Roy set right to work and quickly built canvas mock-ups of my bag.
Meaning: after he and I discussed many changes to the design, he built the bag out of canvas.
I kinda dug it. It was flimsy, but I was already loving my new aesthetics.
Originally, there were two closures for the outer flap, and I’d chosen ridiculously impractical squeeze-clamps that required way too much work for a sleep-deprived dad carrying a kid on one hip and trying to pull out a damn diaper.
That was the first simplification. I wanted one easy closure.
There were leather strips on the outside flap which, at an early point in the design, would double as backpack straps.
I ditched that version of backpack straps and brought those decorative leather strips closer together so that (in my mind) they looked like racing stripes down the back of a European speedster from the 1970’s.
Or just Herby, the Love Bug. Yeah, strangely, I felt like my bag looked like Herby. Or a James Bond speedster.
And I dug it.
For the backpack, we originally had a hidden pocked on the back of the bag that stored a huge piece of metal that connected to its own two straps that one would then clip to the clangy D-rings at the bottom of the bag. (Are you following ANY of this? Suffice to say – it was unnecessarily complicated and required too much stuff, and too much stuff meant heavy.)
I simplified the shoulder strap to double as backpack straps. I had no idea if this would be remotely comfortable, but that’s the purpose of a mock-up.
Roy whipped the mock-up out and I took my umpteenth Citibike over the Manhattan Bridge to pick up my new bag.
I used it for two weeks.
We made more adjustments to a second mock-up.
I used that another few weeks.
And finally it was time to plunge into the actual fabric.
I brought Roy my fabrics: outer, removable liner, inner liner. I brought hardware: webbing (recall what that is?), slide-clips, D-rings, snap clips, small zippers, and whatnot.
A few more weeks, a couple big checks later, Roy. Came. Through.
He produced the stylish, masculine diaper bag of my dreams.
I had something. I really had something.
I hugged Roy and set out to start sellin’ bags.
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