atelierBluebottle is a company founded in 2013.
Our tagline is “MOUNTAIN NEVERLAND by atelierBluebottle.”
We’ve accumulated over ten years of experience as designers of bags and other goods. As entrepreneurial designers, we spent countless hours coming up with new products, giving daily presentations, creating samples, holding exhibitions, releasing dozens of new articles for every season of the year, and on and on… Occasionally being published in magazines, occasionally being purchased by a famous person. We aimed to do the best we possibly could as designers. But when we reached the goal we thought we were aiming for, we realized it was far away from what we really wanted. We’d been aiming to reach the peak, but all we saw around us were more mountains, with Everest far, far away in the distance. But it’s been a long time since we had any desire to challenge Everest. Well, something like that, anyway (haha).
Throughout that process, we found ourselves always questioning what it was we really wanted, asking ourselves, “Is this the best use of all my experience?” Finally, our answer came in the form of the mountains we’d been climbing and the bikes we’d been riding for close to ten years.
We think of our rucksacks as embodying the idea of ultralightness. But rather than making bags that are simply lightweight, we also aim for a simple design, functional materials, and ease of use.
We source our materials from a wide range of sources, both local to Japan and overseas. We make tough demands of our partners’ materials before buying, intending to select only the very best available.
Though you often hear “Made in Japan” used to imply goods made with quality in mind, the reality is often quite different, since only small amounts of goods can be produced within Japan. Without paying large amounts of wages, it’s impossible to produce high quality goods in modern day Japan.
We, too, initially thought of outsourcing. Outsourcing is much easier, and the profits at sale much higher. But after establishing our own brand, we didn’t want to be just another one of many mass produced goods. We wanted a robust, high quality manufacturing process that we could keep a close eye on ourselves. Therefore, though it prevents us from producing in as high numbers, we make everything ourselves. That’s what we believe in.
In contrast to the modern reality that you can buy anything, anywhere, at any time, we wanted to be a brand about which you could say, “You can only buy that from there.” Both our products and our approach to sales are simple. That’s our way of thinking.
