Meet Nex Luggage: Traveling With The Extraordinary

Welcome to our series, Cool Brands Doing Cool Things, where we get a behind the scenes look at the innovation, products and development, business practices, and more from these impactful brands.

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Today we have the privilege of meeting Nex Luggage, a company dedicated to a form of travel luggage that exceeds the ordinary. This exciting company has taken the appreciation and love of travel and translated it into functional pieces. It’s easy to see how their commitment to sustainability and immersive experiences makes them an obvious choice when choosing travel luggage.

Nex Luggage: Focusing On Experiences Over Possessions

Here we explore in-depth questions with Nex about their business and the exciting things they are doing! We hope this gives you a good preview of the value they add to travel through their lines of premium luggage.

1. What inspired the creation of Nex Luggage?

Jackson has been traveling and living by himself since the age of ten. Growing up in different countries while traveling made him realize what travel really means – to reinvent yourself through cultural experiences.

Most travel brands today focus entirely on utilities, selling products that get you from A to B. Nex was founded to create a new category of travel brand – travel inspired by destinations, putting focus on what really makes travel meaningful.

2. The Hawaii Collection is beautiful! Can you share a little bit about the collection inspiration and how you incorporate it into the collections?

Hawaii was one of the most important destinations for all the founders with our personal stories and ties to it. So we decided to launch our first destination collection in Hawaii with the theme “Return with more than memories”.

All of our Hawaii Edition luggage and bag colors are inspired by the land of Hawaii. The logo on the Nex luggage was also inspired by the ocean sunset in Hawaii with a quarter of the circle cut off, representing the sun. The waves on the bottom of the front represents ocean waves in Hawaii as well.

We also aired our Nex Up episode featuring a local artist and our co-founder Adam Lucero where they discussed the history, culture and challenges of Hawaii. We plan to do more of these episodes for each destination.

3. Could you share Nex’s philosophy on creating travel gear? What unique travel challenges do you solve with the product designs?

Our hardshell Hawaii Edition luggage and bags use THE best quality materials, period. In comparison against products with pricing points of $500 or more, our products are still more durable and functional. We strive to offer THE BEST quality on the market no matter what products we sell. For instance, Monos uses secondary tier zippers on their bags while we use exclusively YKK zippers. The same is also in use by Rimowa.

In addition, we also offer our revolutionary Million Mile Care program where we integrates returns, trade ins and lifetime warranty. It’s important to note that our trade-ins will buy back customers old or broken products, refurbish them and resell in our Nexperience collection with a greeting note from the previous owner, allowing our luggage to live a continued life.

[Nex is also highly committed to sustainability as well as environmental and destination support – see question #5 regarding their sustainability practices.]

4. What are the standout features of Nex Luggage that make it the ideal luxury choice? What are the top priorities in the design?

An anti-scratch surface material that’s known to be super durable – allowing our customers to travel up to a million miles and can still trade it in for store credits to buy a new one.

The unique interior material we call peachskin is exclusively used by Nex. You would have to put your hands on it to feel the smoothness of it. But it is designed to be flat, not that plastic feel in other luggage interiors. It almost feels like a piece of blanket wrapped around your clothes inside the luggage.

A special silky coat on the handle of the luggage that other brands don’t have. It makes rolling super comfortable and feels luxury even on the go.

A specially designed grid wheel seating component that is made to be more stable and durable. You can see it from the bottom of the luggage. Others do not have this feature. Our wheels are also slightly larger size than most to make sure even on carpet the luggage can roll smoothly – that is a personal pet peeve, I’ve always hated how my luggage rolls terribly when I arrive at hotels.

5. Sustainability is increasingly important to travelers. What steps has Nex taken to incorporate sustainable practices or materials into its products?

We are extremely committed to sustainability when it comes to product design. We use vegan leather on the bags, we use recycled materials on the luggage and we fund environmental startups from every order we ship. If you want to learn more, we actually have a roadmap to achieve 2035 100% carbon neutrality.

We are also developing a program called “1% for Destinations” where we donate 1% of our annual revenue to a group of hand selected organizations from each destination that inspires our collections, with no middle parties involved at all. Once again, when it comes to product design, we strive to create the highest quality products on the market at a much more affordable price with the focus on destinations.

[Further information on Nex’s sustianability roadmap can be found on their website. They outline their plans in detail for 100% carbon neutrality by 2035 commitment and all the steps they’ve taken thus far.]

6. Can you walk us through the process of designing a piece of Nex luggage? What are the top priorities in your design approach?

The only standard we have is “the potential to redefine the product” for whatever we are designing. We want to be able to not only make travel easier, but in an elegant and minimalistic way. You will find nothing unnecessary in any of our products.

For instance, our bags feature a hidden exterior pocket between the handles. Every other bag has pockets on the outside of the bag, but they are usually ugly and feels redundant. So we designed it so that it perfectly blends in with the rest of the bag, not easy to notice, yet, once you’ve used the bag, you will know it’s there and easy to access. We don’t want to pack our products with a ton of unnecessary features, but we do want to create products that have the potential to redefine a certain product.

Another great example is our weekender bag. The problem with every other weekender bag on the market is they all have this bottom compartment attached to the bag via a zipper. Look at Monos, July, Beis, Away, etc. Every one of them have it.

It takes up too much room whether you want it or not. If you don’t have shoes to put in it, the compartment becomes useless because it has limited space to put anything else in it separately from the main compartment. It is also attached, so that in order to get your stuff out of the compartment, you would have to flip the whole bag horizontally to access it. So what if your bag is full? It’s just not easy to use. It is also really ugly – looks like two bags were stitched together.

So we designed a large weekender bag with a detachable multi-purpose compartment we call “the Pod”. The Pod fits perfectly inside the bag, either horizontally or vertically, if you need it. If you need more space, take the pod out, and you can leverage the entire weekender to over pack whatever you want.

The pod is attachable itself with a strap on the top that you can use to hook onto your luggage or anything else. You can also take the pod by itself and leave the weekender at hotel. If you are traveling with a pet, baby, or going to the beach, you can put small items inside the pod and just carry it by itself. It is also water proof.

7. How does Nex Luggage back their products ensuring durability and functionality?

Through the Million Mile Care Program, the Nexperience Collection, and the Lifetime Warranty – can it really get much better than that?!

8. Can you share any sneak peeks of what’s to come?

We have a few secret products in the pipeline. One is our Ohana Edition luggage. It is a special design (rather than pure color) for the Hawaii Edition luggage line. We are also designing our upcoming Japan 2025 collection with a front pocket luggage that I bet 99% of people have never seen a front pocket one like this.

Can’t share more yet but I can say that it looks just like our hardshell luggage, but with a front pocket, and better yet, even with the front pocket, it won’t lose any interior space. And I promise it’s not ugly. Interesting right?

And That’s A Wrap On Nex Luggage

Thank you for joining us in a preview of this amazing company and their wholesome, intentional approach to improving travel! We hope everyone has the opportunity to travel using Nex because the quality products they offer are truly exceptional. If you have used Nex Luggage before, please let us know your experience in the comments.

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