Something to Read

The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food

I read this piece a month back after my mom emailed it to me, and would like to share it with the class. An excerpt from Michael Moss's most recent book "Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us," the piece explores the research and marketing behind junk food, specifically how to get consumers to eat more, crave more, and buy more. For me, this piece combined a personal interest: health and food to create a strong, clearly researched piece which seems to stand on it's own, despite being part of a larger story.

The piece incorporates several layers of reporting: Moss tells his own narrative about his experiences and relationship with the CEO's and scientists he interviews, tells their stories, explains events attended, research projects he reviewed, and marketing campaigns he evaluated. In class, I'd be interested in talking about the level of research and time commitment needed to create a book/ piece of this sort, and our opinions of narrative books (like Gail's) and this one, and how this fits into our understanding of journalism.

Enjoy, see you all in class.

360 degrees of Consignment

 “That is gorgeous. It’ll go,” Amy says, watching a young girl shimmy into a full-length white prom dress. The bodice is shimmery, the bottom pushing out with fluff, the girl grinning.

Amy Baird is the owner of 360°, a consignment shop in Kalamazoo. She wears sparkling earrings, brown hair falling straight just past her shoulders, a nude and white lace shirt over dark cuffed jeans, sitting on a plump chair in the back of her shop. 360°, which dominates much of Kalamazoo’s consignment market, sells to both women and men. Consignment stores work off a seller- buyer relationship, at 360° a seller gets fifty percent of the final price and the business gets fifty percent, an even split for both.

360°, which is located in the Westwood Plaza on West Main, throws together styles for women and men, the stores display window stacked with the latest styles. Today, it’s there’s a striped full length dresses, a crisp white blazer paired with a huge necklace. Inside the store, shelves are carefully lined with colorful beaded heels, nude flats, Frye boots, display women continue to model the styles Baird finds each day. Baird remembers a woman who once came in, bought everything from the mannequins, and while Baird was redressing them, she left, and then came back in to buy the newly displayed outfits.

“We made rent our first month,” Baird claims proudly about the store, which opened in 2000. “Not anything more.” For a small business owner, breaking even in the first couple months is crucial. This was an immediate indicator of success for Baird, who says her father put aside money for rent at the beginning, which she never needed to ask for.

Baird is the sole owner, her husband originally pushed the idea for the store hard, after only one year of marriage. She studied Apparel, Merchandising and Textiles at the University of Kentucky, then moved into the corporate world, which was not for her: “Well, I had a boss, which I didn’t like. There was no real personal communication with people,” she says. 360° grew quickly at the beginning, since it’s opening they now have over 14,000 names in the computer, both sellers and buyers. “I am the buyer and I am the merchandiser. I am everything in this job,” she says.

She describes her college-self as a shopaholic. “I did everything everybody else did. I spent a lot of money on clothes,” she admits. After moving west to Denver, she came back to her hometown of Kalamazoo to help run Second Childhood, a consignment shop for kids: “I was helping her run that small business at the age of 23. I had all the freedom in the world,” Baird explained.

She opened 360° soon after that. She remembers her husband saying: “We have no money, we have nothing. That’s the perfect time to start it, we have nothing to lose.” The plaza where 360° is located was her ideal location, near the big colleges and in an area people frequented for shopping. Baird says she knew she wanted to own the store solo, describing her independence and desire for creative control: “I know how I want things done. I was afraid if I did it with somebody else, it would get in the way. I didn’t know what it would do to a friendship.”

Baird does work alongside two other women: Katie, who works two days a week, and Kristen Cooley, who has been with the store for three and a half years. Cooley laughs easily, a new mom to eight-month-old Bryson, and is wearing skinny Forever 21 jeans, a pink and white striped oversized t-shirt, tan pumps, and a turquoise necklace, bubbles of color layered upon each other. She and Amy sort through a handful of clothes thrown across the white counter. Fifteen seconds later, they’ve successfully picked out half the items to sell: a couple frilly summer tops, a dress, and begin the process of labeling, entering into the computer, pricing and then organizing each item.

