'Everyone had a black luggage': How Away shook up the travel industry

"Don't confuse speed and strategy, take a pause. That first year I visited every single retail stores that we have and every single factories." Today's guest is away CEO Jessica Skennazi. Founded in 2015, a way quickly became one of the breakout names of the director consumer wave, built on the idea that luggage could be designed with the same level of thought as a trip itself. The company has scaled fast, but it's also gone through moments that forced a reset. When COVID hit a travel brand, and worldwide travel stops so suddenly, those are companies who probably should have gone down at that point. To big changes within the business, Jessica, a veteran of companies like Dyson, Amazon, and LVMH, stepped in to help lead the company into its next chapter. And as a next bad herself, she knows what it means to live out of a suitcase. In this conversation, we'll get into Jessica's experience across the luxury and tech worlds, how she's applying that lens to away now. When you move to your next company, you take on some pieces of that culture and you patchwork it into your own leadership playbook, and what she sees as the future of travel. We're not pursuing short-term, short-lived trends or moments. I always think about and challenge my team to think about, is this a product that is still going to be relevant three years, five years, seven years, ten years from now? Jessica, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me such a pleasure to be here. So I was just saying to you, off-cam, looking at your background, I feel like we have so much in common because we are both expats here in the US, both left to travel, and both seem to have the same dream of going on safari for honeymoon. I just learned this, though I hear that that's been a dream deferred for both of us. It's been deferred, but it's in planning. So it never looks hoax of making your dreams come true. Well, okay, before we dive in, actually, where are you planning to go? Just give us a little teaser in your hopes and dreams, which travel. So for that safari from my honeymoon, which has been deferred, we are towing with a few countries right now. I'd love to do a mix of sing great animals and then spending time at the beach as well. So just to start off, I guess, can you walk us through a little bit about where you grew up and what shaped your ambitions early on? Absolutely. So I was born in Brazil, but pretty early in my life, I moved to France, where I was raised until I was about ten years old. And then I relocated to both the UK and then landed in New York when I was 15, 16 years old. I thought I was going to spend one year here, finish my high school, and then move back to Europe for my studies. Turns out one year is not enough in New York City. And here we are 20 years later, where I've built my life. I went to uni and I started working and I've been loving every single minute of it. And you know, what's funny is that I think you've described yourself as the so-called "negotiator" and "chief growing up." What does that look like? I presume that's carried well into your life today. I'm the oldest daughter of three kids. And because we moved so much growing up, it was the three of us against the world. And a lot of that requires partnerships, negotiations with the parents to make things happen, right? Like to explore, to get to just to have fun and to support an advocate for your sibling. So early leadership experiences as the oldest daughter of siblings. Yeah, I think every older sibling can relate. So fast forward a little bit, you know, your time in the working world. I think it's fair to say you've had a really storied career working at companies, as I just mentioned, like Amazon, LVMH, Dyson. These are companies that are also having three completely different corporate cultures, right? So what did some of these experiences teach you and, you know, what guiding principles have kind of stayed with you? It's such a great question because you take so much on the culture in how the commercial playbook actually plays out. And the culture in itself tells you where is the next chapter of that specific company? How is it going to go into its next evolution? What's going to be the next chapter of growth? And then when you move to your next company, you take on some pieces of that culture and you patchwork it into your own leadership playbook. And I'm so intensely grateful for the experiences that I've had in business. Because I've been able to see it in very, very different ways. Always with companies though that are customer obsessed, that have a very high degree of clarity and intention in where they're heading and what's important to them. And the product at the center of all of them remains core. It's a non-negotiable, it's a great product. It'd be an online marketplace or a luxury goods. And today, at a way, I find that to be still so true, that's playbook of us leading with a lot of clarity, very close attention to culture and an understanding of where is it that we're heading into leading this travel brand into its next beloved chapter. Are there any specific kind of like mantras or principles that you really kind of try to remember as you go through your day to day? Absolutely. At Amazon, the idea of customer obsession is a non-negotiable. The customer is at the center of everything that the ecosystem is built around. That's forcing sometimes tough calls and decisions around sequencing and timing. And Trilia at the end, the financial bottom line, is this the right thing to do by the customer? How do we advocate for the best possible customer experience? You take that and you combine it with decent engineering mindset. Are we solving problems? Are we solving problems that other people are ignoring? Are we doing that first? And how do we take that pain point mindset and address it with clear, tangible innovation to be first to market? That's very, very powerful as well. A way is the best of all of those worlds in a way where we are customer obsessed in everything that we do. The story of the way started with understanding how the customer of today is traveling, what are the pain points in the current travel experience, both in the product and the experience itself of purchasing a luggage and traveling with it? And how do we innovate on that while still adding a beautiful wrapper of design and self-expression that is so true to what awaits from the beginning? And a kind of really segue as well into one thing I wanted to ask you, which is obviously a way has long been seen as this like category creator. What is it that you think made it so special from the start? Because obviously as we well know, this is a very saturated industry, right? So why do you think that it stood out when others didn't? I think it's a great question. And truly from the ideas of our founders, the idea that travel and luggage is a reflection of your self identity, it's an expression of who you are, how you like to travel, this was score. And that idea itself has never been truly explored in other brands in the market at the time. Luggage was commoditized, luggage was a tool to get to a place. More often than not, it was not a very nice, seamless experience. And