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Tami Ben-Ami's involvement in a new beauty products company is more than skin deep For 20 years, Tami Ben-Ami has lived off her legs. Now the top Israeli model is trying to live off her wits, banking on the glamorous image she generated showing off Gottex bathing suits to sell a line of beauty products that carry her name.
The legs still seem endless. But at 39, Ben-Ami knows that the game is just about up and is making the necessary adjustments from that never-never world of modeling, where youth is eternal and wrinkles are worse than sin.
"I don't see it as a break with modeling," she insists. "There is a connection between fashion and beauty products and cosmetics. All the time I have been a model, I have given advice on beauty care. Now I have a line of products about which I can say: `This I can recommend.'"
The idea is hardly novel. Celebrities from Paul Newman to Elizabeth Taylor to Shaquille O'Neal have cashed in on name- recognition to sell everything from salad dressing to perfume to soft drinks. In Israel, Ben-Ami's toughest competition is Pnina Rosenblum, another ex-model, whose personal-name line of cosmetics and toiletries has captured about 10 percent of the local market.
Ben-Ami and Rosenblum have something else in common: Jechiel Teitelbaum.
His company, Extra Marketing Ltd., marketed Rosenblum's products until Rosenblum broke off their partnership last year; now he's bankrolling Ben-Ami.
Teitelbaum says he put up all the money for the venture. "I haven't yet worked out exactly how much it came to," he muses, "but it is in the several hundred-thousand shekel range."
Under their deal, Ben-Ami gets 10 percent of sales. She is also involved in product development and marketing, and leaves the finances largely to Teitelbaum.
Even if she can't avoid being a Rosenblum substitute, Ben-Ami is trying hard not to be a Rosenblum imitation. Physically they couldn't be more different.
Ben-Ami, olive-skinned, dark-haired and large-featured, is a kind of Semitic version of Lauren Bacall. Rosenblum, petite and blonde, is more a slightly naughty Farrah Fawcett.
Ben-Ami is also seeking a separate identity for her products, to carve out her own market niche. Her line emphasizes herbal ingredients;...