Luggage Firm Rolls Out Its Newest Design : Andiamo Inc. of Fountain Valley is cashing in on the public’s demand for roll-aboard suitcases. Its reputation has been built on durable, upscale travel bags for individualists.
Two years ago, a type of wheeled suitcase made popular by pilots and flight attendants revolutionized the luggage industry. The soft-sided, usually black bags--made to fit in an airplane’s overhead bin--have telescoping handles, a zippered main compartment and side pockets.
Known as roll-aboard luggage, about 2 million such bags have been sold since 1992, according to the Luggage and Leather Goods Manufacturers of America Inc. The popularity of this design has made Jay Myers, owner and chief executive of Andiamo Inc. of Fountain Valley, optimistic about his company’s future.
“Usually, twice in a lifetime, people will buy luggage. But this is just a window in time when people are buying luggage just for this feature. It incorporates a luggage cart into a piece of luggage,” he said. “Once you use it, you never go back. It’s better, period.”
The New York-based luggage and leather goods organization is counting on these features to increase overall 1995 luggage sales by 11.3% over 1993’s total of $1.7 billion, when 52 million units of luggage were sold.
Andiamo plans to cash in on the action. With it’s No. 1-selling “Journeyman” suitcase and its “Tuxedo” and “Andiamo Collection” brands of suitcases, duffel and garment bags--many of which have rear wheels and telescoping handles--the company expects to expand its share of the upscale luggage market.
“We have built our reputation on the quality of our product,” Myers said. “It’s a high-end cut-and-sew product.”
Andiamo is a medium-size, privately held business employing 90 people: 75 work in production, the rest in sales and administration at the company’s 33,000-square-foot office and factory in an office park off Warner Avenue. Myers wouldn’t reveal exact annual sales figures, only saying that annual revenues are less than $10 million.
Twenty-one years ago, Myers and his older brother, Todd, founded the precursor to Andiamo, a bicycle accessory company called Y.A. Duck, a name inspired by a routine in the Marx Brothers’ movie, “Duck Soup.” This was the maiden entrepreneurial voyage of two recent graduates of the University of Wisconsin, who had moved to California from New York in 1972.
With $3,500 in savings, the brothers figured that the state’s balmy weather would have an equally pleasant market for bike accessories.
“We started out making bicycle handles, seats and saddlebags. One day we said, ‘Let’s go into business.’ We thought there must be a lot of bicycle shops in California--the weather’s better. That’s about how much thought went into it,” said Myers, who lives in Newport Beach with his wife, Valerie, and three daughters, Sophie, 9, Madeleine, 5, and Charlotte, 3.
The weather and market were accommodating enough, but it was the bicycle industry’s way of doing business that led them into luggage. According to Myers, 45, most bike shops are “mom-and-pop operations” in which merchandising wasn’t a major concern. “We realized we’d never be important,” said the Newport Beach resident. “At best we’d be an accessory item to a guy who wasn’t into marketing.”
Add the hurdle of an industrywide, two-step distribution system in which distributors got 25% of sales, and the brothers realized they weren’t going to get rich in the bike business. So in 1976, Y.A. Duck began its two-year transition to luggage production.
Since then, Andiamo has relied on a single-store distribution system that sells directly to specialty stores. In addition to specialty luggage retailers, department stores like Macy’s, Dillard’s and Bloomingdale’s also carry Andiamo products. The company has nearly 350 active accounts, including sales in Canada, France, Germany and Japan, said Myers, who in 1990 bought out his brother. Todd Myers, 47, now operates a custom-home construction company in Santa Fe, N.M.
Exports make up 5% of the company’s total sales, while industrial-use cases constitute another 20%. The cases are constructed using injection molded plastic, similar to the material used to replace steel on car bumpers. Such cases are used by companies that make expensive computer boards. The company’s principal revenue comes from sales of is soft-sided luggage and business briefcases.
