30 Second Snapshot
Name Melissa Morris & Reinhard Mieck
Your home base Notting Hill, London
Aside from a passport, the three items you always travel with Melissa: My sketchbook, headphones, and of course, my Runaway bag – a LONB signature piece. Reinhard: Our travel chess set, vintage car magazines, and my Vagabond (my favourite LONB bag).
Your perfect meal on the road Melissa: Sashimi from Tskiji market, Tokyo. Reinhard: Crêpe on the Seine.
The best thing you’ve read in the last 6 months Melissa: I just re-read The Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger. Reinhard: Search Inside Yourself by Chade-Meng Tan.
Your travel soundtrack Melissa: Red Hot Chili Peppers, Simon and Garfunkel, Phoenix, Kings of Leon. The one place you’ve been that you think everyone should visit Melissa: Kyoto, Japan. The elegance, refinement, sense of tradition, natural beauty – it’s eye opening and has made an impression that will last.
The one place you’ll always return to, no matter how many times Reinhard: Paris. It never ceases to inspire.
The one Never-Have-I-Ever destination that you hope to visit Melissa: The South Pole… to see earth in a whole new sense. And of course meet the penguins.
The one thing that most surprised you on your last trip Reinhard: Just how breathtaking the English countryside is. We escaped for a long weekend and felt a world away.
Meet Melissa Morris and Reinhard Mieck – Co-Founders of Love Or Nothing Baby, an emerging brand that creates purposeful, perfected, travel-inspired leather accessories. Here we have taken the opportunity to catch up with Melissa and Reinhard to hear how travel has influenced their brand and why one bag is never enough...
Tell us about the inspiration behind Love Or Nothing Baby. What did your "This is What We're Going to Do" moment look like?
Melissa: The idea for LONB came organically from our own experiences. Reinhard was travelling over 200 days a year in his old job. I was in New York City, travelling from morning to night. We both needed to create ways to keep organised and minimise the amount of packing, unpacking and repacking.
Reinhard: The world has never been more dynamic. Travelling between cities has never been easier. But we are busier than ever. So we need the considerations put into traditional overnight bags also put into everyday bags – to suit our life on the go and seamlessly blend into the moments when we are away from home. This is why we created LONB. We wanted to make a collection of luxury leather goods which blend purposeful design, the highest level of Italian craftsmanship and our signature soulful aesthetic in perfect harmony.
And the story behind the name?
Love Or Nothing Baby is the philosophy behind everything we do. Do it with love and dedication or don’t do it at all. At the end of the day, the name of your brand should be the signature of who you are. Nothing sums it up better than this.
What have been some of the highlights, and also challenges, that you have encountered since founding LONB earlier this year?
Melissa: We each spend time in the store and with customers. My favourite moment was when I was helping a customer who was visiting London. He said, "I have been looking for the perfect bag for years". I promised him he had finally found the answer… skeptical, he allowed me to show him our collection. Within minutes, he was so excited, he ran to his hotel and brought back his bag and we repacked everything into his new LONB bag, runaway and pouches. He now stops by every time he is in London and proudly brings friends with him. To me, that is the best feedback and testimonial I can get.
Reinhard: I think the biggest challenge is that Melissa and I are both total perfectionists and overachievers. We want to do so many things, but we are also a small team. It has become a real exercise in prioritisation and teamwork to make this all happen. Each person on our team puts in 200% every day to achieve the level of excellence we all expect from each other. But I suppose that goes back to the name. It's love or nothing, baby.
You have chosen London as the home of your flagship store – why?
Reinhard: There's nowhere in the world that prizes tradition as much as they celebrate what’s new. It's that combination that makes London rare and inspiring. It's the global capital of the world after all. Everyone feels at home here, wherever they come from, they are excited to share travel stories.
The signature item in your collection is ‘The Runaway’ – can you share where in the world you would choose to run away to if given the opportunity?
Melissa: I would love to tour South America. From the cities to the countryside to the beaches, I would love to get lost there for a while.
How have your own travel experiences influenced the vision and development of LONB as a luxury travel brand?
Reinhard: We create products that we need and want and test them ourselves before approving it through production. We carry our bags to work as well as on the road. Whether its pockets to access your boarding pass or special places for your subway card, we created products based on what we needed… I think this is why they are so exciting to people, because they also needed the same things.
What does the future hold for Love Or Nothing Baby?
Melissa: We have many ideas for the future… but that’s for us to know now and share a little later! But you can be sure they will always blend purpose, perfected craftsmanship and soul. That’s the recipe behind LONB.
