Brisbane, Australia based BOgear makes bags, packs, and gear that blur the lines between tactical gear, lifestyle gear, and outdoor gear. They make a lot of very handsome, functional gear but their WTF bags stand out the most.
BOgear’s WTF bags start on the cutting room floor so to speak. They offer a wide variety of fabric, webbing, and stitching colors for the end user to choose from in their regular line of gear so, as you can imagine, they end up with many different colors of scrap material. These scraps are then sorted into bins for dark colors, camo, and bright colors. The bins can be raided when an order for a smaller piece of gear comes in or they can serve as a jumping off point for a nearly random, completely custom WTF creation. It is a very efficient and very fun way to reduce waste.
If you order a custom WTF bag, you can have some control over the end product via several broad color palette choices or, if you are feeling adventurous, you can choose to have no control at all! You have the following choices for the exterior fabric of the bag (from the BOgear website):
WTF Anything
Anything goes. We can mix in bright colours, dark colours, or camo patterns. For clarification, we classify bright colours to include: Red, Royal Blue, Fluoro Orange, Fluoro Yellow, White, and so forth. These are generally colours which could be described as bright, happy, or punchy! This style of bag results in complete randomness, as the sky is the limit for our colour choices!
WTF Camo Only
Camo can only be used. We mix in any of the available camo colours, which sometimes can include colours no longer available for a full bag (we have scrap to do panels, but not enough to do a whole bag). For example camo patterns include: USA Woodlands, USA Desert, Multicam, Australian Camo, Australian Desert Camo, UCP, or random variants which we have lying around.
WTF Dark Only
We only use darker colours. We mix them all together but the bag generally has a darker or more subdued feel to it. The above photo is a good example of this colouring. Colours used include: Black, grey, Forest green, Coyote, Navy Blue, and so forth. This style of bag really benefits from some punchy webbing colours to allow the design to pop!
And the following choices for the webbing:
WTF Anything
This is the same concept as the exterior fabric. We have free range to the webbing colours, and can mix in any of our available webbing. The above photo uses this webbing choice, and although we do use a single line of punchy purple, doesn’t detract from the overall “darker” aesthetic of the bag.
WTF Bright Only
This option uses all the bright webbing we have in stock. It lifts the bag, and gives it a punchy look regardless of what exterior fabric you chose. We mix and match between our brighter colours including: Pink, Purple, Fluoro Orange, Fluoro Lime, and so forth.
The results are always very interesting and sometimes they are downright amazing. BOgear is reducing waste, conducting smart business practices, and making amazing gear just by giving a little extra thought to a common problem that all sew shops face. Kudos to them.
You can read more about the WTF bags on the BOgear blog.
