eBags CEO Packs a Tech-Powered Punch

Great insights in how to change things in an online retail environment. Its not one thing. Its about a lot of changes adding up to big improvement. In this case at least 20% sales increases at eBags.com....Eliot Cobb

Reinvention is a constant in retail. Only those retailers that are able to adjust to meet continually changing customer demand and market conditions can stand the test of time. eBags has grown and evolved over the past 17 years from an online startup to a recognized leader in the luggage space. Despite nearly two decades of advancement, the retailer has found its greatest success to date by turning back the clock and returning to its roots.

Four of the five founders of the online travel accessories retailer were former Samsonite Luggage employees who leveraged their strong segment expertise to build a market-leading luggage-focused assortment. However, as the retailer grew over the years it lost its luggage-first mentality expanding into hyper-competitive verticals, like fashion handbags, that stymied its growth instead of spurring it...............more

eBags CEO Packs a Tech-Powered Punch

eBags Accelerates Growth with Record

Good results for the 2nd qtr. Up over 23% over last year.. Eliot Cobb

July 18, 2016 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

eBags Accelerates Growth with Record

Second Quarter Results and Strong Amazon Prime Day Sales

DENVER, COLORADO—eBags announced today that the company has recorded record growth for the second fiscal quarter of 2016, with sales up 23% YoY and margin growth of 32% YoY. The Amazon Prime event was a record two-day period for eBags in Q3, as they did 25% more sales volume than the next highest two-day period in this quarter.

Growth on the Amazon marketplace outpaced 2015 by 43%, and sales on eBags.com grew 25% YoY. The top selling categories during the Amazon Prime event were luggage (+30%), backpacks (+29%), and accessories (+16%). The top selling brands were the eBags brand, SwissGear Travel Gear and TUMI.

“There has been a transformational shift online for retailers. Amazon’s revenue is growing 20 percent while a store like Macy’s is seeing revenues decline,” says Mike Edwards, the company’s Chief Executive Officer. Our fundamental business model is ecommerce and mobile first, and the strategy is working,”

The company has moved aggressively into the back-to-school period, trending at a strong 40% YoY sales growth and is expecting to sell over 200,000 backpacks through the end of August.
The company’s momentum is focused on driving strong 2016 results through category expansion, a commitment to highlighting top brands to create new growth for global partners and the ongoing growth in the eBags brand product line. The company has experienced strong Q2 growth in all key strategic metrics: site visits are up 34% YoY, mobile visits are up 55% YoY, and site conversions up 34% YoY.

“We are aggressively growing our assortment of top brands and products in all categories, increasing our exclusive and first-to-market offerings and launching innovative products every week on eBags.com,” says Co-founder Peter Cobb. “Our focus is on mobile as shoppers are voting with their smartphones and we are committed to offering the top products that keep travelers connected throughout their journey."

About eBags

eBags is the leading online retailer of luggage, backpacks, and accessories. With over 25 million bags sold and 3.2 million customer reviews, eBags features 67,000 products from 600 brands, including Tumi, Samsonite, Travelpro, and more. For more information, visit www.eBags.com.

Optimove Raises Its American Presence: Opens New York Office as It Signs Four High Profile US Retailers

"Excellent article on customer retention."...Eliot Cobb

eBags, 1-800-FLOWERS, Adore Me and Aquasana select Optimove's Customer Marketing Cloud to automate personalized customer interactions that increase engagement and loyalty

New York, NY (PRWEB) May 17, 2016

Optimove, the leading Customer Marketing Cloud, announced today that it is building on its momentum in the North American retail sector by opening a new office in New York City while adding four major US e-retailers to the growing stable of e-commerce businesses using the Optimove software to manage and automate their customer retention operations. 1-800-FLOWERS, eBags, Adore Me and Aquasana join over 180 brands, including LuckyVitamin, NuMe, Nelly, La Perla, and GetWinesDirect, as Optimove customers.

An Israeli based company, Optimove has recently made strong inroads into the US market. The company's founder and CEO, Pini Yakuel, has relocated to New York to spearhead Optimove's operations in North America and oversee the new office, located at 19 West 21st Street. The company is currently hiring aggressively for sales, marketing and business development roles in its New York office, which it expects to staff 15 employees by the end of this year and double that by 2017. "The American market offers us vast opportunities, but it’s very competitive and you really need to have boots on the ground," said Mr. Yakuel. "In order to become a market leader you need a major presence in the US, and this is exactly what we're doing now."

