About Bags ETC

A British bag and luggage retailer with stores and an online shop, carrying recognised luggage and handbag brands alongside its own lines. It has been trading since the early 2000s, which in luggage retail is long enough to have seen which brands actually last.

Specialists matter in this category because the useful information is technical: shell material, wheel type, warranty terms. General fashion sites rarely publish it.

What they carry

Cabin and hold suitcases, holdalls, backpacks, laptop and business bags, handbags and purses, plus travel accessories such as packing cubes, locks and luggage scales.

Business and travel is the stronger half. Handbags are there, but the depth is in things that go on a plane.

Choosing a suitcase

Hard shell or soft is a genuine trade-off rather than a style question. Polycarbonate resists water and cracks rather than tears; a soft case has external pockets, absorbs knocks and squeezes into a full overhead locker.

Wheels fail first on every case ever made. Two large wheels roll better on pavements and cobbles, four spinner wheels are easier on smooth floors and take the weight off your arm entirely. Check whether the wheels are replaceable, because on a good case they are.

Weigh the empty case. On a strict airline allowance, a case that is a kilogram heavier is a kilogram of clothes you cannot take.

Cabin sizes, which are not standard

There is no universal cabin size. Airlines differ, and several now separate an underseat bag from an overhead one with different dimensions for each.

Measure including the wheels and handles, since that is how a sizer at the gate measures it. And check your airline for the trip you are actually taking rather than the one you took last year.

Using a Bags ETC discount code

Buy the case and the accessories in one order, then enter the code at checkout. Registering the warranty on arrival is worth the five minutes, because luggage guarantees are usually claimed years later.