A running specialist is all set to drive growth in Eastpak‘s bags business. VF Corp’s luggage brand, a major player in the backpack market in France and across Europe, has appointed a new global brand vice president. Marie Gras, who has served as vice president for running at the French sporting-goods giant Decathlon for nearly two and a half years, is leaving Hauts-de-France to join VF Corp’s Antwerp offices. From Belgium, the group operates Eastpak as well as Kipling (led by Domitille Parent, who previously headed Eastpak).

For Marie Gras, a first challenge looms with last weekend’s reopening of an Eastpak flagship on London’s Carnaby Street. The store is located at 35 Carnaby Street and spans two floors. The brand opened its first-ever store on the London thoroughfare in 2008, in a 170-square-metre space.

Marie Gras helped implement Decathlon’s recent running strategy, in one of the world’s fastest-growing sports. Through its dedicated running brand, Kiprun, Decathlon has launched a running app and, notably, formed agreements with partners in new territories to develop Kiprun spaces beyond its own Decathlon stores. Previously, the executive spent almost eight years at Adidas, most recently overseeing the brand’s activities and events in Paris, one of the key cities in the brand’s global visibility strategy.

Eastpak is one of the luggage brands owned by the VF Corp group, which is currently streamlining its operations. The group also owns Kipling, to which it has given fresh momentum in recent months, as well as JanSport, focused on the US market. Eastpak, which benefits from numerous collaborations with designers and mass-market licences, such as Diesel and Gremlins, was founded in 1952 under the name Eastern Canvas Products. In France and Western Europe, it holds a key position among lower- and upper-secondary students. However, across the functional backpack category as a whole (excluding hiking backpacks), the French brand Cabaïa has gained market share in recent years and now claims category leadership in France.

For Eastpak, the challenges are therefore to scale up its entire bags and luggage range and to strengthen its competitiveness against emerging European players in various markets, such as Rains, Ucon Acrobatics, Qwstion, Kapten & Son, Tucano, Ferrino, Ecoalf, Lefrik, and Sandqvist.