Samsonite has achieved pre-COVID-19 level sales this festive season: Anushree Tainwala

Samsonite is the world’s largest travel luggage companies. With a heritage dating back more than 110 years, the company has developed and widely commercialised numerous innovations in luggage, establishing key industry trends and adapting to evolving consumer needs. The brand caters to the huge mass premium luggage and backpack market in India.

With its aspirational value, Samsonite caters to the wide range of low to premium segment of the consumers, offering the products to suit the different tastes of consumers with traditional to the trendy design range. The brand has been associated with cricketer Virat Kohli for over 5 years, who has been part of the brand’s communication across multiple platforms.

Anushree Tainwala, Executive Director - Marketing, Samsonite, spoke to Adgully on the brand’s journey so far, how they keep innovating themselves by offering a whole range of new products to their customers, e-commerce strategy, association with Virat Kohli and more.

The pandemic disrupted several industries and the travel industry was the worst affected. How did it impact your brand American Tourister as people were afraid of travelling and the need for travel gear was low on priority?

The pandemic has affected all the industry and nobody has been spared from its impact, be it an individual or a company. While the lockdown months affected the sales, later on there has been slow recovery for the brand. As the “Why” factor of buying behaviour has a bigger role to play, strong brands such as ours can sail through this positively as we have been consistently keeping our brand promise of delivering durable yet trendy design products in the market. While the consumption patterns will continue to evolve till external factors stabilise, the brand has already achieved the monthly sales level of 2019 since October 2021.

Overall what has been the positioning of brands American Tourister and Samsonite? How have you differentiated yourself in the marketplace, where you have other leading brands and unorganised players who dominate?

The brand has existed since 1933, that is, for over 80 years now, yet we have been successful in positioning the brand as a “Young, Vibrant, Joyful, Easy going” international brand through our communication and also through the globally tested travel companion product assortments. The brand caters to the huge mass premium luggage and backpack market in India. With its aspirational value, it caters to the wide range of low to premium segment of the consumers, offering the products to suit the different consumers’ tastes with traditional to trendy design range.

How has the festive season for the brand this year, as last year was a washout?  Any tactical promotional campaign that you had done to woo the customers during this festive season?

The brand has achieved pre-COVID-19 level sales this festive season. Every colleague, irrespective of department, age, experience, has put their hearts and souls into this achievement. We released a small campaign “Swag Mera American Tourister” during the month of October to delight the swagsters “Young” generation of our country. We had channel-specific offers so that we could cater to the consumers’ expectations better.

You recently celebrated the 5th anniversary of your association with Virat Kohli. How has this association helped the brand? Why did you choose a cricketer and not a Bollywood celebrity?

Virat Kohli is an international sports legend and cultural icon. Virat has always been our only choice for the role. His confidence, accomplishments, and stylish personality were the perfect fit for everything American Tourister stands for. Virat has been an integral part of the brand’s multi-platform outreach. He has been at the forefront of several of American Tourister’s largest pan-India promotions, including many popular communications such as ‘#I’m Ready’, ‘#Swagpack’, and ‘#YourAccessToTheWorld’, ‘#GoSwagpackin’. These campaigns have driven holistic media coverage and achieved fantastic BTL outcomes. Virat has also provided extensive support to the brand across his social media channels, and extended challenges to his social network as part of multiple high-decibel campaigns. A signature luggage collection, released to commemorate the 2019 Cricket World Cup, also featured Virat’s signature – an iconic contribution from the captain of the Indian cricket team and one of the world’s best batsmen.

The omni channel route has expanded. How have you leveraged the online platform for your brands, especially after the pandemic, which forced many brands to look at innovative ways of reaching the last mile?

The brand has got first movers’ advantage on all e-commerce market places as we understood the importance of digital and e-commerce many years back. We have a lion’s share on all e-commerce platforms and always have some or the other initiatives running so that consumers can be delighted with our offerings.

We also have plans to tie up with omni-channel platforms, which can offer seamless omni-channel fulfilment experience by bringing together both online and offline channels. This platform will power order management, inventory management, logistics and catalogue management, etc. This would be our step towards further providing a great experience to our customers.

How do the next two years look like for the luggage industry? What are the plans for Samsonite to stay ahead of the competition and drive sales?

Both the brands – Samsonite and American Tourister – have plans stored. It is too early to comment on the same. Needless to say, we will be ahead of the curve in terms of communication and in terms of product designs and offerings.