Germophobe develops hanger for purses
Peek inside Oprah’s purse and you’ll find her BlackBerry, a makeup bag given to her by interior designer Nate Berkus, contact lens cleaning fluid, sunglasses (in black and brown), reading glasses, $14 cash in her Louis Vuitton wallet, toys for Sophie (her dog), a copy of Maya Angelou’s poem “Amazing Peace,” and a few crumbs from a nutrition bar.
The talk show queen opened her purse once on her show, at the request of a viewer. If you watched that episode, you didn’t see the one thing Oprah really should carry in her purse: one of Alexis Meisel’s purse hangers.
The handy devices allow purse-carriers to hang their purses – from a table in a restaurant or a door in a restroom stall. No more setting purses on the yucky floor for lurking germs or draping them over the back of a chair for lurking thieves.
Meisel, a self-described mild germophobe, knows what Oprah should know – the bottom of a woman’s purse ranks No. 7 on the list of the germiest places in everyday life, according to a Health magazine report aired on NBC’s “Today Show.”
I met Meisel last month in Tacoma at a seminar for entrepreneurs. She drove down from Newcastle with a purse full of her Zook Hook purse hangers. I bought one of Meisel’s hot holiday designs – a crystal martini glass with a swizzle stick. A present for my wife on her recent birthday.
She loved it.
Apparently, so do a lot of other folks. What started with three online sales totaling $60 in July 2007 has mushroomed to more than $5,000 last July – and a prediction from Meisel that she’ll top $150,000 in sales by the end of the year.
Not bad for a former schoolteacher and economic researcher with a master’s degree in marketing and a germ of an idea – but no previous experience running a retail business.
She has, however, seen the inside of a lot of stores. Before Zook Hooks’ launch, Meisel’s most recent job involved roaming through Puget Sound-area grocery and department stores researching monthly price changes. Her research went to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which factored it into its reports of changes to the Consumer Price Index.
