In 2005 the two founders of Noon Solar LLC, an aspiring design business located at 1757 N. Kimball Ave., stood before a panel of venture capitalists at the University of Chicago and presented a new idea – sustainable purses and bags equipped with paper-thin, flexible solar panels that would charge small electronic devices on-the-go.

The panel told the two women, Jane Palmer and Marianne Fairbanks, that their product would find limited demand.

“The whole panel said, ‘No way. Nobody is going to want this,’” Palmer said.

Ignoring the panel’s reaction, Palmer and Fairbanks began producing their design. Since then, the company has seen a gradual increase in sales while riding the wave of eco-friendly fashion trends.

“If we were to do this again it would be such a different response,” Palmer said.

Noon Solar, incorporated in 2004, is hoping to break $1 million in annual sales by 2010, according to Byron Crawford, the business manager.  The bags sell for between $400 and $500.

The company’s sales and marketing exist mainly online. Noon Solar is currently selling six different collections of naturally-dyed leather and hemp bags, each outfitted with a small-scale, flexible solar panel built into the back of the bag. Designed to soak up the sun in window light or on-the-go, the panels can charge small devices like cell phones, iPods and cameras.

John Biggs, a New York resident who received a Noon Solar messenger bag as a Christmas present in 2007, said he has used his bag to charge his cell phone and iPod, but he was most attracted to the bag’s appearance.

“The cool factor - that you’ve got a solar panel on your bag - is the real value,” Biggs said.

Besides its own online shop, Noon Solar sells through five online companies around the U.S. and its bags are on the shelves of stores in Chicago, California, Florida, Washington and Canada.

Fairbanks said the idea for the solar bags was born out of frustrations from the war in Iraq. Seeing the war as a grab for Middle East oil, the women said they designed the bag as a way to break away from America’s energy dependency and incorporate personal power into every day life.

“The hardest part was to come up with an energy solution,” Palmer said. “[The world] had the solar panel, but at the time there wasn’t widespread, small-scale use. In the past two and a half to three years, many more battery packs have come onto the market.”

Inside each bag is a lithium-ion battery box that stores the energy the solar panel absorbs. That battery pack, which weighs six ounces and is hidden inside the bag’s lining, comes with a cord to plug into electronic devices.

Fairbanks and Palmer design and construct prototypes and hand-dye the cotton and hemp in their studio, then send prototypes along with all the materials to a manufacturer in New York.

Currently the company is working on designs with the latest models of small-scale solar panels and battery packs. The new technology is said to give users 30 percent more battery power.

“This alone will give us a more competitive edge,” Palmer said.

The new design is part of the company’s strategy to stay afloat during the economic downturn. According to Crawford, the size of the company, which is composed of just Palmer, Fairbanks and Crawford, is also an advantage during the recession.

“We’re still so small, in the hundred-thousand dollars in sales,” Crawford said. “It’s much easier for a small company to navigate the recession.”

The company said the effects of the recession wouldn’t be fully seen until later, but since the company is relatively new, it doesn’t have a long way to fall.

Although Noon Solar isn’t struggling with high operation costs, it has had trouble finding financial backing.

“One of the ways the recession has affected us is that we couldn't get the financing we needed for our holiday line, so we had to forego doing a run,” Crawford said.

Despite selling high-priced bags in a time when consumers are cutting back on luxury purchases, Palmer said that interest in their products actually increased in the last quarter. More online stores than ever, she said, have been contacting Noon Solar for permission to sell the bags on their Web sites.

“The holiday season wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great,” Crawford said. “There’s a shift toward online shopping that’s benefitting us.”

The company said it has received the most orders from California, followed by Texas and New York.

Jessa Brinkmeyer, owner of Chicago’s Pivot Boutique, stocks Noon Solar’s bags. Most of the people purchasing the solar power bags, she said, are people who had already heard of them.

“People out there come in and comment,” Brinkmeyer said, “But most of the people who buy already know about them.”

With eco-boutiques popping up all over the country, Noon Solar is poised to see continued increases in sales.

“As a consumer there’s still a lot of educating to be done,” Fairbanks said. “But it is on the upswing.”