And we're live that right. Andre: Okay we're cooking. Hey everybody, welcome to Roller Pro live. I got my main man Art VJ here, say hello. Hi everybody. We got Liv down there, say hi Liv. Hi.
Okay well we're here to answer all the questions that you might have about this product, but first I just want to do some version of reiterating maybe in a little bit shorter fashion the insane feeling that has been captured around this whole office ever since we launched this thing, I guess now two weeks precisely ago. These honestly rank among the better or even best two weeks of my life, quite honestly. No really, they do, they absolutely do. We've been working on this thing for so freaking long, and we didn't know what the reception to a product that we have is, and every one of us had really sincere nerves in the leadup to this. I mean that all the more so because we've been working on this thing for so long, and the company has grown, and we're waiting to see if this investment is going to pay off. And there is just a, for those who've been around Peak Design for a while, I think it's well known and well understood we don't have any investors, and I think a good reason that this company is such a wonderful place to work and frankly why we put out such great products is because it's generally speaking a pretty lax environment compared to a lot of businesses that are under severe pressure all the time to make investor demands and turn products around and things like this. But there is a reality, and many aspects of the economy have gotten tight and difficult, and I just to see such an overwhelming response to this product that we've crafted has given me so much joy and relief and affirmation. So a thank you to you guys, you guys at Kickstarter for showing up for this project. I really do not think you will be disappointed. You're going to love this product. So with that, let's go to the questions, shall we? Our friend Adrien over here, project manager for the Roller Pro project, going to be fielding those. How you doing Adrian? Good. Pete, how are you? Wonderful. What do we got?
All right, um, let's go with: how does the roller handle on rough surfaces? So we're talking cobblestones, gravel, grass. Um, okay, such sounds good. Now Andre, so you going to a mic on her or should I repeat that question? No, I have a mic. Wow, you guys are so pro, very organized, this unbelievably pro. I can even turn it off, it's kind of overdone if I'm honest. But uh, okay well great, we already got the question. Uh, who wants to feel that one, Art or Liv? Let rip.
Yeah, so the roller bag we chose to max out the wheel diameter, um, to be pretty large. It's 60 mm tires, and that adds complications to the design of the bag, but we did that in order to make the bag roll easily over rough surfaces. So it's no Jeep Wrangler, but it will overcome obstacles more easily than a bag with smaller wheels. Um, what you would find on a surface that has a lot of drag like grass or something, you might find that dragging the bag in two-wheel mode behind you will be easier than pushing the bag in four-wheel mode in front of you. Uh, but I promise it's a positive experience.
Follow-up question: I actually don't even know this. Are these co-molded? Is this the hub and the tire, if you will?
Yeah, um, yes, but not the parts that you're pointing to. So on the inside of the wheel you can see the hard plastic, and then the tire is over-molded on top of that. And then this is what we call the dished cover, that's actually snap fit.
I see, that's aesthetic, that's aesthetic.
And then this cap is also aesthetic, and that is also a press fit into the axle itself. It eases too, you don't have a bunch of places for dirt and grime to get caught into, so that the wheels are easier to wipe down. Nothing wrong with a good hubcap, am I right?
That's right. While um you guys are looking at the wheel there, Liv, can you just show how easy it is to replace the wheel?
Ah yeah, wheel replaceability was a big question. So this is a screwdriver, screwdriver little screw, lefty Lucy with the Phillips on that. I see, yeah yeah, nice choice. Little lefty Lucy, woohoo, almost there. Oh oh, I made it look messy, demerits not in front of my boss's boss. Yeah, I there you go, remove the wheel and then you can just when you want to put a new one on, boop it a bop, screw that thing back in.
He leave that off for a second there. Sure, okay, talk to me. Let's get a little dorky here. Okay okay, this is, oh look at that grease steel. So this set screw drives in to this gap here, correct? Okay, and so do we, I mean is the tip of this not a special screw by any sit? Obviously it's the one that fits. Yeah, it's the one that fits, but it's just a screw for plastic. That's cool. Is that pretty standard in the roller industry as a way of doing this?
