Jen Rubio | Hustle Con 2017

About this video

Jen Rubio, founder of Away, discusses how she built a luggage company into a lifestyle travel brand through storytelling, strategic PR, and brand collaborations rather than traditional marketing. She explains Away’s early strategy of selling a book before the product launched, creating press-worthy moments like hand-painted monogramming, and leveraging user-generated content to drive growth to over 100,000 suitcases sold and $20 million in Series B funding.

Key takeaways

• Jen positioned Away not as a luggage company but as a travel brand, using storytelling and context in all marketing to make luggage—typically an unsexy category—something customers care about and share
• Away invested early in a PR agency and treated every product feature and business moment as a storytelling opportunity, from the pre-launch book to hand-painted monogramming to collaborations with celebrities and causes
• The company prioritized earned media and word-of-mouth over paid advertising, built a community of brand ambassadors through customer engagement, and used 99% user-generated content on Instagram to create authentic social proof

Episode details: published July 24, 2017 · 3.5K views · 19:25 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. The business ideas, figures and results discussed are the hosts’ and guests’ own claims, shared as brainstorming and entertainment — not verified facts and not investment advice.

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