then the buying was a little bit clunky as well, right? You also did not feel part of a community. Everyone had a black luggage and that set, right? And you would stuff it into a closet when you did not need it. You would pull it out a week before a trip to start packing and always in the back of your mind thinking, "Oh, there must be something better out there." A way came to market in 2016 with that single perfect carry-on. And that was not only a perfect product, but also a great purchasing experience, a focus on community, and then the storytelling and the narrative around this. This is a product that has been built for travelers by travelers. And there's authenticity in that message that we are able to carry on 10 years plus later. Such a good point about the color of it all as well, by the way. There's a lot of neutrals out there. Yes, the majority I think is still black. It's true, but you can have so much fun with luggage. You can have so much fun with color. And that's part of our DNA. And it's not just color. It's the finishes and the texture and the materials that we use. And then they also serve a purpose. Now you can see your luggage coming through the carousel. It's yours. It's your travel uniform. You get to assort your luggage with your outfits. All the way that you like traveling, right? So it's been part of who we are from the beginning. And actually my team quite recently sent me the library of all the colors that we've ever dipped and approved. And I was mind blown by the number of colors there and the fun and the joyfulness that we were able to bring back to travel through that story. Oh, wow. So it was actually quite an array of different swatches. Incredible, incredible. And then we have people who love their pinks or their purples or their blues. And so it's so fun to be able to come back to market. With different shades and tones. And then do you like the customers in those ways? Yeah, so much fun to talk about. You yourself, Jessica, joined away at the end of 2024. That's right. Yeah. And that was following a previous role serving as president of the Americas for Dyson. At this point in your career, what made you feel like this is the right leap to take? I've been always very intentional about taking on your roles. An intention comes with what is the timing of all of it? And at what moment in time do you join in your company? When I started exploring conversations with Jen Rubio, the away founder, immediately became so apparent that a way was on the leap of a new chapter completely. A way had done eight, nine years of this amazing DTC machine that they had built with a cult-like following of those millions of luggages sold and billions of miles traveled behind it. And yet we knew that there was more potential ahead. That potential was going to be expressed through increased distribution, more product innovation, more partnerships, and all of these other potential that we could unlock with stronger discipline in our operational efficiency as well. And so when you're a consumer goods exec, and that's the mandate I mean, how incredible, right? How incredible it is to say, I can take the best of what has been built for almost 10 years, respect and honor that, and yet think through what it looks like for the next 10 years. And truly, we want to measure the brand in decades, and we're building for sustainable, profitable, long-term future, and that's the exacting piece of it. So when we had those discussions about where are we going to gather what's the future look like out there, you have to say, yes, it happens once in a lifetime, those kinds of opportunities. So I joined, right in the middle of the holidays, in the retail, joining in November, December, it's straight baptismite fire, you're in it, but you also see the energy and the brilliance of the teams around you who are making it happen, right? So it's such a great way to actually, on her coming into such a brand. And so I've been at a way for about a year and a half, we've had an exceptional year and a half, we've had an exceptional holiday season, we're very, very happy with where the business is going this year as well, and there's a lot more to come. - Wow, okay, more on that later, but I will say just to your point about realizing, okay, this is the time to say yes. You know, Jessica, obviously there's no secret that you stepped in at a little bit of a delicate time when the company had faced some high-profile challenges, just for the sake of our audience, you know, the background here is that in late 2019, there were reports of a toxic workplace under a waste, co-founder and former CEO, Steph Corey, which led to her resignation and some leadership shuffles. You have been really open about, you know, what you stepped into, and obviously that's no fault of anybody's. My first question is just kind of, did that put you off at all, just honestly? And also, when you took the helm, what were some of your most immediate priorities? - You know, it's a good question, but I also want to get the perspective that when I joined in 2024, you were talking about six years later, some of those events, and outside of some of those headlines, which we can debate around where they justified, was it a moment in time, et cetera, what also happened right after is that COVID hit, and when COVID hit a travel brand, and worldwide travel stops so suddenly, by all measures, those are companies who probably should have gone down at that point. Now, did that happen for a way, no, it did not, and why? Because the team showed and showed up with immense resilience in two things. One, in strengthening the supply chain operations, right? It was a moment in time that they chose to say, okay, this is what's happening in the world. Product, it's complicated to bring it in. Customers are not traveling, they're not opting into the proposition right now. What can we do to strengthen the back office, the operations, right? So they did that beautifully well. And then two, this builds resilience, right? This builds resilience that feeds innovation, that feeds creativity. And at that moment in time, that's when the design teams decided to pivot into saying, okay, we have luggage, let's pause that for now. Let's focus into other bugs and accessories. And still to today, those bugs and accessories in which we're growing double digits year on year in those categories, they are now part of the core assortment that we have as well. So it's thinking about travel in a different way. It's thinking about what are the products you need to not fly overseas, but to go to the office, to go to the gym, to take a micro travel that we can't. And so it was a very interesting moment in time that happened. Now, when you're coming in quite a few years later and that has happened, what does it tell you? It tells you that you have greatly resilient team. You have teams who have been there from essentially day one and for them to still be there almost 10 years later. There's a lot of dedication and loyalty that is a great capital asset for a leader stepping into a new company. And then it does tell you that culture is also very important. And I spend a lot of time focusing on building a culture that's rooted in both clarity and curiosity. And