Really figuring out what we do.

My co-founders and I had the opportunity to sit down and build a foundation to define what we do.  It was a great exercise where we focused on refining both the company (canvas and hide) and our products (bags) down to two sentences.

Business Description:

Canvas and Hide provides simple and durable equipment that captures the heart of the explorer, the requirements of the modern professional, and the mind of the lifelong student.

This really captures versatility while alluding to our core values.  We believe that this is a strong statement that invites the right kind of questions to drive dialog about what we stand for as a company, and the part of the human spirit which we are working to empower with our products.  We are making bags for adventuresome, discerning individuals who appreciate craftsmanship and materials, but also demand a lot from the things they own.

Product Description:

We are developing a multipurpose bag that easily transitions from a day at the office to a weekend adventure.

We feel that we are close on the product description.  We haven't worked in durability and reparability, which are key to our values.  We aren't sure that this is important enough to reside in our most foundational product description though.  There are many companies who offer life long product warranties (jansport for example will fix any jansport you send them with a few exceptions) but we see our impact in this area being based around our consumers wanting to repair their bags (i've never been terribly attached to a jansport.  I usually was just waiting for it to fail so that I could justify replacing it.)  What we have identified as a differentiation is the ability of our bags to seamlessly transition between home, transportation, work, and school.  We see bicycle integration as a key piece of this puzzle, but we do not want to limit our scope to cyclists, as this transitional quality has the opportunity to provide value to a wide range of adventurous individuals.