Bottoli runs the company with a hands-on approach that suggests an urgency to make up for lost time. He says there has to be logic to Samsonite’s brand extension. “We have more than a thousand patents but a qualifier of our vision is that we’re creating an upscale group linked to travel.” The eyewear range, which launches this spring, will be groundbreaking, he claims, “in the same way our luggage consistently has been. In the 1950s, we made the first lightweight suitcase. In the 90s our ‘Spinner’ was the first luggage on wheels. The eye-glasses will be part of the travel experience. They will be made of a patented material that means you can put them in your back pocket and sit on them and they won’t break.”

Similarly, the company is preparing to launch belts with the buckles made out of a resin, so harried travellers don’t need to remove them for airport metal detectors. It is also hatching a line of suitcases with built-in speakers for iPods. “Everything we make will be connected in some way to travel,” says Bottoli. “Eye-glasses that stretch back into shape has to say something to a traveller. The same goes for a mobile phone casing that is shockproof. There will be no licensing deals to make a fast buck. One company wanted to put our name on a fragrance, can you believe?”

A huge revenue stream has turned out to be Samsonite footwear. The company had dabbled in traditional shoes in the 1980s but without getting a firm grip on either the product or the distribution model, the venture fizzled out like the even shorter-lived Samsonite clothing range. The 21st century crossover product, marketed as the Ultimate Travel Shoe, however, fuses Samsonite’s traditional connotations with something more stylish. Mackay and Italian designer Alberto del Biondi have produced shoes with leather panels joined by stretchable fabric, designed to expand up to half a size at 35,000 feet. Shock-absorbing insoles and toggle laces allow quick removal at security checkpoints.

“At first, I didn’t see how footwear was a natural fit for Samsonite,” concedes Bottoli, “but consumer feedback showed us that the concept of shoes specifically designed for air travel makes total sense.” Introduced in 2006, footwear already accounts for 25% of Samsonite’s total business in Italy, the company’s biggest single market after the US. Last August, Samsonite began selling more formal travel footwear through its 178 Indian stores and the handful in Korea. After just six months, footwear accounts for 20% of all Samsonite’s Indian business and is expected to contribute €20m a year by 2011. The shoes are partly made in India via a licensing deal. Footwear will be rolled out across western Asia this year and Bottoli forecasts it will account for 10-15% of Chinese turnover within three to five years.

Whereas luggage accounted for 90% of Samsonite revenues in 2000, in 2007 it accounted for only 63%. Within five years, it will represent just 50% of the company’s business, which, says Bottoli, will buttress it against any aviation-related calamity. Travel, nonetheless, remains the company’s touchstone. “The first thing that people do when they get more disposable income is travel,” he points out.

Moreover he believes that Samsonite is well-placed geographically for international growth. Last July, CVC Capital became the third successive private equity firm to lift the company off the corporate carousel, paying $1.1bn in cash. “Our executive office, our design team and our owner are based in London. I guess that makes us a British company,” smiles Bottoli. Although the company is proud of its American heritage, the focus for growth is very much employing European sensibilities.

In a perverse way, when Bottoli joined in 2004, Samsonite was a good advert for the durability of its wares. Though the company, founded by Jesse Shwayder in 1910 in Denver, Colorado as the Shwayder Trunk Manufacturing Co, had been battered from every angle, it had demonstrated remarkable resilience. The nosedive in travel following September 11, 2001 had led to the delisting of a company that had already pinballed from one doomed reorganisation to another, after emerging from bankruptcy in 1993. This was after a decade in which the once cherished family firm endured two sales either side of a leveraged buyout. Nevertheless, despite chronic mismanagement and financial crunches in Asia and the US, Samsonite still promised great potential. Even during the bleak months of 1992, it racked up revenues of $500m.

Bottoli was ushered in by a second private equity group – Los Angeles-based Ares Management, London-based Bain Capital, and Ontario’s Teachers’ Merchant Bank – which rescued Samsonite from New York-based private equity outfit Apollo Management. He was enticed away from Louis Vuitton with a stake estimated to be around 10% – to a company that Bain later revealed was a fortnight away from bankruptcy. Bottoli moved Samsonite’s headquarters to London – where he had worked for Dutch conglomerate Benckiser – and, with a $75m cash injection, began focusing on upscale products. “Upper sections of societies develop far more quickly” he reasons.

This strategy may have looked like a radical departure but, he points out, many of the current luxury giants were aggregated over time. “Look at PPR [Pinault-Printemps-Redoute, the French multinational which recently ditched its high street stores to focus on luxury pickups, including Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent]. Originally, these firms were not about luxury, so people have made the transition”.