$450 for a custom, hand-made leather backpack is a pretty decent price. Leather bags last forever if taken care of and look better as they age. That could easily be a lifetime bag.
$450 for a School Bag?
111–120 of 122 posts
Re: $450 for a School Bag?
#112The article tries to articulate the value add through attention to detail in manufacturing "so the bags survive 6 years of rough and tumble ", but I'm not really getting it. What am I missing? I had a $60-in-1995 northface backpack that lasted through hauling 5+ periods of textbooks every day, walking and biking to middle school and highschool. It worked fine, in fact my dad still uses it (30 years later) to hold and…
Curious coincidence, I bought a randoseru (ランドセル) [1][2][3] early this morning and complained to my wife all the way to the store. She doesn’t want our children to look different at school. They are already different enough for being hāfu [4] and she doesn’t want to traumatize them even more. The bags are stiff and, in my eyes, quite ugly, and children are supposed to carry several books every day, good exercise but…
[deleted]
Re: $450 for a School Bag?
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Everything else ("it's handcrafted!", "it's durable!") is a reverse justification from there. Thanks for this, exactly. It's the same thing with designer bags. After the rise of "superfake" luxury bags that cost literally a tenth of the real thing, I remember reading some blogs trying to argue why people should buy authentic, basing it on BS "handcrafted quality!" reasons (the reason they were called "superfakes" i…
> Sure, some of the reasons were actually true (it does cost a lot more to pay workers in France compared to China) Even that, is not a problem that the consumer has to solve if the superfakes can attain the same quality using cheaper labour. In that case supporting local jobs could be a justification, not quality (again, assuming that the quality is the same).
Or better yet something without any fake logos whatsoever that is even higher quality than the 'real' thing.
e.g. Even Louis Vuitton for their most expensive bags doesn't use the absolute highest quality leather, so there's room for improvement.
Re: $450 for a School Bag?
#114Looks like it would be a fun project to hand craft
Re: $450 for a School Bag?
#115I'd love to know the relative environmental impact of buying: 1. A single high-quality $400 leather randoseru to last six years 2. A single high-quality $200-$400 ripstop nylon bag with high quality zippers, etc (essentially, GoRuck quality level) to last for life 3. Six years' worth of $50 Jansports that last maybe ~3 years each 4. Six years' worth of cheapass $15 Amazon Essentials level nylon bags that last ~1 year…
This is BIFL culture math that doesn’t make sense IRL. Plenty of people use the same JanSport $50 backpack for a decade just fine for school.
Also, more to the point: I suspect that the environmental impact of this "BIFL" leather bag absolutely dwarfs the impact of multiple nylon bags so I did not have some BIFL-y agenda... =)
Re: $450 for a School Bag?
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
The moment you add an aspect of culture and social pressure all economics goes out of the window. The bags cost $450 because it is the expectation that grandparents will buy an expensive school bag for their grandkids, that's it. Everything else ("it's handcrafted!", "it has 200 parts!", "it's durable") is reverse justification from there. It's the same as trying to figure out why a tiny piece of abundant rock costs…
This is a bad analogy. Watch the video in the linked article. Then go and look at the prices of some luxury brands. These bags are cheap by comparison. I’m not going to try and justify the manufacturing process, but this could be the price of manufacturing something locally and not in a sweat shop.
The cost to make might justify the price, but does the price justify the value add?
Re: $450 for a School Bag?
#117Hello! Author here. Pleasantly surprised to see this on the front page! I thought I'd address a couple of questions here: - Why is it so expensive? You can definitely buy cheaper randoserus made in China and these are giving lower-end Japanese manufacturers a run for their money. For example, https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/dp/B09H5RLGQF is around 45 dollars. Even off-the-shelf Japanese randoserus are cheaper than the…
In addition to this, some people also get their randoseru "minified", where it's cut up and a fist sized version made. My wife still has hers.
My son just received his first randoseru and the company that made it offers to "minify" using almost all of the original key parts from his, in the future.
Re: $450 for a School Bag?
#118To insert a sentence that has nothing to do with the topic, I am in China. My daughter is in the second grade of elementary school. Her schoolbag must weigh 6 kilograms and contains various books, exercise books, and test papers. This was not the case when I was in elementary school. My little schoolbag was empty, with only 2 books and 2 thin notebooks. Nowadays, children have too much homework and they have to write until 10pm every day.
Re: $450 for a School Bag?
#119https://saddlebackleather.com/thin-front-pocket-leather-back... might be closest, but more expensive. https://saddlebackleather.com/tumbled-leather-drawstring-bac... is cheaper and more realistic, perhaps. https://saddlebackleather.com/leather-backpack-lg is only 2 pounds and cheaper still.
I have a Saddleback thin front pocket backpack that’s currently 7 years old. I plan on passing it down to my grandson when he graduates college in around 20 years and he can pass it down to his grandkid when he is done with it.
Amazing durable products from that company.
Re: $450 for a School Bag?
#120The article tries to articulate the value add through attention to detail in manufacturing "so the bags survive 6 years of rough and tumble ", but I'm not really getting it. What am I missing? I had a $60-in-1995 northface backpack that lasted through hauling 5+ periods of textbooks every day, walking and biking to middle school and highschool. It worked fine, in fact my dad still uses it (30 years later) to hold and…
Curious coincidence, I bought a randoseru (ランドセル) [1][2][3] early this morning and complained to my wife all the way to the store. She doesn’t want our children to look different at school. They are already different enough for being hāfu [4] and she doesn’t want to traumatize them even more. The bags are stiff and, in my eyes, quite ugly, and children are supposed to carry several books every day, good exercise but…
That saying is also known as "Tall Poppy Syndrome".