A Business Briefcase For Function And Image

A business briefcase is a must have for any serious salesman or business person. In many ways it shows you mean business.

Right now, think of a businessman. What's the first image that comes to your mind? A few of you might say a gentleman in a fancy suit, a few others might even think of a cigar puffing, obese individual with wads of cash in his pudgy hands. But I would be willing to bet that all of you pictured the businessman carrying a briefcase.

The business briefcase has achieved the kind of stereotypical association with a businessman that it is difficult to think of one without the other.

Mention the word businessman and even before the shape of the person forms in your head, the briefcase is already plainly evident.

And look at any real life business man and you can be pretty sure that he'll be holding a briefcase. For those business people too affluent or successful to carry their own business briefcases, you can be sure that there are assistants who carry it for them.

But what is it about the briefcase that makes it the essential accompaniment of a businessman? Well, to find the answer to that question, we need to turn to the world of cinema. For decades now, Hollywood has been portraying the quintessential businessman as someone who carries around a briefcase.

And often it's the bad guys who carry a briefcase too - smugglers with wads of illegal cash, villains with fancy guns and ticking time bombs and molls with a secret diary. But it's the businessman who has been the true carrier of the business briefcase all through the annals of Hollywood.

A business briefcase provides a great service to the business person. For one thing, it lends an air of elegance and determination to the one who carries it. When someone shows up at your office carrying a briefcase, you usually take them rather seriously.

And secondly, it serves as a repository for all those important documents, files, supplies and even bulky wallets and check books that the businessman would otherwise have to carry on his person.

Most women have the handy tool called the hand bag that partly serves this purpose. But for a man, the business briefcase fills the slot rather nicely.

Here's the reason I decided to write this article - I plan to buy myself a business briefcase very soon. I'm not the yet the kind of businessman that I aim to be, and I hope that a briefcase will speed up the process. It certainly won't hurt.