Friday, May 4, 2007
The definition of luxury -- great service
According to this WSJ story (subscription required), Guy Salter, deputy chairman of the British luxury-industry organization Walpole, says that "unless you're in the sweet spot 18-to-34 demographic -- or you're a new-luxury consumer in China or India -- you're probably getting better attention from brands like Apple, J. Crew, Amazon, Virgin Airlines and Starbucks, which are providing innovative new products coupled with great customer service -- the stuff that was once the purview of luxury."
And, "Jim Taylor, vice chairman of Harrison Group marketing consultants, found that the top 5% of the U.S. population in terms of wealth -- people responsible for $1.3 trillion in discretionary spending -- don't even like the word "luxury" anymore, because it suggests something with mass appeal."
In contrast, fellow Santa Feresident and former Guccidesigner, Tom Fordseems to have stumbled big time with his new flagship men's storein NYC. According to this New York Times story(registration required) that completely pans the store and especially the service:
An unintentionally hilarious parody of a pretentious Madison Avenue boutique, the store reeks of arriviste Anglophilic posturing dressed up as aristocratic gentlemanly refinement. For all the preopening ballyhoo about the it’s-all-about-you customization and details like buttons on trouser cuffs so that your butler can brush away the remains of the day — at last! — the reality is more akin to a luxury store in a second-tier market during the mid-’90s.
The review overview also lists prices as "Unapologetically expensive"! But then "the top 5% of the U.S. population in terms of wealth...responsible for $1.3 trillion in discretionary spending."
The Haute in Couture
This falls into the category of I had no idea! This year a mere ten designers still qualify as purveyors of haute couture according to this WSJ story (subscription required).
"The term "haute couture" is protected under law by the French Ministry of Industry, and only those designated by the Chamber as couturiers can use the term -- which translates loosely as "high fashion," though the word couture technically means "sewing." (The legal protection does not extend to the use of the word couture alone.)"
"…the haute couture tradition dates to Charles Frederick Worth, a 19th-century Englishman-turned-Parisian who showed his ideas on live models and enjoyed the patronage of Napoleon III. In 1868, the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture was created to enforce rules involving fabrics, numbers of employees, and numbers of designs for day and evening wear. This was so strict and costly that only the best of the best could qualify. By the mid-20th century, more than 100 haute couture houses competed earnestly for well-heeled clientele by following the stringent set of rules: sewing by hand, with employees who are French, in ateliers that are French, in France."
So, just in case you thought otherwise, Juicy Couture isn't really couture! :)
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Unprofessional Lieberman Research Worldwide at 1-800-GO-FU** yourself?
On Friday, April 6, 2007 we got a call in the evening at our home in the Bay Area from a cold caller who said he was calling from Lieberman Research Worldwide and
wanted to ask us some questions related to DVDs.
When I declined and asked him to remove us from his calling list he said he would do that only after we finished the 2 minute questionnaire. When I asked him for the phone number he was calling from -- he responded that the phone number was 1-800-943-GO FU** YOURSELF.
Considering that these cold callers are calling us without our permission, wasting our time and spamming us, is this the kind of behavior Lieberman Research Worldwide promotes for its clients? Do their clients know about this?
I'd emailed them back on April 6 to ask for a response but have yet to get one almost two weeks later. Such companies' clients should be warned that consumers won't put up with such unprofessional conduct.
New 4/7/08: It appears that there are two Lieberman Research's. Lieberman Research Worldwide and Lieberman Research Group. I recently got an email from Lieberman Research Group's CFO disputing that their contractors or employees had anything to do with this, and that they don't do DVD surveys. If that is the case, then my apologies. I had linked to both websites since it was unclear which company was at fault, or whether the two companies are related.
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Gozoof recommendations on getting book published
This Gozoof page has several recommendations from Gozoof users on resources for getting books published including literary agents guides, tips from authors etc.
Monday, August 28, 2006
Star power?
