Come on, Barbie, let’s go … travel? 

Barbie and SteamLine Luggage formed a match made in glamour heaven in the summer of 2023. 

The May issue of Vogue magazine featured a photo shoot of Barbie movie star Margot Robbie, including a sunny snap of Robbie in a buttery dress surrounded by piles of SteamLine’s Correspondent Collection in canary yellow. 

In June, Robbie was photographed arriving in Australia in a Barbie-inspired ensemble complete with a pink carryon and hat box combo from the luxury luggage company founded by Sara Banks ’02.  

Then in July, when the Barbie movie was released, careful viewers could spot a SteamLine hatbox in Ken’s closet.  

“We had this amazing trifecta,” Banks said. “Barbie’s production department pulled the luggage for props in the movie, and independently, Vogue pulled it for a photoshoot with Margot Robbie, with Anna Wintour herself approving the yellow, and Margot Robbie’s stylist pulled the pink for her tour as she promoted the film. That was really fun. 

“It feels like a win when you get these external accolades from an industry you respect and people you admire.” 

The path Banks has chosen, from student of psychology, English, Greek and theatre, to successful entrepreneur and CEO, may seem unconventional. Yet, Banks can point to many qualities Kalamazoo College nurtured in her that connect directly to crucial skills in business—as well as in parenthood, in travel and in life. In fact, “if I had gone to business school, I’m not sure I would have started SteamLine,” Banks said.  

What it takes 

So, if it doesn’t take business school to succeed in business, what does it take? 

“A curiosity, careful listening, determination,” Banks mused. “Having a real vision for what you want to do and then going for it. Running your own business has a lot of parallels to life, in celebrating wins with humility, enjoying the ride, not being too stuck in your ways, not having a rigid mindset. In so many ways, K was the perfect environment for me to launch forth.” 

In 2005, at 24 years old, Banks moved to Ireland with her future husband and took out a loan from her future father-in-law to start a small wholesale business, selling soft accessories such as scarves, shawls, and travel wear to boutiques throughout England and Ireland. Her goods represented a combination of items purchased in bulk on trips abroad, and original pieces she designed and had produced. 

“When you set up something when you’re 24 or 25, it’s a lot of grit, a lot of hard work and a certain amount of naivety,” Banks said. “That experience was hugely influential; it gave me the courage to do everything else.” 

Working a lot of trade shows, Banks noticed many women, flying in and out for the shows, would “come right off the airplane from their own countries with these beautiful handbags and coats, dressed to the nines—except they would have this boring luggage with them.” Banks saw an opportunity. 

“I grew up in my grandmother’s closet,” she said. “She was a fashion designer in New York in the ’40s, and she had old trunks, old playbills from New York, the gloves, the hats, the shoes, everything. That was really part of my DNA. I developed a prototype of an old-fashioned steamer trunk with the trolley handles and with the wheels. The premise was bringing elegance back to travel for the modern-day explorer.” 

Entrepreneurship was not yet the buzzword it would become; no one was peddling courses or incubators to get new businesses off the ground. Despite that, “when this luggage idea came along, I was so passionate about it,” Banks said. “I was gonna lump all of our savings into it—everything I’ve worked for in the previous business. My husband was like, ‘No, no, you’re crazy. You’re going from selling soft accessories like scarves to selling leather luggage. There’s a huge difference in price and commitment.’” 

Determined to make her vision a reality anyway, Banks designed a prototype and had a set of luggage made. The next time they traveled together, Banks took the luggage and walked ahead through the airport. 

“As soon as we got to the gate, he said, ‘OK, you have got to do this. Every single person has turned to look at your luggage.’ “That’s how SteamLine was born.” 

Banks found many skills that had served her well in travel and in her first business were invaluable in launching SteamLine: “You tread softly, you listen, you have all your senses about you,” Banks said. “You can’t go in all brassy. You learn as you go. Stepping into a new environment, exploration, learning on your feet, that’s all very much a part of my ethos.” 

Starting a business also called on the breadth of knowledge and experiences that Kalamazoo College values highly.  

“In a liberal arts school like K, you can dabble in lots of subjects,” Banks said. “You can follow your passion in between a variety of subjects and themes, and you aren’t so focused on just learning one thing super well. That sort of diversity works as an entrepreneur and somebody running your own business. You have to wear a million hats. One day, or one hour, you’re wearing your finance cap, and then very quickly, the marketing cap, or the human resources cap. You have to dabble in all these different skill sets or areas. I think a liberal arts education like my experience really set me up for doing that kind of dance in business.” 

