A team of Naperville-area teen entrepreneurs who created a business designed to make travel smoother will compete this coming week as one of five national finalists in the INCubatoredu National Pitch competition in Chicago.
It was no easy task getting there. It took nearly a year of brainstorming and development, business plan writing and website creation before Naperville North High School students Bremen Dinh and Noah Wrodarczyk and Metea Valley High School student Alex Liu were ready to face off in the local competitions that would take them to the national stage.
Just coming up with the concept for Roam Travel LLC was hard, they said.
“The answer didn’t just come to us,” said Noah, 17, who will be a senior in the fall.
What they ultimately came up with was a product that would make travel easier, said Bremen, 18, a recent graduate who plans to attend Indiana University. A strap that would securely attach multiple purses, backpacks or duffel bags to carry-on luggage makes navigating an airport or train station less stressful, they decided.
“We knew when we started we wanted to create a business that was successful, and we took it seriously,” Bremen said.
The luggage attachment had to have the right dimensions and weight so a suitcase wouldn’t fall over or sag. It had to be elastic and versatile enough to hold everything from a small child’s backpack to multiple bags.
Their first prototype was made from cardboard as the team refined their ideas, Noah said.
But would their product fill a need? Trips to Chicago’s Union Station and O’Hare International Airport to speak with travelers were productive. They stopped passengers waiting at the airport’s baggage claim to ask them questions.
Through the interviews and an online survey, they ultimately gathered feedback from more than 1,100 people, Noah said. Many agreed a luggage strap could serve a valuable purpose, he said.
With each step, they were pushed to work harder, Noah said.
The team worked with teacher Gene Nolan and mentor Samir Khan throughout the process.
“I learned many things from this project, including how to work as a team by dividing work and having clear and proper communication,” said Alex, 17, an Aurora resident who will be a senior in the fall.
“I also learned how to solve internal conflicts and to adapt (to) opinions that I disagreed with. … I also enjoyed being able to work on various fields of the business such as pitching and website building.”
The students ordered materials from Amazon and created the first luggage strap. They continued to make improvements, such as adding a feature where the strap doesn’t have to be removed from the carry-on luggage, but rather rolled up and secured into place.
The students completed the legal paperwork, filed for a patent and formed an LLC. They developed a website with the slogan, “Carry Light, Travel Right,” and began working with an Oregon-based manufacturer that will ultimately create their product.
They also sent the Roam strap they made around the world, offering friends, family and strangers they found through social media a chance to try it out during their travels.
So far, the teens’ luggage strap has been to California, New York, Canada, Poland and Ecuador, Noah said.
Reviews posted to their website, roamtravel.us, say the strap was a “handy travel companion,” “pretty useful” and “very convenient.”
The business partners are working on a website feature through which travelers can post a photo of the luggage strap in use for a chance to win a monetary prize.
Preorders are now available online for $29.99.
In April, Roam Travel won third place and $1,000 at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy Power Pitch competition. They followed up that success a month later with a second-place finish and a $4,000 prize at Innovation DuPage at the College of DuPage.
In May, they competed against groups from Naperville Central and Naperville North high schools in a multiround competition where they won first place and $3,000 in seed money that could be reinvested into their product, Bremen said.
The Chicago competition on July 10 will have them pitted against four other teams from Illinois, Texas and Tennessee that also made the cut as the nation’s top five.
However, the upcoming competition will not be the end of their efforts, the team said. They have big ideas and would love to get their luggage strap into airport stores or lounges. They hope to work with some of the country’s biggest airlines.
“I’m excited to show our product to the world,” Bremen said. “This is just the beginning.”
