Is a compact wallet always best?
**** This post is the same as the one posted on "note" ****
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I make and sell leather wallets.
At our shop, long wallets were the mainstream until around 2018, but recently, compact ones have become completely mainstream.
Not only compact ones, but also mid-sized bi-fold wallets remain popular.
However, having been making and selling wallets for 10 years, I've come to realize that choosing a wallet is a matter of personal preference.
It's not that long wallets have stopped selling. They're no longer mainstream, but they are still being chosen.
That's how things stood as of April 2022.
How will things change from here?
I also wonder if in the future, some people who switched to compact wallets will return to larger ones.
Compact wallets are inherently difficult to use physically.
If you live in an environment where you rarely use cash, it's not a problem, but for those who still frequently need to use cash, it can be a minor source of stress.
The more compact the size, the less user-friendly it becomes.
Especially the bill compartment.
The closer it fits the size of the bills, the more carefully and precisely you have to insert them.
I wonder if people who get tired of this will switch to a mid-sized wallet, if not a long wallet.
Of course, as cashless payments become more widespread in the future, more people will find compact wallets sufficient, even if they are somewhat inconvenient.
By the way, I was using a large-capacity long wallet until just the other day.
I'm not good at organizing and managing the contents of my wallet, so a large-capacity wallet that required less management was suitable for me.
However, with compact wallets being mainstream now, I thought it was inappropriate for me, as a wallet maker, to continue using a large-capacity wallet, so I started using a bi-fold one.
The capacity is sufficient, but the question is whether I can organize the contents that will accumulate from now on.
Indeed, for me right now, the bi-fold size is best; I couldn't choose a minimalist size.
Of course, choosing a wallet is a matter of personal preference.
Reading this far, you might think I'm criticizing compact wallets, but that's not the case.
Even before compact wallets became mainstream, my ultimate goal as a wallet maker has been:
"A wallet that is easy to use, has ample capacity, yet is compact."
It's an ideal form that seems impossible to create without magic, but as long as I'm making them, I want to consider things that come as close to it as possible.
At the same time, I also need to consider whether "wallets" themselves will disappear in the future.
Personally, I like making wallets, so I want to keep making them, even if their form changes.
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