P H O T O
B O O K
2 0 1 5
T H E
F R E I T A G
S T O R Y
In 1993, graphic designers Markus and Daniel Freitag were looking for a functional, water-repellent and robust bag to hold their creative work. Inspired by the multicolored heavy traffic that rumbled through the Zurich transit intersection in front of their flat, they developed a messenger bag from used truck tarpaulins, discarded bicycle inner tubes and car seat belts. This is how the first FREITAG bags took shape in the living room of their shared apartment – each one recycled, each one unique. With their innovation, the brothers inadvertently triggered a seismic event in the world of bag making. Its tremors have since made themselves felt in Zurich and the cities of Europe and spread all the way to Asia, making FREITAG the unofficial outfitter of all urban, bike-riding individualists. The first F13 TOP CAT messenger bag has since spawned the highly functional FUNDAMENTALS product line with over 40 different models ranging from smartphone sleeves and shoppers to notebook bags. And since 2010, the REFERENCE collection with Haute Maroquinerie made from vintage truck tarps has struck fear into the heart of the calf- and crocodile-recycling bag industry. Daniel and Markus Freitag still design the products. As Creative Directors, they dream up, develop and oversee every new FREITAG model until it is ripe for production. In 2014, they gave themselves a new raw material on which to flex their creative muscles: F-ABRIC. Their rugged, completely compostable textiles are based on vegetable fibers produced using a minimum of resources within an area of 2500 kilometers form the factory. Tarp bag headquarters have been located at the Noerd industrial complex in Zurich-Oerlikon since 2011. Here, on premises measuring over 80,000 square feet in area, the tarps are disassembled and washed and cut to size by hand. FREITAG thinks and acts in cycles – and that is evident in the factory as well: Each step and process is looked at not only from the aspect of profitability but also through the eyes of FREITAG.
F R O M T R U C K T I L L B A G G O O D S T O R I E S S H O U L D N ’ T B E K E P T T O Y O U R S E L F Since 1993, we have been reincarnating used materials in a new context. We like to call this transformation «From Truck Till Bag». If you take a look at the eternal bestseller lists in world literature and popular culture, it is immediately obvious that some of the greatest stories emerged from just such seemingly simple recontextualizations: “From Frog Till Prince”, the Upcycling of Cinderella or “From Gregor Till Bug”, to name just a few. This was sufficient motivation for us to invite Swiss photographer Joël Tettamanti to the factory for a couple of weeks to capture our somewhat more time-intensive transformation process in all its facets and with all its protagonists using his largeformat camera. The result is an epic pictorial story that begins on the transit route of the Gotthard Tunnel and winds its way through the cutting department, laundry room and design tables in Zurich and tells the moving recontextualization story of truck tarps to FREITAG bags. Transforming old transport truck covers into highly functional, unique bags takes place in five highly-complex stages at the factory:
1 .
R A W
M A T E R I A L S
Anyone who has ever kissed a frog knows that only the best and most beautiful raw materials can be recontextualized into satisfactory R.I.P.s (Recycled Individual Products). And those are rather scarce. A logistical grand offensive is needed to track down so many truck tarps precisely when they are being retired after five to ten years on the road.
2 .
C U T T I N G
T H E
T A R P S
In our opinion, the Cutting Department at Nœrd is the only place in the world where violence is sometimes the only solution since used tarps are not sold by the yard and you can’t just measure and cut out the amount you need for your bag parts. They are reinforced with buckles, belts and eyelets to keep them on their trucks for years – and all that has to go.
3 .
W A S H I N G
The tarps are beautified due to the accumulation of many layers of snowy slush, acid rain, acrid exhaust fumes, fine dust particles and the usual grime from all over Europe. That all has to be gotten rid of, however, so we need our two gigantic washing machines, lots of Zurich rainwater and our tarp washers.
4 .
B A G
D E S I G N
Other designers produce sketches – our designers create bags. One after the other with a sharp knife at the ready. This is where the process takes place that makes our products one-of-a-kind in the truest sense of the word: each one is unique because there is not another one like it in the world.
5 .
S E W I N G
The cut-out tarp pieces have to leave the factory in order to complete the transformation. Our longstanding partners’ sewing machines rattle away like crazy until the thick tarps are stitched together. When the finished FREITAG bags and accessories finally return home, they then have to pass a few hard tests.
