Its almost that time of year

Are you ready for the barrage of pink? It is going to be everywhere for 31 days starting on Saturday. Do you remember when October was black and orange for Halloween? Now we have pink everything. (Pink does not go with black and orange - well maybe with each one separately but not really all together.)

I am not looking forward to it. At the nail salon yesterday I paged through a couple of magazines, Self, Family Circle, and one other one whose title escapes my tiny brain, and all were full of pink stuff. There was a two page spread of items which are pinkified and their purchase will help support breast cancer. There were numerous ads for 'pinked' products. There were several articles with breast cancer stories. There was too much pink. I would have preferred articles on pumpkins, trick or treating, Halloween parties and decorations.

So anyway, I have braced myself. Perhaps I won't wear pink for the entire month. I wear pink often as it is one of my favorite colors. But I don't believe in all this pink crap - and crap it is. Everything can be purchased in pink in October now. What does it really do? It is basically a scam. It cons people into purchasing things that they believe are helping a cause when it is really a marketing ploy by many companies to sell more products.

You will notice it is very rare that they tell you how much of your purchase price goes to support breast cancer research or awareness or whatever. And that is the important question to ask. They may say 'this company will donate $25,000 from the purchase of this product during the month of October to breast cancer whatever'. But that means that a tiny percent of your purchase goes to the breast cancer part and when they hit $25,000 they will continue to sell the product but won't donate any more than that amount.

What you want to ask before you purchase anything pink is what portion of my purchase will go to breast cancer whatever. And is there a maximum the company is going to donate. Without knowing those two, I would skip the pink product and buy what you normally do. And if the answer is 10% of the profit from the sale, that is nothing. A $10 item probably wholesales for $5 and of that probably $2 is profit so that means your 10% is $0.20. You are better off sending in $10 directly.

Yes there are some legitimate companies who donate a decent portion of their sales. You can check them out at www.thinkbeforeyoupink.org.  And there are some good products which are worth their pinkification. Two of my favorite kitchen utensils are a Kitchen Aid knife and Kitchen Aid ice cream scoop that have pink handles. They are good quality and I use them regularly. But for 31 days you will need to sift through the pinkification and make your decisions on what you want to buy. Or just skip the pinkification and send a check to breast cancer research. What I really wish I could see is all the money spent on pink products was just sent in for cancer research.