Herschel Supply Suitcase Launch: New Product Marketing Plan
This paper examines Herschel Supply's strategic expansion into the suitcase market as an extension of its established backpack brand. Drawing on academic literature covering new product launch success factors, cross-functional team alignment, social media's role in product development, early adopter theory, and behavioral economics, the paper evaluates the key considerations Herschel must address. It ranks the most critical factors — particularly marketing-R&D alignment and early adopter engagement — and concludes with three actionable recommendations: building a cross-functional team, executing a comprehensive marketing strategy, and allocating a robust launch budget timed to the fall travel season.
- Company and Product Overview: Herschel's brand, market position, and suitcase expansion rationale
- Key Success Factors in New Product Launches: Academic frameworks for launch success applied to Herschel
- Ranking the Factors: Prioritizing market alignment, social media, and behavioral economics
- Best Approaches and Recommendations: Three concrete recommendations for a successful product launch
✍️ How to write this paper — guide, tools & examples ▾
What makes this paper effective
- Anchors every recommendation in peer-reviewed academic literature, giving the analysis credibility beyond simple opinion.
- Provides a clear competitive context — segmenting the luggage market into low, mid, and high tiers — before applying frameworks, which makes the strategic positioning argument concrete.
- Explicitly warns against assuming backpack market knowledge transfers directly to luggage, demonstrating critical thinking about brand extension limits.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper uses a literature synthesis technique: it surveys multiple research frameworks (Di Benedetto, Cooper, Ernst et al., Frattini et al., Roberts and Candi) and then applies each selectively to a specific business case. Rather than summarizing sources in isolation, the author connects each finding directly to Herschel's situation, showing how academic insight translates into practical strategy.
Structure breakdown
The paper follows a logical three-part structure. It opens with a company and market context section that establishes who Herschel is and where the new product fits. The middle section surveys the academic literature on new product launch success and ranks the most relevant factors for this specific case. The final section converts the ranked factors into three concrete, prioritized recommendations — cross-functional teamwork, comprehensive marketing, and a timed, well-funded launch — creating a clear path from theory to action.
Company and Product Overview
Herschel Supply is a Vancouver-based company that specializes in backpacks and similar accessories. Founded in 2009, the company has become quite trendy, experiencing strong growth since that time (Herschel Supply, 2017). It now sells in the United States, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, and more, in addition to its home market. Herschel products are sold at a premium and are known for their simple, elegant styling and sturdy construction.
The company is now planning to expand its product line into suitcases. This is a natural extension given that the current flagship product is backpacks, and the company already produces smaller travel bags. Launching a suitcase line would give Herschel not only a natural brand extension but access to a large market. The suitcase business is highly competitive, but no existing brands share the same brand image and attributes that Herschel brings. Executives therefore believe there is tremendous opportunity. However, entering this market requires considerable planning on the marketing and product development sides, and the role of the product marketing manager is to drive this effort forward.
The new suitcase line will fit with the current brand image — simple, elegant, stylish, and sturdy — the same attributes that define the rest of the Herschel lineup. The suitcase industry is highly competitive and is split into three main segments. At the low end are fairly generic brands, such as those produced for discounters like Walmart, which offer relatively low quality at relatively low prices; price is the main point of competition. The mid-market is fairly large, ranging from starter brands like American Tourister to premium brands like Samsonite. Companies in this segment typically compete on brand name and quality while maintaining approachable price points. The high end, which features brands like Tumi and various luxury labels, focuses on style, high quality, and brand prestige as key differentiators. Herschel expects its luggage to compete at the upper end of the mid-market — as a more stylish alternative to Samsonite — positioned away from business travel and more toward the independent traveler.
Key Success Factors in New Product Launches
Di Benedetto (1999) identified several key success factors in new product launches: marketing research, sales force, distribution, promotion, R&D, and engineering. These factors make intuitive sense. Marketing research reflects the ability of the company to identify what gaps exist in the market. R&D and engineering reflect the ability to execute on that vision — to bring a quality product to market that aligns with the identified gap. Sales, distribution, and promotion are all critical influencers of the buyers' journey and should reasonably affect the success of a new product launch.