There's kind of like two main ways to attach casters. You either do a set screw version like this, which is in my opinion a little bit uglier because you can see the screw from the front, but it's way easier to take on and off. Or you do a screw from the bottom, and when you do the screw from the bottom it's nice because you don't see anything from the front of the caster, but you have to use um uh Loctite basically to keep that screw in place, and so it's very difficult to replace. You have to overcome the Loctite to replace the wheel, and we decided that that was not the right path for us. You know, and people might think that at Peak Design we always choose aesthetics, but baloney I say. We actually are thoughtful about every single decision. That's a prime example of, I think, making a great call.
You're right, it is a little bit less attractive. That's okay. Yeah, you know, I mean Art, we can talk about that in the skid things on the back here, um, and the hissy fit that you put up with respect to that. Um, and you know, sometimes sorry, you are a consummate professional, I don't mean to call you a hissy fitter. No, I'm a hissy fitter, there's no question, but maybe a little bit. Um, but anyways, like it's just not a purely aesthetic choice. You have to consider all elements of that. Thank yeah. Also when the screws are on the bottom, you actually see the bottom of the bag more than you'd expect when you load it in overhead, when it's loaded in the back of the car. So this allows you to use a significantly smaller screw than having a big bore hole through the bottom axle there. So pros and cons of course, but yeah, easy to replace the wheels, that was a big deal for us. Um, we know that people put a lot of miles on these kinds of bags, especially if you're a professional photographer and you're using these things five days a week or whatever. Um, traveler. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, all right, go ahead.
All right, um, I thought this one was good. Um, can the trolley handle heavy bags, um, carrying like via pass-through or kind of second bag carry?
Totally, I can talk about the mileage test. Yeah, there's a literal test that we run for this where um I can use this one as an example...
Don't you mean like show your... yes like a goddamn champ?
Yes, like a goddamn champ. Um, and the literal way that we prove this is there's a test called the mileage test where you put the bag in two-wheel mode like at an angle like this, 45 degrees on a treadmill for many kilometers, and it's being dragged over a treadmill and the treadmill has obstacles on it so the bag is ricocheting off these obstacles, and you put a really heavy bag on the trolley and you do that for hours, and our bag passes with flying colors. And we have multiplied that test a couple times over to make sure that we are really in the clear, and we are so very confident you can do second bag carry with this trolley.
Okay, um, I think this has come up recently a lot on the Kickstarter comment board, is asking about making a cover for checking the bag in, if that was something that we thought about or if that was something we were going to make.
Yeah, sorry, I'm just looking at Brendon. I just, I mean you guys are ridiculous. Um, yeah, uh, I have been thinking about that too. Um, and currently we're not planning on doing that, but boy do I think we should, honestly is kind of where I've come down on that. Sorry, I haven't really discussed this with any of you guys of the soft goods team yet, but in fact I was actually considering like just whipping up some prototypes real quick. I like Art, you have an incredible soft goods brain. Let's say in the next 20 seconds I want you to think about like how would you do a cover for this bag? Would you use stretchy power net mesh with ultra in it? How would you do it? Have you thought about it?
I've thought a little bit about it. I mean it depends on what the goal of the thing is. If it's a storage cover, you know they make like storage covers so the bag doesn't get dusty if it's in your garage or something like that when you're not using the thing. There's the sort of check-in security cover aspect so that the bag doesn't get as scuffed up when it's going through luggage. Personally, I think the fabrics that we've chosen for this bag, the trim set that we've chosen for this bag, is such that when it does get scuffed up we hope that it ages gracefully rather than just like being this shiny new bag and then it goes through the conveyor belt and it just looks like crap afterwards. I hope that we have achieved that with us. Um, and then I guess the third option would be some sort of like rain cover sort of situation. Um, if I were to do that cover, if we care about the rain thing, I'd probably use like a 210d or 500d nylon sort of pu coated backside shell fabric. Um, you'd have to have a port for the roller so you can or for the trolley handle so that you can roll it around, maybe something for the handle as well, and a pinch so some sort of port at the top maybe a zipper or velcro or magnets or something like that, and then it would have to go around the bag and kind of expose the wheels as well. I don't think it's that difficult of a thing to pull off. Um, it does strike me as fairly niche, and I'd like to see what people's demand is for that over time, um, once they actually get their hands on the bag and use it and stuff. But yeah.
