In bright April sunshine, on the gritty, graffiti-marked roof of Manhattan’s ultra- hip New Design High School, hundreds of girls look on as Henrico entrepreneurs Chris and Kat Costello—creators of the innovative “zpr bag”—set the record for the world’s longest handbag. The colorful bag, made of 466 individual pieces, or “zip strips,” is some 80 feet long.
Photographers snap shots and the news teams’ cameras roll, zeroing in on the portions of the bag autographed by Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt of MTV’s “The Hills,” designer Tory Burch, and actors Ted Danson and Jeff Goldblum as well as the entire cast of the Broadway show “Reasons to Be Pretty.” National Zipper Day—set aside each year to commemorate the 1913 invention of the first modern zipper—has never been celebrated in such style.
Such fanfare was only to be expected. The stylish zpr bag is actually nine purses in one. Young girls can zip, unzip and rearrange the colorful strips to form a variety of looks, customizing their bags to suit personal tastes. (If they had enough strips, they could even re-create the record setter.)
It’s a fresh concept in a market crowded with seen-’em-all giants like Hannah Montana. And thanks to the Costellos’ recently inked deal with Harvest Direct, a top distributor of consumer products, the zpr bag will soon be for sale in major chain stores and on TV.
At $19.99, it’s priced to move. More than 1,100 have already sold, primarily through the official site, www.zprbag.com. A two-minute infomercial is being tested in five major cities, which has the Costellos especially excited. “We know that girls will enjoy the fun, creativity and individuality involved with assembling their own unique bag,” Chris says. “But it’s a product you’ve got to see to believe, so promotional events, TV and Internet video are key.”
So how did a couple of tech-savvy grown-ups get into the girls’ accessory business?
Chris says he got the idea for the zpr bag at the annual Toy Fair trade show in New York in 2005. “There was a woman with a purse made completely of zippers,” he recalls. “It wasn’t for sale. She was standing at a counter, serving people. I immediately understood that this thing had big potential with kids.”
That might be putting it lightly. After purchasing the idea from the woman, the Costellos devised a new model to appeal to the teenage market, which is huge. The market research company Piper Jaffray estimates that, until the recession, teens spent as much as $127 billion a year on fashion and accessories alone. CBS News has reported that girls from eight to 12 years of age are the most powerful consumer group since the baby boomers. American children between seven and 14 spend an estimated $2,000 each per year on fashion accessories, clothing and beauty products, and with the stylish Sasha and Malia ensconced in the White House, being a girl might soon reach screamingly high levels of fashionability.
The Costellos’ elegant western Henrico home, not far from the classically beautiful campus of the University of Richmond, is large enough to accommodate the 10,000 zpr bags recently shipped from their Chinese manufacturer. In the finished basement, boxes line the walls and top the pool table. An entire room has been redesigned as a workspace with shipping and packing materials, so Chris and Kat are ready to send a zpr bag just about anywhere. And while they fill orders, the zpr bag sales team members, whom the Costellos met through their Nantucket real estate agent, meet with store buyers and purchasing agents, guaranteeing ever more orders.
To reach this dizzying height of popularity has taken a few years’ work. The zpr bag has come a long way since its initial prototypes, which were sewed by Chris’s mother. “The hardest part was finding the right zipper,” Chris says. “We had to evaluate metal versus plastic versus vinyl, and consider factors such as ease of use and durability.” They went through 25 zippers before finding the right one, and in the process, Kat laughs, they became “experts on zippers.”
They didn’t need to study branding, marketing and advertising, however. Both had already had successful careers in the field, working for a number of major corporations, including Capital One, where they first met in 2001.
The Costellos say the county couldn’t be a better place to do business. In some locales, they might have to rent warehouse or office space at pricey rates, but Kat says that in Henrico, “the cost of living is lower, and we have the space to work out of our home.”
Chris adds, “Living in Henrico makes it easy to get to places. It’s a quick flight to go see our PR firm in New York, and it’s easy to get to Dallas, too,” the location of Katwalk Kids, a permanent trade show where buyers from boutiques across the nation first got to see the zpr bag in 2008.
Such convenience is key. These days, when they’re not chasing after their two-year-old daughter, Emma, the couple is busy developing the next must-have accessory: the world’s first zippable, unzippable, rearrangeable tote. Totally cool.
Learn more at www.zprbag.com.
