Post by mistermulatto on May 17, 2005 15:50:06 GMT -5
Mixed & matched
New products appeal to those of varied roots
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
BY MICHELE M. MELENDEZ
NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICE
www.nj.com/business/ledger/index.ssf?/base/business-0/1116306828252740.xml
Courtney Morrison's birthday card from her parents last year had a cartoon drawing of a white couple on the front, but her mom had shaded the man's skin with a brown pencil and curled his hair with a black pen.
Dad is black. Mom's white. Morrison and her sister, Tiffany, are a blend of the two.
Their mother's alteration inspired the sisters to design their own greeting cards, showing a more nuanced American family.
Frustration among biracial and multiracial consumers, who crave products that reflect their cultures and skin tones, has bred a home-grown market in goods from cards to clothes.
"There are all of these children of interracial marriages," said Tiffany Morrison, 37, who, with her sister, 36, launched Los Angeles-based Mix It Up in January. "There are things that we need, and now we're creating them."
On the sisters' Web site (www.mix-it-up.net) is a host of black-and-white and color photographs, which appear on the fronts of cards that are blank inside. The selections show the hands of interracial couples wearing wedding rings, holding a rose, clinking champagne flutes, or pressed to a baby with caramel skin.
The 2000 Census was the first to allow respondents to identify themselves by more than one race, recognizing intermarriage. Roughly 7 million Americans described themselves as bi- or multiracial, 2.4 percent of the population. And about 6 percent of married couples characterized themselves as interracial.
By many accounts, the mixing is likely to continue.
Billy No sensed that vibe early. With a Korean-Mexican-French background, he was only a high school sophomore when he began to refer to himself as "blend." Not blended. Just blend.
He soon started making T-shirts and caps with "Blend America" in graffiti style. Eventually, the venture turned into a Web-based company (www.blendamerica.com) that sells T-shirts and hooded sweatshirts.
"It's all about community, unifying cultures," said No, a 28-year-old Tempe, Ariz., resident.
Saren Sakurai, 37, of Los Angeles opened his online store to support his Web site, a membership forum for people who are half-Japanese (www.halvsie.com). His father is Japanese and his mother is of French and Welsh ancestry.
Sakurai said he activated the site in 2002, after a two-year stay in Japan, helping teach English to schoolchildren. He said the Japanese didn't embrace him as one of their own. And back in the States, he stood between two worlds.
His store sells T-shirts, tote bags, mugs and baby clothes with logos and phrases that point to the multicultural, including: "Kiss me; I'm half Japanese," "Multiracial," "Multiethnic," "Blackanese" and, written in Japanese, "Got rice?"
Marilyn Halter, a history professor at Boston University and author of "Shopping for Identity: The Marketing of Ethnicity," traces the visible and vocal pride in culture to the ethnic revival of the 1970s.
"Here it is, 30 years later, and there's still so much attention paid to celebrating distinctive heritage," Halter said.
Halter said mainstream companies have fed the multiethnic market, broadening the range of models and actors in advertising. Various goods, including Crayola crayons and Cover Girl cosmetics, have undergone changes in marketing in response to the country's kaleidoscopic skin tone.
Individuals seek reflections of themselves in everyday life, said Nancy McFall Jean, president of the Interracial Family Circle, a nonprofit membership organization in Washington. This applies in particular to children building their sense of identity, she said.
The multiethnic goods for sale "are reaffirming in a lot of ways," Jean said.
And they're created by folks who have yearned for multicultural merchandise.
Mahisha Dellinger, 29, whose father is Creole and mother is black, remembers experimenting in the kitchen, mixing coconut oil and shea butter with store-bought hair conditioners and styling products.
"I couldn't find the right line of product for my hair," she said.
Based in Sacramento, Calif., she started an online business called Curls (www.curls.biz) in 2003. Now her products, including a children's line called Curly Q's, are available at some salons.
Yvette Walker, 43, of Kansas City, Mo., took a longer road to her store. She recalls not being able to find a wedding cake topper with bride-and-groom figurines that looked like her and her fiancé. She had one custom-painted.
That was 1989. Now interracial couples have options, including purchases from a site run by Trenton resident Michelle Emerson (www.meltingpotgifts.com), who is black and whose husband, Dan Dodson, is white.
Walker's exasperation led her to create New People magazine in 1990, exploring blended culture.
The magazine, available online (www.newpeoplemagazine.com), gave rise to an online store in February. Cards, T-shirts, mouse pads and other gift items display different shades of skin together -- the interlaced fingers of a black woman and white man, an illustration of a heart-shaped pendant split in half, its two sides representing racially distinct facial features.
Even though Walker and her husband are no longer together, she carries on the New People message: "My sensibilities haven't changed. You should be with whomever you want to be with."
Store owners say that spreading the word about this niche market is challenging, although they describe the response so far as enthusiastic.
Barb Simmons, 47, of Palmdale, Calif., joined Mix It Up's e-mail list after her daughter found the company on a multicultural Web site. Simmons is white; her husband is black. They have six children and five grandchildren.
