Our parents met in a shoe factory in Southern Brazil. They worked there together for years before they left to start their own.
Both my parents are fourth-generation German-Brazilian. My brother and I are the fifth. The leather-craft came with the first immigrants. So did the dialect we still speak at home.
What they built first was a small leather workshop in the mountains, in a town called Picada Café. They started by stitching women's bags from leather scraps the bigger factories were throwing away. Patchwork. Built from what was already there. Thirty-five years on, the workshop is still in Picada Café. Still ours.
I was seventeen when I joined them. The first bag I wanted to make was one for myself, for the laptop I dreamed of owning.
When I told the family, they said it was a non-starter. Men didn't spend money on bags. The category didn't exist.
Fifteen years on, Nordweg ships to more than twenty countries. We went international ten years ago. This year, we're opening our first US office in Austin, Texas.
The Workshop
Picada Café is small. Five thousand people. Settled in the 1840s by the same wave our family came over with. The dialect, Hunsrückisch, was recognized as official cultural heritage in 2012.
Our leather comes from LWG Gold-certified tanneries. The hides are a byproduct of the food industry. We don't waste them. The workshop has run on solar since 2019. Our scraps go to ILSA Brasil, who turn them into organic compost. It's how the workshop has worked since my parents stitched the first patchwork bag.
Before any bag leaves the workshop, Hiago checks every stitch. He's our reviewer. Same person, every bag.
What we make, and why
A few years ago my father told me he'd had a dream the night before. He'd walked into the workshop and seen the entire production line dedicated to Nordweg. Six years later, it was.
We make bags, wallets, and accessories for people who'd rather own one good thing for ten years than three forgettable ones in five. We're tired of the cheap stuff. Each of our makers stitches at most two backpacks a day. Some of the first bags we made are still being carried.
A Nordweg bag is a memory album. Full of everything you've already lived with one on your back.
Now
Thirty-five years in. We're still in Picada Café. This year we're in Austin too. Every bag still leaves our workshop before it gets to you.
Nordweg means "northern path" in German. I named it after where we were going, not where we came from.
Made to last.
— Igor Gaelzer