Crumpler: История австралийского бренда сумок и его возвращение к истокам.

Australian bag manufacturer

Crumpler is an Australian bag brand and manufacturer with two separately held companies who design and supply different products to their respective markets. The company's Pacific headquarters are in Melbourne, Australia, while its European office serving other markets is in Berlin, Germany. Established in 1995, Crumpler's products are aimed at young people aged 18 to 35 years old, and have been known for its colourful designs and quirky humorous marketing.

Crumpler was founded in Melbourne in 1995 by Dave Roper (ex bike courier and co founder of Minuteman Messengers), and sculptor / furniture maker / bike courier Stuart Crumpler. Stuart designed the original Crumpler logo in 1991 which he branded onto his furniture designs. Will Miller who was a business partner of Dave at Minuteman came in later as a 3rd partner. From the beginning, the bags were designed for bike messengers,

Crumpler had a booth at the 2005 Consumer Electronics Show to introduce its brand to American technology retailers. Stuart Crumpler sold his share of Crumpler to Roper and Miller in 2011. Roper and Miller left the company in 2015 after Crescent Capital bought a majority stake and took over management. Crumpler became the "official luggage sponsor" for the Australian Olympic team in 2015. The company did not purchase Australian swimwear brand Tigerlily out of administration in 2020 as has been wrongly reported. In November 2021, David Roper, now joined by his daughter Virginia Martin, announced they had reacquired Crumpler. The father daughter team beat out more than 60 expressions of interest and bids from 20 parties. The duo also announced the return of the original logo and a revisit to Crumpler's artistic roots. The Smith St, Fitzroy store reopened in December 2021, having been converted to a showroom with the addition of a workshop where designers can be seen creating limited, exclusive Fitzroy versions of classic Crumpler messenger bags.

Its original logo consisted of a stick figure with dreadlocks, designed before the company was founded. In 2018, the private equity brand owners and then CEO launched an all new logo following results of a focus group. This was met with significant backlash and the generic looking stick figure has since become known as Toilet Man due to its similarity to a toilet door sign. As of early 2022, Crumpler Australia reintroduced the original Crumpler logo with new products featuring the beloved icon being manufactured. Crumpler became known for unusual marketing largely credited to Dave Roper which is deliberately informal with an idiosyncratic approach. logo fruit stickers placed on millions of apples and oranges, tiny boxes of matches, and using a nude body model to demonstrate the sizes of its bags. Their bags are given wacky names, for example "Barney Rustle," "Complete Seed," and "Moderate Embarrassment." The brand achieved high popularity among younger shoppers in Australia, known for its colourful and compact designs.

In Australia, Crumpler sells exclusively through their own stores. There are currently also stores in Singapore and Malaysia. Crumpler Europe no longer has its own physical stores and is now only trading online. The brand has also had various pop up stores worldwide. In 2015 one of these opened in the 1st arrondissement of Paris at the petite Cremerie de Paris. and in 2018 at the Australian Open tennis Grand Slam event. Due to voluntary administration, in 2021 all 11 Crumpler stores across Australia were closed down indefinitely. Since Roper's acquirement, five stores have been reopened Brisbane, Sydney Galleries, Little Bourke St, Fitzroy and Adelaide.