The first bags we made were, to say the least, rudimentary. And to tell the truth, we weren't even thinking about trying to start a business. But the Philadelphia messenger community, being the incredibly supportive community that it is, came through with support. Some well-known vets asked us to make them custom bags, so we did. And they rocked 'em with pride, handed out cards at all their deliveries, and told us the things they liked and the things they didn't. All the while Ellie and I were messengering full-time as well, and long days and east coast winters make for a great R+D environment.

One of the things that we've always tried to do was allow people to express themselves through their bag design. Even from the beginning, we offered color choices for all parts of the bag, not just the cordura. These days that might not seem like such a big deal, since so many other companies have adopted our methods. But at the time, it was pretty much just us and Eric Zo. I don't remember exactly when we took the next step and started doing custom applique, but it was sometime in 1999 I believe. Once we started, we never stopped. The main reason that we started making our products the way we do is that one of the most important aspects of being messengers was, to Ellie and I, the level of freedom and self-expression that came with the job. While on the streets, messengers know each other by their bikes and gear. You can barely catch a few colors out of the corner of your eye as somebody zips by on another street, but you'll know who it was based off of that. We felt like it would only be a natural extension of this to allow for the same level of customization on bags. Custom applique is definitely the most fun aspect of making bags for us, from the artisan angle as well as the fact that it makes our products a very personal connection with every customer who gets graphics on their bag.

We got our big break when Philadelphia was the host city for the Cycle Messenger World Championships in 2000. Up to that point, we had both still been working as messengers full-time. We would get up super early, work on a bag for a bit, go work all day on the bike, then go home and work some more. We had moved production from my kitchen to a loft space that Ellie shared with four other people, to Space 1026 (link). When messengers swarmed into Philly for the 2000 CMWC, we were surprised to have our tiny space overrun by messengers from far and wide who had heard about these new, customizable and crazy-durable bags made by two local messengers.

The boost we got from that event was enough to let us switch to messengering part time. We also started getting some orders from outside the US, since several messengers had returned to their respective homes with our bags on their shoulders. We took it all in stride and kept with our main philosophy, which is to keep making our bags more as durable as possible, and keep making them look better and better.

Although our company has grown quite a bit during the past few years, our basic philosophy has and always will remain the same. We will always be directly involved with the design and production of our products. Which means that all production must always be in house. Which means that we'll always have a highly-trained staff of creative individuals who are trained in an environment that is supportive of the arts, sustainable by necessity, and ever-evolving. Although Ellie and I made our last deliveries years ago, we are still innately connected to messengers. We're not the result of several sales and mergers; we're not a watered-down version of a company that was once owned by somebody who actually cared and then was sold and resold for profit. We don't have to highlight products that are actually made in the USA...because they all are. We don't have to put up a ten-page long FAQ section that basically explains why we can't do x, y, and z. And we don't have to make excuses as to why our bags just don't last quite as long as they used to. While our competition is looking to save a quarter by outsourcing production and buying as much material and hardware as they can from overseas, we're prodding our reps to tell us about what newer, more durable materials they're coming up with domestically. It takes a lot of patience and perseverance to operate this way, mainly because almost nobody does anymore. We are constantly adapting to the fact that almost any supplier we have could decide tomorrow that they're no longer going to make something domestically, simply because of the fact that there isn't enough demand among manufacturers for slightly better (aka more expensive) raw goods. Let me stop before this lecture gets any longer...suffice to say that while other companies are trying to cut their bottom line, we're just making sure that our bags are even better than they were the year before.