Australian stationery retailer Kikki.K has been expanding its lifestyle offering over the last few years into travel and fashion.
The brand’s creative director Lisa Gorman – founder of the Gorman clothing brand – has just released Kikki.K’s first-ever travel luggage range off the back of a quiet entry into fashion over the last year.
The new travel range includes two carry-on luggage options, 'Carry On' and 'Carry On Plus', as well as a range of travel essentials such as tags and totes.
Gorman says there are two key reasons why she pushed the brand into travel. The first, according to Gorman, is that luggage today is boring, noted after researching baggage carousels during the ideation phase.
The second is that interest in travel is rising across Australia. Sydney Airport recorded its strongest quarterly passenger traffic since 2019 in the final quarter of 2024, with 11 million passengers passing through all its terminals in Q4 2024, up 5 per cent in Q4 2023.
International passenger volumes in Q4 were especially strong at Sydney Airport, increasing by 7.4 per cent on Q4 2023, with the 4.35 million passengers representing a 99.1 per cent recovery rate on the previous record quarter in Q4 2019.
In the first quarter this year, Sydney Airport delivered the highest quarterly international traffic on record with 4.32 million international passengers passing through the terminals in Q1 2025, and a 3.9 percent increase on the same period in 2024.
“Australians have always been a particularly intrepid bunch,” Gorman says, “and it’s driving an increased desire to seek out luggage and travel organisation that speaks to the individual.
“People generally like a choice that represents their own personal style.”
According to Gorman, luggage seems to have lagged behind its fashion counterparts (“think of all the handbag choices out there”). “Maybe that’s got to do with the primary purpose of the suitcase being such a functional workhorse in the past, rather than anything you might have appreciated aesthetically. Now, the point is you can have both.”
The luggage range took one and a half years to produce, with Gorman’s Melbourne-based design team involved alongside the expertise of others at various stages of development.
“I’ve designed an array of different things over my career, but luggage is a whole new world of engineering. Specialised production machinery, new-age materials and technology, functionality, internals, externals, finishes, zips, fastenings, locks – and wheels,” Gorman says. “This is my first product on wheels, in fact, and I can now tell you a thing or two about a wheel.
“We’re using 360 Hinomoto Japanese spinner rubber wheels for super quiet, smooth sailing all the way to the departure gate.”
Gorman was named creative director of Kikki.K in 2023, which follows her stepping away from the Gorman clothing brand she founded in mid-2021, more than 22 years after launching and scaling it. She also shifted into art and sculpture, designing wall adornments for four-figure prices.
Kikki.K is currently owned by Brandbank Group, which bought the brand out of administration in 2021. The brand was founded by Kristina Karlsson.
Alongside travel, Gorman has helped include apparel items into Kikki.K’s product mix, with the brand originally launched to tackle the stationery space.
Gorman says the brand is now situated in the lifestyle space, which she says is not restricted by traditional product categories. This means she and her team can offer curated ranges of the things people use to move through daily life in a functional and organised manner.
“This is how apparel can co-exist in a store that offers stationery,” she says. “They’re both about purpose.
“I like to think we take some of the annoying questions out of daily decision making, like – what should I wear today? What’s my schedule today? What should I put all my stuff into today to get out the door?
“I don’t want to make out that I’m any more organised than the next person – there are parts of my life that are definitely not (ie. don’t look at my work desk right now) – but since I’ve had my phone in a case on a cross-body strap, with my swipe card attached, I don’t get locked out. That, for me, is de-frazzlement – formally known as organisation.”
Gorman says Kikki.K apparel is about offering pieces across seasons, not strictly spring/summer, autumn/winter traditional drops.
“I think the concept of smaller capsule collections in good quality fabrications that stand up to high rotation wear, offering versatility and function to your wardrobe, is the way forward for Kikki.K apparel. Like all products at Kikki.K, there’s a fashion edge, but always with a nod to purpose – apparel included.
“Stationery is where the brand came from. We’re certainly not leaving that heritage behind and are in fact completely overhauling the stationery offering with consideration of what paper means to people today.”
Looking ahead, Gorman says the plan is to keep adding to the travel and apparel offerings. She says Kikki.K is in an evolution stage.
“We’re listening to our customer and learning a lot ourselves week on week, but there’s certainly an air of curious excitement from both the existing and from a new demographic around the changes happening with the brand.
“Personally, I’m very inspired by the potential this business holds as part of the Brandbank Group, and what our future Kikki.K is looking like.
“The sky is (literally) the limit.”