Digging Drifter Bags

I fol­low this style site called Well Spent. They “[fea­ture] hon­est­ly craft­ed prod­ucts that look good and don’t cost an arm and a leg.” Last week they did a Q&A with Drifter Bags. The first thing that struck me was that it was an Ohio brand. I shoved the link up on Face­book, and, lo, my friend Rich com­ment­ed with an address. Turns out Drifter Bags is based 15 min­utes from my house.

Well, now I just had to go vis­it. They do their work in what looks like an old car deal­er­ship. I walked in and Tony Nguyen him­self came out to say wait on me. The place is filled with mer­chan­dise, all of it styl­ish and intrigu­ing. Most of the bags are made out of stur­dy nylon pack cloth, but if you’re look­ing for stur­dy Cor­du­ra, or Mar­tex­in waxed cot­ton, or a bag made from cloth pro­duced at the Bemid­ji Woolen Mills in Min­neso­ta, you can take your pick.

Tony told me that the bags are huge­ly pop­u­lar in Japan, Aus­tralia and Europe, but aren’t get­ting much atten­tion in the States. Hope­ful­ly that will change.

I picked up the Mar­tex­in waxed cot­ton Clas­sic Mes­sen­ger Bag and a wal­let for my son. And, good for me and oth­ers with­in dri­ving dis­tance, the prices were a bit less on select items in the store.

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