In the fall of 1993, two brothers made bags from used truck tarps in a Zurich apartment. Today, this has grown into a company that puts unique recycled bags on the road from Europe to Asia. The idea is to keep used materials in circulation for as long as possible – and to close the loop in the future.
To mark its 30th anniversary, the Swiss company Freitag is looking back and launching a limited edition of a bag that was found as a counterfeit in a Swiss supermarket. In 1996, Markus Freitag entered the store and spied a bag he was familiar with: A copy of Freitag’s F13 Top Cat model with the words “Donnerstag.” For all non-German-speaking readers, ”Freitag” also means Friday and Donnerstag means Thursday. A mass-produced product made of new and thin plastic. So the bag had been copied, but not Freitag’s mindset. This moment in the company’s then-young history generated questions and fears of a mass-produced product flooding the market. Fortunately, the supermarket soon removed the knockoff from its assortment.
As a tribute to this turning point, Freitag is now producing a limited number of the 1996 imitation as the F13-D Copy Cat – available exclusively at the Freitag flagship store in Zurich. In doing so, the brand is turning the imitation into an original after almost 30 years and donates 99 percent of the profits to the cultural foundation of a large Swiss supermarket chain. Of course, like all Freitag originals, the F13-D Copy Cat is made from recycled truck tarpaulins, and each single one is one-of-a-kind.
