About
Every part of a backpack improved except the one touching your back.
Straps became adjustable, fabrics became waterproof, frames got lighter. The surface actually pressed against your spine, the one that decides whether you arrive comfortable, is still a slab of closed-cell foam. It does nothing.
ErgoFlo started as a commute problem. Twenty minutes on foot from a train, a laptop in the pack, and a shirt that had to be changed on arrival, every day, all summer. A warm machine and a warm back, sealed either side of a closed-cell foam pad, with nowhere for the heat to go.
Everything sold as a fix moves the foam around: channels cut into it, mesh suspended over it, shapes that widen the gap and then rely on you walking fast enough to flush it. All of that is a bet that convection will show up, and on a still August platform it doesn’t.
So we went after the boring version instead: two quiet blowers and a tensioned mesh window between your back and the bag, running off a cell small enough to forget about, sized to fit the pack you already carry. You keep your backpack, and there is no app.
What we hold to
01
Retrofit, don’t replace
You already own a pack that fits you and has your things in it. Asking you to throw it away to get cooler means a worse product at a bigger price. The cooling should be the part you add.
02
Quiet or it doesn’t ship
If you can hear the fan you turn it off, and then you have paid extra for a foam pad. 26 dB is the gate the design has to clear. Two prototypes were abandoned because you could plainly hear them across a room.
03
Targets labelled as targets
26 dB, 168 g, 4-6 hours: every one of those is a design target we have not measured, and we label it that way everywhere it appears. We would rather you trusted the number we publish after we have actually taken it.
How it got here
Including the parts that didn’t work, because those are the ones that shaped it.
The category is passive, and nobody says so
Osprey AntiGravity, Deuter Aircomfort, Gregory FreeFloat: the best-known back-panel systems are all described by their own makers as tensioned mesh over a frame. Vaucluse even sells a dedicated retrofit ventilation frame, and it works the same way. Every one of them builds an air gap and leaves the moving of air to you.
The first one was terrible
Two 80mm computer fans zip-tied to a cut-down laptop stand, run off a power bank in the water-bottle pocket. Loud enough to get looks on a train, heavy enough to feel dishonest. It was also, obviously, cooler, and that was enough to keep going.
We tried one fan and went back to two
We moved to a single axial fan to kill two noise sources and two failure points, and for a while that was the design. It could not move enough air through a 5 mm channel to be worth carrying. So we went back to two PWM blowers, mounted on a rigid deck so vibration never reaches your back. Blowers push against resistance in a way axial fans do not, and a 5 mm channel is mostly resistance. That reversal cost us runtime, 4-6 hours per set of batteries instead of 9-12, and it made the 26 dB target harder than it was.
Rigid backing was the wrong instinct
A stiff plate holds an air channel open right up until a spine moves. Swapping it for tensioned 3D spacer mesh, 5mm loft held under load by the PETG frame itself, fixed the airflow and the way the panel sits on a back in one change.
We gave up on the rechargeable battery, and it made the product better
A 2000mAh lithium cell is easy to buy and hard to ship: UN38.3 transport testing, IEC 62133, air-freight rules, and a cell that can vent or catch fire strapped to somebody’s back. We were going to do it anyway. Then we asked what the product loses if it just takes AA batteries out of an empty compartment, and the answer was a nicer spec sheet and nothing else. You buy the batteries, you swap them at a gas station, and there is no charging cable to forget. It’s a worse line on paper and a much better thing to actually put in the world.
A preorder, and what that costs you
168 g, 4-6 hours, 26 dB: all targets, none of them measured, on a design with no cell chosen and no test report to its name. We spent a while refusing to take money at this stage, and the argument against it hasn’t gone away, because what is left is most of the engineering rather than a manufacturing run. We’re taking preorders anyway, because the build needs funding to happen at all. Be clear-eyed about the deal. Preorders are final, so if you change your mind we can’t give the money back, because by then it will already be spent on the build. What we do guarantee is that if we’re late you can walk away with a full refund, and if we abandon it you get every cent back. If that isn’t a bet you want to make, the notify list costs nothing.
Who’s building it
ErgoFlo is a student business project by Lucas Nam and Edison Hsu. It is not a company and no business entity stands behind it. We’re two students taking preorders for something we haven’t built yet.
ErgoFlo is a student project, not a company, and no business entity has been formed. The people named on this site are students working on a design together. Nothing on this site creates a partnership, joint venture, agency relationship, or any ownership interest, and no one named here has authority to enter into obligations on anyone else's behalf.
Osprey, AntiGravity, Deuter, Aircomfort, Gregory, FreeFloat, Vaucluse and Kuchofuku are trademarks of their respective owners. ErgoFlo is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any of them. They are named only to describe the current state of the category, and all statements about their products reflect those companies' own published descriptions.
Back the first run.
You’d be paying for a design rather than a finished product, and preorders are final. If you’d rather wait, the notify list costs nothing.