2025, eTail Boston. Keynote Fireside Chat: Modernizing an Iconic Brand: Winning Over A New Generation When You Have 115 Years of Heritage

Moderator: Suzy Davidkhanian, Vice President, Content, eMARKETER: Hi everyone. Thanks so much for joining us. We're very excited. Kick to kick off this next segment. We're gonna talk to you about how do you modernize an iconic brand like Samsonite. Yeah. You just heard, I'm Susie David Canyon, VP of Content at Market Research Firm, eMarketer, and I'm joined by David Oxman, who is, wears many hats of which we'll hear some of them today at Samsonite Group.

Suzy Davidkhanian, Vice President, Content, eMARKETER: So I'm gonna tee us off with, I think, an easy one. Yeah. I didn't realize that Samsonite Group is a portfolio of brands and they all work together. So tell us a little bit more about that before we start off.

David Oksman, VP of Marketing & Direct to Consumer, Samsonite: Absolutely. Good to see everybody. Good afternoon. Yeah. Samsonite Group is actually a portfolio of travel brands playing mostly in the travel space, luggage, but also what we call beyond travel.

So backpacks and luggage where close to a $4 billion global brand with a whole portfolio of brands from premium position brands like to me to better pro position brands like Samsonite. And then more attainable brands like American Torso. So a slew of brands in the portfolio that all play a really unique part in the travel category.

Moderator: Suzy Davidkhanian, Vice President, Content, eMARKETER: I love that. But also notice it's all about travel. And you started just before COD.

David Oksman, VP of Marketing & Direct to Consumer, Samsonite: Yeah.

Moderator: Suzy Davidkhanian, Vice President, Content, eMARKETER: When the world shut down and so travel became non-existent. So yeah. What was that like for you when you first started, and how has that shaped the way Samsonite group is thinking about travel and their categories?

David Oksman, VP of Marketing & Direct to Consumer, Samsonite: Yeah, so I accepted this role March 10th, 2020,

Moderator: Suzy Davidkhanian, Vice President, Content, eMARKETER: my God.

David Oksman, VP of Marketing & Direct to Consumer, Samsonite: Yep. Pretty excited market leader going in a travel category. Three days later, Tom Cruise gets sick, or Tom Hanks gets sick. The NBA shuts down and boom. You're in this environment where your whole category is just stomp. So it was a really interesting time and when the airports closed, our mindset really opened is how I think back on that, those times.

Obviously the first thing we did was make sure our people were good and just settle that way. But from a mindset perspective, it really opened up two things. The first was. What do you do for your consumer when your category is literally closed? And we had to rethink that. So it started with how to lift weights with your luggage and things like that when people literally couldn't move.

But then it shifted and we really had to be close to the consumer trend. And little road trips started opening up. So we were much more focused on short-term travel, then revenge travel hit, and it was international, so we were almost like. Every three to four months, we were constantly shifting the short term consumer behaviors that we needed to address with a lot of speed and then big picture, that time was amazing because we really were going through an evolution and a transformation, and we really doubled down on insights.

We got really close to our consumer. We did a lot of qual and quant. We did a segmentation analysis and we completely rebuilt the portfolio to make sure that each brand played a very unique and distinguished role within the category. So it was it was a crazy time, but now, travel, as we know, booming in a really important part of people's lifestyles.

Moderator: Suzy Davidkhanian, Vice President, Content, eMARKETER: Yeah. And now you're set up for success in an even bigger way because it's so important to listen to the consumer and understand the different segmentations and where each of the brands play. Oh yeah. But also lean in and be flexible in terms of different needs and use cases for sure. But that said, you are an older brand.

Suzy Davidkhanian, Vice President, Content, eMARKETER: And we had this conversation and I teed it up really wrong when we first started talking about it. I can't remember which way I said it. So it is, you said, oh, it's a heritage

David Oksman, VP of Marketing & Direct to Consumer, Samsonite: brand. Yeah.

Moderator: Suzy Davidkhanian, Vice President, Content, eMARKETER: And it is not a heritage brand. It is a brand with Heritage. Absolutely. Can you tell everyone what that means to you and what is that nuance and that distinction?

