The next stop for Tumi

Michael Petry is a man of many talents and one who’s career as a creative director has spanned brands from Adidas to Prada, Ralph Lauren and Frye. In July last year, he landed the role as creative director of Tumi, a brand that since 1975, has been creating world-class business and travel essentials, designed to upgrade, uncomplicate, and beautify all aspects of life on the move. With Petry now heading up the brand, the next step is to move the business to a place of newer, fresher and even cooler ideas. We managed to catch up with Petry on his flying visit to London from New York to talk all things Tumi:

Can you tell me a little bit about your past and your design experience?

I started at Adidas. It was my first job and I was very sporty at the time, and not as old as I am now! It was a good transition out of youth and into my first career. I was in Adidas football – just shoes – I’ve done just shoes my entire career. Primarily Frye is where I started to get into accessories and bags. So from Adidas I went to Ralph Lauren – so I was at Adidas for 5 years, Ralph Lauren for 5 and then I went to Prada and then most recently, I was at Frye for 8 years where I was creative director, and then I just came over to Tumi in July – so it’s been a whirlwind 6 months.

Have you always purely worked in accessories?

I’ve always done accessories but never ready-to-wear. I have 17 years of footwear experience, so I think I’ve made every style of shoe possible in every single country that makes shoes. This was a good challenge because I’ve been design and creative director for some very good brands throughout my time. There was an opportunity to take on a real American brand that really has a fantastic reputation. Everywhere I go there’s so much warmth with people saying “I own a piece of Tumi”, or “I know someone who owns a piece of Tumi”, or “I want to own a piece of Tumi”. Those are good moments to have, but I had to think about how you make the brand cooler or get people to reach it on a daily basis and not just on a travel standpoint but on every single day. So that’s kind of what the goal is.

And what’s the intention with Tumi to achieve those goals?

We want to take the brand from the travel specific brand that people see it as – but it’s not actually the way the business is run right now. Only 40% of our business is luggage and I think people are always surprised by that, but that means that 60% of our business is not luggage so we do day bags, outerwear, electronics. The question is, how do we integrate our brand into people’s lifestyle and how do we get involved with people on a daily basis, not just from point A to point B. People’s lives are much more complex than what they have to carry because of technology, so now everyone has the same basic dilemma, which is that they have their phone and they have their charger and then if you’re overseas you have to have the adapter and you have headphones so everyone starts to pile up more things. We have a good opportunity here to compartmentalise those for some people and also to prove that just because it’s functional, doesn’t mean it has to be ugly. I think it’s a longstanding thing that people don’t think function necessarily means style, so how do we infuse that with being cooler and more stylish?

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So I saw that you recently launched your collaboration with Public School in Dubai?

Public School has been a very good collaboration for us; they won a CFDA, they won the Woolmark International Prize. They are a very cool brand and we have a lot in common in terms of design, but in terms of demographic we have two different demographics, so it was the goal of both of our brands to take each others demographic and to cross pollinate. They wanted to get bigger and they wanted to show a broader audience what they are about, and we have 300 stores globally and are a much bigger company than they are at this point in time. We wanted to help them and I think it was a really nice opportunity for them to collaborate with a bigger brand and a one that has a global distribution. It was a great opportunity for us to then take our brand and to show how we combine the functionality that Tumi is known for with the style that we are looking for.

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So is that something you would do with another, similar brand?

I think in 2016 we will come back to Public School again because we had such a good first year, but we had a good conversation where I think we both have opportunity to do even more creatively, because we just did men’s bags last time and there’s an opportunity to get into women’s bags with them. We typically have a lot of people knocking on our door to do collaborations, which is a really fantastic part of the brand. The question is just picking the right one and editing which one you want to go with. We have about 5 collaborations we are in work with for 2016 so we are really busy. There are really terrific partners and everyone’s of the larger scale and very well known, but at the same time we try and do partnership and collaborations with someone who would be able to take us somewhere else and do something that we wouldn’t be able to do on our own. And then I put my spin on it – and I think that’s the fun about doing these collaborations.

And a big part of it must be bringing in a new audience, like you did with Public School.

Exactly and every collaboration you go into, you need to think about what it’s going to do for the brand, and how it’s going to take us to a different place. The Public School guys have a much younger, urban audience and they just did their collaboration with Jordan Brand, which looks fantastic and again that’s a different audience to the one that’s normally looking at Tumi.

So you’ve noticed a different clientele?

For sure, even for our collaborations in the future we’ve had people knocking on our door saying that they noticed our collaboration with Public School, and people that were buying our products have said that they hadn’t thought of us in that way, but that they could see why we were doing it and that it makes sense.

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In your new role, will you be leaving behind any parts of the brand?

I love the brand and one of the things I’ve spoken about a lot since I’ve been here is not necessarily how you make the brand younger, but it’s just about making the brand cooler. Being younger can be very specific to a different demographic and I think being cooler is a demographic that’s ubiquitous because no matter what age you are, you still want to be cooler. So how do we make our business bags cooler, our travel bags cooler, how do we make a woman’s handbag cooler and how do we get into someone’s everyday life just by making products that are interesting and cool. From a category standpoint obviously bags will be our number one, travel will be our number one-a and we have a growing outerwear business which is typically only found in our larger flagship stores. We have a really good electronics business and that’s a really easy way to say that this is how we integrate Tumi into your life – with our power cord or our power pack or our iPhone case.

On the design front, I’ve noticed you’re carrying a camo bag today. Are you going to be doing more of this type of thing?

Yes, this is definitely a new direction of us and the first time we’ve done anything camo. We’re known for just doing black but this design goes back to wanting to do something a little cooler. It’s had a good reaction, and everyone says that it looks like Tumi – only cooler. We have an opportunity to get a lot more creative in men’s and people know that side of the brand on a really intimate level.

Where do you find your inspiration?

You never know when inspiration is going to hit you, and I think if you ask my wife, she’ll tell you that it sometimes hits me at 3am when I’m pacing the apartment! You always have to be switched on and that’s the beauty of creative life and one of the reasons why I got into this business. There are no two days alike and actually, you’ll be lucky if there are two hours that are alike. But if you’re always keeping your eyes open, always trying to edit and to do better and to think about what the next challenge for the brand is from a creative standpoint, you’ll always find inspiration.

So who is the Tumi gentleman?

The Tumi gentleman is an established man in their career or someone who’s just starting their career but who’s serious about being a professional, someone who is no longer interested in carrying around his student bag: he’s now entered into professional life. So there’s a customer at two points in the career ladder – the gentleman who might have got given Tumi for his graduation present from his parents for his first job and then we kind of walk them up the ladder and we make $2,000 briefcases (for someone at a later stage of their career). The Tumi gentleman is also worldly, technologically savvy and he travels a lot and is interested in an integrated lifestyle.

Visit Tumi here.

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