A FIRST PERSON ACCOUNT OF RUNNING A SMALL BUSINESS.ART school grad Carla Denker first got the idea for Plastica, her offbeat off·beat n. Music An unaccented beat in a measure. adj. Slang Not conforming to an ordinary type or pattern; unconventional: offbeat humor. plastic housewares house·wares pl.n. Cooking utensils, dishes, and other small articles used in a household, especially in the kitchen. shop, after falling for the brightly colored, woven plastic shopping bags she found on a trip to Mexico City Mexico City Spanish Ciudad de México City (pop., 2000: city, 8,605,239; 2003 metro. area est., 18,660,000), capital of Mexico. Located at an elevation of 7,350 ft (2,240 m), it is officially coterminous with the Federal District, which occupies 571 sq mi . In 1996 Denker and her then-boyfriend borrowed money and opened a kitschy storefront stocked with Adj. 1. stocked with - furnished with more than enough; "rivers well stocked with fish"; "a well-stocked store" stocked furnished, equipped - provided with whatever is necessary for a purpose (as furniture or equipment or authority); "a furnished apartment"; odd and unusual plastic items found at thrift stores and swap meets. Business grew after the unique concept garnered the support of neighborhood shoppers and mentions in Vogue and In Style magazines. Jennifer Smith There are at least six prominent individuals named Jennifer Smith:
The Beverly Center is a monolithic eight-story structure located at the edge of Beverly Hills and West Hollywood, California, between La Cienega and San Vicente boulevards. on trendy West Third Street. "We opened down on Sunset, at a small spot that is now a tattoo parlor. A year later we moved to (the intersection of) Hollywood Boulevard For uses other than the original street, see Hollywood Boulevard (disambiguation). Hollywood Boulevard is a boulevard in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States, beginning at Sunset Boulevard in the east and running northwest to Vermont Avenue, where it straightens out and Vermont. The neighborhood responded really quickly to the store. That helped get things going, plus word-of-mouth from the art world and people at Otis (College of Art and Design), where my boyfriend at the time was in school. We also got a lot of press early on because of the concept. "We wanted to have a really specific theme for the store, not just be another shop selling soap and candles. It wasn't easy to find stuff. At first it was more vintage, but now we sell a lot of new stuff. We look in magazines and track down cool things that way, and we also go to gift shows. "I was selling merchandise in the range from a quarter to $50 when we opened. Now I think it was too cheap, but you don't know Don't know (DK, DKed) "Don't know the trade." A Street expression used whenever one party lacks knowledge of a trade or receives conflicting instructions from the other party. ahead of time what people will buy. I remember having a Tupperware display in the window three years ago and one collector just laughed and said he'd die when it became popular. Well, it's popular now! "Our clientele goes from late 20s to mid-50s, it's a mature crowd. The objects are geared as housewares and quick gifts, not as novelties. "We opened the second store this March. It's a transition to more high-end stuff. I wanted a separation between the two locations. "At this point Plastica has developed into more of a name, a style concept. We have these Tom Dixon lamps that run about $250, and we sell wood furniture at the- new store made by a company called 100xbetter, which helped us design the new store. We have some beautiful glass stuff in here as well. But people still take the name literally and say, 'Hey, that's not plastic!"' |
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