A Chat With October’s Profile, Peter Cobb, co-founder/senior vice president, eBags
Catalog Success: Where’s your company headquartered?
Peter Cobb: Denver, Colorado. Greenwood Village, technically.
CS: What are your catalog/company customer demographics?
PC: We sell 520 brands of products, everything from luggage to backpacks to handbags to laptop cases. Five hundred and twenty brands, 36,000 bags. So, there’s such a wide variety. And in a day we’ll have 100,000 visitors to our site. I’m saying all this because it’s hard to pinpoint. It’s about 70 percent women; moderate to upper income — household income around $82,000; average age, and I hate using averages because we have retirees buying luggage for retirement and kids buying backpacks for school, but that 30 to 45 age range is kind of the key sweet spot. But we know we do really well with 18- to 30-year-olds, with Dakine and Billabong and North Face and JanSport and Nike and ladies handbags and all that. Educated, professional … it’s about selection, 36,000 bags, and of course convenience.
In our category there’s no Bags R Us — it’s a very fragmented market. If you’re looking for luggage, you may go to a luggage specialty store. If you’re looking for a backpack, you may go to a Big 5 or Oshman’s or Sports Authority. If you’re looking for a handbag, you may go to Nordstrom or Neiman Marcus. So you’re kind of all over the place, but at eBags it’s one-stop shopping.
