Luggage & Bags: Same Category, Two Completely Different Supply Chains

Everyone Keeps Telling Me Brands Are Leaving China.
The Data Says Something Else.

At the beginning of the year, I was in a long meeting with a sourcing director. Mid-size brand, expanding fast. He'd just told his board that they were "moving out of China" for their next collection. Vietnam, Indonesia, maybe India. The whole pitch was built on one idea: China is losing the luggage market.

I asked him one question. Which China. He didn't understand what I meant.

He meant suitcases. Hard-shell, wheels, the functional stuff. On that, he was right, China is being challenged there, and Vietnam and Indonesia are picking up real share. But his board deck had a slide showing "China's declining position in luggage," and that slide didn't say suitcases. It said luggage. All of it. Handbags included.

That's the gap. And it's an expensive one to build a strategy on.

ONE CATEGORY, TWO MARKETS THAT DON'T BEHAVE THE SAME WAY

US luggage and travel goods imports hit $12.5 billion over the past 12 months. China supplies 35.3% of that, the single largest source by far. If you stopped reading there, you'd agree with the sourcing director. China dominates.

But look at what China is actually shipping. Plastic and textile containers, hard-shell suitcases. Together that's 74% of everything China sends to the US. Leather handbags, the single biggest product category in the entire market at $6.5 billion, are only 1.9% of China's exports.

France and Italy fill that gap almost entirely. Between them, roughly a quarter of all US luggage imports, nearly all of it leather handbags and luxury accessories. Vietnam sits in the middle, a mixed player across both fashion and function.

Two supply chains. One HS code. One board slide that flattened them into a single story.

WHY THIS MATTERS MORE THAN A TRADE STATISTIC

If you make hard-side suitcases, the China+1 conversation is real and it's happening now. Vietnam, Indonesia, India are legitimate alternatives, and the compliance profile changes when you move: different factories, different vendor validation, different chemical testing baselines.

If you make leather handbags, that conversation barely applies to you. Your supply chain runs through France and Italy for a reason that has nothing to do with cost and everything to do with material authenticity. No sourcing shift is coming for you, and building a strategy that assumes one is a wasted quarter.

The mistake isn't picking the wrong hub. It's answering a category-wide question with a segment-specific answer, or the reverse. I've seen brands do both.

THE PEAK IMPORT MONTHS ARE ALREADY ON THE CALENDAR

Imports peak in March and December. That's not random, it's spring travel restocking and holiday season demand. If you're planning your H2 2026 sourcing now, you're planning against a seasonal clock that doesn't wait for a strategy debate to resolve.

The brands that get this right aren't the ones with the biggest sourcing budgets. They're the ones asking which segment they actually compete in before they decide which country solves their problem.

THE DATA BEHIND THIS IS ALREADY OUT OF DATE ON ONE THING

This analysis runs through January 2026. Since then, the Strait of Hormuz has been part of an active conflict zone, and shipping traffic through it has stayed well below pre-war levels for months. That matters here for a simple reason: every China+1 decision has a freight cost and a reliability assumption baked into it, and both of those have moved since this data was collected.

I'm not saying the sourcing logic changes. Vietnam is still Vietnam, France is still France. But if you're building a 2026 sourcing plan on trade data alone, you're missing the freight volatility and route risk that's part of the actual cost of moving anywhere right now. Plan the sourcing shift. Just price it against today's shipping reality, not last year's.
 

ONE MARKET. TWO SUPPLY CHAINS.

At Bureau Veritas CPS we work across both sides of this market, mass-market functional luggage and luxury leather goods, testing, chemical compliance, factory audits, from China to Vietnam to Italy to France.

If you're planning your sourcing strategy for the second half of 2026, know which supply chain you're actually in, and what it actually costs to move, before you decide where to go. Drop me a message or visit here

About the author

Niraj Singh Vice President, Global Consumer Product Line