Same same, but different…

Same same, but different…

With so many great carry brands in the world, it’s easy to remain completely unaware of a brand that you would actually love.

So taking some inspiration from Amazon’s recommendation engine, we’d like to open up the comments and find those brands that we and our community might be unaware of.

We’ll kick it off with some of the more well known ones, which we’ve grouped into themes like Crafty, 1970’s, Industrial, Action Sports, Bike, and more…

Crafty
Construction that you can see and understand. Materials whose character is celebrated rather than forced into servitude. OK, maybe we’re going a little far, but here’s a few nice and crafty brands that you might like – Makr, Tanner, BillyKirk and Temono

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1970’s
There was something about hippies and flares that generated a decade of real ‘truth to materials’ approaches. A number of brands are rediscovering how nice tan leather and wool can be, while still adapting formats to the carry needs of our modern toys. Brands like Hard Graft, Superfolk, Travelteq & Kuvert

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Industrial Designed
Bag designers are a funny breed. If they come from fashion, they generally design soft and draping carry goods. However if they come from an industrial design background, you’ll generally see more structured and zip based bags… the kind you can easily draw. Think Incase, Alkr, Axio and Belkin.

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Action Sport
When you carry skateboards and snow stuff and haul it all over the world, you generally need a pretty consistent feature set. Add to that the fact that 2 of these brands are owned by the same company, and 3 of them are made in the same factories, and you start to understand the similarities. Here’s Gravis, Burton, Dakine, Ogio.

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Bike
Bike couriers are the new surfers… those relaxed ‘don’t give a f#&k’ crew that we all wish we were a little more like. So it’s no surprise that the bike lifestyle sporns bags that let you live a little more like a courier. These brands all do interesting roll-top packs, single strap bags, and have some street cred. We could list others, but these are our pick – Chrome, Mission Workshop, Sag & T-Level.

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Japanese Street
If you’ve never been to Japan, you’ve never seen the real evolution of the human race. They have technology, systems and a culture that makes the west seem prehistoric, and they usually keep it to themselves. We yap a lot about Porter here, but you should check out some of the more street oriented carry brands… Brands like Master-Piece, Visvim, Hobo and Nike (but not as you know it) are amazing!

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Heritage fashion
‘Authenticity’ is a word that has bounced around marketing circles so much recently that it has itself become somewhat inauthentic. While it’s been circling, it has encouraged a lot of brands with a rich heritage to release re-issue and ‘reminiscent of’ bags, knowing that the cool cats would dig the authentic credentials. Add to that some newer brands that try and give the appearance of a heritage past, and we start to have some fun things happening > Gregory (Japanese range is best), Fjallraven, Altadena Works & Herschel

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Who did we miss?
What other brand themes should we mention?