This is your space
What our tagline means, and why a mobile work bag belongs in the same sentence as activity-based working.
Most mornings, I don't choose my desk — the day chooses it for me. A call moves to the kitchen counter. A deep-work block lands at home, headphones on. Wednesday afternoon, I'm back at the office, sitting somewhere I've never sat before. None of these are "my" desk. And yet, the moment I unpack my Gustav, every one of them is.
## What we mean by "this is your space"
When Christian and I started Gustav in 2017, we weren't trying to build a furniture brand. We were trying to fix a frustration we both lived with: the gap between how flexibly people had started working, and how rigidly their tools were still designed.
We were using cafés, kitchens, hot desks, client offices, sun loungers in Greece. But our "workspace" was a laptop and a tangle of cables in a backpack. Productive? Sometimes. Ours? Never.
"This is your space" is the answer to that. It's not a slogan about working from anywhere: plenty of brands say that. It's about the small, specific feeling of arriving somewhere new and, in under a minute, making it feel like you belong there. Your tools where you expect them. Your posture supported. Your focus uninterrupted by the wrong chair, the wrong light, the wrong setup.
Why a mobile work bag belongs in the activity-based working conversation
Activity-based working (ABW) is having a moment. Offices are being redesigned around tasks rather than territory: focus rooms, collaboration zones, quiet booths, social hubs. The theory is sound. The lived experience, often, is not.
Because when you move six times a day, you spend more time setting up than working. Where's the laptop stand? Whose monitor is this? Which drawer has the cables? The promise of ABW is choice. The reality, without the right kit, is constant friction.
A mobile work bag closes that gap. The bag itself becomes the constant - the desk caddy, the laptop stand, the tech pouch, the mat - and the space becomes the variable. Same setup, new view. That's when ABW actually works for the person doing the work, not just the floor plan.
The Gustav range, briefly
Every piece we make follows the same logic: travels light, sets up fast, feels considered when it lands.
Gustav Original: the work bag that opens into a desk organiser. The piece that started it all.
DeskMate: the mobile office in one bag. Carry, open, organise.
Loop: a thermo-moulded felt desk caddy that makes any shared desk feel like your own.
Flow: the laptop sleeve that becomes a mini laptop bag, with a hidden sleeve.
FlexMat: a desk pad in five colours that gives your hands and wrists a home.
Echo: the tech pouch that keeps cables, chargers and small things where you can find them.
Gustav Tote: recycled cotton, folds into a diamond. Carries your organizer and the rest of life.
They work alone. They work better together. Wooden organizers are built in a Greek family workshop, soft goods made from recycled materials.
The bigger idea
"This is your space" used to mean a desk with your name on it. A door. A chair you didn't share.
It doesn't mean that anymore — not for most of us. Hybrid work has rewritten what ownership of a workspace looks like, and the brands that catch up first will be the ones that stop selling furniture and start selling the feeling of belonging at a desk, anywhere.
That's the brief we've been working to for nine years. It's why we obsess over the weight of a felt, the angle of a laptop stand, the way a zip pulls. Small things. They're what make a borrowed desk yours.
Your space isn't a place. It's what you bring with you.
This is your space.
