As with many small creative industries, Trakke started out in my living room. I use this term loosely, as there wasn’t much space to live. Nicknamed ‘Studio 82’, piles of fabric, tools, hardware and thread dominated, and with work-in-progress occupying any other available space, any hope of achieving the ‘minimal design studio’ aesthetic we had in mind was lost. Shelves, desks and seating were all improvised from discarded items found on the streets of Glasgow. In fact, most of our original products were made like this too. With little money, we scavenged fabrics and tarpaulins from skips, buckles and hardware liberated from abandoned suitcases and leather from defunct sofas. We developed our skills and our designs with virtually no investment, and began to build a brand.

Two years on, we finally moved out of ‘Studio 82’ and moved in with our friends at the Glasgow Bike Station. We occupy the mezzanine level in a 10,000sq ft warehouse, surrounded by mountains of bicycles and people who love cycling. It’s the perfect place to work. With two industrial sewing machines in pride of place, fabric storage and a pattern cutting table in the main gangway, customers can come up and buy a bag or chat about a custom order in full view of the production line. Every step of manufacture is right there in front of them. This transparency is such a crucial part of the ethos of Trakke. Our ‘Handmade in Glasgow’ philosophy centres around the idea that people can come in and speak to us directly. They can suggest changes to the bags, or request custom details, and we can respond to that feedback immediately. We don’t need to call up some distant factory, wait for prototypes and then produce a huge run of products. We can make a change spontaneously, so our product development happens continuously.

So if you are in the neighborhood, come in and grab a coffee with us! If not, check out our latest video below for a bit more insight into the Trakke philosophy.

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‘Where I Make’ invites readers behind the scenes of artists from many disciplines to share photographs and a little insight about where they create their masterpieces. See more from the series here.

Usual questions, about what if they are stolen and is this art….to the first: if you base what you do on the worst that can happen, nothing good in the world would ever happen, on the second: that a re-enactment as social action communicating ideas about real issues that were relevant to everyday life 45 years ago as they are today is an important strand of contemporary practice (they won’t use that bit).

After ten takes I said to the interviewer that I was beginning to sound like a politician, he said yes but the difference is that you mean it.

Angus

Since the weather has improved I’ve been riding an old 1940’s Dawes super galaxy racer round town. This is a bike with a strong lineage going back to before the Provo’s time. My friend Wendy’s dad Norman Shillinglaw was an amateur champion cylist with Gala CC. He emigrated to Canada in the early 1990’s and had to sell most of his bikes before he went. I was luck to get one of his Dawes touring bikes. It was stolen last year, I was completely gutted and could hardly bear to tell Wendy as her dad had recently died and there was a real sense of connection to him through the lost bike.

It turned out that he had kept one last bike in Canada and it had come home to Scotland in bits in a cardboard box and was lying in a garage in Kilbarchan. Wendy wanted me to have it, so I picked it the box and took it unopened to Joe at Gear Cycles in Glasgow and we found a 65 year old English Leatheries seat and the original frame and wheels of a single speed track racer from the same period. Norman had found it in the coal cellar at the back of his uncle’s house in a village near Durham and had done it up 40 years ago. Joe put on new forks, as the huge bend at the end of the old forks (which gave it the look of a pre-war original from the Tour de France) made it really wobbly to ride! He also put on a set of Campagnola gears and new brakes as we weren’t too purist when it came to safety.

So I feel like I’m riding a piece of living history with this bike, it’s a hybrid of different people’s attention and care from over the years, but most important is the fact that its still going. If any of the white bikes survive that long it will be testament to either good manufacture or luck!

Angus