marketing messenger-ness

Yet another account of the commodification of a once pround counter-culture. These narratives are becoming so cliched that one has to think there must be something else going on. Not that there's no truth in them. But something a little bit more complicated, please. The story seems just a little bit too comfortingly straightforward to be altogether true. But here it is, in any case, for those who might be interested in another instance of how we are all complicit in our own captivity to the form of empire known as consumer culture. Or so the story goes. Not sure of the exact count, but I did notice a bunch of Timbuk2 bags at the race on Sunday. Not that those of us who sport other brands are any better off according to this sort of critique. Oh well. Courtesy of the NYT:

Consumed: Biker Chic

By ROB WALKER
Published: January 14, 2007

Timbuk2

To be a bike messenger, a former member of that profession explains in the documentary “Pedal,” is to be part of a “whole different culture.” The messenger feels free, envied and looked down on all at once. “Bike messengers fall into the realm of outlaw,” he explains. It’s not clear exactly when people delivering things by way of a bike came to be thought of as a “culture,” but in recent years it has become clear that this image is widespread and probably marketable.

For instance, Advertising Age recently included a messenger-bag company called Timbuk2 in its “Marketing 50” list of up-and-coming brands. With sales to messengers “in the bag,” the magazine observed, Timbuk2 has lately “expanded into an urban-lifestyle brand,” with about $20 million in sales a year and growing quickly. The company’s roots go back to 1989, when a San Francisco bike messenger named Rob Honeycutt started making bags and selling them through local bike shops. When this started to look like a real business, he changed the original name — Scumbags — got some financial backing and opened a manufacturing facility in the Mission District. The brand sold made-to-order bags via the Internet and had a solid cult following by the time Honeycutt sold his stake to new investors and left in 2002.

Soon Timbuk2 started to have success with a more diversified product line. The brand now sells backpacks, laptop bags, duffel bags, tote bags, yoga bags and even wallets. Macy Allatt, director of marketing for the company, says that “urban living” is the common thread. While it is unlikely that bag purchases by actual bike messengers make up more than a sliver of Timbuk2 sales these days, they’re still “the reason this company has been successful,” she says. Presumably that’s both because a bag with messenger-ness in its DNA is bound to be ruggedly functional and because of courier culture’s harder-to-define outlaw chic.

Timbuk2 didn’t conjure this chic: the brand is one of many to notice that messengering seems connected to a more vague, but popular, notion of “urban” cycling, which carries a whiff of progressive politics, creativity and preference for the outdoors, even a paved cityscape, to one of the Man’s cubicles. And of course messengers really do care about their bags: ReLoad, Eric Zo and other small brands have devoted followings. But while, for example, messengers have organized competitions and races for years, it is only recently that these events have started attracting major sponsors like Puma. Meanwhile, the light “fixed gear,” or track bikes (which don’t have brakes), that some messengers use have attracted interest from increasing numbers of people who five years ago might have been drawn to skateboards. The makers of a new DVD called “Mash SF” — full of streety stunts (and painful-looking crashes) in the manner of a skate video but with bikes — were recently recruited to contribute to the influential Japanese style Web site Honeyee.com.

This messenger-inspired aesthetic is what Timbuk2 has addressed with its newer products (one bag is called the Blogger) and by expanding distribution to places like college bookstores. “We’re still very much committed to the cycling community,” Allatt says, noting that the brand sponsors messenger races as well as events like the Bicycle Film Festival and has produced a limited-edition artist series. And while many of the new products are made in China, the messenger bags are still made in San Francisco; the company has also introduced “sustainable” bags made of hemp. “We wouldn’t want to alienate where we came from,” Allatt says.

That’s always the trick: as is so often the case, the more popular the image of the messenger as outlaw icon gets, the more quickly the reality behind it recedes. One interesting thing about the documentary “Pedal” — completed in 2001 but recently rereleased with a companion book of photographs — is that it goes well beyond the popular cliché of the messenger as a tattooed, vegan, indie-rocking young man or woman who has made a lifestyle choice to avoid working in a cubicle. “It’s a nonunionized blue-collar job,” and many couriers are working-class dads with few other options, says Peter Sutherland, the director and photographer. “In New York, a lot of times it’s one step up from rock bottom.” That’s a little different from, say, a leisure activity like skateboarding. But we’ll take our fresh outlaw role models where we can find them, even if we find them risking life and limb to deliver packages for the Man.