Qiu Zhen

Before 裘真 was a handbag brand, its founder Cheng Baohua, 程宝华, worked around leather from the chemical side of the trade. According to his Brandstar interview, he entered chemical trading in 2003 and started an import business serving the leather industry in 2005. The business brought him money and exposure to the industry. It also left him disenchanted enough to rethink what he wanted to build.

The first physical idea was called 求真小屋, the “little house for seeking truth.” Cheng told Brandstar that the name expressed a desire to make products sincerely and hold to a principle. When it was registered in shortened form, 求真 became the homophonically related 裘真. The second character, 真, retained the central idea. The first gave the name a material association with hide and leather.

The dates are less tidy. Brandstar’s founder interview places the beginning at the end of 2014. A 2025 Brandstar article says the brand was born in 2015 and spent almost a year with an empty shop while the team developed its first collection. Brandstar’s own directory says 2016. The most defensible reading is that the physical project began in late 2014, product development and market launch occupied 2015, and a registration or formal brand milestone may have followed in 2016.

What the team chose to make was commercially awkward. Water-dyed vegetable-tanned leather carries the grain, marks and differences of the hide, because a heavy surface coating does not conceal them. It can absorb water and oil. It changes colour, softens and develops a patina. These qualities gave 裘真 a product philosophy while making sourcing, quality control and consumer education harder.

The first collection took nearly a year to develop, and the shop reportedly sat unused for much of that period. Once customers responded, the brand moved online and began to scale. Brandstar says e-commerce accelerated in 2020. That growth exposed inconsistent hides, shortages and weak standards in the available supply chain.

裘真 answered by moving further into production. One Brandstar account says the company began building its own supply system in 2022 and eventually established four factories; Cheng’s later interview says a dedicated leather-production team was formed in early 2023. These may describe consecutive stages, though MEI cannot yet verify the factory entities or locations.

The resulting design language rejects the rigid, vintage look often associated with vegetable-tanned leather. Its hobo bags use softer leather and less external decoration. Cheng’s most effective description is that the company completes only half of the bag and the user completes the rest. Scratches, rain, sweat, touch and time become the second stage of production.

That idea explains why 裘真 belongs in a story about Chinese bags becoming softer. The softness is physical, and it also changes the standard of perfection. The evidence still needs tightening around company structure and dates, but the origin is unusually coherent: an industry insider turned dissatisfaction with surface treatment and insincerity into a brand organised around the word 真.