CONTACT: Lori Barghini (651)-503-5233

Body Perks knows how to get attention

Kristin Tillotson / Star Tribune

Women's fashion trends don't usually begin in Minnesota. But the sole product of a Twin Cities company, BodyPerks, has been showing up on magazine covers, the hit cable TV show "Sex and the City," in department stores and on chic nightclub patrons from New York to Los Angeles.

The latest idea in intimate apparel, BodyPerks, is a pair of $20 silicone nipples designed to be worn -- noticeably -- under form-fitting clothing.

They are the brainchild of moonlighting entrepreneurs Lori Barghini and Julia Cobbs, who claim to have sold more than 23,000 pairs since launching their Web site last July. Nordstrom now carries them in 55 of its 70 stores, including at the Mall of America.

"At first, people looked at us like we were nuts," Cobbs said. "But women spend so much money on their breasts -- bras, lifts, reductions. They're a part of who we are, our femininity, that we've been talking about since we were 12."

The nipples "make women feel attractive and powerful," said Barghini, whose day job is selling advertising for the Star Tribune.

Added Barghini: "They're not for everyone, but they definitely get attention."

Whether BodyPerks will turn out to be a flash in the pad or a staple of lingerie departments remains to be seen, but the story of how this little product went to market is one for promotional textbooks.

It all began in Las Vegas, where Barghini and Cobbs and four friends went for a weekend getaway in April 1999.

"We were goofing around in our hotel room one night, getting ready to go out, and one friend came out of the bathroom with two of those little shampoo-bottle caps stuck under her tank top," Barghini said.

Informal product-testing ensued, and the amount of attention the cap-wearing women received in bars and casinos prompted Barghini and Cobbs to ask an engineer friend to help them develop a mold.

"I wish I had a video of us in Julia's kitchen with the blowtorches and wax," Barghini said.

The engineer is a silent partner, loath to reveal his identity for fear of losing his job with a conservative employer, Barghini said.

But she and Cobbs have been on the run ever since, returning to Vegas to hawk their pairs at the annual lingerie industry trade show and hosting a martini party at the Minneapolis nightclub Boom!, where one male attendee was overheard saying, "This is the only business party I've been to where it seems OK to look at chests."

A trip to the annual motorcycle rally in Sturgis, S.D., yielded sales of 1,000 pairs, plus "practice in how to politely reply to rude comments," Barghini said.

Barghini, who lives in St. Paul, graduated from the University of Minnesota Duluth with a degree in communications in 1982 and has worked in sales for several Minneapolis companies. She handles public relations, copywriting and marketing.

Cobbs, a 1987 University of Minnesota graduate, is an independent marketing consultant who lives in Edina. She met Barghini when they worked at the Carlson Companies several years ago and is now married to Barghini's brother. She developed the company's business plan, Web site and patent application. Another silent partner handles accounting and distribution.

Barghini remains amazed that "no one thought of this before," she said. A masterful quote machine who has dispensed pert quips -- "it's a boob job in a box" -- to media from Newsweek and the Washington Post to Playboy and the tabloid Star, Barghini said she test-marketed the finished product by asking women in restrooms of local nightspots such as First Avenue and the Quest to try them on, walk around and report back. "A lot of them didn't want to give them back," she said.

But the biggest coup was landing product placement on "Sex and the City," one of HBO's flagship programs, not just as a background image, but as a plot point (the show's raciest character dares her conservative friend to wear them in a bar). The show, which focuses on four single 30-something Manhattan women and their romantic misadventures, is the ideal demographic for BodyPerks. The week after the episode's premiere, the Patricia Field boutique -- one of Manhattan's hottest trendsetters since becoming SATC's designer of choice -- sold 800 pairs.

After hitting prime time, Barghini and Cobbs are shooting for mainstream: Besides Nordstorm, BodyPerks is now carried at several dozen specialty shops nationwide, including the Electric Fetus and the Fun Shop in Minneapolis, and has more than 10 regional sales reps pushing the product in the United States, Canada and Europe. They are also getting online orders "from countries I've never heard of" said Barghini, and have sold 10,000 pairs to a European distributor.

She added that "the only people I've gotten negative feedback from are women with breast implants, probably because they paid a lot more than $20 to get noticed."

To date, Barghini claims a wholesale gross of $102,000 on a total investment of $65,000, including promotion costs, Web site (www.body perks.com), packaging design and patent attorney's fees.

Who will wear BodyPerks?

"I think lots of young, single girls looking for that kind of attention, the same who wear the low-waisted jeans, will go for it," said Merle Ginsberg, entertainment editor for W magazine. "You won't see it on the chicest women."

Manette Scheininger, senior vice president of marketing for the intimate-apparel manufacturer Maidenform, offered another view: "I think it's a novelty for a small-niche market. Most of our research shows that woman want opacity. 'No show-through' is what we hear."

Scheininger is not a fan. "I thought we were leaving the woman-as-sex-object behind," she said.

Thus far, BodyPerks has been positioned as a fashion accessory, but soon the partners will begin to plan an approach to a new group of potential customers -- mastectomy patients.

"For this market, it's no laughing matter," said Eve Silver, a medical research analyst and double-mastectomy cancer survivor who is consulting with Barghini and Cobbs. "A very private part of their femininity has been [damaged], and this is a very inexpensive way to recapture a part of it."

In addition to being a fun accessory for some women and a confidence builder for breast-cancer survivors, the product has social value as well, Barghini says.

"I don't think people flirt enough," she said.

As for BodyPerks' success, Cobbs says: "A lot of people have ideas. We did something about ours."