Adapting to—and for—success 

The company picked up steam as fashion and lifestyle publications, including Lucky magazine and online media company DailyCandy, began to feature the luggage. 

The ability to pivot joined Banks’ list of skills crucial to travel, developed at K, and vital to business success. This skill would take center stage again in 2020, when SteamLine found itself—like so many companies—grappling with the impact of a border-closing pandemic. 

“COVID required really nimble thinking, and not being so set on learnings from the previous year,” Banks said. “All of a sudden, all your experiences of the last 10 years go out the window completely. You have no more targets. You have no idea what to expect. We had a lot of meetings and most everybody was able to stay positive and shift around and get creative, like, ‘OK, we are a travel company in a global pandemic. How can we weather this storm?’” 

Successful pivots included promoting the luggage’s benefits as beautiful home storage and décor, as well as developing a mini handbag. In 2019, the brand sold about 70 percent luggage and 30 percent handbags; in 2020, those percentages reversed. 

“We watched all these other luggage companies crumble,” Banks said. “Even though we were down 20 percent throughout COVID, we weathered the storm, and I think it was because we have that ability to be nimble in our thinking.” 

Flexible thinking goes hand-in-hand with lifelong learning, another crossover skill between travel, liberal arts, business and life. 

“I’ve learned lots of lessons in humility, and in knowing when to celebrate, or actually allowing yourself the ability to celebrate,” Banks said. “That’s something I probably learned the hard way, because you can run into tough times, and then it just feels like life is a slog because you didn’t celebrate the wins.” 

For Banks, those wins include successful projects, like collaborations with other brands—including Clarks shoe company, fashion designer Kate Spade, contemporary clothing company Alice + Olivia, Canadian shoe designer John Fluevog and Burton Snowboards—concrete results, like hitting targets, and more abstract highs, like solid teamwork. 

“It’s nice to celebrate and acknowledge that we’re doing this together and it’s working really, really well,” Banks said. “When my family spent two years traveling, we actually brought most of my core team with us to Mauritius (an island nation in east Africa), and that was really amazing. Some of them had never been to Mauritius, and we just spent a week on the beach and in a pool, and I thought, ‘This is a life high. Incorporating something I’m doing for fun, for my own soul, and being able to offer that to people I care about and work with.’” 

Lifelong learning and flexible thinking are both invaluable as a business grows and changes.

“As you develop a business, you hit different benchmarks, and you can’t run a $10 million business as you would a $1 million business,” Banks said. “When you get to a certain volume where you can’t just do it all on your own, your first key hires are so important because you have to recognize what you’re good at and what you’re not good at. I used to do it all on my own, but it didn’t all come naturally to me. I’m not finance, I know that, I would outsource that. I hate talking about myself or pitching my brand, so hiring a PR team has been a large part of our success. As you grow, you get more specific about your skill sets and do what you feel you’re best at. At the same time, as a CEO or as a founder, you have that bird’s eye view. I’m not doing my brochures. I’m not setting up a trade show. You find really good talent, you put their butts on the seat. Having done it all, and then being able to hire somebody that’s better at it than you are and just help direct that ship, is so important. I’m still very curious. I still am risk taking, I’ve got guts and grit and vision, but I’m more willing to or at least more able to acknowledge the things I need help with.” 

As she leans into her strengths, Banks notes that her favorite part of running SteamLine right now is creative design and collaboration. 

“We’re introducing a new range of handbags for spring, which is really fun, because we haven’t done any soft luggage or totes,” Banks said. “Traveling with my family, of course we use the luggage, and then I was like, ‘Oh yeah, actually an airport tote would be really, really handy, because I use one and I need a way to keep all six passports together or a place to put my mobile phone that’s accessible.’ And so now we’re working with an Italian factory on this whole new range, which is a major departure for us considering we only did luggage—and do luggage really well—but now we’re branching out into this range of accessories.” 

‘There’s a balance to it all’ 

One imagines Barbie would be thrilled with the news. After all, Barbie is always well-dressed and accessorized in addition to successful in a variety of roles. And much of Barbie’s messaging—slogans such as “We girls can do anything”—rings true for Banks, even if, as Stereotypical Barbie discovers in the movie, life in the real world is a bit more complicated. 

