Categories: Geek

The Woman Behind The Curse “Hello Kitty”

She’s in every shopping mall, in every kids room and she’s starting to take over the every day life of adults as well. Yeah, I am talking about the “cute” little cat “Kitty”. In the beginning I am sure that the Japanese folks really enjoyed the presence of this little purr. After all in the beginning she wasn’t named “Hello Kitty” she went by the expression”The white one without a name”. She wasn’t named until a year later. Nope, her name is NOT “Hello Kitty”, her real name is “Kitty White”.

The designer that brought us this hellish curse is Ikuko Shimizy. Kitty White was born back in 1974 (yup, before I was even born). Shimizy Yuuko worked for a company still owning the rights for this multi billion dollar concept named Sanrio.

I wouldn’t have anything against Hello Kitty if it wasn’t because of the fact that I have a 4 year old daughter and she’s fanatic about the cat. Still not a problem. The problems emerges when looking at the price tags for these merchendises. MY GOD! It’s half a fortune just to get her a fricking t-shirt or a bed set. I know I am not the only parent that starts to dislike this curse of a cat. Still they are raising the prices every so often!

Yeah, and don’t ask me about the Hello Kitty boxers. Cool or not…who wears that???

Here’s some facts and images about the purr and her global domination scheme.

Company: Sanrio
CEO: Shintaro Tsuji
Turnaround: 1,1 Billion Dollars
Designer: Shimizy Yuuko
Real Name: Kitty White
Family: Mary White – Mother, George White – Father, Mimmy White – Twin Sister, Antony White – Grandfather, Margaret White – Grandmother.
Born: 1974
Items: Over 50,000

A Few Items:

Richard Darell

Richard Darell is the founder and CEO of Bit Rebels, a multifaceted online news outlet that reports daily on the latest developments in technology, social media, design and everything geek. Today this media entity welcomes more than 3.5 million unique visitors per month and is considered the go-to place for people in constant motion. As an Internet entrepreneur, he is dedicated to constantly trying to develop new ways to bring content faster and closer to the end user in a more streamlined way. His excitement for statistics has allowed him to further develop systems that continuously produce accurate and fast-paced analytics to better optimize the approach by which Bit Rebels presents news and content. His graphic design background has proven to be an important tool when designing new systems and features for Bit Rebels since the development of solid and stable code depends entirely on their structure and implemented procedures. Richard currently resides in Stockholm, Sweden and directs the Bit Rebels offices in both Stockholm and Atlanta. You can reach Richard at richard@bitrebels.com