Hi.  Welcome to M.G. Outfitters.  My name is Greg Fowler, and I’m the creator of the goods you’ll find here.

If you happen to be an old friend who’s dropped in, you’re probably thinking, “Huh? What’s going on here? What is he up to now?!”

So, let’s start at the beginning.  No, let’s start at the end.

The Name on the Wall…

I’ve had a career in IT for 25 years now.  That means I was in Information Technology long before most people actually heard of it. When my kids ask me what I do at work, I just say “I keep the computers running.”

Most IT workers are what they call “overhead” to the business.  In other words, you don’t really make any money for the company.  They need you behind the scenes. You are about as far from the sales department and customers as any group in the company, except, of course, when the sales guy’s laptop is having trouble.

For much of the last 10 years, though, I’ve been fortunate enough to work at a company people have actually heard of and produces products people generally admire.  I won’t mention the company name here because I’m not officially authorized to speak on behalf of the company (see previous paragraph).  I suppose a personal website wouldn’t qualify as speaking on behalf the company, but I’ll play it safe nonetheless.

Anyway, I work in one of the company’s manufacturing sites and the name of the company is written in huge letters on one of the walls of the manufacturing floor.  This name is also the last name of the company founder.  So, essentially, I work for The Man, except he died recently. So now The Man is more figurative than literal.  Still, someone else is in charge.

But does The Man care about me and my coworkers?  Well, yes and no.  We’re treated well from a pay and benefits point of view, but The Man keeps moving our jobs out of the country to save money.  Since I started here, the number of employees at our site has fallen from over 1000 to less than 300 .  Now The Man is shutting down our plant and moving most of the remaining jobs to Mexico. Adios, amigo. That’s another story, though, but one that influenced my decision to move forward with this.  I’ll have more on that in the blog someday.

Back to the main story.

Zero to Bag Shop

Everyday, I’d walk past that wall at work and wonder what it would be like to have my name on the wall.  On my products. And almost everyday, I did nothing about it.

Until November 2013.

That’s when I set out on a quest to deliver products with my name on it.  Or my initials, at least.  See, back in my youth, especially when not paying attention to the pastor’s sermon, I sketched and doodled a lot. Like most younger kids, I considered myself an artist.  I loved almost anything arts and crafts.

Along the way, I developed a signature that was the combination of my initials  G & F.  I’d use that mark to sign my artwork.  After a brief stint as an art major in college (possible blog post, too?) I put my artistic self on hold, found computers and wound up in the corporate world. I now have decided to resurrect that old artistic self and create the bags you see here.

OK, but how did I even decide to start making bags, you’re wondering.

That’s easy.  I was Christmas shopping with my wife in 2013.  We were in the handbag section of a major department store.  She’s a professional bag collector (this is not a paying job, unfortunately.  Quite the opposite).  I picked up a leather bag and thought to myself: I bet I could make one of these.  With that self challenge, and ignoring the fact I didn’t own a sewing machine or know anything about leather and fabric, I was off on a mission.

After quickly realizing hand stitching leather wasn’t for me, I bought a 1951 Singer Model 66-16 machine off Ebay and set out to learn to sew and make bags.

I’ll spare you the details now, but within a few months I had a store on Etsy and began offering my bags, signed with an updated version of my GF logo.  Some of them weren’t too bad, either.  I even sold a few.  The reactions I received from giveaways (after the initial shock of “You made this?”) had me encouraged I was possibly on to something.  However, the frustrations of using the wrong equipment for my quality and speed goals (and heavy marathon training) resulted in me taking a break from bags for much of late 2014.  I pondered quitting while I was ahead.  OK, not ahead, but at least the hole wasn’t too deep yet.

 Shop 2.0 & M.G. Outfitters 2.0

In January 2015, after receiving the news of my impending employment demise , I made the decision to give this bag business a serious shot. I upgraded to an industrial machine to have a better chance at producing quality products. I started experimenting with  better materials.  I hired a designer to help with a new logo and website advice.  And I developed plan to grow a real business.  I dusted off the LLC registration, retail license and web domain I still owned from a previous attempt at a blog/t-shirt business 10 years ago.  M.G. Outfitters is back.  In addition to GF signed bags, I’ll also have an MGO line of bags.

Will this work? We’ll see. For many years I’ve searched for an idea for my own business that utilized my talents and interests.  I plan to touch on this in the blog, as well.  This pursuit combines my love of creating and writing with the desire to be involved in all aspects of a business.  I’m as surprised as you that creating bags turned out to be this for me.  On paper some things work and others don’t. I don’t know if it will ever replace my day job, but I’ll never know unless I try.

Next Steps for You

As you can probably tell, I get a little wordy sometimes, so thanks for reading this far.

If you’re intrigued, you can keep up with me and this business in several ways:

First, there’s a blog.  The intent of the blog will be around entrepreneurship and how I’m trying to grow a business.  You can subscribe to the blog to receive updates as I post them.

Second, there are the social media options of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  Facebook and Instagram will be locations for showcasing the bags I’m building.  Twitter will be more geared toward entrepreneurship, like the blog.  You can click on the social media buttons at the bottom of the page to visit those options.

Third, you can go to my Etsy site (click on the banner below) and either favorite stuff if you’re an Etsy user or actually purchase something.  If you purchase, you’ll be added to a customer mailing list and receive updates that way as well. Feel free to share my store with friends.

Finally, you can just shoot me an email at greg@mgoutfitters.com. Give me feedback on anything.  Tell me I’m crazy, if you’d like, but I have heard that before.  If you have a custom request, let me know that, too.  We can dream up something together.

Thanks,

Greg Fowler

PS.  On this site and blog, I’ll try not to talk about running, unless it is absolutely necessary, like in relation to perseverance.  For more insights into the way I think and occasionally ramble on about running, please visit my non-business blog at http://KeyOfGF.com.