Question: “Who did you work with to get these bags built?”
Answer: We are working with quite a few amazing people. Most of them we met via an awesome online community called Maker’s Row. The two key contributors, Nicole Melendez (Original Tech-Design for the Sincerity Inside bag) and David Bloom (bag prototyping and build) are both examples. I’ll post more about them soon…
Maker’s Row was more than just a little awesome. In early 2013, Rusty passed me the link to the Maker’s Row website — we hopped over to the site and immediately something in my gut told me that this was something we were needing to discover. I had a first conversation with Maker’s Row while they were in the very experimental phase of offering paid services, and it got started with a brief but powerful conversation which later turned into a more prolonged project where Maker’s Row helped us push through the parts of their process that weren’t intuitive to the Badass Backpacks team. (Design, Pattern Making, Materials, Sample Making, Tooling, and Manufacturing.) Maker’s Row has been growing up and evolving since I wrapped up my work with them in late 2014. They’re offering more and their community is growing. I continue to be impressed with what they are creating. During all of my work with them: they met me exactly where I was in the process. They didn’t waste my time and they helped me move exactly at the pace I was capable of — which is slower than I thought, and faster than I could’ve imagined. You can check them out on their blog, and you can read more about how they work. I mentioned recently that I want to start thanking some of the amazing people that have helped us get these bags made… and that begins with a huge Thank You to the Maker’s Row team.
So grateful and happy that I got to work with them, and oh yes, we will certainly be working with them again in the future. The Badass Backpacks team continues to dream big about the next bags we’ll be creating. And for everything that we create, we’ll likely need to find people who can help us pull it off — that also will begin with Maker’s Row. 🙂