For Pat McGibbon, the manufacture of messenger bags all began when a friend fished an old sewing machine out of a dumpster.
On leave from work as a bicycle courier because of a back injury incurred while navigating the busy streets of Toronto, McGibbon started stitching together the bags as Christmas gifts for friends and co-workers. Before long, others in the industry were clamouring for her bags, and PAC Designs was created.
“I always thought sewing was kind of boring,” McGibbon laughed while guiding a tour of her Mindemoya shop. “My whole sewing experience was in Grade 9 home ec: I made a pencil case and a bean bag chair. But I'm creative, so I just kind of figured it out.”
Fifteen years later, the Manitoulin Island-based entrepreneur is renowned amongst bike couriers for her practical, durable, and intuitive bags, which are shipped across the globe.
Signature amongst her designs are three layers of abrasion- and puncture-resistant Cordura nylon fabric, double track stitching, and bar tacking to reinforce areas of stress.
And McGibbon is constantly innovating. She was the first to introduce padded backs, anti-sway straps to keep the packs in place, and the use of military-grade Ballistic Cordura nylon for the pack bottoms. She found that adding two-inch, plastic D rings to her designs allowed for easier adjusting, and a removable 'X' shoulder strap offered riders additional support.
All this is done from her home-based shop on the shores of Lake Mindemoya, where she and three employees take orders, field custom requests, and stitch together small batches of the bags at a time.
McGibbon estimates five per cent of her orders come from Canada, while the rest hail from the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, and Europe.
“I'm certainly not the biggest, but I'm still the most respected, because we come up with these ideas that nobody has ever thought of,” McGibbon said. “I think that's perhaps because I'm untrained and I come and look at things from a different direction. So in a sense I don't really know what I'm doing; I just go and do it and it ends up working out.”
Raised in British Columbia, McGibbon came to Ontario on scholarship to attend the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD), but dropped out after “I fell in love with the bicycle and I had to ride my bike all day.”
Six years ago, she was lured to Manitoulin by inexpensive real estate, and she settled into family life. Now, as a single mother of two pre-teen girls, working from home allows McGibbon the freedom to be available to her kids, while living in an area that caters to her active lifestyle.
PAC Designs' acclaim has come mostly through word of mouth. Two years ago, McGibbon was commissioned by the Manitoulin-Sudbury District Services Board to create a pack for Island-area paramedics, and she's now been approached by the Canadian Armed Forces to adapt the design for the military.
Canada Post has come calling, too, seeking her expertise for a redesign of their postal bags, and she is currently working on a pack for a group of Manitoulin physicians who run wilderness survival training workshops for medical professionals.
Despite fostering worldwide distinction amongst devotees, financial success still eludes PAC Designs. McGibbon's current four-person workshop is inefficient, she said, and as such she finds herself at a crossroads.
Though she'd like to keep her business in the North, McGibbon is considering a number of options, including attracting investors, moving part of her production to the U.S., or selling off the company altogether.
With fewer than five employees and less than $500,000 in annual sales, PAC Designs doesn't qualify for government subsidies, and McGibbon is critical of the criteria by which SMEs are evaluated. Assistance with travel expenses or sales and marketing expertise would be a big help.
“I'm at a turning point,” she sighed. “I've got to decide how I'm going to make it a bit better. I think we've got a good product, but I just think I've got to take a step forward.”
Designing remains her passion, so wherever her next move takes her, McGibbon said she'll always be creating.
She's just recently developed a laptop bag insert that allows the computer to be pulled from its case more easily, and she's mulling over ideas for how to design a camera strap that would protect expensive lenses from wear and tear.
Some of her original innovations are now appearing on the products of big-name manufacturers and while it's flattering to see her ideas being used elsewhere–“Sharing is cool, and it's cool that all those guys have my ideas,” she said—it's hurtful that she can't enjoy similar success.
Still, she remains steadfast in her design ideology.
“Generally we can't compete with China, but I think, as Canadians, we just have to make the best product that we can, using the best materials out there,” she said. “That's our only way to compete: just do your best and be as ethical as you can about it.”
