Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking the time to join the Samsonite's first half results presentation. Today, we have our CEO, Kyle Gendreau, CFO, Reza Taleghani, with us. Without further ado, Kyle will begin the presentation.
Okay, great. Thanks, everyone. Well, we're pretty excited to be back in Hong Kong. It's been a bit of time since we've been here. We've been traveling quite a bit, but we're here, and I think it's a perfect time to be here talking about our first half results, which are really tremendous, and so we'll walk you through that. William, you're turning the slides? You're already on the page. A little differently, I'm gonna start with Q2, because I think the trends and what we're seeing continue to move in a way that are very positive, and each quarter that passes, we're seeing actually building momentum. If you look at Q2, and you look at where we are, our net sales up, 36% versus last year, 15%.
I think importantly in Q2, look at gross margin, really an amazing number in our adjusted EBITDA, which is at 19.3%. Everyone's gonna ask me at the end, "What's your guidance for margin for the rest of the year?" We'll cover that. Really an amazing EBITDA for the quarter. Adjusted net income, really tremendous, up 50%. Gross margin, as I said, 59.4%. We're gonna cover it in the deck, but really what's happening with margin is the mix effects of brands like Tumi moving at a faster pace. Asia really kind of kicking in from a growth perspective. China is starting to be part of that as we get into Q2 at a positive 10%, delivering a really amazing gross margin story for us.
Against an advertising spend that's stepping up. We're doing a little bit of catch-up in Q2, you know, so we're pretty close to 7% advertising. Despite advertising at 7%, EBITDA margin, you know, in, well into the 19% range. Importantly, and Reza will cover that in his section, our fixed SG&A, which we've been guiding for several quarters, that we've been able to adjust the cost structure of the business and really fundamentally change the profit profile of the business. You can really see it perfectly played out in Q2. Even for the half, you see it. A big driver of that is not only the gross margin, but what we've done on the cost structure, which is delivering on the bottom line. We're quite happy with the quarter.
My next slide, really, this is a look of the last six quarters, just to give you a sense, and I labeled the, the slide firing on all cylinders. When we look at everything that's working in our business, you can go across each of the segments, and everything's delivering probably slightly ahead of all of your own expectations, if you're kind of modeling us, and even a little bit ahead of our expectations when we look at kind of the trends that we're seeing. Sales, really tremendously strong, $924 million in sales in Q2. Look at where we were just in Q1 of last year, you know, really quite dramatic movements. On the gross margin side, every quarter, we're banking more gross margin expansion, and, and again, there's some mix effect.
Do I think that margin will kind of play out for the full-year? I think it'll probably settle out around 59% or so, but really strong for the second quarter. You can see the EBITDA margin, and the EBITDA margin, and I have advertising off to the, to the right as well on the bottom of the chart. You have to look at those in tandem, but regardless of what's going on with advertising, EBITDA margin's moving every month as we layer in sales and the business continues to get to north of 2019 levels, you're seeing the margin profile really transform, and it really shows up in Q2 quite strongly. Against an advertising, as I said earlier, in Q2, almost 7%. You know, this is really a tremendous result for the quarter.
The half's amazing, too. I, I, I wouldn't normally have started with the quarter, but I think it gives you a sense for trends, but the half was tremendous. Our, our, first half sales up close to 46% to last year, and importantly, up 16.2% to 2019. It's really around international travel continuing to recover. There's not a lot of recovery in this deck because we're starting to think about forward. You know, this is a business that's actually beyond recovery, though there's recovery still happening in international travel, so there's plenty of upside coming. This is a business that's delivering across each of our regions. Definitely Asia kicking in in a bigger way. Asia, versus last year for Q1, up 87%, you know, different than the other markets.
I'll cover those in a second. Up 18% to 2019 for the half, okay? This was a region that was negative at the end of last year to 2019, and so as China kicks in and the rest of Asia starts to move, you dramatically change the Asia profile. Just for color, and we'll have it later in the deck, but from a growth perspective versus last year, all regions really delivering. 87% for Asia, North America, up 25% to 2022, Europe, 30%, Latin America, 30%, and blended up 46. Versus 2019, every region delivering. Asia, up 18, as I said, North America, plus seven, and that's really with that bumpy Q2, which is we're seeing kind of rebounding in Q3.
Really a great number. Europe, 27% up to 2019, and Latin America, up 69%. There isn't one pocket within the regional structure, and I might even tell you at the country level, that isn't now delivering in positive territory versus 2019. On the EBITDA margin side, let me cover gross margin real quick. Gross margin, even for the half, almost 59%, up 310 basis points to the prior year, so really a terrific story there. We'll cover that in a bit. Adjusted EBITDA up, is $334, up 73% or $141 million to prior year. EBITDA margin, 18.8%.
You know, this is with a Q1 where China was still negative and things still catching up and moving, and you can get a sense for where the EBITDA margin profile is moving in the business as well. Again, even ahead of our guidance, I think I started the year thinking 16.5, maybe getting to 17%, and we start to think about an EBITDA margin that's really more like 19% for the full-year. There's, there's your first guidance comment, because everybody's curious. That's really where it's looking, and it's, and it's building because we see the start of Q3, tremendously strong. We'll cover that in a bit as well, feeding into this story. We're, we're, we're quite excited what we've achieved there.
From a margin basis perspective, I have the next slide, but I'll cover it here, 340 basis points better than last year from an EBITDA margin perspective. Importantly, versus 2019, transformative, 660 basis points. You know, we were in 2019, first half, just around 12.5% EBITDA margin. Here we are, really close to 19%, really tremendous. When Reza and I look at the business, really sustainable. If you're really looking and judging and trying to decide where we are, the ability to sustain the margin transformation that we've had in the business is a high focus of ours. You can see, even in our own expectations, we keep even doing better than what we're looking to sustain, it's quite exciting for us.
This is on the backdrop of advertising. You'll notice in my presentation today, I have, like, four, five, six pages on advertising versus five or six pages on product, because product's really terrific. I spent last quarter talking about product and award-winning products, but the ability to really drive your business with advertising dollars and tell your story about what you're doing across your three core brands on innovation, sustainability, really just engaging the market as the market's reengaging in travel. That's feeding into advertising. Not only are we able to deliver these margin numbers, but we're able to step on the gas on the advertising side, and I think that will continue to fuel rest of year into next year as well. We're quite excited really about everything.
In, in many ways, this page captures, you know, kind of the, the, the high level of what's really making us excited about the business. The next slide I've shown once before, this is just another view at this to show really the fundamental transformation of the profit profile of the business. This is reported dollars, but on reported sales that are just, let's call it, up slightly, $21 million. Constant currency, it's much higher than if I adjusted for eBags and Speck things that we kind of adjusted in the business, tremendous growth there. Look at the profit profile. You know, it's really this $121 million of improvement in EBITDA versus 2019. The margins are the most impressive part of this.
You know, that this is a transformed business, delivering margins really in that upper teens level, with real confidence that we can continue that. I'm gonna do a quick walk around regions, just really fast to give you a sense. I'll give you a sense for how regions are trending, as we get into Q3. Asia, as I said, up 86%, 18% to 2019. We, we tend to get the comment that it's being driven by China, but China's just starting in these numbers in many ways. You know, if I guided you that China was -10% in Q1 and +10% in Q2, July for China is looking like +17%. You know, there's a building trend with China.
