THE BAMBOO

CARRY-ON
Our Story
My Life In A Suitcase
Building suitcases has been a decade long dream
of mine. It all started when I walked into a
suitcase shop and realised I basically had three
choices: cheap and ugly, overpriced and ordinary
or designer branded and unaffordable. I couldn’t
understand why something we used so frequently
had to be so ordinary. Wasn’t it possible to build
a suitcase that was both functional and beautiful?
At the time it felt like an obvious question, but in
reality, it would take me ten years, a mental illness,
two companies and a failure so brutal that my wife
and I lost everything, to find the answer.
The adventure of Corvin started in November of last
year when I came home after a tough professional
setback and for the first time in years started
considering leaving entrepreneurship behind me
in order to look for a job. A moment of weakness
that was quickly obliterated when my wife heard of
my plan. “Christian are you kidding me? For years
you have been talking about your suitcases hoping
that one of your ventures cashes out enough so you
can build a factory. Obviously things haven’t gone
as planned but that doesn’t mean you should give
up on your dream. Why don’t you just start and let
us see where it takes us. Of course it’s a risk but if
we are going to go bust, it might as well be for your
dream and not for a job!”.
Two weeks later we were both in the car heading to
Provence to meet with Thibault, a talented young
industrial designer and I would promise myself
that I would do everything physically possible to
make my wife proud.
Our Story

T
he year I turned 28 years
old was an important
year for me. It was the
year I would achieve
my wildest professional
dreams, only to realise
that money could help
me acquire comfort but
it couldn’t buy me meaning. It was the year I
walked into a suitcase shop looking for a new
carry-on but instead found a destiny. It was
the year I packed up my things at work, went
to the nearest emergency room and found out
I was suffering from bipolar disorder. It was
the year my mental illness would cost me my
career in the hedge fund industry but would
help me become an entrepreneur.

Going crazy was probably the best thing that

has ever happened to me. Living in a world
of extremes (mania and depression) can be a
challenge at times but it has also become my
biggest gift when it came to entrepreneurship.
It would give me an entirely different per-
spective to solving problems, an incredible
source of creativity and a profound empathy
for misunderstood talents whom others saw
as flawed because they didn’t fit into a box.

After losing my job at a leading Swiss Fund

of Hedge Funds, after naively disclosing my
illness to my boss, I would go through a soul
searching couple of months with an impor-
tant choice to make. I could either spend my

Going Crazy days popping ‘crazy pills’ at home feeling sorry

When going mentally insane helped me find
my way as an entrepreneur.
for myself or I could try and find myself by build-
ing my first company. Building suitcases was of
course the obvious choice, but I was too scared to
take on a venture of that proportion. I didn’t have
the experience nor the funds to build a luggage
factory and so instead, I built a precious metals
trading platform. My plan was to make enough
money from this venture to then build my suit-
cases. Ten years later I was still searching for my
Golden Goose, when my wife finally had enough
of my procrastination and subtly pushed me into
the deep end of the pool. Ironically we had less
funds than I had then, I still didn’t have any man-
ufacturing experience but I had my wife and to-
gether we had nothing left to lose.
Our Story
Meeting Thibault
“It has to be made of bamboo and aluminium,
it can’t have any plastic and it can’t look like any
other suitcase”, these were the indications Thibault,
a talented young industrial designer got from
me when we first spoke on the phone. It was an
impossible description I had given to a dozen other
industrial designers, most of which thought I was
completely insane.
It takes a specific kind of mind to be patient enough
to work with me and I immediately knew Thibault
was that person. “Wow, sounds absolutely crazy,
extremely challenging but I think very doable!”.
Thibault’s talent wasn’t only in being incredibly
creative, but it was in transforming insane,
unrealistic delusions into something realistic,
functional and authentic.
The Corvin Carry-On was designed in a record-
breaking three months, where we probably broke
every rule in the book of ‘normal procedure’.
Thibault was going nuts at times when I called
him at 11 pm with ‘another idea’ but what kept
us on track was his philosophy of ‘honest design’.
Everything had to have a function, and if it didn’t,
we stripped it. We focused on maximising a few
key features: the handle, the wheels, volume, weight
and robustness, but for everything else we let our
creativity take over.
From there, our story began and in March of 2018
our baby was born. I was the Dad, that got to do all
the ‘fun’ stuff and Thibault was the one stuck with
the morning sickness, months of discomfort and
the painful contractions just before delivery.
THE CORVIN CARRY-ON

