The Business of Bags

Additionally, grommet holes for speaker or headphones wires are also popular technology-related additions, he added. "People want to bring their music on the road so you're having people bring their Bluetooth speakers with them," Morin said.

Aside from safely storing electronic devices and important documents, businesspeople are looking for convenience, like not having to carry something in their hands, and extra components to accommodate everything else they carry on a daily basis, like a water bottle, keys, etc. "[A messenger bag] has room to store your electronic stuff, but also your paperwork," Olguin said. "It has compartments to store different things. Most of them come with a shoulder strap, so you can hang it around your body."

The popularity of business bags is only growing, Morin concluded. "Business never stops, people always have things to bring places, so you're going to need something to put those in and so I would say it's a category that is going to continue to grow," he said.

Rise of the Backpack

Morin mentioned that there is one bag category that is rising rapidly, and will continue to flourish in the future: backpacks. "[Backpacks are] just way more practical than anything else that's ever really been used," he explained.

Backpacks have become the go-to bags for both business and travel. Even those you'd least expect are picking up a backpack in lieu of a briefcase. "I've seen lawyers recently on planes with backpacks," he said. "I've seen politicians on planes with backpacks as well. I met a guy in the music industry on a flight to L.A. the other day, and he had a backpack. It's just interesting to see that it really spans the gamut when it comes to executives."

Morin explained the reasoning behind the growing trend of backpack use for business. "What's interesting is that the Gen Xers are the ones that are influencing that trend—the movement away from the strict business brief to the backpack—and they're the ones that are sort of challenging the notion that your bag has to be the way it looked years and years ago," he said.