Today we’d like to introduce you to Naim Merchant.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
My story as an entrepreneur started at a very young age. I come from an immigrant family filled with business minded people, so I genuinely grew up around the idea of buying and selling product. It’s fitting because my last name is Merchant (irony lol) and I can’t think of anyone in my family who doesn’t have some form of business.
We moved to the United States in 2000, and my father started a company doing private label accessories for a lot of brands. In a nutshell, I grew up learning the nuances of what it takes to develop the best possible product at the most competitive costs and watched brands work their magic as marketers.
In college, I would buy anything from watches (non-fake lol) to bracelets from China and sell them on eBay as a side hustle which technically I could have done full time, but there isn’t really a sense of legacy there. I knew getting out of college that I wanted to build a brand that represented my values and really exemplified what the American dream was all about. Yes, the American dream is very much alive, and I’ll dive into it more.
When we moved here, my family had nothing and essentially started from scratch. My parents worked double time to make sure that I had all the tools at my disposal to do whatever it was that I wished to do. Their education played a big part in channeling the right work ethic and making the right decisions to get to where we needed to be.
Fast forward post-college and working in the family business, designing and really understanding how brands developed and connected with their customers, I knew that I had some skills and knowledge to build something special if I chose to do so. At the time, I was traveling a lot for work, and I noticed at the airport, there were two types of travelers.
On one hand, you have the traveler who just wanted to get to their destination and didn’t necessarily care about the appearance of their luggage. On the other hand, you had another traveler who walked around with branded, statement piece travel gear and it’s almost impossible not to get your attention.
When I started looking at the price points these bags were sold for, it was insane to me that people would have to pay the price they did just to have nice things. I mean I get it, it’s a brand, and you’re paying for the image, but at some point I felt like as a consumer.
I’m going to either look at this as a thing I can’t afford (post-college brokenness haha) and be sad or I’m going to work twice as hard to afford these nice things which I personally feel is the wrong type of motivation to have. I found a serious void in the industry for affordable, luxury fashion-forward travel gear and knew that I had something special here if I could create a simple aesthetic line that resonated with the end consumer.
From there, the idea of Packs came about – simple aesthetic, price point sensitive with a luxury feel. The goal was to create a line that was “better than our competition and sell it for a price that’s cheaper than our competition” (I got that from the movie American Gangster which is honestly one of my favorite movies lol).
Putting into perspective my immigrant roots and growing up in a household where education played a big part in our upbringing, I wanted Packs to be a socially conscious brand that created opportunities for those who don’t necessarily have the fortune of being in an environment that promotes learning.
As a result, the Project side of our business is designed to give 10% of every purchase to a charity we work with called buildOn that helps build schools internationally for kids in the most impoverished countries providing them with vocational life skills.
Additionally, the charity also provides for domestic programs here in the United States for after-school activities for lots of kids in the inner-cities. Our goal right now is to go on track to Burkina Faso (one of the least educated and poorest countries on the UN index) at the end of the year where we would hopefully hit groundbreaking on the first Packs sponsored school.
Simultaneously, we’ve been working with a lot of local initiatives to become a bigger, more socially aware part of our community at home. Our story comes from humble beginnings, but I think those challenges and life lessons have really kept us grounded and true to our core of building a socially aware brand that is for everybody. This will be my legacy.
Has it been a smooth road?
LOL! I think any entrepreneur involved with a startup will attest to the fact that it’s never a smooth road. To be honest, it’s not meant to be – if it was, everyone would do it. The hustle and struggle are beautiful aspects of this game we play in hopes of building something special. I firmly believe that entrepreneurship at its core is just a healthy balance of taking great joy in those small victories you have while trying to minimalize sessions of self-loathing- all while staying true to your “why.”
We’ve had several challenges as a startup and things haven’t necessarily gone the way we would have hoped and planned for. I still remember our first shipment of bags that came in and me and my partner at that time stayed up all night packing bags in my garage to make sure we could get our stuff out to customers expecting their bags for Christmas.
