BRACE YOURSELF -- Wearing Support On Your Wrist

Braclets
Originally uploaded by RLabay.

(From The USA Today -- By Jill Lieber)

CHICAGO CUBS marketing executive JOHN McDONOUGH knew he had a hit when people snapped up 50,000 blue rubber bracelets stamped with "BELIEVE" in one day at THE CUBS' CONVENTION in January.

"People were buying them in increments of 100. In a hotel. In the middle of winter," he recalls of the mad dash for the $2 trinkets. "We knew then that this thing was going to be a rocket ride."

But McDonough never could have predicted how fast this rocket would soar. By mid-May, more than 500,000 bracelets had been sold.

And with the $500,000 proceeds from THE BELIEVE BRACLET sales, THE CUBS in June made their first donation -- to help renovate THILLENS STADIUM, a youth baseball field on CHICAGO's NORTH SIDE.

"Twenty or 30 years from now, people will look back at pictures of this bracelet phenomenon and say, 'What was that all about?'" McDonough says.

Simply put, "Anybody can wear a bracelet."

Brace Yourself -- Wearing Support On Your Wrist