Travelers, take note: here’s an anniversary you may have missed — wheeled luggage.
It’s 40 years old in October for what might be travel’s most welcome innovation.
Briggs & Riley “deserves the honor of easing the pain of bad backs, helping marital relationships and allowing people to travel more smoothly, making many of us question, ‘What did we do before the creation of wheeled luggage?’” says a press release.
The first wheeled bag was the brainchild of Briggs & Riley’s parent company U.S. Luggage and then-president Bernard Sadow. When returning from Aruba with his wife and their two heavy suitcases, he noticed a skid nearby, and made an inspired connection, turning to his wife and saying, “That’s what luggage needs: wheels.”
The prototype that rolled out of the Massachusetts luggage factory in October 1970 had four wheels and a rope tow to pull it along.
One by one, founder Sadow approached the buyers of Gimbels, Macy’s and other department stores. He was repeatedly shown the door.
Finally, a visionary vice president at Macy’s saw the potential.
He demanded that his buyer – the same buyer who had already called the idea crazy – place an order and be the first to sell wheeled luggage.
“Customers made wheeled luggage an instant success and the orders rolled in. The original wheeled luggage was built with caster wheels made from plastic and metal,” says the release.’
U.S. Luggage filed for and won a patent on the now lucrative innovation in 1972, which was later defeated by other companies who now can put wheels on their luggage.
By David Wilkening
