The Swedish backpack Kanken, designed for elementary school students 36 years ago, captured all kinds of street photos, fashion blogs and young people’s backs.
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Every September, Lee Gale, fashion assistant editor of GQ UK, participates in the Festival No.6 music festival in Wales, UK. This well-known British music festival usually attracts tens of thousands of European young people to revelry together. Last year at the scene, he found an interesting phenomenon – at least half of the young people, like him, carrying a backpack with the same style.
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The rectangle, the strap is a little thin, and the overall tone is single. In addition to a Swedish fjallraven Logo, the entire shoulder bag has no other pattern. The backpack, named Kanken (Swedish for carrying, sounds like “Skyken”) belongs to Swedish professional outdoor brand Fjallraven.
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Gale doesn’t like this fashion much. Two years ago, he hadn’t changed his back when he was carrying a Kanken bag that was still a small minority. “I have to pay attention. If everyone starts carrying Kanken bags, I need to look for a different kind of backpack,” he said.
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Kanken’s popularity is faster than he imagined. In addition to being everywhere on Festival No. 6, young fashion bloggers have begun to carry Kanken bags of various colors on their backs. The backpack and actor and model Liv Tyler also appeared in the travel photos photographed by the entertainment magazine. Madonna bought a black Kanken bag for her son. The photo was on the USA Today.
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“Young people no longer see the Kanken bag as a practical and monotonous backpack, but it is cool to use it,” writes David Hellqvist, a fashion writer and Port Magazine editor. “You can see now, The town of Bros, Sweden, is still Berlin, Germany, and the most fashionable young people in the country are carrying Kanken bags.”
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Kanken’s unexpected popularity is not among Fjallraven’s expectations.
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The outdoor product company never took the Kanken package to do a special marketing campaign, nor did it regard it as a fashion item. Like other outdoor goods company’s traditionally conservative mountaineering jackets and tents, Kanken bags are also sold “in the same way” at major outdoor shop stores in Europe.
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“From beginning to end, we all see ourselves as an outdoor brand. The popularity of Kanken is wonderful, but our original intention is not to create a trend,” said Nathan Dopp, Fjallraven’s vice president of sales and marketing.
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When Ake Nordin, founder of Fjallraven, designed the Kanken bag in 1978, he only wanted to solve a basic and practical problem. At the time, the spine of 80% of Sweden’s nationals was damaged to varying degrees. The report stated that this was a sequel to Sweden’s students’ burden of excessive teaching materials in the era of reading. Nordin, who is good at designing outdoor backpacks, is determined to change this situation.
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He used four Swedish yellow pages as his model and weight basis to make a square backpack and sewed a strap in the shape of a W behind the backpack. The square vertical weight and the special shoulder strap design allow the back part to take on weight, thus reducing the stress on the shoulders.
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In 1978, some of the Swedish schools began to display the most primitive military green Kanken bag in the aisles. Later, Fjallraven introduced Kanken bags of different sizes and colors in more than 30 colors, which adults can also use.
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For a period of time, this backpack’s cognitive range is limited to Sweden’s own country. Until the 1980s, with Fjallraven starting outdoor stores in Germany, Finland, and several other European countries, the Kanken bag was exposed to more people, but even so no one felt that the backpack was placed in an outdoor product store. What is the relationship with daily life?
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An Englishman named Lindsay MacFarlaine changed its fate. MacFarlaine is an outdoor goods seller. He planned to sell Fjallraven products in the UK six years ago. When browsing the product line, he noticed the colorful Kanken bag.
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“At the time, it felt that it seemed to have the potential to become a fashion item and it would be recognized by young people around the world.” MacFarlaine told CBN Weekly, “The Kanken bag has a simple and special shape. Nothing unpractical will appear. On this backpack, at the same time its Swedish design style is very unique and there are a variety of good-looking colors.”[url=http://www.cheap-fjallravenkanken.co.uk]
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So far, the Kanken bag has not undergone any changes in its design, only its color has been adjusted. At the beginning, the Kanken bag’s colors come from the earth, forest, and sky colors of the alpine meadows of Sweden, such as the “green forest” and “graphite black” that are still being produced. Then they gradually joined other brighter, young people in nature. More like the color. Counting the shades that have been discontinued, the Kanken bag has produced more than 60 colors.
