wednesday, february 18, 2004
news
the university daily kansar
5A
Vintage clothes come downtown
By Dave Nobles
nobles@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
Don't call its clothing retro, but upstart company Adonis Apparel is capitalizing on the trend.
Jeff Grandsted/Kansan
The company, founded by Dustan Fankhauser, has begun a collegiate clothing line, starting with sales at the University of Kansas and Kansas State University.
Dustan Fankhauser, Adonis Apparel founder and owner, delivered a shipment of his company's T-shirts to Jock's Nitch, 837 Massachusetts St. Monday evening. Adonis Apparel makes jackets, sweatshirts, and T-shirts with vintage-style logos.
Fankhauser said he didn't like to use the terms "retro" or "old school" but that "classic" was a better way to refer to the clothing.
"Obviously, our stuff has a retro feel, and we've ran with that," Fankhauser said. "I don't want to be seen as a super-trendy company."
company. Pankhauser started Adonis Apparel nearly seven months ago. He said he thought of the idea after he saw a trend of vintage clothing and a monotony in regular college clothing.
"I always felt that collegiate apparel was lame," Fankhauser said. "And then I said 'Why isn't anyone doing this?' and there it was."
Tamyra Heim, manager of Sugarartown Traders, 918 Massachusetts St., said Fankhauser's idea would succeed based on the popularity of vintage clothing.
In fact, Heim said the vintage trend was among the most popular and fastest growing that she had seen since she had worked at Sugartown.
"People see it all over TV and it helps that people like Ashton Kutcher are wearing stuff like it," Heim said. "It's not just for the town weirdos anymore."
Although Adonis only sells clothes at two universities now, Fankhauser said about five more were in the works.
The University of Missouri, the University of Colorado and Colorado State University are among the schools in the company's sights. Fankhauser is also planning to design clothing for his alma mater, Miami University in Ohio.
The company has also agreed to design clothing for two ski resorts in Colorado: Loveland and Breckenridge.
Fankhauser sells the clothes at various bars and sororities in Lawrence and Manhattan and said the brand appeals more to females than males.
The first bar on Adonis' Lawrence agenda was Abe and Jake's Landing, 8 E. Sixth St. In return for the right to showcase the apparel at the Abe and Jake's, Adonis will design clothing for the bar.
Fankhauser said although he was taking small jobs on the side, he was still trying to focus on the big picture.
"We're trying to formulate a brand," Fankhauser said. "I'm not trying to pick up every little job, but at first it can help us get our name out there."
Jock's Nitch Sporting Goods,
837 Massachusetts St., purchased
small amounts of all of Adonis'
Kansas merchandise Monday to
test the demand for the clothes.
Although Jock's Nitch hasn't purchased large amounts of the clothes, general manager Doug Dobbins said he was confident the clothing would sell.
"I wouldn't buy them if I didn't." Dobbins said. "It's got a retro
look that nobody else is printing."
Some businesses see Adonis Apparel as competition.
Bill Muggy, Jayhawk Bookstore manager, said he saw the company, as well as local bars, as competition for students' discretionary dollars.
"It's kind of an underground economy," Muggy said. "There's nothing I can do about it."
Muggy said he would consider carrying the apparel as long as he wasn't the only one out of a hundred vendors doing so.
School works to attract minorities
—Edited by Stephanie Lovett
By Marc Ingber
mingber@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
The University of Kansas School of Pharmacy will hold a minority recruitment conference tomorrow and Friday to help attract minorities into a career field that has historically seen a lack of diversity.
Elizabeth Topp, director and professor of pharmaceutical chemistry, said that the main goal of the conference was to attract minority graduate students to the University's program. From 2002
to 2003, less than one percent of the students in the graduate program qualified as minorities.
"Statistics like this are similar to the problem the pharmacy field has seen across the country," Topp said. "We haven't done a good job nationally of recruiting minorities into biomedical science."
Jack Fincham, dean of pharmacy, said that although this year the number of qualified minority graduate students on track to get a doctorate had been raised to around 15 percent, he still thought the number should be higher. He would like to see an
increase of 10 percent during the next five years.
The School of Pharmacy has also started a Multicultural Scholars Program this year to raise the number of minorities. Fincham said the program was started in response to the business school's minority scholars program, which had been successful.
"We are in our twelfth year, and it's working wonderfully," said Renate Mai-Dalton, head of the business school's program.
The business school's program, which was started in 1992 and has 28 members, has a graduation rate of 77 percent, which is above the 56 percent overall graduation rate at the University.
There are other minority scholar programs at the University in African-American Studies, Humanities and Western Civilization, Human Development and Family Life, the School of Architecture and more.
The School of Pharmacy's Multicultural Scholars Program has seven members in its first year, but is looking to increase that number in the coming years.
-Edited by Paul Kramer
Business program sends students overseas
By Jodie Kraftt
jkrafft@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
Students with $500 and a desire to develop business skills abroad can work in one of 87 countries through a campus organization called AISEC.
AIESEC, formerly a french acronym for an economic and commercial sciences academy, is the largest student-run, not-for-profit organization in the world. The organization dropped the acronym as its membership has
grown to encompass a wider range of disciplines.
Because it is an exchange program, AIESEC members work with businesses around the world to recruit students to the United States, or to help domestic students find work in another country.
The University of Kansas chapter has 35 members and would like to expand, said Karl Geiger, chapter president. Geiger, a Washington, D.C., junior, said in a world of international politics and economics, it was becoming increasingly important for students to have
international experience. Right now, approximately 20 KU students or graduates are working abroad through AIESEC.
Students can choose from four main categories of internships: management, information technology, developmental and linguistics. Within these four, students work for companies international universities and English teaching institutions.
Kristen Reinert, Overland Park senior, worked last summer as a marketing director at the University of Economics in Prague. She
said that her internship taught her about the business culture of the Czech Republic, as well as the country's culture.
"I adore that city, which is why I want to go back," Reinted said.
Reinert already applied for, and been accepted to, another internship in Prague for this summer.
Although she has traveled abroad extensively, Reinert said the process of getting a job outside of the United States would have been more difficult without AIESEC.
Edited by Paul Kramer
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