Urban Apparel Magazine first ran across the folks from Yak Pak at the MAGIC show this past February 2010. We were first lured to their booth by the creative wallets bundled into the swag bags handed to attendees of the POOL show held concurrent and adjacent to the main MAGIC happenings. Immediately, we were drawn to their fabulous designs for back packs, travel bags, wallets, messenger bags, and an assortment of other goodies.
Not wanting to leave this
gem unpolished, we returned to the Yak Pak headquarters in a swanky part of New York City. Katie Murphy, their PR Manager walked us through a wide range of their goodies, which we’ll only do some justice summarizing below. The company was started in 1989 by a college student (out of his dorm room, no less) who sensed that there was an opportunity to innovate and improve the fashion of the common backpack. To this enterprising student, “a bag isn’t just something you carry, it’s something you wear.”
From these humble beginnings, Yak Pak grew to create the first micro and mini backpacks, DJ bags, origami bags, cross body shoulder bags, and now their billboard bags, wallets, and even cases to carry chef’s knives. The biggest area of innovation was that Yak Pak pioneered the trend in bringing fashionable prints to the backpack market away from boring solid colors.
Some highlights from our recent visit:
Billboard bags — Yak Pak partnered with Terracycle to create a unique approach to recycling billboard advertisements. According to Terracycle, over 3,000,000 vinyl billboards end up in US landfills each year. Turns out that the tough, weatherproof stuff that billboards are made of are perfect for bags. The resulting product is stylish and individually unqiue because each is made from a different cut of a billboard resulting in a one-of-a-kind piece of art. The product line includes a variety of functional shapes including messenger bags, backpacks, laptop sleeves and totes at prices retailing under $35 for most.
Chef’s knife bags — I already knew about Yak Pak’s fabulous backpacks and messenger / shoulder bags, but I didn’t know they also catered to the catering set. Yak Pak’s fashionable and functional 12 pocket chef bags are great for amateur and professional chefs alike. Keep your sharp knives here without risking puncture as there is a 2-inch webbing strip protection to minimize knife punctures. The bags are easy to roll and secure with air clip lock and include a flap bag for extra accessories. They come in 8 colors and are made of high quality, water resistant polyester.
- Laptop sleeves — I confess. I just bought a new Acer netbook and I had no means to carry it. The folks at Yak Pak were generous enough to give me one of their new Laptop Sleeves, and I love it. Lest you think this makes for biased reporting, I have to report that I’m putting it through its paces, so consider this a product review! The long and short of it is that it comes in 17 different print options, and carries all notebooks up to 15.4 in size. Compatible with all Yak Pak totes, Big P backpack, and Le T mesh backpacks.
As a final note, Yak Pak minds its environmental P’s and Q’s. Their products are manufactured at a wholly owned hydroelectric powered facility in El Salvador, and their employees are paid fair wages in proper working conditions.