When you look at what's happened in the first half, it's really all of Asia that's delivering really amazing numbers to deliver this growth profile. Overall, Asia, for, for July, is at 22% growth, so the trend really just continues. My sense is, a market like India, which is delivering amazing growth, still delivering amazing growth, that'll start to settle down because you'll start to kind of, you know, comp and, and, and lapse. At the same time that India maybe goes from up 70% or 80% to up 50%, China's kicking in. I think the Asia number really has the ability to continue to deliver these meaningful growth numbers.
Strong sales by region, importantly, the cost structure within Asia, both the margin mix, what's driving the business, and what we've done to manage fixed costs, Subrata's here today in the room, managing the Asia region, doing an amazing job with his team and all of our teams to manage the cost structure to deliver a margin expansion. Asia's always been a higher margin region for us, but you can see versus first half 2019, was roughly 20%. Here we are at 24.8%. Again, China just starting to kick in. As we move through the year, our ability to continue to deliver that, I think, is very strong. And then from an advertising perspective, and even that margin that I'm showing you, this is with advertising at 7.1%.
You know, this is a meaningful investment and push in this, in this region, to push the business across the countries that we have. Really exciting moment for Asia. You can see across the board, many positives. North America, really significant adjustment in EBITDA margin. I'll cover why there. In a business that's actually growing, and I think if you were listening to our Q1 call, I mean our... yeah, Q1 call, we guided, "Hey, Q2 might be a little bit softer for North America." The reality is, and what we said, it's timing, and we're really seeing timing. We saw a strong Q1 for North America. We've seen a slightly softer Q2, still in a, in a, in a strong position, for the half up 7%.
We're seeing building momentum as we step into Q3. This is the timing shift. As we're sitting here today, it looks like July for North America, blend is 8% up. August, in an early glimpse, you know, north of 10% is the way I would think about North America. North America business, it's a mix of Tumi, Samsonite, American Tourister. Tumi's really delivering amazing numbers, really to my next point. You know, Tumi's up 33% in the half, a similar number as we step into Q3. This Tumi performance is really helping fuel, along with what we did to adjust the business for Speck. We exited Speck, as you remember, during pandemic, we culled some of the third-party brands for eBags, which were driving sales, but no profits, that changed the profile.
Really, what the amazing transformation is North America going from roughly 12% EBITDA in 2019, first half, to 19.9, call it 20%. You know, that's really tremendous. It's, it's a mix of everything working, a mix of Tumi really kicking in, and the work that Lynn and the team have done to manage cost structure and deliver margin across the overall business. This is, again, with advertising stepping up, you know, so 5.7% versus just 5% last year. Again, a really positive North America story. Europe's tremendous. Europe just continues to be tremendous. I don't know if you've traveled to Europe, but Europe is as busy as I've ever seen it.
We'll be there this weekend, but I've been in and out of Europe probably eight times in the last six months, and it is booming. Any, any country that I'm going to, Italy is insane. London's very, very busy. You can see it in the travel numbers. You know, that's inbound travel, but just generally, these are, these are markets that are moving in life, fully back to normal. Our first half sales are up 30% to prior year, and 26% to 2019. We guided last call that Q2 had a little bit of disruption because we were putting a warehouse management system in. These are numbers including some of that disruption. You know, and that was short-lived. We were guiding just so you would see it, but the numbers are really amazing.
Q2 is up 24% despite that, and I thought it was important that we guided you for that. As we come out of that, or if we adjust that Q2 the number probably is more like 32%, adjusting for the handful of leaks that we're managing the warehouse system. Again, really tremendous growth. If you look at August, for example, really on the other, full other side of the warehouse management system, north of 40% growth in Europe versus last year. Really amazing momentum, really continuing. I think somewhere along the way, I guided an amazing summer travel season in Europe. It is amazing plus, is the way I would describe it. It's very, very strong, and we can see it in our numbers. And that's with EBITDA margin moving.
EBITDA margin, if you look at it versus last year, slightly down, but totally transformed advertising spends. We're, we're up to 6.5% versus roughly 4.5% last year, as we really start to lean in and push the business on the advertising side. Again, a, a terrific performance across the board in Europe with strong momentum as we go into Q3. Latin America, you know, this is... was a project that I think Reza and I picked up really in 2019, around how do we transform Latin America's growth profile, but importantly, its profit profile, to kind of be in line and, and contribute to our overall profit profile for a region that I think should grow into $400 million-$500 million in sales.
You can see for this year, first half, we're at just over $100 million in sales. We're well on our way versus where we were in 2019 and particularly in 2018, but more importantly is the transformation of profit. This is a business that adjusted its way to market, and markets like Brazil really took action on the cost side, driving direct-to-consumer, direct-to-consumer e-commerce, which in some of these markets wasn't up and running fully yet, is up and running. All of that's feeding into a terrific gross margin story for this business, and importantly, an EBITDA margin story that's now allowing the business to move at an accelerated pace. Here you can start to put advertising in.
This is a business spending almost 6% on advertising, versus a year ago, we were at 3%, because we were navigating in prior periods, even lower than that. I'm excited about the long-term prospects for Latin America as well, and that trend continues. July, just for scale, is up 64%, this is a market that's still continuing to deliver in line with what we're seeing. That's 64% to 2019. All of our brands are delivering, and we have a handful of brands that are smaller, very tactical. Reza's gonna cover those growth profiles. Those are great, our core brands really drive our business.
When you, when you look at our numbers and you take a look at what's driving, I'll start with Samsonite on, on the, on the left side, $880 million in the quarter, up 48.7% versus last year, and 25% to 2019. This is really, you know, right in the heart of our business, delivering amazing growth. Tumi growing at $420 million, up 52%, growing at a slightly faster pace versus last year, up around 22% to 2019. A little less than Samsonite, because we had a little bit of store restructuring going on within Tumi, so, but the business is overachieving to what our expectations are as well. Very, very strong.
American Tourister, which is entry-level brand, and I might argue when we're looking, and I've had some questions along the way this year on how consumers are acting, higher-end consumers are still actively buying. Lower-end consumers are still engaged, they're traveling, but maybe just at a slightly slower pace. You can kind of see it in our American Tourister numbers. Still amazing numbers, up 43, call it 44% to last year and up 15% to 2019. You'll see some of our advertising campaigns, you can see some of the products really delivering on that front as well. All three of our core brands, all contributing in a meaningful way. I might argue, our higher-end brands contributing just a bit more, which has also helping on the gross margin side and profit side of the business.
With that, we're leaning into marketing spend. You know, we're at the position. All the work we've done to position the business, deliver a meaningful EBITDA margin profile for the business, and now allowing ourselves to properly invest back into the business to push it. Again, this is against a competitive landscape that's highly fragmented, so share a voice in our ability to deliver campaigns and content and tell consumers what we're doing with the products that we're making on the sustainability front, innovation, really transformative products, and you'll see some of it around the room. You'll see some of it in some of the clips that I'm going to show you. That is a game changer.
We can drive sales growth against a fragmented market and gain market share, particularly as we're coming out of pandemic, and we're sitting on such a strong footing on inventory, on some of the best product collections we've had. I often say that every year, but it's amazing. We won 12 Red Dot awards, may actually 13 Red Dot awards, this year alone, across all of our brands. It's really tremendous. We can really message these key differentiators, and allow our scale to, to really move and gain market share in the business. We're doing a lot of that.
