You’re three days into a work trip in a foreign city, running late for a meeting, and you yank the zipper on your carry-on one last time to force it closed. It catches. You pull harder. The slider pops off the track, and suddenly a piece of luggage that cost you several hundred dollars is, for all practical purposes, an open box with wheels. You find a hotel concierge who points you to a cobbler. You buy a roll of duct tape. You miss your meeting.

The zipper is the single most common failure point on a rolling suitcase. It’s the part under the most stress every time a traveler overpacks, sits on the suitcase’s lid to close it, or hands the bag to a gate agent to be tossed into a cargo hold. And once the zipper goes, most luggage is effectively unusable.

Some brands, like Rimowa and Away, offer repair programs, but they typically require shipping the bag back to a service center or dropping it off in person at a store—a process that can take weeks. Lower-priced brands sometimes find it cheaper to send a customer a replacement bag than to fix the old one, which means the broken suitcase ends up in a landfill.

Cotopaxi, the 12-year-old outdoor brand known for its colorful, llama-logo backpacks and its commitment to sustainability, is offering a solution that could fix those friction points. The brand is launching its first-ever hard-side roller suitcase line, called the Coraza, built on the philosophy that you should be able to fix your luggage when it breaks. It’s available online and in select stores starting today, and costs $295 for the carry-on size and $345 for the checked size.

Each of the parts most likely to fail—the closure, the wheels, and the handles—can be easily repaired at home or on the road. That’s not just more convenient; it also prolongs the life of the suitcase, keeping it out of a landfill. “This has been in development for a few years,” says Cotopaxi CEO Lindsay Shumlas. “The intent was to create something that is built to last, but also built to be fixed.”

A Zipperless Design

Most roller suitcases on the market today close with a zipper, but zippers are notoriously hard to fix. So Cotopaxi’s design team found a different closure mechanism altogether.

Coraza uses two reinforced latches that snap the shell shut, with integrated TSA locks. If a latch ever breaks, Cotopaxi will ship a replacement part to the customer, free of charge, with a QR code inside the bag linking to step-by-step repair videos.

The interior is modular: removable, recycled-polyester liners that function as built-in packing cubes and can be pulled out to hang in a closet.

The wheels, which Shumlas compares to skateboard wheels for the way they glide, come off with a few bolts and can be swapped by the traveler. The ad campaign to launch Coraza features a dancer, a choice Shumlas says was meant to convey how smoothly the bag moves. “I have never had smoother luggage, and it is really the skateboard wheels that do it,” she says.

The swappable wheels also create an opportunity for customization. Customers can buy additional wheel colors on Cotopaxi’s site and mix and match them to create their own combinations. And if the wheels break during a trip, travelers can have a new set quickly shipped—or pick some up in one of Cotopaxi’s two dozen stores around the world—and replace them. The tools required come packaged with the replacements, and the wheels are designed to swap in easily.

Creating a fixable, modular suitcase took years. While polycarbonate shells are an established manufacturing technology, engineering a hard-side bag that opens and closes reliably without a zipper—while still meeting international carry-on dimensions and TSA requirements—meant working closely with Cotopaxi’s factory partners and conducting extensive durability testing. Cotopaxi landed on a shell made from recycled polycarbonate that Shumlas says has held up through her own six months of travel, including a four-week work trip across Asia.

The bag launches in a carry-on and a checked size, each in three colorways, including a black version with blue wheels and two in Cotopaxi’s signature brighter palette. The llama logo sits front and center.

Growing The Business

For Cotopaxi, hard-side luggage is the logical next step. The brand has built its business on backpacks and technical apparel, and already sells a softer, two-wheel rolling duffel. Shumlas argues hard-side luggage is a category that has been quietly begging for the kind of systems thinking that outdoor brands routinely apply to backpacks and tents, where repairability and field-serviceability are taken for granted.

That expansion comes at a moment when other direct-to-consumer luggage players have been struggling. Paravel, a sustainability-focused startup, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. Away, once valued at $1.4 billion, has cut staff in multiple rounds. Both companies scaled rapidly on venture capital. Cotopaxi, by contrast, has funded Coraza’s development without external capital. “We’ve funded all of the innovation investment in this line through our own operating cash flow, and continue to do so,” Shumlas says.

The company now operates more than 20 stores in the U.S. and abroad, including recently opened locations in Japan and South Korea and a new store in Jackson, Wyoming. Shumlas says Cotopaxi opens two to three stores a year, concentrated in urban markets near college campuses—a demographic that has taken to the brand’s backpacks as everyday commuter gear. International expansion, which began five years ago in Tokyo, has become a strategic priority.