The Andiamo luggage lines, which are comparable to brands like Tumi and Hartmann, ranges in price from $115 to $200 for a duffel bag, $220 to $600 for a Pullman--a standard rectangular suitcase with a handle on top--and $300 to $495 for garment bags.
“The features are user-friendly,” said Denise Baldwin, a manager at El Portal, a specialty luggage store in Santa Ana, referring to the wide straps on the Andiamo garment bag that keep items in place and reduce wrinkles. “We do continual business with Andiamo. The quality and craftsmanship are fabulous.”
Other luggage insiders say Andiamo’s style sets its products apart.
Woody Winfree, publisher of the trade journal Travelware, says Andiamo luggage isn’t the choice of just anybody shopping for upscale luggage. And corporate executives, who are often drawn to more traditionally styled brands like Tumi, are not the ones who buy Andiamo.
“Andiamo has a particular style,” Winfree said. “Their designs have always had a little spin on them. They’re more stylized. Andiamo is a little more for the individualist, someone who’s more of a renegade.”
Andiamo’s client list supports that opinion--it includes celebrities Jay Leno and Mick Jagger, and former Presidents Ford and Bush.
“We recently got a return for repair (order) from Ross Perot,” Myers said. What is unusual is not that the order came from Perot, but that a piece of Andiamo luggage needed repair, Myers said.
In a March, 1993, study by Consumer Reports, Andiamo’s 44-inch, five-suit garment bag received a superior impact-resistance rating. Fully packed, the piece withstood 3,000 spins in a revolving drum without sustaining scuff marks, shell and handle damage, or split seams. For other categories, however, the luggage didn’t fair quite as well. The garment bag earned average ratings for its overall convenience, handle comfort and hanger-track design.
But perhaps the greatest testimony to the durability of Andiamo luggage came in 1988. Not long after a terrorist’s bomb exploded aboard a Pan Am jetliner in Lockerbie, Scotland, a grieving mother wrote Myers a letter of appreciation.
The woman’s daughter, who was a student at Syracuse University, had been on that flight and died. All the woman had left were the belongings the girl had packed in a piece of Andiamo luggage.
“I think (writing the letter) was part of her grieving process,” Myers said. “I was glad our luggage had performed. But, I wish it had never been put to that test.”
O.C. Enterprise: Andiamo Inc.
ABOUT THE COMPANY
* Location: Fountain Valley
* Owner: Jay Myers
* Business: Andiamo designs and manufactures upscale luggage and industrial cases.
* Founded: 1976
OWNER’S REFLECTIONS
* How did you get started?
“One day (my brother and I) said, ‘Let’s go into business.’ We started out making bicycle accessories.”
* Where did you get financing? Personal savings.
* What was your biggest challenge?
“Keeping our presence in the front of (the consumer’s) brain and keeping the product as good as it can be.”
* What was your biggest mistake?
“In the start-up phase, I don’t remember any mistakes,” said Myers, adding later that he regretted creating a line of luggage with glove leather lining 16 years ago. “The price was astronomically expensive.”
* What was the best advice you received?
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, be scrupulously fair and honest.”
* What was the most important lesson you learned?
“The competition never sleeps. If you’re working hard, just assume they’re working harder at marketing, sales and keeping the product right on the money.”
* What advice would you give someone starting out?
“Live within your overhead. And save for a rainy day because it will eventually come.”
Source: Andiamo Inc.; Researched by VALERIE WILLIAMS-SANCHEZ/Los Angeles Times
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How the Luggage Industry Stacks Up
Despite an overall 7% decrease, to 52 million units, in the number of luggage pieces sold in 1993, some categories of luggage showed an increase in dollar volume. Total U.S. sales in millions:
Product 1992 1993 Duffel bags $95 $97 Garment bags 378 352 Pullman (26” and up) 420 367 Pullman (24”--25”) 160 169 Pullman (carry-on) 160 169
Source: Luggage and Leather Goods Manufacturers of America Inc. Researched by VALERIE WILLIAMS-SANCHEZ / Los Angeles Times
