PPAI Expo Report: Social Media's Favorite Bags, Turning Jackets Into Totes, and More in the Bags Category

"Bags" is a pretty large umbrella term within the promotional products industry. If a customer says they're looking for bags, there are a million questions you can and should ask from there. First: What kind of bag? Are we talking backpacks? If so, what kind of backpack? Rugged? Minimal? For school, travel or both? If they're looking for totes or grocery bags, there are similar subcategories that you can and should offer them to make sure you can give them exactly what they want.

And, like apparel, bag fashion moves quickly, so new design trends and aesthetic choices come in and out of favor.

As we moved throughout the show floor at the PPAI Expo, we paid extra attention to what sorts of bags were on display, which seemed to be getting the most attention, and spoke with a few suppliers about purposeful design with their bags.

Less Is More

A lot of suppliers are going for more minimal approaches to their bags, including both the silhouette and the decoration — rounded edges, clean lines, and omitting some of the bells and whistles common in bag designs.

And while black was still a common color choice, many suppliers used full color spectrums for rainbow-like displays and plenty of branding options for distributors to match their customers' branding.

Brevitē, a new-ish company in the bag space specializing in backpacks, crossbody bags, ands mall pouches, billed itself as the "most popular brand on the internet," meaning it's resonating with younger end-users and influencing others.

Elliot Kim, one of the three brothers who started the company, explained how the simple design influenced by life in New York City influenced the products.

"What we did was take a really simple silhouette of a backpack, and we loaded it with a ton of cool features—features we would want to use," Kim says from the Brevitē booth. "There's a luggage strap—really easy to travel—there's a bunch of secret pockets where you could put your passport or your wallet when you're on the go, a stretchy water bottle pocket that could fit a Stanley or a big Yeti. There's a separate water-sealed laptop sleeve, which is great. Most laptop sleeves are inside of the bag."

The compartments are almost hidden, and the size of the bag from the outside belies all of the space in the interior. The name of the brand itself indicates the goal of the product.

"The name Brevitē, if you say it with a Y, it means clear and concise," Kim says. "We wanted put that into the design of the product. We said a lot of bag brands are kind of boring with boring colors, black or gray, and said, 'How could we do it differently with some vibrancy, give something that people would want to wear and show off to their friends?'"

So, how does a bag that looks so simple go viral? What does it mean for a bag to go "viral" at all?

"Right now, if you have a really good product and compelling content that's entertaining people, people buy into that," Kim says. "They share it, they like it, they engage with it. For us, we did the same thing. We created a really good product that people actually want to use, and then we learned how to entertain people in that process."

For decoration, Brevitē is still keeping things simple and understated with embroidery on the front, and is working on other options like hang-tags or zipper pulls to keep the minimalist aesthetic but provide a branding space.

A Bag for Everyone and Everything

Elsewhere on the show floor, Hexa Custom, whom we know primarily from their colorful and highly personalized outerwear, walked us through their new bag venture. The goal, according to creative director Kathleen Baker, was to create something for Hexa Custom that wasn't reliant on season or geography. Bags have use all year round, whether you live somewhere with four distinct seasons or not.

Using the same materials as their jackets, Hexa introduced totes with similar utility as Brevitē's bags, featuring all sorts of compartments and hidden features, and similar customization opportunities as their jackets. There are three styles, modeled after three different jackets, with sizes varying from laptop sleeves to larger all-purpose totes.

Colorful Choices

We're not going to come out here and say that color is the new black, because a good quality black bag goes with everything and will always be a good choice. But brans like Numo made it clear that distributors shouldn't shy away from some color when pitching bag products to their customers.

For the bags that still want to go with the timeless black look, the trend is still on the clean and minimal side. Decoration like embroidery or other ways to keep a small brand logo that doesn't take away from the understated design are big right now. It creates a luxury look for a high perceived value.