From Olympic shooting coach to Czech backpack brand Bagmaster

Emil Blažek spent more than a decade coaching the Czech Republic's top sport shooters and preparing the national team for the Atlanta Olympics, but after the Games he turned down a tempting offer to lead the Swiss national team and threw himself into business instead. Today his company Bagmaster makes school backpacks used by tens of thousands of children across Czechia.

While still coaching, Blažek noticed an acute problem: good-quality sport-shooting clothing was almost impossible to find in Czechia, and imported gear cost a fortune. Together with his partner Jiří Částka he founded the firm Hitex, which began sewing specialized shooting apparel from stiff fabrics designed to help athletes stay stable and protect their backs during hours of standing, kneeling and prone shooting practice.

From a small workshop, Hitex grew into a supplier for shooters at European, world and Olympic level — more than 90% of the company's output is exported, and clients travel to Czechia for custom-tailored suits from as far away as Australia and Japan. A single suit can cost tens of thousands of crowns, and there's a waiting list for Hitex products — sometimes customers wait up to six months. The company's annual turnover holds steady at a few million crowns.

Alongside Hitex, Blažek teamed up with Radomír Brinda, a former classmate from grammar school, to launch another venture — making school backpacks under the brand Topgal. At the time there were almost no modern models on the Czech market, and the partners saw a real opportunity. They began bringing back ideas from international trade fairs and setting up production with suppliers in Hong Kong and later China, since manufacturing the backpacks in Czechia turned out to be impossible for lack of the right materials and capacity.

Over time Topgal became one of the most prominent players on the Czech school-backpack market, with annual turnover of around 200 million crowns. However, the partnership between the former classmates ended in a conflict over the company's future strategy, and the two parted ways. After the split, Blažek was left with only part of the warehouse stock and personal liability for the company's loans — in effect, he was back at square one.

That is when Bagmaster was born — a new brand with which Emil Blažek started all over again, once more proving he was ready to build a business from scratch even after a serious setback. Today his backpacks are carried by tens of thousands of schoolchildren across the country, and the entrepreneur continues to juggle several ventures at once, striving to be among the best in each of them.

By the Around Prague newsroom