Handbag Designer 101: The Stories Behind Handbag Designers, Brands, and Industry Icons

From Ghost Designer to Brand Builder: How Karen Cardoso Created Bolsa Nova 👜🇮🇹 | Emily Blumenthal & Karen Cardoso

• Emily Blumenthal • Season 1

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What happens when you walk away from decades of designing for other people—and finally bet on yourself?

Karen Cardoso spent 30 years behind the scenes designing handbags for household names like Jessica Simpson and Franco Sarto. But when tariffs upended her production plans, she didn’t fold—she pivoted. That moment sparked the creation of Bolsa Nova and introduced her to the magic of Italian wash leather: soft, slouchy, and totally irresistible.

In this episode of Handbag Designer 101, Karen shares:
✨ What it’s really like launching your own brand after years in corporate
🇮🇹 How discovering Italian wash leather changed her business overnight
🧵 Why she refuses to over-develop and only creates what her customer actually wants
👩‍💼 How her “ideal customer” wasn’t who she expected—and what that taught her about branding

From QVC to Nordstrom to specialty boutiques, Bolsa Nova’s slow-and-smart growth story is a lesson in staying agile, owning your instincts, and designing with purpose.

🎧 Listen now.

Our Guest: Karen Cardoso is the founder and designer behind Bolsa Nova Bags. With a background in designing for major brands like Nicole Miller and Franco Sarto, she brings decades of industry experience to her own line of buttery-soft Italian leather handbags that blend casual luxury with timeless appeal.

Host Emily Blumenthal is a handbag industry expert, author of Handbag Designer 101, and founder of The Handbag Awards. Known as the “Handbag Fairy Godmother,” Emily also teaches entrepreneurship at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She is dedicated to celebrating creativity, craftsmanship, and the art of building iconic handbag brands.

Find Handbag Designer 101 Merch, HBD101 Masterclass, one-on-one sessions, and opportunities to book Emily Blumenthal as a speaker at emilyblumenthal.com. 

Buy Emily’s Books: “Handbag Designer 101” & “Savvy Suzanna’s Amazing Adventures in Handbags”

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Speaker 1:

So again, we try to keep it really tight to season so we can make those changes really fast and also buy into what my retailers may be buying at the time. If I don't want to buy hundreds of pieces, I buy 50 pieces, I buy 20 pieces and I just tack on to another order.

Speaker 2:

Hi and welcome to Handbag Designer 101, the podcast, with your host, Emily Blumenthal, handbag industry expert, and the handbag fairy godmother Emily Blumenthal, handbag industry expert and the handbag fairy godmother. Each week, we uncover the stories behind the handbags we love, from the iconic brands and top designers to the creativity, craftsmanship and culture that define the handbag world. Whether you're a designer, collector or simply passionate about handbags, this is your front row seat to it all, to it all. Welcome, Karen Cardoso of Balsa Nova Bags to Handbag Designer 101, the podcast. Welcome, welcome. Thank you for having me. Yeah, like I was telling you, it's been a minute since I've had an independent designer, which always brings me joy and makes me happy because you know my people, if we just dive right in. You had said you had been in the business for 30 years. Yeah, Was it bags? What was it like? Let's just throw ourselves back in. Yeah, so I?

Speaker 1:

I worked in New York City for 30 years for multiple brands, always as kind of what I call a ghost designer behind the scenes for licensees or you know, big companies that had a lot of name brands. I've worked on wallets, handbags, cosmetic bags, pretty much any type of like leather or non-leather accessory Slugs as they call it.

Speaker 1:

Slugs right, that I mean literally was the slug queen for a long time. Small letter goods, yeah, slugs for people who don't know. And you know, did it for a lot of different brands within companies and then kind of pivoted to handbags worked with like designer brands like jessica simpson, franco sardo, nicole miller, uh, bacchier, um, you just a lot of that after it was sold. Yeah, okay, after it sold, but Monica was still there at the time.

Speaker 2:

Um so we would work together yeah.

Speaker 1:

So it was a fun time. But you know, around seven years ago I was like ready to pivot. A lot of things were going on in the industry and I just really didn't want to like start over as a full-time designer and ended up starting my own business from my house, doing consulting work first, you know, because that's you don't have to pay the bills. So I did that for a long time. I did a lot of consulting work for friends in the industry who needed whatever. They needed a handbag, a planogram, a sketch, you know, a cad, anything and started building the brand, which is Bolsonova.

