The itinerary for Tumi’s most recent launch event was the first clue that the brand is charting new territory. If you’d glanced through the list of activities on offer—massage sessions, mosaic-making workshops, breezy beachside dinners—you might have thought it more suited to an episode of The White Lotus than a high-powered business trip. This was all by design, of course—to introduce their newest collection, the brand had gathered 80 guests at the Centara Reserve in Koh Samui for a weekend geared towards maximum relaxation. As for why, it was summed up succinctly by Tumi’s global creative director, Victor Sanz: “Sometimes you have to slow down to move forward.” And when a brand as entwined with high-performance, high-flying intensity as Tumi decides to take a breath, one can’t help but lean in to see what follows the pause.
Relaxation was the weekend’s prevailing directive, and all attendees were happy to oblige. Guests sipped fresh lemonade as they mingled with Sanz and other key figures from Tumi, including Aris Maroulis, the brand’s Vice President of Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. Thai celebrities like Becky Armstrong and Mile Phakphum made the rounds with chic Tumi accessories on their arms, seemingly impervious to the scorching Koh Samui heat.
The collection everyone had gathered to celebrate, Mediterranean Escape, was a vibrantly hued celebration of tranquillity. It took core Tumi products—like the 19 Degree line and the Voyageur series—and gave them a makeover in coastal-inspired shades of pink, yellow, and green. “We’ve had colours in the past, but this is the first time we’ve gone for so many bold colours at the same time,” confessed Maroulis.
Though the pastel-hued shades looked perfectly at home in sunny Koh Samui, their true origin, as the name suggests, lay thousands of miles away. “We kept coming back to this idea of the Mediterranean,” Sanz explained. The team was drawn to the sensorial richness of the region, but the first hurdle they faced was in pinpointing a location. As it turned out, that was a question better left unanswered—in any truly transportive fantasy, details are optional. “It’s just the idea of going to the Mediterranean, enjoying that beautiful coastal town where you’re having a cocktail with your friends without any plans,” Sanz says.
From that enticingly vague tidbit, the physicality of the entire collection took shape, soft and dreamlike in its vision of a summer getaway. The Pink Clay colourway was chosen for its resemblance to terracotta tiles, but was rendered in a lighter hue to give it a more timeless appeal. Similarly, the Washed Yellow recalls not the bright citrus shade of Amalfi lemons, but the scent of them wafting over a summer breeze. The Mediterranean Print features a photograph of an unassuming family relaxing by an azure ocean, captured by a friend of the design team while on vacation.
To those familiar with Tumi’s usual offerings of sleek aluminium and matte black, the collection might come as a surprise. But to Sanz, the Mediterranean Escape line is not so much a pivot in focus as a momentary reset. “Our customers are almost like performance athletes, and slowing down is part of performance,” he explains. “You can tell the athlete, you’re just going to keep running and running, but you know they’re eventually going to burn out and get tired. And if they need that time to pause and get away, why not create the right vehicles for them to achieve that?”
Go slow to go fast. Aside from being a snappy maxim, the phrase has come to define Tumi’s approach throughout their 51-year tenure. The brand is firmly anchored to their core values—intelligent design, durability, comfort—but what propels them is an insistent desire for change. It’s as much a part of Tumi’s DNA as the ballistic nylon that made up their very first travel offerings. “We’re not afraid, we don’t hesitate, we’re confident. We try new things,” Maroulis says of Tumi’s approach. “Our traditional focus has been changing for a while now, and it will accelerate.”
A clearer picture of Tumi begins to form once you understand this constant search for newness—one that explains how an ostensibly serious, no-nonsense brand finds itself hosting a sun-drenched relaxation retreat. But even on an occasion defined by unwinding, one senses a keen undercurrent of strategy. Every journey needs a map, and Tumi’s is based on a keen understanding of customer and market demands. Right now, the map points squarely towards that elusive and most sought-after demographic for almost every brand: the young female consumer.
It’s not a new direction for the brand, but it’s one that they’re approaching much more proactively. Tumi keeps an ear to the ground through their network of sales associates, who are in constant communication with customers even after a purchase is complete. “Our women customers are coming to us and saying: Hey, I need something that’s more casual, or maybe a little bit more dressy, or something for a cocktail event. What do you have for that?” Sanz shares.
Collections like the sleek leather Agent line and the more fashion-forward Journey soon followed—but the ultimate key to success with young women lies in a blend of form and function. Bright colours and sleek silhouettes might draw the eye, but it all rests on a bedrock of utility. Every Tumi collection marketed towards women shares all the same core values as the men’s offerings, from carefully considered pockets to durable materials. “Look at a collection like Alpha,” Sanz says, referring to their core collection of high-performance travel essentials. “It’s totally structured. It’s ready to go. It’s very streamlined. But when you distil it down to its core values, you can find the same thing in a collection like Voyageur.”
With broader appeal, though, also comes a greater need for adaptability. Put a product out into the real world, even one made of aluminium or ballistic nylon, and it will be bent, broken, scuffed, and twisted. In this regard, Tumi rolls with the punches. Their products are famous for withstanding tests of material, but they also stand up to more philosophical questioning. “We’ll design a product with a particular usage in mind, and then we’ll see a customer using it in a different way,” Sanz says. He recalls, on a particularly memorable occasion, seeing a Tumi backpack on a sharply dressed businessman, and on the very next street, seeing the same model secured to the back of a young father’s stroller, with diapers, snacks, and baby wipes each occupying their own dedicated pocket. “We do design with a certain intent in mind, but when people use our products, they find a uniqueness,” he shares. “They define what it is and what it means to them, and I love seeing that.”
There is a genuine interest at Tumi in how the products perform once they’re out of the showroom. Maroulis shares that ahead of the Mediterranean Escape collection’s launch, the office took bets on which colour would prove the most popular (amongst the weekend’s 80 guests, Thyme was the clear winner, but Washed Yellow was also a sleeper hit). This curiosity is a key part of their search for change. As always, though, it’s anchored to a firm belief in the brand’s core values—and isn’t that what makes constant reinvention possible? Even in their quest to move forward, there are compromises Tumi will never make. “Material innovation, design, durability, functionality, customer service,” Maroulis lists, naming the aspects of what the brand calls ‘the Tumi difference’. “These things, no matter what, we don’t compromise on. And we shouldn’t, because we know who we are.”
“That’s exactly what Victor [Sanz] is thinking every day,” Maroulis goes on to explain. “How can I move forward but still be authentic?” Sanz echoes this sentiment, adamant that trust is at the heart of Tumi’s appeal. “People know our values, and they know that those value systems cascade to every product we make, whether it’s a bag charm or a piece of luggage,” he says. “We don’t deviate from those values.”
As for where Tumi is headed next, Sanz is circumspect. “We have a couple of surprises coming,” he says. When probed for hints of a location or a climate, could a cosy ski retreat be on the horizon?—he remains tight-lipped, but assures us that it will be an evolution of the Tumi ethos. “I will say this: it’s a continuation of our story. You’re going to see us continually evolve the brand to express the needs of the customer. We want to be there every step of the way.” As we sit in sunny Koh Samui, the glare off the water makes it hard to see what lies ahead—but the course is clearly charted, and if there’s one thing you can count on, it’s that Tumi has a plan.
Discover the Tumi Mediterranean Escape collection here.
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