Crumpler

Bags for people who know how to live: adventurers, photographers, riders, designers, makers, thinkers, doers. Each of our products are purpose designed, constructed with quality materials and made to last our lifetime warranty. We’ve been at this since 1992 – for better and worse – and learned a lot along the way.

While Crumpler product naming may lack rhyme and reason, our design approach is anything but random. Uber bag and luggage nerds, we consider every usage, situation and detail from the ground up.

All exterior fabrics are purpose-chosen for durability and waterproofed on both sides; wheels and wheel housings are designed to fend off gravel and dirt; zips and handles are made to withstand constant use, as well as contoured for comfort; and inside a Crumpler bag you’ll find the right number of right-sized pockets in all the right places. Why go to such lengths? Because we believe true luxury is the absence of problems.

THE STORY OF THE CRUMPLER BAG

It’s 1992. A young man sits hunched over his grandmother’s old sewing machine in a shed in Ballarat, Australia. He’s trying to get the machine to sew through a truck tarp, so he can make a bag strong enough to carry a slab of beer home on his bike.

Grandmother may have helped with the prototype, but it was a parachute-maker who in 1993 really helped Crumpler on a path to making better bags. He grabbed a bag and ripped it apart. Then showed a better way to stitch it back together.

A Melbourne bike messenger company ordered some of the first bags for their riders. They loved them not just because they were strong, but also because they could open and shut them without taking them off. Melburnians started noticing these brightly coloured messenger bags and wanted a piece of the action. They followed the trail back to the Crumpler workshop in Flinders Lane. Sales picked up and the company grew.

Whether for better or worse – and it was often worse – Crumpler worked it out for themselves. They found their own way and that’s what makes them different.

New bag designs in the current pattern room still sit next to the original messenger bags. Their principles remain the same: simplicity, a willingness to experiment and a determination to make the best bag possible.