Bag design

[Pari]

FLYSURFER makes awesome kites, but the travel bag that comes with the Soul- I don’t understand why they made it the way they did.
So I got out my old Lite bag from my previous 12m only to find that the fancy ‘no jamming’ zip puller had corroded and that bag was useless until I can fix it with a new zip or zip runner.

I commented in my review of the Gong Unik kite how much I liked the bag. Just simple things like useful pockets and a plastic chunky zipper. 
The FLYSURFER travel bag- at last they have put plastic runners on the zips- hooray, about time. But they still put the same ‘no jamming’ runner on the lite bag, so that thing will be useless in a year or two.

The other annoying thing with the travel bag, and this really made me scratch my head in disbelief, is the made the whole thing padded. Like padded as if you are going to put a laptop in there! I would much rather I had a tough, one layer bag that is light and strong and has more space in it to get more gear in, possibly two kite with bars, than useless padding for a soft kite.

If FLYSURFER designed one GOOD bag that took the best of both their bags that come with the Soul, I think they’d be onto a winner. 
Anyway I know it’s not a important part of the kite experience, but as a product designer I get a bit OCD about it.

So much so that I took a pair of scissors to my new kite’s bag. Gone is all the foam padding and the double lining, except for the back panel, as this will be more comfortable for carrying, and the strap attachments are stitched through all layers which will add more strength.

The bag works great, it’s much lighter and now I have more space for things that matter, like kites, or bottles of water, or wetsuits- anything than carrying around useless padding.

OK, rant over- carry on!