Speaker 2:

So this is really great because you obviously knew how to work with factories. You knew what was needed, you knew tech packs, so forth, what factory was like, what it took to develop a line, to develop a collection, especially since, working on licensed brands, you're under very specific constraints as to what the expectation is, because it obviously beyond needing to match the DNA of the brand hypothetically Jessica Simpson, where the retail or the fashion might be one place, the handbags will be someplace else, because obviously, with licensing, who actually makes it goes to the brand that already has it set up, not so much the people who own the brand name. Just an overview of licensing. So was it always in the back of your mind like one day I'll do my own thing, or was it?

Speaker 1:

okay, I was.

Speaker 2:

You know this is what I want to do, and it's a day job and I'm good with that.

Speaker 1:

You know it was. I always wanted to do it, as anyone. It's a scary proposition, right Just to like drop everything. You know you make a good salary, you have a great career just to walk away from that is scary. To do something on your own so and we were at a point my husband also supporting me at the time, you know, through this whole transition we were at a point where I could do it and I had factories that were willing to work with me at the time of originally in China, because that's that was my where I was working at the time in rather beautiful leather factories, high end leather factories that do a lot of designer stuff, and they were great. They got me in business. We did two lines with them and then the tariff started going up the first round and realized that this was seven years ago.

Speaker 1:

Yes, so right before the pandemic, right? Wow, beautiful wash weather that I fell in love with and figured out that my pricing wasn't going to have to go up that much at that point to be able to bring it in from Italy, and for me it was a slam dunk. I moved everything over, ended up partnering with three people pretty early on as a partner, and they really supported me and brought in some of the best sellers I had. Backpack behind me was like one of the bestsellers for years, and I was like one of the first that jumped on the sling trend. So we have the Mama Bella sling, which is really extremely popular there. We've had it in like 10 colors, and so that was great and we're doing all out of the house all out of the house.

Speaker 2:

So that just just out of curiosity, because I've had a lot of I've known and worked with and know several people who've gone out on their own. After you know quote unquote day jobbing within the industry and you know for as many years as you've done everything, you're still, you know, at a day job. You have other people to hand things off to, like who's going to bring the goods in and who's going to do the accounting and who's going to do the clearance, and do I need an expediter? Who's going to get them through customs? And do I need to have my goods delivered in a different way? I can't. Maybe I shouldn't do freight on board FOB, maybe I should do LDP, landed duties paid because I don't have a person to bring them in. How did you handle those challenges? Because I'm sure there were things that you were like, oh damn, like okay, I've never dealt with this side. I knew it existed.

Speaker 1:

So actually, yeah, I mean that's the hard part. The designing was easy, like I knew that, like I could do that. I mean I've been doing that for 30 years. Right, I know trends, I could pick colors, I can do a tech pack, I know I can figure out what the next thing is going to be, tweak it, whatever. And the hard part was everything else and that was scary and that was a lot of talking to Google. Me and Google were very good friends.

Speaker 2:

Oh, my God yeah.

Speaker 1:

Now.

Speaker 2:

ChatGPT can tell you whatever you need. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

But it's hard. It's hard even to today, because even when I bring on bigger right now we're in a workshop with Macy's, we were on QVC a month ago, we are on NorthJunecom, we sell to Shields, we sell all over the country to boutiques or on faircom. All of these different systems are different and they all have their own set of like how to do this and how to do that, and what forms you need and how to submit it, and it's challenging. It's challenging to learn that and relearn it every time you set up with a new retailer.

Speaker 2:

You know and it's funny because I know the workshop through Macy's, I've had a few designers go through that and how Nordstromcom works and I just had a conversation about this this morning with a specific trade show of how independent designers handle and are set up for drop ship versus shipping directly to boutiques and how challenging it is to pick a production number amount because drop ship you can never guarantee. So how have you handled that in order to maintain going forward? That is the hardest thing ever?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it is. And the best part of working with my factories in Italy is that they take very small quantities, so I don't have to ship a lot all at once. I could test and I could pivot pretty quickly. So within three months I could just get a new set of goods in so I could see like, okay, this is working. I need to reorder this quick and sometimes we're out of stock. I don't mind being out of stock, you know, for me it's. You know, I'd rather be that than have so much goods I don't know what to do with, where I need a big warehouse where I'm storing like hundreds and thousands of dollars of goods. So we do work very, very close to season. I kind of threw out everything I knew in the industry when I started working for myself, because I felt like there was so much overdevelopment.

