Freitag Spins Up A Unique Way To Design Your Own Bag

Sustainability is something of a trend in softgoods, albeit a worthy one. From fabrics made from recycled water bottles and natural fabrics made with no plastics at all to bags that are simply just made to last lifetimes, never finding their way into a landfill. While many brands are shifting practices to be more responsible, there’s one brand that’s been at the forefront for over three decades; Freitag of Zurich.

Freitag founders, and brothers, Markus and Daniel Freitag kicked off their enterprise in the early 90s when their search for sturdy, waterproof bags hit a brick wall. One day, Markus came home with a discarded truck tarp and decided he was going to make a bag out of it. The rest is, quite frankly, history. Freitag has since been synonymous with the idea of recycle-and-reuse, all while delivering hyper-functional and stylish bags all over the world.

A New Kind Of Custom

Nowadays, plenty of brands offer vast amounts of customization for their products; from colors and fabrics to hardware and bespoke sizing. However, none have taken the approach that Freitag has with their latest offering: F-CUT. Freitag’s F-CUT puts you right in the factory at the cutting table. Picture a dozen unique truck tarps laid out before you, each with their own unique colors, patterns, and patina. F-CUT gives you the freedom to choose every panel, from any tarp in stock, for your one-of-a-kind bag, all interactively. Once chosen, Freitag cuts every panel exactly as specified, and builds and delivers that bag to your door. It’s one of the most standout customization processes we’ve seen.

I had the opportunity to run through this process myself, building one of Freitag’s messenger bags, the F712 Dragnet. Since Freitag offers a limited (but generous) amount of tarps at any given time, I first found myself re-checking the website every day or so to see if anything new really spoke to me. It was fun to see what other people had chosen, since you can quite literally see panels from other customers’ bags cut out of the tarp.

Eventually, a tarp with subdued, cool grays, and a mountainous wavy pattern popped up. I knew it was time. All in, I chose from two separate tarps for my design, which is a cool feature to offer. The aforementioned tarp was used for the outer shell and front flap, and a geometric black and gold tarp for the inner and outer pockets. To top it all off, I chose the slightly cheeky “My Fault” label over the standard Freitag F-CUT labeling. I was shown a confirmation screen and I hit “submit”. After that, I was given a final design page that was mine to share, which you can even still check out here, with different expanded views and 360° rotation. When designing your bag, you’ll see a “Next production date” listed at the top so you know when to anticipate your bag hitting the sewing floor.

Fast forward to just over a month, in my case, and my brand new, “My Fault” F712 Dragnet was on my doorstep. As advertised, it was exactly the bag I had designed, down to some of the blemishes in the tarp from its previous life on the road. The F712 is a classic, old-school-cool messenger in the truest sense of the word.

Under that front wave-patterned flap is the contrasting gold and black section of tarp number two, with small gussets on either side for extra storage. The inside is decidedly spartan for the gear-hauling bike messenger, with just an unpadded sleeve on the back wall. The front flap also has a 3-position configuration that goes from what you see above, to almost fully expanded. Even at the fullest, it still maintains its weather-resistance thanks to an extra panel on the interior that unfurls with the front flap.

This was by far the most unique, and interactive bag designing experience I’ve ever come across, especially at the scale Freitag operates. Sure, there are plenty of amazing custom bag makers out there that will offer any number of customizations to existing or even ground-up products, but nothing quite approaches the feeling of ownership that Freitag has been able to instill within F-CUT. If you get the chance, you go play around with F-CUT, as at the very least it’s a cool tech demo of what’s possible now and into the future in the world of softgoods customization.

Right now, Freitag F-CUT offers a choice of two models; the F713 Knight Rider and the F712 Dragnet which is pictured above. You owe it to yourself to check out F-CUT, and make something your fault.