Hello Kitty is a gobal, billion-dollar enterprise, but where did it come from ?
Hello Kitty is the bigger selling brand of the Sanrio Company Ltd,
which was founded is 1960 by Shintaro Tsuji.
Hello Kitty is part of the Japanese pop culture of "kawaii"(cute). It all started in the early '70s. Sanrio was trying to delvelop its own in-house design department. The president, Shintaro Tsuji told his group to draw animals. In 1974, a young designer named Yuko Shimizu came up bad impression. The first producted was a small clear vinyl coin purse. The products quickly caught on and dwarfed the rest of the company's sales with in a year or two.
Unlike most American characters, whose use and design is tightly controlled, Kitty changes constantly. Each year, the designers come up with new theme for Kitty, plaid one year, in pink another, a princess with tiara in other years, always giving the obsessed collctors something to want.
There are currently about 22,000 Hello Kitty products on the market. Sanrio produces and markets more than half of them, but about one-third are made under license by hundreds of other companies. Each month, Sanrio takes 600 products off the market and replaces them with another 600 items. Some are shuffled for seasonal reasons. Beach sandals in summer, down quilts in winter, back-to-school bags in autumn. But many are taken off because they don't sell and to keep the line up fresh.
