Customisation Guide

When customising your bag, you need to make sure you know which style you are going to purchase.

We have a variety of styles and sizes for you to choose from.

Please take a peek at our colour guide and select your colour.

If you’re uncertain as to which type of leather you’d prefer, we can send you swatches so you can see them in real life, as the colours can differ quite significantly depending upon the monitor you are using. You can choose up to 10 different leather colours to receive. You will receive a £10 voucher code upon ordering, so all you will pay for is postage!

Just contact us us with a list of leathers you’d like to receive, along with the name and address of where you’d like them to be sent. However, please bear in mind that this will slow down the ordering process a little as our swatches are sent out using Royal Mail First Class & Royal Mail International Economy.

We offer to monogram in Silver-leaf, Gold-leaf or Blind.

For the cost of £10 up-to eight characters/letters can be embossed – with or without abbreviated periods. Each additional character costs £2 extra. There’s a maximum number of characters that can be embossed onto our bag and this depends mostly on the style you have selected.

The character amount depends on the width of the letters (e.g. a ‘W’ is much wider than an ‘i’.) Please feel free to contact us if you want us to verify if something will fit using this option. Alternatively, if something doesn’t fit or you’d like something completely different then consider our bespoke monogramming service.

We can emboss with uppercase, lowercase or a mix of cases, but we do not have superscript or subscript characters. We have punctuation marks and some special characters like ampersand (&) and hyphen (-) but very few characters with accents. The font we use for standard monogramming is ‘Edinburgh’ in point size 30. If you need a particular font or a mix of unique characters, then consider our bespoke monogramming service.

If you’d like more letters, different fonts, weird and wonderful characters (Sanscript, Cyrillic, etc.), your full name, a favourite quote or saying, or want to emboss a design, symbol or company logo on the bag, then we can cater for all of these options and more.

Our tool-makers can craft special brass tools with your exact design with very fine detail, approximately up to a resolution equivalent to 300 dpi. This allows us to emboss the design (Logo, Custom text, Signature, etc.) on to the bag in either Gold-leaf, Silver-leaf, Blind or in Black Indian Ink. We can also offer laser engraving into the leather any design or text you require. Uniquely, laser engraving can also be applied to the reverse of the leather, enabling you to have a message or quote to read every time you open your bag. We can also digitally print any full-colour logo onto the bag in any location you want.

The price of our custom monogramming service starts at £30.

Many people find it convenient to have a handle added to the top of their bag. The handle allows you to pick up the bag off the ground quickly.

The briefcase handle customisation can be added to any satchel larger than 11″, although it’s usually attached to satchels that are 14″ or larger satchels. The cost of this customisation is £20, but please be aware that when the briefcase handle customisation is added then the top of the satchel becomes flat instead of a smooth curve and therefore reduces the height of the satchel slightly, usually by about 1 to 2 cm depending upon the size of the satchel – this can be clearly seen in the example photos.

The bolt-on handle can be fitted to most bags, except a tote and it costs £10. It can also be retrofitted, meaning we can add them to your bag even after they have been made, should you decide later on that you would like one fitted.

Frequently when we fit a handle, then it is accompanied by a shoulder strap that has been made detachable by the addition of some trigger hooks. This enables a satchel to be used as a handle-only briefcase, or pixies and sporrans to be used as a clutch. If you have a handle fitted afterwards, but you would like your fixed strap changed to a detachable strap, then please ensure to request it because the work won’t be undertaken as standard, and vice-versa, if you would prefer the bag to have a fixed strap instead of a detachable one then please let us know when you order your bag.

Usually, when we fit a handle, then it is accompanied by a shoulder strap that has been made detachable by the addition of some trigger hooks. This enables a satchel to be used as a handle-only briefcase, or pixies and sporrans to be used as a clutch. If you have a handle fitted afterwards, but you would like your fixed strap changed to a detachable strap, then please ensure to request it because the work won’t be undertaken as standard, and vice-versa, if you would prefer the bag to have a fixed strap instead of a detachable one then please let us know when you order your bag.

