In case you’re looking for Part 1 and Part 2, just follow the links. With our new “Statement Makers” line about to debut, I thought it was a good time to do some reflecting - and also to create a place online where I can send people who ask, “How’d you get all this started?” (If you’d like a sneak peek of our Statement Makers, check out the new slide show on our Rebagz homepage.

Part 3 - Day-to-Day Life @ Rebagz
When the work day ends in Los Angeles, where our offices are, the work day is just beginning in the Philippines, so it’s not unusual for me to be up past midnight doing business by phone and email. But I consider myself incredibly fortunate to be working this hard because I know there are so many people who would love to be in my position.

I love talking to our customers. It’s actually one of my favorite things – seriously! Sometimes that’s the only social time I have all day. I encourage them, and our sales agents on the road, to give us feedback. We want to know the bad as well as the good so we can make our designs and the way we do business as user-friendly as possible. And if you’re one of our customers already, you’ve probably noticed how fantastic Rorey and Shasta are. I’m so lucky to have them working with me.

Our customers are the reason we’re as successful as we are, and one of the things that’s so vital to me is to celebrate every small inch of success and express my gratitude wherever and to whomever I can. We’ve had a lot of extraordinary opportunities that have seemingly fallen into our laps and I’m so grateful for each and every one of them.

For anyone thinking about getting into this sort of business, I highly encourage it! It’s incredibly rewarding. But in terms of creating one’s own design business, just realize fear is a part of it. Most people let the fear stop them, but there’s no true courage without fear, and you need a lot of guts to stick your neck out in fashion. When you have those dark, frustrating days, and I’ve had scores of them, just remember that if it was easy, everybody would be doing it - and succeeding at it. The only thing that can keep you down is if you choose not to get up again.

I think 3 parts is enough for my retrospective on Rebagz. Any more navel-gazing on my part and I’m afraid I’ll get a crick in my neck.

Thank YOU so much for all your support!

XOXO Marty

In case you’re looking for Part 1 and Part 3, just follow the links. With our new “Statement Makers” line about to debut, I thought it was a good time to do some reflecting - and also to create a place online where I can send people who ask, “How’d you get all this started?” (If you’d like a sneak peek of our Statement Makers, check out the new slide show on our Rebagz homepage.

Part 2 - Designs, Designs, Designs
When it comes time to design bags for the new season, I come up with several ideas, which I then sketch out in detail and have the first set of samples made. I often travel to the Philippines to supervise the revisions of the samples – ‘cause there are always lots of revisions.

I work with my agent over there to determine what’s not only fashionable but feasible as well, because sometimes wonderful ideas just don’t translate gracefully to real life. There’s my imagination and then there are the perils of execution. How smoothly can the corners really be sewn? How easily can the weave accommodate the curves I want? I usually start out with between 12 and 14 ideas, end up with 8 to 10 sketches, and then usually end up introducing about 2 to 5 new designs per season.

I never went to design school, by the way. You don’t need to, and you certainly don’t need an MBA, either. What you do need is to know how to draw and sketch. But even these skills I taught myself to do. There are so many people who have a great eye and terrific ideas, but the two things most vital to success are so often never even considered by up-and-comers, and those things are working hard and being a good listener – the former being even more vital than the latter. Yes, you need a feel for color and dimension, for proportion and for where trends are going, but so much more than that working hard is the only way to succeed in any field.

I did have one very frustrating design situation. I’d found an adorable rice sack decorated with the cutest panda I’d ever seen. I couldn’t wait to work with this “fabric” and knew we could sell thousands of handbags made from them. Then I found out the sacks were from a discontinued brand of rice and there were only a couple of hundred sacks left. After tearing a few chunks of hair out in frustration, I came up with the idea of creating a Limited Edition line – Rebagz L.E. – for situations like this. Our L.E. handbags celebrate the unique beauty and rarity of the Panda sack and others like it, and remind us that many things around us have limits too.

So when challenges like these present emerge, look for the opportunity inside the problem. There’s virtually always something there that can benefit you.