So I have pages here to talk about advertising, marketing, versus product, because one of these advantages we have is we can continue to push the business to deliver growth, and that's exactly what we're doing. As we, as we allocate, you'll see us allocate a bit more to Tumi, where Tumi can move at a faster pace. It's growing in markets that we've been really just laying the foundations for, so we can overspend in Asia, we can overspend in Europe on Tumi. We're also accelerating our e-commerce across all of our brands and channels. A lot of our advertising dollars ends up there anyways. We can really drive these important initiatives on driving the business....
So just quickly and then we'll show a video, but stunning visuals on this Ecodiver product, which is really an amazing product. This product very quickly went into our top five in Europe, and this is an amazing product incorporating sustainable materials. It's got backpacks, but it's got unstructured luggage, duffels, wheeled duffels. Younger good consumers are traveling this way. If you really look at airports today, and you see what younger consumers are moving, you see a lot of them moving in this kind of way, and this product is hitting it, and it's been very, very successful. It's launching in the U.S., I think, this week. It's really been a tremendous story for Europe. So if we could, let's play this video campaign.
Exploring the outdoors and admiring the true beauty of nature. Discovering the unknown. Escaping reality and reconnecting with yourself. Chasing magnificent sunsets and creating unforgettable memories. Adventure awaits. What's your next adventure? Ecodiver by Samsonite.
I might say, this, this campaign was really super successful in Europe. Very inexpensive to make, too, I'll tell you that. It was really an amazing, like, influencer-driven campaign that was tremendous. You think about the competitive landscape that we're dealing with and our ability to launch a product, an eco product, really, with meaningful amounts of sustainable content, and then tell a story as powerful as that, and be able to spend dollars to tell consumers about it, really drives the needle. Amazingly, when you have a good product, the consumers gravitate to it. Again, a top five within Europe very quickly. You'll see it spreading across the rest of the world as well. That was Ecodiver. Within the U.S., we're advertising. We're back to doing some advertising on brand side.
This was a collaboration with or endorsement with Chloe Fineman. This is Elevation Plus. This was a Red Dot Award-winning product. Really interesting opening in the front, really a sophisticated piece of product. Again, in the top 10 for the U.S., and this launched just a few quarters ago. Really an amazing story there, incorporating recycled content within the liners as well. Importantly, in India, we've, we've actually relaunched Samsonite in India. We started this year as the business was really running and building headway to be able to invest and push and drive the business. India, as most of you know, is, is been, for a long time, an American Tourister-driven business. Samsonite's been there, but we have ability to really move. I think the Indian consumer is moving.
I think that when you look at forward travel and forward expectations for growth, five years and 10 years, India really becomes a huge part of the global economy, and from a travel perspective, I think it's super strong. We've leaned in here in a meaningful way with advertising, endorsing with, with one of the most historic actors within India, famous cricketers in India, with really powerful campaigns. We've seen our Samsonite business tremendously move to all of our surprise, just in Q1 and Q2 off the back of these campaigns. You should expect more from us on India. When we're talking about India next year, you'll see Samsonite becoming a bigger and bigger piece of that mix, not at the sake of American Tourister. It's really American Tourister who's delivering tremendous growth.
A lot of what you've seen over the last five and six quarters is really an American Tourister-driven story, at Samsonite now can play a bigger role, which will also help move margin profile in India as well. We're very, very excited here. These campaigns are super powerful. I think our competitors, that's one market where we have bigger competitors. I think they were quite surprised at the magnitude of what we showed up in market with from a campaign perspective, we're excited there as well. On the Tumi side, you know, this is a business that we're really pushing with advertising, really with celebrity endorsement. It's super important. We have collaborations with brands like McLaren that are doing tremendous. We have amazing cast of international characters.
We have Lando Norris, as you know, Reneé Rapp , Richarlison, and Sunny from Korea, all delivering amazing benefits to the brand. They're all really passionate Tumi consumers as well, so I think that's even more fun when we're on shoots with these guys. They're really, you know, amazing believers of this Tumi brand. All of that, and if you're, if you're following Tumi at all, you can't miss these characters. I call them characters. They're really assets or amazing talents within the world, delivering a good story for Tumi, with amazing product. I think, most importantly for Tumi, the product's just tremendous, and we continue to deliver tremendous product. There's a video here as well we'll show, but this 19 Degree collection, we have it here on, on the front of the stage, for Tumi.
19 Degree aluminum, 19 Degree polycarbonate with recycled content and recycled liners. A lot going on with this collection that's really become a bit of a, you know, a collection asset for the brand Tumi. It's a signature almost for Tumi, and it's delivering growth in every single region that we're operating on. I might show a really good video here as well. I. Yep. Yeah, just, just terrific. It really speaks to the power of Tumi and our ability and our real task to properly invest behind these brands. As a percent of sales, you'll see our advertising higher on this brand as we really move and push it, and, and really moving the needle. We're very excited what we're seeing with Tumi. On the American Tourister side, again, this is a really young, fun, colorful brand.
Tons of energy with this brand. Product's the best we've seen. We have a really wonderful collection of products in the back of the room here for American Tourister. The campaigns match the brand. They match the, the playfulness of the brand, the, the, the youthfulness of the consumer. Find Fun Everywhere was a campaign, and this is a collection of what we've been doing around Asia, particularly on the brand. We'll play a quick snippet of what we've been doing within Asia for the brand, American Tourister. Importantly, it's a really fun clip, and you can watch a lot of that online if you want.
The really amazing part here is that when you're in this branded entry level, and you're really grabbing consumers that maybe are stepping from an unbranded to a branded product or, you know, kind of low, nobody can do this. Nobody can create that level of content and drive to help drive the business against a product offering that's just tremendous and continuing to develop and build over time. So a lot going on with there. I think lastly, on the product or two more slides, this Rollio, we launched this. We talked about this at the last earnings. There's some of that here in the back. You know, this is a fun collection.
This isn't gonna drive massive volumes of sale, but the reception of this really fun, different look at luggage, which you can do with American Tourister, has been tremendous, and again, a Red Dot Award-winning product. Really a lot of fun. You have a lot more license to play with some of this within the brand, American Tourister. Again, it differentiates and positions this brand different than a sea of, you know, might, might, I might label unbranded products in this, in this, at this level. Very exciting there. Lastly, on sustainability, we're, we're very focused on our responsible journey.
I have a slide right after this, but I wanted to show you Essens, which is the next generation of, what I would say, significantly, incorporating recycled material so that the outer shell is a meaningful percentage of recycled content, the interior lining is Recyclex. This is built for repairability. This is an amazing product where you can if a wheel breaks, we can just mail you a wheel. You can... With your pen, you can change the whole wheel housing, boom! We can send it to you. If you think about sustainability, not only is it recycled materials, but how do we keep your bag running as long as you want it to run? How do we think about design for repairability, which we're doing across all of our brands, but this is really an interesting capture of exactly, that on this brand.