This New York Times story (registration required) evaluates the value of a star, in the aftermath of the Tom Cruise-Sumner Redstone fireworks:
“There is no statistical correlation between stars and success,” said S. Abraham Ravid, a professor of economics and finance at Rutgers University, who, in a 1999 study of almost 200 films released between 1991 and 1993, found that once one considered other factors influencing the success of a film, a star had no impact on its rate of return. Employing a star had virtually no discernible impact on the box office itself. Mr. Cruise would no doubt object to that assertion. And to be fair, there is some theoretical pedigree to the idea that he may be worth every penny. In fact, there is a whole branch of economics that aims to explain how talented people generate so much more money than competitors who are only slightly less good. It’s called “superstar economics.”
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Doing GOOD
According to this WSJ story (subscription required), one heir is trying to do GOOD. I think it's a great idea who's time has come, and if done right, the publication could reach many younger people (rich and not so rich) who want to do good with however much money they have to give.
We're not philanthropists. We're not just wanting to give away money for the sake of giving money, nor for the social or other benefits some giving brings. We want our money put to good use. We want to see change. To see our money make a visible difference...not squandered on reinventing the wheel or competing with other like-minded organizations.
For the first time last year, we pulled a financial commitment to a nonprofit because it wasn't taking advantage of the other organizations that were already in the field doing complementary work. Even though we met with the Managing Director (the ED was too busy to meet) and conveyed our concerns, they were more keen to tell us that they knew what they were doing and how much experience they had running nonprofits. Well they lost us not only as donors but also as supporters, and it appears from the most recent invitation to their LA fundraiser, we weren't the only ones they lost.
Bernie Goldhirsh, the founder of Inc. magazine, amassed his fortune by selling entrepreneurs ideas on how to make money. Now, his son Ben is trying to make money by telling people how to give something back.
...With some of that money, his 26-year-old son plans to launch a magazine in September called GOOD with a dual purpose: build a profitable business and serve as a platform for people looking to do good. Mr. Goldhirsh is funding the initial $2.5 million start-up cost himself, and he has assembled a core group of about 12 employees -- all under 30.
Netflix impasse
Just as I've been thinking of this problem...related to the last film we received, "Good Night, and Good Luck" which has sat on our entertainment center for weeks...while we've paid for and watched a handful of other fluff/commedies. According to this Wall Street Journal story (subscription required):
Netflix Inc., which boasts nearly five million members, often trumpets how its all-you-can-eat rental model is changing the way people are watching movies. But Netflix may also be changing the way people don't watch them. Through its Web site, Netflix makes it easy to comb through a massive catalog of 60,000 films. It offers access to everything from Charlie Chaplin's 1921 silent tramp movie "The Kid" to recent Academy Award-winners like "Crash." And some members admit that when browsing the Netflix backlog, they overestimate their appetite for off-the-beaten-track films. The result: Sometimes DVDs languish for months without being watched.
"It's a paradox of abundance," said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of culture and communication at New York University. If people aren't pressured to see a movie in a specific time frame, he said, viewers tend to put it lower on their priority list. "When you have every choice in front of you, you have less urgency about any particular choice," he added.
Wednesday, June 7, 2006
The long tail of Netflix
According to this New York Times story on Netflix, which has over 1 billion movie ratings in its system (since it doesn't get rid of the movies you rate even when you leave and then return much later) and some five million households with accounts it is the long tail that's important (just as on eBay, Blogit and many other web services...the idea that there's a small market for every kind of item):
Out of the 60,000 titles in Netflix's inventory, I ask, how many do you think are rented at least once on a typical day?
The most common answers have been around 1,000, which sounds reasonable enough. Americans tend to flock to the same small group of movies, just as they flock to the same candy bars and cars, right?
Well, the actual answer is 35,000 to 40,000. That's right: every day, almost two of every three movies ever put onto DVD are rented by a Netflix customer. "Americans' tastes are really broad," says Reed Hastings, Netflix's chief executive. So, while the studios spend their energy promoting bland blockbusters aimed at everyone, Netflix has been catering to what people really want — and helping to keep Hollywood profitable in the process.
