Oh and, of the three off of our site, maybe trend-setters like them, but it still hasn't coalesced into a huge trend the way pop things do.

Certainly not by those examples anyway.

The Lions in the Sun was for a gallery show, a collaboration of artists & it was traded for a badass painting that my wife really loved and so having no money I did acquire it by the only means I could, trading a sweet bag and a bag of loot besides. So it's in NYC being worn on occasion by a velodrome riding, team belonging to, badass artist of good repute.


The cog bag was bought by a swedish messer at cmwcnyc, no doubt because she liked it, but she was also shopping for work gear, our bags are often considered a bit unobtainium by folks on that continent because of VAT & shipping. So it's being used on the job in Sweden by a messenger.


The last is "Amy's Bike" from the same artist collaboration/gallery show. It's now with a patron of the arts in Japan who is a fan of the original artist in NYC whose work the flap was based on & whose subject was an actual messengers/friends w/her & us to boot, bike.

No targeted demographics, no trend spotting or setting, no adspace, just nice stuff in the area of our particular interest. We're a BOB from other BOBs who live & work with yet other BOBs & we live & breathe the bicycle. And it's been that way for awhile. When I started messing in 93 I had a crappy Gabriel messenger bag & it wasn't waterproof enough for the area. I looked around & saw I needed either a T2 or a Manhatten Portage or a trip to SF to get a Zo. If I could, I was told, I could get a custom bag, since it would soon be a fast friend I may as well have one that I really liked. I just got a t2, but I had buddies with custom bags, just like I had buddies with custom bikes & eventually had one myself.

I'm not arguing that it's popular stuff, but to me a trend is something with a beginning, a climax & an end. If you only see the past year or so & just noticed I can see where you might think it was a hipster trend, but it's been this way for decades. Just like the bikes themselves, there is everyday, raceday & showday & everyone finds their niche by exploring them all, the only real trends are inside the individuals who go up then down in their own interest, the influx of new riders with their own standard of what's fun or cool keeps it steady, no "hot or not" for us all.

97%+ of the bags we make are unadorned, functional work bags. If all you saw was the fancy ones, dude that's you & you saw us having fun, that's not a trend.

Sorry for the speech but you seem bitter-like, thinking these people are all just style & no substance. That's just perception, reality they are much like you with different interests.[/end coffee break]