Away

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About

Away is a start-up luggage company specializing in hard-case travel bags. The company has grown very popular in its four years of existence, securing high-profile endorsements and celebrity marketing collaborations. In late 2019, a piece in the Verge brought its company culture, labeled "toxic" by the publication, into the public eye, leading to harsh criticism of the brand and start-up culture in general.

History

Away was founded on November 9th, 2015 by Stephanie Korey and Jennifer Rubio.^[1] The company sells high-end carry-on luggage and was praised for keeping the price below $250 by Vogue. Buzzfeed^[2] praised the product in 2018, noting it had a phone charger, a laundry bag, and a high amount of storage space. The company collaborated with actress Rashida Jones,^[3] the NBA,^[4] and Star Wars,^[5] among others. By May of 2019, the company reached a value of $1.4 billion.

Criticism

On December 5th, 2019, The Verge^[6] posted an article describing the culture inside of the company. The company was described as toxic by former employees, detailing a state in which CEO Korey would berate employees on public Slack channels and offer little vacation time. Upon discovering a Slack channel where employees vented their frustrations, she fired every staff member and called them racist (Korey is white). She also forbid paid time off requests from a management team under the guise of teaching the team "accountability."

After the piece ran, quotes from Korey stunned Twitter users. User @adventurered^[7] tweeted her "accountability" quote, writing, "Can you IMAGINE working for luggage company @away and having the CEO write shit like this to her own customer service employees to 'teach them a lesson'? What in the actual fuck" (shown below, left). User @dylanmatt^[8] wrote the situation was more ridiculous because Away is a luggage company (shown below, right).