How Shay Mitchell Disrupted The $17 Billion Luggage Industry With BÉIS

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It started with a Youtube channel named #Shaycation, countless trips and an affinity for fashion, all of which led Shay Mitchell to create BÉIS in 2018. Now, the brand generates $200 million of revenue and has carved out a space in the saturated luggage market, disrupting a high-growth, multi-billion dollar industry.

Speaking on stage at the National Retail Forum last week with Harley Finkelstein, president of Shopify
SHOP
, Shay Mitchell shared with 4,000 attendees what she believes are key drivers of her brand’s success and how she positioned it to cater to all on-the-go journeys, not just travel. By offering an innovative approach to travel essentials and customer experience, BÉIS has made a name for itself and attracted the likes of hundreds of thousands of customers. Here are a few lessons from BÉIS’ successful brand building strategy and innovative approach to disrupting a category:

1- Think bigger picture: most of the main brands in the luggage category target frequent flyers or those just looking to buy a suitcase and nothing else. BÉIS is different. Shay Mitchell explains that she saw much beyond that: she sees her customers as people in motion, whether they go to the gym, on a roadtrip or commute to work, and need travel essentials for all types of travel, not just airport and flights. By looking at the luggage industry from an overall ‘on-the-go’ perspective since the brand’s inception, she set out to develop products that cater to people in motion, ensuring BÉIS would offer a diverse range of solutions for individuals on-the-go.

“You don’t need to buy a plane ticket to find our designs useful—we made sure every detail delivered on your day-to-day goals. For instance, our duffle doubles as a gym bag and our backpack goes from carry-on to carrying all your tech,” states the brand’s website. BÉIS sells carry-on and check-in suitcases, but also carries a range of bags that fit all types of on-the-go needs: from work totes to gym bags, backpacks and weekender bags, shoppers can find the relevant bag item that meets all their needs when they are on the move, no matter the destination. In addition, the brand also sells matching accessories, from cosmetic cases to laptop bags and lunch bags, making it a one-stop lifestyle destination for all.

While established luggage players also offer bags and certain types of travel accessories, these are often designed and sold as secondary, ‘nice to have’ items, while BÉIS incorporates these products as a core part of its value proposition, ensuring they can be paired with each other or with suitcases, and are available in many different styles.

2- Develop a customer-centric, no compromise value proposition: sometimes, the easiest industries to disrupt are saturated ones where innovation is rather limited. The luggage market is made up of dozens of popular brands, but most are either highly premium and somewhat fashionable or very affordable but weak in terms of quality. When identifying this market opportunity, Mitchell knew there was room to do things differently and fill a gap.

“I always felt that I had to pick between beautiful bags that looked chic and were super expensive or ugly bags that were super functional and more affordable. I didn’t want to compromise on one or the other, and I didn’t feel anyone else should have to either. So, I created BÉIS to offer consumers (and myself) options that deliver fashion, form and function, affordably,” she shared in a Linkedin article.

BÉIS has undoubtedly managed to position itself as brand offering style, form and functionality at a competitive price point, which can be attested when exploring the range of suitcases options and reading through the thousands of positive reviews. The carry-on roller, one of the brand’s best sellers, sells for $218 (when TUMI or Samsonite carry-ons are priced between $350-$800), is available in eight colors and has a 4.9 star rating of nearly 10,000 reviews with unanimous positive views on its functionality, design and durability.

With its sleek and minimalistic design, well thought-out features that make on-the-go movement effortless and aesthetically pleasing through a range of colors, the travel brand offers consumers products that combine fashion, durability and function at an attractive value for money position, which is more than what most competitors currently deliver.

3- Invest in all channels to grow awareness and conversion: another aspect in which BÉIS has a definite edge involves how it reaches its audience. By creating a modern, stylish and quite affordable lifestyle brand, it quickly reached hype status and leveraged social media platforms from its inception to convey its value proposition. With one million followers on Instagram and 370,000 on TikTok (with some videos seen by 20+ million viewers), the brand is very active on social media and has developed a strong content strategy to educate consumers on TikTok while leveraging Instagram posts to bring traffic seamlessly to its e-commerce website.

In addition to a strong social media presence (another differentiator versus established luggage brands) and a remarkable e-commerce website powered by Shopify, BÉIS also partnered with Nordstorm, Revolve and Bloomingdale’s to reach customers who prefer to shop for luggage and travel accessories in person. The brand also launched pop-up activations in 2022 and 2023 to gain brand awareness and drive conversion through its website. Designing immersive experiences like the ‘BÉIS Hotel’ pop-up activation helps the brand showcase its products in an engaging, unique environment, allowing it to interact with customers and boost brand building outside traditional channels like stores and e-commerce.

“DTC will continue to be the lion’s share of our business, as we are a digitally native brand and we intend that to continue. However, we have learned through our pop-ups in the last two years that our consumer does love IRL experiences and interacting with our brand through the brick-and-mortar channel. So, we will continue to learn and expand that channel as it makes sense for different categories within our portfolio,” shared Hussain Johnson, the brand’s president, with Business of Fashion.com.

BÉIS is an example of how disruption is sometimes not about revolutionizing an industry, but can just be about innovating by doing things better: creating new types of experiences and designing products that fit all customer needs and lifestyles, which resonates with a wide audience. By engaging efficiently with its customers, delivering a range of sleek, durable and well-priced products that meet all of customers’s on-the-go needs, the luggage and lifestyle brand proves that reinventing a category can often go a long way.

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