Brands come and go from baggage carousels; one name has been circling them since before there were carousels.
Samsonite, founded in 1910, was named a Finalist for Best Luggage Brand at the
2024 Travelling for Business Awards, its second century looking as competitive as its first.
Longevity of this order is engineered, not inherited. Samsonite's test laboratories brutalise prototypes beyond any realistic owner's cruelty, tumble tests, drop rigs, simulated miles by the thousand on rolling roads, and the survivors populate ranges spanning featherweight soft-sided cabin bags, signature hardside collections in advanced polycarbonate and woven composites, and business lines with dedicated laptop protection, organised interiors and the quick-access front pockets frequent flyers quietly consider essential. Multi-directional wheels, robust telescopic handles and TSA locks arrive as baseline assumptions rather than selling points.
For the working traveller, the brand's genius is fitness for purpose at every price. There is a correct Samsonite for the graduate's first conference and the director's hundredth long-haul, for underseat allowances and month-long postings, and the breadth doubles as advice: whatever the brief, the range already contains a considered answer. A global service network and spare-parts support extend product lifespans across decades, sustainability by durability, reinforced by the company's push of recycled materials into core eco-focused collections, while
this publication's own hands-on testing has rated the brand's business credentials over the years.
The 2024 judges set the institution alongside winner Away and fellow challenger Gomatic, heritage bracketed by the disruptors it inspired, and Samsonite's finalist standing confirmed that a hundred and fourteen years in, the original remains the reference.
The brand's innovation cadence belies its age. Recent years brought recycled-material collections pushing sustainability into the mainstream range rather than a token line, ever-lighter shell constructions that give back kilos to airline allowances, and smart organisational interiors informed by a century of watching how people actually pack. The company that invented much of modern luggage keeps behaving like a challenger, which is precisely why the challengers still measure themselves against it.
The
Travelling for Business Awards salute staying power earned rather than assumed, and Samsonite's 2024 recognition honoured the name that taught the world to trust its luggage, and keeps renewing the lesson, one indestructible case at a time.
