The Year of Selling Out, Pt. 1
A couple of months ago, the nice folks at Timbuk2 messenger bags got in touch about doing some El Rey messenger bags together. The big cheese, Mark Dwight, saw my pictures at National Product and emailed me, and that week he came by the house and then I went over to their factory (!) here in SF, not five blocks from HQ. I'm thrilled that they're interested in my stuff, and Mark and everyone else are good folks.
Thinking, as I do often, of my loyal and not particularly wealthy fans, I wanted to try and keep costs down so the the retail price would be as low as possible. Their current Artist Series bags use an expensive process (basically the same that's used to make bus ads, if I remember correctly) to get the art on the middle strip of vinyl that makes up these bags. Apparently, this strip costs 10 times what the other two do, leading to the $100 price. They're beautiful and nigh-upon-bulletproof bags (with a lifetime warranty, no less), but a hundred bucks is a chunk of change.
Here's a look at the first round of failed prototypes, where after researching way too much about getting paint to stick to cordura, I went back to the hardware-store spray paint I use for my Krylographs for the X-1 prototypes.
They looked OK, but on some of 'em, the bags curled as the paint dried, making for a little more overspray on the upper layers than I'd like, meaning sort of fuzzy images. Plus, masking off the rest of the bag from the overspray took a lot of masking tape and time.
Their nice PR lady took the ducky one with her on a trip and apparently it didn't last long and started flaking off. Poor ducky.
So I took some cordura strips to Lo-Fi Mike, to silkscreen as he did the first round of El Rey t-shirts. (see The Year of Selling Out, Pt. 2) These, the X-2 round, came out looking great.
But their longevity is unknown. They're currently being beaten up by, I like to think, actual live bike messengers with tattoos and callouses and overactive adrenal glands.
I'll keep youse updated as the testing continues apace.
Thinking, as I do often, of my loyal and not particularly wealthy fans, I wanted to try and keep costs down so the the retail price would be as low as possible. Their current Artist Series bags use an expensive process (basically the same that's used to make bus ads, if I remember correctly) to get the art on the middle strip of vinyl that makes up these bags. Apparently, this strip costs 10 times what the other two do, leading to the $100 price. They're beautiful and nigh-upon-bulletproof bags (with a lifetime warranty, no less), but a hundred bucks is a chunk of change.
Here's a look at the first round of failed prototypes, where after researching way too much about getting paint to stick to cordura, I went back to the hardware-store spray paint I use for my Krylographs
They looked OK, but on some of 'em, the bags curled as the paint dried, making for a little more overspray on the upper layers than I'd like, meaning sort of fuzzy images. Plus, masking off the rest of the bag from the overspray took a lot of masking tape and time.
Their nice PR lady took the ducky one with her on a trip and apparently it didn't last long and started flaking off. Poor ducky.
So I took some cordura strips to Lo-Fi Mike, to silkscreen as he did the first round of El Rey t-shirts. (see The Year of Selling Out, Pt. 2) These, the X-2 round, came out looking great.
But their longevity is unknown. They're currently being beaten up by, I like to think, actual live bike messengers with tattoos and callouses and overactive adrenal glands.
I'll keep youse updated as the testing continues apace.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home