Well, well supported. If you have a chance to look at this product, it's interesting on the inside. The inside has packing cubes, full packing cubes on both sides, that when you get to your hotel, you can just clip them out and put your stuff right in the drawer, and you can put your case away. If you're in a small hotel, and you don't have a space to put this, you can take your stuff and literally manage your, your room in a really interesting way. Consumers are loving it. It's, it's, it's different in the marketplace, doing really, really well. This wonderful, sustainable story. You know, this kind of design to matter, made to last, I think, sort of really captures, part of the the, the essence of this product, actually.
Again, if you get a chance to look at it, it's the next generation of Magnum Eco in many ways. If you remember Magnum Eco, we launched a year ago, which was successful. This really just elevates the game even that much more, and I think it's terrific. Just lastly, on re- our responsible journey. Importantly, first off, is I hired a new VP of sustainability for the business. Marina Dirks joined us. She was running that initiatives for Tiffany's. I think she's a wonderful add to our business. If I described her, very, very talented, knowledgeable, but importantly, a very good communicator. For me, and you've heard me say this before, if you're gonna move a sustainability strategy for an organization, the whole organization needs to come along.
Her ability to communicate and bring an organization along, every one of us in the company has some thinking and decisions to do to drive our responsible journey when you think about the compass of what we're driving at. I think Marina is doing that very well. She's been with us for a few months, and I think she's doing terrific. I think you'll really start to see some of her impact as we get into next year and the year after as well. What are we focused on for 2003 and beyond? We're gonna redo our materiality, comprehensive sustainability materiality assessment. The last one we did was in 2018 when we were launching this. We're really leaning into that.
This will cover not only internally, but third-party suppliers, you know, social and civil reach out. You know, really, everybody that's in our network will be part of this, this assessment, which companies that are really serious about driving change on ESG and sustainability need to be doing. We're doing that. We'll use that to start to continue to solidify our targets, targets, that will start to become measurable. You know, we're not so far away from needing to get limited assurance on some of these statements that we're making. So really being smart about the KPIs and the targets that we set, really across all fronts. Product sustainability, which is an obvious one, but science-based climate targets, which are becoming more and more important for this business.
Off the back of this assessment, we'll be able to start to do that. Human rights and all the issues that get caught up in, again, our ESG responsible journey, will come out of this, and we'll set some KPIs. We're evolving the system and softwares to track this data. You know, so a lot of companies are doing that. We're doing the same. We've just launched some tracking tools. You'll continue to see us make the right investments to do this, along with really building our team. So under Marina, we've added resource. You'll see us add more resources here, as we move the needle and drive our strategy. Again, it's planet, product, people focused. along with, underlying foundation of governance, which we're very focused on. Again, I'm really passionate about, our responsible journey and our ESG journey.
We're doing really tremendous work, and I have zero doubt that we'll transform our industry, you know, as far as on the sustainability front. Continue to watch what we're doing on that front. With that, I will turn it to Reza. I'll come back at the end. Thank you.
Thank you so much. I'll just also add that it is really nice to be in Hong Kong, to see all of you in person, after being on the phone for several years. This is just amazing results. I think what we take away from Kyle's comments is really we have phenomenal brands, great product, great people, and ability to invest. What's happened over the last few years, and we have repeatedly talked about it, but you're really seeing it bear fruit now, has been all of these investments throughout the pandemic in the business and in terms of fixing the cost structure of the business, has resulted in these amazing results for the first half.
Net sales, if you're looking at it on, on the, the first half of the year, up $506 million increased year-over-year, 45.7%. That's despite some currency headwinds. If you're looking at it in, in, in terms of the second bullet point on the left-hand side, currency has actually worked against us, but we're still delivering fantastic results despite that. Gross margin, we had always been monitoring this. We, we're, we're always looking at whether or not there could be an impact in terms of promotional activity, et cetera, but really, the price increases that we talked about last year, we have continued to hold strong on those. The ability of having invested in products and positioning of the brands means that we're able to maintain the gross margin.
Again, another excellent result for the, for the quarter, so that gross margin percentage of approaching 59% continues. Then our adjusted EBITDA. Obviously, the cost structure, we, we are incredibly disciplined about maintaining our cost structure after the hard work of a couple of years ago. For the half, adjusted EBITDA margin of approaching 19%, and obviously, you saw the quarterly number, the second quarter being even better than the first quarter in that regard. Delivering $171 million of net income, more than doubling the net income that we had from last year, the trend continues.
Going on to the next slide, some of the highlights, Kyle has covered this, so I'll try to go through some of the relevant points and double-click on some of the points that he raised. Again, constant currency, almost 46% up on sales. Adjusted EBITDA up $334 million, an increase of $139 million. Adjusted EBITDA margin of 19.3%. Importantly, that's with advertising at 6.9% of sales. As, as you look at the different regions and you look at the year-over-year trend, realize that we're actually investing even more behind the brands. We'll get to a slide that talks about inventory as well. We have also invested significantly in inventory to be able to drive these results.
Gross margin increase of 310 basis points year-over-year. Fixed SG&A expenses continuing to improve as, as a percentage of sales. We were 23% as a percentage of sales, 320 basis point improvement from first half of 2022, and 520 basis point improvement from, from first half of 2019. Please rest assured, we are super disciplined at, at maintaining that, that number. On the next slide, advertising is somewhere where we are consciously increasing our investment. We do view it as investment. We have almost doubled our spend from $58 million in first half of 2022. So th-that investment, you should expect this as a percentage of sales to run somewhere between 6.5%, 7% for the foreseeable future.
I think that drive helps drive sales, but also helps invest behind the brands and the positioning of the brands as well. That strong profitability continues. You may have noticed, and I think this is an important point, because oftentimes I get questions around our balance sheet. We refinanced our debt and extended the maturities. Most of our debt, which is all of our bank debt and our Term Loan B, our pro rata facilities, now have an additional five years before we have to address it again. The balance sheet has been addressed, and, in this market, it's rather rare to see us actually reducing our interest expense as a result of doing that.
The way that we did that, and I'll cover it in a little bit greater detail, is really by shifting between the various debt capital markets that we have to try to take advantage of some of our wonderful banking relationships. Our net leverage, when we got together last quarter, we were at 2.5 turns of net leverage. We had guided towards net leverage at the end of the year, approaching two turns. Already at the half, we're at 2.15. It seems like the delevering will actually exceed what we had said by the end of the year as well. We're very, very happy with the delevering of this business. Ample liquidity.
Liquidity of approximately $1.344 billion, which includes $745 million available on our revolving credit facilities. On slide 28, strong net sales. Again, we did, we did cover most of this. Across every region. I think the message here is every single region is delivering, and delivering at very strong levels. That trend, I'm sure we'll get the question, but yes, we are seeing that trend continue into July as well as August, so we feel that this will continue as we go through. Again, just to look at the numbers quickly, Asia, 76.4% growth year-over-year, 24.8% North America, 25.5% Europe, 23.2% for Latin America.
If you're looking at the various channels, obviously, we have been, throughout the pandemic, talking about the investments that we made in e-commerce. DTC e-commerce showing really, really good continued growth. If you, if you're looking in terms of the percentages, 55.6%, looking at DTC e-commerce, 52.2% year-over-year, it, for, for the half, looking at our retail channels. One thing that we should just note around our retail channels, you're looking at these growth numbers and keep in mind how many stores that we've shut. If you were to look at the comparable store sales, these are phenomenal results, because our fleet is significantly reduced compared to where we were in 2019. In 2019, we had just shy of 1,300 stores.
