Some Knowledge

It seems there is this person, Heidi Montag, who is a TV star on the MTV series The Hills.  I’ve never seen this program.  I don’t know anything about this person.  Apparently, she is famous and some kind of entertainment celebrity.  Well, she’s gone into marketing.  Heidi has “created” a line of clothing she calls Heidiwood.  So, if you are famous and want to make money, abstract your own name, which is already recognizable, and come up with some product you can sell to a lot of people, like clothing.  Very interesting money making proposition.

It seems that this line of clothing came out in April, from what I’ve found written about it online.  I don’t have any idea why it’s so popular today.  The only items in this line that I saw were a zebra print top and black shorts.  Looked like the kind of stuff you could buy at K-Mart.  I imagine this fashion would be very trendy with people who might live in an Alabama trailer park.  Still, there’s no accounting for taste in clothes.

This kind of thing interests me.  You can see celebrities trying to cash in on the fame of their name all the time.  There’s Neuman’s Own Salad Dressing, there’s the Oprah Book Club, and now there’s Heidiwood.  I can see a future when every product or article we use will be named after somebody famous.  Maybe we can take the top celebrity of all time and name the planet after them.  It’s not just actors who are in on this scheme.  There’s even a bagel joint named after Einstein.  For a while there there was a PDA called a Newton.  Even physicists are getting in on the action, albeit posthumously.  We live in a world that cashes in on fame.

I don’t know if I would recommend that anyone buy any of this Heidiwood wear.  I’ve read mixed opinions on the kind of fashion sense these clothes project.  Of course, I’m not in the market for this kind of thing anyway, but I thought it was interesting how marketers are always using every trick of publicity to sell whatever products they can get manufactured cheaply in Asia.

Ziami is a manufacturer and sales site that sells custom clothing.  You can get shirts for $30, suits for $100, and ties and cuff links for $20.  The company claims their mission is to design custom clothing for low prices.  The site has been very active today.

Apparently this company also offers an employment option.  For $99.95 you can buy a starter package and become a design consultant.  They will even set you up with a website for $9.95 a month where you can sell clothing and recruit design consultants.  This seems to be some kind of viral business model where the company does business through an army of affiliates.

Ziami manufactures clothing in China from measurements supplied by design consultants.  They make the clothing from custom fabrics.  You have to pay in advance for your goods, and there is a $99.95 new customer access fee.  Clothing is usually finished in 3-5 weeks.

This seems to be a new kind of custom tailoring operation that is just getting started.  Perhaps this is the next wave of the future in clothing manufacture.  Custom fitted clothing has always been more expensive than mass produced items.  It seems that now with this company you can get good prices and custom fitting at the same time.  If you are in the market for tailored clothing, check out this operation.  You might save some cash and get a good suit of clothes in the bargain.  Perhaps you will also find your future career as a fashion design consultant.

At first it just sounds disgusting.  Turning stinking fish skins into leather.  Now, there are companies cleaning and tanning salmon, carp, Nile perch, sturgeon, and other kinds of fish and making products out of this recycled material.

People usually just throw the skin away when they eat fish.  I did a simple Google search for fish leather and found many places calling this sea leather or ocean leather.  There is even a company called Skini that makes salmon leather bikinis.  It seems turning fish skin into leather is a complicated process that takes over a month.  You have to get all the fish oil out of the skins and treat the skins with chemicals to preserve and toughen the finished product.

I saw some wallets and belts advertised on one site.  The products looked pretty cool.  The scales leave patterns on the skins that show up in the finished product.  Fish leather is not cheap.  A wallet goes for $55 and up.  Belts cost $75.  The salmon bikini sells for $355 or so.  All this from an article that is either used for chicken feed or that would be sent to the landfill.

I’ve played computer games where they have boots made from frogskin or boots of the fish.  Now, it seems, fish leather is a real product that is making a mark in the fashion world.  For hundreds of years the Japanese have been upholstering the hilts of Samurai swords with stingray leather.  Perhaps it is good that a product that used to be a source of waste is now becoming an article of clothing and accessories.