clarity with the courage of also leaning into where we're going next, where we're making the decisions that are going to impact the roadmap for the next three to five years. Yeah. And I will say, I was saying to you just before we started the interview that one of your former staffers I actually know and she was actually speaking very highly of you. And I think that's always such a sign of what a leader is like, how people talk about you behind the scenes and people who work under you talk about you even after they've left. How do you feel like you really work to instill a very positive, you seem like a very bubbly person, like a positive culture out of way day to day. I am very big on transparency. And so you come in and you talk to your teams day and day out around what's working well, but also what's not working so well. And for those areas of opportunities, of improvements, let's have the discussion together. Let me explain the thinking behind sometimes the tough calls or the decisions or the reasons why we came up to something specific. But now, at the same time, with that culture of transparency that I really want to instill in everyone, I expect a very high degree of ownership and accountability on the other side. I do think that when you mix all of those things together and you empower your team to make decisions that are rooted in data in transparency and partnership with a high degree of accountability, you'll be able to hide performance culture that is rooted in both performance and purpose and the sense of sort of shared belonging of where we're heading together. Listen, the world is moving very fast. There's things that are happening every single day in the headlines, in business. There's no flat line anymore, right? There's no slowing down. And that can bring anxiety, that can be triggering for a lot of people. So when you truly build a culture that's focused on that sense of shared purpose, do we know who we are, do we know where we're going? I think you're building something that's very strong where people can sort of navigate the more stormy waters with more conviction and with more serenity to truly focus on what matters the most, a great product that's designed led with amazing quality behind it. So when you took the helm officially as CEO, what were some of your most pressing priorities? Let's say on day one, and how is that evolved now? Yeah, it's a great question, and I want to answer it by saying that if you have pressing parties on day one, don't confuse speed and strategy, right? If you try to immediately put your imprint into the roadmap for the next three months, you might not make the right call immediately. So take a break, take a moment, take a pause, learn the business, have the humility of learning the business, that was very big for me. That first year, I visited every single retail stores that we have and every single factories in which we produce our product, and in which we manufacture our products. And so I learned the processes, I learned the business that way by looking at how we source our raw materials, our testing standards when we bring products to market, and when we talk to our retail teams on the field, what is it that they're telling you about the customer, about the brand, et cetera? And so there's that moment of learning. And out of that moment of learning, when you're still fresh into the business, you bring perspective. And that perspective is very much incurred into, let's honor what's so beautiful and so strong about this brand, but let's also generate momentum about where you see it can go, and what is the opportunities that is ahead of us, right? And so that's how we shaped the first three-year plan when I joined. And that three-year plan truly being incurred into, let's meet customers where they are. We have built an amazing community of millions of travelers, mostly in North America, but we know that there's more travelers out there, we want to talk to them. And so let's go meet them out, right? And we did that. And we did that through intentional distribution expansion. We did that through partnerships that unlocked new communities for us. We did that through telling our stories in different ways as well, and doubling down on brand and creative and storytelling, which was very core from a way they won as well. So that was the roadmap at the beginning, and then doing that with an underlying layer of strengthening the foundations under all of it. So when we move fast, we move with the conviction that the economics are working, that the teams are prepared, that we're raising the bar in every single decision that we're making. It's so refreshing to hear about how you really wanted to take your time to put together that plan. So how long was it in the end that you did this listening tour? That took a year to hit all the factories and all of the retail stores, including our international locations, but it was so incredibly worth it. And then we built our first three-year plan, probably like six months into that new mandate, in partnership with a lot of our teams, our leadership teams, and our board as well. Don't confuse speed with strategy. That's a good one. I'm going to steal that line. This year has gone by so quick for me. It's almost the end of the year, and I've already come up with some new resolutions, but I thought, why wait? Everything else starts in the fall. School, football, kick-offs. The newest season of that TV show you're going to binge. And while everyone is catching up on that latest episode, you're missing out because you're trying to win a customer bag because you missed their call. And that's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O. The phone system built so you never miss a call. Quo is the number one rate of business phone system on G2, trusted by over 90,000 businesses who rely on it to stay reachable and look professional every day. All your calls, text, voice mails live in one place, so anyone in your team can pick up a conversation, see the full history, and respond fast. Don't wait until the newer to make better changes. Money is on the line. always say hello with grow. Try quote for free plus get 20 70% off your first six months when you go to quote.com/btv. That's qio.com/btv. When you look at the luggage market today, you know, what gap do you see now? What do you think the legacy brands are still missing? I think that you brought it up. The market is both more saturated than ever before and more fragmented as well than ever before. And as a customer coming into the space in the consideration phase, you're kind of lost, honestly. You don't really know where to go. You have price points considerations. You have quality considerations. You have featuring innovation claims that are part of your consideration mindset. It goes back to what kind of traveler are you? How are you using your gear? Are you using it for business, for pleasure, for everything? Is it just you or do you need to pack for you an entire family? And so truly taking that into consideration, that's what we look at. And we go back to sort of it's a travel brand built by travelers. That's how we're going to bring innovation to market. That's how we're going to build the partnerships. And so we do that very