To add to it, our shipping carrier delayed delivery on packages, and most of the people missed giving these bags as gifts for Christmas. Definitely wasn’t the start we hoped for and our customers, at that time, were first-time buyers, so we definitely faced a little bit of a hit-back. There’s just so many moving parts within a brand that it’s definitely a challenge understanding how to manage your growth efficiently.
You almost always want the product and customer experience to be flawless but there’s always hiccups, and I think how you react to those challenges plays a big part in your success. We live in an age today where connecting with your customer at a personal level is so important, and I think finding creative ways to form that connection can sometimes be a challenge.
There’s just so many competitors and non-competitor brands that are looking to do the same thing where the usual strategies become mundane and overwhelming to the end consumer. Fortunately, there’s a unique method to our madness here at Packs, and so far, we’ve been fortunate to build a community of Packs supporters who I brand as the Packs Elite.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Packs Project – tell our readers more, for example, what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
When we first created Packs Project four years ago, the idea was always to create a brand that gave its customers the absolute most value while simultaneously creating an impact around the world. Anyone can sell product but how do you create a company that’s impactful, sustainable and communal to all its supporters? That’s what Packs Project is at its core.
The Packs side of the business has always been about fashion-forward, affordable luxury, luggage with influences from the latest trends in music, art, fashion, and culture. We wanted to build our line modeled around basic utility, simple aesthetic that gave the most value to our consumer without breaking the bank.
All our bags are made with sustainable, vegan leather, and our luggage is produced in some of the same factories overseas where brands like Armani produce their bags. The quality is impeccable, and the material is high grade resulting in a return rate which is far under 2% for the year. As we continue to grow the line, we’ve expanded into several different types of fabrics and shifted focus in turning our line into a more centric brand which has a selection for women and men equally.
What separates us from the rest of the Pack (no pun intended lol) is that our entire line is built in matching sets so that your backpack, duffel, weekender, and traveler are all in sync and highly fashion forward. Additionally, every bag has a printed lining inside, specifically patterned in green and red interwoven lines that symbolize hope and peace for the future. Our end goal is for each bag to serve a symbol for our bigger and grander vision of aiding in the fight against global illiteracy which also serves as the Project side of our business.
The Project side of our business has been the single most driving force to everything we do here at Packs. As mentioned earlier, the idea was to build a brand that was impactful and defined our legacy for years to come. For every purchase made, wholesale or retail, we donate 10% of the value to a charity we work with closely called buildOn that helps us build schools around the world in the most impoverished areas. You see, here at Packs we firmly believe that education is the key to breaking the cycle of poverty and underdevelopment globally.
Living in a country where we’re truly blessed with opportunities, it’s sad to see that there are still adults and children in the world who do not have the basic means to learn how to read and write. BuildOn is a 4-star charity (the highest amount of stars you can get as a charity) that is headquartered in San Francisco and splits its resources towards international literacy and domestic after-school programs especially in the inner-cities.
Currently, the funds we raise are being pushed towards their initiative of building a school in Burkina Faso, which is in West Africa and ranks as one of the poorest and least educated countries on the UN index. The hope is to continue to build schools around the world and use education as a means to make positive, effective change. As the saying goes, give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.
Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and the least?
I think what I like the most about our city is how much it’s grown and changed over time. I’ve been coming to downtown since I was 12 on a fairly regular basis and I can sincerely say that it wasn’t necessarily a place you wanted to hang out at after hours. There weren’t as many events and most of the day to day was strictly business.
Over time, there’s been a wave of people moving in and creating little pockets of culture/art that have become incredibly fun to watch develop over time. I can honestly say after working all day in downtown, I still end up back there after hours just to hang out and check out all the newness.
What I hate about it and I think everyone will agree for the most part – Traffic. It’s insanity right now.
Pricing:
- Backpacks starting at $70
- Duffels and Weekenders between $120 and $150
- Backpack, Duffel, Weekender, and Traveler (all carry on) for under $450 as a set
Contact Info:
- Website: www.packsproject.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/packsproject
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/packsproject
Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
