Conversation with Daniel and Markus Freitag

Is “Made in Switzerland” a strong element for Freitag?

Daniel : We like products that last, and I think they should last quality-wise and material-wise – it shouldn’t fall apart after wearing it a few times – but also design-wise. Rather than designing fashion, which you have to change every season, we like to make designs that last for longer.

“I think this might be something that people call Swiss quality, to have these
three aspects which come together : simple, classic and functional”

How did you come up with the idea of using truck tarp?

Daniel : The location of Markus’s flat and the view from the kitchen window was the inspiration. There is a freeway passing right through Zurich. All the trucks that go from north to south, from Hamburg to Palermo, pass right through Zurich because there is no street around the town. This kitchen window looked onto the freeway and Markus saw all the trucks passing by and this was the inspiration for the bag.

“The material is waterproof and strong enough to protect all the goods on a truck so it must be good enough to build a resistant Freitag bag”

Markus : The whole production took place in my student flat. I went outside of Zurich to a trucking company to buy some truck tarpaulin. I got the first piece of truck tarp, which was quite enough for the first and second prototype. At that time Daniel was in San Francisco so I sent the prototype to him for a real test with the bike messengers there. He came back with feedback and we started the production of the first Freitag messenger bag.

What has been the main inspiration behind Freitag?

“what’s fascinating to us is the fact that the architecture or the products tell your story”

Daniel : The material itself is plastic. We don’t actually like plastic but we use this material in our products because it’s recycled. I think you have these conflicts all the time and just to deal with them is a good motivation. Maybe it would have been much easier to build new containers with new steel, for our flagship store in Zurich, but then the architecture wouldn’t tell you that story.