much every day. Social media also has been a huge driver of a ways growth. Analysts have said that you're one of the first brands to truly win at platforms like Instagram by selling a lifestyle versus just a product for other young CEOs or operators out there listening. What advice would you give when you're thinking about how to really build a brand and stand out on social? The lifestyle comment I find so interesting because I don't know that that's required for every single brand that's starting out there. But for a way, it was part of the DNA again from day one. Because travel is so emotional. Because travel is so much an expression of your hopes and dreams and ambitions in how you travel and where you're going. And you and I are traveling probably quite differently as well. So storytelling is embedded completely into their history of a way up to today and in the future as well. Social media is the function, the tool, the platform that we're using to tell those stories. And even through that, we are continually adapting the stories that we tell and how we tell them. We have an amazing brand and creative team behind a lot of the stories that we tell in which we like to infuse humor and creativity. Because at the end of it, travel is real. Travel is messy and chaotic. And it's not perfectly polished all the time either. And we like to lean in into those travel truth. But today, we're also engaging into new platforms like TikTok and we've launched our TikTok shop this year or even other ways in which we can tell our content stories, including through our wholesale distribution partners. So for other founders and CEOs, the storytelling component, you need to be very clear in what is the story that you're wanting to tell through that. Is it an engineering story? You have innovation that no one else has in market. Is it an aspiration story? The product is a truly a reflection of your life and identity and you're going to aspire to a specific lifestyle moment. Do you want to talk about the behind the scenes, how the product is made, all of the brain power and creativity that goes behind bringing something to market, which there's so much of at a way as well. And so I think having a little bit of clarity brings a sense of both consistency and authenticity to the platforms that then gets you to build a community that's going to follow you and that's going to engage with you over time. You have to make sure you're not muddled about your vision. Exactly. Yeah. One thing that also released it out to me, Jessica, is that when you are a Dyson, you've talked about how you and your team spent a lot of energy defending the companies, you know, market position from copycats, especially from players on the beloved air rep. I'm curious how this has shaped your approach in a way, again, with regard to the fact that there's probably a lot of copycats out there right now. That's something in which my thinking has even evolved over time. When I started in consumer goods, you had more time, more runway when you launched the products before copycats and jubes would come to market. And so you could benefit from this first mover advantage for sometimes yours, not just small. Over the last 10 years, that runway has massively reduced. And at the speed in which other companies are actually operating, we have seen the rise of not only more copycats and jubes, but also how fast they're coming to market is so much faster than any time before. So you're enjoying less time and you're competing potentially with more jubes. So you have two choices. You can let this depress you all day long. You can start obsessively scrolling through all of the jubes and sending them to your legal team with question marks around, can we do anything about this? If you do that, you start using focus on your brands. And the other approach that I would recommend and I try to do, even though it's not easy every day, is you focus on what you do best. You focus into your innovation, your timelines, your roadmap. What is ahead for your customers? You still stay focused on your non-negotiables and you obsess over those details. How do we bring the best next version of that suitcase or that bag to market? Because at the end of the day, those jubes, they can cloud your judgment, they can slow you down, they can make you request a lot of your conviction points and to what purpose? No, if you had a great idea and you're continuing to build on it, they're actually the proof points that it's working. And you have to continue to address the customer who's going to value that original proposition and take them along with them. Now, that's not to say that one should be complacent about competition because I believe that that's a dangerous behavior to have as well. But how do you channel that into more creativity and more innovation? That's the approach that I think is quite more interesting to explore. I've always been someone who sets big goals for myself and then sometimes gets overwhelmed by the size of them. Take working out. Before I had this goal of exercising every day for an hour, and because that felt like a big commitment, I'd inevitably find reasons to put it off, right? One thing I learned is to break up the goal into smaller habits that are more achievable. So instead of telling myself, I need to work out for an hour. I started just saying, I'll just go for 15 to 20 minutes. Funny thing is, once I got myself to start, I'd usually end up staying much longer. And eventually, working out became something I actually look forward to, because of the small change that totally changed my routine. That's from masterclass, the sponsor of today's episode. It's specifically from Atomic Habits author James Clears class about developing good repeatable habits. And I love that masterclass gives you access to instructors who have genuinely defined their fields from AI pioneer Dr. Faefe Lee to former FBI negotiator Chris Voss. There are over 200 classes across 13 categories, and you can even listen in audio mode, which makes it easy to tune in on your commute or your workout. Masterclass keeps adding new classes, so there's never been a better time to get in. Right now, as a listener of the show, you get at least 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com/btb. That's 15% off at masterclass.com/btb. Head to masterclass.com/btb to see the latest offer. Definitely. And I think actually the advice you gave there, it sounds like it could apply to virtually any challenge, right? Where it's like really recognizing what's beyond your control and trying to make sure you stay focused is that probably one of the biggest challenges that you would outline for a way, you know, like just the the dupe culture, the copycats. What else would you point to in terms of pain points just briefly? Even outside of the dupe culture, the macro landscape currently is quite volatile. So yes, you might have dupe culture on one side, but look at everything that is impacting consumer brands today, right? It is complex geopolitical landscapes. It is a supply chain that always has its its fair share of obstacles every year from tariffs to supply chain big corridors are being stuck at the moment. So if that's the case and if that's the baseline and if that's