Born to Roam:The Adventure Bag Came to Life

Born to Roam: How the Adventure Bag for Starlink Mini Came to Life

When I crossed the border between Western Sahara and Mauritania—driving through a mined stretch of no man’s land—I was stunned. Completely speechless.

I’ve visited over 60 countries in my life, most of them explored far off the beaten track in a 4x4 expedition car, practicing what I call “immersive exploration.” But nothing could have prepared me for what happened at the Mauritanian border—known as the toughest crossing in all of Africa.

I was logged in as a “unit.” They didn’t check my passport. No questions. No destination asked. A soldier in a dusty field uniform, his head wrapped in a sky-blue “tagelmust” like the Tuaregs and Saharan nomads wear, simply looked me deeply in the eye and said two words: “bon voyage”…

Later, out on the endless desert—scorching hot by day, freezing cold by night—with no SIM card working, no chance of setting up camp outside designated military zones due to security risks, it hit me. Hard.

Staying connected isn’t just about work. It can be the difference between safety and being completely alone in the middle of nowhere.

Staying online on epic journeys is no small feat. For people like us—digital nomads, explorers, creators—Internet access isn’t a luxury. It’s a lifeline. But once you leave the grid and head deep into the wild, the signal vanishes.

And that’s where this story begins…

The African Spark

It all started in February 2024, during the world’s toughest amateur rally—Budapest to Bamako. A route inspired by the legendary Paris-Dakar Rally.

For three intense weeks, we battled Africa’s raw unpredictability: the scorching heat and bone-chilling cold, endless Saharan sand, razor-sharp rocks, and sometimes even our own limits. We pushed through Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. Africa threw challenge after challenge at us—broken vehicles, constant fuel shortages, and zero reception, even with local SIM cards. Internet? Forget it.

A currency exchange shack in the desert. 

And every night, under the howling desert wind—there was still work to be done. Global e-commerce never sleeps. It runs across three time zones and demands you stay connected from literally anywhere. Without the internet, it’s like driving blindfolded—straight into failure.

That’s when the thought hit me: “We need Starlink. But not that bulky one on a tripod—something mobile, lightweight, ready for any trail.”

The problem? The mobile version back then was absurdly expensive—$4,000 to $5,000 just for the gear, not to mention the astronomical subscription costs.

The saving grace came in the form of one team—out of over 400 rally crews. They had a Starlink Gen 2 with a motorized stand. Nearly a thousand people tried to get on that connection. Of course, it wasn’t possible. We often waited for hours just to check something mission-critical online. Another layer of frustration—after 16 to 18 hours of brutal off-road driving each day, we were utterly spent. Wake-ups at 5 AM, setting up camp past midnight… it wore everyone down.

Senegal - Guinea mountain border

But still—we searched for the miracle of Starlink. And honestly, I’m grateful for that experience, even though it pushed me way beyond my limits.

First Test, First Letdown

When the Starlink Mini finally launched in Europe in June, I didn’t even blink—I ordered it immediately and took it on a short test trip through the Pyrenees, following the GR11 travers trail, known as “Senda Pirenaica.”

It worked flawlessly. I mean—wow, I had a connection anytime!
…But then came the “but.” It came in a basic cardboard box. No protection. No convenience. No sense.

Every single time it was the same routine: unpack, unfold, prop it up on something, then pack it all back again. And during the drive, the plastic antenna would slide around the dashboard, the cable twisted into a chaotic mess. The box? It disintegrated after the first downpour. The frustration was real.

That’s when the idea started brewing.
What if I made a bag—not just any bag, not something off-the-shelf that “kinda fits”—but one that could let you connect to the internet on the move? One that protects the gear, powers it, survives any weather… solves all the problems I’d just faced… and looks badass doing it.

That’s when the vision for the Adventure Bag was born.

Designing from Scratch

In September, two months after returning from the Pyrenees, the vision became bigger than just creating the Adventure Bag—it was about changing my life entirely.

At the time, I was working with four other people, running an e-commerce business based on selling premium branded products through marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart, Kaufland, Otto, and many others. The products came from Polish distributors, which gave us what seemed like an edge—they were slightly cheaper in the distribution chain compared to our competitors.
At least, that’s what we thought at the beginning...

After three years of building this semi drop-shipping model, we had over 150,000 SKUs listed, across categories like Home & Kitchen, Sports, Garden, Toys, Tools, and more. We were selling on three continents—USA, Australia, and Europe.
But I started to feel serious burnout.