Speaker 2:

So much overdevelopment, so much overdevelopment, so much it's so. I feel like people do that because they just want to prove that they're productive. I'm sorry, like yeah, it's so unnecessary.

Speaker 1:

I was like I'm never doing that again. It's silly If you design a good product, you recolor it and it's a good product, so it's not a good product, and you move on and then you know you have your. You know you have your little minis, you have your slings, you have your tote, like you don't need five totes, so yeah, so we work really close to season. We drop new goods all the time. We don't say say okay, this is our spring line, this is our fall line. We kind of just it just flows.

Speaker 1:

How far out do you develop before delivery? I mean probably a year, but it's, it doesn't mean that's gonna, that will be what I deliver. Right, like we design, we tweak, we color, we pick colors and by the time we actually go into production, you know then we decide what we're actually going to buy. Things change. So again, we try to keep it really tight to season so we can make those changes really fast and also buy into what my retailers may be buying at the time. If I don't want to buy, you know hundreds of pieces on there, buy 50 pieces, I buy 20 pieces and I just tack on to another order.

Speaker 2:

Right? Is the goal, just out of curiosity, to be sold in store, or are you content being com? Because I assume with most retail nowadays it's drop ship, which is good and bad. It's got its pluses and minuses, yeah.

Speaker 1:

No, I'm in store. I mean, I've been in stores. I was in village for a little bit. I didn't love that. You lose control a little bit and you don't know what's really going on at those stores and how you're getting displayed. For me it was because of anxiety. You want to go speak it and you can't. You have nothing. But we do ship to a lot of boutiques. I have a West Coast rep and they sell to a lot of boutiques on the West Coast. We have Northeast people, so in that respect, we are in store. I'm happy to be online. I do like to control it a little bit. Again, I don't think that like I think a lot of people are fine with buying online. If they return, it's fine. You know, that's the name of the game buying online.

Speaker 2:

They return, it's fine. You know that's the name of the game. You know it's so interesting because back in the day, you know the crown jewel was getting in store, but with that I mean when my bags were in store a million quadrillion. You know, years ago like I would personally go to each department store, make sure I got there early. I would have the education with the floor staff. Hopefully they were seasoned seasoned, not seasonal because if you get the young ones that are there in between for holiday or for college, you get the ones who are professional retail people, because then they'll listen.

Speaker 2:

And then having to work backwards on, okay, what do I bring to educate them? I need to bring food. I won't bring bagels, I'll bring muffins, because muffins you don't need a top Like all these little things that go into your head, only to get there to do a meet and greet to find that your product isn't even out. And I've had that where I have gone into, you know, the guts of a department store Actually it was a Dillard's fun fact and climbed through because my first week's numbers were zero and they were about to drop me and I'm like, oh my God, I need to fly here and it's so much.

Speaker 1:

It's impossible to do it actually, and you're running a whole business. You can't be that person too. Like again, there's so many hats you can wear at one time and you kind of have to prioritize. What hat is that going to be?

Speaker 2:

And yes, have you done a lot with your boutiques Like anything experiential? Or because that I have found with a lot with your boutiques like anything experiential? Or because that I have found with a lot of designers now, when they find that they have a handful of boutiques that are really strong, that they try to do extra with them.

Speaker 1:

Like, yeah, I did early on again, you know, time-wise it's harder these things but yeah, yeah, early on, I I was, I literally was selling out a chunk of my car, like I was at the boutique like every other week. You know what do you need, what do we need, and that works. But you know, and they love that. You know the boutiques love that you can help them. But now it's a little bit harder to have that time to do that and so it does help. I've been planning a trip to the West Coast because I really want to see my stores there. I have such great stores there. They're so supportive and they have amazing like boho chic boutiques, especially in, like you know, northern California. I, you know and I will get there, it's just a matter of having that time.

