Long Island City, New York · Since 2016
Eleven people, one workshop, one framed complaint letter.
We are not a lifestyle brand with a warehouse. We're a small leather workshop that makes a short list of bags and argues about edge finishing more than is healthy.
How it started
A briefcase that flaked apart in a meeting, 2016
Marcus paid $240 for a bag sold as 'genuine leather'. Nine months in, the handle started shedding little grey flakes onto a client's boardroom table. It was bonded leather — hide dust glued to fabric and embossed to look like grain.
He emailed the manufacturer and got a form letter about wear and tear. That letter is framed above the cutting table.
Wayfare started six months later in a rented room above a dry cleaner in Long Island City: two people, one clicking press, and a rule that we would only ever cut full-grain and top-grain hide.
How we think about leather
A short catalogue of pieces that get better, not older
We are not trying to sell you a bag for every outfit. Most people need two: something that carries a laptop into work, and something small enough to wear across the chest when you land.
That belief shapes everything. It's why we make ten pieces instead of ninety, why the briefcase gets solid brass instead of plated zinc, and why we spend money on thicker hide and heavier thread rather than extra pockets.
Good leather is the only material we know that looks better after five years of use than it did in the box. Everything we do is in service of that.
Who's actually here
The two people who sign off every pattern
Marcus Adeyemi
Co-founder, leather
Grew up in his uncle's shoe repair shop and spent eleven years buying hides for a furniture maker before starting Wayfare. Selects every side of leather we cut and still edge-paints the first unit of every run himself.
Dana Okonkwo
Co-founder, design
Trained in industrial design and previously patterned technical bags. Responsible for the fact that our zippers open the direction your hand already wants to move, and that no sling has a pocket it can't justify.
Design principles
Four rules we've broken exactly twice
01
Full grain and top grain, or nothing
No bonded leather, no corrected split, no PU coating pressed with a grain plate. If the hide can't take a scratch and burnish it out, we don't buy it.
02
The bag opens the way your hands already move
No compartment should need a diagram. If a tester reaches for the wrong zipper twice, the layout is wrong and we redraw the pattern.
03
Hardware you can replace, stitching you won't need to
Solid brass and gunmetal fittings from stock lines we hold in inventory, bar-tacked anchors and waxed polyester thread that won't rot in the seam.
04
No feature we can't defend
If we can't explain why a pocket exists in one sentence, it comes off the pattern before production.
How a bag gets made
From pattern to shipment takes about fourteen months
Most of that is hide selection and testing. The sewing is the fast part.
Step 1
Pattern and first sample
Dana draws the pattern in card, we cut one unit in the workshop, and we live with it for two weeks before anyone else sees it.
Step 2
Hide selection and cutting
Marcus works each side by hand, marking around growth wrinkles and thin bellies. Straps are only cut from the firmest part of the back so they never stretch.
Step 3
Stress, wear and water
40 kg static load on every strap anchor for 24 hours, 10,000 zipper cycles, and two hours under a spray rig on the waxed lines before a pattern is approved.
Step 4
Stitching, edging and finishing
Sewn on flatbed and post-bed machines, edges sanded, dyed and burnished by hand, then oiled, inspected stitch by stitch and wrapped in cotton.
Materials
What's actually in the bag
- Full-grain buffalo leather
- Thicker and more open-grained than cowhide, used on the duffles and briefcases because it carries weight without stretching at the anchors.
- Top-grain cowhide
- Used on the slings and belt bags for a softer hand and a slimmer profile. Darkens quickly where your hand and jacket touch it.
- Hot-waxed cowhide
- Waxed after tanning so water beads instead of soaking in. Creases lighten into a pull-up effect that reads vintage from week one.
- Solid brass and gunmetal hardware
- Zippers, D-rings, buckles and base studs in solid brass, gunmetal on the black lines. They dull into a patina instead of flaking plating.
- Bonded cotton and waxed thread
- Cotton twill linings you can actually see into, sewn with waxed polyester thread that won't rot inside the seam.
Inside the studio
Unstyled photos from the sample rail
Ten years in
The numbers, unrounded
41,800+
leather bags shipped since 2016
4.8 / 5
average across 1,500+ reviews
1.9%
warranty claim rate
62
countries we've shipped to
We publish the warranty claim rate because it's the only durability number that can't be marketed. In 2019 it was 4.3% — a batch of buckles from a supplier we no longer use. We replaced every one.
SSL Secure Checkout
256-bit encrypted payments on every order.
Free U.S. Shipping Over $75
Tracked 2–5 day delivery from New York.
30-Day Easy Returns
Unused leather returns free with a prepaid label.
1-Year Leather Warranty
Stitching and hardware covered, no receipt hunting.
Questions before you buy?
Call +1 914 483 5602 or +1 914 676 8242, or email contact@wayfaregear.com. Someone on our team in New York answers — usually Priya, occasionally Marcus if it's about a hide.