the new normal, how do you adapt and how do you build highly adapting teams to this being the new normal? That means even more resilience, even more adaptability, even more ability to pivot one way or the other when you do that. And those are great things to have to build a culture that's high performing. Those are great skills to develop and hone at every single level of your organization. So in a way, let's assume that this is the new normal. Let's build businesses that are stronger than that and that require us to take perspective, know when to pivot and when to shift direction and do that early enough, right? We cannot be complacent anymore. Yeah, be agile. That's really great advice. Especially today, I want to get your take on the future of D2C and retail because you've touched on distribution now a few times. Like some other brands we've had on this show away has long been seen as this poster child for the D2C movement. But last year you also made headlines for pushing more aggressively into retail and wholesale places like Amazon and Nordstrom. What made this the right time to strike there? Truly, a lot of people are thinking about D2C as very black and white. It's not. D2C in the early 2010s was about that very, very clear and almost exclusive focus into building a very strong website, sometimes a couple of flagship anchors around it. But that's not the full story. The full story is it was that to serve talking to the customer directly and being direct to customer. I think it's not just about sending your products straight from any covers website, it's about you and I knowing each other, engaging with each other, me getting access to consumer data, insights to shape the next chapter of the company, right? So this is what I think is the most important piece of it. And how do you keep that, that interaction, that leaning in that engagement with the customer, the community that you've built for the last 10 plus years, and you now compound it. To expand it into meeting customers where they are based on the last 10 years of being a DTC business. At a way that has manifested itself into DTC first or mostly into DTC smart. Let's take what's still the center of gravity for the brand, which is an amazing website that's paying a great luggage buying experience. But let's compound that through, we're going to go and do that with other partners who believe in the power of community, just like we do, who are able to feed us insights that are very important to understand where we're going next as well. So the pendulum has shifted a lot. I think a lot of brands went through. We're going to be DTC first and only to wholesale is the way to go. I want to put the pendulum in the middle. The pendulum in the middle is what is your website used for? And for us, it's the highest integrity and expression of our storytelling, of our full assortment, of all the services we have for our customers like personalization or other services. And at the same time, building a cost system around in which you can bring the great product to more people. Then, operationally, the question becomes, what are all of the links between those things? So when we think about building a true omnichannel ecosystem, it's not even about all of those channels coexisting in parallel. It's about how do you bring back lifetime value in customers of having someone buy a product at Nordstrom and then get it personalized in a store, buy a product on Amazon and a second set on our website. How do you do all of those things with the tools that you have today? And to some extent, I think that the technology today is strong enough that it allows us to build on the best of DTC and the expansion and the awareness that a wholesale, great partner can unlock in terms of a creative value to unlock new communities. And when you say you want that pendulum to be in the middle, is that quite literally? I mean, you're a private company, so feel free to share what you want, but is there a ratio that you're targeting in terms of the whole DTC player versus the wholesale and conventional retail side? We're not thinking about it in terms of percentage or what's the right mix, etc. We're thinking about it in terms of where should we go? Let's go there and do it well. And that will sort of like lend the pendulum where it is, right? One side, we are actually operating one of the largest consumer goods e-commerce that I have seen on the other side of things. We know that the customer is out there looking for the away products in other retail partners, the Nordstrom of the world, the Amazon of the world, the exporting goods of the world. And for us, when we look at onboarding new retail partners, we take that lens of who is their customer? How loyal is that customer? What is the online experience, what is the offline experience? And so we're going to continue to expand a couple of other distribution partners within that lens. We are opening a few this year. We actually are opening a revolve forward coming up as well, which I'm incredibly excited to partner with. It's a fashion story. It's a color story. It's a premium story in the positioning. And they have great assortment that I'm very proud to be a part of. We have a lot more, frankly, that are coming up as well for the rest of the year that you'll see us announcing. And that's because the customer is out there looking for the brand. And we think we have an answer and a strong proposition for them. Just on the note about partnerships, a way has collaborated with so many designers, celebrities and brands on really fun limited edition collections, including a really fun partnership with White Lotus last year. Is it also about the fact that this is a category where there's not a ton of repeat purchase saying, so people don't always buy a new suitcase, right? Is that part of the strategy here to really stay top of mind to consumers? Okay, so this is a great question, because when I came into the brand, I was thinking to myself, hmm, love the product, love the category. How often do you bring the customer back into the fold, right? What is the time between a first purchase and a second purchase? Well, the role of our teams is to sort of reduce that time and to do that in a very, I think intelligent and clever way. So why are people coming back to get a second purchase? One, very often, we see that they love the first carry-on that they bought and now they're building their sets. So they are going to buy a large or trunk to go with it or perhaps a second carry-on for them or their partners. The second thing is that we have an incredibly generous community who loves to gift our products to their friends and family as well. So they are coming and them themselves are becoming ambassadors and eventually, so they are coming back and they're exposing the brands to more people. The third way in is that customers are coming in and opting into a new product category. So they might have our bigger carry-on, which is our best seller, and they'll add the personal items to go with it, the duffles, the back baths, the gym bags, the diaper bags, the pet carriers, etc. And then finally, some people are coming in through the lens of partnerships. But indeed, we've had a very busy, exciting schedule of