Samsonite is creating a new destination for its jet-setting customer.
The luggage brand has opened a store on New York’s Upper East Side at 838 Madison Avenue that will sell its premium Black Label product lines. The store, which celebrated its official opening Thursday evening with a private event, is the first for the brand in the U.S. and part of a larger retail rollout for the firm.
Samsonite has 15 Black Label stores worldwide, including shops in London, Berlin, Brussels, Moscow, Singapore, Seoul and Tokyo. President and chief executive officer Marcello Bottoli said Samsonite is looking at opening doors in major cities throughout the world. New locations in the U.S. include San Francisco and Boston, which are scheduled to open in October.
“We are following the pattern established by many luxury brands by looking at key cities internationally for retail,” said Bottoli. “Having your own retail stores allows you to do several things, the most important of which is to control your own destiny.”
The 713-square-foot space on Madison Avenue adheres to the interior design concept created by French architect Nicolas Guillot and featured throughout the Samsonite Black Label boutiques. A color palette of orange, cream and black unifies the space, which is divided into four areas. They include the entryway display, which will highlight the latest products to arrive in the store in square and rectangular niches that can be mixed and matched; the cash wrap, which includes a platform to the side for additional display and shelving at its back that showcases vintage Samsonite luggage; a footwear salon, where customers can try on the range of casual Samsonite shoes or browse through special-edition items, and the main retail space, where shoppers can pick up small leather goods and other travel items from a glass-covered display case or browse through additional luggage choices.
Samsonite Black Label comprises four lines, including Samsonite Signat Attaché, the hard-sided briefcases based on the brand’s models from the Sixties that feature limited-edition designs by Matthew Williamson; Samsonite Vintage, which is inspired by vintage models; X’Lite, which builds upon the brand’s history of pushing forward casing technology and is made from a lightweight material also used to build boats, and Scope by Marc Newsom, a collaboration with the industrial designer.
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Prices range from $36 for a wallet to $900 for a Samsonite Vintage hard-sided trunk. New pieces in leather and items from Alexander McQueen’s collection for Samsonite, which is expected to arrive in spring, may retail at higher price points.