G'Day Bklyn

Thursday Friday, Together Bags Any Day Now

 I admire go getters who turn that one great idea into a money-making business. But sometimes, things move too fast or not fast enough, and those go getters make big promises they struggle to keep.

I really hope that’s not the case with LA-based accessories brand Thursday Friday whose founding duo Roni Brunn and Olena Sholomytska created the Together bag – a wildly popular canvas shopper emblazoned with a pop-arty Hermes inspired bag print on the outside. With the original $35 price tag (the price has since risen to $45 to counter rising cotton prices), they literally sold like hotcakes.

What could be wrong with instant success and enormous publicity you ask? Well, this fledgling company has had a very public struggle to fill orders placed as long ago as January, causing an outcry on its Facebook page from frustrated buyers. In full disclosure, I’m among the hundreds of people worldwide waiting on bags I ordered and paid for at the start of the year.

It seems the wait may soon be over. Late yesterday, Thursday Friday posted the following to its Facebook page: 

“We understand your frustration with us. We have been dealing with the delayed shipments, cotton price rise and production halts since we started. When we designed our products, we did not expect it to explode in (the) way it has and the overwhelming demand from all over the world has exceeded our production. Please be patient with us, we take your orders very seriously and we are shipping all orders from Jan/Feb.”

This long-awaited assurance prompted many hits of the Like button, and was met with a flurry of thankful, hopeful comments from Facebook fans.

Sure, we all knew when we ordered bags in January that they were on backorder and would be delivered sometime in March. But as March turned into April and spring weather coaxed us to swap chunky leather bags for a lighter tote, there were still no bags and intermittent communication from the firm left shoppers wanting. There were discussions about how to get a PayPal refund, and even threats of getting the Better Business Bureau involved.

‘Production Snafu’

The problems started when, with unexpectedly high and relentless demand, Thursday Friday had to work with an unfamiliar factory which was not only seven weeks late with orders but produced bags of unacceptable quality that Thursday Friday wouldn’t sell to customers. Even once a suitable factory was booked, it was slow to replenish stocks.

“During this production snafu, we understandably got more incoming customer emails, and this volume overwhelmed our support team,” Creative Director Roni Brunn, half of the Thursday Friday duo, told G’DayBklyn. “We’ve been hiring and training new staffers with the same eye for quality and care that we have for our products.  Again, this level of attention to detail has created another lag – a delay in answering support emails.”

What there has been all along though is enormous publicity for the bags – from blogs like this to The New York Times, Elle and The Daily Mail, and a prolific Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr presence by the company. That presence, as it turns out, can be both a blessing and a curse. Sure, a company can promote itself brilliantly through social media, but on the flipside, when something goes awry all those chatty friends and followers have a very public place to rant. And that they did.

A string of negative comments and delivery queries litters Thursday Friday’s Facebook page. So much so, that the company repeatedly asked people to take their issues to customer support rather than use Facebook  as a complaint forum. 

“We try our best with those whose frustrations are voiced on Facebook, and we completely understand that our responses may not work for everyone,” said Brunn. She said the company contemplated sending an email to customers “but thought it’d be whiney of us. We’re lucky to have anyone interested in our products and just want to push through any setback.”

Interestingly, even bad publicity – in the form of legal action from French luxury brand Hermes, whose iconic Birkin bag inspired the Together tote – has only fueled demand for the quirky bags.

Hermes, whose Birkin bags sell for upwards of $9,000, contends that Thursday Friday is  ”riding on the reputation and recognition of the Birkin Bag” to sell its otherwise generic tote. And in so doing,  Hermes says Thursday Friday is creating confusion among customers and putting Hermes’ reputation at risk.

I’m not sure that anyone is confused by a leather bag worth thousands and a cotton tote, but the suit has done nothing to damp demand for Together bags.

As we cross our fingers that the wait really is coming to an end, Brunn assures Together bag carriers can still be the coolest kids on the block.

“These bags aren’t close to ubiquitous,” she said, putting a positive spin on the setbacks and delays.  “People who ordered them in January will still be among the first to carry them.”

Sticks + Stones …

It’s not often that I am reduced to tears by a news story but the latest tragic tale of a Rutgers University student killing himself after fellow students outed him on the Internet makes me sick enough to cry.

As a human, it makes me wonder what sort of children we are raising that two college students would think it a funny prank to ridicule another person’s sexuality in public. And as a mother, I feel a massive responsibility to ensure that my children would never think to treat another like this, and to protect them from ever being bullied.