“I do believe you have to let certain things go in order to let certain things in,” Banks said. “I think there’s a balance to it all. And you have to be structured about it. I remember when my first son was born, I was trying to work from my phone as I was trying to play with a 4-month-old, and thinking, ‘I’m doing both things really badly. I’m not focusing on either one.’ I had to carve out time and put routines in place to say, when I’m here with the baby, I’m here with the baby. When I’m working, I’m working. With that said, I feel like, you know, you can. Yeah. You can have it all.” 

That doesn’t mean it’s always easy. 

“I’ve been operating SteamLine more like a lifestyle business,” she said. “It keeps me and my team afloat and alive. It also gives me a lot of freedom to do things that I desperately care about, like being part of my children’s lives, being able to travel when I want to. That balance of life works really well for me. I get to do it all in some ways: I get to run my business. I get to have my evenings with the children and take them to their sports. We have done a ferocious amount of traveling, which has all been wonderful and actually will oftentimes facilitate growth in areas of the business. But then cashflow can be a challenge for us. The luggage is expensive. It’s not an easy thing to produce. They’re all handmade, so we have these long lead times for production.” 

Banks is not complaining, though. 

“We all have our challenges. We all have our hard times and our bumps in the road, but I have an amazing family and an amazing support network and amazing friends, and I have had amazing experiences in life and getting to meet people in the world and also in running the business.” 

In life as in business, Banks believes, “You might have to let certain things go; you might have to be very forgiving of yourself. You have to be very forgiving of others. I think you need to go easy. You can’t maybe be the best at everything. You might make mistakes. We’re all human. It probably sounds very pie in the sky; you’ll hear me later, and I’ll be like, ‘Oh my God. I’m screwing up everything today.’ We all have those moments. But I feel very fortunate. I feel very, very fortunate right now.” 

When the curtain rises on the final productions of its milestone 60th season, the Kalamazoo College Festival Playhouse will return to its roots, offering students enriching experiences that will echo the Playhouse’s pioneering spirit.    

To date, this season’s theme has been “Systems as Old as Time” featuring plays that explore the harmful systems that hold back the oppressed while highlighting the ways that joy, laughter and solidarity can exist and thrive despite those systems.  

The productions have included Playhouse Creatures, a play that takes place in 1669 as theatres in England are reopening after 17 years of Puritan suppression; Dutchman, a one-act play in which a young bourgeois Black man is killed by a calculating white seductress (written in 1964, the play appears as a contemporary post-George Floyd commentary upon existing white racism); and Be More Chill, written by Playhouse alumnus Joe Tracz ’04, where an average teenager swallows a tiny supercomputer that promises to make him popular—examining issues of social shaming and conformism in the process. 

When the academic year ends, the Playhouse stage will be rocking into summer with the Farmers Alley Theatre production of School of Rock. Based on the hit film starring Jack Black, the musical follows a failed rock star who poses as a substitute teacher at a prestigious prep school. There he turns a class of bright and well-accomplished students into a rock band, which will be played by a real-life school of rock, the Kalamazoo Academy of Rock. The Festival Playhouse also will host Farmers Alley for a production of the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, a musical comedy featuring six quirky adolescents who vie for the spelling championship of a lifetime.  

Both productions will bring together a professional theatre company and members of the Kalamazoo College theatre community, giving K students the opportunity to work beside local and Actors’ Equity Association professionals, just as Playhouse students did through summer stock productions beginning in 1964. 

“Farmers Alley was looking for another venue where they could do some larger plays that aren’t suitable for their space at 221 Famers Alley, and of course, I’ve had our 60th anniversary on my radar for a couple of years,” said Lanny Potts, artistic director of the Festival Playhouse Theatre and K professor of theatre arts. 

 “This just seemed like a kismet opportunity, where we could combine some of the history and richness of the Festival Playhouse and what it used to be with a current equity theatre experience. We’re able to provide some space, but really this is about giving students the opportunity to work alongside an equity stage manager, equity performers and professional outside directors,” said Potts, who designed the Farmers Alley Theatre space and serves on its board. 

