(~5 minutes to read)
News item: Luxury fashion house Balenciaga launches US$2100 tote that looks like IKEA’s $0.99 “Frakta” bag.
The marketing department of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Prada Fashion Inc. (ICBINP, pronounced “Ick-bee-inp”) was holding a crisis meeting.
Six of the most un-conservatively-dressed people on the planet sat around a table shaped like Italy, waiting for the Vice President to speak. She herself was dressed in a blue leather dress that failed to reach her knees by approximately thirteen inches. Her top was an interesting shock of orange floral patterns—in the plural. The left sleeve was dahlias from shoulder to elbow, while the right sleeve was lilies all the way to the wrist. Holding them together (or perhaps keeping them separated) was the bodice; a mixture of chrysanthemums and autumn leaves. With her red and white dreadlocks, the VP was pure fashionista from head to thirteen inches above the knee.
The effect was, however, somewhat spoiled by her calf-length, plaid carpet slippers.
“Team—we are in crisis,” said Sadie-Trix (for that was what she was known by; although her parents still called her Pauline, believing—wrongly—that Sadie-Trix was a portmanteau of “Sadist” and “Dominatrix”).
She paused to let sink in the gravity of her statement of the obvious.
“Balenciaga has pulled the rug out from under our feet and the feet of all their other competitors. They’ve designed a twenty-one hundred dollar version of IKEA’s Frakta blue bag. And it’s cornered the market. We haven’t shipped a single unit of our lunchbox purses for three weeks, and our Toilet Roll Tote might just as well… be used as toilet paper, for all the interest it’s attracting right now.
“We need the next Fashionista Frakta, so I hope you’ve come with your ideas!”
Gilbert (pronounced the French way), head of the Buying Trends team, piped up.
“What about a designer bookshelf? Ikea’s Billy bookshelves are everywhere—on average, every home in the developed world has at least two. What if we came up with our own version of that—y’know, sequins down the front edges, leather-covered shelves, funky-shaped embellishments on the top…”
“A bookshelf is not a fashion accessory, Gilbert,” replied Sadie-Trix, pronouncing his name the English way to put the pretentious git in his place. “You can take a handbag or a purse clubbing with you, where everyone sees you with it. That’s one reason the Belenciaga bag is such a hit—you can keep your eye on it from a mile away. Who’s going to take a bookshelf clubbing?”
“What if we called it the ‘Billy Club’?” suggested Gilbert.
“Are you kdding!” chimed in Davide, the team’s unofficial Faux Pas Catcher. You do know what a billy club is, don’t you? It’s a night stick. A truncheon. A cosh.”
“Oh…” said Gilbert, quietly.
Sadie-Trix took the helm again.
“We need a fashion accessory that imitates something dirt cheap but which we can charge a couple of thou’ for. So handbags, purses, shoes, hats…”
“What about coke bottle flip flops?” offered Gabriella-Lamé, Sadie-Trix’s PA, sitting at the heel of the Italy-shaped table.
The entire Italian coastline turned to look at her, silently waiting for more.
“Well,” she said nervously, “we create flip flops that look like coke bottles cut in half from top to bottom. The neck of the bottle would be the toe, and the knobby bottom of the bottle would be where your heel goes.”
“Do you have any idea how much Coca Cola would sue us for?” said Davide.
“What if we paid them for the use of the name and design?” said Gabriella-Lamé, her voice getting smaller and smaller as her confidence deserted her.
“And eat into our margins?” said Sadie-Trix, contemptuously. “Come on guys—we need ideas!”
The suggestion “Soup can sandals?” floated down from the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
“It’ll sound like two skeletons copulating on a tin roof when you walk in them,” scoffed Davide.
“You stole that!” returned Pisa. “Sir Thomas Beecham said it about the harpsichord.”
“Doesn’t take away from the complete idiocy of your idea though,” said Davide.
“Why the hell are we concerning ourselves with quotes by someone that’s been dead for nearly sixty years!” yelled Sadie-Trix. “Where are the ideas?”
“Baseball caps designed like the coronation crown?”
“Ditty bags with faux naval insignia?”
“Baseball caps that double up as a KKK hood?”
“Limited market,” growled Sadie-Trix.
“But growing in the USA currently,” Davide reminded the meeting.
“Poop emoji handbag?” This was from Horace, the brochure compiler, stationed in Naples.
“Give me more…” said Sadie-Trix, despite herself.
Horace stalled, shocked and surprised that he had the floor.
“Uhm… well… it’s a great shape for a handbag. It’s novel. It’d be a great talking point. And Patrick Stewart’s voicing the poop emoji on the Emoji movie; we could ride the popularity wave of the film.”
“Comments?” Sadie-Trix was definitely intrigued.
There were a few mutters that seemed to indicate that the team hated the idea but couldn’t come up with a good reason.
“Won’t we be handing our arses to our competitors on a plate though?” said Gilbert. “They’d be saying something like, ‘Ha! Ink-bee-inp has launched a handbag that looks like shit—because it is!’ and we’ll have no comeback for that…”
There it was. Gilbert had saved the day, and the enthusiasm of the “hear, hears” and “good points” proved it.
“Okay; we’re back to square one,” said Sadie-Trix. “Come on—ideas; ideas!”
“Handbag that looks like a brown paper bag?”
“Already been done.”
“Handbag like a dead cat?”
“That’s been done too.”
“Handbag like a black garbage bag?”
“Too big.”
“Purse like a matchbox?”
“Too small.”
“Handbag like a Ziploc™ bag?”
A chorus of “ooh!”s swept around the Italian coast.
And then refinement suggestions started flowing like gut rot moonshine from a leaky still.
“It could have a transparent outer layer, and artwork on the lining that looks like food—sandwiches or chicken drumsticks; or chilli con carne…”
“Wouldn’t chilli look just like poop in a bag though?”
“What would the strap look like?”
“Would we use a plastic zipper as the clasp for the handbag?”
The excitement was intoxicating—they were clearly on to something. Sadie-Trix called the meeting to order.
“Any other ideas?” She paused. “Okay, let’s get the feasibility and design done. Three days, people. I want mock-ups, sales predictions, and projected return on investment. Go go go!”
And so they went. They designed. They mocked. They predicted. They projected.
And they launched the ZippityPurse handbag to great acclaim.
Six weeks later, a rival company launched its emoji-inspired PoopBag purse. The fashion-and-fads sheeple thought it was absolutely fabulous, and flocked to buy one.
Interest in the ZippityPurse handbag waned, and sales tanked.
Still, six weeks was a good run for the ZippityPurse handbag.
I guess.