Tyler Clementi jumped off the George Washington Bridge on Sept. 22 after learning that his roommate and another student had used a webcam to film a sexual encounter between Clementi and another man and posted it not once, but twice on the Internet . The two 18-year-old freshmen Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei are charged with invasion of privacy, with the most serious charges carrying a penalty of up to five years in prison. Of course, nothing will bring back Clementi or any of the other young people who have taken their lives after repeated bullying.

What really gets to me, besides obviously the length Clementi felt he had to go to in order to flee the public humiliation inflicted by his perverted roommate, but just why anyone would think it okay, let alone funny, to target a boy for being gay. I realise this is naive of me, but I really thought we had come far enough that young adults – especially once at college-age - didn’t have to hide their sexual preference.

Back in the old days when I was at school, I’m sure there were mean girls. I remember being teased for having Greek heritage (unlike some of the pristine WASPS I schooled with), oh and for wearing glasses, and being on the debating team but it was harmless stuff back then. I don’t remember ever feeling shut out by it, and certainly not suicidal. What has happened to make kids so extraordinarily horrible to their peers?

Apparently while technology has made leaps and bounds, allowing social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook to broadcast exploits far and wide and encroach on privacy all around,  kids today are dragging their knuckles on the ground and getting thrills from belittling anyone different to themselves.

 Bullying is alive and well, and with more terrifying consequences than ever.

Streuth! Crikey! WTF? To Aussie National Costume

Arghhhh ... my eyes!

When  you  switch on the TV come August 23 to watch the Miss Universe pageant, which I know you all will, please disregard this crazed ensemble on Australia’s entrant. High-heeled Ugg boots, a sheepskin shrug and a cutout cossie, that’s a swimsuit in Oz-speak: Is this really worthy of a national fashion identity?

Please, Ugg boots shouldn’t be seen outside of your cold apartment in the dead of winter, or at least that’s my take on them, let alone adorned with heels and on a catwalk. Hideous. But, what do I know. Jesinta Campbell, the 18-year-old Aussie pageant queen, is chuffed with the costume, which she will wear to represent the land down under in the national costume section of the contest. “Isn’t it incredible,” Campbell said when revealing the outfit, which a-la-pageant style also reveals plenty of her.

Well, yes Jesinta, it is incredible, in the same way that the Crocodile Dundee stereotype was incredible, and horribly embarrassing. The costume was designed by Sydney’s Natasha Dwyer who works under the Arthur Ave label, and the swimsuit bares a design hand-painted by an Aboriginal artist. To be fair, I actually don’t loathe the multi-layered skirt, but I am not sure how it really speaks to Australia. Perhaps the color palette is reflective of the earthy reds and ochres of the landscape, and common in indigenous art. Or perhaps Jesinta is headed to Rio for Carnival after her Las Vegas jaunt?

Please, before you judge Australian fashion sense based on this national garb,  think Sass & Bide,  Lisa Ho, Peter Morrissey, Richard Tyler, Collette Dinnigan, Carla Zampatti – there are plenty of great designers to emerge over the years, and they really are incredible. Oh and feel free to smack me silly if heeled Ugg boots catch on!

Aren’t Yuppies Just Grown-Up Hipsters Anyway?

Spotted On A Construction Site

This snippet of graffiti on some construction to the Area Yoga building on Court Street got me thinking: Aren’t yuppies just hipsters all grown up? Not necessarily older, but in a different phase of life.

Yuppies are by definition young; so are hipsters. Both are urban and both have professions of some form, lawyer or book publisher perhaps VS indie rocker or graphic artist. Hipsters like arts and pop culture, as do yuppies who, to go with the sterotype, typically spend plenty of money on cool stuff … so isn’t it more about a state of mind. Yuppies are settling down, while hipsters are hooking up; yuppies are having babies, while hipsters just have sex.

Maybe I’m missing something in the call for “Yuppies Out: Hipsters In.”  To be sure, these could have come from different scribes, but it seemed an amusing juxtaposition, especially given the makeup of the neighborhood – old-timers who grew up here mixed with Manhattan transplants in search of more space to push a stroller and perhaps a million-dollar brownstone to store it in, and the singletons in creative fields who start work sometime after 10am, once they snarkily dodge the strollers.

Coincidentally,  I spied the graffiti from across the street only because I noticed that upscale children’s store Ola Baby  is going out of business.

Yep, breeders take note; there is a closing sign on the window and a 50-70 percent off sale in the meantime. Perhaps we’ll get another organic, fair-trade, pricey coffee shop … or just another boarded up building.

Ola Baby is at 315 Court Street, between Degraw and Sackett Streets.