Collection: Braasi Industry Back to work

Eliška and Šimon met studying architecture in Liberec, opened a shared studio and cycled to work. They were missing a rucksack that would fit a laptop without looking like a sports statement. So Šimon simply sewed the first one himself and gave it to Eliška for Christmas. Then came a rucksack for friends, a first cycling exhibition, and the architecture studio gradually turned into a workshop. Braasi Industry today sits in its own factory in Prague’s Holešovice district, which the founders rented from the city in a devastated state after a flood and rebuilt themselves — they are architects, after all. A team of seamstresses sews dozens of rucksacks there daily, and the company remains family in the literal sense: the finances are handled by mum. Design inspiration comes from the simple aesthetics of 1980s climbing gear, and the materials are fundamentally Czech, from one-hundred-per-cent cotton to military-grade Cordura 1100D. There are just two exceptions: Japanese YKK zips and buckles, and Italian cowhide, because in those two disciplines the world’s best simply sits elsewhere. Local manufacturing here is not a label but a competitive advantage: Braasi can hand over a corporate-order prototype the next day; from Asia it would take a month. Rucksacks by architects now fly to customers in Germany, the Netherlands and Japan. And they are still designed like a house: timelessly, honestly, without ornament.