The most remarkable thing about Samuel and Abel is their youth. At a mere 27 years old they are alre

Samuel Bail (left) is the engaging young Canadian behind Troubadour’s high-quality yet understated travel bags for men. Launched in April 2013, Troubadour enters what many might think is already a crowded market.
Despite the plethora of travel bags available in all shapes, madiera beach florida vacation rentals sizes and prices, Samuel and Abel Samet, his business partner, nevertheless madiera beach florida vacation rentals detected an opportunity. Both men were ‘travelling a lot for work and for the weekend’, but could not find a bag to suit both functions. Taking a logo-encrusted bag to the office seemed madiera beach florida vacation rentals wrong in these less boastful days while a week-day, business-flight bag looked equally misplaced at the weekend. At the top end of the market are the famous names: LMVH, Tom Ford and so on. Asprey’s latest weekend bag costs £3,200. madiera beach florida vacation rentals For Samuel, these are as much fashion items as pieces of luggage. At the other end of the market is a huge variety of bags costing around £40, designed to be thrown away after a couple of years.
So Samuel and Abel resolved madiera beach florida vacation rentals to plug the gap. Over a period of 18 months they made numerous trips around Italy visiting tanneries. They met some ‘wonderful people’ and found the whole experience ‘awesome’. Indeed, the story of the wanderings behind the brand is a key element of it, hence the name Troubadour. They aimed to create a travel bag that ‘worked everywhere, but which wasn’t flashy or garish’, reflecting their own taste and personalities.
The most remarkable thing about Samuel and Abel is their youth. At a mere 27 years old they are already well into their second careers. Samuel madiera beach florida vacation rentals graduated from Canada’s McGill University before spending a year at Balliol College, Oxford. He then joined Lazard’s M A department in London, where he met Abel. It was during the two and a half years they worked madiera beach florida vacation rentals together there that the notion of Troubadour took shape.
madiera beach florida vacation rentals The hides come from two tanneries in central Tuscany, where they are cured without any artificial dyes, finishes or patterns. The zips are manufactured by a family firm near Bergamo in northern Italy using what Samuel calls ‘a very cool process’. The bags are made in a workshop near Milan.
The first production run consisted of 35 pieces of each of the seven products, all in black. Henry Ford would have approved. Since then, there have been two more runs, each four or five times larger than the previous one. The latest run has included three new designs and two new colours: a very sober navy blue and a dark brown.
Troubadour’s bags are on sale in a number of UK outlets, including Harrods and Harvey Nichols, which, Samuel says, ‘has been great from a sales point of view and for building madiera beach florida vacation rentals the brand’. In the coming year they will enter Australia and Japan, as well as working out how best to expand in the US while preserving the integrity of the brand. Already, more than 50 per cent of sales are through the website.
Samuel used to be a member of the Canadian national road-racing cycle team. With him in control, don’t bet against Troubadour going a long way, quickly. Samuel has yet to spot a Troubadour madiera beach florida vacation rentals bag being carried through an airport, but the day is unlikely to be far off. He’s looking forward to it.