Coraza is priced in line with other premium outdoor-adjacent luggage, and replacement parts—wheels, latches, and liners—are free for the life of the bag. In a category where planned obsolescence has long been part of the business model, Cotopaxi is betting that a suitcase built to be fixed by its owner will stand out.

“How often do brands have a lifetime warranty on your luggage, but you’re shipping it back and potentially being shipped a new one?” Shumlas says. “What we’ve done is we’ve made it entirely repairable.”

Ranked: The U.S. Cities With the Most Sunshine

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

Some U.S. cities average nearly 11 hours of sunshine per day—far more than the national norm.

Using NOAA data and visualized by Julie Peasley, this map ranks the 20 sunniest U.S. cities based on annual sunshine hours.

The results highlight a clear geographic divide. Southwestern cities dominate the top of the list, while Florida—despite its nickname—trails California in total entries.

The Sunniest Cities in America

Arizona dominates the very top of the ranking, with Yuma, Phoenix, and Tucson all placing in the top four. But California has the broader showing, with several cities across the state making the top 20.

Rank	City	State	Yearly Sunshine Hours
1	Yuma	AZ	4,015
2	Phoenix	AZ	3,872
3	Las Vegas	NV	3,825
4	Tucson	AZ	3,806
5	El Paso	TX	3,763
6	Sacramento	CA	3,608
7	Fresno	CA	3,564
8	Albuquerque	NM	3,415
9	Los Angeles	CA	3,254
10	Miami	FL	3,154
11	Denver	CO	3,107
12	Oklahoma City	OK	3,089
13	San Francisco	CA	3,062
14	San Diego	CA	3,055
15	Honolulu	HI	3,036
16	Salt Lake City	UT	3,029
17	Boise	ID	2,993
18	Tampa	FL	2,927
19	Wichita	KS	2,922
20	Memphis	TN	2,888

Florida still appears on the list, but its “Sunshine State” reputation does not translate into dominance. Miami and Tampa rank highly, though fewer Florida cities make the cut than California cities.

The Southwest: America’s Sunshine Capital

One pattern stands out immediately: geography drives the rankings. The sunniest cities cluster heavily in the U.S. Southwest, particularly Arizona, Nevada, California, and New Mexico.

Cities like Yuma, Phoenix, and Las Vegas benefit from desert climates where clear skies are the norm. Persistent high-pressure systems suppress cloud formation, while low humidity limits the moisture needed for clouds to develop.

In fact, the Southwest is one of the driest regions in North America. As noted in climate studies, limited precipitation and stable air masses create ideal conditions for near-constant sunshine.

Why So Few Clouds?

The Southwest’s sunshine advantage comes down to a simple recipe: dry air, stable weather patterns, and geography.

• Dry air: Desert regions lack the moisture needed to form clouds.
• High pressure systems: These systems promote sinking air, which inhibits cloud formation.
• Topography: Mountain ranges block moisture from the Pacific Ocean.

Together, these conditions create the clear, sunny skies that define cities like Phoenix, whose climate is comparable to global hotspots like Karachi and Baghdad.

Sunshine Beyond the Desert

While the Southwest leads, other regions still make appearances. Cities like Miami and Tampa benefit from tropical climates with strong seasonal sunshine, while Denver and Boise combine elevation with relatively dry air.

The gap across the ranking is striking. Yuma receives more than 1,000 additional sunshine hours per year than cities at the bottom of the top 20—underscoring how extreme the Southwest’s advantage really is.

Learn More on the Voronoi App

Explore how climate shapes cities worldwide in World Cities by Climate Type on the Voronoi app.

AI is changing how directors and cinematographers work—but not the way you might think

When people think of artificial intelligence in Hollywood, they might picture deepfakes, synthetic actors, or AI-generated scripts and video. Google’s Veo3, along with other tools like Pika Labs and Kling AI, made headlines for their photorealistic AI generated video clips (as did OpenAI’s Sora 2 before the company in March announced plans to shutter it). 

But for freelance filmmakers, the real shift is happening behind the scenes. For years, cinematographers and directors have had to wear many hats: artist, technician, project manager, negotiator. Now, AI is quietly taking over some of the more tedious jobs. 

Short-Form Frontier

Michael Goi, former president of the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) and current co-chair of its AI committee, remembers widespread panic in the industry a few years ago. “There was this blanket fear that AI would completely replace jobs,” he says. 

That fear has been overblown, Goi says. He presented an ASC seminar last year outlining one of the largest hurdles to widespread adoption of AI video—consistency. In a live demonstration with six-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer Caleb Deschanel and AI creator Ellenor Argyropoulos, the filmmakers attempted to use AI tools to generate a specific shot. “Caleb had a very clear vision,” says Goi, “and it was a struggle to even get close.”

