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How Fitz Gate Company Paravel is carving a niche in the $20B+ Global Luggage Market

By November 1, 2019April 8th, 2024No Comments

How Indré Rockefeller Is Creating A Niche In The $20 Billion-Plus Global Luggage Market

Indré Rockefeller, cofounder and co-chief executive officer of Paravel, a luxury travel luggage and accessory brand, discovered a gap in the $20 billion-plus global luggage market. Launching in 2016, her company provides high-quality, stylish travel bags at an accessible price point from a brand that consumers connect with. The brand has also attracted many celebrity fans including Allison Williams, Emma Roberts and Katy Perry.

“I was traveling all the time,” Rockefeller explains. “I was working for an international fashion brand. I was on the road visiting our stores, going to our headquarters and flying to various cities for Fashion Week; living out of luggage basically. I was constantly going to go pack up and found myself thinking, ‘why isn’t there one brand that I am drawn to, to solve all my packing needs?’ I’m going to six-to-seven different brand companies to solve my travel needs.”

“It felt like there was no brand that was addressing travel holistically as a system that also resonated with me,” she continues. “There were two extremes in travel. It was the luxury brands that were treating a lot of their travel goods as an afterthought addition to their offering, not as a core tenet to their value proposition. Then there were commoditized travel brands that felt that they were really speaking almost to this hangover of the male corporate traveler.”

When launching the brand, Rockefeller and her business partner, Andy Krantz, focused on creating a product that resonated with an international consumer. They use materials that are resilient and time-tested. In doing so, the company has re-engineered cotton canvas and nylon into stylish, functional silhouettes destined for modern life.

Rockefeller’s foray into fashion occurred after a back injury ended her career as a professional dancer. She began working as Anna Wintour’s first assistant at Vogue. “Leaving it [dance] for a very all-encompassing job, the way it was at Vogue and in Anna’s office, made it an easier transition,” she states. “I went from one all-encompassing role and world into another one. In the beginning, I didn’t have time to think about it; I just threw myself into a new job and into a whole new space. Working for Anna directly was an opportunity to learn everything about the industry It was just sort of such a wonderful, foundational introduction to the industry at large.”

After earning her MBA from Stanford, she went back to work in the industry at Moda Operandi, a multi-brand luxury e-tailer, where she served as general merchandising manager and creative director of trunk shows. From Moda Operandi, Rockefeller transitioned over to Delpozo, a luxury Spanish fashion brand. In her role as president of the Americas she not only opened its U.S. Office but also oversaw sales, communications and strategy. She met Krantz during her stint with Delpozo. He oversaw finance and operations for the Americas. Now, they are improving the way consumers travel.

“Learning to delegate is something that is critical and is a hard lesson to learn as an entrepreneur when it’s your own company,” Rockefeller humbly shares. “Especially in the early days, everything is personal, everything is coming from inside you. My cofounder and I, everything that we have built, started from some instincts from the two of us. And from there, adding people to the team is an absolutely wonderful thing…Risk taking is something that is instinctive in entrepreneurship, but a lot of times that’s your own risk that you can calculate. You have to embrace and encourage other people’s risk and make sure that they know it’s okay to fail because some of the best moments or results come from either lessons from failure or an attempt at one thing and a result in another.”

Through all of Rockefeller’s pivots she focuses on these essential steps:

  • Conduct as much research as possible. That includes speaking with people in the industry in which you want to pivot into, finding mentorships and volunteering at industry events to fully understand what it is you want to do.
  • Talk to people in the industry you want to move out of now. Sometimes there are surprising moments where what you think you’re looking for could in fact be replicated where you’re at; understand what the options are within your own industry.
  • Figure out where innovation could benefit the industry you want to pivot into. Creating new products or services will set you apart and help you become a trailblazer in the field.

“Especially in this sort of female entrepreneurial community,” Rockefeller concludes, “it’s growing faster. There are amazing female entrepreneurs out there with wonderful strides being made and conversations being had. Some of the best companies founded by women were founded in a setting where women identified something that they were interested in or passionate about that wasn’t necessarily understood by the broader community until they became a larger company. In retrospect, people understood it but not at the time they did it. Perhaps it’s just about trusting your own instincts.”

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