Bluesmart Inc. was a global travel technology company that developed and produced Internet of Things travel products. The brand launched a

carry-on The term hand luggage or cabin baggage (normally called carry-on in North America) refers to the type of luggage that passengers are allowed to carry along in the passenger compartment of a vehicle instead of a separate cargo compartment. Passe ...

suitcase A suitcase is a form of luggage. It is a rectangular container with a handle typically used to carry one's clothes and other belongings while traveling. The first suitcases appeared in the late 19th century due to the increased popularity of m ...

, the Bluesmart One, on the crowdfunding website Indiegogo in 2014. The campaign raised $2.2 million USD in contributions and became the highest crowdfunding project ever for a travel product at that time. On May 1, 2018, Bluesmart Inc. announced they would be shutting down operations, due to a ban by major US airlines on smart luggage with non-removable batteries. The company's intellectual property was sold to Travelpro and the company's products will no longer be supported.

History

Crowdfunding campaign

In October 2014, the company launched its first product on Indiegogo, asking for support of their campaign - offering pre-orders of their product as rewards. The company met its goal in 2 hours and broke records in the Hardware category by pre-selling 10,000 units to 114 countries and collecting more than $2.2 million USD in contributions. In November 2014, while their extended Indiegogo campaign was still ongoing, the company was selected by Silicon Valley-based startup accelerator

Y Combinator Y Combinator (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator launched in March 2005. It has been used to launch more than 3,000 companies, including Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Dropbox, Instacart, Quora, PagerDuty, Reddit, St ...

to be part of its program for the Winter 2015 batch.

Production of the first smart carry-On

After Bluesmart Inc.'s manufacturing prototype passed its first reliability tests in June 2015, they set up a Mass Production division and local team in China which quickly grew to 15 employees. Bluesmart Inc. began shipping what would be known as the Bluesmart One in August 2015.

Products

In late 2015, the brand released Bluesmart One. In 2016, the brand released the premium Bluesmart Black Edition carry-on, which was more durable, and had an upgraded exterior anti-theft system. In June 2017, Bluesmart Inc. introduced its Series 2 products including the Bluesmart Cabin, Check, Laptop Bag and Passport Pouch. Bluesmart Inc. was awarded the Red Dot Best of the Best Design Award category.

References

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