July – The Perfect Carry On

The humble suitcase hasn't changed since they first put wheels on them in the 1970s. How often do we find ourselves struggling to find luggage that that meets our needs of today? As a category, the travel accessories industry is broken; make it as cheap as possible, use a plethora of wholesalers and distributors to sell, and ignore all connection with the customer. This causes the existing market to be filled with over-priced goods sold with a short product lifespan in mind. Churn and burn. We started with this problem, and changed the entire business model to solve it.

Our design brief was simple; we needed better reinforcement of corners and bends, a better business model around trials and warranty, and a simple method to buy and communicate with the brand. July was designed for strength and convenience. Brilliantly manufactured, it has created a new standard in the market: unbreakable, beautiful luggage. An integrated power-bank that charges your devices on the go, a handle that stops at any height you want it to, custom-made wheels that don’t make a sound, and a signature Y Strap compression system, all in a 100% German polycarbonate shell with reinforced aluminium bumpers.

In a category where most items are thrown out after 2 years, July luggage is designed to last a lifetime. This reduces the frequency and need of purchase significantly, adjusting the market to be a lot more sustainable and reduce total luggage consumption. Creating higher-quality longer-lasting products at a fraction of the traditional price points thanks to our direct-to-consumer model means we are giving people of all economic situations the opportunity to own luggage that lasts a lifetime and stops the cycle of single use travel accessories.

Our challenges were ensuring we could custom design everything to solve the market need problem. Together with our partner factory we created new wheel and handle housing so we could create a unique eggshell shape around the corners. This additional curvature innovation was designed to create more bounce back on hard knocks at the polycarbonate’s weakest points: it’s corners. We then worked to reinforce the case with custom anodised aluminium bumpers for added protections. Ultimately our business model is the innovation here that democratised unbreakable design; only Rimowa sells a hybrid polycarbonate and aluminium bumper case, and they do so at $1,200 per unit (the July is $295 with a lifetime warranty).