Mosafer, the Qatar-based travel lifestyle store, is celebrating today its first flagship in the US, and the 21st store worldwide with a VIP event hosted by Shark Tank’s Daymond John.
The 13,400sft store in New York had a soft opening in December last year. The grand opening event highlights the new approach to travel retail through introductions to new categories of travel retail.
Brand activations will be organised around three key categories; health and wellness during travel, travel tech innovations and the latest in in-flight comfort.
During the soft opening, chairman and founder Ashraf Abu Issa had stated that Mosafer is keen to revive and refresh the travel lifestyle.
Formerly the home of an art gallery, the two-story space with floor-to-ceiling glass windows will house the ‘Fine Art of Travel’ experience Mosafer seeks to bring to shoppers.
It will operate as a one-stop-shop that will give shoppers travel solutions from innovative products and in-store demonstrations, to luxury beauty and treatment solutions, a concierge service, on-the-spot repairs, an own-brand line of business travel attire, and the “silk road” cafe - a homage to the ancient trade routes between east and west.
The store will soon have a US dedicated e-Commerce website, too. Mosafer will sell over 60 brands of luggage and travel accessories, from Samsonite, Hartman and Victorinox to the less widely distributed Hedgren, Porsche Design, Blue Smart and HENK, with Mosafer as the only retailer of the $35,000 suitcase in the US. On average, prices range from $7.89 for an Eagle Creek Pack It Cube to $680 for a large Briggs & Riley spinner.
Mosafer, which opened its first location in Qatar in 2010, later opened 19 outlets across Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan and Qatar.