What are the Noritake china patterns and how are they determined?

The china patterns would relate to what we consider to be gold banded. We adopt designs based on our designers who are based in New Jersey and we have a design team and we have a director of design, who is just brilliant. He gets influences from everything from fashion shows to magazines. He goes to Germany a couple of times a year, to the Frankfurt Fair and the house ware fair and sees what's going on in those. We also have home furnishing that he consults with to make sure that the colors are correct. And what they do is they just generally build the concept for collection. For instance, we have a new collection that was introduced a year and a half ago called the Meridian collection and its really, really cool because depending on the accessory pieces, that you put with it, you can make it look of very, very contemporary or very, very traditional. So, it's really a great pattern for people who want to have one china pattern that they can bring out at Easter time or Thanksgiving or for a Sunday dinner, something like that and still look kind of traditional. Yet if they get accent pieces and layer the accent pieces with square pieces and mugs and crystal and it's a great look together and depending on what accessory pieces you lay out you're either going to look contemporary or traditional and that was kind of groundbreaking thinking about designing it. We were very obsessive about the ergonomics. The cup has to feel right, that it has to be shaped in a way that's going to hold the coffee hot and so we designed a thinner kind of a cup rather than the old style tea cups. The old style tea cups the coffee got cold very quickly and people didn't like that because they were savoring a cup of coffee and wanted hot coffee. So we kind of changed the shape of the cups. Even the dinner plates have to stack really well... large accessory pieces, soups and covered vegetables and covered butters and things like that so... there is a whole process that's involved in... in introducing a collection and of course... the material that you are going to use. Do you want to use a bone china? Do you want it to be an inexpensive collection? Prices are a big determining factor because we make things routinely to sell anywhere from $30 up to $130 for the five piece plates and there are gradations in the design and in the artistry that's involved in the materials and what not. We always try and keep our designs really, really traditional while also introducing something a little bit more modern. There has to be a classical influence...and that is what people are looking for when their mindset is towards chinaware they want what they perceive is their grandma's china or mom's china with flowers on it, in a pretty gold band and upgraded to be more modern, more contemporary but they still want that kind of china feeling to it and I guess I would kind of equate it to the way a dinner table is made.