Has The Chic Luggage Race Peaked?
The next trendy suitcase better have a built-in television or some other ridiculous feature, because the market is getting crowded.
Sign of the times. The popular DJ John Summit made an Instagram post in which he kicks, throws, hammers, and lights his Rimowa suitcase on fire—ostensibly because he’s fed up after pieces from the luxury brand broke down on him. Then the comments section took off:
- “We’ve been summoned,” wrote Away, the startup that kicked off the modern-day case race in 2015. More affordable than Rimowa and Tumi, but prettier than Samsonite, Away reached a $1.4 billion valuation in four years and opened the D2C suitcase floodgates.
- “Please let me send you some @beis luggage,” the actress Shay Mitchell commented. She founded Béis in 2018. One of its latest collaborations was with Rare Beauty, Selena Gomez’s cosmetics brand.
- Tumi and Samsonite also chimed in on Summit’s post. Samsonite owns Tumi, having bought the brand for $1.8 billion in 2016—the same year that LVMH bought airport status symbol Rimowa.
Overall, legacy brands like Samsonite, Tumi, and Rimowa still command the baggage carousel, but the new players are making inroads. “We’re all fighting to steal market share from Samsonite, which owns 25% of the market, and LVMH, which owns another 10%,” the co-founder of July, an Australian luggage brand, told Fast Company. One of the latest upstarts to vie for some cargo space is Casetify, a phone case company that launched its first suitcase in 2024.—ML
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