Las Vegas teen savors design contest victory

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Eimi Marritt, a 18-year-old Las Vegas resident who won the Fresh & Easy Design-a-Bag contest, earned $5,000 to spend on groceries.

By Brian Nordli (contact)

Saturday, Aug. 18, 2012 | 2 a.m.

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Eimi Marritt's winning design was inspired, she says, by her favorite Fresh & Easy fruits.

Eimi Marritt can’t wait to get her hands on some peaches.

At the mercy of whatever groceries her mother buys, it’s been more than a year since she’s eaten the succulent fruit. But that’s soon to change.

The 18-year-old Liberty High School graduate won the Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Design-a-Bag contest, earning her $5,000 to spend on groceries. Her design will also be featured on reusable grocery bags sold at Fresh & Easy grocery stores in Las Vegas, Arizona and California beginning in January.

“I was just excited and happy,” Marritt said. “I couldn’t believe it.”

Marritt’s design was chosen as a top-10 finalist out of nearly 600 entries by Fresh & Easy; then Fresh & Easy reward members decided the winner by vote. Marritt is the second Las Vegan to win the contest in its three-year history. Tonya Jacobsen won last year.

Before all that, though, her family picked it as her best design out of four options to be submitted. She had designed bags featuring a bunch of vegetables formed into the shape of a flower, one with pixelated fruit and another showing the different textures of a strawberry, but nothing topped the fruit-splatter design.

Placed on a clean, white background, a strawberry, orange and lime bursting with ripeness, look as if they had just been dropped onto the page; its juices splattered everywhere. Marritt said she got the idea from the splatter effect used in her high school yearbook, and made the design on Photoshop.

“The inspiration came from my favorite fruits from Fresh & Easy,” Marritt said. “I wanted to keep my design simple and fresh like the store.”

Marritt said she only entered the contest because her sister asked her if she wanted to submit a design. She said she’d never won a contest, so when her father called her after receiving an email indicating she won, she was shocked.

She said she’s excited that her design could encourage people to purchase and utilize reusable bags. It also means that the money she and her family normally would have spent on groceries can be used to help pay for college. Marritt will be attending the University of Nevada, Reno, to study chemical engineering.

“I didn’t get (a lot) of money from scholarships, so this will help me a lot,” Marritt said.

But first, she plans to buy some of those peaches, and then maybe some pears.