Repurposed Billboards
Rareform is a company with a mission to turn old billboard vinyls into beautiful and practical items. They have taken in over 2 million pounds of billboards that would normally go to landfills, and repurposed them into unique and durable bags. The bags they offer include totes, purses and duffles. They also sell wallets, lap sleeves, phone cases, tees, hats, surf board covers and more!
How Rareform got started: (From their website) It started while we were backpacking through South America and saw old billboard vinyl being used as roofing. Blown away by the material’s versatility and durability (not to mention uniqueness and style), we jumped head first into the crazy idea of taking billboards and repurposing them into one-of-a-kind products.We started brainstorming business names and finally wrote down two words that described the products we wanted to make. Each bag would be unique — or “Rare” — and each billboard would take on a new — you guessed it — “form.” We hopped onto Godaddy.com and bought Rareform.com from someone in the Midwest for $2,000. (Thanks Robert!) Yes, that is how it started: with us maxing out our Capital One cards to follow our dream.We took our first billboard to an auto upholstery manufacturer and had him sew up a surfbag. It looked amazing! We showed it to some friends, and everyone was stoked. We then hit the tradeshow circuit and sold the idea of Rareform. Enough people said yes, taking a chance on us, not because of where we were, but because of where we were going.
After that, we hustled. We worked out of an attic in Santa Monica above a boxing gym (that’s the truth) and drove two hours every few weeks to one of our partners’ warehouses to cut billboard material. We also went on the road and hit the phones, trying to sell bags.
We began to grow, and in June 2015 we moved into our own office and warehouse 40 minutes outside of Santa Monica. We expanded internationally to Japan, Europe, Korea, Israel, Canada, and other countries. We brought on Walker, Kara, Alex, Noberto, and others.
They even appeared on Shark Tank. View more here.
If you would like to get involved with the Rareform movement, click here and check it out!