Though video AI tools have made significant strides since then, they are still very much geared toward short-form content, with most tools only capable of generating clips of up to two minutes in 4K quality. That’s good news for the growing number of people working on vertical series—Goi among them—who get to test new video-generation models, sometimes before their public launch.

A striking example of what’s now possible is Fruit Love Island, an AI-generated “fruit slop” microdrama from TikTok account @ai.cinema021 that became the platform’s fastest-growing account ever, amassing over 3 million followers in nine days and 300 million total views before coming to an abrupt halt in late March after being flagged for low quality. Each two minute episode allegedly took around 3 hours to make, and are thought to have used text-to-script tools like Object Talk that are then plugged into an AI video generator.    

For most freelance cinematographers, though, the gains of AI aren’t on-screen, but behind the scenes, making it easier to plan how they will capture the shots they need.    

Streamlining storyboards

While fully AI-generated feature films may not be around the corner, filmmakers are regularly using tools like Midjourney and Runway to create storyboards and visual references. 

Rob Berry, a freelance cinematographer whose clients include Bergdorf Goodman and Nordstrom, Berry remembers his first encounter with AI-generated storyboards on a commercial project. “[The clients] were able to make them very quickly, change them the day before the shoot and hand them to me. I was like wow, the future’s here,” he says. 

Director Sage Bennett, who’s shot campaigns for Dior and Jim Beam, sees a similar trend. “Budgets are getting smaller, and expectations are getting bigger,” she says. In her experience, AI is often being used to bridge that gap, though it still needs a human touch. While last year she still thought AI visuals looked a bit “uncanny valley,” she thinks the technology has gotten much better, and she now sees it as almost standard practice for storyboarding and generating visual references. 

Both Berry and Bennett use AI as a kind of creative sounding board: one that never needs to sleep. “Sometimes you just need to talk through a tiny idea,” Sage says. “I’ll ask, ‘Should I push in or pull out for this shot, and why?’ It helps me sharpen my instincts.” Goi also has used AI to suggest focal length or composition for a shot after plugging in a storyboard. 

Berry says AI doesn’t come up with the ideas, but it’s a great tool for organizing his thoughts in pre-production. Both say that in projects that they’ve been on, AI has mostly been used for voiceover or VFX work rather than production itself. On one commercial, Bennett’s team used an AI-generated voiceover as a placeholder while they sourced a real actor — and ended up preferring the AI for the final product.

Even Steven Soderbergh has leaned in: in a recent interview with Variety, the director revealed he used AI-generated imagery in his John Lennon documentary to visualize surrealist sequences that would have otherwise been out of budget with a VFX house. “My job is to deliver a good movie, period,” he told Variety. “And this tool showed up at a moment when I needed it.”

An Invisible Assistant

Where AI shines most for freelancers like Berry is in logistics. “As a creative freelancer, I’m first and foremost running my own business,” he says. He uses tools like ChatGPT to manage his workload: drafting emails, balancing budgets, and organizing project notes. “I told ChatGPT to act like it was my agent at CAA and walk me through a negotiation,” he says. With seven projects on his plate, he says, “If something could scan my inbox and tell me where I’m at with each one, that’s the dream.” 

Bennett also uses AI to streamline pre-production tasks. “I’ll plug in script notes with descriptions, shot sizes, and ask ChatGPT to generate a clean shot list that I can then go in and adjust. I’ll still tweak it, but it saves so much time.” When writing treatments to pitch commercial work, she sometimes uses AI to help with structure and polish. “I still revise everything in my voice, but it speeds up the process.” 

Though companies have begun testing AI generated commercials, Rob hasn’t seen work slow down for him. But he sees staying on top of AI as part of the job now. He’s been teaching himself prompt engineering through hours of trial and error. “Most people ask a question, get an answer, and leave. But if you keep probing and try different characters and approaches, you get way more out of it.” He particularly likes the “deep research” feature of ChatGPT for in-depth reports on, for example, deciding between two cameras, or developing a pre-production checklist for an ASC-level Director of Photography. “It takes a few minutes and comes back with a ten page report, 16 sources.”  He believes that being adept at using the latest technology is key to staying at the forefront of his craft. 

Goi agrees. “There are conversations I’ve had with Jim Cameron and Rob Legato that AI won’t make a mediocre filmmaker great,” he says. “But it can help a great one refine their vision. That’s why we need top of the line filmmakers involved in where this tech is going. The more professionals engage in what should be best practices for [AI’s] use in the industry, the better positioned the technology and creative artists will be as we progress.”

Somehow, the weaker nation is in the stronger negotiating position.

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(Image credit: shapecharge/E+)

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