All our satchels come with a fully adjustable shoulder strap as standard. The straps on smaller bags (less than 14-inch in width) are 38-inches in length and 46-inches long on the larger satchels.

Standard shoulder straps are designed to fit people sized between 5’6” (168cm) to 5’10” (178cm) and come with a great deal of adjustability meaning they will generally fit people sized 5’3” to 6’1” of average build. If you have chosen backpack straps, then we will also adjust the backpack straps accordingly for your size.

People of taller and broader stature often find a longer shoulder strap useful or if you want to wear it across the body, instead of off-the-shoulder as it’s usually worn.

On the other hand, if you are particularly small, or if the bag is for a child, then we can also shorten the straps for you. Alternatively, we can add extra holes in the strap, (we then add a unique strap keeper to keep the longer strap in place.) All straps can be replaced at a later date if you think a child would like a longer strap later on.

For simplicity, all strap adjustments cost £10.

If you predict the contents of your bag are going to be heavy, then you may want to help spread the weight on your shoulder by using a shoulder strap pad. For £10 we will craft you a matching shoulder pad (or contrasting, if that’s what you’d prefer!) The shoulder pad is removable and slips over the shoulder strap. The shoulder pad can be added on to our 19 mm wide strap and our 25 mm wide strap.

The shoulder pad is a little curved so that it fits comfortably over your shoulder. It is lined with suede to help cushion the downward force on your shoulder. We recommend this, especially for students who are going to carry a lot of heavy textbooks. The shoulder pad gives you that added comfort while being an excellent fashion accessory on your bag.

We offer two types of standard shoulder straps which are either 3/4″ (19 mm) or 1″ (25 mm) depending upon the bag, but we can boost this up to a 1 5/8″ (37 mm) which helps in spreading the weight of the bag on your shoulder. Ideally suited to people who carry their bag a lot while commuting or travelling around town. We recommend adding these wider shoulder straps to our products that are large in size such as our 14″, 15″, 16.5″, 18.5″, backpacks, etc.

Our bags are crafted with generous gusset depths, but many students find they have to carry a considerable amount of books, as well as their laptop and notebooks and office workers find they are carrying all manner of things in their bags. Sometimes it can be handy to have an extra wide/deeper gusset. This effectively allows you to slide ‘more books’ in your bag – not bigger books.

We also offer bespoke gusset sizes; the smallest gusset starts at just 3 cm (nice and slim if you want to slide in a laptop or a few notepads) up to a maximum of 42% of the satchel width. However, we recommend that gussets generally measure one-third of the bag width. For example, a 15″ satchel would have a gusset measuring 5″.

A small fee of £15 allows you to boost the depth of the gusset by an inch.

The traditional satchel has always had double sided buckles to fasten its flap. There is an art to opening them, and a regular satchel user knows just how to get their satchel open in a couple of seconds. Buckles help as a deterrent to thieves also! However, no matter how good traditional buckles can be, they are slower for access. For £25 we can modify your satchel, so it still looks like it has classic buckles, but it is fitted with discrete magnetic fasteners hidden underneath the conventional buckles.

There’s also the option for you to choose a single buckle or a single magnetic fastener. This option depends on your personal preference and style.

Backpack straps allow the satchel to be worn on the back. When fitting backpack straps we usually still fit a shoulder strap but make it interchangeable with the backpack straps so you can choose what carrying method will suit you best. If you would prefer we didn’t do this, then please be sure to request ‘Backpack Straps Only’, otherwise you will get both.

They’re ideal for cyclists and smaller children who carry a lot of heavy books to school but may not have the strength or stamina to carry them on just one shoulder. Starts at just £25 to upgrade the strapping to interchangeable backpack straps and shoulder straps.

The full inner slip pocket is an excellent customisation which you can have added to your new leather bag when you need a little more space to have your things organised. Depending on the size of your leather bag, the full inner slip pocket could even keep your precious laptop safely inside.

The full inner slip pocket is available in most of our medium to large handcrafted leather products. Check in the customisation options on our made-to-order products to find out if you can have this added to your favourite design.