Hooking the hip crowd

As a former journalist, Kalika Yap understands the difficulty of penetrating the human mind, set on its own particular viewpoint, right or wrong. So now, as a marketer, she's rightfully proud of winning a small point, that is, inducing women to ask for her Luxe Links by name, rather than asking for a generic purse hook. After all, the Luxe Link is so much nicer.

Win a Luxe Link of your very own! Be among the first in Hawaii to get a Luxe Link by following this link to Nadine Kam's Fashion Tribe blog, www.starbulletin.com/blogs/fashiontribe. Be prepared to post a comment. First eight will receive a Luxe Link courtesy of company founder Kalika Yap and the Star-Bulletin.

Yap took a circuitous route to her path as owner of two businesses. After graduating from Kaiser High School in 1987 -- classmates might remember her by her middle and maiden names, Christine Joy Nacion -- she headed to New York University, where she graduated with a journalism degree and went on to work for CNBC and Bloomberg. When her boyfriend of four years landed a job in California, she moved with him. With her credentials, she figured she would land a media job easily. She didn't. What's more, she and her boyfriend broke up within three weeks.

"It was a complete disaster," she said. "I didn't have a job, I didn't have a car. There was nowhere for me to go."

Even so, she never gave a thought to retreating back east or to Hawaii, determined to make it right where she was.

With nothing better to do, she sought refuge at Cyber Java, one of the new Internet cafés that were just beginning to dot the landscape in 1996. For a born communicator like Yap, it was the most amazing network.

"My mom was a teacher, and she always said, 'If you want to learn something, teach it.' I started learning HTML and started teaching classes. Then I started going door to door to all the small businesses in the area and telling them they had to have a Web site. Everyone thought I was crazy.

"My friends from CNBC would visit and they would see me working at the café, helping make coffee, and would ask: 'Why do you have your own Web site? Why are you doing that?'

"But it ended up really, really good."

Sensing the future of the Web and its potential as a marketing and communications tool, Yap started Citrus Studios, a Santa Monica-based interactive design agency offering Web consulting, design and programming services. Writing had taught her to be exact in her word choices, and "citrus" seemed fitting. "I made lemonade out of lemons," she said.

YAP RECENTLY started a second business with a former NYU roommate, Rosella Bignami, based on her serendipitous discovery of purse links while traveling in Italy. The portable devices attach easily to table and countertops, allowing a woman's purse to hang, rather than sit on a potentially dirty floor, dangle from a chair back where it might fall, or rest uncomfortably on her lap or behind her back.

As a tidy, fastidious sort of person, she said: "When I saw them I freaked out. I thought, 'So I don't have to put my purse on the floor?' I was really excited."

The problem with many other hooks on the market is that they're not very attractive. Because those most likely to care about their handbags are also likely to carry designer purses, Yap figured she'd found a niche for her more upscale Luxe Link, of which 100 styles are available, 15 to 20 of them bearing Swarovski crystals. They cost $35 to $59.

Rather than a bulky hook, the Luxe Link features a sleek chain link that wraps around a polished disc that slips easily into any purse -- in its own little pouch, of course -- or attaches, like a charm, to any handbag.

Even at Neiman Marcus' Mariposa restaurant at lunchtime, just about every woman's purse is sitting on the floor, so Yap sees a lot of growth ahead for Luxe Link, already a hit with the Hollywood crowd. Those who use them include Lindsay Lohan, Nikki Hilton, Paris Hilton, Kimberly Stewart, Jessica Alba, Tori Spelling and Queen Latifah.

"At the end of 2004, no one had it. I think the trend is just coming up and every woman has to have one of these links.

"It's a nice gift, too, for the girl who has everything," Yap said. "Eventually, I want women to have one for each of their purses."

That would be sweet, indeed.