Di Benedetto also notes that the timing of the launch is another important factor. It is therefore essential that the company identify whether there is an optimal launch window and manage the launch process so that timing aligns with the best possible moment to enter the market.
Cooper and Kleinschmidt (1995) discuss the KPIs typically used to measure the success of a new product launch. Many activities — especially those in marketing — will be driven by the choice of KPIs selected for the launch. One key example is whether Herschel intends to measure success on the basis of market share or profit, because there is a trade-off between high spending to win market penetration at the expense of short-term profitability and seeking short-term profitability that might come at the expense of market share.
Cooper (1994) also developed a framework for evaluating new product success. According to this framework, the ability of a new product launch to meet its KPIs depends on product superiority, strong market orientation, focus and project prioritization, early and sharp product definition, solid up-front homework, a cross-functional team approach, quality of execution, and a systematic stage-and-gate new product process. There is a clear emphasis on research and planning in these factors, as new product launches conducted without proper planning will either result in a product the market does not need or want, or they will deliver a product that does not fit the identified market gap. For example, failing to establish an early and sharp product definition could result in significant delays as the scope of the product changes substantially, forcing all teams to revisit their work repeatedly.
Ernst, Hoyer, and Rubsaamen (2010) discuss the interface between marketing and R&D that is necessary to drive successful new product development. Without cross-functional cooperation among marketing, sales, and R&D, a new product is less likely to succeed. Marketing can help determine what gaps exist in the market, sales can help define customer pain points, and R&D can work with these departments to ensure that the new product addresses a need the market has that is not served by existing products. When these linkages break down, a new product might still succeed, but the probability decreases substantially.
Roberts and Candi (2014) discuss the role that social media can play in new product development. For many companies, social media is a marketing function, and the ability to engage directly with customers means that ideas can be tested quickly. However, their study found that social media is a relatively ineffective tool for market research. Issues identified included the self-selection of people who choose to interact with a company on social media. Despite this limitation, social media is an effective tool at the launch stage.
Cheng, Chang, and Li (2013) find that the structure by which a new product is developed does not influence the product's success. Their study examined project-related, organization-related, process-related, and market-related methods and found that each can be effective. This provides useful insight for Herschel: how the new product development process is structured may be situational, but it also means the company can work with any model — the key success factors lie elsewhere.
A study on early adopters also offers relevant insight for new product development and launch (Frattini et al., 2013). Early adopters play two critical roles: dissemination of information about new products, and imitation, where later followers seek to replicate the behavior of early adopters. Herschel's successful launch in the backpack industry was driven by early adopters, who made the backpacks fashionable and allowed them to go mainstream. A similar dynamic would be tremendously beneficial for the company's new luggage line.
References
Cheng, C., Chang, M., & Li, C. (2013). Configural paths to successful product innovation. Journal of Business Research, 66, 2561–2573.
Cooper, R. (1994). New products: The factors that drive success. International Marketing Review, 11(1), 60–76.
Cooper, R., & Kleinschmidt, E. (1995). Benchmarking the firm's critical success factors in new product development. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 12, 374–391.
Di Benedetto, C. (1999). Identifying key success factors in new product launch. Journal of Product Innovation and Management, 16, 530–544.
Ernst, H., Hoyer, W., & Rubsaamen, C. (2010). Sales, marketing, research-and-development cooperation across new product development stages: Implications for success. Journal of Marketing, 74, 80–92.
Frattini, F., De Massis, A., Bianchi, M., & Sikimic, U. (2013). The role of early adopters in the diffusion of new products: Differences between platform and nonplatform innovations. Journal of Product Innovation, 31(3), 466–488.
Herschel Supply website. Various pages. (2017).
Roberts, D., & Candi, M. (2014). Leveraging social media sites in new product development: Opportunity or hype? The Journal of Product Innovation Management, 31(S1), 105–117.
Create your account
Always verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.