Our Story
Before Nordweg had a name, it had our parents.
They met in a shoe factory in Southern Brazil. After years working side by side, they left to open a small leather workshop of their own in Picada Café.
Their first bags were patchwork, stitched from leather scraps larger factories had discarded. Thirty-five years later, the workshop is still in Picada Café. It is still in our family. The principle has not changed: make something useful, make it carefully, and stand behind it.
The bag that started Nordweg
I joined them at seventeen. The first bag I wanted to make was for myself, for the laptop I dreamed of owning.
“The category didn't exist.”
My family did not believe men would spend money on a bag. I kept asking for the chance to try. Fifteen years ago, that idea became Nordweg.
Ten years ago, we began shipping internationally. Nordweg pieces have since reached people in more than twenty countries.
The workshop behind the name
Nordweg grew out of the workshop, not the other way around. The work happens beside the cutting tables and sewing machines, with each maker stitching at most two backpacks in a day.
Before a bag leaves Picada Café, its stitching and finish are inspected. If it carries our name, a person here has inspected it and stands behind the work.
What we make and why
My father once told me about a dream. He walked into the workshop and saw the entire production line making Nordweg. Six years later, it was real.
Growth did not change the reason for the work. We make backpacks, briefcases, weekenders, wallets, and small leather goods for people who would rather choose one useful object and keep using it. These are pieces for workdays, flights, weekends, and the marks that come with years of use.
We call the larger idea Uma Vida Boa, a good life. To us, it means doing work worth being proud of and making something useful for another person.
From Picada Café to Austin
In 2026, Nordweg opened its first U.S. office in Austin. The bags are still made in Picada Café, in the family workshop where the story began. Austin brings us closer to our U.S. customers. It does not move the work away from its source.
Nordweg means "northern path" in German. I chose the name for where we were headed, not where we had been.
Igor Gaelzer
Founder, Nordweg