One of the great things about traveling or moving to a new city is that you can be who you wish you were; a reinvention is possible. The same can be true for transatlantic brand expansion. Some midrange brands in their home markets have been successfully able to go upscale as they were exported.
During recent trips to London and Bogota, Colombia, I noticed standalone Samsonite stores – designed to support Samsonite as a near-luxury brand. Some are branded Samsonite Black Label, but all sport a high-end image and design I wouldn’t have previously associated with the brand.
Samsonite is a midrange brand in the U.S. Its line is generally considered well made, but not in the league of a Tumi or Louis Vuitton (check out the BusinessWeek story link below for an interesting career change for Samsonite’s current CEO who is ex-LV). But that’s just where management seems headed with Samsonite Black Label. And if my very informal poll is any gauge, this strategy could very well be successful – with benefits that accrue to the core brand as well.
The company is opening its Black Label stores in fashion centers in the U.S. and Europe to help propel the brand (see the list of stores here) as well as hiring noted designer
s to generate excitement for what was a moribund brand and category. In addition, its acquisition of a majority interest in premium handbag designer Lambertson Truex provides a platform for believable expansion into the true luxury segment of the luggage category. Visitors to the Samsonite Black Label web site are treated to imagery and layout that seem inspired by Agent Provacateur lingerie more than its luggage industry cohort.
While it’s too early to tell if the Black Label brand will take off (see below for figures from fiscal year 2006), management’s focus on moving the brand up-market via dedicated retail outlets and brand showcases in top cities makes a lot of sense.
Interestingly, for an American brand, Samsonite derives more than 48 percent of revenues from the U.K. and Europe and just 38 percent from the U.S. (the balance is from Asia, Latin America and corporate/incentive sales).
TipTree is another case of a brand moving up-market by becoming a transatlantic brand. At home, this maker of preserves is considered solidly middle market. In the U.S., it is merchandised alongside other imported jams and jellies such as Bon Maman, all positioned as high-end brands for
our market. Readers in the U.K. might think Bon Maman also a mid-market brand and dismiss the notion that it has moved upmarket at all. But it is important to recognize that U.S. supermarket shelves are generally stocked with mass market brands such as Smuckers and Welch's that cater to the majority of our 300 million consumers. So when an import of any kind secures shelf space at many of our supermarkets, that’s a significant success for the brand and its distributor.
Unlike Samsonite, Tiptree’s success seems a case of sticking to its knitting. Samsonite’s new management team has brought with it a sweeping strategy change. But they are more alike than you might imagine. Both have leveraged their core strengths to attack a new market. Samsonite has brand recognition and management depth (along with knowledge of the market and its potential). Tiptree has its English heritage that makes it generally attractive to us here in the U.S. (and if you check out Tiptree’s Web site, it would appear that the appetite for its preserves is truly global). What Tiptree needed was good distribution for a product that had the right basic attributes. Samsonite, however, was a much bigger project – but seems like it is also headed for very large rewards.
Article links:
BusinessWeek Online Feb 2007 on Samsonite (overview)
India’s Business Standard, Jan 2007 on outsourcing of manufacturing
Hartford Courant Jan 2007 on Alexander McQueen as luggage designer
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