See it on TV, click on it, wear it
…of marketing and sales. It may not be too far-fetched to imagine a day when ''Desperate Housewives'' spins off Desperate Housewares, a line of products made for the show, written into the show and then sold through a Web site.Explicit product placement generates $4 billion, Web site executives said, and some have estimated that extending this model to things like clothing that is incorporated into a set but never identified creates a market potentially worth $100 billionWhich explains why retailers, brands and networks are scrambling to sign on. StarStyle has deals with about 25 networks, shows and studios, including FremantleMedia, the producer of ''American Idol''; MTV's ''Real World: Key West''; and daytime soap operas like ''The Young and the Restless.'' The site also markets apparel and accessories from music videos.Shoppers can click on an item on the site, which links them to retailer sites like Nordstrom, Macy's and the Gap to make the purchase.At SeenON!, some of the most-viewed items are the Gucci 85th anniversary bag from ''Ugly Betty,'' Meredith Grey's JBrand jeans and Gabrielle's Aldo purse from ''Desperate Housewives.'' At StarBrand.tv, the top sellers include the Adriano Goldschmied jeans that Rory wears this season on ''Gilmore Girls'' and the Lucky Brand belts worn by Veronica on ''Veronica Mars.'' Not surprisingly, most shoppers on these sites are women, ages 18 to 34.Fans have long been doing for themselves what the new Web sites have made effortless. When Carrie Bradshaw wore stilettos on ''Sex and the City,'' viewers hungrily eyed her…
…Eastpointe office building, a gift shop offers a kaleidoscope of colorful pieces of Polish folk art, Polish products and other items from the former communist country.Polish crystal and Boleslawiec pottery. Wooden boxes and jewelry. Nesting dolls and Easter eggs. Traditional, hand-beaded vests and aprons. Antique dolls and coloring books.
The gift shop is but one small part of the American Polish Assistance Association's very local grassroots effort of international goodwill.
It starts in this office space on Gratiot near 9 Mile Road, and ends up in orphanages, schools for blind children and community centers in Poland.
Proceeds from the gift shop -- though they aren't much -- help pay for shipping costs, packing supplies and such for this shoestring-budgeted operation of volunteers. They quietly sell items from the shop and, more importantly, collect clothes, toys, toothbrushes, blankets, bikes, crutches, school supplies, linens, wheelchairs and more.
Sorting and packing of the items takes place in a large closet just off the gift shop and in another office across the hall, where boxes are stacked floor-to-ceiling in preparation for the transatlantic voyage to Poland.
The all-volunteer American Polish Assistance Association, or APAA, gathers the goods as it has since the 1960s, when it…
…March, the pop band had parted with frontman Eric Dill, whose high voice had lifted the group's 2005 Top 10 single "Just the Girl." It made the album "Greetings From Imrie House" the highest-charting debut that year and put the band on tours supporting Ashlee Simpson, the Backstreet Boys and Ryan Cabrera.
To move forward, The Click Five went back — back to Berklee College of Music in Boston, where the group came together in 2003 while four of them lived in a place called Imrie House. (Dill was the only non-Berklee member.)
There, through mutual friends, they found Kyle Dickherber, lead singer of the band Hillside Manor, and signed him to replace Dill.
They have a new single, "Jenny," and their sophomore disc, "Modern Minds and Pastimes," is due out June 26. Both feature Dickherber, now billed as Kyle Patrick.
Asked about the upcoming disc during a telephone call from his tour bus — driving in upstate New York — bassist Ethan Mentzer states the obvious. The group also includes guitarist Joe Guese, keyboardist Ben Romanshan and drummer Joey Zehr.
"I think that the drastic difference is gonna be the fact that Kyle is singing and Eric is not," Mentzer says. "They have very different voices. But ... stylistically, we still consider ourselves a rock-and-roll band or a power pop band playing pop songs. And our goals are still the same: We want people to enjoy these songs and understand the lyrics and have fun, too."
Dickherber's voice is so different, Mentzer says, that the…
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