Abandoning the Box : Today’s Executives Are Lightening Their Loads With Softer, Flexible Portfolios

Robert Wolf, vice chairman of the Los Angeles advertising agency Chiat/Day, used to go to business meetings toting a conventional hard-sided briefcase. But today he uses a lightweight $300 canvas and leather case to carry his papers.

“It’s more flexible,” Wolf explained. “You can get more stuff into it. I carry mostly papers from work, but I also carry a dictating machine and a calculator.” The case is “light and it has a shoulder strap, which is a real advantage over a leather briefcase when you are running through airports trying to catch a plane.”

One of the country’s most celebrated deal makers, real estate magnate Donald J. Trump of New York, summed up the current attitude toward briefcases in his autobiography: “I play it very loose. I don’t carry a briefcase.”

Across the country these are tough times for traditional “business cases,” a category that includes the soft accordion-like rectangular leather briefcases used by many lawyers, extremely wide “catalogue cases” used by salesmen as well as the slender, strongbox-like attache case favored by many tradition-minded business executives.

A cooling off of the nation’s seven-year-long economic expansion, an explosion of new business technology such as portable computers and cellular telephones, as well as the rising number of women executives who prefer lighter-weight portfolios, have combined to erode the status and utility of familiar leather-bound business cases, once used chiefly to shuttle papers and lunch from home to office.

“In the business world, the attache case is not the status symbol it once was,” said John T. Molloy, a management consultant and author of the book “Dress for Success.”

“Many top executives don’t even carry briefcases any more,” Molloy continued. “If they carry anything, they carry a small leather (portfolio).”

It’s not just top executives that are forgoing briefcases, however. Many younger middle mangers--unconstrained by tradition--are opting for alternatives.

Revenue Up Slightly

During the past three years, when unit sales of other hand luggage rose 9% to 86.7 million, unit sales of business cases--which includes the soft-sided canvas-type carried by Wolf--have remained at about 11.4 million, said Robert K. Ermatinger, executive vice president of Luggage & Leather Goods Manufacturers of America Inc., a private industry trade group in New York.

Wholesale revenue from business cases climbed only slightly last year to $646 million from $615 million in 1987, according to the trade group. And with businesses paring their work forces of executives these days in an attempt to run leaner and more competitive, sales might grow even more sluggish.

“As the economy goes, so goes the sale of business cases,” said Herbert Schlesinger, vice president of Berlin, N.J.-based Schlesinger Co., a leading American manufacturer of leather briefcases.

From the late 1970s to 1988 the industry was blessed with a combination “of status-conscious yuppies . . . and a booming business expansion,” Schlesinger explained. But today, he said, “the market is saturated” with business cases.

The industry has not stood still in the face of these challenges.

Although the traditional briefcase market still accounts for the bulk of sales, manufacturers are scrambling to offer variations on the theme. Consumers can buy everything from a $10,000 James Bond-like briefcase with eavesdropping devices offered by CCS Communication Control Corp. of New York, to canvas carrying cases and oversized portfolios with shoulder straps.

Yet even in the traditional market of standard 18-by-12-by-4-inch briefcases, there has been a proliferation of new materials and designs.

At the exotic end of the scale are elephant and alligator cases that cost upward of $1,500. More typical are $80 to $400 black, brown or burgundy leather and vinyl cases, said Lewis Savinar of H. Savinar Luggage Co., a family-run discount retailer in Los Angeles. But there are also canvas, wooden and even gold, silver or black aluminum cases.

Manufacturers are not only tinkering with the outward appearance of business cases. Inside, they have been adding more compartments, flaps and pockets to hold things such as pens, calculators, business cards and appointment books.

“From a merchant’s standpoint, the sheer variety of selection has become tough to manage,” Savinar said.

Influence of Women

“A super-conservative buyer like a lawyer or an accountant would buy the brief bag; a lot of judges, for instance, buy these,” Savinar said, pointing to the accordion-like bags that close at the top with a small flap.

Those a little less conservative, he said, often stick with a basic leather attache case. And trendy yuppies and “your entertainment industry types” are partial to the $340 to $560 silver and black aluminum briefcases marketed by Zero Halliburton, a division of Zero Corp. of Los Angeles.

But it is the rise of women executives that has caused perhaps the biggest rethinking in business case design and marketing.

Sarah Stack, first vice president at the Los Angeles investment house of Bateman Eichler, Hill Richards, is typical of those women executives who have chosen a soft-sided case over a hard-sided briefcase.

“Style was a minimal consideration” when she decided to forgo a traditional briefcase and buy a soft-sided, expandable portfolio case, Stack said.

“Basically, I brought it because it was cheap and functional,” Stack said. “I can carry my lunch in it, my calculator and my appointment book. I don’t think people’s egos are as tied up in what they carry,” she said, adding that she’s seen a lot of men carry portfolios.

In the past few years, manufacturers have alternately toyed with bright colors, slimmer designs and softer materials in an effort to appeal to women executives. Yet, except for preferring lighter-weight products with shoulder straps, most women generally stick with the same conservative colors and styles that men purchase, retailers say.

“They buy the same thing men buy,” Savinar said. “The only difference is that they don’t like anything heavy. Savinar said many women customers at his store buy small three-inch-wide briefcases or portfolios--a flat portable leather case that usually closes at the top with a zipper or a leather flap.

Indeed, although attache cases still outsell all other business cases, unit sales of portfolios increased 115,000 to 5.17 million from 1987 to 1988, nearly twice the unit increase of attache cases, according to the Luggage & Leather Goods Manufacturers of America.

Dorothy Penix, executive vice president of Hartmann Luggage Co., a division of Brown-Forman Corp. of Louisville, Ky., concedes that “women have had a big impact on us. We now offer a little softer design and the addition of shoulder straps on some portfolios,” Penix said.

Attached to Old Cases

Technology is also having a big impact on the design of briefcases.

At least one company, Rona of Little Ferry, N.J., now offers a briefcase with a compartment for a mobile cellular telephone. The company already produces other models designed to hold tape recorders and typewriters.

Yet, while many manufacturers are experimenting with unusual designs and materials, some experts complain that it’s difficult to get consumers to try some of the newer variations because people become so attached to their old briefcase. What’s more, prices for new leather cases have escalated sharply in recent years.

“Briefcases are like a desk away from the office,” observed Penix, of Hartmann Luggage Co. “A good briefcase helps you organize your life. People get very emotionally attached to their briefcases. We’ve done a lot of repairs for people who’ve had their briefcases for 20 years or more and don’t want to give them up for a new one.”