We're, we're now running around 1,000 stores for our fleet globally and still delivering unbelievable results as a result of that on a much, much smaller store fleet. Obviously, that helps in terms of the fixed cost leverage that we're getting into the business. Then our core wholesale business continuing to grow as well and contribute up 41.1% year-over-year. Then looking at travel versus non-travel, both categories performing. You know, obviously, the travel category, what we had seen initially is when a market opens up, there's a lot of demand for the travel category. Usually, the first SKUs that are performing are the larger luggage sizes. As a market continues to evolve over time, it gets into a more natural mix between travel and non-travel. People start going back to business.
We start to see backpacks and unstructured luggage performing as well. The story is that all of our categories are continuing to perform. We talked about all of the larger brands in Kyle's presentation, every single brand performing. We do see, and you see it in the gross margin numbers, that the more premium brands of Tumi and Samsonite are growing at a slightly faster clip, but every brand is contributing. Obviously, we're continuing to invest between some of the smaller brands. They don't move the needle as much, but we do feel that strategically, over time, Gregory, Lipault, and some of the others are obviously core product offering as well, and they play a product. Every brand performing at very healthy levels as well.
This is the point that we're extremely proud of, and we're gonna continue highlighting it for you. I'm looking at my friend, Dustin, who through the years would always ask me about distribution expenses, hopefully, you're pleased with these numbers. Significantly lower fixed cost percentage as a percentage of sales. As you think about guidance and where we're looking at this going forward, it's the percentage number that I would encourage you to be focused on. We're expecting that percentage as a percentage of sales to continue to improve. Obviously, if you're looking at it versus 2019, where we're sitting here last year, we would say, in absolute terms, we would have $200 million of improvement.
That is where it had shaken out. Now we're going on five years later, we have to really start to look at it as a percentage of sales. For the first half of 2023, 23% as a percentage of sales. At just compared to last year, that's a massive improvement from 26.2% as a percentage of sales. That fixed SG&A is something that we are continuing to focus on. The balance sheet. I think the story on the balance sheet is we have a very, very healthy position. You know, our leverage is the lowest that it's been since I've been here, very, very proud to report that. Continuing to delever, and most importantly, the refinancing, which I'll cover on the next slide.
Ample liquidity here. We'll touch on inventory levels as well. Why don't we go to the next slide, William, if you don't mind? We refinanced our senior credit facilities. Just to give you a little bit of greater granularity on that, when, when we talk about that, it's basically our pro rata debt facilities and our Term Loan B. We have new five-year maturities, $800 million of senior secured Term Loan A, which is with our core relationship banks, $600 million of senior secured Term Loan B, and $850 million revolver. That's basically the upsize revolver that we put in at the, at the beginning of the pandemic, which would serve our needs for, for the foreseeable future. We extended all the maturities, so there's no concerns around it going current anytime soon.
We reduced our outstanding debt by $65 million during that time as well, because we often talk about net debt, but we do care about the gross debt numbers as well. We repaid some debt when we executed that transaction. The net result of all of that is that we've lowered our annual cash interest payments by approximately $5 million as a result of this refinancing. You should expect that we're gonna generate cash flow going forward. It was a great, a great quarter, again, in terms of cash flow generation. The use of proceeds for that is to continue to delever. On to the next slide. Working capital. You can see this inventory number. All of you have been following our story for quite some time.
We have been chasing inventory over the course of the last year and a half. We are in a very healthy inventory position. And again, the beauty of our supply teams is the way that we manage inventory, is we can basically look at our product purchases and, and work this level down as the sales are there. This is unlike other retail and apparel companies where you have seasonal risk, et cetera. We feel very good about where the inventory stocks are. The reason we feel good about it is we're able to deliver on sales. We have essentially paid for this inventory that is sitting on our balance sheet. As we generate sales, that generates cash because we basically have already paid for these inventory, and we convert that into cash.
It helps our leverage position as we go forward. Again, this is yet another one of those examples of investments that we made. We've made investments in products, we've made investments in people, in the brands, in the advertising, and we've made significant investments in making sure that we have good stock, so we do not miss sales. Looking at CapEx. CapEx levels, we are investing in CapEx, and where you see the CapEx is very targeted. It's refreshing some of the store fleet. You'll see that in Asia, with some of the shorter lease terms that we have in Asia. We are refreshing some of the stores with a focus on, obviously, the Tumi brand, as well as some of the Samsonite fleet that we have here.
You see some retail numbers there. There's selective store openings. Our fleet stands at a little over 1,000. Still well within where we were historically, but we are absolutely targeting select store openings in all regions in a targeted manner. Overall CapEx for the half, we're at just shy of $21 million in total, with a focus on those two categories primarily. On the next slide, to the outlook, we'll cover, then we'll open it up for questions.
Okay. Thanks, Reza. Again, really amazing first half performance you can see, and we are excited about the growth prospects. We've guided a bit around what we're seeing for trends into Q3. Very strong. I might even tell you, building momentum. As travel continues to rebound, we, we, we haven't had a lot of recovery slides here, there's still recovery to go. International travel is still down 25%. China's driving a big piece of that, within the rest of the world, there's still recovery within international travel. We're excited for that. That will come, that will fill in this year and into the start of next year.
You know, as it rebounds, the position that we have in this business, the ability to drive investments in marketing and advertising to capture all of this, I think will really just drive fundamental growth for our business at a different profit profile. We are seeing a quick recovery in China and Asia, okay? I was on Bloomberg this morning. It started with, "Tell me what's going on with China," 'cause everybody's quite interested. We're seeing it. We're seeing it within Q1, which was slightly negative, to a positive Q2. As I guided you, July, positive 18%, you know, so a building trend. This reopening of group travel to some 70 countries, which just happened half a week, that's gonna take a few months to get into play, capacity, airline capacity. That will build now that this is here.
For me, China will not only deliver growth for Q3, but more importantly, Q4 and Q1 and Q2, as that capacity builds and international travel really starts to open. Not just Chinese travel, but in and out of China is quite difficult still. The number of flights in and out of China to the U.S., dramatically lower than what it's been historically. As that capacity builds, I think you'll see that the travel build there as well. I, I don't wanna overplay China for Asia. Asia is tremendous growth, despite China. You know, if you, if you look at our underlying growth in markets like Southeast Asia, India, Japan, which has moved into really comfortable double-digit positive territory. Two quarters ago, Japan was still negative or flat. It's up 16%.
Korea, for the first moment, is positive, 5.3% in the last month. Korea, as China opens, Korea will really see the benefits of that. So there's so much growth still to come, I guess, is the way I would describe it, within Asia, of which China will help fuel some of it, but the rest of Asia is actually delivering an amazing story. So we're quite excited about the growth prospects here. I might add, it's not on this page, business travel. We're really clearly seeing business travel come back. We're here, some of you are here, some of you have traveled in from China to be here.
I think as we come out of the summer holiday season kids get back to school, the world kind of really gets back to business, there's so many more people back in their offices. Think about what it was one year ago to where it is today as far as people back to their office. You know, the days of coming in one day a week is changing rapidly around the globe, all of that feeds to, in, in my view, business travel recovering, we're starting to see that. I think that will continue as well. There's lots of fundamental growth in the, in the business from a recovery perspective.
