Rolling Duffle Bag for Ergodyne
A piece of carry on luggage that's easily embroiderable
This project was part of a summer internship at Thank you for providing me with the resources and support to be tenacious.
Introduction
Ergodyne staff and partners travel to trade shows and conferences often, and need a piece of luggage that can easily be co-branded with new partner logos. How might we make a high quality piece of luggage that can be embroidered easily after the bag has already been manufactured?
Research
Ergodyne staff and partners travel frequently, and need a carry-on-sized bag.
Business partners want co-branded 'merch' to bring to trade shows and conferences.
Bags must fit into embroidery machines, and have negative space for new logos.
Development
My first idea is to have an exterior pocket that unbuckles or unzips to go into the embroidery machine alone. This solves the issue that most carry on has; large bags hanging off the machine prevent fabric from fitting in the hoop, and can cause issues while the machine is running.
I also pitch a few ideas with built-in toiletry bags. These concepts use the toiletry bag as a compression strap while it's installed.
We narrow it down to 4 styles and decide to blend the two on the right into a concept to be made as a sample. Next, I start working on the tech pack that will tell the factory how we want to construct our bag.
After a few weeks of back and forth with the factory over hardware choices and colors, we received our first sample. The front pocket zipper extends all the way to the bottom of the bag, allowing the fabric to mount in the embroidery machine while the bulk of the bag sits below. The first sample uses materials that the factory has on hand. We will change these for more durable, attractive fabrics in later revisions.
Final Concept
The rest of the design team finishes sample revisions as my summer internship ends. The exterior fabric is replaced with the final water resistant spec, and the orange accent color is moved from the top panel to the anodized handle hardware.
The finished design includes an expanding zipper section that increases the volume of the bag beyond carry-on size. Foam backing is sewn into select walls to hold the bag's structure without weighing too much, or taking up space, and padded handles on all sides of the bag are reinforced with bar tacks.
The front panel has a tone-on-tone logo treatment along the bottom which leaves room above for future embroidered logo treatment.
The back of the bag is made from 600 denier polyester, and includes an ID badge pocket to label the bags of the many staff members who will hopefully enjoy their new luggage!
Embroidery ready carry on luggage for Ergodyne