David Oksman, VP of Marketing & Direct to Consumer, Samsonite: Yeah, so obviously when you hear Heritage brand, I think most people it feels, a little stodgy. A little outdated. But we're a brand with heritage and for me that's a really important distinction. This has been an innovative, iconic brand for 115 years, really on the cutting edge of travel.

Since 1910. So we don't just want to tell our story, we wanna constantly be adding chapters to the story. And we do that in a variety of ways, but ultimately it's about leaning into what makes your history special, makes your heritage special, but really being open to what is changing and how do we stay modern and cutting edge and on the forefront of what consumers want today from a travel perspective.

Moderator: Suzy Davidkhanian, Vice President, Content, eMARKETER: So how does that look like in, in practice when you think about being fresh? And culturally irrelevant, but also staying true to your heritage and to your

David Oksman, VP of Marketing & Direct to Consumer, Samsonite: history. Yeah, so I think again, it's for us. We really want to lean into what makes our history special. Yeah. The product, the quality. We know that Gen Z, they care about durability.

They care about authenticity. They don't just want to have things. They wanna have things with meaning. So we really want to story tell, but again our consumer for Samsonite specifically, it's a psychographic, right? So even though there was an older generation that moved with Samsonite in a really.

Robust way. It's very relevant today in terms of how lifestyle has become so prominent and the emotional connection people have with travel. So telling those stories in a way that doesn't change where we've been or who we've been, but just reinforces the product's. Great. It's durable. It's innovative, but it's also built for how you want to move.

Moderator: Suzy Davidkhanian, Vice President, Content, eMARKETER: I think that teases up really well, and we're hearing a lot more conversations around an emotional connection versus a need and features versus benefits. Yeah. You teed it up already, but I'm gonna tease it out a little bit more. Travel was once you know a way to get from a place to another place, and now it's more about lifestyle, health, and wellness, even identity.

Suzy Davidkhanian, Vice President, Content, eMARKETER: There's all these influencers popping up in this space. Yeah. So how do you ensure that you are moving along in that continuum? To go from utilitarian to emotional?

David Oksman, VP of Marketing & Direct to Consumer, Samsonite: Yeah. I think it starts with. With being authentic and telling real truths, which is again, why we start with our consumer.

Little story here, as we were developing our first campaign, coming outta the Pandemic, we were doing a lot of insights and one of the insights that kept, we kept hearing for, especially from Gen Z and some millennials, was like, I know it's a great brand because my parents had it. I know it's a great brand.

I know it's really quality 'cause my grandparents carried it. And we were seeing that message resonating. But then we were also hearing about how people wanted to disconnect. They wanted to get away from their devices, they wanted to be unfettered. So we actually came up with a campaign which we call travel Like Your Parents.

And we actually leaned into the insights because I think what people didn't realize was when their parents were traveling. On road trips and hitting the road and being unfettered and just going places. They were pretty. Fucking cool. Like they were really interesting and cool and dynamic and it was actually exactly emotionally how this generation wants to connect and travel.

So instead of steering away from our heritage and the emotional connection of how it was for their parents, we leaned all the way into it and it was a really awesome way. And then our creator programs, they were telling authentic stories about what travel meant to. To their parents. Our amazing activation team's actually here, I remember one of the creators like had the car that her grandfather used to travel in and she kept it up and she traveled in it.

And it's just like amazing to see how the stories and the emotional connection being told by our consumers.

Moderator: Suzy Davidkhanian, Vice President, Content, eMARKETER: That's so cool. And I'm gonna pivot for a second and talk a little bit more, if you don't mind, about your creator program and how is that structured? What does that look like? How are you teasing out some of those assets potentially for other campaigns?

David Oksman, VP of Marketing & Direct to Consumer, Samsonite: Yeah, so our creator program is something we've been building over the past couple of years, and for me it's, it's critically important. We have a really robust analysis of who's the right fit. It really does start with authentically, who does self-reflect? So Samsonite, that is a traveler brand, right?

That is about people who wanna experience places the way locals do. It's not a tourist or brand, right? It's not a tourist brand where, hey, we just want to go to Disney World, or it's very different mentality. So finding creators that self reflect that is, is part one, right? And for us, we view what's happening in the creator space.

