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Hey,
Before I get into the meat of this one, I want to say something I don't say enough: we're extremely fortunate that over the last decade of doing this Discommon Goods thing, we've genuinely built a community rather than a customer list. Some of you on this email list have bought every single thing we've ever made. For over ten years. That's insane to me, and it's a proper treat when the same names keep showing up on the orders. Thank you.
At some point every company has to look up and ask what its path forward is. So here's ours.
The Word for 2026 is Refinement
I'm trying to apply it to my life, and I'm trying to apply it to the business. We are extremely good at making crazy stuff (huge things, expensive things, valuable things). But when it comes to solving real problems and making incredible products actually real, the truth is we're at our best with soft goods.
So at the end of 2025 we made a big decision: build a proper collection of soft goods. Something that helps more humans discover Discommon exists, and helps us grow into what we're best at.
We've spent a massive amount of time on it. There's a new variant of our duffel, rebuilt from the construction up. A smaller overnight duffel. A very Discommon interpretation of a briefcase. And the one everyone here is quietly most excited about: a backpack.
One thing that comes with all of this: a general lowering of prices across the entire bag line.
Well, with the terrifying, sweaty-palmed prospect of increasing our production numbers comes some price breaks from our makers. We've decided to pass those breaks straight on to you. We're extremely excited about this collection and hope you'll champion it by buying, sure, but also by telling your world it exists.
Now, the obvious question: what the fuck happens to the mischievous version of Discommon? The random bottle openers, the ceramic coffee cups, the samurai sculptures?
Don't worry. It isn't stopping. It's just going a little more underground. We're building it into more of a secretive club; a place where we drop the things we're genuinely passionate about, straight to the community. The name isn't final yet, but we're working on Disco Lab. I don't want to lose who we are. I just want us to focus and grow at what we're extremely good at.
What Discommon (The Design Firm) Has Been Building
Grand Prix Motor Cars, Portland. Val, the owner, originally came to us to reimagine their logo. Somehow that has spiralled into one of the most cohesive and exciting projects we've ever done. We kicked off with brand strategy and a full rebrand. At 18 years in business, they'd never touched their branding, and they're a much more mature company now than the one that started.
Around the same time, Val bought an old REI building in downtown Portland to become their new home. Of course, I have an inability to keep my mouth shut, and while he was walking us through the space I kept pointing at walls saying there could be cool art here, and here, and here…
Somehow we've ended up doing most of the interior design of the building, all of their merch, a pile of original artwork pieces of our own, and commissions from artists we love. We also completely redid their website in conjunction with dealer.com. It's rare that a project touches every discipline we care about. This one does.
The Hong Kong Business Aviation Center. The globally renowned MAKE Architects commissioned us to create an iconic piece of art for the building. Through a lot of concepting, we moved away from hanging something from the ceiling; the view out onto the tarmac, where people watch their jets waiting for them, is too good to compete with. Instead we built a piece into one of the side walls: precisely cut slats of stainless steel, arranged to mimic the cloud layer an aircraft passes through as it climbs into open air.
The best detail is that the art mimics the exact angle of the giant cantilevered canopy outside the HKBAC. Stand in the main lobby: look left, our art points at that angle. Look right, the canopy points at that angle. It ties the interior and the architecture into one gesture. It's installed now. Grand opening later this year.
Gus is a 38-foot-long, 67 million years old Tyrannosaurus rex that was pulled out of a cattle ranch in Harding County, South Dakota over a five-year excavation. He's roughly 63% complete by bone count, but they are 75% of the animal's total mass, which puts him in the A squad, crème de la crème of T. rex specimens ever. Only Sue and Star are in the club with him. (Look them up, nerds).
He is named after Gary "Gus" Licking, the rancher whose land he was found…uh..under (?) His skull is exceptionally preserved and he has a healed rib. Gus was scrappy.
Last week at Sotheby's, a mystery maniac took him home for $50.13 million. It’s the most anyone has ever paid for a dinosaur, doubling the pre-sale estimate. It’s a little bittersweet as it will likely never be in the public domain to be researched, but ‘tis the world we live in.
Somewhere out there is a person who woke up this morning and owns a 67-million-year-old apex predator. If that person is on this email list — hi. I have some ideas.
Talk soon,
N
P.S. If you know someone who'd like a bag built without shortcuts and now priced to actually reach them — forward this. That's how communities grow.