Anita and I first met at business school. She was focused on the tech industry, and I was fascinated by product design, retail, and branding. While Anita grew her career around building tech products at startups, Microsoft, and Google, I built physical products at The Gap, Mervyn’s, KiwiCo, and Parasol Co. As the years passed by with weddings, pregnancies (five babies total!), first homes, and job changes, our friendship remained strong. We also always found time to enjoy one of our favorite passions together - traveling!
Little did we know then that our passion for travel would turn into what Kaleido Concepts is today.
One year ago, we were on a trip to France and Germany. We did a ton of walking through the streets of Paris. We struggled with our heavy and bulky backpacks as we climbed all 669 steps of the Eiffel Tower. Yet when we visited the Louvre and Musee d’Orsay, we needed something to hold our knee-length down jackets, wallets, and water bottles in order to free our hands up to take selfies! If only we had a lightweight backpack with water bottle holders that we could use in this situation...
We also visited several trade shows in France and Germany and gathered catalogs and samples in search of some product ideas. I have memories of us packing in the hotel room trying to decide what would make it home with us, what could fit, and sitting our our luggage to zipper it all up. If only we had packed a convertible tote bag to carry all the extra stuff we had...
As we traveled from airport to airport, we looked for solutions to our specific pain point. And all we could find were boring, uninspiring bags and packables that didn’t offer a strong style point of view. The existing product on the market were there to fill a functional need, but did not allow consumers to express their personal style.
Now, one year from when the idea of Kaleido Concepts originated, it is surreal to see how far our idea has come. When customers send me photos of them wearing our bags, it is a richly rewarding feeling. To know that someone appreciates the product decisions that we made and the details that we stressed with the manufacturer that we needed to have… it makes it all worth it.