Acme Made has been developing bags and accessories since 2002. While we started with a focus on higher end laptop cases, 2008 marks the year we have begun expanding beyond that realm and into bags and totes for everyday use as well. The line for this year is really interesting as we designed it in Italy and we’ve brought a lot of thought and functionality into the line while still maintaining a very modern style to the designs and textiles.

Our audience has always been “creative professionals” such as architects, designers, art directors and so forth. For that reason, we use textiles and materials that are more unique such as our woven stripes by famed British designer, Paul Smith, or our newest find called “Telun” that is a beautiful Italian canvas that is vulcanized with a matte black rubber on one side – it’s amazing. Anyway, almost every textile we feature has a story behind it. Even the lining we use is unique in that it is actually lining for tuxedos that we then quilt for added protection.

We worked for Apple’s design firm and ad agency and noticed that there wasn’t many bags out there that complimented the design of the Mac itself. Why we didn’t plan to go into the computer bag industry, it seemed to just find us. Designing a high end computer bag is FAR more difficult that a typical handbag because how often do women carry around valuables and information worth thousands in their handbags? Yes, a laptop bag has to be extremely protective, secure AND stylish – so you have a lot more variables to be concerned about and testing to insure the straps and hardware won’t break.

Hell, design nightmares happen every day. We had a problem where one factory in Asia decided to save money without telling us and swapped our lining material with a cheaper material that was not colorfast. Well, we design a lot of bags for Apple laptops that are white and the lining started crocking (bleeding) and staining the laptops – ughhh. While it only happened to a handful of people, it was hell having to fix. Word to the wise, watch your vendors closely.

There are a lot of things that make it worth it – I’d like to think that we helped bring a sense of style and quality into a category where it really didn’t exist before. Bringing in innovative textiles, clean designs, and thoughtful functionality to the “computer world” has been a big challenge and a lot of other companies are now jumping onto that wagon. Also, watching our designs iterate over time and, of course, now growing into a more traditional space is also nice to see.