A L L
T H E
N ΠR D Y
D E T A I L S
Turning 18, FREITAG figured it’s time to get their own place. After almost two decades in post-industrial district 5, the F-Crew moves a reckless three miles into their new building in Zurich’s pre-hip district Oerlikon. Despite the name NŒRD, the F-Factory is everything but boring. It’s in the north of Zurich, in a district called Zurich-Oerlikon, and once you’ve finished reading this, you’ll know just how nœrdy NŒRD really is. Already some years ago, FREITAG’s hub at the former gear plant Maag-Areal started showing signs of decay: Musical stages moved in next door, post-industrial bars and clubs put up their disco balls. The atmosphere tipped from production to consumption, and when plans for the Prime Tower, Zurich’s highest building, were released, FREITAG started looking around. There are not many empty lots in Zurich. At least not above 5’000 square meters. And sizeable rentals in this city are usually better fit for the next Lehman Brothers, than for the old FREITAG Bros. Being a hands-on manufacturer, FREITAG needs hands-on space for washing, cutting, for packaging and storage. And being FREITAG, they just couldn’t move outside of the Zurich city limit. Luckily they found the impossible.
A small lesson in growth. FREITAG has been growing every year from the moment the first tarps were washed in the Bros.’ own bathtub. The individual recycled bag makers have come from 2 to over 130 employees, from 1 to over 50 bag models and from 1 push cart to 8 FREITAG Stores and over 400 resellers worldwide. All without a penny from investors. Still, when you’re «building your own factory», people are mildly surprised. No, FREITAG did not put down millions. As ever so often, they put down an idea: «How about an entire block of affordable industrial and creative space in Zurich. Leaving out all luxury. But built to highest environmental standards.» When the lot was secured, it didn’t take long for the posse of NŒRDs to form: The developer, the contractor, the investor, the partner. Turns out FREITAG is letting a whopping 7’500 square meters – in a building they conceived, with neighbors they chose. Isn’t it grand? Built this city on R’n’R. FREITAG in two words: recycling and recontextualization. FREITAG thinks and works in cycles and so does their building. Built on a previously contaminated lot (why did you think it was vacant?), NŒRD starts by recycling the very land it’s built on.
As for the FREITAG production line, the Swiss perfectionists • re-use rain water collected from NŒRD’s rooftops to wash their tarps • re-use the relatively clean water of the last washing cycles of one load for the second cycle of the next load • re-use the temperature of used water to heat up the rain water • re-use all kinds of wasted material in «Biopoints» installed in the office tracts According to expert calculations, saving water and energy will pay for the necessary investments in about, erm, 18 years. Simplicity, longevity, sustainability: FREITAG takes 50% of its heat from waste power plants, uses a lush rooftop garden for inspiration and insulation, and pays a premium for hydroand solar electricity. It uses galvanized mesh wire fencing for its balconies, anodized steel for its doors, supersized insulating windows for light and lots and lots of straightforward, insulating concrete. It gets cold in Switzerland. A NŒRD’s Paradise. In 18 years, a lot has happened: From the first messenger bags sewn by hand from recycled truck tarps, car seatbelts and bicycle innertubes in a little Zurich apartment. To the first copycat product, «Donnerstag», by Switzerland’s leading super-market chain. To first retailers in Europe and overseas. To moving into the first big, industrial hall at Maag-Areal. To opening the first FREITAG store in the unlikely town of Davos. To the first accolade of a FREITAG bag by the MoMA NYC. To award winning stores in Zurich and Hamburg. To the first unicolored collection FREITAG REFERENCE. To NŒRD. In all this crazy development, however three things haven’t happened: 1. No turbo-capitalism. FREITAG still thinks and works in cycles, true to the original product philosophy, even if it takes a little longer. 2. No farming out. FREITAG still washes, cuts, stores, packages and dispatches in Zurich, even if it costs a little more. 3. No conformity. FREITAG still experiments with product, production and marketing, even if it confuses some people. What’s happening now: At NŒRD, FREITAG has room to grow. To grow in professionalism, where a palette used to be one and the same truck tarp design, now every shipment is perfectly assorted. To grow in output, getting the production time down. Not to grow in waste production and energy consumption, looking at every step and every cycle not only through the eyes of business, but through the eyes of FREITAG.
