In 1983, a company named Phiten was founded in Kyoto. The company made products it calls “quasi-drugs,” alternative medicine with pseudoscientific explanations for what each product is supposed to do. Most of them are supposed to harmonize with the human body’s natural energy field, to help you sleep, or energize you, or make you good at sports.
So what? You’ve heard of this before. Why write about this company rather than the dozens or hundreds of others who do the same thing? Thanks to a happy coincidence at the turn of the century, this little Japanese company from the ’80s gets on national TV in the United States, every Sunday night at 8:00.
Energy Fields and Aqua-Metals
Photo by *嘟嘟嘟*
First, a little talk about the claims behind the products. Phiten’s main selling point is its Aqua-Metal technology. According to their sales materials, Phiten products are dyed in Aqua-Metals, “metals broken down into microscopic particles dispersed in water.” They do this with gold, titanium, palladium, silver, and platinum.
This process is supposed to better harness the properties of the metals. What are those properties? The Phiten website says they use gold because “It’s believed that Gold helps to strengthen the immune system. It is a perfect enhancer for the absorption of nutrients, regeneration of tissues, and circulation. Many have also claimed that it is a powerful anti-aging agent.” I hope whoever wrote the ad copy gets a phone call from their high school English teacher about all those weasel words.
Phiten makes a lot of products that straddle the surprisingly thin line between alternative medicine and athletic gear: necklaces, lotions, gels, shirts, and by far the most terrifying, Aqua Gold Drinking Water. And, if you’re privy, you can even buy necklaces and lotions to make your pet feel better too. Phiten’s product line has expanded over time, and the company certainly has as well. But the real story is how this Japanese product made the leap across the Pacific Ocean into America, finding a newer, male-r market for these pseudoscientific gels and creams.
Baseball Stars and a New Sales Strategy
Curtis Granderson is a big proponent of Phiten necklaces, which have helped him hit for a .125 batting average so far this year.
In 2001, in what was either a chance occurrence or a brilliant marketing maneuver, Phiten had its big break in the United States. On one of the Major League Baseball All-Stars trips to Japan they do every so often, future Hall-of-Fame pitcher Randy Johnson found a Phiten necklace and decided he liked it. According to The New York Times, he started the trend in the US.
Phiten has a product that works, which is extremely important. I’ve been asked to use a lot of products, but this is very beneficial because of what I do. Pitching at my age, my body structure gets tired. I’m always trying to find a product that will make me better, to recover quicker, to be stronger, and so when I’m working with a company such as Phiten, and they’re improving and trying to get better, the results of the products I’m using will make me better as well.
- Randy Johnson
The necklaces really caught on in baseball after 2004, when the “cursed” Red Sox swept the Cardinals for a World Series victory, while seemingly everyone on the team was wearing a Phiten necklace.
Due to a confluence of superstitious baseball players and Phiten company reps making their way into Spring Training dugouts, Phiten accessories spread fast across Major League Baseball. The list of players who wear Phiten is too long to print here. The bracelets blend in fairly well, but the necklaces are hard to miss when you watch on television. In every other close-up shot, you and everyone else watching ESPN will see that ropey necklace, usually matched to the team’s color. Baseball players get them for free, and the ones that keep wearing them are free advertising for that corporation in Kyoto. In a handful of cases, those relationships are even extended into paid endorsement deals. Remember that Aqua Gold Drinking Water? Angels pitcher CJ Wilson recommends it!
The benefits of what happened with Randy Johnson and the Boston Red Sox are clear today: Look at Phiten’s website and you’ll see a list of “Brand Ambassadors.” Big name baseball players from Justin Verlander and Yu Darvish to Josh Hamilton and Shin-Soo Choo sit right up at the top of the page. No one outside of baseball is a household name in the US: the US Men’s Kendo team, softball pitcher Jennie Finch, Japanese pro golfer Hideki Matsuyama. The baseball players are all wearing Phiten’s product on national television, making people like me and a country full of amateur players ask “What’s that hempy looking necklace they’re all wearing?” Without them, what are the odds that I would have ever have heard of Phiten Aqua-Metal necklaces?
