Skip to main content

Feel Good Friday – ESPEROS

While perusing the many awesome brands at the Liberty trade show in January, this brand of bags caught our eye. ESPEROS (which means ‘hope’ in Spanish) is a handsome brand of bags that gives back.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Based in Austin, Texas and founded in 2012 by Oliver Shuttlesworth, ESPEROS is seeing steady growth with their wide range of totes, backpacks, portfolios and weekenders. All of the bags are made with 10.10 or 16 ounce military canvas. Some of the newer pieces are lightly waxed canvas (for the more rugged user). ESPEROS bags are made using heavy-duty military grade canvas (you already said this above.) and top grade leather (Esperos also is sure to work with ethical suppliers).

Image used with permission by copyright holder

The Feel Good Friday aspect? With every bag they sell, ESPEROS helps send a child in the developing world to school for a year. One way is through their partnership with Pencils of Promise. Another is by donating 10% of their profits to supporting schools in Guatemala and Haiti. There are more than 75 million children in the world that lack access to any form of education. ¼ of the adults worldwide are unable to read or write their own name. By offering these great looking bags to customer’s world wide, ESPEROS is hoping to play a big part in providing access to education for children in need.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

To increase their effort the brand offers their retail partners the opportunity to give back a portion of their sales to support their mission. Did you know that the cost of attending school in some developing countries is as low as $15 a year? We give props to ESPEROS for helping these kids thrive, grow and learn.

Topics
Cator Sparks
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Cator Sparks was the Editor-in-Chief of The Manual from its launch in 2012 until 2018. Previously, Cator was covering…
Why United By Blue, An Outdoor Clothing Brand, Wants Your Local Waterway’s Trash
United by Blue cleanup

As you read this, two continent-sized expanses of plastic float placidly in the Pacific Ocean. Trash moves between them on an interstate-like current, and every day 38 million more pounds make its way into the saltwater. Fisheries are nosediving, beaches look more and more like garage sales instead of postcards, and Flipper was harpooned by a Japanese whaler. And yet against this seemingly hopeless situation, United By Blue
, a Philadelphia-based outdoor clothing brand, is baling water from a figurative sinking ship with a bigger and bigger bucket while simultaneously trying to recruit others to do the same before the whole thing goes down.
Meet The Founders of United Blue

Mike Cangi, with fellow cofounder Brian Linton, uses that far-looking, aspirational rhetoric that usually precedes a sex scandal. But the company’s moves have always been hyper local when examined with a close-enough lens. Linton spent his childhood in Southeast Asia, seeing firsthand the effect of polluted oceans and trash-strewn beaches, and Cangi grew up surfing Philadelphia's nearby Jersey Shore. With their first business, which preceded UBB, the pair donated five percent of the company’s profits to ocean conservancy, which vanished like a drop of water in, well, the ocean. “It was really hard to measure, to feel like we were making a difference,” Cangi says. “We wanted to get our hands dirty, literally and figuratively, and do our own good work.”
“We are all connected by the world’s water,” says cofounder and United By Blue brand director Mike Cangi, sounding very much like an aquatic version of a yoga instructor. “Every body of water is within our scope.”
So in 2010, the pair founded United By Blue. While the company’s desired effect of ocean conservancy may have been similar to the first business's iteration, its model was radically different. Rather than writing a check and adding a blurb to its website, the company instead adopted the cause in-house, internalizing waterway cleanup and preservation by hiring the personnel themselves. Of course, volunteers have been critical to its core mission — over 13,000 have given time in 300 events across the 48 lower States — and the company also funds large-scale cleanups executed by professionals with specialized equipment in remote and sometimes dangerous locations. (To date, its collective efforts have netted more than 3.5 million pounds of trash, and it continues to pledge that for every product sold, one pound of trash will be removed from local waterways.) But UBB’s initiatives start in its Philly office by employees whose job descriptions read more like Greenpeace than green space.
How Does Trash Get Into Our Water?

Read more
How Fazl Socks Gives Back to Children’s Homes in India
brands giving back fazl socks 1

Much like the distinctive and whimsical prints of FAZL designs, Mike Gunn and Vanessa Tse's journey to start Fazl is a unique tale like no other. They met years ago on a fateful journey to volunteer at a children's home in North India. "I was here to learn about the children's resilience in these homes. These kids came from such traumatic backgrounds but in these homes, they could thrive and live fully," says Vanessa. She also emphasizes that Mike always had a desire to create a "social enterprise" that works on helping people in underprivileged countries. One trip to a Himachali market solidified both their dreams. Vanessa picked up a pair of patterned socks and said, "What if we could give back to children's homes and give fair wages to the Himachali women who make them?" From there came the creation of Fazl, a brand whose name comes from the Urdu word meaning 'grace.'

FAZL has always been one of a kind, with their primary mission aimed at providing fair wages for the women who make their products, as well as donating 50% of their net profits to children's homes in North India. But the journey to start their own company wasn't an easy one for co-founders Mike and Vanessa.

Read more
How Our Place, a Cookware Brand, Empowers Artisans and Encourages Social Justice
brands giving back our place cookware

If you’ve ever been served an Instagram Ad for the Always Pan or seen someone raving about a new chic pan that not only does the job of a ton of the tools in the kitchen, but also looks beautiful enough to sit out on the stove all the time — no, it’s not a scam or a hoax. 

The company, Our Place, known for it’s popular non-stick, non-toxic pan that steams, sautés, cooks grains, simmers soups and sauces, and more, is truly one of the greatest pans and brands out there. No more using three or four pans just to get dinner on the table — you can do just about everything in this one pan. As promised, the Always Pan will replace eight pieces in your kitchen. Say goodbye to your steamer & strainer (each Always Pan has a steamer basket included!), saute pan, saucepan, saucier (which is just a rounded saucepan), skillet, fry pan, non stick pan, and built-in spoon rest. Not only do they promise to replace eight kitchen pieces in your pantry with one rockstar and ridiculously good looking pan, they also have strong philanthropic initiatives. 

Read more