Markus Freitag
A small workshop in a barn in the back of a farmhouse where Markus Freitag and his brother, Daniel, grew up outside of Zurich was the birthplace of what is now one of the most recognizable made-in-Switzerland brands.
"When we were kids, my brother and I would collect old wood, and build rafts and racing carts," recalls Markus Freitag. When they were about 15 years old, the boys' first entrepreneurial venture together was making new bicycles from old parts that they would collect by scouring the neighborhood for scrap metal. An apprenticeship as a display artist and window dresser at a small store where his mother worked, was another opportunity for Freitag to figure out how to construct artistic creations out of reused materials. "The owners of the shop didn't have a budget, so I'd use old pieces of tarp found outside to create window displays. They'd be leftover after a hole in the street was covered up after a pipe broke."
