In 2015, a Portland entrepreneur borrowed $5,000 to make a leather journal; 6 years later, his brand crossed $100 million in sales

Curtis Matsko was not setting out to build a major leather company when he cut his first journal in a Portland garage. He made it for his girlfriend, then asked her to leave her job and build a business with him. They began selling their work at art festivals, where the response gave them something a business plan could not: proof that customers would pay for what they were making.

Those early sales also showed Matsko where the opportunity might be. The products were handmade, useful and built from leather, but they were not positioned as luxury goods. The company could make something that felt substantial without putting it behind the kind of price tag usually associated with premium leather.

Etsy changed who could find the brand

Portland Leather Goods spent its early years meeting customers face to face. Art festivals became an important testing ground, with Matsko recalling sales that eventually reached tens of thousands of dollars at some events. The company was learning which products people picked up, which ones they bought and what made them come back.


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Etsy opened that experiment to a much larger audience. Portland Leather Goods says it became Etsy's No. 1 seller within five months in 2018 and later ranked among the platform's top all-time sellers. That growth mattered because the company was no longer limited by the number of people who could walk past its booth at a weekend market.

The online business also changed the founder's role. Matsko has described himself as more interested in direct marketing and selling than in presenting himself as a traditional leather craftsman. That distinction helps explain how the company could move from a small maker operation toward a much larger consumer brand.

The business grew by keeping the middleman out

The company's central idea stayed fairly simple as its scale changed. Portland Leather Goods sells totes, bags, wallets, journals and smaller accessories directly to customers, using its own online store and retail locations. Its pitch rests on premium leather and comparatively accessible prices.

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That approach places the brand in an awkward but useful part of the market. It is not competing with disposable accessories, yet it also does not rely on the exclusivity and pricing of traditional luxury houses. Direct sales remove some of the costs that can build up between a manufacturer and a customer, giving the company room to compete on materials without following luxury pricing.

Manufacturing eventually moved well beyond the original garage. Portland Leather Goods now has an artisan workshop in León, Mexico, and its retail footprint has expanded across the United States. The company says it opened its first store in 2022 and reached its 15th retail location in 2025.

Scaling up did not require outside investors

The size of Portland Leather Goods is striking partly because of how Matsko says it was financed. Rather than raising venture capital or selling ownership to outside investors, the company grew through its own sales. Interviews with Matsko have put annual revenue above $100 million, while the company has continued to describe itself as self-funded.

That makes the growth story different from the familiar startup path. There was no rush to raise money in order to chase scale first and figure out the business later. The money came from customers, and the company expanded as that demand became large enough to support new production and stores.

The original product also never disappeared from the story. A journal made in a Portland garage became the starting point for a company selling leather goods at national scale. The interesting part is not simply how large Portland Leather Goods became. It is how closely the business model still resembles the first bet Matsko made: make a useful object, sell it directly and let customers decide whether it is worth buying.