At 9pm every night, emails from Samsonite store managers across the country start trickling into the mailbox of Subrata Dutta, managing director, Samsonite South Asia.He receives more than 200 of them every day and replies to the ones that tell of odd sales numbers, seeking reasons where the sales have been below expectation or congratulating the performers where the figures are celebratory, marking a copy to other stores.Last week, anticipating low sales, Dutta had expected to write many emails asking the managers why sales were stagnant.But he was pleasantly stumped to read emails suggesting high sales at most stores. The entire week, in fact, he had to write an average 30 congratulatory emails a day.“Consumers go a little slow on spends just before the end-of-season sale period in anticipation of high discounts. I was expecting sales to come down, but on the contrary, there has been an enormous upswing in sales,” says Dutta.This comes at a time when consumers are under immense pressure from high food inflation and in a mood to cut down on discretionary spend.Indeed, between January and June, says Dutta, sales were up 44% year on year.But luggage seems to be a part of a different parallel trend — that of increasing consumer affluence and desire to use high quality and good looking branded bags.VIP Industries, which is the largest luggage maker in the country and claims to have a market share of as much as 58%, confirms that consumers are increasingly spending more on branded luggage.

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Dilip Piramal, chairman, VIP Industries Ltd attributes this to growing consumer affluence, surge in air travel, and road and weekend trips, which have increased demand for quality luggage across mass, mid and premium segments, particularly in the last three years.

“There is strong uptrading in luggage. Consumers are willing to spend more on the category. For consumers who are using a luggage product for the first time, though, unorganised products are the entry point into the category,” he says.VIP is looking at a 20% sales growth this year, which will lead to a 40-50% profit growth, says Piramal. Samsonite’s Dutta says Indian consumers are buying higher priced products even in discretionary segments like luggage.

In his observation, from paying Rs5,500 for a product last year, consumers are willingly upping their average unit price to Rs7,600 this year.

The company sells luggage at prices starting Rs5,500 under the Samsonite brand, at Rs1, 900-6,600 under the brand American Tourister, and at Rs18,000-28,000 under the luxury brand Black Label.“At the beginning of the year, we were confident of at least 25% sales growth. Looks like we are going to surpass that,” says Dutta.VIP’s Piramal says there are a lot of first-time buyers entering the luggage category, so the mass and mass-premium segments are likely to see the most growth compared with the premium and luxury segments. VIP’s portfolio has the brand Carlton in the premium segment, SkyBags, Aristocrat and the flagship VIP brand in the mass-premium segment, and Alfa at the mass-end.Discounts loom, but luggage keeps flying off the shelves Alfa, due to its value proposition, is seeing consumers move from the unorganised market to branded offerings. Similarly, where premium brand Samsonite is growing at 30%, mass brand American Tourister is growing much faster at 80% year on year.“VIP Industries has strong brands as well as the broadest product portfolio and distribution among India’s branded luggage companies. We believe VIP ranks highly on both reach and quality —- two key attributes that drive consumer purchase decisions.

Additionally, rising revenue contribution from its more profitable ‘soft luggage’ segment (currently at 60% contribution) and an advertising campaign aimed at encouraging a consumer shift to higher-margin products should drive a margin expansion,” analysts Ajay Nandanwar and Gautam Chhaochharia of investment banking firm UBS wrote in a June report, recommending a ‘buy’.Analysts say the soft luggage category is growing much faster and giving better margin than traditional hard luggage, a category growing in low single digit, with the exception of high-end luxury hard luggage. Both VIP and Samsonite import soft luggage, mostly from China; while hard luggage is manufactured locally.The branded luggage market in India is estimated to be Rs2,400 crore in size and has other players like Safari, Witco India, Hidesign, Da Milano, international brands such as Victorinox, Delsey, Gucci, and Louis Vuitton.