Selling the Amish

“I see this in the food industry.  There’s quite a few organizations here locally that will sell using “Amish”.  And what they’re trying to do is create the perception that it does come from Amish producers.  When it doesn’t.  They don’t explicitly say so, they just say “Amish Country this”, “Amish Country that,”…”Amish” is big, [...]

Continue reading “Amish Country” on the label: Deception or fair game?

Temperatures are dropping and that can mean only one thing: the return of the “Amish Miracle Heater”.  The device got worked-over pretty well in the press last season, but regardless (or perhaps in part due to all the attention), the sales campaign of the Canton, Ohio-based Heat Surge company was by all accounts wildly successful.  [...]

Continue reading Miracles keep happening: the Amish heater returns

Three Amish media links: Yours truly commenting in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on our old friend, the Amish Miracle Heater. An unheard-of tragedy in the Amish community at Holmes County. And a quirky story I stumbled across, ‘The Amishmen of Times Square’, by writer Jude Stewart.

Continue reading Amish media roundup

Popped open a copy of USA Today in-between flights yesterday, and what should I find but another full-page ad for the ‘Amish miracle heater’. I was hoping to avoid the heater issue as it’s been covered enough elsewhere, but looks like there is a lot of fresh reporting just out.  Good Amish heater analysis at [...]

Continue reading ‘Miracle’ marketing

In this second part of an interview with an anonymous Lancaster County Amishman, we look at the phenomenon of outsiders joining the Amish, using the Amish name to market and sell products to the public, Amish participation in the recent presidential election, and the meaning and purpose of shunning. (And if you missed the first [...]

Continue reading Part Two: An Amish America Q-and-A with a Lancaster County Amishman

photo: amishcigar.com ‘Amish’ sells. That fact is not lost on the numerous merchants of Amish-branded stuff.  Software, refrigerators, and organic cotton bedsheets are among the products that non-Amish dealers have sold under the Amish moniker or by association with Amish images. Often, the connection to bona fide ‘Amishness’ (whatever that term means) is dubious at [...]

Continue reading Marketing the Amish

Okay, just a bit lazy today on the Amish blog and trying to get my act together to go run however many miles in the freezing Polish weather (snowed yesterday!), so I am going to do a little roll call of some of my favorite posts from the past year: Do the Amish use credit [...]

Continue reading Credit cards, nuclear power, and funny cigars

From Amish Society, Fourth Edition: ‘…there are many myths about Amish foods.  There is the legend of “seven sweets and seven sours” on Amish tables.  The only place I have ever eaten seven sweets and sours is in a tourist hotel.  The tourist industry has done well in capitalizing on myths, judging by the number [...]

Continue reading John Hostetler on Amish food

Here’s an ad for Amish Naturals pasta. It hits all the main points–made by Amish hands, ingredients cultivated in the heart of Ohio’s Amish country, water from Amish wells, and the noodle plant was even constructed by Amish workers. Plus it’s all-organic. As the Amish population continues its explosive growth, ‘wellness living’  increases in popularity, [...]

Continue reading Selling the Amish, continued

‘Amish’ sells. Whether it’s an overpriced bag of trail mix or a six-figure kitchen cabinet installation, people gravitate towards the implicit quality of anything with the Amish label. Exactly what does that label mean anyway? Does tobacco grown in the general vicinity of Amish country count as ‘Amish’?  What about an RV produced at a [...]

Continue reading Amish for Sale