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Interview: RoadWired's Michael Hess
January 28, 2005
I’m very pleased to have had the chance to interview Michael Hess and learn a bit more about RoadWired and how they come up with all of those great ideas for making life with mobile electronics easier and more enjoyable.
Could you tell me a little more about how RoadWired got started?
My family had a well-known, 50 year-old photo equipment manufacturing/distribution company. We were involved in lots of different things, from darkroom equipment to flash accessories to book publishing and much more. But of all of the things we did and made, my favorite part of the business was camera bags. We designed and made many of them right in our own sewing shop here in upstate New York, and I found it to offer an ideal combination of creative and business elements. When we sold the company in 1998, I wanted to stay in the “bag business.” Despite the fact that it is an overcrowded, insanely competitive industry, my feeling was that the bag market was really a fragmented collection of markets—-from giant companies making laptop bags, to small businesses doing PDA cases, to all kinds of camera bag suppliers and more. But there really wasn’t one place where serious travelers and tech-lovers could turn to get a complete, coordinated assortment of high-end “gadget luggage” covering all of the different portable electronic categories. I took out a bunch of napkin sketches and notes that I had been making over the years, and focused on turning them into what I hoped would be a unique, innovative, marketable line. I launched RoadWired with about a dozen or-so styles in 2000. Five years into it, so far so good. We have grown about 30-fold, we have a broad and ever-growing product line, and have been fortunate enough to get tremendously positive press and a humbling and flattering “fan following” among our customers.
The Pod/Podzilla is arguably one of the most clever, most useful designs I’ve ever seen, and solves the problem of how to carry mobile electronics and all their related accessories with ease. How did the design originate?
Thank you so much for the kind words. all of our products arise out of a combination of ingredients. In the beginning, it was almost all my ideas, because I didn’t have much of a choice. The Pod family of products,
including Podzilla, came out of a lot of daydreaming, sketching, sample making and testing. Basically, I had envisioned a bag with “wings” that would each contain a specific type or “theme” of contents.. A battery/film/consumable wing, a digital memory wing, a cable and adaptor wing, etc. After a lot of experimenting, we came up with a design (the original Pod) that we just knew was right. It worked, it was unique, it was fun, and best of all, it put a smile on the face of everyone who looked at it. It became our best-selling product in a very short order of time. Soon after, we started getting requests for larger and smaller versions of the basic design, and the Podzilla and Pod Pouches were born directly of that customer demand.
How do you come up with new product ideas: In house design team? Market research? Customer suggestions?
In terms of our design process in general, a lot of what we do still starts with “home-grown” ideas. But as we’ve grown and evolved, we have been able to get lots of great customer and retailer feedback, suggestions from experts in the press, and other forms of information and inspiration, and many of our recent product introductions reflect those influences. We now have an industrial designer on staff, and are moving to a much larger building this month-two small, early steps in what is a long-term plan to establish a full in-house design center for our products (as well as custom, OEM and “private label” products for other companies, which is a growing part of our business already). As has been widely written and reported, “design is everything” these days. I agree with that statement, and I am committed to it-and excited about the possibilities.
The Advanced Protection System is rather innovative. How did you come up with the idea to include weather and corrosion resistance to your product
line?
A few years ago, one of our suppliers showed us the very high-tech “Intercept” material that was developed and licensed by Lucent Technologies (Bell Labs) for use in protecting sensitive aerospace components and other
equipment. We were given permission to use the material to develop bags and accessories for the consumer market, with the condition that all of our designs and prototypes had to be sent to Lucent (which still owns and
licenses the Intercept patents, technologies and materials) for testing and approval. After a lot of sampling and tweaking, we got the thumbs-up from them and introduced the Advanced Protection System. The laptop sleeves, PDA
cases, wraps and media storage products that make up the APS collection have done very well, and we have some exciting new plans for the evolution of the line.
The Cordz product line is something of a departure from your previous focus on cases/protection for mobile electronics. Can we expect further diversification in the future?
Actually, though bags are definitely our focus and priority, we have always maintained a small assortment of interesting non-bag gadgets and accessories, to which CORDZ are the newest addition. One of our golden rules is that we avoid commodity products or “me-too” businesses, so we tend to stick with unique and/or unusual items. Although retractable cords are widely available from many companies, we wanted to put our own unique spin on the concept, to keep ourselves out of the mass-market fray. So we designed a line of brightly colored (RoadWired Yellow) cords in
unusually-shaped housings, and put together some interesting, practical kits in beautiful, informative packaging. They have been very well-received.
Can you let us in on any upcoming product introductions, or at least give us a few hints?
Well, we literally just introduced several products that I am especially excited about-the Roadster Convertible bag and the Skooba Collection. Skooba has been a particularly special pet project, and I am thrilled with the way
it came out. Going forward, we plan to add many products to the Skooba collection, including some very cool iPod cases and more. We also recently announced a major new partnership with Tenba (www.tenbagear.com), a well-known, 30 year-old camera bag brand. As part of this joint venture, we will be responsible for all product development and manufacturing for both RoadWired and Tenba (another reason we are moving to the bigger building!). We are now in the process of designing 6 to 8 completely new collections for this business for 2005. look for some exciting new outdoor-oriented tech bags, urban style gear, and of course, a growing offering of digital imaging bags and accessories.
Thanks for your time!
It’s my pleasure. Thank you for your interest.
