Home › About abshoo
01About the brand
What abshoo makes, and who it is for
Everything in this catalogue is a bag that goes to school and comes home again. The range is narrow on purpose, it is organised by the length of the back that carries it, and the two shelves that sit outside that order are there because a gate asked for one and a lunch has to travel.
- 2017 founded
- 41 bags in the range
- 196 colourways
- 37,863 ratings
Six shelves, and four of them are a step on the same ladder.
A bag is chosen by the back, not by the birthday
The organising idea behind everything abshoo makes is that the length of a child's back decides the bag, and that nothing else comes close. A pack that reaches below the bottom pulls backwards on every step, walks the straps off the shoulders and ends up carried in one hand; a pack that stops at the waist stays where it was put. That is why the small end of this range is three separate heights rather than one bag in three prints, and why every card on the site prints its height in inches.
The age printed on a product label is a rougher version of the same measurement, and it is the one people buy by because it is easier. A tape from the bony bump at the base of the neck to the top of the hip bones takes ten seconds and settles the question for a year. It is the single piece of advice on this site we would keep if we had to throw the rest away.
Why the range is this narrow
Forty-one bags is a small catalogue for a bag brand, and it stays small because the shelves were drawn around jobs rather than around categories. A clear backpack is not a style, it is an answer to a gate. A matched set is not a bundle, it is an answer to a lunch that gets left on the counter. A luggage strap is not a feature list item, it is an answer to twenty minutes between a taxi and a departure board. Where there is no job, there is no bag: nothing here is made because a competitor makes one.
It also means a decision made once carries across the site. A parent who has learned that their child needs 14.2 inches knows it whichever print they end up buying, and a student who has learned that a 15.6-inch sleeve holds their machine can read that number off any shelf here and get the same answer.
What we will not put on a card
No page on this site says a bag is good for a back. The guidance we quote from the American Academy of Pediatrics and from the orthopaedic surgeons is about a load and how it is worn, and both bodies are careful to keep it that way; the paediatricians note in the same breath that more padding does not mean less pain. A strap, a panel and a belt spread a weight. None of them reduces it, and a catalogue that implied otherwise would be selling a promise it cannot keep.
The same restraint applies to the two other subjects this range touches. Nothing here is called waterproof, because the finish is water-resistant and a bag left in a downpour lets water past the zip. And nothing here wears a chemical-safety badge: the federal limits on lead and phthalates are public, we link to the pages that set them, and the certificate under them belongs to the importer of record rather than to a catalogue that photographs the bags.
Where a photograph stops being useful
Almost everything that decides whether a school bag survives to February is invisible in a photograph. A bar tack at the strap join, which is a short dense row of stitches worked back and forth across the webbing, looks like a smudge at the top of a picture. A doubled base panel looks like nothing at all. The binding around the edge of a clear PVC panel, which is the difference between a bag that lasts a season and one that splits in October, photographs as a thin dark line.
A photograph tells you what a bag looks like, which is the half of the decision the child cares about. Four or five numbers on the card tell you whether it works, which is the half you care about. Neither half is enough on its own, and a bag chosen on the strength of one of them is the bag that comes back in October.
The facts on a card, and where they come from
Five things are printed against every bag here and all five come out of our own product data rather than out of a paragraph somebody typed: the height, the litre figure where the maker gives one, the laptop sleeve size where there is a sleeve, what the bag is made of, and the price at our last update. Where the data has no figure, the line stays blank. How often the figures are re-read is set out on the page about our updates, and the terms page says what a price on this site is and is not.
The founding year above is the one fact this site states about its own company, because a buyer is entitled to know whether a name is a decade old or a fortnight old. Everything else you might want to know about a bag is on its card, in inches and litres, where it can be held against the bag in your hands.
02The brand
About abshoo
What we make, who it is for, what separates a school bag with its height printed from one sold by a photograph of a smiling child, and how long we have been cutting them.
What is abshoo?
A school bag brand. abshoo makes backpacks for preschool, kindergarten and elementary children, bookbags for middle and high school, laptop and travel backpacks for college, clear backpacks in heavy-gauge PVC for venues that ask to see inside a bag, matched backpack and lunch sets, and insulated lunch bags. Forty-one bags across six shelves, mostly in water-resistant polyester, from about thirteen dollars to about fifty.
Is abshoo a shoe brand?
No, and the name catches people out. There is not a shoe anywhere in the catalogue: every product on this site is a bag or a lunch bag. If the name brought you here looking for footwear, this is the wrong shop; if it brought you here looking for the school backpack a neighbour recommended, it is the right one.
What makes an abshoo backpack different from a supermarket one?
Three things you can check before you click. The height is printed on the card in inches, which is what actually decides whether a bag suits the child rather than the age on a label. The litre figure is printed where the data carries one. And where a bag has a laptop sleeve, the diagonal it was cut for is named, so a fifteen-point-six is a fifteen-point-six and not "fits most laptops".
The trade is the cloth. A twenty-dollar bag is not a hundred-dollar bag, it will not see four school years, and the card does not pretend otherwise.
Who are abshoo bags for?
Mostly for a parent buying in August for somebody between two and eighteen, and for the student who takes over that decision at about sixteen. Within that, the kids' shelf is for backs that are still growing into a bag, the bookbags are for the years a bag is carried five days a week, the college shelf is for a laptop and a commute, and the clear shelf is for anybody, of any age, walking up to a gate where security has to see inside.
Does abshoo make anything other than bags?
Almost nothing. Everything on these shelves is carried rather than worn, with two exceptions that are still bags: the insulated lunch bags and one striped beach tote. There are no pencil cases sold on their own, no water bottles, no uniforms and no stationery, and a catalogue that sells a backpack by its height in inches has no business selling a lunch box by its personality.
How long has abshoo been making school bags?
Since 2017, which is 9 years. The useful part of that is not the anniversary but its consequence: the classic bookbag that carries the largest pool of ratings on this site has kept its cut across those years while the prints and the colourways turned over, so somebody replacing a bag that finally went through at the strap can find the same one by name rather than by hope.
Where can I buy abshoo bags?
Every buying button on this site opens the bag you were looking at, in the colourway you chose, at our retail partner, where the size is picked, the payment is taken and any exchange is handled. The catalogue button at the foot of every page opens the whole range in one place instead of one bag.
The catalogue is easiest to read from the school year you are buying for rather than from the price list. If you are starting from scratch, the front page of abshoo lays the six shelves out in order, and the block of six checks on it settles the height before you open a card.
How the prices and the figures on these pages are kept current is a separate question, and it is answered on how we update the catalogue.
Every abshoo height, every colour
Every size, print and colourway in the abshoo school range sits behind this button, with the price from our last update against each one.