Speaker 2:

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Speaker 2:

When you were designing your line and again having this experience within the licensing world, you know the customer for one brand is absolutely not the same customer for another how were you able to back into and reverse engineer who your customer would be with your designs? Was it okay? I've been designing these kinds of bags for so long. I know these silhouettes are strong. I know these colors are strong. I know I could put my own spin on it and then it will be much better because it's my spin. Or was it? I'm going to completely reinvent the wheel on something I've always wanted to do but wasn't allowed or was constrained.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's a great question, Because I like started with like very classic looking bags with like interchangeable straps. It's actually a pretty cool concept still to this day because it was the metal would change color. It was cool, but I couldn't resonate with anyone. I didn't like, I couldn't get the hook and I was like, oh, I'm going to sell to millennials, I'm going to sell. You know what I was thinking, and it's a lot of testing, I think.

Speaker 1:

And then when I saw who was like reacting to me and my story, it was people my age, you know, a little bit older, you know, and, honestly, people that had no kids at home, where the kids were older, they had a little bit more money because the bands all got cheap. And then when I started to show the Italian line, it was like a shift. It was just like, oh my God, what is that? I need that. You know, it's one of those like I want that. That, yeah, one of those like I want that there, you know, and you know, just so beautiful, the woven like and all the detail, the two-tone, like I just wanted to, you know, like give you an idea Like it's so beautiful and smells good and it feels good, and it just resonated, you know, and it's just a lot again.

Speaker 1:

A lot of trial and error, a lot of trial and error. And now I kind of have her down, who she is. You know she likes to travel. She already has designer bags in her closet. She probably has a little bit of extra income. She doesn't really care about having a logo on the outside. I don't logo anything on the outside. I don't believe in that. I know it's like not good for my branding, but it's just the way my brand is. She is very casual. She wants to wear this all day long and to dinner and wherever. So it takes time, but I definitely know her now.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that definitely takes a minute to get to that point, to understand who your customer is and have a you know, especially when you're starting out. And then, as soon as you think you've got it, you're like, oh wait, maybe, maybe that's not her. And I love that you you shared that you wanted to try and do something innovative, because the one pitfall that most people do is to try and do something theoretically that no one else has done or nothing you've seen, because most likely it was done and it potentially didn't work. Only because we have such a short attention span as consumers and if you need to stand there and do a dog and pony show to explain it, the cost of doing business, the time value of money, becomes very unclear. Because now you're having to be like, no, but look how cool this is, and look, you can take it on, and you can take it off, yeah, yeah, it's too hard to explain it is.

Speaker 2:

And then you're like I could just sell a bag without you know here, look, here's a pretty bag, as opposed to me having to, like you know, run out of breath with every person that comes by yeah, yeah, it's, it's definitely, and that's also like tricky like in your soul to be like I want to do something so new that I could put my stamp on it that nobody else has done, but at the end of the day, you just want to sell nice bags that make people happy.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's a bag. At the end, you know, I think the one thing I have that as someone else maybe younger wouldn't is that I've been in a long time. I don't get attached Because I've done so many things. I know how the trends flow. Things come in, things go out. Like you can't just have that design one bag and say this is going to be my bag forever, this is what I'm going to sell Like. It's never going to work like that. It's always going to change. It's always going to change and you have to be able to pivot and that's what I had to do. Right From one country, literally, to another, one leather to another, one complete aesthetic to another was that hard to relaunch.

Speaker 2:

Like branding wise, like I put all my energy in, now I have to go back and tell my customers wait, wait, it's better, it's new and improved, it's from Italy, like was that yes and no, because I was still selling a very soft leather product and I was always about, oh, buttery soft leather.

Speaker 1:

So that was still my DNA, right, it's still buttery soft leather. I was never doing a structured bag. Really. It was always going to be something that felt good on your skin. So I was still selling that aesthetic. The boho vibe was definitely different, yeah, and having that like more casual look. But again, you know it was slow. I still had stock. We did two lines for a long time. We had the Italian leather, we had the classic leather, so it slowly came in. It wasn't a full done and start over, yeah.

Speaker 2:

I mean, I'm sure that was a relief, though, that you didn't have to go from you know zero to like again to start back to back because it's so stressful.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it wasn't like that. It came in slowly and just kind of took over. How did you?

Speaker 2:

end up in Italy? Was it, like you know, china wasn't going to work out, or you knew you had to phase out China?

