A visit to the factory

Last Friday I went to Wenzhou to visit the factory that makes the Banner Bags.

Linda greeted me kindly and showed me around their whole facilities, she showed me the machines that make the material they use to make tote bags for various companies.

I brought her a big banner in my backpack and followed her to the tailor room, where mr. Yang greeted us and we discussed the making of new prototypes.

This was a very fun trip and I made a video for you so I could give you some insight to what’s going on behind the scenes of The Banner Bag.

Thanks for watching. And please keep spreading the word. If you like this video, please share it and like it on youtube.

Update on new sample products

Next Friday I’ll be visiting the local factory here in Ningbo, to see the place where the bags will be made, meet the people and get to know more about them.

I have to take a train there for a couple of hours so this will be a real interesting trip.

Keep posted and follow me to the core of China.

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The idea of The Banner Bag has many sister projects, bags have been made out of all kinds of material and old banners have been popular. Trendy colorful bags out of all kinds of advertisements.

So what makes our banner bag so good?

We want our project to stick out, but what makes our project different from all the already existing ones? First we can name the price we offer to buyers is a lot lower then the competing products. If we make our goal in funding we’ll have access to material that will be easily turned around into convenient tote bags. Secondly, we look at our products as unique, exotic and exciting with Chinese characters which are complex and beautiful.

Stronger handles

The team has assembled to look at the option of strengthening the handles of our bags. The weight test we did showed that the bag could hold more than 30 kg. but the handles were the first to break. 

In the light of that we have decided to change to a new stronger material for the handles, a thicker poly-thread strap that we will then later do a new weight test on. 

Here are comparison pictures for the two types.

Feature at Trendhunter

The Banner Bag was featured on the popular site http://www.trendunter.com by Sarah Robson

http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/the-banner-bag

Sarah Robson

 

 

Sarah writes:

The Banner Bag is an incredible project created by Gyda Sigurdardottir and Michele Santoro that turns old banner materials into handy tote bags. Both Gyda and Michele have been living in Ningbo, China for almost a year, and have just launched funding on June 4th to raise $8,000 for their project.

The idea for The Banner Bag project came after realizing too many companies in China discard their banners directly after their advertising campaigns finish. Sometimes these materials are re-used for other purposes, but more often than not, these banners create immense amounts of pollution. These tote bags are durable, easily folded and are perfect for going to class or grocery shopping. The Banner Bag is a unique project that tries to protect the planet while providing an attractive bag with creative designs.

 

Thank you Sarah for your support, we are very happy to get people talking about The Banner Bag.

Please follow the link above and tweet/share the article so more people have a chance to read it. 

We have officially launched on Kickstarter!

Hello everybody!

Thank you for supporting us! We have been approved and just launched our project on kickstarter! here is the short link: http://kck.st/JGiN8U

Please share this link with anyone you feel may be interested in our project and our cause. We really appreciate all your support!

Michele Santoro

Kickstarter promotion video

This is a video promoting our Kickstarter project for The Banner Bag.
Please watch and keep posted for our launch.

best.
Gyda

Kickstarter launch-date is June 4th 2012

Now thatThe Banner Bagis ready for launch we will activate our funding project tomorrow evening, 6 pm Beijing time. (10 am on Coordinated universal time, London, Reykjavík)

The Kickstarter funding will be open for 45 days and our goal is to rais 8.000$. We have various options for purchase and any small contribution will get a step closer to our goal.

Welcome to The Banner Bag Blog!

Gyda and I have been living in China for almost a year now. China is a fast-paced, constantly growing and changing country. Because of this, many things are coming and going, businesses are born and disappear shortly after all the time. Many of these businesses use large vinyl or woven polypropylene banners for their advertisement, which are discarded after the campaign. All those materials are often re-used for various purposes (storage facilities, “home made” barracks or stripping of the vinyl or polypropylene from its woven threads) although loads of this material once a campaign is over is disposed of or recycled using methods that pollute. More often than not these materials will be around after the businesses they were advertising are long gone!

We want to take a small step towards a cleaner tomorrow by making something useful out of these materials. Disposable plastic bags (especially for grocery shopping) are slowly being rendered illegal in many countries (the entire state of Hawaii just banned them), and new re-usable bags are more and more popular to substitute our old horribly polluting methods.
The Banner Bag wishes to provide unique, attractive and trendy tote bags that also give a helping hand to cleaning up our precious planet.