Swiss Design — Zurich Made

Markus Freitag is an employer, provider of ideas, bag maker, re-contextualiser of truck tarpaulin, designer, founder, developer, representative, occasional dilettante, as well as cyclist, father and snowboarder. After training as a display designer, from 1991 to 1993 he attended the specialisation course for visual communication at HGK Zurich (todays Zurich University of the Arts). In 1993 there weren’t any messenger bags for sale in Swiss shops, and so he and his brother Daniel decided to make them themselves. The FREITAG lab.ag is still owned by the Freitag brothers and these days employs around 200 people. Their headquarters are located in Zurich Oerlikon, where 450,000 products are produced annually, mainly bags. In 2014 they brought a new raw material into play: F-ABRIC is FREITAG’s own, self-developed textile creation from bast fibre, made in Europe. The company also runs 21 FREITAG Stores world-wide, two of which are based in Tokyo.