We've spent the last year developing a line of premium hard shell luggage for the new brand Roam and they officially launched earlier this month. Roam may be a startup but they come with a huge amount of luggage pedigree - two of the co-founders are Charlie Clifford (who founded Tumi) and Larry Lein who was Tumi's Executive VP for many years. The other co-founders bring decades of luggage retail experience to the team. So the talent was there on the client side - all they needed was a little design magic.
After a wide ranging concept exploration we decided the main USP for them was to offer an incredible amount of customer personalization - even down to the color of the thread for the edge binding on the shells. This is made possible by the fact that each case is made to order here in the USA and delivered to the consumer is less than a week, something that no other manufacturer offers.
A well-considered color palette obviously becomes of vital importance so we worked with Cross Creative Design to produce a palette which is both harmonious and incredibly flexible - whether the customer is looking for a sophisticated business case or a fun vacation addition.
There's more to the design than just a million different possible color combinations though - throughout the process we specified the highest possible components and where we weren't satisfied with the quality available we custom designed the parts. The result is premium luggage which is both super-lightweight, supremely durable and cost effective compared to the competition. The quality design coupled with the knowledge that no-one else has the same case as you makes us think we hit on a winning formula.