partnerships where we are bringing such fun to the category that sometimes you just want to upgrade. Sometimes you just want to get the new version because it is such a fun expression again of color or a moment in time of a reflection of how you're traveling in that year that you know what, it's worth it, you're going to do it. White Lotus was such a great example of that, the collection sold out. It was beautiful and the storytelling around it was, I think, really, really well done. And we have a few more coming up. We just announced a partnership with Disney for the new movie of Toy Story 5. So that's a collection for families with kid-sized luggage working as well as an away-adult luggage as well. But with the fun and the understanding that people are traveling differently when they're traveling for family, when they're traveling for entertainment, for fandom, and we want to tap into that as well. We also are announcing this spring a partnership with Amtrak and this is more reflection on how customers are sometimes now choosing to use train travel as well and slower pace travel. So this is us understanding how the customer behavior in traveling has changed and bringing partnerships to life that honor that and products to life that makes sense for that type of travel as well. So, partnerships, not only they're incredibly fun, but for us, they're great with to bring customers back into the fold, to tell different stories, to test things out in market, and to have fun with a category that should be fun when we talk about travel. It sounds like a lot of it is turning, it's not a need, it's a want, right? So that's really great. And also, it makes me curious, I feel like you guys must be bucking the trend in terms of the repeat purchases and the frequency that you're seeing. People do that because to your point, it's almost like just with the partnership of revolve, for example, it's really turning it into an accessory that you want to carry. You got it. Exactly, right? And when you talk about that, I think that we talk a lot about desirability, right? And that's sort of like that need to warmth thin line of, I need to get my hands on this, which is fun, again, a product like a luggage doesn't have to be a boring black rectangle, it can be fun, it can be an expression of yourself, and you should treat yourself for it. You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of our place, the always pants, like you don't always need a new pan, but sometimes you just want that nice new color. That's right. Exactly. So very interesting. You talked a little bit about growth and categories. For a long time, a way was known for the hard shell luggage, but in 2024, you guys expanded into soft side bags for a consumer. This might not seem like a huge deal, but on the operational side, how has that been different? And then can you tease any other new categories that you might be looking at? Speaking of the next decade. In the US, about 50% of the population travel with a soft side suitcase. So how do we package everything that we learned and did so well with hard shell into the soft side product that had basically never been updated in markets, right? And so we brought to life in 2024 that soft side. We actually just refreshed our soft side with premium features that just hit market in the last couple of weeks as well, and we're going to continue to invest in soft side as a category that just serves a purpose that people really like to engage with. Similar to soft side, we actually just launched a net new product categories of our soft side garment roller bag a few weeks ago, which is a check in size, which allows you to put seven to eight four size garments and to put them on a hanger system that we've built inside the luggage so that when you arrive at destination, there's no wrinkles. You don't need to scramble for a steamer or an iron. It's such a fun product. It's essentially a closet on the wheel. Because it's about again solving the pain points of specific types of travelers. So that's an example of a net new product category that we've brought to market. Now this year in the next couple of months, specifically, we're coming to market with products that are clever in how they use the space around them. the user space inside of the luggage as well, trying to again understand that people are traveling in different places and that they might have not all of the space in the world to expand their suitcase everywhere. And so we're thinking a lot through that. And that has a lot of industrial engineering complexities that we need to fix. So you ask that question about sub-side, it's new factories, it's new tooling, it's new expertise, it's new testing standards, even for us on what is that product supposed to do? And how do we make sure we bring the best possible version of it to market? The same goes for all of the innovation that we have this year. And I'm smiling because in the back of my head, I have my team telling me, Jess, we're launching products every month that's at some point this year. And I'm like, yes, we are. And this is incredibly exciting. And we have all of those stories to tell, but a lot of products are really through the lens of innovation of features, not just color or partnerships. And also it's just so funny to hear about how like your team will talk to you about this, because I was going to say when you're spouting off all of these new features, all of these new partnerships, I'm like, that's a lot of work behind the scenes, right? And you're just like, okay, this is so fun guys, but everyone is just like, wait, I'm tired. Like what we're coming up to market is actually a very small person of all of the ideas at the beginning of the year or the year prior that everyone has. But again, it's about the focus and the time to make the right decision. We think that there's a lot of right calls, though, that we can make this year. Staying on expansion, you know, in recent years, obviously a way has significantly grown its international footprint. When you look overseas, which market really represents the biggest growth opportunity to you? And what regions are you most focused on? The vast majority of our business is still centered in North America and the US specifically. We do operate international flagships in both Canada and the UK, and we see great promise in both those international markets to continue building both awareness, but also there's a lot of potential in understanding even how people are traveling there. An example of that is in Europe, the international tarry on size that you that most airlines require is actually a little smaller and slimmer than your standard carry on here in the US. So how do we truly bring to market solutions for that? So we're going to continue to double down on Canada, on the UK, specifically with also some interesting fun new retail that we're going to be launching over the summer there. And products that we want to make sure serves the nature of the traveler there. Ultimately, in the next two to three years, there's going to be a lot more international expansion out of way. We are excited to see the potential that the product has all over the world. And it's a product that nends itself so well to it you're traveling in