FROM TARP POACHING TO THE REUSABLE SHOPPING BAG
Some of our trainees thought thatwe invented the F52 MIAMI VICE because the object it’s modeled on, the classic Swiss paper shopping bag, doesn’t comply with one important point in the FREITAG manifesto, namely: «We only own objects that last». That may not be entirely accurate, but it’s at least as good as the correct story of the bag’s origins.
Let’s rewind to year three of FREITAG. By 1996 you could buy our bags in Germany, we had a real website, and there were already several models in our range. The point was, the bike bags all looked pretty similar, and the main difference between them was their size. And that’s why Daniel and Markus Freitag felt the time had come to recycle something different made from used truck tarps.
One day, Markus was in a branch of the Migros, when he suddenly realized there was a bit more at stake than FREITAG’s next bag model. On one of the shelves, he discovered a bag that somehow looked familiar.
The bag with the «DONNERSTAG» logo wasn’t a one-off. It was available only in one shade of blue and certainly wasn’t recycled.
«Can they get away with that?» «Does the Thursday bag mean the beginning of the end for FREITAG?» These were the questions going through the minds and churning the stomachs of the Freitag brothers and the then (mini) F‑crew.
Fortunately – and to everyone's relief – it didn’t lead to a protracted court battle, or even a glut of Thursday bags burying FREITAG. Thanks to a wave of sympathy unleashed by F‑ans and F‑riends, which was also picked up by the media, Migros stopped selling its Thursday bags and promised to stop naming its bags after days of the week.
So what does all this have to do with the F52 MIAMI VICE? Inspired by the mega distributor’s need to imitate and the not particularly sustainable properties of the paper bag, Daniel and Markus decided to launch something different: a recycled, individual, robust and ever-reusable copy (or in this case interpretation) of the prototypical Swiss shopping bag as their next product.
So, the second classic design from FREITAG, the F52 MIAMI VICE, was the fault of a copy of the first design classic. The tit-for-tat response in the form of a reusable shopping bag is cut from used truck tarpaulins more than 30,000 times a year and is now available in a FREITAG-owned rip-off version as well.
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