XOXO Marty

We’re almost set to launch “Statement Makers!”
Finally - and we’re over the moon about these new bags. We’ll be posting photos soon enough, as well as making them available for purchase on our website. In the meantime, I always get asked about how I started this whole Rebagz thing, so I thought now was as good a time as any to write about it. We’ve had lots of successes - and yet we had to deal with the economic splat just like everyone else did.

Warning: it’s a long story, so I’m going to break it up into a few parts. Otherwise you’d be scrolling for days…

How It All Began…Part 1
I’d been making hand-crafted jewelry with my friend and co-author Christine Calla (“Beading Vintage Style Jewelry”/Sterling Publishing) and wanted to expand the company. Christine had grown up in the Philippines and she suggested I head there with my ideas for handbags. I originally began making my samples out of fabric, but when I discovered this beautiful recycled weave being made by a fair-trade organization, it just made sense to work with them to create some of my designs.

I started the rice sack line, however, from absolute scratch, literally roaming the markets in search of rice merchants to see what sacks they had – and then trying to convince the rice sellers to sell the used ones to me to make handbags. That request got a lot of strange looks. Yes, I was the crazy American woman who wanted to buy the empty sacks of rice, not the full ones.

Given that I did humanitarian work in Mexico following the Zapatista rebellion and that my mama was a serious recycler, the choice to work with recycled materials was an obvious one. You have to remember that people have been using rice, flour and feed sacks for hundreds of years to make rough clothing.

For design ideas, I read magazines, go to museums, go to the mall – all these things give me ideas. But for the most part I simply consider what I’d like in a bag (that’s how our All-in-One Wallet and Sport Pouch came about) and also what shapes and colors please my eye.

I also like creating bags with curves because my corporation’s called Half the Sky Designs LLC, as in the saying, “Women hold up half the sky.” That’s why I created the Cinchy Totes with curves and designed our circular award-winning “Life is a Circle” Bag.

In case you’re looking for Part 2 and Part 3, just follow the links. (If you’d like a sneak peek of our Statement Makers, check out the new slide show on our Rebagz homepage.

XOXO Marty

I admit it may seem a stretch to see designing and selling handbags as a means of bringing peace and justice anywhere, much less around the world. But I always feel that even small gestures can add up and make a difference. And that’s something you’re helping us do because whenever you place an order for our Rebagz Eco-Chic Handbags, $1 from that order goes to Global Exchange.

I worked with Global Exchange when I did humanitarian work in Chiapas, Mexico and I really like what they’re focused on - “Building People-to-People Ties.”
I first went to Chiapas on one of their “reality tours,” where “travelers are linked with activists and organizations from around the globe who are working toward positive change.”

They go to all sorts of different countries, and I know my journey with them was a life-changer. That’s a big term to toss around, but in my case it’s no exaggeration. It’s one of the big reasons I do business the way I do and make sure the people who make our eco-fashion handbags are treated and paid decently.

The reason I bring all this up is because Global Exchange’s membership coordinator Natalie Mottley recently sent us a very kind letter after getting our most recent check, courtesy of our generous customers:

Thanks so much for yet another generous donation to Global Exchange! We really appreciate your support and your partnership in our work for peace and justice around the world.

Really, she’s thanking you, and I thought you should know that. Every bit helps - even handbags.

Thank you for enabling me to give back to an organization that was so important in my life.

XOXO Marty

Yes, it was 2 summers ago when we first launched our eco-friendly Rebagz at the California Gift Show in Los Angeles. The buzz around eco-friendly fashion was just beginning to build, and it’s amazing to think how far it’s come since that July 2007. Granted, I’d been selling our bags at a few events a couple of months prior to that, just to see what kind of response I got. But I consider the opening day of the gift show as our true launch.

I have to laugh when I think back to it because I went into that trade show with what I thought was a very down-to-earth, realistic attitude. Given that this particular show had been shrinking in attendance and that we were a brand new exhibitor there, I knew it was a distinct possibility that, though we might meet a lot of interested boutique owners, there was a chance we might not write any orders for our eco-friendly handbags during the show itself.

This is from the Accessories Show in Vegas.

