Vivian Lin (林易萱), a 30-year-old local office worker, has traveled abroad three times over the past three years.
During that three-year period, Lin bought two suitcases with different sizes and styles.
“Other than the functionality, I found brand familiarity and design to be the two major deciding factors when choosing and purchasing a suitcase,” Lin told the Taipei Times in a telephone interview.
Photo: Amy Su, Taipei Times
Compared with five years ago, an increasing number of Taiwanese in their 30s see fashion and style as important elements when choosing suitcases.
To capitalize on this trend, Samsonite Pacific Ltd (美商新秀麗太平洋), a subsidiary of the US-based Samsonite International SA, is introducing a new premium luggage and leather goods brand, Hartmann, to Taiwan in the second half of this year.
The Hartmann brand, founded in 1877, is recognized as a mark of luxury by consumers in the US, leading Samsonite International, the world’s largest travel luggage company to acquire it in 2012.
Samsonite Pacific opened its first Hartmann outlet in Taiwan in August at Mega City (板橋大遠百), a shopping mall owned by the Far Eastern Group (遠東集團) in New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋).
The company further plans to launch two new outlets under the Hartmann brand by the end of this year, at Top City (台中大遠百) in Greater Taichung and T.S. Dream Mall (南紡夢時代購物中心) in Greater Tainan respectively, to expand the brand’s market coverage to central and southern Taiwan.
Eyeing a similar target audience as Rimowa — a German-based luxury luggage brand widely known in Taiwan — Samsonite Pacific is scheduled to raise its total Hartmann outlets in Taiwan to nearly 10 in three years, compared with a total of 14 Rimowa stores nationwide.
“We hope to build up Hartmann’s brand awareness among Taiwanese customers with medium to high-level consumption power in the preliminary stage of operations,” Samsonite Pacific general manager Nick Lin (林福平) told the Taipei Times in an interview earlier this month.
Lin said there are many Taiwanese consumers in their 30s or even younger with strong purchasing ability who are willing to spend more on a suitcase for a quality brand and unique style, as Taiwan became the third Asian market to welcome the Hartman brand, after Japan and China.
These medium to high-income consumers usually show steadier purchasing ability than other consumers, even amid sluggish economic sentiment, which made Lin confident in the Hartmann brand’s development in Taiwan.
However, the situation also reflected major uncertainty in the suitcase market as a whole, due to the close connection between luggage sales and the global economy.
Global economic weakness may drag down the sales momentum of travel luggage, as the number of business trips declines because of slowing economic activity and people have less money to travel abroad on vacation, Lin said.
That made Samsonite International accelerate its expansion into the bag industry over the past few years, either by raising the proportion of such products under its current brands, or merging and acquiring new brands.
“The bag industry, both in Taiwan and globally, has enjoyed higher and steadier demand than travel luggage,” Lin said. “We hope the company can have a place in the bag sector in the long-term future, while consolidating our strength in luggage industry as well.”
Taking the Hartmann brand as an example, non-travel products currently account for about half of its overall products, leading Samsonite International to reformulate the brand’s concept and product mix after acquiring it, Lin said.
As for the company’s main brand, Samsonite, the company gradually raised its proportion of non-travel products to about 30 percent, he added.
To boost its product diversification, Samsonite International has also acquired several brands since 2012, enabling it to expand its presence not only in the high-end luggage and leather goods market, but also into the outdoor lifestyle and the smartphone case businesses.
Samsonite International now owns eight brands, with products including luggage, business and computer bags, outdoor and casual bags, and travel accessories across various price bands to cover consumers from the middle to the top of the spending range.
In addition to Samsonite and Hartmann, the other six are: Samsonite Red, American Tourister, High Sierra, Lipault, Speck and Grogery.
In Taiwan — a market with great diversity — Lin said all of the company’s brands have their own potential in development, with the Samsonite brand having entered the nation’s market more than 20 years ago.
However, the company’s business in Taiwan suffered from poor brand positioning and sales channel confusion.
Because of this, Lin committed himself to channel reform and brand repositioning after joining the company’s management in August 2009, by setting up a straightforward channel strategy for the company’s brands.
The channels for the Hartmann, Samsonite and Samsonite Red brands are concentrated in department stores, with American Tourister — a young and fashionable travel brand with mid-level prices — to expand sales from department stores and hypermarkets to e-commerce channels, aiming to generate volume via trade-ups from local brands.
As for Samsonite’s two outdoor lifestyle brands with different price bands — Gregory and High Sierra — and smartphone case manufacturer Speck, Lin developed a strategy to license sales of these brands to an exclusive agent in Taiwan.
Internally, Lin improved the assignment of responsibility at Samsonite Pacific, while boosting the company’s profitability by reforming inventory and warehouse management, which has helped lower the company’s costs in the sector by 30 percent.
The moves sparked a nearly three-fold growth in sales last year from 2009, rebounding quickly from the global financial crisis in 2008 and further drawing its parent group’s attention to Taiwan’s strong market potential, which had previously been seen as relatively small.
The company plans to introduce newly acquired brand Lipault to Taiwan in the second half of next year, Lin said, as it aims to maintain its momentum in the nation via the youthful French luggage brand with functional and fashionable designs.
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