Roller boards and carts or sack trucks are practical, but also bulky – Geza Lakatos and Jan Nordhoff are convinced of that. The two founders of Rollyz invented a handy furniture roller system. We tested it.

Anyone who has moved more than once knows about the physical (and mental) stress that moving house entails. Geza Lakatos knows the problem well enough. The designer has often had to move for professional reasons. However, since he doesn’t own a car, he took the train to get his belongings from one place to the next. “Once when I had to transport some heavy packages through half of Germany, I realized that there was no small, practical transport option for boxes and crates that also looked good,” the founder recalls, how he came up with the idea for Rollyz has come. On the same day he made his first sketches for his handy roller system and went to a 3D printer in Berlin. There he met Jan-Hinrich Northoff, co-founder of his start-up.

The sack truck for your pocket: That’s Rollyz

Together, the two inventors worked out a new mobility and transport solution: Rollyz, a kind of “sack truck for your pocket”. The handy furniture roller system can be used universally – for the next move, a spontaneous rearranging action or heavy furniture transport. There are three different solutions for this:

Rollyz is currently (still) available in two different colours, as a set of 2 and as a set of 4 in red and/or black. The transport rollers each carry 50 kilograms (each) and are made of bio-based plastic – using a complex process with a 3D printer. But how exactly does the application work in practice? We tested it.

Practical test: This is how the handy rollers are used

For the experiment we used a set of 2, which includes two black transport rollers and two red transport belts as well as matching adhesive pads – you would have to use your own accessories for screwing. Our tester has just moved and has the whole apartment full of heavy, packed boxes that are difficult to carry. So we put two boxes on top of each other, tightened the straps and pushed the two boxes through the apartment by tilting them slightly towards your body. It worked amazingly well and was child’s play, both to assemble and to transport the heavy moving boxes.

We then tried attaching the adhesive pads to a piece of furniture and removing them again – that also worked without any problems. What didn’t work out well at all, however, was the transport of a large loudspeaker, which wasn’t due to Rollyz, but to the construction of the boxes. These stand on small feet, which were longer than the roles. As a result, the loudspeaker could hardly be transported and, on top of that, the floor was also scratched. In addition, the buckles of the tension belts scratched the paintwork directly on the edges due to incorrect placement (which was the tester’s fault, a small warning would have been useful here).

Conclusion: If you use the transport rollers correctly, they are a practical help in everyday life. Thanks to their handy size, they fit in any pocket and can be used anywhere. The design is plain and simple, but whether you want to put Rollyz in your apartment permanently (which the start-up uses to advertise, among other things) remains to be seen.

Can Geza Lakatos and Jan Nordhoff also convince the lions with their new mobility and transport solution? The founders hope for an investment of 125,000 euros and are prepared to give up 15 percent of their company shares. You can see whether a juror will strike tonight in “Die Höhle der Löwen” at 8:15 p.m. on Vox.

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