Baird sees each and every item that comes in. Today, she has four racks of clothes to sort through, and unprecedented number of items came in on Saturday. She holds up shirt and says: “Shirt, yellow, teal, white pullover tunic, Trina Turk, Banana Republic,” and then picks the price: $22.95, explaining: “There are a couple things I look for. The brand, how new it is, you know, how current, even if it didn’t have a tag, and how well I think it’ll sell.”

Cooley describes Baird’s relationship with the store frankly: “People ask for her by name, people call it Amy’s store.”  Cooley works the business hours of the store, 10 to 6, and contrasts her own relationship to the store with Baird’s: “For her, she is a bigger part of it; it’s always on her mind, the anxiety. If a customer has a problem, it’s her business.” She is quick to note the influence the store has on Baird’s family life: “Her kids are getting older, and they’re doing things. I don’t want to step between there, because I know she wants to be a huge part of the business, but I’d be there anytime she wants to go to her daughters dance recital.”

Baird herself describes being a mom and business owner frankly: “It’s awful, it’s really hard. It’s very stressful to be a woman, who’s a business owner, the breadwinner, and a mother. You wear every hat,” she says. Her kids say, “Look Mommy’s famous” when they go out and people recognize her. She remembers when the CEO of Yahoo was critiqued for taking two weeks off after pregnancy, and recounts taking one week off, explaining that’s what a single business owner does. Her kids are 10 and 6 and her husband works part time at FedEx, mostly for the benefits. Baird laughs at the thought of having hobbies, hoping that when her kids get older she’ll have time to do things for herself again. “I don’t know if I’ll hand this business down to my daughter, because it’s so stressful,” she says.

Baird says the businesswoman aspect of her job isn’t the hardest one, when the economy dipped in 2007, 360° felt the impacts. She recounts: “People were like ‘God your business must be great because it’s used clothing’ and I’m like ‘you know, not really.’ Because if nobody’s buying anything new, I’m not getting anything in, and then I have nothing. It’s a vicious circle.” Plato’s Closet, a nationwide chain specializing in clothes for “teen and twenty something guys and girls”, opened across town in 2007, forcing a contest in the Kalamazoo consignment scene for the first time in Amy’s ownership of 360°.  “I had anxiety every single day. I’d been coasting along for 7 years, and all of a sudden I had competition,” Baird recalls. Plato’s Closet, she says, dominated the tween market, and she shifted to a slightly older focus group, 22-45. 360° got a better selection, carrying slightly more upscale brands like Banana Republic and JCrew.

One of the biggest challenges these days, Baird says, is the ability of customers to post bad experiences online: “You have a bad experience at a small business, people take it to heart, you know, it really affects your sales. I don’t think a lot of people think about that. It’s really hard to be a small business in this day, because most people will go where the best deal is. I have lots of loyal customers, but even people you thought were loyal are not. And it’s hard to not take it personally.” Being engrained in the community is difficult as well, “You gotta go and try to make everybody happy, and it’s stressful. And we live in the community. The community of 360° does have it benefits though, and a 13-year relationship with customers is a long time. “That’s 13 years they’ve been coming. I’ve seen them get married. They change their name and I forget their new name,” she says.

Baird is now sorting through a new rack of clothes, when a mother and daughter come in, looking for a full-length nude dress, a young bridesmaids dress, in a children size. 360° doesn’t carry children’s clothes, but Baird, Cooley and a random customer quickly list six or seven other stores they could try, pulling out iPhones and helping the women brainstorm. The customer recommends Rent the Runway, telling about how the girl could get a dress for just a short time and then send it back, renting an outfit for the wedding. Cooley says this is one of the strengths a small business has: “We all have communication, so if a customer has a problem or there’s a unique customer, we kind of all know what’s going on.” The woman and her daughter leave clearly pleased with the visit, despite having purchased nothing.

For the upcoming summer, and the three racks of items still waiting to be sorted, Baird says the store can be unpredictable. On the first sunny days, people are often outside, they don’t come into the store: “they’re on walks, they’re eating outside, they’re exercising,” she explains, then after a couple of nice days, they come to get their new things. She recites her motto for the store: “I’d rather have somebody come in and buy five things at a less expensive price than just one. That way five sellers make profit.” Cooley tops it off, “There must not be a place like this anywhere else. People say, they move to New York, and they send their stuff home, and they move to Chicago, and they still send their stuff here.”

