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Frequently Asked Question!
When Tom was about ten years old, his parents gave him a choice: he could mow lawns and deliver newspapers to earn money to buy the backpacks and down jackets he wanted, or he could learn how to sew on the family sewing machine and make his own gear. Tom chose the latter, and today, he works with his Seattle factory crew to make his designs available to you. While Tom started out making day hiking and backpacking packs, he now designs a wide variety of travel bags, laptop bags, messenger bags, briefcases, camera bags, organizational accessories, and even knitting bags and dog bags — and yes, backpacks. Tom personally sources and selects the materials we use, and he’s a bit of a perfectionist: we don’t settle for off-the-shelf fabrics. Instead, for example, we buy our own dye lots of custom 1050 denier, U.S. made, high tenacity ballistic nylon, and ultralight Halcyon ripstop from Japan. In that way, we’re a small company that behaves like we’re a big company. Tom’s perfectionism also means he won’t settle for less than having his own factory, here in Seattle, with some of the world’s best seamsters, cutters, and assemblers. Tom works with the crew who make his designs; the back-and-forth between designer and sewing crew means a more finely tuned and nuanced product. Tom’s designs are inspired by his life: “I hike, I travel, I have a dog, I use Apple laptops, iPads, and iPhones, and through our forums, Facebook, and Twitter, I hear from you folks, who tell me how you work, live, travel, and play. I love what I do, and I hope you do, too.” – Tom
To meet the rest of the crew at TOM BIHN, visit our About Us page.
Yes, all TOM BIHN bags are made in Seattle right in our own factory. If you visit our Seattle factory showroom, you will be able to see our talented factory crew in action. We are dedicated to creating quality products and quality jobs.
We made a page all about it: Planet Earth
No. Our Seattle factory is dedicated to producing our own original designs.
No. While our bags are made in our own little factory, it’s still a factory: it just doesn’t work for us to make one of anything.
There’s no set schedule on which we release new designs. For more on that, see our post On The Design Process: Inspiration, Timeline, Testing
We’ll send out the first heads-up about the release of a new design to our email newsletter. Our goal is to put as much information — photos, specs, description — about the new design up a week in advance of it being available for order or pre-order so you can make as informed a decision as possible as to whether it’s a design that will serve you.
Throughout the year we may add a new pocket to an existing bag or add a new color. We are often able to give our customers a sneak preview of upcoming changes on our forums, so that’s the best place to check on what we’re up to.
Bihn rhymes with din. And fin.
Tom’s father was an airline pilot and Tom was feeling a little sentimental when he was designing our logo. The artwork is based on a 1930s-era luggage label; it features a Farman F-121 Jabiru airplane.
Usually cold and rainy. Next question please…
You can order online through this Web site or at our factory showroom here in Seattle.
Yes, it is. We take the responsibility of keeping your data safe, whether it’s your credit card information or your phone number, very seriously. As with any checkout on any Web site, always look for the little lock or secure symbol in the corner of your browser window on any page asking for personal information.
TOM BIHN bags are carefully constructed of fine quality materials and components in our own Seattle factory. They’d be less expensive if we had them produced in China or Vietnam, but then we’d lose control over the quality of the finished product and the quality of the jobs we create. Our turn-around time (the time between designing a new product and being able to ship it to customers) is quite fast, especially for a small company. We could use cheaper materials, but we’ve been making bags for a long time and plan to make them for a lot longer still: we don’t want folks complaining about this or that part breaking or wearing out prematurely. There are plenty of less expensive products on the market and it’s up to you, the consumer, to decide if the quality of our products justifies their expense.
So now that you know what goes into our products, you might wonder why they aren’t even more expensive. First of all, we sell almost exclusively to the end consumer, so there is no wholesale-to-retail markup: you buy directly from the factory. Second, we are a lean little company: we are not top-heavy with vice presidents, nor are we traded publicly. We are a museum-quality example of human-scale capitalism: we make stuff and sell it to people.