Obviously it's great for building content. It gives you some distribution, but it really is the way discovery is happening for people today. Traditional search, I'm sure we'll hear about it. We know that not just AI is disrupting search, but we know that social media is disrupting search in places like TikTok and Instagram are really where brand discovery and almost the whole cycle is happening all the way through the purchase.

So we use our creator program for many different things, but it really does authenticate and, show the brand through a lens that is. Really built for the brand.

Moderator: Suzy Davidkhanian, Vice President, Content, eMARKETER: And that goes back to your actual campaign, which is around, it's not just a bag, it's Samsonite. Yes. Which is a very cool tagline.

Suzy Davidkhanian, Vice President, Content, eMARKETER: How did that come about?

David Oksman, VP of Marketing & Direct to Consumer, Samsonite: Yeah. So it's not just a bag, it's a Samsonite. Here's our awesome, we're in Boston, Peyton Pritchard, go Celtics and John Ro. It's not just a bag, it's a Samsonite. It's really reinforcing a couple things. One is. The iconic nature of the brand. There's a symbol when people carry something, it should have meaning, especially a backpack or a duffle where you're holding it almost closer to your heart, right?

You're really carrying something meaningful. So we wanna reinforce that differentiation, especially in a world where we know value is really important to the consumer unless there's an emotional connection with a brand. Partially we're leaning into that. The other thing is, in terms of adjacencies, what we call beyond travel bags, backpack, duffles. Weekenders. That's an amazing category. Most people, if you say, Hey, Samsonite, what do you know about them? They say. Great luggage, but we're so much more than that. We actually, even you saying we're, we are a travel brand, but what I really want to own is movement.

Anytime you leave your front door and are moving, that's an opportunity for our brand to be part of that experience. So we're also leaning into that a little bit with, it's not just the bags, the Samsonite, but ultimately what's beautiful about this platform for us is it really enables us to story tell.

For years. We can tell Peyton's story about what it means to move on the court. We can obviously tell John Tutorial little hints if you're a fan of. If you're a fan of his, a little elevator action. We shot 'em in New York City, so some Easter eggs for severance. But we can really tell people's stories or let them tell their stories through our platform.

Moderator: Suzy Davidkhanian, Vice President, Content, eMARKETER: And that's just another way of staying culturally irrelevant. For sure. Like leaning into the moments and making sure that you are using those reflected into your advertising.

David Oksman, VP of Marketing & Direct to Consumer, Samsonite: Yeah. The team, we talk a lot about moving at the speed of culture.

Moderator: Suzy Davidkhanian, Vice President, Content, eMARKETER: Oh, I love that. And

David Oksman, VP of Marketing & Direct to Consumer, Samsonite: that's really what we're really focused on is how do we move at the speed of culture and find the right things Yeah.

To lean into.

Moderator: Suzy Davidkhanian, Vice President, Content, eMARKETER: And the other thing about moving quickly when you're a category that's already defined in some ways and you're. I would say a market leader in that category. In the definition. Absolutely. How, when you think about growth, how are you looking at the adjacent categories in terms of being authentic to your brand and also making sure that people see you in those categories?

David Oksman, VP of Marketing & Direct to Consumer, Samsonite: Yeah, absolutely. So our head of brand, Nicole, who's here, we talk a lot about world building. And from a brand perspective, that's 115 years. Like we have a pretty well-defined universe that we're trying to operate within. And ultimately from a category diversification perspective, it should just feel natural.

You should find things that a consumer's not gonna be like, why are they, doing X, Y, or Z? But it should just feel like, oh yeah, they've got really great durable products. Of course, I want organization items from them because I wanna protect the things that I have. Our Gregory brand, which is a.

Really high end on the mountain. Very niche, really passionate consumer for mountain bags and backpack. Just entered the organization space and for that consumer, like they trust the product. Yeah. It's so trusted. It's so elevated from a performance perspective. They want it in their driveway.

They probably want it at the beach. They want it in all these locations. So it's just about finding those natural places that you can step into from a brand universe perspective.

Moderator: Suzy Davidkhanian, Vice President, Content, eMARKETER: So speaking of, I think you t up my next question really well in terms of, we know Samson night. Is both has its own store.

Suzy Davidkhanian, Vice President, Content, eMARKETER: So direct to consumer website. Yeah. But also you have a lot of different distribution points through wholesalers. We do. Yeah. You have to manage that. In terms of the customer experience, how do you think about that? It is definitely a way to keep growing, right? The more places, the more doors you're in, the better your sales technically, for sure.

