OREANDA-NEWS. LVMH Group plans to open the first store of its premium brand Rimowa in Russia, with suitcases that David Beckham and Roger Federer travel with. The brand of premium travel suitcases is currently studying the possibility of entering the Russian market and is looking for a room to open its first store in Moscow, a source in a commercial real estate brokerage company said. The Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH) group, which owns Rimowa, declined to comment.

Rimowa is a German brand of suitcases and bags, founded in 1898. In 1950, the company began to produce its first suitcases with a corrugated aluminum body, which became the hallmark of the brand. In 2016, Rimowa became part of LVMH: the group bought 80% of the company for €640 million. In June 2021, LVMH acquired the remaining 20%, the amount of this transaction was not disclosed.

In 2020, Rimowa, in addition to travel suitcases, also began to produce watch cases, phone cases and sunglasses. Then the head of the brand, Alexander Arnault, the son of the head of LVMH, Bernard Arnault, said that the company started working on changing the brand's product line even before the pandemic, but what happened forced the company to pay more attention to such products. Rimowa has also added shoulder bags to its line, similar to smaller copies of ribbed suitcases and backpacks with the same recognizable pattern.

CBRE Retail director Marina Malakhatko believes that it is unlikely that the brand will open its first store in Moscow this year: "The brand is primarily associated with luggage, and now that the number of trips has decreased, there is probably no point in rushing to open a store." At the same time, according to her, any luxury brand needs to have its own store for recognition and formation of loyalty among its customers, and not only be present in multi-brand department stores.