MaDee Bags has been created by co-founders Donna and Maria. Although we both work in technical fields (Donna is an architect and Maria is an engineer), our passion has always been fashion. From the time we became friends in high school up until the present, our number one activity when getting together is shopping. Creating custom made handbags resulted as a natural extension of this interest. We've both also dreamed of running our own business.  We offer 20 different styles of bags from handbags such as Manalia whose name is derived from the Italian word for handles to travel bags such as Viaggio our weekender bag. Currently, we are planning on making our bags available at shows and fairs in the Northeast and looking to team with boutiques to showcase our line.

Our bags are unique in that we use a blend of heavy-duty materials which give our bags a sturdy body and shape. We use cotton fabrics and most of our bags contain matching piping to enhance the bag’s colors and design. Our target audience are woman similar to ourselves and our friends. Specifically woman in their 20’s, 30’s and 40’s in any phase of their life. Because our bags are customized by the client, we feel that they will offer something for women outside our target demographic as well. We're also in the process of designing a handbag for young girls.

From inception, Donna’s “Uncle Frank”, has been a driving force in the design, development and manufacturing processes. He has been and continues to be our inspiration in bringing the product to market. Uncle Frank has been sewing since age 7. His 71 years of experience has been in tailoring and clothing, never having sewn or designed a handbag before. However when we brought the idea of making handbags to him, we were amazed at how quickly and deftly he was able to take all his expertise in clothing and help us create a wide range of professionally made bags. Uncle Frank is set to retire in the coming year, but he will remain not only a valuable consultant, but also our inspiration in moving forward with MaDee Bags.

It’s no surprise that the concept of starting a business creating custom handbags came about after one of our shopping sprees. After shopping for purses one day and coming home empty-handed, we started throwing around some of our own ideas for purse styles and colors. Before we knew it we were shopping for fabrics and coming up with different purse styles. The more we talked about our ideas, the more excited we got and as a result MaDee Bags was born. Working with Donna’s uncle further helped us solidify our ideas and designs and consequently our line of products slowly began to materialize.  Each MaDee Bag is unique and customized for each client. MaDee Bags are an expression of each one of our clients design style. Each bag evolves out of a vision, there is a reason for why a particular fabric and bag pattern was chosen. Each one of the stories behind the creation of a MaDee Bag is integral to the sense of fulfillment that comes out of the creation of MaDee Bags LLC .

On one of our first fabric shopping trips in New York City, we found this great silk fabric at an affordable price, we were so excited we purchased 40 yards of the fabric. We couldn't wait to see a completed MaDee Bag in this fabric, we started on it that very day. The handbag pattern was ready to be cut and the fabric was ironed, as the iron ran across the fabric we noticed that the fabric started to shrink. It was minimal so the bag was sewn- crisis diverted or so we thought…. Donna loved the completed bag so much that she wore it everywhere. On one occasion the bag was caught out with Donna in a heavy rainstorm and that’s when the nightmare started, the rain caused the bag to shrink considerably and what was once a MaDee Bag was now a “shrinky dink”. The lesson learned was that we needed to do quality assurance testing on our materials before using them in the production of a Madee Bag.

We measure achievement not by the number of MaDee Bags created but by the number of smiles we received from our clients. Seeing our initial vision brought to reality has been the most rewarding part of the process. The ability to concentrate our creative passion and technical skills into the creation of MaDee Bags is what drives us and has made this journey all the more satisfying.