Optimove enables marketers to manage and automate multi-channel customer marketing plans based on proprietary, predictive micro-segmentation technology. The Optimove platform helps marketers maximize customer engagement, loyalty and lifetime value by automatically personalizing, executing and evaluating a complete framework of customer data-driven campaigns. Optimove delivers highly personalized, multi-channel campaigns via the Web, email, SMS, push notifications, Facebook Custom Audiences and other channels. By allowing marketers to imagine, design and execute both pre-scheduled and real-time (customer activity-triggered) campaigns, Optimove makes it easy to deliver the ideal messages to every customer, increasing customer spend and engagement while reducing churn.

eBags is a leading online provider of bags, luggage and accessories from more than 500 brands. “We are always looking for new and better ways to give our customers the individual attention that will keep them loving our brand,” said Chris Seahorn, VP of Marketing at eBags. “Optimove gives us a powerful back-end customer data warehouse with customer modeling based on predictive analytics and large-scale messaging automation. Optimove is a leader in delivering an effective and comprehensive product.”
 

About eBags

eBags is the leading online retailer of luggage, backpacks, and accessories. With over 25 million bags sold and 3.2 million customer reviews, eBags features 67,000 products from 600 brands, including Tumi, Samsonite, Travelpro, and more. For more information, visit www.eBags.com.


About Eliot Cobb

Eliot Cobb is a Co-Founder and the former CFO and Secretary for eBags.com 

Eliot Cobb Image

Eliot Cobb

EBags Survey Shows Consumers Desire More Travel Apparel

Good article on eBags offering of Travel wear... Eliot Cobb

Consumers want comfy clothing for their next cruise adventures, flights and road trips.

EBags recently announced the results of a customer survey, where 70 percent of respondents said “comfort’ was their top preference when shopping for travel attire, over function, fashion and professionalism.

With the recent explosion of the activewear market, many consumers aren’t only shopping for workout purposes anymore. Athleisure has changed the way people perceive clothing in their lifestyles, including when they travel. Today consumers are vacationing frequently, so they want clothing that isn’t going to hurt, bunch or prevent free movement.

“Years ago when the activewear market was forming, wearing yoga pants outside of the gym wasn’t mainstream. Now that it’s a fashion statement, we are marrying activewear products with our travel shoppers and bringing on more activewear brands to meet customer demand,” eBags chief executive officer Mike Edwards said.

In addition to expressing “comfort” as the number one priority, survey respondents mentioned three other motivations for their travel apparel decisions.

• Layering was listed as highly important, since customers wanted to be prepared for changes in weather or environment while traveling.
• Wrinkle-free clothing was also favored highly by customers, who said that yoga clothing is versatile with soft fabric, while activewear is stretch resistant and masks body odors, which was what traveling customers were looking for.
• Light and breathable clothing was preferred by customers that traveled frequently, too. Respondents said that they didn’t want to pack heavy and that they appreciated activewear brands that met both conditions.

The e-commerce company said it plans to expand its clothing inventory to include more active apparel. “EBags has added thousands of SKUs and six new categories in the last six months, including wearables, audio, shoes, clothing and technology,” Edwards said. “Curating a robust collection of activewear is the next step in allowing customers to purchase everything they need for travel in the same place."

About eBags

eBags is the leading online retailer of luggage, backpacks, and accessories. With over 25 million bags sold and 3.2 million customer reviews, eBags features 67,000 products from 600 brands, including Tumi, Samsonite, Travelpro, and more. For more information, visit www.eBags.com.

Samsonite Buys Luxuty Brand TUMI

"This is Big news in the Luggage business. It's the largest sale ever in this category. Tumi sales are roughly $540 million, so Samsonite purchased Tumi at a multiple of 3.5x, which is unprecedented..... "   Eliot Cobb

Samsonite to Buy Tumi for $1.8 Billion

Samsonite agreed on Thursday to buy one of its most prominent competitors in the luggage industry, Tumi Holdings, for about $1.8 billion in a deal that unites two of the biggest companies to cater to business travelers.

