U. student doesn't need med school for med cash

Adam Blackman knows a trend when he sees one. Following in the time-honored entrepreneurial tradition of cashing in on college clothing fads -- from the boxer short to the Bart Simpson t-shirt -- the Wharton junior has already sold almost 5000 pairs of hospital scrub pants, an item he feels will be the next big craze in student attire. "[The hospital pants] are a good product to latch on to," Blackman said. "They've never really been marketed retail." Blackman is also following in the time-honored Wharton tradition of making a bundle off of someone else's idea. "Everybody knows about hospital pants. They've been a fad for some time," Blackman said. "It's not an original idea in terms of the product." But all's fair in love and business, and Blackman says he wants to expand his business dramatically to include other university bookstores. He said he recently sent out promotional material about his hospital pants to 200 other schools, in the hope that they too will want to cash in. "I don't see any reason why a few hundred bookstores won't want [the pants]," Blackman said. "I anticipate a good response." Although he won't say how much profit he is making from his pants-peddling operation -- which he also sells to high schools as a fund-raising gimmick -- Blackman insists that all of his profits are going back into his business, which he calls Students' Choice. Blackman's friend, College and Wharton junior Cindy Warshawsky said she thinks the trousers trade is a "great idea." "They are great for college students," Warshawsky said. "They could become the same kind of clothing as boxer shorts -- something you can throw on when you're hanging out or can wear them different ways or cut into shorts or whatever." Blackman said he never expected his unique product to become the hit that it did. In fact, Blackman never really saw himself as an entrepreneur at all until his pants hit it big. "I never had a lemonade stand as a kid," Blackman said. But as a freshman he put together a catalog of products for college students and distributed it to the University and at high schools. He said the hospital pants were the only product that didn't fail miserably and he knew that he had a winner on his hands. And the rest was history. Blackman said that he hopes to expand his business to include hospital shirts, and maybe bandanas, too. And if these too are successful, Blackman may just decide to go into clothes marketing as a career. "I'd rather work for myself than for someone else," Blackman said. "And I'd rather do this than get a job."

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