The show ran from a Friday in mid-July through the following Monday. I figured if we were going to write any orders, it’d probably be on Sunday, though I hoped maybe, just maybe we might write one or two on Saturday.

So what happened when someone wanted to write an order on opening day, after we’d only been open for business for a few hours? Justin Bird, an amazing college student who was a godsend that summer, looked at me and I looked at him - and we realized we had everything in place except a procedure for taking orders. Oh, we had the order forms, catalogs, price lists and all that. But we hadn’t yet actually thought through the order process or practiced it.

Our first order was a comedy of errors and I’m forever grateful to Gesture Boutique for being patient with us while we worked through our mistakes with them. I even had to send Justin chasing after the buyer - twice! - because we’d forgotten key bits of information, like their telephone number, shipping address - tiny details like that. It’s a good thing you can’t see how red my face is, even now as I think about it 2 years later.

We also did the Accessories Show in Vegas a month later - that’s where that booth photo was taken. Got a good response there too. So, much to my relief, I realized I was onto something.

Last week we took some time out at the office, went into our warehouse and popped the cork on some champagne. There was chocolate cake too, ’cause what’s a birthday without some cake? Justin went back to finish up at Cal Poly up in San Luis Obispo but we still keep in touch. He even built a beautiful eco-friendly bike out of bamboo! Take a look at this beauty -

Justin's Bamboo Bike - Don't ya just love engineers?

I’m so grateful to so many people -

- our current office staff (Rorey, Shasta, Bonny and Laura)

- our sweet broker Malu over in the Philippines

- all of our weavers and sewers

- my brilliant publicist Lisa Elia

- the Wild Web Women at Web Marketing Therapy for helping work on my web outreach issues

- and, of course, all our wonderful customers and supporters like you. (I have to give a special shout out here to the folks at Gesture who were so tolerant on our first official day in business.)

Thank you thank you thank you from the bottom of my eco-happy heart.
XOXO Marty

I admit - it’s a reach. But I had to find some common theme for this blog so I could gush about our appearance in the July issue of InStyle magazine and talk about the post-election situation in Iran, because it’s vital that we pay attention to it. In addition to the polls that enter into both stories, there’s also the female element, as you’ll see.

InStyle

First, a shameless plug. On page 20 of InStyle’s next issue you’ll discover that Rebagz Large Tie Tote won their poll about which eco-tote their readers would rather wear. We got 57% of the vote (thanks to many of you!), which was 30% ahead of our nearest competitor. So, for very selfish reasons, that poll really mattered to us. It also shows how much the mainstream media has caught onto the eco-trend, as have their readers, because more than 2000 of InStyle’s readers - who are female, by and large, took the time to log on to their website and vote. One of the reasons I think women respond to our handbags and our company so much is that Half the Sky Designs LLC is woman-owned and run, plus our work benefits so many women over in the Philippines. Given that all our bags are made under fair trade conditions, those women earn a decent wage and go to work in places that are pleasant instead of dungeon-like. This is important to us, and we think it’s important to our customers too. If you’d like to see me explain how our eco-chic Rebagz are made, check out our video on YouTube.

Iran

Watching the news about those powerful protests in Iran reminds me of my days doing human rights work in Mexico in the mid-90’s, following the Zapatista rebellion. It was all about creating a stronger democracy in Mexico and in many ways it succeeded because, though they’re imperfect, the elections in Mexico are cleaner than they were and the indigenous communities have a substantially stronger voice. But it took time, and there was a great deal of frustration we all had to endure. What was so extraordinary then in Mexico and now in Iran is the power and involvement of women in the movements. The pre-election polls showed the challenger Moussavi lead by a substantial margin in Iran, and much of his support came from women. He’s the first Iranian politician to campaign openly with his wife at his side and to discuss the rights of women in their closed Muslim society. When you look at footage of the protests, you’ll see many women there in the streets, demanding a recount. If you go on Twitter and check out the subject #iran, the posts just keep streaming by. People are just aching to make a difference. Check out these photos of a recent Iran protest to see what I mean. This can go one of two ways: transformation comes about, or the protests go the way of Tiananmen Square - this month marks the 20th anniversary of that massacre, by the way. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen again.

XOXO Marty