TUMI's Adam Hershman and artist Michael Murphy on the "Essentially Beautiful" pop-up

Instead of solely focusing on its own story, the brand shifted some of the limelight to its ambassador and crew member, South Korean footballer Son Heung-min (also known as Sonny), who made a guest appearance at the event. “I’m thrilled to be a part of TUMI’s pop-up — and even more so that we’re in my home country. Excited that everyone gets to experience the Essentially Beautiful campaign in this special place,” said Son Heung-min. The locker-inspired display that featured collectables and merchandise signed by the pro footballer was a crowd favourite.

Aside from that, at the centre of it all was a multidirectional perspective sculpture by American artist and perceptual art pioneer Michael Murphy. He created the Tumi Hypercraft Sculpture — an artwork comprised of seemingly disorganised suspended elements — that creates an illusion of a 19 Degree Aluminium piece morphing into the logo letter “T” as you walk around it. 

We had the chance to speak to Adam Hershman and Michael Murphy, who gave us more insights into the brand and the pop-up.

Adam Hershman, Vice President of TUMI Asia Pacific and Middle East

Tell us more about the Essentially Beautiful pop-up featuring the Fall 2023 collection.

The Essentially Beautiful Pop-Up concept and theme is about celebrating TUMI’s brand DNA. It's not only talking about the beautiful design and the aesthetics that the products have, but also the things that go into the product, which make it high performance, highly functional, and how the combination of those elements is essentially beautiful. There’s also Hypercraft — the extreme attention to detail in products with the straightforward exterior — that makes TUMI’s products unique and special. As you explore, you will find different things and different angles. For example, the pocket’s placement is there for a specific reason, where we place a lock on a suitcase is deliberate, and the USB port is almost unnoticeable. All of these things are intentional but we keep the design clean and simple at the same time.

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the world. What is TUMI doing differently now compared to three years ago? 

We’ve never gone back to our true values and DNA more than during the pandemic. We’ve entrenched ourselves in our core values like design excellence, high performance and high function, and continue to prioritise our connection with our customers. We never stopped innovating, even during the pandemic, and we had some of our most major innovations come to the table. The lightweight and high-durability Tegra or 19 Degree suitcase is for people who do a lot more leisure travel; our briefcases and backpacks are for the office; we have gym and tote bags with compartmentalisation for people with a more active lifestyle. We now have golf products, tennis bags and snowboard bags that we created so that as we come out of the pandemic and people pursue their passions, we’re there to be part of the journey.

TUMI places so much focus on craftsmanship and the products last through time. What are you doing to keep your customers coming back for more?

TUMI is a brand that is rooted in quality and with an incredible foundation, it allows us to engender lots of trust with our customers. We are very proud that people can have our bags for years — that means you have a lot of memories and an emotional connection with them, and that’s something that we’re incredibly proud of. When you have that experience with Tumi, it keeps you coming back to the brand, and you want to see what else the brand has to offer. The thing that stands out about Tumi is that it exists at the crossroads of design, function and performance. It is hard to have one of those things as a brand, but TUMI has all three. 

What is the brand focusing on next?

You are going to see more continued innovation in our men’s and luggage collections, which we are probably most well known for, such as the new Alpha X, the Tegra, and the 19 Degree products. As I had mentioned before, customers nowadays are more into active lifestyles. You will continue to see us leaning into an active lifestyle, even with our choice of ambassadors. Also, we continue to see a lot of growing interest in the women’s section, so you should see more development in that area in the future.

Michael Murphy, artist

Tell us more about your multidirectional perspective sculpture for TUMI. 

I refer to my work as perceptual art because the emphasis of the work is on the viewer’s perception. TUMI approached me as they were looking for something unique, and they presented me with the 19 Degree and I “solved” that. The sculpture is a composite of aluminium and some other materials — there is aluminium on both sides and a photo print on the front. 

What I'm trying to do is to make artwork that we see in CGI all the time — those things that happen and transform in front of our eyes in films. I try to create them on the computer and bring them into the real world. Everything is built by hand on the computer, and this artwork took about a month for us to get to this point.

You’re the pioneer of perceptual art. What drew you to that?

It is really from experimentation. That is how you find new, exciting things. When I was young, I experimented with all kinds of paint, material, tools and technology. I was using a lot of projectors to project onto three-dimensional surfaces because I was fascinated with the way that an image could exist at two dimensional and three-dimensional at the same time, depending on how you looked at it. That was when I fell in love with what I have been doing for the last 25 years, and my pursuit since then has been to try to make that happen in the real world without projections.