JOHN ZHAO is a New York disc jockey. He also describes himself as a fashion designer, a poet and a philosopher. But it is in none of these disparate talents that he recently found fortune.

Zhao, or DJ Kato as he prefers to be known, manufactures the Crystal Mini iPod with his business partner, James Duboise. “It is basically the iPod Mini and we cover it with Swarovski crystals in a number of different designs,” he says.

He also sells them for as much as $999 (£519) each, a $750 mark-up on the non-bling version of the same Apple music player.

Zhao and Duboise, and their company called Simple Solutions, this month landed a supply deal with Bloomingdale’s, the upmarket New York department store, and they have a scheduled appointment with Vogue, which could be enough to turn their small business into a New York design house of renown.

But the success of their relatively simple idea has more to do with the iPod than with the crystals they stick to them.

“No doubt, the iPod is a revolutionary product. You could not have done what we have done unless it was already stylish and already a fashion statement,” Zhao says.

The company is just one of hundreds springing up all over the world to cater to more than five million iPod owners. The range of businesses adapting to this single product is so varied that the iPod could be said to have created its own micro-economy.

This iPod economy includes such companies as Bose, the speaker manufacturer, and BMW, the German carmaker, alongside startups such as Zhao and Duboise’s Simple Solutions.

BMW has integrated the iPod into some of its vehicles, spending millions of pounds upgrading the production line, while Bose has produced a range of speakers specifically designed to cradle the iPod.

Then there are web-based start-ups such as Rip Digital that will take away your CDs by the hundred and load them on to your computer for a small fee.

Bob Crandall, a senior economist at the Brookings Institute, the Washington think-tank, likens the iPod to Henry Ford’s famed Model T.

“In 1903 Henry Ford founded the Ford Motor Company and before he integrated backwards to start making all the parts himself, he had to commission and buy all the components for the car from other companies,” Crandall says.

“So all of a sudden you had dozens of companies surrounding this revolutionary machine that was changing people’s lives and they were prospering on the back of Ford.”

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