any airport all over the world. And it leads my greatest joy to see away suitcases arriving on the on the belt or rolling through a terminal in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, etc. Right. And so I think we want to honor that and we're thinking a lot about what the timeline looks like, but it's it's happening. Also just in terms of localization, you just brought up a great point about like the different carry on size in Europe. Are there any other kind of like travel trends or ways that you've sought to localize your product as you look abroad? When we launched our great first product, it had a battery that was integrated into it. And that was a little bit also, I mean, that was very new and that was, I think, what helped the store being what what is this new brand that's coming to market its genius. We had to remove that and retrofit the luggage based on airline regulations asking you to now remove the battery pack when you're traveling. And so that's not an example of how we've retrofitted our assortment in the past. And we stay very close to how those guidelines are changing, how the sizing is changing as well to bring to market the best possible highest quality product life that has the most capacity. Right. When people are traveling, what they're looking for is durability and capacity. Those are the two non-negotiable things that people are looking for when they're researching, so we stay close to those stats, those regulations. And then as I mentioned, we also stay close to outside of air travel, how people are traveling in train in cars with their families to other destinations. An example of that is the rise of entertainment travel people traveling for concerts, for festivals, all of the people traveling for sports. This is extremely not only fun, but very rich in the product assortment that we can bring to market. One of our best seller non-leggegge product is a transparent mini crossbody that is great for a festival because you get into stadiums with it. And so truly understanding again how we are your travel companion in all of those moments. Let's shift to outlook. You know, you can't talk to a business leader today without getting their view on AI. What is AI's strategy? Are there any interesting applications that you're currently exploring? Yes, on all of it. So for us truly AI as a consumer brand, it's an enabler. It's a tool that allows us to spend more time about thinking what matters the most in the business, going back to a lot of strategic thinking, long term thinking, because we can afloat, we can automate workflows a lot faster. And so we are doing that internally quite a bit, and this is touching all of the functions from marketing to operations, finance to customer service, truly being empowered to supercharge it as a tool as an enabler of better ways of working and more time spent on the right things. However, on the other side, AI is also changing how customers are thinking about travel more people than ever before are using AI to plan for tools to get ideas for trips to get full itineraries being planned. And it's a very, very interesting moment that's happening because at the same time that you're seeing that, you're also seeing the rise of way more white glove service travel planning, a lot more luxury high-touch human fuel planning that sort of brings back the humanity of travel. So how do you combine those two things because they're changing how customers are traveling for brand likes like us. It's really is about visibility in some of the recommendations. So as travelers are typing, what is the best luggage for this trip that I have? You want to make sure as a consumer brand that you're showing up, that's forcing us to hone our skills in the new type of SEO that we're calling geo around AI visibility and recommendations. And how do we also now that planning and packing are closer than ever before bring some of those insights and some of that like planning fun earlier into the journey. So AI as an enabler internally to truly focus on strategic moments and AI as a disruptor into the travel world for consumers impacting how we're thinking about the development of services in our overall broader ecosystem. Yeah, it's interesting. You talk about focus and but it's interesting. I feel like you are like many other type of people on the show quite a yes person like you're very go go go go go. How do you manage your time and priorities with all of the myriad of things that are on your list? Probably data. We've talked about this but I go back to clarity and focus and if you know exactly what are the non-negotiables and you hold accountable to that it allows for less distraction on all of the shiny other things that you want to say yes to but it's not no forever. It's not right now, right? And so I spend a lot of time about the sequencing of those priorities of all of those opportunities that to your point. I do want to say yes yes yes let's do this. It's great. It makes sense. We're going to grow through it but you cannot do all of it at the same time. You have to resource manage properly and you have to understand what needs to happen first. What are the strong foundations? What's going to strengthen the overall operating model before you can say yes to a lot of those things. So going back to being quite disciplined in our growth, quite intentional in our growth is really critical at this moment of our journey. Is that specifically something where like you know you might look at your diary in the morning and be like there's only three parties I want to knock off today or like what does that look like in practice just to be really specific? To be very specific yes I actually do that. I look at my calendar for the day and I try to be as ruthless as possible with it. What are the things that are absolutely required to happen today? What are the other projects that without me looking at it or my input they're not going to move forward. I'm being the blocker. I don't want to be the bottleneck for it. And then also within that carving out moment in my agenda in which you can think about the future. You can brainstorm about your positioning your assortment where you're going next. Protecting and preserving that time in a very tactical way is very important. Otherwise you're going to get pulled out into so many meetings and different directions that it's going to be hard to actually get the big work done. Yeah the deep work. Yeah that is really underrated I think. For years away has faced questions about an IPO. What can you share about the latest on that? Are you going public anytime soon? It's a great question and a question that it's always kind of nice to think about because seeing a liquidity event of that type is an exciting moment I think for any consumer brand. What I'm focused on right now is strengthening the way of today and of tomorrow immediately. And that's the laser focus that I have and that my team has on the business. So Could it happen? Maybe one day, right? But I will tell you we're not focused on that at these very moments in time. Okay, not right now. Zooming out, Jessica, what is your endgame here? If we were to set back down and let's say 10 years from now, you talk about the decade, right? Where would