Word Count: 1612

Target: The Kalamazoo Gazette

The Events of October

My impressions of The Events of October were highly impacted by my constant nausea while reading the book. I was, to say the least, very impacted by this story, and put the book down several times, especially at the parts focusing on the IM's and the murder scene. With that aside, I do have some critiques and questions about the book.

I was interested in the time line of this story, which is something that I'd hope to discuss with Gail this evening. At what point was it clear to her that an in-depth book was the appropriate medium for this story? Did she do primarily research or was the information presented something she had kept or had easy access to? I am curious about the process of this writing, and how transition from different styles of writing comes to a writer?

Secondly, the use of her own character was both positive and negative in my opinion. I perhaps expected her to be too much of the story, since we open with her experience, but this was incorrect. She doesn't weave herself back into the piece until much later, after describing in detail some of the relationships and stories of both Maggie and Neenef. I was confused by this slightly, perhaps I just had the wrong impression, but this threw me off, and almost made me question why she included the "I" character. I know I sort of asked this last week, but I'm still struggling (especially after reading many profiles, which seem to be split between using the "I" character and not) at how one makes this decision. Gail's explanation here would definitely be good insight, and I hope to bring that up tonight.

Overall, the reading experience was not a pleasant one due perhaps to my senstivity and this topic, but I did enjoy the structure, the leading through the experience, and am excited to talk about some of the complexities of both the event and the process of writing a story about it.

Revision

Words: 1156

Target Publication: The Kalamazoo Gazette

Title: 360 degrees of Consignment

“That is gorgeous. It’ll go,” Amy says, watching a young girl shimmy into a full-length white prom dress. The bodice is shimmery, the bottom pushing out with fluff, the girl grinning.

Amy Baird is the owner of 360°, a consignment shop in Kalamazoo. She wears sparkling earrings, brown hair falling straight just past her shoulders, a nude and white lace shirt over dark cuffed jeans, sitting on a plump chair in the back of her shop. 360°, which dominates much of Kalamazoo’s consignment market, sells to both women and men. Consignment stores work off a seller- buyer relationship, at 360° a seller gets fifty percent of the final price and the business gets fifty percent, an even split for both.

“We made rent our first month,” she smiles proudly about the store, which opened in 2000. “Not anything more.” For a small business owner, breaking even in the first couple months is crucial. This was an immediate indicator of success for Amy, who says her father put aside money for rent at the beginning, which she proudly recounts that she never needed to ask for.

Baird is the sole owner, her husband originally pushed the idea for the store hard, after only one year of marriage. She studied Apparel, Merchandising and Textiles at the University of Kentucky, then moved into the corporate world, which was not for her: “Well, I had a boss, which I didn’t like. There was no real personal communication with people,” she says. 360° grew quickly at the beginning, since it’s opening they now have over 14,000 names in the computer, both sellers and buyers. “I am the buyer and I am the merchandiser. I am everything in this job,” she says.

She describes her college-self as a shopaholic. “I did everything everybody else did. I spent a lot of money on clothes,” she admits. After moving west to Denver, she came back to her hometown of Kalamazoo to help run Second Childhood, another consignment shop for kids: “I was helping her run that small business at the age of 23. I had all the freedom in the world,” Baird explained.

She opened 360° soon after that. She remembers her husband saying: “We have no money, we have nothing. That’s the perfect time to start it, we have nothing to lose.” The plaza where 360° is located was her ideal location, near the big colleges and in an area people frequented for shopping. Baird says she knew she wanted to own the store solo, describing her independence and desire for creative control: “I know how I want things done. I was afraid if I did it with somebody else, it would get in the way. I didn’t know what it would do to a friendship.”

Baird does work alongside two other women Katie, who works two days a week, and Kristen Cooley, who has been with the store for three and a half years. Cooley laughs easily, a new mom to eight-month-old Bryson, and is wearing skinny Forever 21 jeans, a pink and white striped oversized t-shirt, tan pumps, and a turquoise necklace, bubbles of color layered upon each other. She and Amy sort through a handful of clothes thrown across the white counter. Fifteen seconds later, they’ve successfully picked out half the items to sell: a couple frilly summer tops, a dress, and begin the process of labeling, entering into the computer, pricing and then organizing each item.

