TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

New Tools' Frills Follow Function

ADVERTISEMENT

By LINTON WEEKS, The Washington Post

Published: September 3, 2007

WASHINGTON - Everywhere you look these days, the functional is getting a coat of froufrou. Let's call it cutility.

Keys, hammers, door knockers, even Swiss Army knives are no longer dull, straightforward, undecorated things. They are gussied up with polka dots, flowers or Disney characters to reflect the owner's personality and to make the mundane fun.

Everyday tools and objects are receiving total makeovers. Orvis sells a tool kit that includes flower-patterned pliers, scissors and utility knife. Target offers a toilet brush holder shaped like a black bear.

A pink Traeger barbecue grill in the shape of a pig greets customers outside the suburban hardware store Strosniders - for eons a refuge from cuteness. Inside you now see screwdrivers covered with stylized American flags, flowered hammers and racks of colorful designer house keys - happy ones with smiley faces, daisy displays and multicolored jigsaw puzzle pieces. For about $5 you can buy Disney keys touting Mickey Mouse, the Little Mermaid and other characters. There are keys representing all of the local college and professional teams. There are Superman, Spider-Man and SpongeBob SquarePants keys. And for your motorboat: a NASCAR key.

Personalized keys are explosively popular, says hardware and tool manager Jim Lovaas. 'We're expanding all the time.'

One company at the center of cutility is the Brooklyn-based Sarut Group. The firm distributes practical items with fanciful designs, such as cheese graters shaped like princesses in long skirts, vegetable peelers that are Asian characters and 'Nemo whisks' shaped like fish.

'Everything we do is very functional. But it brings an element of whimsy into the home,' company spokeswoman Sharon Hitchcock says. 'We take ordinary objects and make you smile.'

In this same-old, same-old world, she says, 'it's an attempt to make your home an oasis.'

Alan Andreasen, a marketing guru at Georgetown University, says the trend toward cutility is 'an attempt by lots of people to individualize both themselves and their possessions.'

He equates the cuting-up of the commonplace with 'tattoos, customized cellphones and ringtones as a way to step away from mass commoditization.'

Credit, he says, goes to the clever marketers who have found ways to breathe life into mundane commodity categories. 'Sure,' he says, some 'people have lots more discretionary money to spend on these things, but I think it's more about the idea of trying to be your own person.'

Cutility is spreading preciousness, syruplike, over the last remaining standard-issue items. Even classic Swiss army knives are marketed in pink, purple and blue. So where is all this going, this pursuit of sappiness? Can daisy-adorned Leatherman tools, Crayola-colored tenpenny nails and Burberry jackhammers be far behind?

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT