The Travel Baggage Industry Begins Preparations For The Post-Pandemic Era

In 2020, like many businesses, the luggage industry was also hit hard. Since travel is quite heavily restricted, big brands like Rimowa and Away saw a big drop in sales.

But with the vaccination rolling out and travel returning back to track slowly, luggage bag companies are expecting a growth return in the last two quarters in 2021.

The Travel Baggage Industry Begins Preparations For The Post-Pandemic Era

This business category saw more than 80% drop in its sales in the first 3 months when America was hit by Covid-19. This information is as per dated in an NPD report in spring 2020.

Most of the luggage brands have made many efforts to diversify their business but failed. Sara Banks, who is the founder of SteamLine Luggage, said that in the pre-pandemic era, the brand’s sales for large luggage bags were 70% and 30% for handheld bags. This ratio flipped in the post-pandemic era, the sales of large bags was reduced to 30% and small bags was 70%.

The company is now re-focusing on the efforts made in marketing and shifting its

resources from social media ads to email marketing. Further, they are changing their content to focus on the high-end cases which can also be used for in-home storage and not something while travelling only.

Sara said that this shift will help many brands dodge the impacts of a pandemic. The brands have wound up after foreseeing just a 14% sale decline from March to November. SteamLine has seen a 12% more transaction in 2020 as compared in 2019, but the average value of the order was much lower.

She has said that the luggage category will be making a comeback in the next two quarters in 2021 in markets which are outside of the U.S. The numbers shrank to 60% in 2020 while her brand registered 80% of the sales in 2019, the pre pandemic era in the U.S.

The brand saw 14% of the sales year over year in the U.K. while in Australia the business was boosted by 31%. The brand is now considering opening a distribution centre though it already has one in Australia to reduce the shopping costs.

She said that noting the behaviour of Australian consumers she will be expecting more business there. The people of the U.K. and the U.S. are being more thoughtful about travelling in the future. They are less likely to travel to various places and will be staying in one place for a longer period of time.

In the early phase of the pandemic, Beis the luggage and travel company had expected to see a 45% decline in their sales. But the story was quite different, the company by refocusing on the marketing strategy ended the year 2020 with a revenue up to 159% by re-focusing its attention to non-travel bags.

As per the DTC sales report, it was seen that weekender bag sales were four times the original sales from the previous year. The total sales were doubled. Beis was launched initially in 2018. 

CEO and Beis president Adeela Hussein Johnson quoted that she believes that till the tail end of the summer and at the beginning of the fall, there will be a resurgence of the travel though it might be domestic only.

And so Adeela said that the brand will be gearing up to increase in luggage production by fall. They will be introducing newer models which may be quite small or very large.

This will be reflecting the two new styles of bags they will be coming up with. These bags will be meant for extended stays in a particular location or short quick trips to places. It will be depending on the customer’s needs to work from home while they might be travelling.