How Timbuk2 makes its messenger bags (pictures)

If you've ever wondered how Timbuk2's famous bags get made, we scored a tour of the San Francisco factory floor to show you.

Timbuk2 started in 1989 when San Francisco bicycle messenger Rob Honeycutt decided he needed a bag that better suited his needs. He bought a sewing machine and fabric, and the rest was more or less in the bag.

More than 20 years later, Timbuk2's current CEO, Mike Wallenfels, shows off the latest evolution of the company's bag tech, the Power Commute Messenger bag. The bag is Timbuk2's standard Commute Messenger, with one major difference: it comes with a unique rechargeable power pack called the Joey T1, as indicated by the removable orange sticker. It will be available for purchase October 15 from the Timbuk2 Web site.

Wallenfels shows off the Joey T1 power pack, a thin, lightweight box with rounded corners and a clever charging cable that works with most devices that charge off of micro-USB, as well iPhones, iPads, and iPods.

The Joey power pack, which houses a lithium polymer battery and firmware to automatically detect the proper discharge output to power up your device, lives in a specially designed pouch in the Power Commute bag. Because of the charging cable's long reach to almost any corner of the bag, you won't have to remove the power pack itself.

It's not hard to imagine the Power Commute becoming a tech junkie's favorite accessory. The Joey T1 is apparently only available to manufacturers by its parent company, and is not sold separately by Timbuk2. Timbuk2 sells it for $199 as part of the Power Commute Messenger bag, or for the same price in the Power Q backpack.

When you walk in through the front door of the Timbuk2 headquarters at 583 Shotwell St. in San Francisco's Mission District, you're faced with what looks like a standard tech start-up. The cavernous room has bicycle racks in the front, a meeting room, showroom, dining area, and kitchen on the left, and a handful of desks for employees on the right. It's only when you walk toward the back of the building that you enter the manufacturing room, shown here.

Timbuk2 makes its custom bags by hand here, while its ready-made bags are produced in China, Korea, Indonesia, and Vietnam. According to the company's Web site, Timbuk2's factories "have the highest ethical standards, production expertise and are accredited by the CSC, Bureau Veritas, Level works, and numerous top US retailers. In addition to regularly visiting our factories, Timbuk2 employs two full-time people who work on-site at our factories in Asia."

And for browser-standards obsessives, Timbuk2 plans to relaunch its Web store fully in HTML5 "soon," according to Wallenfels.