Processing dozens of packages daily, selling products I felt no connection with. And on top of that, the profits? Close to zero. Everyone else in the food chain was earning—marketplaces, couriers, warehouses, distributors… but not us. The margins we were left with hovered around 1–2%.

That’s how brutal the competition is in this space. To break even, we’d probably need to offer 500–600 thousand products and sell through 50–60 marketplaces—just to play the game of “what’s cheaper today” or “what’s in stock while others are out.”

The volume of data we were generating, the daily stream of problems—it was overwhelming. Even during that epic African journey, we spent hours talking about this cannibalistic monster we’d created.

If you asked me who I am—I’d say I’m someone who loves to create. Someone who finds joy in building something from scratch, taking full responsibility, making bold decisions and owning the outcome. I live for shaping reality, learning every step of the process, pushing through every obstacle, planning in detail and executing from A to Z. And in the end, growing together with the satisfaction and gratitude of the people who use what I’ve built. I’m proud when you’re happy—when I get to be a small part of your journeys.

To cut a long story short, I decided to do something that truly mattered to me—I quit. I walked away from everything I was part of. I said goodbye to my former partners.

I left with unfinished dreams, a broken sense of self, and the bitter thought that maybe I’d taken the wrong path. A path driven by money, recognition, scale—but not by joy. The pressure kept building. More stress, more long meetings and discussions that felt more like survival tactics than building something meaningful. Months of working for free, being told “one day it’ll all pay off.” Being shown how to do things while slowly losing all creative influence.

The people I worked with are truly good people, and I’m grateful for the time we shared. But we’re very different. We see business through completely different lenses. That’s another lesson I took from that experience.

Sometimes in life, we just don’t know what to do. Our subconscious grips us tightly—hands and feet—whispering, “Don’t move. It could be worse.” It scares us with the unknown. And in moments like that, the real answer isn’t deciding what to do—it’s knowing what you absolutely don’t want to keep doing.

That’s exactly what happened to me.

I made the decision—even with no savings, no car, and no business partners—that I couldn’t stay where I was. I knew this choice couldn’t wait. It was either change everything… or be crushed by the work that was slowly draining the life out of me.

I made the decision—without any clear plan of what would come next—to walk away from it all.

Of course, I talked it through with my partners. And strangely, it felt like a relief for everyone. As it turned out, they’d also had enough, but didn’t really know how to tell me I’d become… well, persona non grata. That my vision, my drive to scale, my obsession with blazing new trails just didn’t align with their approach to business or life.

So everything ended respectfully, the way it should. I wrapped up all remaining matters quickly—it took another two to three months. And then, one morning, I woke up and realized I was on my own.

A blank slate.
A head full of hope and dreams.
Time to start over.
And I had a powerful asset: 100% of my time, ready to be shaped however I wanted.

So I got to work.
I’d never designed anything made of textile materials—let alone technical ones—but I had a vision.

I went through hundreds of tactical backpack designs and quickly saw two camps:

1. The Chinese approach: cram in every possible feature, make it cheap, make it look good in pictures on Amazon, quality optional.
2. The military-grade approach: raw, rugged, built like a tank—gear used by the U.S. Army or Polish special forces.

I chose the second philosophy: no gimmicks, just what works. Total function.

Have you ever thought about what separates a car from a tank—aside from the obvious?
It’s that a tank has not a single unnecessary part.
Built like a tank. Nothing unnecessary.
That became my design DNA.

I also knew, from my years on the road, there’d be no compromises.
Only original Cordura 1000D.
YKK zippers.
TS548 IR-compliant MOLLE straps.
Bonded nylon thread.
Minimalist. Functional. Indestructible.

And the bag had to be built by a serious manufacturer—one with years of experience producing military-grade gear.

Two months later, I had it all sketched out. Every detail.
Now I just needed someone to sew it.

Sourcing – The Battle for Quality

The first and most obvious direction was China. I reached out to about ten factories. Replies came fast—even on Sundays—but none of them actually read through my design. To them, a bag is just a bag. I asked for Cordura? They offered me “Cordura-style nylon.” Two weeks later, I had more frustration than quotes. No one asked what I wanted to build—only how many. No one cared about the prototype—they just wanted to know if I was aware of their MOQ (Minimum Order Quantity).

In three cases the conversation moved forward a bit, but I was always dealing with assistants who had to check everything with someone else. I get it. I understand how it works. I’m not here to criticize—it’s a system, and filtering inquiries by budget is sometimes necessary.

But I was all-in on this. I couldn’t hand over my only card to someone who was already sprinting toward the next order without giving a damn about the details.

