Kim Wright can dial her friends on a pink phone, dressed in a pink outfit, perhaps embellished with a pink button or two or three. And when she surfs the Internet, most likely searching for more you-know-what, she's doing it on a carnation-colored laptop.
When Wright, a breast cancer survivor from Reisterstown, tried to persuade her husband to buy a TV in her signature shade, she perhaps should have worn her sparkly, alluring rose gold necklace with the charm looped into the shape of an advocacy ribbon. Because on that, he put his pink foot down.
Not long ago, autumn color meant the reds, golds and russets of turning leaves or maybe the candy-corn hues of Halloween. But, increasingly, October comes on like a slow, deep blush, forcing shoppers to think about breast cancer as they buy items including pink groceries, pink clothes and pink electronics.
"For the month of October, when all of this floods the market, everyone gets the message, whether they want it or not," says Wright, who beat Stage 2 breast cancer 14 years ago and who has been stocking her home and wardrobe with symbolic products ever since. "Everybody thinks of me when they see something pink."
Though Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the most visible breast cancer organization, has used the color pink since its inception in 1982, the color made the leap to merchandise in 1990 when a woman with the Komen Foundation created pink visors for survivors. The next year, every survivor at New York City's Race for the Cure got a pink ribbon.
And in the past decade, those two original pink gestures reproduced like little pink bunnies, spawning the profuse amount of breast cancer merchandise filling the market today, particularly during October's Breast Cancer Awareness month.
After the race itself, marketing partnerships are Komen's second-largest fundraiser, bringing in $50 million last year.
"It started as an outpouring of support for our Race for the Cure event, but we wanted a way to continue the conversation," says Katrina McGee, Komen's vice president of global partnerships. "It's certainly great progress."
Komen alone has close to 200 corporate sponsors - huge names including New Balance, American Airlines, Yoplait, Payless, Ford, General Mills, Dell, Perdue, KitchenAid, Kimberly-Clark, Cartier, 7-Eleven and 3M.