Well, I think our comment board is about to light up with people saying they want that. I just, I like, I don't, although I fully agree I think it does patina really well, a lot of people want to keep this bag absolutely pristine, and when it goes through the conveyor it simply is going to get beat up, and that's going to be a heartbreaking experience when you try to gate check a thing. So I think particularly for our customer, I think it is a little bit of a miss. There's plenty of these on the market right now. Um, you know, if we don't get this thing produced in quick enough time for you to protect that, I hate to say it but I recommend an aftermarket one, or about a medium-sized men's t-shirt does the job. Um, I checked it over the weekend actually, it does the job. It dangled over, no, stretched over. It's got to be a medium. I mean if you're talking large XL you're going to have a dangle, but this is a stretch job. Did you cut out holes for the handles? Uh, it has a hole right in the neck, right? But how about the side handles, did those go through the side handles? No, there's not, there's not actually, there are, I didn't, you can probably reach through. Yeah, yeah, so and it stayed on while it was checked? Like it came, no I didn't do it, I just did it in my house. I did it in my house, but my sensation is that it had a decent shot at staying on. Yeah, I'm imagining like if you Peak Design everybody, yeah I'm imagining if you had like an R in your driveway and you have like a Daffy Duck t-shirt to over the tires to protect it. That's actually my wife sent me these things, I forget there's a brand where you take your face and it prints these things out. Oh, she's got me the link, it has your face and it's just massive and stretched around your luggage so that you can identify, their thought is so that you can identify your bag, 'cause there's nothing as unique as a face. Anyway, it's a great question. I actually think it's kind of a no-brainer product for us. I don't think it should be that hard to come together, and um, we'll see how busy they are over there in the soft goods department. Pretty busy is the answer. But all right, uh, let's pivot to the camera cube. There was a question about what other Peak Design bags the XL camera cube fits inside of. It's just a 45L travel bag with the plenum removed, as well as duffles starting at 55L and larger, and the duffel pack that's a 65L duffel pack, and one of Art's if not his favorite bag, travel duffel pack. Next question.
Excellent. Um, is it cool if we lift the bag by the trolley?
Sure, yeah, absolutely. And hauling this sucker up and down stairs for years. There's another, to be specific, there's another literal test that we do, um, where you hang the trolley by this like machine that picks it up and drops it and picks it up and drops it over and over and over again, and we do 1500 cycles on the trolley. So yes, you can carry this bag by the trolley. You can accidentally drop it, like it's all incredibly strong and very very rigorously tested. Very violent, very scary test to watch. Is that the jerk test? Jerk test, yeah, yeah, 1500, I pass every time. Um, I also just want to take the opportunity to say that you know there's been some comments out there like oh Peak Design isn't a luggage maker, and we're new to the game, so there's an expectation that we're going to have gotchas that might not be there. And to some degree, I think that's a valid critique. We did invent a new trolley mechanism that no one else really had the guts to do, but we tested the hell out of it, and we did so with very industry standard testing. We did not invent these tests, right? We have exceeded them greatly. Um, but take faith that this is like, you know, this is big luggage coming at you with the ASME tests and ISO nine, what do we up to, nine billion seven sigma now? Yeah, yeah, quote me, I dare you. Yep, yeah. And we have been working, you know, on most of the parts that we've developed with manufacturers that engineer these types of parts, um, for a lot of the companies you're familiar with. Um, we're just doing it in a much more bottom-up way than most of the clients that they're used to working with. Um, they love the trolley that we've developed, they're super blown away by it, um, just the level of quality and engineering and thought that's gone into it. Um, we've managed to package a lot of mechanisms in a footprint that they haven't done, um, after working on these things for a long time. And um, yeah, so it's not like we're just working on it here in the garage solo. Um, there are a lot of people who have been doing this for a long time making sure that we're not going wrong on it. So this is actually the part in the process that's so curious because you just know that there are a lot of companies that are reading hard through our IP right now and trying to figure out their way to build their own version of this, because this is going to become the new standard of what a luggage trolley shall be. And I don't know, I think that's a pretty cool thing that we have pulled off a number of times here at Peak Design, and I think we've got really excellent IP on it, and we'll see how long it holds up.
