NEWBIE INTRO - Norlin Luxury Wine Bags

Greetings fellow Berserkers,

My name is Tom Reddick and I am the founder and owner of Norlin.

Norlin is the result of a lifetime interest in designing and creating luxury products. About six years ago, I finally decided to try and make Norlin a viable- and hopefully eventually profitable- part of my career. To get started, I developed a number of handbag and accessory designs- built from scratch- and then set out to find manufacturing partners in the United States to craft them from the finest materials available. Exotic leather, French horse hair fabric, embossed leathers and even Linton Tweeds (the makers of the tweeds used by Chanel)- some of which I manually reconstructed in-house using Norlin’s library of Linton yarns, are some examples of the materials we have used.
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The above shows some of our earliest work. The jacket is a winter white Linton tweed woven with blue and gold metallized denim yarns. The scarf is a print on silk with rosettes of a bird wing I created in Photoshop.

As many of you know, fashion is a very difficult business- and all the more so now with the retail landscape changing so dramatically. And so it was that after a few years of very successful word of mouth business, we found ourselves at a stalemate when looking to move to retail. We got plenty of interest from retailers- but their demands for absurd margins, lower retail prices and certain guarantees left me in a position to either dramatically lower the quality of our products or go out of business since it would not be sustainable to meet such demands while maintaining our current levels of quality.

And so, I decided to keep Norlin small and let it take its own organic course- focusing my attention on moving to an online direct to consumer model (removing the huge retailer markup in the process) and also looking for better market opportunities- areas where we could provide something truly unique.

Thus was born the Max Wine Bag - named for my father who inspired my interest in fine wine when I came home one weekend from college in September 1995 to visit and was treated to a glass of 1976 Chateau Lafite-Rothschild plus a visit to his favorite wine store where I made my first Bordeaux purchases.

The Max Wine Bag is a luxury product in all respects. It is made of the finest materials and manufactured in collaboration with Chill 'N Go using their latest chilling technologies. Each bag is individually made in the United States of America and comes with Chill 'N Go linings and cold pack inserts which are removable for chilling if you prefer not to place the entire bag in the freezer.

As we move to an online direct to consumer model, but also working in partnership with wine stores operating on margins far lower than your average fashion retailer, we are able to offer the highest quality items while also removing a significant portion of the highest markup in the sales and distribution process. It is my hope that our core initial product line of wine-related luxury accessories may be the foundation on which many future products may be built.

Thank you for reading and for our part in this year’s BerserkerDay! Here are a couple of images of our existing bags in black ostrich and bison. Stay tuned for our BD11 offering with new colors and materials!
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Hey Tom!

How many bottles does the Max bag hold? two? they look great!

1 Like

This is fantastic.

Hi Tom. I love my 6 bottle bag and get loads of ‘where did you get’, ‘how do I get’, etc and it is not nearly as fancy. What sizes do you offer? Can you also show pictures of the inside?

Looks great.

Greetings Matt and Will- thank you for your kind words!

Matt- this particular bag holds two wine bottles and can accommodate large bottles like Krug. The interior divider that holds the removable chill pack is only attached to one panel of the bag- so it can be brushed aside to allow you to carry one magnum or three half bottles.

Tom.

Thank you Ryan. Right now I just have these in the two bottle size, but we will be able to make 1 and 3 bottle sizes very soon, as well as a 4 bottle version that is more square in shape with a 2x2 configuration.

Here is a shot of the top of the interior to give you an idea what the lining and utility pocket look like. The bag is fully lined with this material plus insulation and there is a center divider of the same material in the bottom half of the bag that holds the removable chill pack. As noted above, that divider is only attached to one panel inside the bag, so it can be brushed aside if you want to carry a magnum or three halves- which I have done with ease in the past. Please let me know if you would like to see other detailed shots.
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Looks great Tom. Thank you.

Can’t wait!