You know what? I hear some guys say they help. Some guys wear them because they’re afraid that if they don’t wear them, they’ll miss out on something. I actually wore one of the Phiten bracelets at one time, and I felt that my elbow pain went away. Then I gave it to somebody else by mistake, and he put it in his pocket and said his cheek went numb.
- Pittsburgh Pirates manager Clint Hurdle
The company is now branching out into the NBA and NHL, with hopes of replicating their success on a new market. And unless NBA and NHL players happen to be more resistant to wearing necklaces on TV, what’s there to stop this formula for success from working again?
Hedging Bets and the Logic of Magic
Photo by Alan Sung
It’s tempting to say baseball players are stupid or superstitious for wearing the necklaces and buying into the hype (the ones who aren’t getting paid to endorse Phiten, that is). But what harm does it do them? They’re not paying for the necklace or the bracelet or the athletic tape, and a lot of their teammates wear them, and who are they to say the pseudoscience and chemistry is made up?
Occasionally you’ll see someone do an informal study on the effectiveness of Phiten wear on sports performance, but the results never say much. In a report for ESPN’s “Outside The Lines” program, Dr. John Porcari of The University of Wisconsin at La Crosse performed a series of tests on the Power Balance bracelets, an American product once very popular in the NBA. He had athletes perform a number of tests based on Power Balance promotional material, demonstrating strength, balance, and flexibility. The athletes would do the test once while wearing a Power Balance bracelet and once wearing a dollar store rubber bracelet, with a wristband covering the bracelet so they would not know which they were using. No matter which bracelet the athletes wore, they performed better in their second tests, either from added familiarity in the experiment, or from the added confidence they got from the switch in bracelet. Porcari proclaimed that the bracelets were a hoax.
Phiten is treading dangerous ground. That American “magic bracelet” company, Power Balance, was forced to pay a $57 million settlement in 2011, practically ending the business. The company claimed that their bracelets improved the wearer’s strength, balance, and flexibility, but when the claim was challenged in a federal court class action lawsuit, the owners had no scientific evidence to back their claims. The owners admitted their claims were false and offered full refunds, then filed for bankruptcy and eventually sold the company.
And a fun little side note: Power Balance, founded by two Californians, claimed its products were based on “Eastern philosophy,” whereas the Japanese Phiten company doesn’t advertise any kind of oriental mystique. Perhaps said “Eastern Philosophy” was just “The Philosophy of Phiten.”
The products are supposed to make you feel better and feel less fatigue, but is that going to be measurable in baseball statistics? And even players did play better when they wear the bracelets, how would you know what is the placebo effect and what is not? If wearing the “magic Japanese necklace” makes an athlete more confident, then he’ll play better, Aqua Titanium aside.
If I were a high school baseball player right now, I might even wear one. At this point, so many baseball players wear them that wearing one makes you look more like a baseball player. And looking like a real baseball player could make other people treat you differently, could make a scout pay more attention to you, and could help you fit in on a team. Fifty dollars is a lot for a ropey-looking necklace, but it’s not hard to imagine real benefits past all the energy field pseudo-science stuff.
“I used to imitate all kinds of people, I would do Barry Zito’s windup. When I batted, I would do what Chipper Jones did. I also wore the wrist tape, the arm bands, the batting gloves, no batting gloves. Whatever you saw somebody doing, you had to do it. These ropes are definitely being worn all the way down through the farm system. You’re going to see people in high school wearing them. If kids today are emulating us wearing the twisted ropes, I’m speechless, in a good way.” – Texas Rangers pitcher Derek Holland
By gaining so much traction in Major League Baseball, Phiten has managed to warp things so that buying one of their Aqua-Metal antioxidant necklaces is actually a logical decision for a young athlete. You don’t have to buy into their claims to buy a bracelet. That’s what is genius about the company. Now maybe they can ditch the Aqua Gold Drinking Water.
Bonus Wallpapers!
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Sources:
“What’s with the thicker necklaces?” from Yahoo! Sports
“The power of belief” from ESPN The Magazine
“Bat speed a bit off? Try a titanium necklace.” from The New York Times
Phiten.com
“Twisted Misters: Phiten neckwear all the rage” from MLB.com