Tom Bihn, a Port Angeles, WA-based company, is a specialty maker of backpacks and carrier bags for laptops, has doubled sales since last April.
According to marketing VP Darcy Hudgens. Bihn bags are sewn and sold in French Canada. Candian law requires care labels are printed in English and French.
The workers in Canada wanted to poke some fun at their company president, Hudgens says. So after instructing owners not to bleach, iron or machine dry the bag, the French half of the label added the following two sentences: NOUS SOMMES DESOLES QUE NOTRE PRESIDENT SOIT UN IDIOT. NOUS N'AVONS PAS VOTE POUR LUI." Translated, the message reads, "'We are sorry that our president is an idiot. We didn't vote for him.'"
No one knows when this “joke” began appearing inside the bags, Hudgens says. They only know that in April, 2004, a blogger read the care label and assumed the president in question was George W. Bush. The blogger didn’t even post the Bihn company name in his post.
That’s when the Internet took the item and began sending the story around the world in no time. Eventually, the bag label was linked back to Bihn. Sales began to build. Eventually, the local NBC affiliate visited one of Bihn’s two stores to tape an interview for the local news. MSNBC grabbed the story, and then the Associated Press and Reuters.
At first, the company was worried about the publicity might offend one of the political parties. “It wasn’t really intended to be a marketing play,” emphasized Hudgens says. “But once it got out there, it doubled our sales.”
The boost has been ongoing, and has even created a $60,000 back-order problem at the 12-person company. Hudgens expects that this holiday season will be the best in the company’s history, thanks to the free publicity. The company also noticed that its non-computer bags—café shoulder bags, messenger bags, totes and such—are selling better since the label story broke.
Selected posts from various blogs retelling the Bihn label story suggest she’s right: “hahaha… dude that is great”; “I am dying laughing… seriously”; and best of all, “Gotta find one of these bags.”
Buyers can find them, thanks to an extremely user-friendly Web site (www.tomBihn.com). A handy page on the site not only tells the official Bihn version of the story but identifies which bags come with the “idiot” label, to avoid disappointing customers buying bags partly to get the label.
Of course, not everyone has a sense of humor. “In the beginning, we received some nasty e-mails,” Hudgens says. “And we thought about what good could come of this—besides doubling our sales.”
Then the company came up with was T-shirts with blow-ups of the label, with $16,000 profits from the item going to the Seattle Veterans’ Center. T
Bihn started making and selling his own bags in a Santa Cruz storefront 20 years ago. But the company really took off when he opened an Internet site. Now the company has a store in Seattle’s Pioneer Square and another in Port Angeles. Most of the company sales are online.
Bihn doesn’t produce a catalog, doesn’t discount prices, and prefers a soft-sell “community” approach to marketing, says Hudgens.
The “French label” portion of the Bihn Web forum does contain one post from last April that reads, “Enjoy your boycott here in the States. Hope it was worth it.” Judging by the sales charts, it probably was. And now Bihn doesn’t have to change the label for another four years.
directmag.com/directtips/Tom_Bihn_label/
sayanythingblog.com/entry/tom_bihn_bags_apologizes/
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