It started with simple frustration. In 2019, we looked around and saw a world flooded with backpacks that all look almost the same, are made nowhere in particular, and end up in the trash after two years. Cheap zippers. Thin straps. Materials that don’t remember what they’ve been through. And behind it all, anonymous factories where no one knows the name of the person who sewed your item.
So Slávek and I started Batohiro. Not as a brand, but as an answer.
Craftsmanship has a name and a face
Every Batohiro backpack is made in small workshops in the Czech Republic — from Vysočina to the Pardubice region. Not in some abstract “European region,” but in specific rooms where specific people sit at specific machines. Our seamstresses have names. They know the types of stitches that last for years and those that fail after the first overload. They know where the backpack suffers the most, and that’s exactly where they add reinforcements — not because it’s in a manual, but because they’ve been doing it for twenty years.
When you buy the Minato Premium, it’s not an anonymous product. It’s the result of decisions made by real people who refused to compromise. And you feel that difference in your hand before you even open the backpack.
Materials that have a future
We can talk about ECO CORDURA® Re/Cor™ made from recycled materials. About YKK® zippers, which are the industry standard because they simply never fail. About Fidlock® magnetic buckles that withstand tens of thousands of cycles. About water-resistant EKOPAK® coatings. We work exclusively with European materials — mainly from Germany.
But technical specifications are only half the story. The other half is a principle: we use materials that are so good the product doesn’t have to end up in a landfill. That’s it. When a backpack lasts ten years instead of two, it’s not a luxury. It’s basic responsibility towards the materials someone extracted, produced, and transported.
That’s why we offer a lifetime warranty on all our products. Not as a marketing slogan, but as a logical consequence of how we make them. When we believe in our craftsmanship, why wouldn’t we stand behind it?
Wabi-sabi: slow fashion as a form of respect
Our aesthetic comes from Japan — emphasizing minimalism, precision, and respect for traditions. Especially key for us is the philosophy of wabi-sabi, which finds beauty in simplicity, naturalness, and authenticity. That’s why our models carry Japanese names — Minato, Roku, Tenso, Kai, Sora.
We live in a time when you can buy a backpack for 400 crowns and throw it away after a year. This economy works until you start counting the real costs — for the planet, for the people in factories on the other side of the world, for you who keep buying the same thing over and over.
Batohiro is a conscious decision to go the other way. We make fewer pieces. We charge a fair price. We stand behind every single product that leaves our workshop.
This is not romanticism. This is math. When a backpack lasts ten years, its annual cost is lower than a “cheap” alternative you have to replace three times. When it’s repairable, you don’t have to replace it. When it’s made here, it doesn’t fly halfway around the world.
Design that serves
At Batohiro, we don’t chase trends. Our design is Japanese clean. We are inspired by an approach where every detail has a function and every unnecessary element is removed.
The Minato Premium backpack expands from 20 to 40 liters because real life isn’t standardized. The Kai waist bag fits because we invested months of testing into it. The Tenso 30 and 40 were created because customers told us they needed something between a daypack and a travel suitcase. We listen.
Be the Hiro
Our motto Be the Hiro is not an advertising slogan. It’s a principle we design by — encouraging everyone to find the hero and uniqueness within themselves, often hidden in small details. Heroism for us is in everyday details: how well the strap fits after twelve hours of wearing, how the zipper looks after five years, how the material ages. We do everything to transfer that into our products — combining everyday function with pure aesthetics.
What you buy when you buy Batohiro
You’re not buying a backpack. You’re buying a decision to do things differently. You’re buying the craftsmanship of people who know their work. You’re buying materials that make sense. You’re buying a product that WILL BE WITH YOU FOR A LONG TIME.
It may sound like big words for a backpack. But we believe that it’s precisely in everyday things — what you carry on your back, what you use daily — that it shows what kind of economy you support and what kind of world you want to live in.
Batohiro is our answer. We hope it will be yours too.