This week was quite an exciting week for our group. Anthony arranged a meeting with the Gene, the owner of Transpack a locally owned backpack company. It was a very useful meeting and helped us gain an outsider point of view. He was impressed by our idea and our prototype. He gave us suggestions on materials, manufacturing, and how we should distribute our bags once we have a sellable product. He brought up a good point that time is very limited for us, as far as the rest of the semester goes (this project has the possibility of lasting long beyond the end of the semester.) and we should focus on getting an online market opposed to trying to land local retail accounts. So we are going to focus on trying to establish an online presence for our company. I will be spearheading the website, which will be www.krakenbags.com.
The Kraken bag with a skateboard and other items inside.
Anthony and I also came up with a name for our company over a long phone conference. We wanted to have a nautical themed name and decided on The Kraken Bag Company. The Kraken is mythical sea monster. We let the rest of the group vote on the name and we all agreed on Kraken. I have started designing a logo for our brand. I also created a technical drawing of our bag so that we could easily make changes to the bag and also so Yu-Yi and the rest of the group could easily work on different color ways and branding.
As a group we met at L.E.S. (Lower East Side) skatepark. Our main objective was to observe skateboarders in their natural environment and element. It was a cloudy weekday morning and a couple members of the team got carded by the local law enforcement, just to make sure we were of age. We took pictures of different bag solutions that various boarders were using and informally spoke to a few different skateboarders. A few skateboarders had backpacks with vertical board straps, another had a gym bag with a board attached to it and one skater that we talked to had his extra board wrapped up in a plastic garbage bag. We showed them our prototype bag and they gave us suggestions and feedback. One particular skateboarder that we spoke with had very useful input for us. He has lots of bike messenger friends and is a cyclist himself, brought to our attention that we need to take into account left handed people. Right now our strap system is set for a right handed person. He also gave us suggestions, such as a handle, an option to wear it as a two strap backpack, and reinforcing the bottom of the bag to help secure against blow-outs. Overall the few skaters that we talked to were excited about the bag, liked the overall look and durability.
L.E.S. Skatepark.
Corey and his garbage bag solution.
Alex giving us feedback and ideas about tweaks in the design to make it more functional.
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