I would tell you, what we've done on the product side, again, ahead of anybody in our space on product development, sustainability, well supported with advertising, will fuel a great story for us as well. You know, I think there's a lot to go on the growth side. We'll, we'll cover some of that as well. I'm sure you're gonna ask. You know, I really think flight capacity building back in is really gonna drive international travel. We're seeing that. Most markets, domestic travel and, and, you know, the, the, the flight capacity is almost back to normal. In Europe, it's actually slightly positive. U.S. is normal. I think within Asia, there's still some domestic travel to go. It's really this international travel that's gonna move. As...
Again, as I said, off the back of that and off the back of what we've done to adjust the cost structure, you should see us really drive and invest in advertising, which is why I spent some time here today talking about it. We have 6.5% as our target. If we're doing better, you'll see us step on the gas even a little bit more here, particularly with brands like Tumi, where we can push the needle even at a faster pace. And I really think that'll help drive sustainable growth for us. As Reza covered really well, we're very disciplined on SG&A, fixed SG&A, all costs in our business.
We, we fundamentally have changed the way we think about cost structure in the business, not just Reza and I, but within the organization, 'cause the organization all went through what we did to adjust the cost structure. As we go into budget cycle for next year, one of the things we're laser focused on is: What's the cost structure doing? Everybody knows it. We don't even have to push anymore. People are showing up, telling us what they're doing on cost structure. Again, I think this will continue to deliver on the margin side, and we have an organization that really understands that very well. Tons of liquidity, right? Liquidity is not our issue, guys. We have, we have amazing liquidity, with a reset balance sheet from, from a debt perspective, but deleveraging. We'll be below 2x.
I have zero doubt we'll end the year below two times leverage. That's something we've been guiding. I think when I started the year, we thought we'd end the year at 2.1, 2.2. We're gonna go right through that and be below two times for the year. I think that's a really powerful story with tremendous relationships with our banks. You know, we delivered an amazing, debt reset refinance, at a moment where debts, the debt markets were a little, you know, moving and interest rates, but we delivered a terrific story, one of the best refinancing I think happened, in the first half of the year. We intend to resume, distribution to shareholders for dividends. For us, we're distributing to shareholders, and we guided that last quarter.
We definitely will do that, as we get into next year. It's the right thing to do, so we can continue to delever, but use the cash generation to put the yield back to our shareholders as well. I think that's important. We had that in place for a long time pre-pandemic. We're now able to put it back in the right way. That's coming. That'll be in line with our dividend distribution policy. We have this amazing ongoing commitment for sustainability and innovation. You should never doubt on the innovation side, we're laser focused across all of our brands on innovating products and incorporating sustainability into what we do. Maybe materials, also repairability, durability, which has always been our story, all tied into a story that I think-...
sticks us out apart from the industry that we're in, as far as our ability to do that. We are the innovators in this space, and we have really amazing teams around the world. We shouldn't underestimate. This is a business that's gone through a pandemic. Our teams are largely intact. You know, they're the same people driving the story and are really highly passionate about it. I hope you can sense that Reza and I are passionate about the business, but our teams are probably equally, if not more passionate around product development, design, marketing, delivering these great campaigns you saw. All that I think is gonna help fuel growth and market share for our business. Lastly, I think the energy levels are high in the business.
I, I often think you get numbers and you get presentations, but energy levels matter in a business, and I would tell you, our energy levels within this business, across every region are, are really strong. I'd like to thank the team. You know, a lot of our team are here, some are listening in. This is an organization that's driven by an amazing group of people across the globe, and they are delivering. I wanna thank everybody and thank all of you for continuing to follow us along in our journey, and hopefully, you enjoyed what we've delivered in this half. With that, we can happily take questions.
Great. Why don't we start with, Linda, well, Macquarie?
Hi, thank you very, very much, management, for your attendance today. I have two very simple question for you. Number one is that I wanna ask about the secondary listing in United States, because, you know, some of your peers, they are quite eager to do that, either in Europe or somewhere else.
Yep.
I just want to know the possibility for Samsonite, and how do you plan to use if you have any, like, a big amount of the proceeds from this secondary listing? That's number one.
Yeah.
Number two, I wanna ask about the India market, because I do notice that the India market right now, the contribution is getting higher and higher, but we know that India is a very complicated retail market. Maybe can you just share with us, how do you the engage for this market? What is your strategy by branding, and especially, what is the... You are the foothold for the brand to expand in India? Thank you.
Okay.
I'll take it.
Yep.
Listing, I know there was a Bloomberg article that came out, even though we went on the record to say we're not doing anything, they still said that we were, I guess. Look, as a former banker, bankers pitch us ideas all the time. We, we evaluate it. Ultimately, we do what's best for our shareholders and, and the company. There are no plans currently to do anything. We, we evaluate it. The Hong Kong has served us well. We, we do look at other markets because the liquidity is the point, it, it, is really the, the reason that we evaluate it. But frankly, you know, if you look at our share price performance, and, and now we're part of the Southbound Connect as well.
There's, there's ways that we think we can address that liquidity point, and we've been on the road, and we spend a lot of our times looking at our shareholder place globally. And if you look at who our shareholders are, it's a who's who of institutional investors in U.S., in, in Asia, as well as, as Europe as well. I, I do think that we get access to, to the right investors here in Hong Kong currently, but, but again, we have to look at things, and we have to evaluate things, but it's, it's not like we have to do something like some of the others that, that, that you raised. That's really on the listing point. And, and, and the, the issue with the listing, frankly, is the second corollary to what you raised.
We don't need to issue equity, and the last thing we wanna do is dilute our shareholders. That's part of the calculus as well, is the way when you end up moving a listing, the way that you get attention is by actually doing a listing so that you have appropriate analyst coverage, et cetera. We don't have a use of proceeds for that. That's actually, there is no need for us to be raising equity at all, right now. In terms of India, the India performance remains really, really strong. You know, it's still in... We're looking at it. It runs anywhere on any given month, between up 40% to 2019, up 60%, up 70%. It is a fundamentally restructured business.
If you're looking at it as a contribution, as a percentage of the total of Asia, we're delivering these strong EBITDA margins in Asia with India contributing at that portion. It's, it's kind of funny because we look at it at what the number one country is on any given month, and there's a healthy battle between our colleagues in India and in, and in China. Ultimately, China is gonna outpace India and go back to its number one position quite healthy. I mean, that's just the reality of it. We like the fact that India is doing well. Within the India business, you saw some of the campaigns of what we're doing, both with Samsonite as, as well as American Tourister. The positioning of our brands in India has been elevated.
We have invested behind the India business, so the margin profile of India has improved as a standalone. If you're looking at the contribution overall as a percentage, obviously, as China comes back, you're gonna see a more natural shift to where we've been historically as well.
I think our India team is amazing. If I just cut through India, India is very complex, I fully agree. JK, who runs that regions, really understands that market. It's the one sales meet I go to every year where we have 800 or 900 people at, because India's the complexity of India requires you to have people within the market driving the channel and the sales. It's a mix of your own retailers, from, I'll call it, franchise stores, like partner stores, wholesale. All of that requires an attention to detail, that I would tell you, if you're, if you weren't in India driving that, you could not navigate India. Our team has been there for a very long time and really understands that market well. We know how to make profits. This is a market that's really close to 20% EBITDA margin.
