ISPO Award Winner 2025: Peak Design Roller Pro Trolley

Travel gear traditionally evolves slowly. Roller suitcases especially have long relied on the same internal architecture, regardless of brand. Peak Design saw an opportunity to start fresh here: 

“When we looked at the rolling luggage landscape, we saw many brands wrapping the same underlying architecture in different aesthetics. Everything felt commoditized. So we started from a blank page, embracing our outsider perspective to rethink what a modern piece of soft luggage could be,” the Peak Design Team explains.

The Roller Pro keeps the familiar silhouette of a compact carry-on, but up close its internal engineering is a departure. Every critical component from trolley, wheels and hinges to shell materials was custom-built specifically for this product. The overall aim: to improve responsiveness, durability, weight and usable space.

At the heart of the innovation is the SlimDrive trolley system. Instead of aluminum tubes, the Roller Pro uses flat, single-piece 7 mm carbon fiber tubes, enabling a drastically lower profile without sacrificing stiffness. This frees up interior volume and eliminates the flex common in conventional trolley systems. “We utilized carbon fiber in place of aluminum to make extremely low-profile trolley tubes. This is the first time to our knowledge that carbon fiber has been used successfully in a luggage trolley.”

Combined with an anodized handle chassis and custom deploy button, the trolley delivers an ultra-responsive, precise rolling experience even when the bag is fully loaded.

Professional photographers, videographers, and frequent travelers played a major role in shaping the final design, according to the Peak Design Team: “Users wanted a bag that rolled effortlessly through airports and job sites, so we lowered the wheelbase and added oversized casters for smooth, stable 4-wheel travel. They also needed space for heavy telephoto lenses, leading to a slim carbon fiber trolley and wide wheel placement that maximize interior room.”

A critical need was also easy access in tight spaces, which led to a feature that comes in handy for everyone traveling: A drawbridge-style main opening allows the bag to fully open while occupying only half the footprint of a clamshell. With customizable drawbridge cords and smooth friction hinges, the bag doubles as a functional workstation with the XL Camera Cube.

The Roller Pro uses a hybrid soft–hard shell body: a 70% recycled rigid polycarbonate inner shell wrapped in a 100% recycled, Bluesign-approved 550D Versa Shell. This combination provides crush protection while maintaining a flexible, weatherproof exterior that forms a practical front pocket for travel essentials. Inside, the shell architecture and slim trolley maximize usable space, making the 34L volume feel significantly larger than expected.

“We took a very ground-up approach to the development of Roller Pro,” the Product Team recalls, so building a roller from scratch meant rethinking almost every part. “We pushed our manufacturing partners to do things they had not done before and to take a much longer development cycle than usual. We were able to be convincing by providing real engineering work backed by prototypes and test data.”

With its patented trolley, hybrid shell, compact opening, and fully proprietary hardware, the Roller Pro is designed not just to travel but to endure years of real-world use. Being able to repair individual parts of it also plays into this concept of a long lasting travel buddy. 

So, what does the ISPO Award mean for the Team at Peak Design? “It means everything,” the Product Team says about winning the ISPO Award. “Launching a product is a marathon, and getting strong external validation makes the long hours and late nights feel worthwhile.”

• Patented SlimDrive trolley with flat carbon fiber tubes for maximum interior space
• Hybrid soft–hard shell with recycled materials and crush protection
• Drawbridge opening enabling workstation use in tight spaces
• Oversized, replaceable 60 mm wheels for stable rolling
• Fully proprietary components for long-term durability