Dezeen Magazine

Bugaboo expands beyond pushchairs with first luggage collection

After 20 years making pushchairs, Dutch company Bugaboo is expanding into a different area of the travel market: luggage (+ slideshow).

The Bugaboo Boxer is a modular "system" of cases that can be easily interlocked. It is sold as a four-wheeled chassis, to which users can add a suitcase, cabin case or laptop bag in their preferred configuration.

Bugaboo expands beyond strollers with first luggage collection

The Boxer is made from durable polycarbonate and features a steering system based on Bugaboo's famous pushchairs.

The company's co-founder and chief design officer Max Barenbrug describes the steering as allowing users "to go everywhere with the use of one finger".

"The chassis is like our strollers – a serious device with a lot of engineering behind it," Barenbrug told Dezeen. "It is strong, highly manoeuvrable and holds all kinds of luggage configurations."

Bugaboo expands beyond strollers with first luggage collection

Bugaboo claims that its design makes it easier for travellers to negotiate multiple bags. This is because, as well as featuring a strong chassis, Boxer luggage can be easily clipped together and unclipped.

An external organiser, hooks and elastic straps enable users to keep items they might need easy access to – like coats – close at hand.

Bugaboo expands beyond strollers with first luggage collection

Bugaboo was founded by Barenbrug, a graduate of Design Academy Eindhoven, together with entrepreneur Eduard Zanen in 1996. They released the first Bugaboo pushchair in 1999.

The pushchairs are now so well known, they were honoured with their own postage stamp in the Netherlands in 2007.

The Boxer may be the company's first foray outside of pushchairs, but Barenbrug is keen for Bugaboo to become known as a travel design company.

Bugaboo expands beyond strollers with first luggage collection

"We want to design products that make our customers feel free, unburdened, like a load is off their shoulders," said Barenbrug.

"If you look around at airports you see lots of people dragging along different types of suitcases and you see them struggling going through the many interactions they have to have with their luggage on their journey – security checks for one," he continued. "We decided to look beyond the suitcase and design 'something' that captured all these movements."

The Boxer will be available in a range of colours – including black, white and red – at launch. As well as the current Travel, Cabin and Laptop cases, Bugaboo plans to add additional sizes to the range.

In the luxury luggage market, it will be competing with the likes of Australian designer Marc Newson's reinvented Louis Vuitton trunks.