Made In Chicago: DEFY Manufacturing Co.
(CBS) – DEFY Manufacturing Co. makes bags for work and travel.
They design them in Ravenswood and make them on the West Side.
"It's a bit silly that we care so much about bags, if you really think about it. We're obsessed with it," founder Chris Tag says. "Every single day we come in we really enjoy trying to solve new problems, trying to listen to customers, to just make something better than we used to."
Tag says he started DEFY because he liked bags and he thought there was a dearth of selection for men.
"If you want a perfectly fine bag, you can go to Target, and you can find an affordable, functional bag. But I think what DEFY does well is, we're creating something unique that's overly engineered," he says.
He adds: "If you sit on a train the guy across from you and a guy across from him, they're not going to have that bag. We're like small-batch whiskey manufacturers."
Tag started DEFY in 2008. He used to be an art director in advertising, but it was always his goal to move on from that, to "leave a cubicle."
"Defy status quo and defy anything that ever gets in your way in life," Tag says.
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