We bought hard sided Samsonite luggage from Kohl's last year. Sometimes brand names will make lower priced products to sell specifically at stores like Kohl's, and Samsonite is one of those. Ugg and Michael Kors do this. Lots of brands do.
We found the quality to be very good and its held up well in the 4-5 times we've used it while flying over the last year. We have a Samsonite outlet store near us and one of the styles was also available there, so they are legit. I can't speak to whether the quality compares to an expensive one you'd buy from Samsonite.com, but I have to assume they're made in the same place with similar materials. And for the price, if we get a good few years out of them, I'm happy.
One thing I will recommend is buying them in person in the store. I ordered online and one of them had a huge dent in the side of it when we opened it. No idea how it happened. We took it back to the store, but it was an online only item so I had to get on their courtesy phone to speak to customer service. They were going to refund me at the store and then ship me a new one, but they were out of stock. They weren't offering me anything on the phone other than a refund (not even a raincheck), so after standing my ground with the manager in the store, they finally let me even exchange it for a different one that was the same price. It was pretty frustrating, so I've learned to just go to the store for purchases like this!
