For Oregon women, success is in the bag

PORTLAND, Ore. — Years ago, when Dixie Powers went shopping in Thailand, shop owners didn’t mind if she overpaid by inadvertently using Japanese yen.

"If you handed them yen, you’d be in big trouble," Powers said. "You’d be giving away the farm. Honey, they knew exactly what they were doing."

To avert such goofs, she and other Delta Air Lines flight attendants carried foreign currencies in plastic sandwich bags to keep from mixing them up. But eventually, Powers and a co-worker, Ann Simmons, both of the Portland area, realized a more elegant way to solve their problem — and perhaps make a few bucks on the side — by creating a small bag with five zippered compartments.

In 1996, they began selling the currency bags to flight attendants in staff-only airport lounges. From that low-key start, they built their enterprise, Portland-based baggallini, into a business marketing an array of brightly colored collapsible totes, rolling luggage and handbags with more than a dozen internal pockets.

In the years since, the serendipitous entrepreneurs — Powers’ 9-year-old daughter had suggested the company’s name — have made out well. By this year, their debt-free company was on track to ring up more than $2 million a year in sales of products marketed mostly through catalogs and travel boutiques. The founders retired from their day jobs two years ago.

But this year, they realized they might have tapped out their homegrown business expertise and might need more schooled help to hone their push beyond the consumer and distribution niches they had occupied. So, in November, the pair hired their sixth employee, Dennis Eckols, a retired Fred Meyer executive, to help reach bigger retailers and spread their sales network.

In less than a month, Eckols has provided the baggallini partners with their first precise gauges of their products’ profitability and created exacting goals for sales contractors.

"If we were going to grow, we needed someone who knows what they’re doing," Powers said.

Similar to many start-up companies, the baggallini founders began with a little of their own cash, product ideas they had gathered from their work and help from contacts they had made in their travels.

Their first supplier, for instance, was the cousin of their favorite jeweler in Bangkok, Thailand. He manufactured about 100 currency bags to match their first design.

Flight attendants snatched them up. But a problem cropped up: Since the bags were glued together, rather than stitched, they fell apart.

"The coins would bunch up in one big mess," said Simmons, 54. "My heart just sank."

Baggallini’s principals compensated their first customers and took to heart their first lesson about the trickiness of supplier relationships. Still, the company went through three more suppliers before finding its current, reliable one, a large Chinese contractor.

They closely guard its identity.

To date, baggallini has never hired a marketing consultant. Powers, who dropped out of Portland State University, and Simmons, who received an education degree from the University of Texas, still dream up bag designs over beers in their homes. They ask retailers for advice on new products, and they sniff out strategies from competitors and mentors at trade shows.

The hanging tag on each item touts their background: "Designed by flight attendants, approved by travelers."

Baggallini’s business has quickly grown beyond its initial airline-employee customer base, which now provides less than 20 percent of its sales.

The company with the silly name makes some seriously durable, versatile products, said Wendy Liebreich, co-owner of Portland Luggage. Liebreich urges travelers to pack baggallini’s collapsible shopping bag, especially handy for bringing back more than they take.

"Whenever I do a packing demo, I always show at least two or three of their items because they are that user-friendly," Liebreich said.