My name is Nicole Roberts and I've worked as a textile and product designer for about 12 years. I recently had the opportunity to travel to Thailand and start my own line of laptop bags. It's taken over a year to get the bags produced and ready but they're finally here! I just launched my website and started official sales in October.  The bags reflect my style-casual, practical and artsy. I realize the style of NokHoo bags isn't for everyone, but that's the point. I make bags for people like me who don't want a plain black bag or something TOO pretty.

My inspiration comes from all over the place. I love art, design, nature and travel and am constantly in awe of what's around me. I make sketches and take photos all the time and find it really satisfying to create a usable object from those ideas.  The bags are constructed with sturdy but interesting textured fabrics for the exterior, contrast prints inside and topped off with quality hardware and great layered artwork (think screen print, embroidery and beading). All styles are currently backpacks with plenty of padding so there's no need to worry about your laptop, plus they're really comfy.

The idea for the bags came when I was looking for a sturdy but interesting-looking bag for my laptop. The only choices seemed to be bags that were practical and boring or 'pretty' but not very functional. What with being a designer, I decided to make my own.  For me the name is interesting because it brings me back to the time I spent in Thailand (of course I am forever explaining how to pronounce it "knock-who"). NokHoo is the Thai word for owl and because owls are both handsome and wise, it seemed like the perfect name for these bags. (Yes, there are other variations of the spelling, but I like this one best.) In the Thai language, they associate each letter with a word. The letter H is called "ho nokhoo". My logo is a stylized version of this letter made to look like an owl's face.

The most exhausting part of all this has been coordinating other people's timing-it's like herding cats. Solving design problems is a piece of cake compared to that.  The whole process of creating NokHoo has been an adventure. Developing the designs, navigating technicalities of starting a business, hunting down a specific thread in a tiny, crowded alley in Bangkok, unraveling how to work cross-culturally... all of this is it's own reward. Of course I hope to actually sell some bags as well! But that's a new adventure that has just started...