Troubadour, a brand that designs backpacks and luggage for professionals who work and travel, has raised £3.2 million in a funding round led by Harlo Equity Partners. Pembroke VCT, Troubadour's first institutional investor in 2013, added £1 million as a follow-on investment, while Bayes Entrepreneurship Fund and Norrice Finance joined as new backers.
Troubadour makes bags for people who want pieces that work hard, look right in any room and keep up with wherever the day goes. Its main product, the Apex backpack, has been named New York Times Wirecutter's best laptop backpack five years running, earning a loyal following among people who take their bags seriously. A certified B Corp, Troubadour makes its bags largely from recycled materials and backs them with a five-year warranty.
Sales come from several channels at once. Troubadour sells direct to consumers, on Amazon, through wholesale and retail partners and to corporate clients. Revenue reached £8.4 million in 2025 after 15x growth over the past five years, and US customers now account for more than 70% of direct-to-consumer revenue. The corporate sales business, which produces branded bags for companies including Nvidia, OpenAI and J.P. Morgan, grew 141% last year to more than £800 thousand. Wholesale partners include Harrods, Nordstrom, Bloomingdale's and Equinox, and Troubadour also sells through its own store.
Abel Samet and Samuel Bail founded Troubadour in 2011 after careers in finance that included time at Lazard. The pair started by driving between tanneries and zip makers in Italy, Spain, France and England to source materials for a single bag. They named the brand after the travelling storytellers who carried stories from place to place, and Bail now leads the business as CEO.
The new funding will pay for growth marketing and customer acquisition, along with a new dedicated corporate and wholesale sales team. Product development continues alongside, with a women's collection and a full luggage range now in development. Part of the round will also support further expansion in North America and Europe, where Troubadour aims to reach many more customers with its bags. Novalta Partners acted as fundraising adviser to Troubadour on the round.
We are delighted to continue supporting Troubadour. Since backing Samuel and Abel as the company’s first institutional investor in 2013, we have watched them transform the business from a start-up into a leading global brand in premium work and travel bags, with a loyal customer base and blue-chip corporate clients. We are pleased to welcome Harlo as lead investor alongside a strong group of co-investors and look forward to the next phase of growth.
When Abel and I started Troubadour, we set out to make the bag we couldn’t find: beautifully made, comfortable, lightweight, and designed for the way people actually work and travel. Fifteen years on, we’re still obsessive about getting that right, and more people find us every year. This investment lets us put more into our products and bring Troubadour to many more customers in North America and Europe. We're grateful to Pembroke, Harlo, Bayes, Norrice and our other investors for their support, and to Jonathan Friedman at Novalta Partners for his advice throughout the process.
Troubadour has done what many consumer brands struggle to do: build genuine brand loyalty while growing across several channels at once. Its corporate and wholesale traction shows the brand travels well beyond its direct-to-consumer base, and we see significant opportunity ahead in North America and Europe. We’re delighted to lead this round and to partner with Samuel, Abel and the team.
Troubadour is exactly the kind of founder-led business we want to support: a disciplined team, a distinctive product and a clear route to further growth. We’re excited to back the next stage of Troubadour’s journey.
Troubadour makes some of the best-designed bags we’ve come across, and Samuel and Abel have built a team to match. We’re delighted to invest alongside Pembroke, Harlo and Bayes, and to support the business as it scales further.