You know, that's a great story when you think about American Tourister as a meaningful piece of that mix. I think there's upside in that margin over time as Samsonite lays in and becomes a bigger percentage of the story. The team is really sharp on what they're executing. We're investing in India. We manufacture in India. I think you know that. We've expanded that plant a year ago, two years ago. We're expanding it again now. We make over 500,000 pieces a month in that plant alone. What does that allow us to do? Be very close to market in India. We can deliver products, and we manage our destiny.
A lot of the products you're seeing here, I don't want to say a lot, but probably half of that is being manufactured in our distribution in India. We just invested in a new central warehousing system. We used to be a bit more cobbled together. That's fully in place. That was done in the last two years, and so the structure in our India business is tremendous. The team is really, I think you, you couldn't do India if you didn't have the level of experience and breadth across that entire market that drives that business. I think it's one of our most fascinating businesses. I honestly think if you take a five-year forward view, India is really gonna deliver a story. One, we're executing well, but as a market, I think it's gonna deliver a real story as well.
It's the one market we have bigger competitors, and we're winning. You know, we continue to win on those fronts. It's super vibrant. We are delivering on product, people. There's a lot to that story that I'm very excited about. Again, I, I put a lot of it to the teams that we have there driving the business, so.
Great. Dustin, in the front, Morgan Stanley.
Thanks for taking my questions. First question regarding the EBITDA margin. I think we are seeing very good EBITDA margin now because of the efforts in the $200 million cost saving. Going forward, I kind of think that Asia is gonna be the big driver, like looking at a 24% EBITDA margin first, first half and versus the 19% average and, Asia, back to the number one market for the company, is going to grow the fastest. How can you keep that level of the EBITDA margin for the region? You talk about India, but just overall for the region, what's the plan? What's the competition dynamics here? Like, my understanding is that in the U.S. and Europe, you might have some of the sort of bigger or longer history kind of players, but in Asia, it's always been quite fragmented.
Mm.
Emerging brands that here and there come and go. How, how could you continue to gain share in this region?
Yeah. I think, twofold. Asia's gonna clearly grow, so mix matters on margin profile of the business, okay? So in many ways, India, Asia, getting back to 24-25%, there was a period. Because 2021 wasn't, I mean, 2019 wasn't our best year. This is a region that historically probably could run at 22-23%. The reason you can see India's, I mean, Asia's, overall EBITDA margin moving up is there's mix effect happening. You see Tumi moving at a faster clip, adding to that. You see, brand Samsonite really driving good sales. American Tourister. From a profit profile perspective, well managed in India. It's been here the longest. Its positioning is higher. As far as competitive dynamics, you know, these in-and-out brands, we, we've consciously actually not allowed ourselves to fray down into that too much.
If you went back four or five, six years ago, you would have. I think when I took over as CEO, you would have heard me say: We don't need every dollar of sale. We need the right sales. Being disciplined within Asia on not getting pulled down into these come-and-go brands or factory brands that come in and out at really low price points, because you don't win anything there. You don't really gain brand market share. You can kind of fray into that, but distract the business. If we stay disciplined on what we're doing and manage kind of our growth aspirations at a sustainable level, I think the margin profile will look quite good. Let's not underestimate the growth that you're gonna see in Tumi in Asia.
You know, it's, it's probably our biggest growth driver for Tumi for the next five years, will be what Tumi does here, and so the mix effect of that will be very high. We're gonna disproportionately spend there, but it's still gonna deliver an EBITDA margin north of 25%, with advertising really stepped up to help push that business. On a blended basis, the potential for overall EBITDA margin for Tumi is quite high. Those mix effects will drive as well. Subrata took the team through a really extensive cost exercise during pandemic. A lot of that is playing out here as well. We really thought about, because it's a market that's a bit more complicated. We run with a center. We have really strong country teams.
We really went into each country and really looked at spans and layers of control and really thought about structure. That structure is kind of relayed, and you can kind of see it playing out right here in this first half. Staying disciplined on that front while pushing, because what you don't want to do is underinvest in Asia either. If it's gonna deliver a high growth profile, we need to make sure we're adding retail stores, we're adding the right infrastructure. All that blended, I think it's gonna deliver really a great story. We listed in Hong Kong. We have a Hong Kong listing venue question. We listed in Hong Kong because the inertia for growth for this company is all regions, but Asia is really can grow at a disproportionate level.
We're, we're on a track to do $2 billion in sales in Asia, okay? This is a business that's probably gonna do $1.3 billion-$1.4 billion, kind of just guessing off my mind here, where we are. And that's in the next handful of years, you know, so the growth profile is tremendous, with a high profit profile. Gets to your margins question, which is the overall EBITDA margins for the business are quite good. If I was gonna guide you for the full-year, we're gonna be really close to 19%, right? That's different than where we started, probably even different than what I thought last quarter. You can see Q3. I can tell you the start of Q2, the start of Q3 is tremendously strong.
You know, you've got a EBITDA margin profile that's actually heading towards this 19%, and allow us to deploy back into the business to drive strategy, things like advertising and push the business, but not drive fixed costs, because I don't think that's the right sustainable story. Those are the, the mix points. If you just do your own modeling, we've talked about this many times, you will model yourself up higher than 19%. I think over time, the business probably has potential for that, for sure. You'll... I think you're, you're feeling it right now. I think you'll see it, this year, right in that zip code for the end of the year. I had a I went region by region. Every region's delivering.
You know, North America, with, with the effect of the Tumi mix, is 19.9% for the half. You know, North America's delivering on margin. Europe will, will deliver. Europe's a little bit lower now because of the warehouse management systems, caused a little bit of a blip in, in the second quarter. From an EBITDA margin perspective, there's no reason why Europe's not in that, that zip code. Look what we did to Latin America. Again, it's, it's small now, but imagine in five years when it's a $400 million business with a, with an EBITDA margin right in the zip code of where we want to be as a company. It was negative, two years ago, or not two years, in 2019.
All these feed to, you know, some real confidence in, and I, and I kind of lead into it, and I lead into it in the last call, this fundamental change in the structure, cost structure of this business, allowing us to push the needle and, and drive the business. The wild card is gross margin and competitively, what are competitors doing? I think that's where, you know, because of our real amazing ability to constantly design and innovate products and, and manage our supply chain, more effectively than everybody else, I think we'll be able to navigate gross margin at the same level.
Arguably, if you do the modeling yourself, Asia's growing a little faster and Tumi's growing a little faster, gross margin actually has a natural tendency to go up because those, those are slightly higher margin regions or brands, and they're gonna move at a slightly faster clip. On the margin side, gross margin side, I have a lot of confidence as well. Again, we're really in a good position to manage it, Dustin, and if anything, you're feeling it now, like it's even surprising us a little bit. If I showed you the July numbers, you know, your one of your eyebrows would twitch because it's really an amazing number. It's carrying really comfortably into Q3, you know?
Again, we're cautious guys, we're cautious in our guidance, but, you know, really, the things that we're managing, and, and much of it's things that you physically manage, are doing really, really well.