Suzy Davidkhanian, Vice President, Content, eMARKETER: So how do you think about that in terms of a cohesive experience for the customer? Sometimes you need to showcase the luggage or the accessories. Tell us more about that.

David Oksman, VP of Marketing & Direct to Consumer, Samsonite: Yeah, every consumer touchpoint is an opportunity to create brand love, right? And we want to really have a brand expression at those touchpoint that makes sense, feels connected.

We never want a consumer to walk in and have an experience with a brand that doesn't feel like the same experience they'd have. In our stores or on our website. So we've put a ton of investment into what we call the digital shelf, right? We want our brand stores on Amazon, we want our brand sites on Macy's and Kohl's, all these great partners we have and at point of sale to feel as elevated as possible to, again, just reinforce that, this brand matters and it's something that you should be proud to carry.

So again, I think it's you wanna meet the consumer where they are. And there's a consumer who wants to shop our products in different types of distribution. You want to be there for them and make sure that you're maximizing every single touch point you've got.

Moderator: Suzy Davidkhanian, Vice President, Content, eMARKETER: Yeah. And so

David Oksman, VP of Marketing & Direct to Consumer, Samsonite: how do you choose your partners though?

Yeah. So again, through the segmentation we have real clarity of which brands fit the distribution. In the most impactful way. And then ultimately when it comes to investment on the marketing side, it really is about winning with the winners, right? And over-investing in the places that you know, your consumers gonna over index.

Moderator: Suzy Davidkhanian, Vice President, Content, eMARKETER: I love that. Winning with the winners. I love that. One of the other things I love is that you have a lifetime guarantee. You don't have an actual loyalty program in terms of earned points, but somehow for me, that loyalty transfers into that lifetime guarantee. How do you guys think about loyalty?

David Oksman, VP of Marketing & Direct to Consumer, Samsonite: Yeah, at the end of the day, you know that brand love is earned.

Brand love creates. Share of wallet ultimately. So we try to reinforce at every single touch point, how do we ensure that the consumer experience is buttoned up? We've brought our customer service in-house over the past few years. We've really focused on making sure that repairability sustainability is actually a huge focus.

We want to be the number one most sustainable brand in the category. So we're doing a lot on repairability, making sure that products can be. Self self fixed. If a wheel, something happens with a wheel, we're doing a lot to make sure we're maximizing that. So between warranty, touch points, customer experience sustainability, we feel like those are the things that long term, the experience with your product.

Is where it all begins. And to drive true loyalty. The worst thing you can do in our category is let the consumer down. Because most of the time they're, you're in an airport, something happens. Is there anything more frustrating than not being able to wheel your luggage or for a zipper to come off?

So we just wanna make sure that we're maximizing it. 'cause believe me, from a consumer perspective. You'll hear a lot more about that experience than when everything goes fine. Absolutely.

Moderator: Suzy Davidkhanian, Vice President, Content, eMARKETER: Yeah. Speaking of the consumer, we're hearing more and more about there's value consciousness happening.

Suzy Davidkhanian, Vice President, Content, eMARKETER: Everybody's thinking about different places where they're gonna be spending their money. Yeah. We do know that price sometimes does drive sales. So how do you think about that within your portfolio of brands?

David Oksman, VP of Marketing & Direct to Consumer, Samsonite: Yeah, we've built the brands to play in certain pockets, right?

So for instance, like we said, Samsonite the best brand in the better category to Tomi premium position for, a more luxury consumer. And then you've got a more attainable brand like American Tourer. And what's exciting about the brands, especially on the value side, is as you go more towards that value base, like American to store, we can have so much fun with that brand.

It's more accessible. It can play on color trends because the consumer's probably replenishing it more often 'cause it's a lower price point. So that really distinguished from Samsonite, better price positioned iconic probably is gonna last that person five, maybe 10, sometimes 50 years. And on those places it's like you make different choices.

Yeah. You make different choices on colors, you might make different choices on feature set. So it really is about maximizing that and ultimately. Value, people wanna talk about price, but really it's about value. And value is the intersection of things like price and quality and benefit and emotional connection.