Under the terms of the deal, Samsonite will pay $26.75 a share in cash, 32 percent higher than the closing price of Tumi’s stock on Wednesday.
Buying Tumi, founded four decades ago by a veteran of the Peace Corps and named after a kind of ceremonial Incan knife, will give Samsonite an entryway into high-end luggage.
Tumi’s roller bags have a cult following among travelers who covet the sleek, and expensive, black ballistic-nylon models for which the brand is known.
Tumi reported $548 million in sales last year, up 4 percent from the previous year.
“Tumi is a perfect strategic fit for our business,” Ramesh Tainwala, Samsonite’s chief executive, said in a statement.
The deal is one of the biggest acquisitions by Samsonite in its century-long history, stretching back to its roots in Denver as the Shwayder Trunk Manufacturing Company. The luggage maker has been bought and sold over the years, most recently to the private equity firm CVC Capital Partners. Samsonite went public on the Hong Kong stock exchange in 2011.
Samsonite has a market capitalization of about $4.3 billion.
In its announcement, Samsonite said that it planned to market Tumi luggage through its own sales network and expand the brand’s reach in Asia and Europe.
Samsonite will finance the deal through loans from Morgan Stanley, HSBC, SunTrust and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, the company said.

By MICHAEL J. de la MERCEDMARCH 3, 2016

Photo

Tumi was founded four decades ago by a veteran of the Peace Corps and named after a kind of ceremonial Incan knife. CreditMax Rossi/Reuters

eBags Adds New Executives

"eBags has always needed a Chief Merchandising Officer and I'm happy to see that they're finally hiring one. This will undoubtedly mean that eBags will continue to add more non-bag products to its assortment which should mean even more sales."  Eliot Cobb

DENVER, Mar. 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- eBags, the largest online retailer of luggage, backpacks, handbags, and accessories, announced today several key executive hires and new appointments to the management team. Scott Erdman has been named Chief Merchandising Officer and Krista Paul is joining as Vice President of Content Innovation. eBags also announced that Mike Frazzini has been appointed Chief Technology Officer and Chris Seahorn Vice President of Marketing. This news comes on the heels of eBags selling its 25 millionth bag and finishing 2015 with record sales.

"We are fortunate to have extraordinary depth and breadth of talent across eBags' executive team," said Mike Edwards, eBags CEO. "These new appointments will help us continue to make huge strides in mobile optimization, growing our product portfolio and increasing customer engagement, loyalty, and sales."

Scott Erdman is a veteran in retail, merchandising and ecommerce with more than 20 years of experience in luxury retail, apparel and accessories. Erdman joins eBags from Bluefly, where he served as Chief Merchandising Officer. Erdman spearheaded the site's transformation from an asset owned business model into a marketplace business model, making the site a true destination for fashionable consumers. Erdman has also held management positions at Saks Fifth Avenue, LVMH, and Macy's.

"I am delighted to be joining the dynamic and creative team at eBags and play a role in the company's future success," said Erdman. "I think the company and industry are poised for growth and innovation, which makes this an exciting time for an ecommerce merchant to be joining the organization."

Krista Paul brings with her extensive digital marketing and travel ecommerce experience. She founded the travel loyalty platform UsingMiles in 2009, which helped frequent flyers manage all of their miles and points in one place. The business was sold in 2013. Having built marketing teams from scratch at startups and global companies, Krista has broad experience creating and managing the digital and social strategy, including influencer marketing, consumer PR, interactive marketing and customer engagement.

Mike Frazzini and Chris Seahorn, longstanding executives at eBags, have been appointed senior leadership roles within the company. Mike was the first IT person to join eBags in 1998. Under Mike's leadership, eBags has grown from a lean startup into a top ecommerce travel destination. In his new role, Mike will focus on building an industry-leading IoT-platform-connected mobile technology and an innovation pipeline of critical technology to facilitate agility, profitability, and customer experience.

                     

About eBags

eBags is the leading online retailer of luggage, backpacks, and accessories. With over 25 million bags sold and 3.2 million customer reviews, eBags features 67,000 products from 600 brands, including Tumi, Samsonite, Travelpro, and more. For more information, visit www.eBags.com.