Meet Victor Sanz: the exuberant innovator behind New Jersey-based luggage brand Tumi. Sharply dressed and very well travelled after almost 15 years designing, reimagining and road-testing the living hell out of cases, he certainly knows a thing or two about travelling in style. Sat in the brand’s flagship store on Regent Street, Sanz shares his thoughts on the changing world of business travel, how the company has changed since its takeover by Samsonite last year and why you should never pack loud colours when you’re going on a work trip.
What’s changed in business travel since you first joined Tumi back in 2003?
In the past, your case was just this black box that helped you haul stuff from A to B, but these days fashion, design, architecture and engineering are becoming more and more interwoven. Down the runway you’re seeing clothes that look like product design, and product design that looks more like fashion design. For us, it’s all about the way we tune into our customers’ needs and frustrations, whether it’s materials, functionality or making something beautiful to break up the monotony of sitting in an airport terminal for hours.
How do you go about building a bag for the modern businessperson?
I look at our customers now and I call it ‘from the boardroom to the bar’: you should be able to walk into the boardroom and not feel embarrassed by the bag you’re wearing, and with that same bag, you should be able to go to meet your friends after work and not be embarrassed and want to hide it away. In 2017, business doesn’t stop at 5pm or 6pm – business continues. Whether it’s cocktails or an event afterwards, we don’t have the luxury to run back home; we just slide from one thing to another, to another. That’s the person’s lifestyle, so let’s try and perfect that journey.
Whas last year’s Samsonite takeover changed the way you work at tumi?
For us, it’s been business as usual, except now we have this amazing opportunity to continue to grow the brand alongside a huge team of like-minded people. It’s great, because now we’ve suddenly got loads more eyes in the world to look at things like new materials or changes to airline regulations to work out a way to make our customers’ journey as easy and hiccup-free as possible.
How has social media changed travel?
The days of carrying around bulky laptops are over and our bags have quick-access pockets for tablets and smartphones, but beyond that we’re looking more and more outside of our industry to see what’s happening in the world. For us, social media is awesome because it gives us an immediate, interactive insight into what our customers are doing, how they’re travelling and where they’re going – it means we’re always discovering hot new locations and better understanding people’s needs.
What are your top packing tips?
Lay out everything you think you’ll need, then cut it in half: that’s your start. Then make sure your palate’s nice and simple, especially if you’re travelling for business – if you go for a caseful of blacks, whites and neutrals you’ve got more colour matches for every kind of event. It sounds like a cliché, but when you travel a lot for work, less is more.
For more information, see tumi.com
