BrightLine Bags has reconfigured the Flex System, its modular gear-bag product line.
“We took the notion of our original modular design and made one simple change to how the basic modules are implemented, and then we also added some new components.” said Ross Bishop, president and founder of BrightLine Bags. “This one change created a whole new level of versatility, and it made the entire system work even more true to the original design intent.”
The front bag and rear bag are no longer used as the primary building blocks for all the configurations. Now everything is built using just End Caps and Center Sections, company officials explained.
This allows new bags that are the same-sized configurations as before, but now each bag has more modules, which give more versatility because multiple configurations of different sizes can be built from the included parts.
The impact of this change can be clearly seen with the resulting “reconfiguration” of the most popular gear bag, the B10 CLASSIC, which was just a front bag and a rear bag zipped together. The new version of this same bag is called the B7 FLIGHT and it’s made up of front and rear end caps and two center sections; 4-inch and 3-inch. (And by the way, it’s called the B7 because 4+3=7.)
“Having four modules for this bag instead of just two is a big deal,” said Bishop. “Now every owner of the new B7 FLIGHT can build four different bags of different sizes using just the included parts, whereas owners of the former B10 CLASSIC get just that one bag unless they spend more money to buy additional modules. This truly lets our customers build different-sized bags for different amounts of gear on different days, right from the start. We call this ‘Adaptive Utility.”
As a further example of this extended versatility, the new B18 HANGAR (the largest of the pre-configured bags) has three Center Sections to go with the two End Caps. Having five modules allows the construction of eight different bag configurations, according to company officials.
Perhaps the coolest of the additional smaller bags that can be built from the included parts of any configuration is the most-basic combination of zipping just the two End Caps together to make a skinny “iPad” bag with lots of pockets, company officials said. BrightLine Bags calls this the “B0 SLIM.”
BrightLine Bags added two new Center Sections, the CS3 and CS4, to go along with the previous trio of CS2, CS5, and CS11. So now any customer can build just about any bag necessary for any need because of the wide array of possible modules.
BrightLine Bags has also added two “Opposite” end caps. Since all the modules of the FLEX System are one-directional, the result is that each module is “front-facing”. Customers have often requested a duplicate set of pockets like the ones found on the front end cap, but they’d like them on the rear of their bag as well. So now there is a Pocket Cap that faces front, and a new “opposite” Pocket Cap that faces rear.
There are also two Flat Caps – the original one that faced rear and the new one that faces front. These two new end caps give even more options the type of bag that a customer can build.
And finally, BrightLine Bags has redesigned the flat cap rear to allow the telescoping tubes of a suitcase to pass through to make it easy to place your BrightLine Bags securely on top of your suitcase, or on a folding cart (also available from BrightLine Bags).
There is a series of new videos on the BrightLine Bags website that show all about the new configurations and modules.
BrightLine Bags has been designing and manufacturing gear bags for pilots since 2008. For more information: BrightlineBags.com