In this day and age, the words stress and travel go hand in hand. And, often, travel stress begins with packing — but Calpak is aiming to alleviate that with the arrival of its first brick-and-mortar store.
The travel essentials brand has opened its first retail store in Los Angeles at Westfield Century City mall, allowing customers to get better acquainted and equipped with its offerings ahead of trips. The 1,200-square-foot store is an ode to the company’s organizational approach to packing, with every product thoughtfully lined along the lime-washed, arch-shaped walls and a “packing island” as the centerpiece, where shoppers can lay out the company’s various-sized suitcases and customize different packing cube configurations.
Calpak store in Century City Mall.
“You can easily put luggage on top and open it and pack it how you want it, because you have so many different organizers,” Jennifer Kwon, Calpak chief executive officer, tells WWD of the packing island. “It allows customers to play with different luggage sizes and customize what packing cubes they need.”
For the store’s design, Kwon along with the architecture firm Gensler sought out to create a visual manifestation of the company’s tagline “You’ll love getting there.” With a cloud-shaped lighting pendant resting above a portal-like full-length mirror, Calpak played on elements of travel — and the visually pleasing parts of the journey. “The airport is sometimes very stressful so we wanted people to have a pleasant feeling,” Kwon says, adding, “The store came from wanting it to feel like some touch points from different travels you might have, like a hotel lobby or a coffee shop, and while still maintaining the brand identity.”
Calpak store in Century City Mall.
The curved overhead lighting above the register takes visual cues from being up in the clouds. The arches throughout the store pay tribute to sightseeing on vacation. “The arches are aligned with our brand aesthetic, but also reminiscent of a lot of landmarks,” Kwon explains. Meanwhile the tile that lines many of the arches is a nod to the brand’s 35-year history. “The yellow is harkening back to our brand colors but it is a little bit more muted,” Kwon adds.
Calpak store in Century City Mall.
If the photogenic store seems primed for serving as the backdrop of an Instagram post, that’s not coincidental. In the wake of social media, the travel retail sector has experienced rapid growth, with revitalized brands Calpak and Rimowa, and newcomers Away, Béis and Casetify. Kwon has noticed the shift since starting at Calpak in 2013 in the product department. “The world has changed so much since then,” she explains. “In 2013, in this space, a lot of the focus was on business travel. If you were shopping for yourself for a non-business trip, there wasn’t that much. That was in the beginning of when social media was becoming really big and it was the beginning of this huge rush into leisure travel.”
Calpak store in Century City Mall.
Now, Calpak uses social media as a tool to find inspiration for new products — and reenvision how the company presents its products to customers. Case in point: Calpak’s baby collection. “We saw a lot of our customers using some of our other bags as a baby collection,” Kwon says, “and that’s what sparks a lot of our use cases: customer feedback. The Luka is one of our most versatile bags, and people can still use that bag as a baby bag.” But now Calpak also offers a stroller caddy bag that converts into a crossbody bag. “I think the stroller caddy bag is an example of something where we felt like we could do something a little more interesting,” Kwon says, adding that the brand will be focusing next on launching a kids collection.
In the future, Calpak is eyeing potential retail locations in New York City, Chicago and Texas, but for now they’re concentrating on Los Angeles as a new revenue stream. (Online sales currently account for the bulk of the brand’s revenue.) “We’re really focused on getting this store right,” Kwon says, “because it’s our first foray into retail.”
