Its 2018 and the truth is that many product brand owners know that the retailers that used to sell their products are doomed to slowly go out of business, as they get their lunch eaten by Amazon and co. Even within luggage too. Retail will consolidate into a few mega retailers, brands that sell direct online+offline and then a reduced segment of highly specialised third party retailers that are primarily in existence because of their physical shops and service, but need to be digitally present and very good in that channel to.

Within luggage, there is no shortage of medium size players that wont make it and many specialised smaller ones that wont too. And for brand owners the nightmare is to be vulnerable to the larger mega retailers that control consumers habits online, because they can bargain hard and eat up more of the pie/margin/profit in the product.

So if you run Rimowa it would be irresponsible for you to by now not begin to take gradual control of your own distribution.

It's fine a balance, as they will aways need third party retailers in this product segment - but far fewer than before.

So it's actually a tough job to begin to drive to sell more directly while not completely upsetting the relationship with the third party retailers.