Tsuchiya Kaban currently employs 200 craftspeople in the atelier. These are the people responsible for bringing designs to life, each one with special skills and a variety of experience to bring to the table. Some of our leather crafters have decades of experience, and in our culture we believe that it’s important to teach each other and carry on traditions, so they also mentor the next generation of makers.
Each bag passes through the hands of these people, our family. We’d like for you to meet some of the special people in our Tsuchiya-Kaban Family.
Meet Ms. Sasaki. As a young person growing up in Japan, Ms. Sasaki admired the people in her life that were experts working with their hands. Once, as a child, her family had home renovations and she watched the tradespeople in admiration as they did their construction work, laying concrete and woodworking. The ease at which they knew their craft, and the skill level of their work really inspired something in her.
Efficiency is also important to her, "I have to analyze a design sketch and plan each step of that construction process and make sure it all flows, if there is ease in construction it translates into superior quality.”
A leather bag isn’t a product that is made by one person alone. Instead, specialized leather crafters are responsible for the production of each part in accordance with the workflow. This is exactly how to go about achieving the two goals of consistent quality and a sizable manufacturing volume.
The phrase "united as one" is written in the Randoseru work studio. These words were written by a former senior craftsperson, and they really resonate with her. "Although the craftspeople that work together may be of different ages and have different personalities, wonderful results are possible as long as everyone is "united as one."
"I am grateful for my team here at Tsuchiya Kaban, we all take pride in the things we make, we work together and it’s a pleasure to learn from each other. Our wish is for that feeling to travel all the way to our customers.”