So how are you maximizing those things to make sure that the consumer wants to spend that extra 20, $30? To get that brand that has a little bit more connection with

Moderator: Suzy Davidkhanian, Vice President, Content, eMARKETER: that. Yeah. And I think we can't say it enough, right? Understanding the value means different things to consumers. And understanding your own portfolio brands and how they don't sit on top of one other really helps everybody rise.

David Oksman, VP of Marketing & Direct to Consumer, Samsonite: For sure. Absolutely.

Moderator: Suzy Davidkhanian, Vice President, Content, eMARKETER: So another thing, we can't have a conference these days without ai. You touched on it. We're talking about it in terms of content creation. Yeah. We're talking about it in terms of commerce, in terms of search. It goes everywhere across all of the customer journey.

Suzy Davidkhanian, Vice President, Content, eMARKETER: Yeah. How are you guys reacting to what's your playbook when now people are starting to search for things like, hi, I need the best luggage for carry on Four day girl trip to Miami. Yeah. What does that look like for you guys?

David Oksman, VP of Marketing & Direct to Consumer, Samsonite: Yeah, so obviously ai, super hot topic here, everywhere in every boardroom, probably across the us I'd say for me personally, before we will get into some of the details there.

This whole conversation about what role is AI gonna play and what's it gonna do, and is everyone gonna lose their jobs? I tend to think that AI is more coming for your busy work than it's coming for your job. And I think that you're doing yourself a disservice if you're not leaning into the tools.

Actually think prompting is creativity, I think that the idea of leveraging these technologies to create unique outputs, whether that's. Strategic prop outputs or creative outputs is literally the game changer that everyone should be thinking about as opposed to being so worried that it's somehow gonna influence, their specific role.

For us, as we think about the role it's playing, obviously I think there's three key areas from a search perspective that we feel are gonna. Like over influence the algorithms. One is obviously we used to call it SEO now we call it a IO, which is how on site we're thinking about the difference between someone going on Google last year and saying, best carry on luggage, and then we show up versus what's the, what should I bring for my trip to Paris next week?

It's a very different. Experience. So we're thinking about how that will influence our platforms. And then just looking at the content that we also think is feeding into that, whether that is UGC, our creative program becomes even that much more important. Our reviews, our editorial, and that's the last piece, which is really the earned, yeah, the earned media our PR partnerships, the way in which consumers are talking about us.

All becomes part of that process. And I think personally as I'm looking ahead, the disruption to the consumer journey in terms of what role will our website play? Will they ultimately get there? Will chat GBT build their own platform that completely self-contained the experience? Are they gonna want my cart or.

Are they gonna send consumers to us in different, unique? So I think that is the biggest shift that's gonna be out there. And the question's gonna be, what does that model look like and how does it change the commercialization? Yeah. And the consumer journey especially, is that all these platforms become even more personalized to your experience.

I'd say like a watch out that I'm feeling is how do they avoid it becoming an echo chamber for the things that you already like. I think some of the best parts of shopping today are the unexpected things you might find. Walking through a store or in a search, what happens? How does that play into the way AI shapes the future?

Moderator: Suzy Davidkhanian, Vice President, Content, eMARKETER: These are all such important questions and I think, there's not one place today where we'll find the exact answer, but it's so important to ask yourself these questions so that you can set up the company for success. And e every retailer should be thinking about, every brand should be thinking about.

Suzy Davidkhanian, Vice President, Content, eMARKETER: What, how is it gonna change and where do I insert myself so that I can still win and get the data that I need to continue be doing personalization and meeting the customer where they are. Yeah. The time flew by. It did. It really did. Thank you so much for everything that you shared with us. We're looking forward to seeing some more of your commercials, especially the space one.

David Oksman, VP of Marketing & Direct to Consumer, Samsonite: Yes. I'll hit it real quick. So just, I was so sick, the team and I were so sick of seeing. All these ads of people hitting luggage with their cars on our Instagram feed that we decided to take it up a notch and we actually sent our luggage into space. So that's an actual photo of our luggage in space. It was an amazing campaign that the team executed and yeah, more innovation and fun to come.

Moderator: Suzy Davidkhanian, Vice President, Content, eMARKETER: Can't wait to see to another a hundred years. Absolutely. Thank you. So great chatting. Thank you.