Wherever your journey takes you:

8 min readApr 28, 2020

Business Design Case Study:
The Cariall Co. — a homegrown luggage brand

The global market for luggage is forecast to exceed US$ 67 billion by 2020, driven by the popularisation of travel gear, product design and functionality advancements due to the rapid increase in rail, road and passenger traffic.
The luggage industry employs state-of-the-art technology and scientific research to develop sophisticated products with innovative designs that effectively reduce neck, shoulder and back fatigue.

A robust travel and tourism industry, consumers desires to travel in style, rising standards of living to complement aspirational travelling and increase in business travel are the key factors that represent the key growth drivers in the region.

India is one of the major markets of luggage bags across the world. It is a highly fragmented market consisting of both unorganised and organised segment, with a dominance of the former in the overall industry.

The market has been dominated by VIP and Samsonite. The major brands which have been promoted by VIP over the years include VIP, Carlton, Skybags, Alfa, Aristocrat and Verve.
In addition to these brands, there are several other players in the organized segment, such as Safari, Giordano, Bulchee, Fiorelli, Blue and Blues, Timex, Kipling, Remova, Jansport which have been seeking to establish strong position in the market in the last few years.

The growing desire for a fashionable luggage bag has prompted the luggage suppliers in the country to constantly innovate in order to meet evolving lifestyles and trends. Increasing fashion and brand consciousness drive demand for lifestyle luggage products.

The growth of the luggage industry has been impacted directly by the growth of travel infrastructure such as national highways, airports, railway stations which contributed significantly to the development of the travel industry in India. Over the years, both domestic and international air travel in India has shown consistent double digit growth.

Travel bags consisting of trolley bags, suitcases and duffel bags and rolling totes have been a significant contributor to the market growth of the over the years.
Indians have shown inclination towards soft luggage bags, which are light-weighted and is easy to carry from one place to another as compared to hard luggage.
Convertible luggage and compact & foldable luggage capture consumer attention.
High airline baggage costs ramp up demand for lightweight luggage.

Several factors, including rising urbanisation, increase in personal disposable income and growth of travel industry are expected to fuel the market growth of luggage in India in the coming years.

Ameet Industries — a luggage manufacturer based out of Nashik approached us with an interesting challenge — to build a homegrown luggage brand that could make a mark for itself in the Indian marketplace and globally.

The starting point for the project became a simple question:
What would be our fundamental premise for designing and manufacturing our bags?

We created four design principles that have stood the test of time since we defined it around 3 years ago. These principles have guided the conceptualisation, design & manufacturing of bags over the years.

When we started defining the edges and creating the brand — we were looking for a name that was simple, easy to pronounce and was flexible enough to grow with the brand.

While Carriall as a brand name captured the spirit of the brand, we also needed a tagline that would capture what the brands purpose was and what it means to its audience.

A key insight became the larger idea behind luggage and journey. A journey sometimes is physical but could also be a mental or even a spiritual journey.

The luggage becomes a lot more. It holds your possesions, protects whats valuable and is your constant companion on your journey.
“Wherever your journey takes you” became a tagline that managed to capture these emotions and also became a signifier for the brands purpose.

SWITCH! Studio — created a brand film that became the pivot point for the brand and its identity. SWITCH! commissioned a series of illustrations that defined the visual language for the brand. The illustrations depicted scenarios and moments in journeys.

The brand films were created for use across social media channels and helped in creating a unique visual language for the brand that stood apart from the competition.

As the brand was being developed, we worked with the management and the manufacuring team to design the surface and look for the bags.

With hard luggage design we developed the patterns for the surfaces and lining — in conjunction with product development team to create distinctive pieces of luggage that would perform well functionally and would stand out from the crowd.

A key part of the design and functionality of the Carriall bags was integration of technology within the bags. Technology was seen as a key aid in augmenting the functionality of the bags especially for business travellers — a key category of audience we were speaking with.

Carriall bags featured its own native app that connected the bags with smartphones and gave the users possibilities of distance tracking, auto lock and several other features.

The Carriall website was developed to serve as an additional ecommerce marketplace along with established channels like amazon, flipkart & myntra.

A large number of ecommerce assets were developed in conjunction with Snell Business Collective to ensure effective sales and marketing communication on marketplaces. These involved e-commerce pages, image assets and key highlights and differentiators.

The packaging experience for the brand was focussed around not just highlighting the various features of the product but also what makes the brand relevant for its customers.