Brooklyn Industries

Lexy Funk and Vahap Avsar met at Art Omi, in upstate New York where they were both resident artists. After moving to NYC together in 1995, the young successful artists were searching for a way to make a living through their creative endeavors. They decided to start their own company so they could LIVE, WORK, CREATE. Avsar had long been staring at the giant billboards from the couples studio on the West Side Highway. One night, he found a vinyl billboard in a dumpster and decided the material would make a perfect messenger bag. Funk and Avsar rented an old factory building in Williamsburg, Brooklyn to manufacture their first product messenger bags made out of recycled billboards. One afternoon, Avsar sketched the view from the Williamsburg rooftop looking west toward Manhattan; this drawing became the iconic logo for Brooklyn Industries, which quickly started creating t-shirt designs and bags for the local community. Over the next four years, Funk built up a wholesale distri...