yes, i'm obsessed with bags

Yesterday American Public Media's Marketplace ran a segment on the death of the plastic shopping bag and the rise of the reusable. Here in San Francisco plastic shopping bags have been banned, and when you're around town you see more and more folks trucking around their consumables in their own bags.

The Marketplace story featured Vincent Cobb, president of the ecommerce site Reusablebags.com, which sells, obviously, a wide variety of reusable shopping bags -- from ultracompact to thermal to heavy duty. They're also venturing into the "Fashionable" category, with about 15 SKUs that are a little less utilitarian and a little more "high design." The entire category of reusable shopping bag is relatively new; though Reusablebags.com was started in 2003, searches for similar product on eBags.com, the gorilla in the bags space, came up empty.

Which brings me to the opportunity: designer and custom-printed reusable shopping bags. The trend setters in the major cities (where banning or reducing the use of plastic shopping bags is likely to happen) are going to look at the shopping bag as another outlet for self-expression. In the near term, look for boutiques in these cities to start carrying limited run high-design reusable shopping bags.

And then, look for the shopping bag to jump to the mass-customization and community-designed segments. How long until Zazzle or Qoop offers custom printed shopping bags? Wouldn't you just love to guilt your friends and family into adopting a reusable bag with a bag that features pictures of their kids? ("Do it for the children...") Or how about skinnycorp spinning out a threadless or Naked and Angry tailored for shopping bags? The clever illustration opportunities are endless...

Comments

[Josh Santangelo]

When I was in Berlin, I got surprised when I went grocery shopping. They had plastic bags at the checkout, but you had to pay extra for them. Most people opted not to, and bagged their own groceries in various forms of reusable bags. I just bought the plastic ones, since I didn't have anything else on me.

Seems like a much more pragmatic solution than simply banning them. Charge people a dime a piece instead.

[Michael Sippey]

I think this is what Ikea's doing now, at least here in the Bay Area. You can buy one of their big reusable shopping bags for like a buck or two, or you can pay per plastic bag that you use to take the stuff out of the store.

[richard]

Charging exorbitant amounts (like, a dollar each) for plastic bags seems like the way to go. And while Freitag has had a shopping bag-sized model for years now, the reusable woven bag that Safeway et al are selling for a buck each are going to turn into the new freebie. I got one in a 12-pack of toilet paper, for crying out loud. We'll end up with dozens of them in our homes, wishing companies would just stop giving them out, already.

But that's at least a year out, at least. In the meantime, the bags that are well-designed, with good handles (not the Safeway ones), will be the consumers' choice.