Zappos.com x Hamilton Perkins Collection: Advertising Vinyl Transformed Into Unique Bags

We teamed up with Zappos.com to repurpose some of their advertising vinyl into unique bags. This collaboration began in Las Vegas, NV at the 2018 Travel Goods Show. We showed the team our collection and began to brainstorm how we might develop artisan-made products from recycled plastic water bottles and Zappos advertising vinyl. After a busy trade show, we flew home to Norfolk, VA and began to plan for the collaboration. 

We reimagined materials that we had never used before and we made limited edition backpacks and duffles. We used our canvas that recycles 17.5 plastic water bottles and were able to make a product that is durable and study. The vinyl sizes were wide ranging but some were larger than the front door of our co-working space at the ODU Innovation Center (our first office that we operated from at the time of the Zappos.com advertising vinyl delivery). This is a useful project to consider whenever an organization is considering what to do with advertising vinyl that might have old dates or language. The banners that we recycled into bags dated back to 2017 in some cases and could only be used for specific events. We provided added promotion for future events by capturing the essence of the outdated advertising vinyl by including it in a new design.

We cut the vinyl into smaller pieces to begin cutting the patterns. We finally fit the vinyl into our office. We optimized for wastage on this project and used all of the banners for cutting. Fortunately, the vinyl was very colorful and had lots of interesting pieces to work with. With simple soap and water many of the banners were restored like new and had very minimal damage to the original images and text. The best part of the collaboration was that the bags would always be unique because of the text and images used for lining and accent color.

The collection took about 3 weeks to produce in total. We produced backpacks suitable for carrying laptops and books. We also made duffle bags for the gym or business travel. We used colors from the actual advertising vinyl and incorporated logos to help the product serve as a gentle brand reminder.