Freitag messenger bags: One-of-a-kind and eco-friendly

They were invented at Zurich, and continue to be made in the same place as on day one. Yet, today they are sold in many more places. There are five Freitag shops in Switzerland and Germany, and Freitag departments in stores worldwide (well, that is, in the northern hemisphere and New Zealand).

They are also sold in an online shop at www.freitag.ch, where each individual bag is displayed and can even be virtually turned all around. This is very useful for one-of-a-kind bags.

I am actually not sure why they are so appealing to me. Options include: I like messenger bags per se, I like the one-of-a-kind concept, the 'used' status of the tarpaulins (purchasing a bag means recycling a piece of a lorry back onto the road), the bright colors and the glossy finish.

Prices are a bit of a setback. For your information: My little bag cost the dear soul who gave it to me 88 Euros (F41 Hawaii five-0, like the red-and-white one at the top); it was a present. They have eight more models of messenger bags that range between 112 and 250 Euros. Their simple shopping bag costs 52. These figures might be an inspiration to go hunting for them on ebay... see below.

Also on offer are more comfortable shopping bags, men-only handbags, a hi-volume sports bags, footballs (!), and a range of things they call 'successories': keychains, shoulder-pads, iphone sleeves, ipod cases, wallets and laptop sleeves.

Photo by Dom Dada

The company's justification for the prices, however, is the high amount of work that is required to produce a bag, that is all done by hand and nicely illustrated on their website. Used truck tarpaulins have to be bought second-hand, cut into large pieces by hand, and washed in very large washing machines. When laid out flat on the floor, designers cut pieces for bags from them using transparent templates that are later sent to sewing workshops. Those are in Switzerland, France, Portugal and Tunisia. Then before packing into boxes, each bag gets photographed... they get something like personal ID cards. One-of-a-kind...

Via the online application, you can drag bag template pieces on tarpaulins and actually purchase the bag that you create this way. The model of this bag is F12 dragnet (see picture), and it will cost 260 CHF (about 170 Euros), which is about 20 Euros more than the standard price of this model. They have 12 different tarpaulins at once in the application, and of course put on new ones from time to time as the old ones get consumed. A preview will show what the bag will look like. Personally, I enjoy designing virtual bags even if I cannot buy them all in the end...