I don't want to sound mean or whatever, just my good old honest opinion.
I think that in such a trendy world, hippie bags and such are only for a small amount of people : the hippies, so if you want to make money from hippies, unless you make bags that perfectly suits their tastes, then you won't be making money. Sure there's a lot of people from different "groups" who will be interested in those bags, but their amount will be rather small. Why? Because any normal human living who knows a slight bit about fashion is usually interested in a bit more classic bags which they can tote around for almost any occasion. People are actually looking more for bags which are trendy, got the right shape, large enough to carry enough stuff, a resistant fabric. So unless you make trendy bags, people aren't really going to be interested, even if your hippie bags are the neatest on the market.
As sad as it may be, appealing to the masses sometimes means that you'll have to put your real tastes aside.
I mean, right now, the
IT bags are totally the Balenciagas motorcycle bags, as well as the Chloe snakeskin bag, the Melie Bianco hobo bag and finally the Marc Jacobs multipocket bags. The reason people like them are for the reasons I've told you above, and last but not least is that people are in LOVE with trendy fashion items. But when you're just starting you won't want to compete with these companies, so what happens is you compete with smaller companies who do very cheap and cheap looking versions of trendy bags, and there prices are so low that it's hard to compete.
So what I say is just do what you feel like doing, but keep in mind that the handbag industry is a tough one.
But if you really like what you're doing, then don't care about all my bla bla here, it's like what do I know? It's your business, not mine, follow your heart.