All right, um, we've got a question about the snap tent. We got a couple questions here. So the first one is how protective is the laptop sleeve? Every time it goes to Adrian, there's Brendon. You, I don't know what you're talking about. P sure you don't. Uh, how protective is the laptop sleeve?
Yeah, um, the laptop sleeve is pretty protective. It's uh, so first of all on the outside of the bag, uh, in the areas where the laptop sleeve is present, we do have a polycarbonate shell, so it is hard shell on the outside of the bag here. And then on the inside we have some closed cell EVA foam that provides really good protection for hard objects inside of the bag and everything like that. So it's comparable to, as far as the interior of the bag, the level of protection is comparable to our other bags that we've made. We have sort of established minimum standards for those bags for protection, and we have a really good track record with those, with making hundreds of thousands of those at this point that have been checked and carried on and all of that. And um, you know, with the hard shell on the outside, that level of protection is going to be even higher on this one.
So what's the thickness of that hard shell, uh, compared to a standard polycarb bag that's being made out there?
It's a little bit thinner, it's a little bit thinner because we have additional structure via some honeycomb and some wire reinforcement in here. So we're able to go and the foam and fabric on the outside also build structure in the bag. So it's about the structure of the whole system versus just the individual thing that we're stacking material on top. So we can go a little bit lighter on the polycarbon structure to make up for...
I think the main point, and if I recall correctly you guys were kind of driving, um, you were driving, is this about the thinnest that we can possibly vacuum form polycarbonate?
Uh, yeah, it is. I think it's 1 mm, and then standard is usually 1.2 to 1.5 something like that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, which doesn't sound like a huge difference, but over the whole course of the bag it definitely adds. It's a 25% difference, 1.25 versus 1. And like that is obviously, there's been a lot of critiques around there about weight. I think most of them pretty unfounded once you actually look at other bags and be like oh that's not a shocking amount different, but like there is thought in it, right? Like yes, there is a cost in terms of weight to having a composite layered construction, but what you get from that is not just an aesthetic but a protection and a durability over time, and my goodness is it worth it. And I, you know, yeah. Uh, budget airlines are always going to not allow you to bring enough stuff. I don't know what to do about that. Actually I do know what to do about that, because I've flown a lot of them over the years, and what you do about it is you weigh it and they look at you and say you're a bad boy, and then you go inside and you take the thing out and then you reweigh it and then they let you go and you put it back in there. Works every time. The people who are working the counters, they feel bad, they know it's a stupid rule, they don't even want to have to enforce it, they just don't want to lose their job. So anyway, again quote me, but that's how I've always gotten around this. That's Europe, that's Asia, that's Latin America where I've had those issues before. And if you have Peak Design packing tools, we make it pretty damn easy to go in and you're not peeling every piece of Fruit of the Loom out one by one, right? You know, you go in there and, that's right, that's right. We have a creative customer set, I think we can get around this.
Yeah, I just wonder, we did get some questions about weight aside from how to finagle past disgruntled airline employees. Do we have additional comments just we were talking about the shell and the fabric? Um, any other comments just about weight in general?
Yeah, you take a crack, Art. I'm ready to go on this one if you're...
Yeah, I mean I think you should chime in as well. I mean I think it's just important to know that this bag is doing a lot. This is sort of the, um, it's the only bag that we're making as of now, but this is definitely sort of the pro kitchen sink version, all the bells and whistles. It has the expansion, it has the laptop access, it has the quick everyday carry sort of pocket on the front of the thing. And you know, as a result of that, when you're doing weight comparisons you really have to kind of put it in that class of products. Um, so yeah, it's not designed from the outset to be this super lightweight thing, but I think when you feel the bag and the structure of it, um, you'll feel...
We're live, we're live, we're back. Okay, all right Art, let's just get right back into it. We had a little battery issue there, but we're back, we're juiced up again. Um, I think you said all there is to say. There's not a, you know, this thing may add up to 3.9 kilograms, that may be a few hundred grams above what other just very simple non-featured polycarbonate standard just doing what you can to keep up with the Joneses scrolling the Instagram type of bags. That's not what this is. It's a much better bag, and it's worth the extra weight, it's worth the extra cost.
