If you feel like spending several hundred dollars on a backpack (big if, I know), I can personally vouch for https://www.seventeenthirtythree.com/. It's more or less a one man show, and the guy is very obsessive about sourcing materials & assembly. Advertising is all word-of-mouth as far as I know. I at times feel anxious about his long term prospects for the exact reasons mentioned in the OP article - I have a backpack from this shop that's about a decade old and has zero visible wear. I think, in order to make this business model work, it's pretty much impossible to scale.