Sure, I know there are excellent factories in China that make top-quality gear. But they need orders of 1000+ units in one color, and it takes 3–5 months. That just wasn’t my scale.

So I walked away from China disappointed—and honestly, I’m glad I did. That frustration was a gift.

Next, I turned to Poland—my home country. I found great workshops, and without any language barrier I could explain everything quickly, pour my emotions into it… but no one wanted to source premium materials.

Some even said it out loud: “Polish Kodura is the same as original Cordura, but cheaper!”

Poland is a country with relatively young democracy. And even though EU funding has helped modernize it—on the surface it often looks more advanced than many Western countries—the mindset is still deeply rooted in its socialist past.

As the last presidential elections showed, more than half the country believes the government simply “has money” and should hand it out. Everything is owed. Everything must be cheap. A bargain is the only reason to buy. What matters is who hacks the system best or gets it for less.

To me, that mindset is toxic. It doesn’t resonate with me at all.

Still, I believed there had to be places in Poland where quality matters. After all, a lot of amazing products are made there—white-labeled for big cosmetic, sports, and automotive brands. A great example? The quiet upholstery factories near the eastern border that, under strict NDAs, produce leather interiors for brands like Porsche, Bentley, Rolls-Royce, Maserati, and Ferrari…

After speaking with a few potential workshops, I chose a small one and commissioned the first prototype. Three weeks later… what I received was a mess—something that barely resembled my design.

Unfortunately, even though the workshop had experience sewing their own backpacks, working with a relatively rigid material like 1000D Cordura on a compact product exceeded their technical skills. They gave up after the first version, without even trying to improve it. Just called it quits.
You should’ve seen how it looked...

But I didn’t give up. I started searching again, this time with a new plan—create a professional 3D model.

So I reached out to a brilliant designer from Peru—Candy Vargas. After just five days, based on our conversation and my sketches, she delivered a visualization that finally matched my vision. I couldn’t stop staring at it.

And it was the right move. That model made it so much easier to show exactly what I wanted. It instantly helped me weed out the wrong offers and focus only on the serious ones.

Then, almost by accident—thanks to a friend’s recommendation—I reached out to another workshop.
And finally—bingo.

I found a small company with over ten years of experience making top-tier backpacks, bags, pouches, and military-grade gear—as well as products for the civilian market. They used only original Cordura and knew the craft inside and out.

The owner, Ania, is an award-winning designer. We met. She understood everything immediately. One week later, I had the first prototype in my hands.

And I knew—this was it.

1st Production Prototype

Production Like Surgery

Together with Ania, we took the bag out into the field for testing. We made a few tweaks, but they were minor—wider zipper on the second pocket, a bigger handle, a reflective strap. Then we moved on to producing the final prototype. I commissioned the first small batch in a single color.

Every Adventure Bag was handcrafted. Every seam, every strap measured down to the millimeter. Ania personally oversaw each piece. The production was handled by three seamstresses—each one specialized in a different stage of the build.

The first batch of ten bags was completed right on schedule. Some were shipped to Australia, the rest stayed in Europe. The first two units went straight to handpicked YouTubers—people who really know how to test gear in the wild. They specialized in Starlink Mini setups.

The first reviews were incredible. And that lifted me up. It gave everything real meaning.
There were no sales yet, but the fact that the Adventure Bag resonated—that people noticed all the small details that were crucial to me—proved I was on the right path.

More Than Just the Adventure Bag for Starlink Mini

The Adventure Bag for Starlink Mini isn’t just another product. It’s a solution to real travel problems. The result of passion, frustration, relentless testing, and an obsession with quality. It was created so you can simply… connect to the world—wherever you are.
Built to serve you for years. Built to spark memories every time you grab it—whether from a weekend hike or a wild expedition.
It’s meant to be a trusted part of your gear—tailored to your needs and never letting you down.

From the first idea to the final product—every decision was intentional. Every detail has a purpose. Every gram of material plays its role.

Thank you for your trust—to all of you who’ve already bought it, for being part of this journey. Because of you, this huge shift in my life has meaning. The good energy I poured into this work came back to me, stronger than ever. Thank you for every kind comment and for every suggestion. Because like Harry Bosch said: “Everybody counts, or nobody does.”

If you ever want to ask something—just write to me. I promise I’ll reply to every message.
Wishing you an absolutely fantastic day!

Radek LEO

P.S. I’d love for you to check out the short film on our YouTube — it captures the heart of this story in a way words never could.

 ▶ Watch the film on YouTube