you want a way to be? Great question. And I would feel very proud of a brand who still, top of mind, for pioneering a travel, forward product and services to customers all around the world, right? And considering to hone in on the community that we've built in the last decade and the one that's coming, and for that community to know that we are their travel companion, that we've innovated to keep up with how travel is changing, how their travel has been changing as well, I would feel very very proud to be there for us. And you're right. We are building a brand in decade. I mean, I mentioned that and I strongly stand by it, which means that we're not pursuing short-term, short-lived trends or moments, right? We're not bringing a product to market because everyone else is doing it. We're not bringing a feature to market that is going to be gimmicky and outdated in two years. We are building for the long term. When we're bringing products to market, I always think about and challenge my team to think about is this a product that is still going to be relevant three years, five years, seven years, ten years from now, now, ten years in, it is incredibly deeply rewarding to see and to hear stories from travelers who but their first away in 2016, 2017, they have travel stories to tell us, right? You start dissociating the product to, to the stories behind it, and then they come back together and, and that carry on that maybe has a few scuffs, maybe wanted to dance along the way, now is the memories of the weddings that you went to the first business trips, all the different jobs that you had, that capital is incredibly precious, right? It goes back to the product unlocking the stories of travel that are shaping us all over and that are making us, I think, who we are and building that ecosystem, continuing to go and to lean into those stories, that's what we're building for. Alright, this brings me to a segment we're calling what it takes, where an audience member gets to ask for advice or hear more on what it takes to get where you are. Today, Jennifer and e-commerce founder based in London asks, Jessica, you've had such a remarkable career, what was the toughest inflection point for you along the way, not just operationally, but just emotionally or strategically, and how do you get through it? There are hard calls all the time, there are tough calls all the time. For me, one of the biggest one when I look back at my career is when you think you're ready for something else and stepping away from an assignment or a mandate as an executive that you've not only enjoyed doing, but you were actually quite successful at. And the lens that I use for that often is, am I still growing, am I still learning, am I continuing to have fun in the job that I'm doing day and day out and these are hard days are real, we all have them, but you don't want to have too many of them in a row. And when you start answering no to a few of those questions, a little bit too often, you have sometimes to make the hard call of, I need to do something else, I need to stretch my mind, I need to stretch my thinking into another way. And it's both, it's very bittersweet because I think it's both very productive and needed, but also, it's a tough call and it's sometimes, you know, hard-frenching to leave a team that you've hired and built and really love. Thank you so much, Jess. Now we're going to end with a quick rapid fire round, don't overthink it. Okay, are you a get to the airport early person or arrive just in time person? I arrive just in time and I will tell you, I missed the first flight in my entire life last week. It happened. Yes, but I was so sad about it. I had a perfect track record of never ever missing a flight. So I usually like cut it very close and this one, unfortunately, got it too close. Oh my goodness, I'm the same way, by the way, for the record, I have not missed one yet, but my husband keeps telling me it's going to happen one day. Carry on or check back. Carry on, not only because I'm now very efficient in the awayplay book of packing. So I have my compression packing cubes. I have my bigger carry on, which is great. There's nothing that I like less than waiting for my luggage once I arrive at the destination. I just want to get out of the airport as soon as I can. Yeah, I love the packing cubes. So good. Do you like to travel with a plan or do you like to go with the flow? Okay, I unfortunately like to travel with the plan and I see unfortunately because I'm trying to be more spontaneous in my travels as well. And before AI, who was a huge help, you should see that my travel is done in Excel. So it's all of my scenery, all of my column. Yes, yes, I unfortunately traveled with Excel spreadsheets that you are that girl. Oh my God, I love it. Okay, what is one brand you admire for its storytelling? You know, I think that gap has done a fantastic, fantastic job into bringing another gap. Oh, and it sounds into the world with their partnership, the quality of their products, their design with Zach Pozen that are just hitting every single time. And it's beautiful to see. And as a gap girl who grew up, you know, in the 90s, wearing those hoodies, just seeing it coming back to market with such vibrance is incredibly exciting and inspiring to see. I think that's a good one. Victoria Beckham also just. Yeah, can't wait. Yeah, one destination on your personal bucket list. I would love to take my kids to Tokyo to explore the vibrancy of the city, taste all the foods and see the cherry blossoms, maybe even go skiing. We are raising New York City kids who fortunately, unfortunately love sushi and it's so funny to me to see a five-year-old just eating all of this. So I promise myself that I would take her to Japan at some point. That's very sweet. How do you like to unwind after a long week? Pretty boring and winding. I love to just go home, spend time with my two children, my husband, perhaps a glass of wine, a Netflix show and then go to bed and not too late. Yeah, just like us. What do you like to ask when you're hiring? What I like to ask when I'm hiring, what I get to get the sense off is how curious the person is and how much of a firefighter they are and what I mean by a firefighter is someone who sees a problem is going to run into the building to try to save the day and have ownership of that. So curiosity, accountability and that idea of problem solving even outside of the scope, that's always what I'm looking for in people. What is one piece of advice lastly that you come back to often? I think that you cannot underestimate culture and the power it has to drive performance and companies who are focused on that, who are building strong culture in which people feel proud of doing the work including the hard work, are the same companies that are going to see good performance in the market and that are going to be able to build resiliently for the future. So don't underestimate the power of culture to drive performance. Well said, just thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. That was great. Thanks for joining us on Behind the Business. For more stories on business and leadership, follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. See you next week. (upbeat music)