Janell Bags has been featured in many notable media outlets such as Yankee Magazine, DownEast Magazine, and News Center Maine, among others. We are glad you came to see us! We are just a couple in our mid-thirties that’s been married for what seems like forever. We have dreamed a lot of dreams and some of them came true!! One of those dreams is the four best kids around! We also dreamed about Jerry working at home…and fourteen years after our wedding it happened!! One night in 2010, I was dreaming aloud about buying a pro camera so that I could pursue my photography interest. I had an idea of a way to bring in some extra income to pay for it but Jerry said “You should sew bags.” What?!!! Some challenges just require attention…..so the next day when he came home from work, I had a bag to show to him! He loved it and true to who he has become also offered a little advice on what I could do better! I made a few more samples in my little kitchen, swallowed my fear and went to visit local tourist shops!! To my delight I got my first orders!! After a year of that we moved from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania to Maine! (We grew up in the heart of Amish country and I learned to sew from my mom as a young child.) We joined the huge craft show world here in Maine and kept on dreaming! I designed new styles while Jerry worked his day job and helped me where he could. His next suggestion was another “WHAT?!!” moment!
“Leather! You should try making bags with leather!!” Um, no thank you! And then, challenge excepted!! An they were a hit!! At the very first craft show!! I slowly transitioned from the upholstery fabric I was using, to leather. It was a huge learning curve, but all the love from our fans kept me pressing in! Our dream of Jerry working at home started to come into view, and in 2018 he made the scary step! All of a sudden our meals depended solely on our ability to grow our business!! It’s been an amazing journey of fears and victories and lots of late night dreaming! (After all that is what got us here in the first place!)
We just moved to a larger facility where you can come shop! We also create all of our bags right here! We love Maine (and America) and all the industry that was born here! We love providing our customers with beautiful, fully lined, leather bags that are not only designed in America, but also made in America!! That’s the way we will keep it!
