Herschel Technical Snow Backpacks F/W 2026/27 Preview

Retail Buyers Guide: Technical Snow Backpacks F/W 2026/27 Retail Buyer’s Guide
Brand: Herschel
Interviewee: Adam Mansell, VP International

Which technical snow backpacks sold best in the winter 2024/25 and why?
Our All Season Backpacks performed best this season – this was a new style for us, and it offers a number of key features such as a built-in hydration system, removable waist & sternum strap – which allows you to wear everyday, or also out on the slopes. It also comes with a rescue whilstle, and removable compressions straps for gear attachment. We think this style performed well, as the removable waist and sternum strap means it can be used every day, but is also technical enough to be on the mountains. This was our first season launching our Herschel Outdoors Equipment, and it has been a great offering to our existing, loyal Herschel fans who already buy into our core range.

Which of your 2025/2026 snow backpacks do you expect to perform best at retail and why?
Our All Season Backpack is expected to do well – it comes in a 29L size and 17L. It offers a number of key features such as a built-in hydration system, removable waist & sternum strap – which allows you to wear everyday, or also out on the slopes. It also comes with a rescue whilstle, and removable compressions straps for gear attachment.

Are there any observable trends in the practice of snowboarding that impact product demand and development?
We’re excited to see growing visibility for women in competitive snowboarding — a space that has traditionally been male-dominated. At Herschel, we’re proud to support this progress through our talented roster of female team riders, including Emma Crosby, Savannah Shinske, and Stine Tønnessen. While participation in snowsports still skews approximately 70% male to 30% female, we believe the rising profile of women in competition will continue to close that gap in the years ahead. As a brand with a near 50/50 male-to-female customer base, we recognize a clear opportunity to offer more female-focused styles within snowsports. Reflecting this, our upcoming 2026 collections introduce tones such as Moonbeam (a soft off-white) and Heron (a feminine purple hue inspired by the light that lingers before sunrise and after sunset). Additionally, in S3 26 we’ve expanded our Herschel Outdoor Equipment range with Edge Purple Camo — a fresh, female-forward colorway within our Realtree® collaboration.

What are the technical highlights in construction and materials of your 2026/27 collection?
With all our Herschel Outdoors Equipment product, we try to make travelling with the collection as seamless as possible. So whether that be adding an internal tool organization system to our All Season Backpacks to keep things organized and accessible, too adding a removable waist strap with gear attachment tabs – we always want to make travelling with our product as seamless and stress free as possible. Our All Season Duffle features a modular connection system, which allows users to seamlessly attach it to their duffle bag – offering you a free hand to be able to use your phone or navigate to your next destination.

What color palettes, prints or patterns are you featuring in your 2026/27 collection?
For 2026 and 2027, we launch our Moonbeam colourway, this is an off-white colour – which has consistently been a top seller in our mainline collection over the last few years.
Similarly, we added Ash Rose to the collection to bring a more feminine edge to our bags. Looking ahead to S3 26 – we launch an exciting partnership with Realtree® to introduce two of their iconic camo patterns to our All Season and Snow Roller ranges; APX Camo, and Edge Purple Camo. Camo is a print which has always done well for us, and has been a part of our DNA since Herschel was founded in 2009. This is the first time we have launched a partnership in our Herschel Outdoors Equipment collection, and we are excited to launch with Realtree® – a brand which was founded in the outdoors space due to it’s realistic camos, and has crossed over into streetwear fashion. The collection feels really authentic to us, and will allow us to reach our street style consumer, who also needs a bag to take them from the everyday outdoors to their snowboarding trips. We also introduce new seasonal colorway Brindle, a versatile earth tone exclusive to our Ultralight range.

Which technical snowpacks do you expect the most growth from in 2026/2027 and why?
As a brand, we are focused on growing our womens business in both our mainline, and Herschel Outdoors Equipment. For this reason, we would expect to see growth in female silhouettes and colourways from 26 onwards. The ski & snow industries collections can still be very male dominated, with limited femininity. For this reason, we would expect to see growth in our 17L & 29L All Season Backpacks – these are smallver versions of the 36L All Season Pro backpack. We are expecting growth in the more feminine colours such as moonbeam and ash rose – which form part of our core colour palette, and in seasonal colourways Heron and Edge Purple Camo (part of our real tree collection, further details above)

How are you implementing sustainability in your products and production processes?
First and foremost, our focus is to build high quality, durable product, which doesn’t require replacing. We are so confident in this, that we back all our bags & accessories with a lifetime warranty. Within our Herschel Outdoors Equipment, our two main lines are our Ultralight collection, made with 100% recycled polyester liner. And our All Season bags made from 100% recycled polyester.

What are your marketing stories for 2026/27?
We kick off our S1 collection in January, focused on our Realtree® Partnership in our mainline collection. We also have an exciting new womens focused range called Cloudform – our softest collection yet. It is a range of feminine focused, silhouettes on an ultra soft fabrication. S2 launches in April, where we introduce our new Heron colourway in Herschel Outdoors Equipment. Another feminine addition to our Outdoors collection, Heron is a purple tone, inspired by the colour that lingers before sunrise and after sunset – it really captures the transition between day and night, when the outdoors feels infinite. It compliments the core black & moonbeam colours that are available in our existing Herschel Outdoors Equipment line. S3 launches in July, in the core backpack space this is where we focus on back to school. But within outdoors, we will be excited to launch our Realtree® collaboration – this is the first time we have launch a partnership within our Herschel Outdoors Equipment range.

How are you helping retailers to sell this category?
As standard, we provide all our retailers with:

Product imagery
Enhanced PDP stills for site – clearly showing the features and benefits of our technical product
Enhanced PDP videos for site – silent, 20 second visuals highlighting the key features of the bags
Product knowledge videos – these are 1-2 minute long videos of our team walking through the product. We encourage retailers to use these on site, or to refer to for staff training
In person staff training
Strutcards, and window display kits for stores
We also supply our retailers with seeding product – this can be used to seed talent, press, their team riders, or for store teams to be able to use themselves, in order to test out and confidently talk about the product
Press releases
Campaign assets (stills & videos pre sized for social, we also resize any videos or imagery they might require on site)

Ultimately, our aim is to be easy to do business with – we provide as many templated assets as possible, which are readily available on our media database, which all our retailers have access too. We always support with additional asset creation requests as well, knowing that some of the independent retailers we work with don’t have the ability to re-size in house.

Key Products:

Realtree® All Season Resort Backpack 14L:
RRP 120 Euro Rooted in the wild. We partnered with Realtree®, innovators in camo design, to reimagine the All Season Resort Backpack from our outdoor performance line. Featuring their iconic camo on custom All Season fabric, it includes a removable waist strap with pockets, quick-access side sleeves and an internal tool organization system. Packed with safety features, it’s equipped with a strap pocket to fit most standard sized rescue radios and GPS devices, and a sternum strap with an integrated rescue whistle.

Realtree® All Season Resort Backpack 14L

Realtree® All Season Duffle 41L:
RRP 160 Euro Featuring their iconic camo on custom All Season fabric, it’s built with a large main compartment and a three-point carrying system. With modular connectivity, it seamlessly attaches to our roller bags.

REALTREE ALL SEASON DUFFLE

Snow Roller Bag 168cm:
The Snow Roller Bag 168cm is built with all-terrain wheels, water-resistant tarpaulin liner and seamlessly attaches to our All Season duffles using modular connectivity, allowing you to easily travel with a spare hand to navigate. With a compact design, it folds in half for storage and transport – perfect for those with limited storage space.

snow roller