Baird sees each and every item that comes in. Today, she has four racks of clothes to sort through, and unprecedented number of items came in on Saturday. She holds up shirt and says: “Shirt, yellow, teal, white pullover tunic, Trina Turk, Banana Republic,” and then picks the price: $22.95, explaining: “There are a couple things I look for. The brand, how new it is, you know, how current, even if it didn’t have a tag, and how well I think it’ll sell.”

Cooley describes Baird’s relationship with the store frankly: “People ask for her by name, people call it Amy’s store.”  Cooley works the business hours of the store, 10 to 6, and contrasts her own relationship to the store with Baird’s: “For her, she is a bigger part of it; it’s always on her mind, the anxiety. If a customer has a problem, it’s her business.” She is quick to note the influence the store has on Baird’s family life: “Her kids are getting older, and they’re doing things. I don’t want to step between there, because I know she wants to be a huge part of the business, but I’d be there anytime she wants to go to her daughters dance recital.”

Baird herself describes being a mom and business owner frankly: “It’s awful, it’s really hard. It’s very stressful to be a woman, who’s a business owner, the breadwinner, and a mother. You wear every hat,” she says. Her kids say “Look Mommy’s famous” when they go out and people recognize her. She remembers when the CEO of Yahoo was critiqued for taking two weeks off after pregnancy, and recounts taking one week off, explaining that’s what a single business owner does. Her kids are 10 and 6 and her husband works part time at FedEx, mostly for the benefits. Baird laughs at the thought of having hobbies, hoping that when her kids get older she’ll have time to do things for herself again. “I don’t know if I’ll hand this business down to my daughter, because it’s so stressful,” she says.

Baird says the businesswoman aspect of her job isn’t the hardest one, when the economy dipped in 2007, 360° felt the impacts. She recounts: “People were like ‘God your business must be great because it’s used clothing’ and I’m like ‘you know, not really.’ Because if nobody’s buying anything new, I’m not getting anything in, and then I have nothing. It’s a vicious circle.” Plato’s Closet, a nationwide chain specializing in clothes for “teen and twenty something guys and girls”, opened across town in 2007, forcing a contest in the Kalamazoo consignment scene for the first time in Amy’s ownership of 360°. 

“I had anxiety every single day. I’d been coasting along for 7 years, and all of a sudden I had competition,” Baird recalls. Plato’s Closet, she says, dominated the tween market, and she shifted to a slightly older focus group, 22-45. 360° got a better selection, carrying slightly more upscale brands like Banana Republic and JCrew. One of the biggest challenges these days, Baird says, is the ability of customers to post bad experiences online: “You have a bad experience at a small business, people take it to heart, you know, it really affects your sales. I don’t think a lot of people think about that. It’s really hard to be a small business in this day, because most people will go where the best deal is. I have lots of loyal customers, but even people you thought were loyal are not. And it’s hard to not take it personally.” Being engrained in the community is difficult as well, “You gotta go and try to make everybody happy, and it’s stressful. And we live in the community. 

Writing Process

This profile felt significantly different to write than the personal (obviously, perhaps). Initially, I was very hesitant to make contact with Amy at 360, a slight sense of dread that she wouldn't like me, that I wouldn't be able to measure up to the quick faux intimacy that we'd discussed in class. However, I'd say for a first draft, I was quite pleased. Speaking with Amy was easy, and I was most surprised to find that questions sort of just came to me as we were talking, and that a lot of my notes were unneeded.

The structural part of this assignment, however, posed a bit more problems, as I wasn't quite sure what sort of order to put all the information I'd gathered. Parts about the store seemed necessary in order to introduce her, but the pull of her family life and early career could help set the stage for her life to come. I decided not to put myself into the story since I've only know Amy about a week, and I felt that the authors we'd read who'd done this stayed with their "subject"/ friends for a much more significant period of time.

I was also concerned about the piece reading like a time line, but I think with several more interviews and some structural organization I won't have to worry about this. A question for the group though: How do you tell someones life without it sounding too timeline'd? Interested to see other pieces of an individual who figured out a way to explain a life in creative ways.

