B. May’s Career is in the Bag

Sept. 3, 2015

She started with pillows and has found her way to bags, leveraging her fine arts degree into a new life as a designer of fine leather goods. Originally from Bloomfield Hills, Mich., Barbara May is now firmly entrenched in Petoskey, where she’s headquartered her B. May Bags business, using her facility as a design workshop, a retail display store and a jumping-off point for taking her collections to New York City and beyond.

BAG BEGINNINGS

With a BFA in Woven Textiles, May’s college education landed her in Manhattan, where she soon found herself designing and making high-end throw pillows.

“But I’d always spent my summers up in Petoskey and I wondered what it would be like to live here year-round,” she said.

The pillows in the line she worked on were made of organza and taffeta, Japanese-influenced in design and well suited to expensive big city apartment interiors.

Bringing them up to Petoskey didn’t get her very far. “Let's just say that those pillows didn’t really work in northern Michigan,” she laughed.

So May decided to try something different. She started working with leather, crafting handbags and totes from scratch. She worked with a wholesale leather bags agent in New York for a while, but soon decided to strike out on her own.

CARS TO CARRYALLS

May bought an old car dealership on M-119 just outside Petoskey, turning the defunct showroom into her retail space and fitting herself with a workshop area.

“I work on big wooden tables made by my father” she said, “so they have good karma and energy in them. My parents have helped me a lot through the years. I started making the bags myself, and eventually hired a sewer.”

Everything grew slowly as she transitioned from one form of design to another. Today, she no longer needs an agent; she has her own salesperson, plus seven people working on production and assembly five days a week.

None of them, including May, were trained in handbag making at the beginning, but she brought in people with transferable skills from the auto industry and canvas shops.

“We learned as we went,” she said. “It’s all done by hand and we work as a team.”

BY DESIGN

To design the bags, May skips pencil and paper, or even computer design programs. Instead, she’s completely hands-on.

“I’m inspired by the materials,” she said. “I can’t even do a mock-up in paper or fabric; it’s not the same. I have to actually work with the leathers, kind of like a seamstress drapes fabric. I try to keep my shapes simple and highlight the materials.”

She travels to Italy twice a year to attend leather shows, where she buys a wide range of goods, from the skins that will be used for B. May Bags’ own embossed cowhide to other exotic materials.

“We do bags in python and other snakes from Vietnam and Indonesia, plus lizard, stingray, ostrich and a red fish from South America that’s an invasive species to them, but that makes for great handbags for us.”

She doesn’t have particular concerns about sustainability, but she does make sure she routes everything through the correct channels.

“I have a fish and game license and everything goes through duty, plus I make sure the tannery we use is reputable,” she said. “I think, as the industry grows, more suppliers will be going green and I'd be glad to work with them.”

CONCEPT TO BAG

After a design is completed, there’s no lag time. “We’ll put it right on the floor,” May said. If someone wants the brand new bag, she’ll just order another one for them, unless it’s a wholesale order, which can take six weeks to six months, depending on how many and how busy the shop is.

“This is because we make everything by hand, to order,” she explained.

The bestsellers so far are the Simple Shopper bag and the Crossbody Mini-Messenger, but there are a lot more in the works.

“We’ve just started working with the fish I mentioned,” May said. “It reminds me of Japanese paper; it doesn’t look like scales and is very layered with a big pattern and graygreen colors like you’d see in eucalyptus. We also do the bags from that skin in brown and black.”

A new men’s line is also on the way, including shaving kits and The Weekender, a cowhide gym/duffel bag in black, navy and tan.

“It’s a smooth and simple look,” May said. “In fact, all of our bags are very simple and clean; we don’t use a lot of hardware, so they’re light and minimalist.”

NEW BAG-INNINGS

May’s in the thick of completing her spring 2016 collection, which she’ll be taking to New York City shortly to show to wholesale buyers. She focuses on owner-operated boutiques and smaller retailers to carry her bags, in order to keep them more exclusive, including shops in Ann Arbor (Ayla), Seattle (Mario’s) and Dallas (Tootsie’s).

“I think people like to find something new, and that not everyone else has,” she explained.

Long term, her plans for B. May Bags include growing the wholesale business, expanding the e-commerce on her website and holding on to her Michigan shops, especially her Petoskey headquarters.

“I like that I’m spending more time creating now. I love what I do and it’s gratifying to work with the people I work with,” she said. “And I love that I have had so many of the same customers for years.”

She also credits northern Michigan itself for her burgeoning success.

“It’s so supportive for business here!” she said. “I didn’t plan to be here long term, but now we’re staying in Petoskey because I don’t think I could’ve done this anywhere else.”

B. May Bags has two retail stores, one in Petoskey (1922 M-119, 231-622-4908) and one in Birmingham (929 S. Eton Rd., 248-686-3389). The Petoskey store is open 7 days a week and bmaybags.com is always open online.