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MacFarlaine decided to separate the Kanken bag from Fjallraven’s outdoor product line and sell it separately. A website called “I love my Kanken” was officially launched in 2009. This is a partnership between MacFarlaine and Fjallraven. It is also the first website to sell Kanken as a fashion item.
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But this is not enough. “Don’t forget that not many people except Swedes know Kanken before this,” MacFarlaine said. He opened Facebook and Twitter accounts for this backpack, encouraging people who bought Kanken packs from the site to send back photos of themselves and this backpack from different places and share them via social networks.
Photos that were photographed on the road or on the commuter road were collected on this site. In some European countries, there are more and more young people carrying Kanken bags, including bar DJs and various creative workers. They see themselves as “rebels” of rucksacks and are committed to separating themselves from those who carry Eastpak or JanSport backpacks – those brands are so common.
This kind of Kanken bag was initially only popular in Europe and was similar to Volkswagen Type 2 in the anti-traditional culture of the 1960s. This old-fashioned truck was known as the “hippy car” at that time. Young people scrambled on it. Once you see people with the same kind of car, they will nod nicely.
“On the streets of London, if there are two strangers with Kanken bags meeting, they will look at each other and may think, ‘Where did you get this special backpack?’” Gale said.
The popularity in this small circle was soon broken. Starting in the second half of 2012, this backpack will often appear on street photographs of European and American fashion blogs or magazines. The moments of dramatic “encounters” described by Gale also occur less and less.
Stars have contributed to the popularity of any fashion trend. Zooey Deschanel, a Hollywood star with a somewhat exaggerated style of clothing, posted on Instagram a photo of himself in the second season of the American drama “New Girls”. In the photo, Deschhanel carries a sky-blue Kanken bag.
This photo has won more than 80,000 Like, fans continue to ask which brand backpack in the end. The editors of the Italian fashion magazine Grazia were even more excited. They wrote, “When Deschanel issued that photo, most people were not familiar with the backpack, but she confirmed our judgment—the 55 Euro Swedish backpack has formed a trend. .”
Such trendsetters have accelerated the popularity of Kanken. MacFarlaine quickly added pages in different languages on the site, and it also covered the distribution worldwide. At present, young people from Southeast Asia are the most important consumers of I love my Kanken, followed by the Chinese market. Its easy price also made it easier for more and more young people.
As early as 2008, Kanken bag has come to China. Fjallraven also focuses exclusively on outdoor products in the Chinese market. However, Zhang Yimin, director of Chinese marketing at Fjallraven, noticed that in places like Sanlitun in Beijing, there were more people carrying Kanken bags. “In China, the crowd back Kanken is young, stylish and international,” she said.
As in other countries, Fjallraven does not set up a separate store in China. The Kanken package is mainly purchased overseas. Although Fjallraven opened a store on Tmall, it still appears as an outdoor product company without a separate sales page for Kanken.
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Currently in the Fjallraven product line, sales of Kanken bags ranked first. This seems to be contrary to the common business logic – if a product is widely recognized by the market, the brand will focus on this product to get more profits.
“We are not a brand that specializes in making backpacks,” said Zhang Yimin. “We will not make changes to cater to the market, including design and marketing. The Kanken bag is now a star product, but it is not our core product line after all.”
In the process of Kanken becoming popular, sensitive agents, fashion bloggers and street hipsters are very active. Fjallraven himself is very low-key.
It was this low profile that once won the favor of Kanken enthusiasts.
“For me, this is where the Kanken bag appeals to me. Fjallraven won’t let it bluntly appear in front of you through advertisements, but let it spread underground,” Gale said. “Imagine if Kanken. Become a high street brand, it is not so cool.”
After the distributors of Kanken bags in Singapore began distributing goods, a Singaporean fashion blogger called Fal wrote, “Sorrowful, my Kanken is no longer unique.”
(although I am not prepared to test that theory) and reliably keep beverages cold throughout the blazing hot summer.
