Buying In - (Page 19) buying in 19 Sales of items bearing Hello Kitty’s elusively inexpressive but undeniably cute likeness climbed through the 1970s, stalled briefly, rose again in the 1980s, and after another dip experienced tremendous growth again starting in the mid1990s. In their book, Hello Kitty, business journalists Ken Belson and Brian Bremner say that by the cat’s thirtieth anniversary, Sanrio was making around six thousand Hello Kitty products a year, granting paid licenses to others who made sixteen thousand more, and selling them in forty countries. (About ten thousand Hello Kitty items are generally available in North America.) The ever rotating product line has included all manner of toys, clothing, stationery, and the like, but also appliances, toothbrushes, golf bags, spatulas, bikes, computers, mobile phones, and, in one instance, a $30,000 diamond-encrusted wristwatch. Although Hello Kitty was seen strictly as a young girls’ phenomenon in the United States for many years, that had changed by 2004, when Sanrio research found that a third of the customers in its U.S. stores were people over eighteen, shopping for themselves. This epiphany was followed by the release of Hello Kitty lingerie and jewelry. In 2007, MBNA was offering a Hello Kitty Platinum Plus Visa card. Sanrio’s licensees have included not simply anonymous commodity makers, but acclaimed designers like Richie Rich and Traver Rains, whose Kitty-emblazoned Heatherette dresses sold for $1,000 and were worn by the likes of Paris and Nicky Hilton. And, of course, Hello Kitty appears on a great variety of T-shirts, from the most basic to more rarefied options, like a collaboration with designer Paul Frank that sold at Bloomingdale’s and other department stores. The astonishing success of Hello Kitty has been the subject of much speculation. Some aspects of that success seem
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