Botkier

Monica Botkier is used to being behind the camera. On a recent afternoon, however, the former fashion photographer for publications such as Nylon, Surface, Seventeen and Fitness is poised before the lens, getting used to her new role as the face behind the burgeoning accessories brand Botkier.

Propelled by its runaway hit, the Trigger bag, which has sold some 40,000 units since it first stocked the shelves at Barneys New York in September 2003, the brand has grown from a side project for Botkier into a viable company. It now supports 11 full-time employees, operates out of a new 4,000-square-foot space in New York’s Soho district and offers some 20 silhouettes, including this spring’s Bianca satchel, which retailers such as Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, Calypso, Intermix, Jake in Chicago and Stanley Korshak in Dallas could turn into another home run.

For fall Botkier is expanding the brand’s handbag assortment to 25 styles that will retail from $500 to $700, and adding on a few specialty looks featuring custom-developed hardware and higher price tags. There also will be an edited selection of small leather goods that will sell for around $175, as well as belts.

And Botkier is not planning on stopping there. “I have my eye on a bigger company,” she said, adding that growth continues to be rigorous, with 45 percent wholesale gains from the fall 2005 to the spring 2006 season. “But right now, for example, I’m not thinking about sheets and plates. Eventually, I might love to make everything, so down the line I’ll see where it goes. I want to take it one step at a time.”

The 32-year-old Brooklyn, N.Y>-born Botkier admitted to having a fetish for luxury handbags, spending a photo shoot’s salary in her 20s to procure a Hogan or the latest Yves Saint Laurent look that she would see among the accessories called in for fashion spreads. Nevertheless, Botkier had no plans at the time to become the next contender in the high-end handbag market.

“I was really developing this crazy obsession with handbags,” she said. “I got a saccharine high from buying these bags, but the more I used them, I would think how I spent so much money on them and they weren’t as functional as I needed them to be. I had the idea— and it was such a casual idea— to make my own little satchel.”

Botkier took a few leather skins that she had among a stash used to construct photography portfolios and a drawing to a store that claimed to custom-make bags.

“I rolled in there with my sketch and my piece of leather and they said, ‘That’s not what we mean. You can choose among these leathers and these bodies, and you can mix and match them,’” she said.

After some convincing, however, the owner agreed to take on the project, the result was the prototype for Botkier’s Trigger bag.

“Me and my bag were very happy for a little while,” said Botkier. “But I didn’t think about it beyond carrying it.”

Encouraged by models, editors and eventually a friend who was a designer and offered to exhibit the bag at Paris’ Premiere Classe, Botkier decided to give the business a chance.