Bouga is a Foldable Tote Bag for the Creative Cairo Hustler

If you see someone toting a shoulder bag designed with the iconic yellow imagery of the Cairo bus ticket, or the vertical green stripes of Egypt’s summer watermelon, or recursive Arabic translations of the ancient Book of the Dead, you’ve come across Bouga. Inside the bouga might be everything from college books to the week’s haul of fresh fruit and vegetables—up to twenty kilos’ worth in a bag that refuses to betray its carrier or its street-bred Egyptian heritage.

"I would always pick practicality over fashion,” says Mai Sabri, the creative force behind Bouga, “but whatever I wear has to always express my character.”

Sabri, a self-described workaholic, is a senior brand designer at a famed f&b company. “Branding is the thing I enjoy most in life,” she says. After more than five years working in this industry, including a stint at The Brand Company, agency work and her own freelancing projects, Sabri felt she wanted to launch a brand of her own as a creative sandbox where she could design to her heart’s content.

“When I entered the corporate world, everyone was calm and collected and wearing black, whereas I was the young Gen Z-er wearing a bright orange hijab and making people laugh.” Wanting to create something that reflected herself, the starting point for Bouga became the vivid colours; the other essential ingredient was practicality. Ever on the go between work and home, Cairo and Alexandria, and outings with friends, Sabri noticed a gap in the carrier bag market, between what was reliable but expensive, and affordable but cheap-looking or easily ripped.

In the quest to fill this gap, Sabri came across the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam’s foldable tote bag, which became the inspiration for what would become Bouga. She made adjustments to the concept based on surveys she sent out to friends and acquaintances, and began her search for a factory to produce the first samples she designed.

“I thought this would be the easiest part, because it’s just one large piece of fabric sewn together, but I ended up going to more than 20 factories,” says Sabri. “They either didn’t understand the bag or weren’t willing to make it.”

Afterwards, the other challenge Sabri encountered was coming up with a name. Bouga refers to the simple cloth wrapping used by Egyptians for centuries to wrap food and carry it with them to work in the fields or the city. She already knew her designs would be rooted in local heritage and culture to differentiate them from other products on the market, and she needed a name to reflect that.

“I first considered sheila, but it has a negative connotation. When I thought of Bouga, the only issue was making it read properly in English.” The ‘u’ in the name takes the place of an apostrophe more commonly used in Arabic transliteration, but not possible for use on Instagram—her main marketing platform.

Like its namesake, the bouga is designed to be as convenient as possible. Folding into a small pouch the size of your hand, it can be placed into a purse, a backpack or a large pocket, or even hung on a keychain. The material, a recycled ripstop polyester, is waterproof and can carry weight up to 20kg.

“I was thinking about the identity of my customers,” Sabri says about the Bouga’s heavy weight capacity. “I wanted to target people who, like me, care about practicality but don’t want something that looks cheap, whether they’re students or professionals or just buying books at the Cairo Book Fair.”

One thing Sabri did not expect upon launch was the interest Bouga attracted from foreigners and expats based in Egypt. In hindsight, all the elements of a collectable local souvenir are there: locally made, locally inspired, and memorable through its daily use in one’s life. “People have been asking me if we ship internationally, which opened up a whole possibility I’d never thought of before for Bouga,” she says.

Bouga’s bags are currently sold at The Qaaf in Downtown Cairo and through Bouga’s website and Instagram page. Available in seven designs with a new collection coming soon, Sabri is planning ahead for the start of summer and the launch of a new beach product built on the same Bouga principles of foldability, practicality, and local flair.