We’ve spent a tremendous amount of time putting together some of the best leather backpacks that are available online today. We have a selection of some of the highest quality brands like Tumi, Mulholland Brothers and Bric’s, as well as more affordable but high-quality pieces from Piel Leather. If you are in the market for a Leather Backpack now, call us so we can help you make the best pick available.

Quick update after the Christmas rush has ended. There are a bunch of new OGIO bags on sale. Check out the 2007 OGIO 7900 and the OGIO 6900. Better stuff coming every day.

One of the most unique and cool bags I have seen is the OGIO Locker Bag (especially the black version). It is actually a virtual locker for your stuff, bring your dress shoes, comb and hair stuff put it in the bag and lock it up while you play bball with your friends. This bag quickly became a favorite when going to the gym when I found out how much stuff I could fit inside of it.

Since we have wine carriers on the brain right now, we just did checked out a new Mulholland Leather Wine Carrier which are probably the best in class for Wine Carriers on the market. The best thing to use these for are corporate gifts, or gifts to your partner, we can engrave them with anything you’d like, and it makes for a great gift.

We have a new Leather Wine Carrier to add to our already big selection. This time its from Ghurka who makes an expensive, but well made carrier that’s a great buy for the holidays. We’ve been selling the carriers out fast in the past couple weeks, so get on one for the holidays quick!

I just noticed a cool new feature for anyone using Google’s Gmail service. Recently Google launced Google Docs & Spreadsheets, which is essentially an online version of Microsoft’s Office program. Well they have a great way of integrating these new features for Gmail users. When people send you spreadsheets now, you can open your docs directly into your browser, and save them for later in your online folder. This is one of the greatest time saving items I’ve seen in a while, everyone has a ton of documents in emails that they use as their “storage”, but Google takes it one step further so that we can more efficiently keep track of all the documents that we get bombarded with everyday.

The Berlin Art Forum was held this week, we saw some pictures from the event on High Snobiety’s website.  What stood out most to me (and most relevant to the readers of this blog). Is this interesting piece, which seems to translate to “You’re sure it’s mine luggage?”  Anyway, we’ve all been there, and this is a humorous take on waiting for our luggage, the thing we all hate doing at the airport.

Tumi introduced a new golf bag today that is only available in during the month of October (Breast Cancer Awareness Month) called the Bernadette. This unique golf bag retails for $450 USD and 20% of the retail price will be donated to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. So go out and create awareness for this important issue, and you get a great Tumi bag as well, the bag comes with a removeable rain hood, is made from nylon with leather trim, and has eight zip pockets.

See more information on the Bernadette at Tumi’s Website.

A sporty brand with extreme products. From humble beginnings to a modern phenomenon, top gear bag designer OGIO still thrives on the substance that spurred its existence…vision. Michael Pratt fostered the prodigy that is OGIO, and with intuition and a little financial reinforcement spawned the young company’s venture into gear bag design. With an innovative line of duffles and packs loaded with excess features, OGIO dished out the inner extreme everyone craved. With this driving appetite, OGIO reinvented golf with a fresh contemporary line and a pimped out “golf cart”, more widely known as the BRV (battle-ready vehicle). OGIO spurred new age golf, and recognized the vast potential of their entity. Sharing a synonymous intense direction with action sports, OGIO’s eminence emerged from the get-go with the production of the hit motocross film “Global Addiction”. With a die-hard crew and collective insight, OGIO gathered top athletes from across the nation from moto, BMX, skate, snow, and surf to produce Team OGIO. Together OGIO designers and athletes unite to create specific action sports packs. This cutting-edge company has single handedly revolutionized bag design and there is more where that came from.

Looks, Style and the price make this extreme brand one of our favorites. Remember, cool bags that make sense are hard to find.

We just came across this great blog Day in the Life of My Tumi that is an often humorous take on Tumi luggage, and is a must read for anyone considering buying into Tumi’s T3 collection. One of the really interesting things we noticed in this blog was the first post Inspiration for the Tumi Blog Mark, the author, goes on to document a compliant he had with his favorite luggage brand, and received two letters from the President expressing concern and asking Mark to be a new field tester for Tumi. If you are a road-weary frequent traveler you can relate to most of the articles in this great blog.

Check it out at Day in the Life of My Tumi

Hartmann was founded by Joseph S. Hartmann as the Hartmann Trunk Co. in 1877, and was originally based in Milwaukee, WI. The brand has always been a symbol of luxury and quality goods since it’s inception. The Company rose to prominence in the 1930s when they introduced the belt from a flywheel that were used in tanneries. Using this belt, Hartmann introduced Belting Leather, that eventually became the company’s signature. During the 1940s the company made a significant contribution to the United States effort in World War II.

By 1973 when air travel became more and more prevalent, the Company pioneered carry-on luggage with it’s 747 collection. In 2002 the Company celebrated it’s 125th Anniversary, and continues to be one of the most luxurious luggage lines made today.

There are a ton of travel books, magazines and travel writers out there that help people get to the best “finds” in a particular city. The great travel site Gadling has tipped us to a series of books that help one not only visit a location, but the best things to do when you LIVE there. Although the series is relatively short at the moment (only for Ireland, Costa Rica, Mexico and a few others) these books should give you a great in-depth view of what it is actually like to live in a foreign city as an Expat. Also thanks to gadling, check out the Telegraphs Expat Events Guide which should help if you are looking to find a bit of home.

A lot of luggage manufacturer’s have storied histories and have built a reputation for durability and ease of use. Tumi is one luggage brand that excels in durability, accessibility and most importantly style. Founded in 1975 by Charlie Clifford after some time spent in Peru with the U.S. Peace Corps, Tumi has become known as the brand for discriminating globetrotters and executives. The name Tumi comes from Clifford’s time in Peru, and is the name for the Incan diety of good fortune. Tumi revolutionized the luggage industry in the early 1980s with the introduction of U.S. Military style black-on-black garment bag that utilized ballistic nylon (a nylon fabric developed by DuPont that were worn in flak jackets by airmen in World War II). This garment bag is still a vibrant piece of the Tumi collection, but over the years the Company has gathered more than 35 U.S. Patents on their designs, a lifetime warranty and their signature tracer program and 24-hour customer service at 1-800-299-TUMI.

With some great new designs and classic collections in 2006, click here to view them.

Le Cool has received a ton of great publicity for their new travel books, that details the experiences of locals so that you can have an insiders view of the city you are going to. Unfortunately they only have three books available at this time, Spain, Europe and the Rest of the World. I can’t wait for our next European trip to experience something a little different from the eyes of Le Cool.

Buy it here.

{from coolhunting}

As of this writing there is only two manufacturers allowed to make TSA Approved Locks, and these companies are Travel Sentry and Safe Skies.  For the latest info on TSA Luggage Locks, check out their Lock Page for more information.  Two company monopoly ain’t bad, huh? Since we started the days of heightened security, all luggage that passes through the United States is checked by the Transportation Security Administration, or the TSA.  Basically you are still able to use your old locks, but if the TSA determines that there is something in there that they need to inspect, they have the right to break that lock, but with these TSA locks, they have a master key and are able to get instant access and inspect what is needed.