The Long Road to Interchangeable Straps

February 19, 2016

Hello TruBlue Tribe!

As most of you know, we have been working on replacement or "upgrade" straps for quite some time. What seemed like an easy task was not exactly a piece of cake.

First, we tried to upgrade the way they snap or buckle to the bag. After experimenting with numerous designs, we discovered:

Magnets are not secure
Buckles are a pain
Our original snaps actually worked and looked best

This is a picture of one of our original test designs. The buckle was cumbersome to buckle and unbuckle and we ended up just not buckling our bags up most of the time when using it in everyday life, not ideal.

Once we decided that we should keep the easy "snap" design, it was time to figure out colours and materials. This was a lengthy process that we got many of you involved in over social media and in multiples focus groups. We can't thank you enough for all of your help!

What we learned in this process:

Everyone has their own personality, and taste in colours
There are a lot of fun colour combinations in this world
Everyone seems to love leather

So, what we had now were 2 conclusions. 1) Keep the snap design and 2) leather was a winner.

Now was the time to set to work and find colours that went with as many of our original bags as possible, to give you the best options in our first round of upgrades. We searched big malls we searched small malls we searched for fashion trends, watch bands, belts, and kiosks. What we discovered was that to bring you the best colour options we needed 2 neutrals, a red, and a blue.

Finally, we found the exact colours:

Onyx (dark pure black)
Natural (a sort of tan, fairly light brown)
Mahogany (the hardest colour to nail, a dark red that's not too red but not too brown)
Navy (a dark blue like the colour of our logo)

After looking at the bag with the straps, we decided we could do even better. The bag would look even better if the handle could match and the logo could use an upgrade as well. So we have included matching leather handles with all of our straps and we have made metal logo pins! The pins can go on your bag, your notebook, your jacket, wherever you'd like! We personally love the way they look on the bags with the leather straps and handles. Gives the Original a whole new level of class!

So friends, there you have it, the extremely short version of how we used the last 7 months to bring you these upgrades for your Original :) Enjoy!

I snapped this picture of our Creative Director, Joe, testing the new upgrades while we were at CES in Las Vegas. Lookin' good Joe!

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