Teacher Leelee Chou, 27, flipped through the catalog and saw a part of childhood she had missed--a Korean doll in traditional hanbok dress.
Chou, whose ancestry is half-Chinese and half-Korean, grew up in an upper-middle-class white neighborhood in Upland.
"As a kid, I played with Barbies. It was subliminally ingrained in me that this was beauty. This was to be valued. I didn't have a Korean doll," said Chou, a sixth-grade teacher at Belvedere Middle School in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Now, in her classroom and with her own child, Chou turns to Asia for Kids, which says it is the largest mail-order company of its kind in the country. The catalog offers ethnic dolls, crafts, books and other items featuring Asian languages and culture, such as an anthology of Hmong folk tales and a CD of Cambodian court music with English translations of the Khmer lyrics.
A Cincinnati mother of two who started the catalog four years ago with 100 stapled copies has built the company's mailing list to 1 million people worldwide. More than 25% of the company's customers live in Southern California, its biggest market.
Companies such as Asia for Kids are responding to demographics showing the impact of Asian Americans, along with new Asian immigrants, as consumers. In California, for instance, people of Asian ancestry are the state's fastest-growing and best educated in terms of school level completed, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Asian Americans also have the highest average household income at $46,695, according to the latest bureau statistics.
"More and more companies are starting to recognize the importance of Asian American consumers--that they have not only an influence on the people in their communities but that they're a link to people in Asia," said Bill Imada, president of Imada Wong Communications Group, a Los Angeles-based marketing communications firm specializing in Asian Americans.
For instance, Imada pointed out, New York Life Insurance Co. offers a Chinese-language Web site. "It's not just Monterey Park anymore," with its proliferation of Chinese-language signs and businesses catering to the majority Asian population, he said.
Yet, researchers have found, images of Asian Americans in everything from advertisements to dolls are still hard to find in most of the country (the Toy Manufacturers of America does not track the production or sales of ethnic dolls and toys).
