Mark Dwight Of Rickshaw Bagworks Talks Bags, The Dogpatch, Local Business And Beyond

Mark Dwight Of Rickshaw Bagworks Talks Bags, The Dogpatch, Local Business And BeyondPhotos by Stephen Jackson/Hoodline
Stephen Jackson
Published on June 09, 2016

The messenger bag has gone from specialized bicycle delivery luggage to a ubiquitous competitor to the traditional backpack. And today, bag makers are getting into laptop and gadget cases, and beyond. 

Mark Dwight has been in the middle of this big local trend for more than a decade — first in his job at formative bag company Timbuk2, and now as the founder and chief executive of Rickshaw Bagworks in the Dogpatch. 

Located at 22nd and Minnesota, Rickshaw's factory produces all of its bags, cases and other items right here in the city. The warehouse is also home to the brand's flagship retail store, where people can drop by and customize a bag to their liking on the spot. 

Dwight has become deeply invested in the neighborhood and the success of local businesses across the city. He founded nonprofit SFMade to "promote local manufacturing and job growth in the manufacturing sector." He calls it a "geographic ingredient branding concept," inspired by the Intel Inside branding campaign from decades ago. 

He also serves as president of the San Francisco Small Business Commission, and is creating a new Dogpatch neighborhood business association.

We stopped by the Rickshaw headquarters the other day to chat with Dwight about his company, the Dogpatch, and the survival of the small business in a rapidly changing San Francisco. 

Where are you from and how did you get here?

I grew up on the Peninsula, a little bit north of Silicon Valley, in Los Altos. My father was an early Silicon Valley pioneer in the laser business; he started the first laser company there, in 1962. I grew up in high tech, went to Stanford to get a degree in mechanical engineering, and worked in high tech for almost 20 years. 

While I was taking a year off in 2001, I serendipitously crossed paths with Timbuk2—an associate of mine was an investor. Timbuk2 was struggling financially, and he told me they could use some new management and that they needed to raise some money. Long story short, I became an investor and CEO at Timbuk2 in 2002. I then ran the company for three years. We turned it around and sold the business to a private equity firm, and then eight months later, I was fired. 

The proudest day of my career, however, was when I gave a million-dollar check to the employees at Timbuk2. We sold it to the private equity firm, but we had set aside some of the equity for the employees. So even though they didn't own the stock, it was set aside and we distributed that money. There were sewers that had been there for 13 years, who got checks for $90,000. 


Tell us how all this led to you starting Rickshaw. 

Well, I got a severance, so I got a year off. However, I had fallen in love with the bag business, and I had really fallen in love with San Francisco and the idea of manufacturing here. So I decided I'd start my own company. Rickshaw was born a year and a day after I was fired from Timbuk2. That was nine years ago. 

What makes your business tick? What sets you apart from other bag companies?

What makes us tick is making custom bags. All of our bags are built to order, whether it's for a consumer that buys on our website and clicks on our little bag customizer, or even orders something not custom-built. We are built to order.

We also have a corporate business, where we make bags for kind of the who's-who of tech companies and other businesses, most of them in the Bay Area. I like to tell people that I can ride my bike to all the business we need right here in San Francisco, because there's so many new companies always starting and everyone always needs a bag, a shirt, a hat and all the stuff that goes with having your uniform for your new company. It's part of the esprit de corps of working for a startup, and we play right into that market. 


You are currently president of the San Francisco Small Business Commission. How did you first get involved with City Hall?

Well, when I was at Timbuk2, we were given an award by the Chamber of Commerce, as a rapidly growing company. By virtue of that, I got on the radar screen of the Chamber of Commerce, and they asked me to serve on the board as a representative of small business.

Then, when the city was doing the eastern neighborhoods rezoning plan to figure out what was going to happen to Dogpatch and Bayview once Mission Bay was completed — how they were going to preserve some land for production, distribution and repair, along with some of the warehouses — I got involved in that working group at City Hall, under Gavin Newsom. And then when Mayor Lee was elected, they asked me to join the Small Business Commission as a commissioner.

There are seven of us on the commission, and we decide amongst ourselves who will be president on one-year terms. I am on my second year as president of the commission. 

Would you say that the Dogpatch is having 'a moment?'

It's exploding. It's the fastest-growing neighborhood in San Francisco — that's anecdotal, but I think that it's true. We will triple the population of this little area called the Dogpatch over the next four years, with all of the residential construction going on. 400 units going in on Indiana, 300 units halfway complete at the corner of 23rd and Third, and half a dozen more developments planned. UCSF is also expanding into the Dogpatch, much to the chagrin of the Dogpatch population. They have busted out of Mission Bay and are coming our way.

With all of this new development, how are small businesses being supported?

I am actually founding a Dogpatch Business Association. Until now, we've been part of the Potrero Hill Merchants Association, which re-branded itself about three or four years ago as the Potrero Dogpatch Merchants Association. I have been a member of that for a number of years and I have witnessed that although they have quite a few members, very few Dogpatch people come to the meetings, and that's just because you gotta get up the hill.

I’m a big believer of neighborhoods being the neighborhood you walk. The common refrain from anyone running a small business is, ‘I don’t have time to do______, because I’m running my own business.'

But my big cry-out to all my colleagues is to get involved. Get involved at City Hall. What happens in your merchants' association, what happens in your chamber of commerce, does have an effect on your small business. Never in the history of San Francisco has small business been the endangered species it is today.

What do you love most about what you do?

I love making people happy. We’re kind of re-massaging our mission statement, and we’ve really netted it down to 'Making people happy, making great bags.' You know, we could go off on some social responsibility tangent or some other thing, but at the end of the day, we make it here in our own factory, and I think that’s something that’s extraordinary.

Also, it sounds kind of kooky, but what are we in business for? It’s to interact with people. I love working with my team, and I think they enjoy the fact that it’s a creative company. We print fabric, we work with great colors, we’re inventing new products all the time, and we’re making people happy with what we do. There’s nothing really not to like about that.