What YTONET makes, and who it is for

Everything in this catalogue is built for the walk between a car and a desk, a gate and a seat, a corridor and a room. The rolling bags carry it, the sleeves and totes ride on them, and the card tells you what a bag fits and how it moves before it tells you anything else.

2013 founded
59 bags in the range
112 colourways
55,484 ratings

Rolling laptop bags with a telescopic handle and rubber wheels, rolling backpacks on two wheels or four spinners, laptop sleeves that open flat for a checkpoint, teacher totes, garment duffels, tennis and gym backpacks, tool bags, cleaning caddies, and the wheelchair bags, walker baskets and moving straps that carry for the people around them. Most of it is cut from 900D or 1680D nylon or polyester with a water-resistant coating.

YTONET makes bags that roll, and has done since 2013. The range starts where the day starts: a laptop bag on two rubber wheels with a handle that locks at each stop, cut so the laptop rides in a padded sleeve against the stiffest wall of the bag and the files ride in front of it. Everything else on the seven shelves is built to the same brief, which is the walk from the car to the desk with both hands free.

How it started

The first YTONET bag was a rolling laptop bag, made in 2013 for a teacher who was carrying a laptop, a binder of marked work and a lunch from the car park to a second-floor room and had stopped being able to feel two fingers by Friday. The first version had plastic wheels and a handle that locked at one height, and it came back after a term with a list: the wheels were loud on the corridor, the handle was too short for a tall person, and the lunch had to live somewhere that was not on top of the laptop. The second version had rubber wheels, a handle with three stops and a pocket on the side for a bottle, and it is the bag the rest of the range grew out of.

The workshop still runs the same test on every rolling bag before it is signed off: loaded to the weight of a laptop and a day's files, it goes up and down a ramp with a kerb in it and along a corridor of tiles, and anyone in the room can hear whether the wheels pass. The bullets on our product pages say the wheels ran twenty miles of rough road in testing, and that is the road they mean. Nobody counts the bags or the people, because the number would be a story and the test is not.

What we make

Rolling laptop bags are the shelf the brand is known for: 15.6 and 17.3-inch sleeves, two rubber wheels, a locking aluminium handle, and a front that carries a combination lock, a cup holder or an insulated lunch carrier, depending on the day it was cut for. Rolling backpacks put the same frame on a back, with straps that stow behind a panel and either two wheels or four spinners with a trolley that detaches. Laptop bags that are carried are the sleeves in four sizes, the teacher tote, the briefcase that expands and the messenger in PU leather. Travel and sport is the garment duffels, the tennis and gym backpacks and the cooler on wheels. Work and trade is the tool bags in 1680D cloth, the tool backpack, the delivery backpack and the patrol bag. Cleaning caddies are the wearable, tote and rolling caddies in 900D. Home and mobility is the wheelchair bags, the walker basket, the crutch padding, the moving straps, the zipper binders and the file box.

The second idea is the number on the card. A bag is described here by the laptop it fits, in inches, because that is the decision a buyer makes and the one a photograph settles badly; then by its dimensions, its wheels, its cloth and its pockets, in that order. A cloth is named by its weight, 900D or 1680D, and by its coating, water-resistant, which is a claim about the fabric and not a promise about the rain.

Who it is for

You, if the morning starts with the laptop, the charger, the binder, the lunch and the coffee, and the question is which of them rides on your shoulder. The bags here are chosen for the walk as much as for the desk: rubber wheels because a corridor is tiled, a locking handle because a bag that collapses on a ramp is a bag on the floor, a strap on the back of every sleeve and tote because a suitcase handle is the best place a small bag can ride. That is why the cards print the size, the wheels and the dimensions in plain words, and why the phrase "water-resistant" is treated on this site as a construction claim about the cloth rather than a promise about a downpour.

The people who decide these things have first names and jobs on the front page, and nothing else: Mei settles the frame and the wheels, Daniel the cloth and the coating, Priya the sizes a sleeve is cut for, and Tom reads the letters and fixes the pages. There are no portraits, because a portrait on a page like this is a stock photograph, and no head count, because the count would be a story.

What we will and will not say

A card describes a bag: what it fits, what it measures, how it rolls, what it is cut from, what it carries. What a bag does for you over a school year is yours to judge, and the pages leave it to you. Where a page touches a public rule or a body of advice, what happens to a laptop at a checkpoint, the size limit on a carry-on, the weight limit on a child's backpack, the weight limit on a lift, it is written under a named public source, read on the date printed beside it.

The one verifiable thing we say about ourselves is the year, 2013. Everything else you might want to know about a bag is on its card, and how the figures on those cards are kept current is set out on how we update the catalogue.

02The brand

About YTONET

What we make, who buys it, what separates a bag sold with its laptop size and its dimensions printed from one sold by a photograph, where we are, and how long we have been at it.

What does YTONET make?

Bags that roll and the pieces that ride with them. Rolling laptop bags for a 15.6 or a 17.3-inch laptop on two rubber wheels with a locking telescopic handle, rolling backpacks on two wheels or four spinners, laptop sleeves in four sizes that open flat, teacher totes and a briefcase, garment duffels and court bags, tool bags in 1680D cloth, cleaning caddies in 900D, and the wheelchair bags, walker basket and moving straps that carry for the people around you. Seven shelves.

Who is YTONET for?

The person whose day starts at a car door with a laptop, a binder and a coffee: a teacher, a nurse on a floor, a commuter with a train in the middle of the morning, a traveller with one bag and a gate to reach. The bags are cut for that walk rather than for a photograph, which is why the wheels are rubber, the handle locks, and the sleeve sits against the stiffest wall.

How long has YTONET been around?

YTONET has made bags since 2013, which is 13 years at the time of writing. The first bag was a rolling laptop bag, and the rolling laptop bag is still the piece most people mean when they type the name; what has changed is the handle, the wheels and the cloth, and what has been added is everything that rides on the handle.

Is YTONET the same as the other rolling bag brands?

The frame is a trade standard and we do not pretend otherwise: two wheels, a telescopic handle, a padded sleeve. What differs is what a card is willing to state. The laptop size is named in inches, the dimensions are printed as length by width by height, the wheel count and the handle are named, the cloth is named by its weight, the pockets are counted, and where the site touches a public rule, a checkpoint, a carry-on, a child's backpack or a lift, it names the source and links it.

Where is YTONET sold?

Through our retail partner, which is where every buying button on this site opens, and where the colour is chosen, the payment taken and any return handled. This site is the catalogue: what a bag fits, what it measures, how it moves, what it is cut from, and what it cost at our last update.

Where is YTONET based?

The desk that answers letters and fixes the pages is in Alameda, on the bay side of San Francisco, and the address and the telephone are on the contact page. The bags are sewn elsewhere and rolled up and down a test ramp before they are signed off; the shipping happens at our retail partner's warehouses, not at ours.

The catalogue is easiest to read from the day you have planned rather than from the price list. If you are starting from scratch, the front page of YTONET lays the seven shelves out in order, and the three-measurements block on it settles the laptop size and the handle height before you open a card.

How the prices and dimensions on these pages are kept current is a separate question, and it is answered on how we update the catalogue.

Every size, every wheel

Every rolling bag, backpack, sleeve, tote, duffel and caddy in the YTONET range sits behind this button, with the price from our last update against each one.