A bamboo hard case, an aluminium

chassis, a single handle that allows
you to pick-up, open and pull your
carry-on. A suitcase that blends
functionality and beauty into an
iconic minimalistic design.
Second Chances

A
t the age of nine, I was sent
to a juvenile delinquent
school for three years.
Sharing a home with chil-
dren whose parents were
prostitutes and heroin
addicts was an incredible
life lesson, as well as a fast
track to a street-smart education. This experience
would not only be the best three years of my child-
hood, but it would impact me for every decision I
would make in life.

The power of second chances is probably the most

important lesson I took away from this school. It is
something I have integrated in everything I do and
how I deal with my most challenging setbacks. It is
what pushed me to become an entrepreneur, not
because I wanted to disrupt the suitcase industry,
but because I wanted to build a finishing school
for juvenile delinquents. Building suitcases was
just my means to get there and the perfect training
ground to test out my unconventional approach to
building future leaders.

I believe every person should try and find one phi-

losophy they want to leave behind as a legacy. In
my case it is the power of second chances. It means
betting on the underdog, appreciating passion
over experience, eccentricity over normality and
respecting the gift of failure. Am I saying everyone
deserves a second chance? Of course not. I am sim-
ply implying, that from time to time giving some-
one that inspires you a chance, can be a lot more

Tough Love
rewarding than betting on the obvious talent.

The one thing that has differentiated me from most

of the juvenile delinquents who ended up in trou-
ble or in mindless jobs, was the belief others put in How the Corvin
me and a chance to prove myself. An incredible philosophy came into
gift that brings the best out in a person and one existence at a juvenile
I feel obligated to pay forward in both the team delinquent school
members I choose, and the life choices I make.
Second Chances
A Team
Like No
Other
Experience may make you
more efficient but passion
changes the world
A
successful entrepreneur
once told me: “get the
right people on the bus
and figure out later where
they sit” an incredibly val-
uable philosophy I wished
more companies would
apply. We tend to hire ac-
cording to experience and track record whereas
I prefer to hire based on passion, creativity and
drive. Experience is valuable if you are trying to
build something already in existence, passion is
what you need if you want to break new ground.
This approach brought together eight extraor-
dinary individuals who may have never built a
suitcase in their life but would build what I con-
sider, the most beautiful carry-on in the world.
The best example of this approach was proba-
bly Mathilde. An industrial designer who found
her calling in photography and originally joined
the team as our video and backstage storyteller.
She was the discrete girl behind the lens, capturing
all the key moments, but every time we stumbled
on a major issue, she would put down the camera
and come up with a ground-breaking solution. It
turned out Mathilde was a natural when it came
to prototyping. It was a gift she developed from
years of helping her father in his workshop as a
little girl, and a passion so valuable we ended up
replacing our professional prototyper with her.
My job in building the Corvin Team was to artic-
ulate a clear vision, energise everyone with abun-
dant enthusiasm, teach them how to dream and
then get out of their way. Passion and our shared
love for building something beautiful, would take
care of the rest and everyone would find their nat-
ural role on the team.
Second Chances
How We Build
“Christian the truth is, you are not a priority to us”.
Words that still make me cringe when I think of
them today, as they cost me my second company,
all of our savings and my self-confidence as an
entrepreneur .
Cardessential, my second company, was a venture
I had set up in partnership with one of the
largest card producers in Switzerland. A major
manufacturer that would end up defaulting on us
after misrepresenting their production capabilities.
A very painful lesson
on manufacturing,
but one that would
serve me when I
was searching for
the best production
model for Corvin.
Manufacturing is
a major challenge
for any start-up,
and in our case, we
had three possible
solutions. We could
either build our
suitcases in-house
and incur significant up-front costs requiring a
substantial amount of start-up capital. We could
find a large producer in the USA or Europe and
accept to be ‘last in line’ when it came to getting
our products. Or, we could do what most small
companies do, outsource our production to China.
The only option that made any sense to me was
to keep as much of our production in-house as
possible. The question, however, remained: how
could we achieve this and still remain competitive?
After liquidating cardessential I needed to take
a break from entrepreneurship to rebuild my
confidence and spent the following three years
studying and working with companies on my biggest
insecurity: failure. It would be a valuable experience
where I interviewed over 50 of Switzerland’s CEOs
and Board Members on the topic of failure and
worked with a number of multi-national companies
as an ‘expert’ on the topic. I called my consultancy:
Too Crazy To Fail.
The most important
lesson I learned from
my experience with
Too Crazy To Fail,
is that Vision and
“Losability” were the
two most underrated
factors to ensuring
the success of a
company. Losability
is a term I came up
with to define the
opportunity cost an
employee experienced
when resigning
from their job. In
other words, all the things we leave behind when
we switch companies (salary, benefits, work
environment, flexibility, colleagues etc.). Offering
more losability than the competition was therefore
essential and could either be done through financial
compensation (which is what most companies do)
or by being creative. Given my contrarian nature
and my passion for second chances, I decided the
best way to solve my challenge of wanting to keep
our manufacturing in-house was to be creative.
Second Chances
Losability
This is where the story comes full circle and where
I may lose some of you, as you conclude I am either
completely nuts, very naive or both.
Corvin will be on the one hand a platform for
talented entrepreneurs that are looking for an
environment that offers them independence,
flexibility and a world of creative opportunities. On
the other hand, it will be an ‘accelerator program’
for those who have fallen between the cracks, have
been unlucky in life or need a second chance.
In other words, my management will be composed
of proven entrepreneurs, and my manufacturing
team of forgotten members of society most
companies deem ‘too risky’ to hire. From the
homeless to juvenile delinquents, to ex-convicts
and addicts, I firmly believe that offering these
individuals an opportunity will be the secret to
our success. It will of course require time, patience
and a support system, but it will also maximise our
productivity by giving them the one thing nobody
else will. A second chance.
MADE OF BAMBOO

