Vera Bradley

American luggage and handbag design company

Vera Bradley Sales, LLC (d. b. a. Vera Bradley) is an American luggage and handbag design company, founded by Barbara Bradley Baekgaard and Patricia R. Miller in 1982. As of 2019, its home office is in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The company was named after Baekgaard's mother. Its original luxury cotton bag product lines have expanded to include fashion and home accessories, office supplies, and patterned gifts. Many items have distinctive florals, paisleys, or geometric prints with complementary linings, as well as elongated diamond quilting. The patterns were originally inspired by French Provençal country fabrics

The founders, Baekgaard and Miller, met in 1975 in Fort Wayne. Baekgaard was redecorating her home by hanging wallpaper when Miller, who was new to the area, came over to her house and introduced herself. Baekgaard asked for help hanging the wallpaper and this experience developed into a wallpapering company they created, called Up Your Wall. Eventually the pair started selling clothing together through trunk shows at homes. While traveling back from Florida through an airport prior to a spring trunk show, they noticed the bland, masculine carry on bags that many travelers were using and thought that women would want to use something brighter and more feminine. Once back in Indiana, they borrowed a total of $500 from their husbands, bought some fabrics inspired by the Pierre Deux French Provençal look popular at the time, and had a seamstress friend develop prototype bags. They disassociated the bags from the clothing they sold in order to find out what the demand would be if the customers were not aware the bags were produced by them, calling them "Vera Bradley", after Baekgaard's mother. The bags sold well, and family members ran the business out of Baekgaard's basement, with the first logo for the company being created by Baekgaard's teenage daughter, and mother Vera becoming a sales representative in Florida. Vera Bradley Designs was incorporated on November 15, 1982. The majority of bags were initially sold through small shops as well as Marshall Field's. The business did not have issues with selling the bags, but did encounter difficulty keeping up with the demand. They hired local seamstresses as well as provided a loan for the creation of Phoenix Sewing, a company dedicated to making Vera Bradley products. Phoenix Sewing was under contract to not produce other products unless their board agreed to do so, and Baekgaard and Miller were board members. Eventually several sewing companies formed and expanded in the area to produce the products. In 2019, the company purchased a 75% stakeholder share in Creative Genius, parent company of Pura Vida Bracelets, a bracelet company based in La Jolla, California. They have the option to purchase the remainder of the company in 2024.

Circa 2007, the company started to employ overseas manufacturing to lower costs and keep up with demand. As a result, several US based sewing companies, including Superior Sample, Phoenix Sewing, and one of their oldest partners, KAM Manufacturing, had to reduce their workforce or close their facilities altogether. The company had already started moving production from China to Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam, but due to the tariff issue, sped up the move to the other manufacturing locations.

Despite licensing to many different purveyors, due to the popularity of the designs, the company has had issues with other companies manufacturing replica goods. In 2005, Vera Bradley brought a suit against Target (which was later settled out of court) for using designs resembling their copyrighted ones on various articles of clothing. In 2018, Amazon and Vera Bradley jointly filed suits against sellers who were importing and selling bags on Amazon that were verified as being counterfeit.

Mary Sloan, longtime friend to Baekgaard and Miller and one of the company's first sales representatives, died in the early 1990s from breast cancer; both her mother and grandmother had died from the disease as well. As of 2015, it was the largest amateur women's golf and tennis charity tournament in the country. Posts from the cancer researchers and Vera Bradley on Facebook, Instagram and the company's blog were used to help recruit patients for clinical trials. Research information is published on the website of the Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center at Indiana University for scientists to be able to collaborate toward a cure.