It is a CRAZY idea… but I am going for it!
IMAGINE: A bag made from trash that is powered by green energy to charge your phone or tablet.
I have had the realization: we can actually manufacturer these here in the villages, cheaper by half than the Chinese manufactured competition. I’ve been working on the design for two weeks now. The Solar Shoulder Bag will leverage the network of two dozen women in the villages we have cultivated, the high standard and skill we have attained on smaller bags, and my background in micro-electronics. With this, we can manufacture these, as-green-as-you-can-get, amazing product on a small to medium scale. We could easily handle 1000+ once we get going.
We’re just starting out, and I am posting this because we could use your help!
I envision running a Kickstarter Campaign to get this going. But first, we need to get the first three prototypes done– and I could use some cash in my paypal account to pay for the solar panels and feedback from three real people on the product.
This will be an ultra portable, made from trash, shoulder bag that can carry and charge your cell phone or mini-tablet from the built in solar panels, lithium polymer battery and open source charging circuit. Version 1 is designed specifically to hold an iPad mini or a Galaxy Tab. The bag itself will be made from recycled chip wrappers, the shoulder strap from from jeans, the lining from old umbrellas (waterproof!) and the access ports will be sheathed by pop bottle tops. The bag will have a USB port where you can plug in your device to charge from the battery that has been charged by the sun (10hrs to charge it in the sun). It will also have a mini USB port where you can plug in to charge from a computer or other USB port. There will also be a button to press to see how fully charged the bag is from four LED indicator lights.
Sound pretty awesome? Just drop me a line or post a comment and be one of the first three. We’ll design the bag to your specs for 65$ (and shipping). Tell us the Tablet you want to carry, your favorite pop brand/colors and other ideas, and we’ll work it in just for you. Here’s the made-in-china competition that starts at 100$ for their lowest, not nearly as awesome, model.
Don’t worry! It won’t be so boxy! This is just the limitation of the simple drawing app I am using to lay out the dimensions for the design.
How can we possibly compete with Chinese Factories and big companies you ask? These mother’s are the answer! Here they pose with some of our smaller sized clutch made entirely from Coke labels. The trash is everywhere, and its free. The women, who take care of their children and small stores during the daytime, have lots of free time and are more than happy to make extra money weaving the trash into these bags. There is a vast surplus of labour and time and of course garbage in the villages, and it enables us to replicate the bags by distributing the designs around the community. I call it “community manufacturing”.
Because of this surplus, we can even compete with photocopy machines. Yep. Everything down to the tags of our products can be handmade and completely customized. That’s a good thing, because some bag have their linings made from umbrellas, others from silk neckties. Some are made by Aunt Rose, some by Aunt Sanped. We can thus make note of this in each of our tags.
