How the Shiny, Viral Hulken Bag Became a $50 Million Brand
The rolling totes resonated online with makeup artists, caterers and other niche professional audiences before going mainstream.
Photo illustration: Ryan Haskins for Bloomberg Businessweek; photos: Hulken; Getty Images
In the early 2010s, Alex Schinasi’s dad sketched out an idea he had to make shopping easier: a tote made of tough yet pliable plastic, big enough for carting around six grocery bags, that rolled on wheels. As an executive at Codefine International SA, a Swiss company that manufactures large industrial bags for transporting everything from animal feed to mined ores, he was able to get a few samples made for his family, including his daughter.
Schinasi, a tech entrepreneur who’s launched and sold two software startups, would roll the bag to the grocery store near her home in Brooklyn, New York. Her husband, Yoni Sheleg, a musician, filled it with amps, cymbals and gig equipment. Everywhere they went, strangers would stop and obsess over the bag’s utilitarian look—something like a boxier IKEA tote on wheels. In 2018, Schinasi and Sheleg started to turn their family’s prototype into a real product and created a Shopify site for the bag, which they called Hulken. When Covid-19 hit and Sheleg’s gigs dried up, the couple doubled down and launched the bag to the masses. “We wanted to make sure we had a product that was not just practical but fashionable, and something people would be proud of having by their side,” Schinasi says.