Offering a unique combination of

strength, flexibility and weight,
Bamboo is ideal for absorbing
shocks and a noble equivalent to
leather at only half the weight.
Build With Us

Every company I have ever built was based on a detailed and lengthy business plan.
A strategy that has never really worked out for me because of Mike Tyson’s astute
observation that: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”.

Corvin is the first venture I ever set up without a formal business plan and started it
solely on the basis of a decade long passion. Given how spontaneously we decided
with Claudia to get started on the suitcases, there was simply no time to open Excel
and start calculating projections.

Now that we have completed our prototype, things have formalised a bit more as
we prepare to go into mass production. To this end, we are welcoming any partners,
friends and future colleagues who would like to help us in this journey and look
forward to bringing a bit of eccentricity to the suitcase industry.
Build With Us
Partners
Similar to Tesla Motors, we are looking to
finance the manufacturing of our suitcases
through pre-orders. To this end, we have setup
a partner’s program, that offers companies
a customised “limited series” with their own
branding. In addition the first partners that
order over 500 pieces, will receive a five year
revenue share on our total sales as a thank you
for their early on support.
Orders
If you would like to support us with a pre-order
of your own Corvin Carry-On, please feel free
to visit our Kickstarter page. Our campaign
will end on May 4th 2018 and you may find
the link directly on our website:
www.corvintravel.com.
Investors
If you would like to support us as an investor,
we are currently preparing for our Series (A)
round which we hope to complete by July 2018.
The project has been self-funded until now
and the capital raise will allow us to finance the
required tooling, moldings and equipment to
commence full-scale production. Our target is
to raise a total of $3M with our manufacturing
headquarters based in North America.
Team Mates
For the eccentric entrepreneurs or the
manufacturing experts that would like to
support us on our journey, please get in touch.
We may not be able to afford you right now
as an early stage start-up, but we would love
to get to know you. The future can evolve
very quickly and if there is one thing we have
learned with Corvin, it’s that we always want
to meet passionate talents.
For More Information
Corvin Travel GmbH
Schaffhauserstrasse 550
8052 Zurich
Switzerland

www.corvintravel.com

Christian Wehbe
E: c@corvintravel.com

For More Information