filed under Food | Funniness | Only In RI
Rhody to honor TV knives with street name
1:10PM ON
02/22/2008
BY
Ari
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUarASqrVnY]
I could have sworn Ginsu knives were from Japan, but apparently they are a homegrown commodity: Indeed, it was Rhode Islanders who “slapped a faux-Japanese name onto a cheap serrated knife and used TV infomercials to turn it into a ubiquitous brand parodied by Saturday Night Live.”
State Rep. David Caprio is proposing we honor this forgotten chapter in our shared history by re-naming a quarter-mile stretch of road in a Warwick office park “Ginsu Way.”
Now, giving your product a “foreign-sounding” name is nothing new in the world of advertising (Haagen Daas coined the use of the umlaut for marketing, say). But combining faux-import-quality cutlery with late night infomercials? Only in Rhode Island my friends:
Caprio proposed the road’s name last month after speaking this summer with Ed Valenti, who began marketing Ginsu knives with his partner, Barry Becher, in 1978. Valenti is now the chief operating officer of PriMedia Inc. in Warwick, and the unmarked road that would be christened “Ginsu” runs outside his office.
Valenti and Becher were already using infomercials to sell household goods when they were contacted by the Ohio-based knife maker Douglas Quikut, which wanted to boost sales of its Eversharp kitchen knife.
The Rhode Island marketing duo suggested turning the product into a set of knives, changing the name to the meaningless Japanese-sounding “Ginsu” and selling it on TV.
Their infomercials were the first to take credit card orders and refer buyers to a toll-free telephone number, said Valenti, who recently wrote a business book called “The Wisdom of Ginsu.”
They got bought out by Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway. If that’s not success, I don’t know what is.
February 22nd, 2008 at 6:44PM
Will Emmons Says:
Don’t you love what our alleged representatives waste their time on?
[Reply]
September 1st, 2008 at 3:17PM
Anonymous Says:
…
” If you work hard on your job, you could make a living. If you work hard on yourself, you could make a fortune. Your income is primarily determined by your philosophy, not the economy. Success is something you attract by becoming an attractive perso…