Our story

Our Story

A Father. A Daughter. One Standard.

My father learned to work leather in a small Tuscan workshop when he was sixteen. By the time he was thirty, he could cut a hide blindfolded.

In 1996, he opened Maronelli—a promise to make bags the way the old masters did. No shortcuts. No machines. Just his hands, his tools, and leather from the same Florentine tannery his mentor used forty years before.

I grew up on the workshop floor. While other kids played with dolls, I played with leather scraps. Dad would let me "help" by holding pieces while he stitched. I thought I was essential. Looking back, I probably slowed him down.

But he never rushed me. He never told me to go away. He just let me watch and learn.

When I was old enough, he taught me to stitch. It took three years before he said my work was good enough to sell. Three years of him inspecting every seam and handing it back. "Again."

Now I work beside him every day. He still cuts every piece of leather himself—his cuts are within half a millimeter, every single time. I handle the stitching. Eight stitches per centimeter, double-needle saddle stitch. The same technique used in Tuscany for five hundred years.

Nothing leaves our workshop until we're both satisfied. Dad checks my work. Then I check his. We argue sometimes. He wins more than I'd like to admit.

People ask why we don't scale up. Hire more people. Make more bags.

The answer is simple: we can't. Not without compromising. Every bag that leaves here has our name on it. Our reputation. Our promise.

Each one takes six to eight hours to complete. We reject seventy percent of the hides we're offered. We use solid brass hardware, not plated zinc. We stitch by hand because machines can't feel when the leather wants to give.

These bags aren't made to be replaced. They're made to be kept. To soften with age. To develop a patina that tells the story of your life. To look better in ten years than they do today.

That's the Maronelli promise. It's the only way we know how to work.

— Sofia