Yeah, yeah, I think maybe the one thing that I think I got cut off on is just the structure of this bag. When you feel a standard polycarbonate kind of 50/50 clamshell opening bag, the way you can flex the whole bag, you can move the two halves independently if it's not loaded and packed out super full. When you're rolling over things, the two halves of the bag are sort of like independent from each other. And this bag really does feel like a solid unit. It's, uh, it's yeah, it's not on a membrane.
Yeah, uh, I see. All right, um, we've got some questions about decisions like things we didn't do or why we didn't do certain things. Uh, well the first one is actually about check bags. Are we making check bags?
H, it's going to give this one to you Liv, but you'd be like I don't know what does he want me to say. Uh, I just blurt it out, say the truth. Or yeah, well I don't, yeah well give the truth, give your truth. Um, give my truth. We are, my truth is that we are working on more bags, and more bags will have more sizes, and that's the truth. And we'll leave it like that.
Yeah, great. Why don't, yeah, we didn't do sizes for this out of the gates, um, for one to judge, you know, test the waters on demand and see what people thought about it, get some people's feedback from it. And then you know, this bag by nature of it fitting camera cubes and the carry-on being really required for a lot of people when they're transporting expensive camera gear, it makes a lot more sense to just do the carry-on size for us for now, because it's just a different level of protection and expectations of protection that people expect in a carry-on size bag. So how this design translates into a check-in bag is a little bit different than your average polycarbonate off-the-shelf roller. So um, the other additional color I'll add to that is that you know this is another example of where I think Peak Design uniquely we've been able to simultaneously prioritize the working professional real deal photographer and someone who doesn't own a camera at all. That's thanks to the camera cube system. But we, as I'm sure most people have seen, we aspire to sell to more people than just photographers. We think we're, you know, when I named the company there was intentionality that I stayed away from photography based names because I wanted it to be a more general application to open us up to really the whole world of customers out there. And um, we started with the absolute primo best kind of apex predator bag, the one that we've been dreaming of. We understand that different sizes, different price points, different feature sets, these things will expand over time. Um, but this is going to be kind of that real quiver killer for quite some time. I, you know, the way that I think about it just from a business strategy standpoint is that kicking ass in photography legitimizes Peak Design as a brand. It is what allows us to approach a more mass market with a true air of authenticity. And I just don't, I mean you can do that like other brands that are out there that are just like business school brands, you know, all of a sudden they crop up out of nowhere and they've got a bunch of funding from investors and they're just pumping a different version of a thing and trying to sell a lifestyle. This category of product, rolling bags, is rife with these things, and it's just not the way we do it. We are here to define an element of technical expertise, and we can go to those more simplified versions still probably better hopefully in every single way, but we want the permission to do it first, and we do that by making the best damn thing we can.
All right, and Liv, why did we not ship this with a TSA lock?
Oh yeah, okay. We didn't design and incorporate a TSA lock directly into the bag because of a few different reasons. Remember the carbon fiber trolley? The point of the carbon fiber trolley is to reduce the amount of space the trolley takes up in the bag because we care about packable volume. The integrated TSA locks take up a lot of packable volume. That lock is like 2 inches deep into the bag, and we thought that was a lot, and so we didn't feel super strongly about keeping that in the bag. In addition to that, you have to have the zipper pulls or these metal zipper pulls that attach into the lock and how the lock works, and those are actually really painful to pull because they're big and pointy, and we hated that too. We also did some research and found out that a lot of people aren't locking their bags most of the time. Even photographers, they would rather actually lock their bag to something rather than just lock the thing closed. And so for all those reasons, it didn't feel like an important and potential feature to keep in the bag, and it had a bunch of negatives associated with it.
Yep, yeah, we kind of decided to let people choose their own adventure and get the lock of their choice if they wanted to. Especially because a lot of people said that they really wanted to be able to cable the thing to an object to prevent people from walking away with their bag in a carry-on context, versus people going in and pulling stuff out of their bag when it's checked or something. This is a bag that for the majority of the time is going to be with you, so it's that sort of walkaway situation that I think is the more vulnerable aspect than the sly pickpocket situation.
Cool. Um, we have a question about the front pocket. So someone's asking if you're looking at the EDC pocket, um, when it's open if you can tuck, what I think the question is, is can you tuck the snap tent into the pocket and will that save space? And then just generally my dad thinks that we should show that pocket, um, so he made a personal request.
