Trying to bag the number two luggage spot

Dubai: What's a company to do when its flagship brand has been an unassailable market leader in its category over decades? Well, if the company is Samsonite Corp, the luggage company, you try and lift the other brand in the portfolio to the number two slot.

This is exactly what the company's Middle East operation is trying to do. While the Samsonite label retains market leader status with more than 30 per cent, the company now wants to do more with the American Tourister brand.

"The hold on the Number Two spot in the region's luggage category has been pretty fluid, which is why we feel with a strong push American Tourister can attain that spot," said Jai Krishnan, vice-president for the Middle East, East Africa and Saarc markets at Samsonite.

"Until last year we had not focused too much on this brand in the Middle East, unlike the situation elsewhere in our global operations. This is what we wanted to correct."

A first stab at re-establishing American Tourister's credentials was done through an extensive campaign in the summer of 2011 under the tagline ‘Go see the world'. It aimed to establish the brand as an ideal accessory for the young and family traveller demographic. (Samsonite in contrast would always maintain its premium position as a travel lifestyle accessory.)

The campaign, according to Krishnan, proved such a hit that a repeat was launched towards the closing weeks of last year and extended into the first half of January. This time too it played out on TV and print, but with a different tagline — ‘The world is calling'.

The two campaigns together cost just over $5 million (Dh18.3 million), but the higher profile did translate into good business for the brand, with the GCC markets seeing a doubling in sales during 2011, Krishnan added.

This year, starting with the peak travel phase, Krishnan hopes to go in for a repeat campaign but with a slightly higher budget. "The response from both the consumer and the trade was good enough, and that's always an impetus to try and do more," he said.

"On the trade side, while just over a year ago it would have been difficult to find department stores and hypermarkets with a high awareness of American Tourister, it's not the case now. We will continue to use these channels going forward."

More stores

It also means that a stand-alone store for American Tourister is out of the question.

That is a privilege retained exclusively by Samsonite, which now has more than 50 dedicated stores in the Middle East and is also sold through multi-brand channels.

The flagship brand ran its own brand building campaign last year under the ‘Step Out' theme.

"The strategy of having more standalone stores for Samsonite will continue, though we are more or less covered in all of the key malls in Dubai," said Krishnan.