A few months ago I designed and sewed a cargo bag custom fit to the new MORryde Overland Rack, I posted about it at the time. The bag was in the rack at the SEMA Show and Overland East show and got many very nice comments from people at both shows.
It came in very handy on the rainy trip back to NY from Overland East - I brought an extra passenger home from that show and didn't have enough space for the extra luggage inside the Jeep so the bag got a good test on the highway and in weather.
The bag also works well on roof racks, I'm driving my LJ to Easter Jeep Safari and will probably use one on my roof rack for that trip.
A week ago I met with a manufacturer that sews for the military and asked them to sew a sample with the idea of getting the bag into production. Today I met with them and reviewed their first sample, which they did in desert digital camo. Here's the sample laid out on a table in their shop. The camo color is a little lighter in reality than it is in this cell phone photo.
The fabric is waterproof and UV-treated, the sewing is excellent and the seams will be heat-sealed against water entry (the seams on this first sample aren't heat-sealed). I asked for a very few minor tweaks and they'll sew another sample for me by the end of the week.
The price they quoted was lower than I expected, so these can end up at a nice retail price (but not sold by me, I don't sell anything). It's pretty likely these will get into production, a company has signed up for the design.
I've designed three different sizes which cover pretty much all of the tailgate/over-spare racks on the market, and I expect the company will offer all 3 sizes.
The company will have to decide what colors to offer. I did my original prototype in ACU camo and the preproduction sample I just got from the manufacturer is done in the desert digital shown fabric above.
What colors do you think would be good if these go into production? Camo of some kind? A solid color?