Just to add to the competitive point, because I think it's important. You know this about us, we are local, local. We have these amazing brands, but the way we go to market... We wanted to give you a flavor of it in the advertising. We were talking about India advertising, to pick up on the point from a little bit earlier. We're selecting those people that matter for that market. In India, where you have a competitor, a local competitor, we produce in India. Our cost structure matches what needs to happen in that market. We do that throughout the globe, and I think that's what makes it really, really powerful, is we have different competitors in different countries, but the way we approach them is at a local level and make sure that we're addressing it that way.
My follow-up question is. No, not a few, but just maybe two. You mentioned Tumi, is it gonna be a good growth driver in Asia? Not sure if you can break it down, it's gonna be a more like ASP strategy or category expansion or opening, like, more stores?
Yeah.
What's the. That is for Tumi. Especially, you know, one of the key competitor to Tumi, I think they've been doing fairly well. You know, appreciate your thoughts around it. Then I think in the announcement, you mentioned the GP margin being strong. One of the reasons is because of the promotional activities-
Yeah
it seems like across region has been actually low. Wondering to, to confirm that, is actually the all the three key region, like, demand so good, so, the sort of promotion level still quite low versus pre-pandemic?
Yep.
You will see some of the local colors. Just, just lastly, you mentioned that the July numbers could make people like, you know, raise their eyebrows. I'm wondering, you are going to talk about it or not? Thank you.
I, I just did. I gave you a sense for July, which is... All, all I'm really trying to give you is the trend continues. I would tell you from a growth perspective, and, and we tend to give that. July's, you know, really up kind of, you know, 18%, 19% to, to 2019. August is better, and we're not closed with August, but the trend in August moves even to a higher level than that. The, the, the important piece here is that, you know, the, the trend story, and the trend story across regions is very strong. You know, I covered it in a little bit of detail. North America, you know, under some challenged Q2, but, you know, positive Q3. That's a trend story. It's, it's, it's definitely moving in the right way.
I think I would leave it at that. All of the, the benefits you've seen on gross margin and SG&A and those things are carrying very nicely into July. Let's not forget, July is often one of our biggest months, and it, and it delivered. I think I started the year of saying, and I think it was on Bloomberg last quarter, saying the summer travel season is gonna be tremendous, and it 100% is, and we're seeing it in our numbers. You saw it at the end of Q2 for sure, July and August, we can feel it, across all of the regions. There's not one region kind of stepping back and one moving forward. They're all moving in, in this way, it's very, very positive.
As far as Tumi Asia, it's a combination of everything you said. It's not necessarily ASP per se. It's not an ASP, but as the brand establishes itself, we continue to have more and more confidence on the higher end products delivering on sales. The mix of will drive ASP higher. This 19 Degree aluminum doing very well, that's a high ASP. That benefits, there's margin benefits there as well. For me, Tumi in Asia is around penetration. How do we further penetrate the brand, get in front of more folks? How do we drive more of our digital e-commerce strategy? We have some Tumi team members here driving the Tumi business in Asia. How do we lay more footprint? How do we refresh footprint than we have? I was touring stores yesterday.
How do we get bigger stores, you know, within Asia? Because as the brand has continued to establish itself and we have more offerings, not only in kind of business travel, that has a little bit of a masculine characteristic to it, and travel in general, which has been underrepresented in Asia, how do we do more travel for Tumi in Asia? How do we get into the some of the additional categories that we're really pushing, like women's category with Reneé Rapp and pushing some of these campaigns? You'll see Georgia, Georgica collection in Asia today, and that, that wouldn't have existed a year ago. You need to penetrate the market and expand footprint as well, and so we're looking at store fleet and how do we expand and update those as well.
All of that's gonna feed to a really good Tumi story over the next four or five years. It's, it's delivering now. It's amazing growth now. I think it can continue on a combination of all that, but for the most part, it's penetrating the market. Many markets we're just starting to touch. Every market we show up with Tumi, it actually performs really well. We didn't talk about Tumi in Latin America, which is largely a distributor market, but that is booming. The growth of Tumi in Latin America is tremendous as well. You'll see that story play out across all markets, even mature markets like the U.S.. You know, the U.S. is a mature market for Tumi. It's up 33% last month versus 19.
You know, these are, these are tremendous numbers, and so it's a good story. We're launching new collections. We're getting into more lifestyle. There's Tumi fragrance. There's things that are bringing this brand full circle from a lifestyle perspective, from a brand with really amazing product, you know? I think you made a comment on competitors. In my personal view, Tumi's in a white space because its product is borderline luxury. I'd call it really high-end, amazing, functional product. Serves a purpose, delivers not only on the travel side, but on the business products. You know, I've got my Tumi bag sitting here 'cause I like to show people. This is an amazingly functioning business bag that's just incredible. You know, I have access to hundreds of selections of business bags. I can't stop using this one 'cause I love it.
The, the attention to detail that Tumi delivers, really moves the needle. In, in my view, that's in a space all its own from a competitive perspective. The breadth of what we offer for Tumi at this kind of premium, super premium level with functionality is different than, than most players in the marketplace. We're pretty excited. I think Tumi, you know, I think you've heard me say this before, Tumi's clearly on its way to a $2 billion business. When we acquired it, it was a, you know, $500 million or $600 million business, and we're not, if not for pandemic, we'd be $1 billion today. You know, we're really, we're getting really close to that, and the growth drivers of that business aren't slowing down. You know, I, I think it's gonna really deliver.
There's nothing not really working in that business as well. For us, you should be challenging us to make sure we're investing enough to push it, and the board does that with me quite well, as far as make sure that we're disproportionately pushing and spending on that brand to move the needle as well. Sorry, that's a really long-winded answer, but we're really passionate about what that brand can do within our portfolio.
Great. Great. I think we have time for a couple of more questions. First, we'll take Kai from Haitong, and then we'll end with Chris from CLSA.
Okay, thank you for taking my question, congratulations on the outstanding performance. I have two questions. First is about the wholesale partner. How should we see the wholesale partner sentiment, especially in the U.S., and also for the guidance, do we still keep the guidance from the revenue side? My second question is about the marketing strategy. As we have seen, the marketing expenses has been rising. In terms of these three core brands, how shall we do the marketing strategy for them? Thank you.
Yeah. Yeah. On the wholesale partners, I think, we're, you know, we have wholesale partners across the globe, but you're probably focused on U.S. wholesale partners, right? Which are a big piece of that business. I would tell you from a category perspective, that's performing really well. Travel is a, is a category that's driving sales across these customers. I think, and the relationships are tremendously strong. You know, so if you think about a Macy's or a Kohl's or an Amazon, these are really strong relationships. We deliver amazing product for them. We often run or lead the category for them within the footprint, and it's highly profitable for them. They're very well entrenched in, in this, in this, space with us. The sell-through of our product's super strong. Our... I, I was talking to somebody earlier before the call.
You don't get a sense for underlying North America performance when you blend maybe wholesale customers that are making some buying decisions within a month or, or, or they've shifted something from Q1 to Q2. You know, look at Tumi North America. It's up, it's mostly a direct-to-consumer brand. It's up 30%. Our own e-commerce, Samsonite, not ex Tumi, up 80% year- to- date. Our, our retail comps are up 5%-6%, and that's with gateway stores, not, back to, you know, break to flat.
Gateway stores.
You know, they're actually negative. This is comp sale, though, so comp sale because we don't have inbound, Chinese.