Speaker 1:

I mean, I was thinking about it and then I actually got contacted. I get contacted by factories all the time on LinkedIn because I have been in the business so long, yeah, right.

Speaker 1:

So, but this one stood out and I thought, oh, wait a minute, this is interesting, like send me samples and let's talk and made a trip and it was like, oh my god and it's funny because I've been trying to do this look for a very long time this, this wash leather look. And I remember I saw a bag in a shopping trip in London and I was like what is that leather? That's beautiful, like it was this. Wow, I could never do it in China, ever. It just didn't exist the technology.

Speaker 1:

So wash leather is white leather. Right, it's a bag made in white leather. It's already made. The entire bag goes into a washing machine and dyes like denim, right, right, right, right, right, right, like a garment dye, right. So it's getting tumbled and rinsed and hangs to dry for like days. It also gets hand treated. It's like we saw the seven step process. It's probably actually even more than seven steps, but it's like you know, you go from one machine to another after the bag's already made, so you're paying for all that too, on top of just getting a bag made. But that's what makes it look so beautiful what they call labor yeah.

Speaker 1:

And they're all family-run factories. They pass this stuff generation to generation. It's been around for a long time, right, and it's really specific to Glamour.

Speaker 2:

Right, and it's really specific to Glamour. God forbid something happens and you're out of luck. You're like ugh. But yeah, have you, as an independent designer and a small business, thought I need to diversify and make sure I've got a backup Of?

Speaker 1:

course, yeah, so there is actually more than one. There's one that we mainly use, but there are more than one, right? So we do diversify. And we actually are looking at US factories too. There's not many of them, unfortunately. They just they don't have the same capabilities to do what we do overseas, so we are looking at one that could maybe do some very simpler style for us and maybe some small other goods, um, wallets and so on. So, yeah, always diversifying. Um, I work with a friend of mine who's a jewelry designer. We do like fabric bags out of India, so always looking for new and different. So these are on my website. This is just a fun little aside project also got bought by three people for a little bit. So yeah, so yeah, we're always pivoting. I'm also working on some sport handbag straps. So just different things always going on in the back end. You know, again, being in business a long time, nothing lasts forever, so you always have to be looking three steps ahead of where you're at today.

Speaker 2:

This has been so lovely getting to know you and your brand and hearing your story, and I think you know there have been so many interesting takeaways to this conversation, from ensuring that you diversify your factories to really putting the time in and I honestly, think the biggest one is just don't get too attached.

Speaker 2:

Think the biggest one is just don't get too attached. I have told more designers who have referred to their bags and their brand as their babies, and I've had to tell them they are not your babies. Babies are different, babies you need to take care of for life. They are yours for life. This is a product. It's meant to be replicated, it's meant to sell. If it's not selling, you must change it.

Speaker 1:

That's it, that's it, because your goal is.

Speaker 2:

And if you're getting knocked off.

Speaker 1:

That means you're doing the right thing.

Speaker 2:

Exactly and then move on or do it better. I always say you must be the fastest, the first or the best. So you got to pick a lane, that's it.

Speaker 1:

Or second. It's always good to be second too, anyway.

Speaker 2:

Well, but that makes you the best, because you're doing a better version of whatever somebody else did. Karen, how can we find you, follow you and learn more about Balsa Nova bags?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so we're on. We actually have a website. Balsa Nova, b-o-l-s-a-n-o-v-a means new bag in Portuguese, so Balsa Nova, handbags with an S. I'm on Instagram. Instagram is kind of like the best place to see day-to-day what's going on. That's bolsa, underscore nova, underscore handbags, and on the website you can have links to everything pretty much of where you can find us. We're on Long Island. We do have a small boutique in Hewlett, which we have our studio in which I'm sitting in right now, and we have our small little warehouse. So we do have a little bit of a square foot space and then a bigger warehouse we use in Brooklyn and that's it.

Speaker 1:

And anyone can reach out to me any young designers too. If you ever want to reach out to me on LinkedIn, I'm on there and I will answer any questions. Thank you, karen Cardoso.

Speaker 2:

It was lovely meeting you.

Speaker 1:

Love meeting you too.

Speaker 2:

Thanks for listening. Don't forget to rate and review, and follow us on every single platform at Handbag Designer. Thanks so much. See you next time.

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