When customers tell Niki Rasor her custom-made handbags are smokin’ hot, they’re not too far from the truth.

The Vista mother of four makes purses, backpacks, totes and duffel bags out of recycled firefighter turnout coats and pants. Last year, she sold more than a thousand bags and this year she’s on pace to nearly double that amount.

Rasor’s Firefighter Turnout Bags — which sell for $65 to $500 — solve two problems: finding a productive use for the surplus gear, which firefighters are required to replace every 10 years, and offering Rasor a lucrative outlet for her creative talents.

Niki Rasor makes fashionable bags out of expired firefighter gear. What began as a moment of inspiration has turned into a company called Firefighter Turnout Bags. Video by David Brooks.

She came up with the idea in 2008 when her husband Carlos, a firefighter for the city of San Diego, came home one night and asked if she could remove a zippered pocket from his turnout coat. Never one to waste, she sat down at her sewing machine and sewed the pocket together with one of his old work suspenders to create an eye-catching purse. The first time she took it out in public, she was stopped multiple times by curious passers-by who wanted their own.

Rasor, 38, said the bags appeal to people who like to celebrate the vocation of firefighting and are passionate about recycling. Besides handbags, she has found more than 100 uses for the gear, including fanny packs, diaper bags, wine bottle sleeves, aprons, iPad cases and dog vests.

Many of her orders come directly from firefighters, who want their old turnouts reinvented as a memorable gift for their wife or child.

“This is a very precious thing to these firefighters,” she said. “It’s their second skin that’s been keeping them safe all these years. It’s like a trophy and they want to memorialize it.”

Rasor had a hard-knock childhood in Orange County, where her formal schooling ended after ninth grade. Living practically on the streets, she bought all of her clothes at thrift shops and taught herself to sew so the clothes fit and looked better.

“I didn’t make my own clothes but I called what I did fabric manipulation. People would ask me ‘did you make that?’ and I would say, ‘well, kind of.’”

She paid her bills as a waitress, bartender and surfing coach, and it was on a beach in San Clemente in 2003 where she met her future husband. They married two years later and eventually moved to Oceanside, where she became a full-time mom to their kids, now ages 5, 6, 8 and 10.

Rasor made the first turnout handbag for herself, but when friends and fellow firemen’s wives asked, she made them similar bags for free. As demand grew, she learned more about the problem of surplus turnouts. For the past 40 years, fire agencies have required staff to replace their turnouts every decade. New turnouts cost about $2,000. Firefighters are reimbursed for the new togs, but figuring out what to do with the old ones is a big problem.

“Some are donated to volunteer fire companies, some are thrashed and get shredded, some are stored, some are sold as surplus but most just get thrown away as trash,” Rasor said.

As demand grew for her bags, she purchased old gear from surplus shops and sewed the bags in her Oceanside garage. At first she sold the bags by word-of-mouth and at Oceanside’s Sunset Market. Eventually she began working out trades and credit deals with fire agencies that were happy to find a new use for the old gear.

Although the bags mostly appeal to people associated with firefighting, Rasor said she has sold many to runners, campers and other outdoor sports enthusiasts because of their durability.

In 2013, the business outgrew her garage and she incorporated as Firefighter Turnout Bags by Niki Rasor. She rented a warehouse, bought equipment, hired six workers and began selling the bags online. But everything that could go wrong for the self-trained entrepreneur did. She filed her paperwork wrong, lost money to unscrupulous vendors, had a problem with employee theft and quickly outgrew her space. The strain it put on her marriage, family and finances forced her to rethink the business from the ground up.

Four months ago, she relaunched her business on the ground floor of her family’s new home in rural north Vista. She works with three employees, has room on the property to grow and her expenses are manageable.

Rasor keeps an inventory of about 2,000 pieces of surplus gear on shelves and racks in her garage. She personally hand-strips each piece of gear by carefully removing the clips, straps, reflective tape and seams and then washing and drying it. The gear is made from Nomex, a man-made material that’s strong, ultra-durable and tear, water- and fire-resistant, so it takes three hours to strip each piece.

Virtually all of the business is custom order through her website. Customers can pick the style of bag they want as well as the color fabric, reflective tape and straps. Many firefighters mail Rasor their own gear for stripping (from as far away as Australia). Because of the high demand and customers’ desire to design their own bags, Rasor has only about a half-dozen premade bags in her inventory. Because virtually every order is custom-made, delivery usually takes three weeks.

Small bags cost $65. Mid-size bags and purses are $130 to $175. Duffels, depending upon the size and degree of personalization, are $350 to $500. All come with an American flag patch featuring her company logo.

When Rasor first incorporated her business, there weren’t any other seamstresses making bags from turnouts, but since then several others have popped up around the country. She said her bags, which have drawn more than 85,000 likes on her company’s Facebook page, are different because there’s an “edge and grittiness” to them.

“Most people are fascinated because they’ve never had a chance to touch firefighter clothing before. They’ve never seen inside or played with the clips. They don’t want it to look perfect, they want to know what it was before. They want to see how it’s been recycled,” she said.

Rasor said she’s not looking to sell her company or over-commercialize her business because she likes maintaining creative control. But one product extension she’s mulling now is expanding into surplus police gear.

“Police are getting so much bad press these days and I would love to do something positive for them,” she said. “That’s the hardest job there is and they deserve the recognition.”

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