The history behind the Playhouse and its summer stock offerings can be traced to 1954, before its first productions, when Nelda K. Balch arrived at Kalamazoo College. Balch personally developed the theatre department and created the Festival Playhouse as a theatre company, while holding many titles at K, including department chair, professor and managing director. 

Dorothy U. Dalton at the time was a founding member and board member of the Kalamazoo Civic Players. She had nurtured her own love of theatre as a K student in the 1910s when she starred as Caliban in a production of The Tempest before performing for the Provincetown Players and Washington Square Players, and serving as an assistant director for the War Camp Community Service during World War I. When she returned to Kalamazoo, Dalton and Balch became artistic kindred spirits, as both were interested in what is now known as “activating theatre” and providing “theatre with a consciousness” to connect a community with significant and relevant theatre arts experiences.

Dalton was an integral partner in the development of the Light Fine Arts Building, as well as the Dalton Theatre, Dungeon Theatre and Playhouse Theatre. Her seed money helped Balch grow the Festival Playhouse into the professional producing, nonprofit arm of K’s theatre program. Festival Playhouse began in 1964 as a summer stock theatre company. Professional actors and artists worked with students during the summer months, offering what then was a unique experience for students in an academic theatre program, empowered in part by the College’s former year-round academic calendar. 

“I think it’s one reason why we have such a deep well of historically terrific alums coming out of the K theatre program,” Potts said. “We really were at the forefront of an initiative and idea that quickly caught on.” 

In 1964, its first productions included Waiting for Godot, The Firebugs, The Chairs and The Resounding Tinkle, which were staged at the newly opened Dalton Theatre. The brick-and-mortar Playhouse later was constructed in 1976 and opened in 1977 before being named the Nelda K. Balch Playhouse after her retirement in 1981. Modeled after the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, the theatre was built with—and still features—Michigan’s first thrust stage, meaning it places the audience on three sides of the scenery. 

Balch continued to teach and direct students as a professor emerita, and by 1985, she had directed and performed in more than 200 productions. The Playhouse honored her again in 1999 by producing her play Return Engagement: A Dorothy Dalton Tribute. 

Dalton died in 1981, yet her support of the Festival Playhouse lives on through funding from the Dorothy U. Dalton Foundation. Balch passed away in 2011, and her enduring impact still influences the experiences of students today. 

Changes in the College’s academic calendar led the Festival Playhouse to shift from summer stock productions each year toward its current fall, winter and spring shows. Today, a student advisory group selects each season’s productions in what Potts describes as an amazing process. 

“Students meet every other week,” Potts said. “They sit around a table, eat bad snacks, and they talk about plays that they’ve read. One of the group’s criteria is that they don’t just select plays they want to do. Instead, we ask ourselves, ‘why this play, why now, why here?’ We look at classics and modern plays and we look at musicals. We look at BIPOC playwrights and opportunities for performers of color. We’re looking at different genres, different historical periods, and if we’re going to do a play, we will look at it through a lens of social justice initiatives and ideas. We think the full richness of the canon can be produced in ways that give us insight into our understanding of needs right now.” 

The students behind these efforts are successful, Potts said, because they seek and come from a wide breadth of experiences. For example, this year’s stage-management team includes engineering, biology, chemistry and biochemistry majors. 

“I don’t know if people know what stage managers do, but they are the glue that holds the fabric of the production together,” Potts said. “Without a stage manager, we just don’t do theatre. If you think about the normal number of activities that K students do, and then imagine being a stage manager for a theatre production, you can imagine it being a heavy lift.” 

The Playhouse is there when students seek opportunities in theatre, regardless of the fields they ultimately choose. And the benefit of a liberal arts college like K is that all students who venture into the theatre department can find opportunities to learn from our professional faculty and staff, to experience working with guest artists on stage and behind the scenes, to participate at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, or to connect with theatre programs via internships or study abroad or study away programming—no theatre major required.  

“I think Kalamazoo College attracts the type of student who has an extraordinary panoply of interests and things that they want to engage with,” Potts said. “We have students who want to do STEM, psychology, business, history and English. But they also like music, art and theatre, so the theatre program provides an open door of opportunity for students to continue to pursue their passions. Not every student who comes through our program is going to be a theatre major, but when they experience theatre, they exercise their artistic, creative and collaborative muscles in ways they just couldn’t someplace else. They’re interested in telling important stories with a mission and a meaning. And that’s a K tradition that’s never changed.”