T H E
B E G I N N I N G
«RESPECT, BROTHERS»
TEXT: OLIVER GEMPERLE / PUBLISHED in 2000
This is a story about two brothers and a sewing machine turning their roommate’s life into living hell. And then it’s the story of Freitag «freeway-bags made in Switzerland». In the early nineties I moved away from home and got an apartment with the Freitag Bros. as my roommates. You’re young – you make mistakes, right? This was in Zurich, the city everybody knows from postcards as a place of riches, swans and a blue lake coloured in post-production. Only I wasn’t rich, and our apartment was next to the transit route Germany – Italy which cuts Zurich in half like a chainsaw cuts a wedding cake. Continuous mini-quakes invading the building, making paint and mortar fall from the ceiling in plate-sized chunks and cracks. Cracks in our walls. Scientists have proven that the permanent acoustic emissions from highways are extremely unhealthy: Nervous stress, light sleep, depressions and, inevitably, straight-out insanity. In reality the first couple of months with Markus and Daniel were bliss. But then my seemingly sane and friendly roommates started doing things that would drive you more nuts quicker than any noise imaginable. I was on unemployment, got up at noon and tried to think of a story that would turn into my first novel. Roommate Markus Freitag was different. Hyperactive as he was – even in those times – he laid down the beginning of a story which I am about to tell here. One morning Markus attached a trailer to his bike and pedaled to a nearby industrial zone. When he came back it was with the old tarpaulin from a cargo truck. Lugging it up to the fifth floor he started scrubbing it in the bathtub. He then laid it out in his room between mattress and stereo, and drew cut lines on it: the prototype of the FREITAG bag. Our comparatively comfy apartment now radically changed as did my life. For weeks the bathtub would be full of black, smelly water polluted with dirty tarpaulins. The hall was stacked with boxes of ‘precious materials’: old bicycle inner tubes, seat belts saved from the ravaging teeth of junkyard dogs and more, many more stinking tarpaulins. The kitchen table was replaced with a preindustrial sewing machine. Its sound overruled anything you’ve ever heard chattering down a street. Traffic was closing in on me from all sides. Daniel Freitag had been able to test their bag on the back of a hard-core bike messenger in San Francisco – and when he returned to Zurich from his globetrot, he took the last square foot of our apartment and installed a computer. Packing lists, invoicing, addresses: the printer added a new shade of yellow to the acoustic landscape of what I had to call my home.
Apparently to reimburse me for my pain and suffering, they gave me two Freewaybags – a big one and a small one. The original models. Garbage turned into robust and a sort of elegant-looking messenger bags. And not one was like the other. Drawing the cutlines on the printed tarpaulins, Daniel and Markus art-directed the design of every single bag. I hadn’t thought of this project as a business before, but slowly it dawned on me that they might be more likely to go places with their bags than I was to go with my novel. The rent on my new apartment is bordering on exorbitant, but I managed to relocate to a quiet side-street. The walls are freshly painted, and I am the proud owner / operator of gadgets like remote-controlled heating in the bathroom. It even heats my towel rack. The Freitag Bros. are no longer making their bags in their apartment. They’ve got themselves a nice ’n neat little business with 40 employees, a worthwhile home page (www.freitag.ch) and all that. The bags aren’t sewn on-site anymore, they are partially outsourced to a manufacturing facility employing disabled people. So you’ve got that social aspect too – apart from the ecological aspect of wearing totally recycled materials. This is serious. Words like «innovation», «creativity» and «niches» and other linguistic straws people use to make sense in the area of consumer products feel right at home here. At this point I would like to describe an encounter I had in New York not long ago: I was in the city to do research for my new novel. I was geared to get a piece of the clubbing. The Lower East Side – I went down there. I found a bar that was pretty empty in terms of furniture – maybe it had only been opened for a couple of hours, maybe it was meant to be that way – you never know in these places ... Many people there, their number and dresscode suggesting I was at the hip place at the right time. Bingo. When I approached the bar for a drink, one seriously down-and-out looking guy looked me over: «Nice jacket,» he said, referring to my Swiss nickel-and-dime raincoat. I only wear it when it’s raining cats and dogs. «Looks a bit like those FREITAG bags! Do you know them?» I check to make sure that I’m not wearing a FREITAG bag myself (we know the tricks), and started telling the guy my story. He kept crying out: «Wow! That must have been GREAT FUN!» He was pretty nice otherwise though. Summing it up, all I can tell people who want to get themselves a FREITAG bag is: «People, the FREITAG bag is still one solid piece of equipment – they’re nice, and the two guys certainly deserve their success. Respect, brothers!»
D A N I E L
-
M A R K U S
P H O T O
B O O K
2 0 1 5