It's That Time Of Year Again.

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? My favorite holiday by the way. Now we have pink everything.

I am not looking forward to it. A couple of weeks ago I paged through a couple of magazines, 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 want people to be aware and to help eradicate this terrible disease cancer is, but too many companies are using it to make a buck. Everything can be purchased in pink in October now. Randy is a good example as he buys pink hats like they are going out of style. 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.

My son came home from school yesterday and announced he would like to sell the pink wristbands he wears, to his fellow classmates in school and donate 100% of the proceeds to breast cancer research. That is more of the spirit I like.

My little company also sells a multitude of "pink" items from calendars to staplers. This year I may feel differently when someone purchases one of those items and send 100% of the proceeds to cancer research as well. Maybe I'll post a few things with all proceeds going to a worthy cause.

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. And there are some good products which are worth their pinkification. 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.