Though some "go ballistic" when they see depictions of interracial couples, Simmons said, "The time has come."
New products appeal to those of varied roots
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
BY MICHELE M. MELENDEZ
NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICE
www.nj.com/business/ledger/index.ssf?/base/business-0/1116306828252740.xml
Courtney Morrison's birthday card from her parents last year had a cartoon drawing of a white couple on the front, but her mom had shaded the man's skin with a brown pencil and curled his hair with a black pen.
Dad is black. Mom's white. Morrison and her sister, Tiffany, are a blend of the two.
Their mother's alteration inspired the sisters to design their own greeting cards, showing a more nuanced American family.
Frustration among biracial and multiracial consumers, who crave products that reflect their cultures and skin tones, has bred a home-grown market in goods from cards to clothes.
"There are all of these children of interracial marriages," said Tiffany Morrison, 37, who, with her sister, 36, launched Los Angeles-based Mix It Up in January. "There are things that we need, and now we're creating them."
On the sisters' Web site (www.mix-it-up.net) is a host of black-and-white and color photographs, which appear on the fronts of cards that are blank inside. The selections show the hands of interracial couples wearing wedding rings, holding a rose, clinking champagne flutes, or pressed to a baby with caramel skin.
The 2000 Census was the first to allow respondents to identify themselves by more than one race, recognizing intermarriage. Roughly 7 million Americans described themselves as bi- or multiracial, 2.4 percent of the population. And about 6 percent of married couples characterized themselves as interracial.
By many accounts, the mixing is likely to continue.
Billy No sensed that vibe early. With a Korean-Mexican-French background, he was only a high school sophomore when he began to refer to himself as "blend." Not blended. Just blend.
He soon started making T-shirts and caps with "Blend America" in graffiti style. Eventually, the venture turned into a Web-based company (www.blendamerica.com) that sells T-shirts and hooded sweatshirts.
"It's all about community, unifying cultures," said No, a 28-year-old Tempe, Ariz., resident.
Saren Sakurai, 37, of Los Angeles opened his online store to support his Web site, a membership forum for people who are half-Japanese (www.halvsie.com). His father is Japanese and his mother is of French and Welsh ancestry.
Sakurai said he activated the site in 2002, after a two-year stay in Japan, helping teach English to schoolchildren. He said the Japanese didn't embrace him as one of their own. And back in the States, he stood between two worlds.
His store sells T-shirts, tote bags, mugs and baby clothes with logos and phrases that point to the multicultural, including: "Kiss me; I'm half Japanese," "Multiracial," "Multiethnic," "Blackanese" and, written in Japanese, "Got rice?"
Marilyn Halter, a history professor at Boston University and author of "Shopping for Identity: The Marketing of Ethnicity," traces the visible and vocal pride in culture to the ethnic revival of the 1970s.
"Here it is, 30 years later, and there's still so much attention paid to celebrating distinctive heritage," Halter said.
Halter said mainstream companies have fed the multiethnic market, broadening the range of models and actors in advertising. Various goods, including Crayola crayons and Cover Girl cosmetics, have undergone changes in marketing in response to the country's kaleidoscopic skin tone.
Individuals seek reflections of themselves in everyday life, said Nancy McFall Jean, president of the Interracial Family Circle, a nonprofit membership organization in Washington. This applies in particular to children building their sense of identity, she said.
The multiethnic goods for sale "are reaffirming in a lot of ways," Jean said.
And they're created by folks who have yearned for multicultural merchandise.
Mahisha Dellinger, 29, whose father is Creole and mother is black, remembers experimenting in the kitchen, mixing coconut oil and shea butter with store-bought hair conditioners and styling products.
"I couldn't find the right line of product for my hair," she said.
Based in Sacramento, Calif., she started an online business called Curls (www.curls.biz) in 2003. Now her products, including a children's line called Curly Q's, are available at some salons.
Yvette Walker, 43, of Kansas City, Mo., took a longer road to her store. She recalls not being able to find a wedding cake topper with bride-and-groom figurines that looked like her and her fiancé. She had one custom-painted.
That was 1989. Now interracial couples have options, including purchases from a site run by Trenton resident Michelle Emerson (www.meltingpotgifts.com), who is black and whose husband, Dan Dodson, is white.
Walker's exasperation led her to create New People magazine in 1990, exploring blended culture.
The magazine, available online (www.newpeoplemagazine.com), gave rise to an online store in February. Cards, T-shirts, mouse pads and other gift items display different shades of skin together -- the interlaced fingers of a black woman and white man, an illustration of a heart-shaped pendant split in half, its two sides representing racially distinct facial features.
Even though Walker and her husband are no longer together, she carries on the New People message: "My sensibilities haven't changed. You should be with whomever you want to be with."
Store owners say that spreading the word about this niche market is challenging, although they describe the response so far as enthusiastic.
Barb Simmons, 47, of Palmdale, Calif., joined Mix It Up's e-mail list after her daughter found the company on a multicultural Web site. Simmons is white; her husband is black. They have six children and five grandchildren.
Though some "go ballistic" when they see depictions of interracial couples, Simmons said, "The time has come."