Where There’s a Mum, There’s a Way

“There is nothing more British than a satchel.”
— Julie Deane, Founder, Cambridge Satchel

British mum Julie Deane found herself in a pickle one day back in 2008. Her eight-year-old daughter was being bullied at school and Deane decided to move both the girl and her six-year-old son to a private school. But she and her then-husband were £23,400 short of the £24,000 annual tuition for both children. (The British pound, for which £ is the symbol, is currently equal to $1.20 in U.S. currency.)

Cambridge Satchel, the company she started in her kitchen that year to pay the school fees, is today a global brand producing handmade leather bags that catch the fancy of students and fashionistas alike.

“I’m a very logical, nerdy person,” Deane has explained to countless nosey reporters inquiring about the company’s origins, “so I took myself to the computer, with a cup of tea, and made a list of 10 jobs that I could do to pay the fees, still be a mum, and have my dog with me on the job.” Trained as an accountant, the resourceful mum gravitated to businesses that she could start with £600.

She had been books to her children at the time and began looking for school satchels that reminded her of those that Harry and Hermione, characters in the popular series, might tote at the fictional Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It wasn’t long, though, before her British mum’s ire meter was flaming alerts. “I was sick to death of the rubbishy schoolbags that they have today,” she explained. “I was outraged, properly outraged, because the satchel is the most British bag you can ever imagine. Everyone had a satchel when I was in school. But no one in England was making them.”