Profile

1000-2000 words            target publication: ideas?!

“That is gorgeous. It’ll go,” she says, watching a young girl shimmy into a full-length white prom dress. The bodice is shimmery, the bottom pushing out with fluff, the girl grinning.

Amy Baird is the owner of 360°, a consignment shop in Kalamazoo. She wears sparkling earrings, brown hair falling straight just past her shoulders, a nude and white lace shirt over dark cuffed jeans, sitting on a plump chair in the back of her shop.

“We made rent our first month,” she smiles proudly about the store, which opened in 2000. “Not anything more.”

360°, which splits each sale 50/50 between store and seller, dominates much of Kalamazoo’s consignment market, selling to both women and men. Baird is the sole owner, the idea for the store originally pushed hard by Baird’s husband, after only one year of marriage. The store grew quickly at the beginning, and 13 years later has over 14,000 names in the computer, both sellers and buyers. “I am the buyer and I am the merchandiser. I am everything in this job.”

Baird explains quickly that she tried out the corporate path that was prescribed to her, moving west to Denver after studying Apparel, Merchandising and Textiles at the University of Kentucky.

“Well, I had a boss, which I didn’t like. There was no real personal communication with people,” she refers to the corporate world. In contrast, talking about 360°, Baird tells: “The great thing about this place is it is like a family.”

She pauses before explaining that in the corporate world every window had to be designed one way, and that she had her own ideas about how things should be done.

She quickly relates back to her 22-year-old self, remembering her feeling that she had no idea what she wanted to do. Baird reigns from Kalamazoo proper, describes her college-self as a shopaholic. “I did everything everybody else did, I spent a lot of money on clothes,” she admits.

She says she went through the motions after Denver, interviewing to be a buyer for Saks Fifth Avenue in Chicago, eventually moving home to Kalamazoo to work at Second Childhood, a young consignment store in the area.

“I was helping her run that small business at the age of 23, I had all the freedom in the world,” Baird explained about the Second Childhood, owned by a girlfriends mom.

She opened the store soon after that, remembering her husband saying: “We have no money, we have nothing. That’s the perfect time to start it, we have nothing to lose.” Since she knew the area, the plaza where 360° is located was her ideal location.  Baird says she knew she wanted to own the store solo, describing her independence and desire for creative control: “I know how I want things done. I was afraid if I did it with somebody else, it would get in the way. I didn’t know what it would do to a friendship.”

“It’s awful, it’s really hard. It’s very stressful to be a woman, who’s a business owner, the breadwinner, and a mother. You wear every hat.” Baird’s kids say “Look Mommy’s famous” when they go out and people recognize her. When the CEO of Yahoo was critiqued for taking two weeks off after pregnancy, she recounts taking one week off, explaining that’s what a single business owner does. Her kids are 10 and 6, her husband works part time at FedEx, mostly for the benefits. Baird laughs at the thought of having hobbies, hoping that when her kids get older she’ll have time to do things for herself again: “I don’t know if I’ll hand this business down to my daughter, because it’s so stressful.”

When the economy dipped, Baird explains: “People were like ‘God your business must be great because it’s used clothing’ and I’m like ‘you know, not really.’ Because if nobody’s buying anything new, I’m not getting anything in, and then I have nothing. It’s a vicious circle.”

The worst came when Plato’s’ Closet opened across town in 2007, forcing a contest in the Kalamazoo consignment scene for the first time in Amy’s ownership of 360°. 

“I had anxiety every single day. I’d been coasting along for 7 years, and all of a sudden I had competition,” Baird recalls. Plato’s Closet, she explained, dominated the tween market, and she shifted to a slightly older focus group, 22-45. 360° got a better selection, carrying slightly upscale brands like Banana Republic and JCrew, and despite the personal attach Baird felt initially upon Plato’s closet, she enjoys this new sector.

The fashion world in Kalamazoo is something that Baird keeps tabs on as well, stopping to pick the right words before describing: “Kalamazoo is a little more conservative. Kalamazoo is cheep. People want a deal,” but she continues to explain her motto about the store, “I’d rather have somebody come in and buy five things at a less expensive price than just one. That way five sellers make profit.”