Monday, May 8, 2006
Newspaper print readers down, website readers up
Although their online advertising is growing at a rate of 25-30%, newspapers still earn only about 5% of their advertising revenue from online ads. And while the larger newspapers kept or increased their circulation for the most part, newspapers' weekday daily circulation on average is down in the six months ending in March (about the same as the previous six months) according to this AP story in the New York Times (registration required):
The Newspaper Association of America, analyzing data from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, also reported that Sunday circulation fell 3.1 percent at the 610 newspapers reporting those figures. The 2.5 percent decline in average paid weekday circulation was based on data from 770 newspapers reporting to the Audit Bureau.
...The largest newspapers held up relatively well, with Gannett Co.'s USA Today notching a 0.09 percent gain to 2,272,815 copies, remaining the top-selling newspaper in the country. The Wall Street Journal, published by Dow Jones & Co., was second with 2,049,786, down 1 percent, and The New York Times was third, with an increase of 0.5 percent to 1,142,464 copies.
Monday, May 1, 2006
Super wealthy behind estate tax repeal
According to this New York Times story:
THE watchdog group Public Citizen (citizen.org) and the advocacy group United for a Fair Economy (faireconomy.org) issued a report this week [available here] saying that 18 superwealthy families are largely responsible for financing the lobbying campaign aimed at repealing the estate tax; the Senate is scheduled to take up repeal next month.
The families, worth $185.5 billion, have financed and coordinated the campaign and have, until now, managed to hide their participation behind the trade associations and business groups they have formed to represent their interests, Public Citizen reported. The families include those behind some of the nation's biggest and best-known companies, like Wal-Mart, E.& J. Gallo Winery, Nordstrom and Koch Industries.
Of course, gay families will also be impacted favorably by this, and should support it only in principle if the US Religious Right continues to fight gay marriage from becoming legal in every state. Why should gay partners suffer when one dies and cannot leave his or her estate to the other without huge penalties.
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Social networking musical chairs?
Maybe it is a zero sum game. The early media and Internet darling, Friendster has stalled at about a million visitors, while other sites like MySpace and Facebook have led the increase in traffic on social networking sites. As this Media Life story puts it, a social networking site is only as good as your network of friends on it, and teenagers (and some of us who're older) can change their preference overnight as one site becomes hot while another gets boring to them.
Maybe the Facebook guys who were hanging out outside their Palo Alto office some months ago, when they asked me about my Audi Blogit license plate, should have taken the supposed $750M offer while the going's good for them. Since the barrier to entry is so low.
Facebook had 10.5 million unique visitors in the U.S. in February, up from 2.8 million in February 2005, an increase of 271 percent, according to comScore Media Metrix.
MySpace has grown even faster in the U.S., clocking 37.3 million unique visitors in February from just under 9 million in February 2005, a growth of 318 percent, according to comScore Media Metrix.
“That’s a boatload,” says Bob Ivins, managing director at comScore Europe. “It is great to see a site like this just take off because it talks to me about the huge opportunity that still exists on the web.”
Google continues growth
While I have started using Amazon's A9 search engine more often than Google, according to this CNET News.com story Google has continued to increase its market share of search:
Google's domestic market share rose to 42.3 percent in February, up from 36.3 percent a year earlier, ComScore said.
Yahoo's search market share in the United States fell to 27.6 percent from 31.1 percent a year ago, while Microsoft's MSN fell to 13.5 percent from 16.3 percent and Time Warner's America Online fell to 8 percent from 8.9 percent.
IAC Search & Media's Ask.com, which unveiled a new brand and interface last month, rose to 6 percent from 5.3 percent.
Thursday, February 9, 2006
Google stockholders: Cruising for a bruising?
There are finally some sensible articles being written about Google in the business press rather than just the group love we were seeing. Until Google's latest quarterly earnings missed projections by a significant chunk of change and shaved off tens of billions off its market cap. As I'd written previously, Google has been cruising for a bruising (as my college roommate would have put it). According to this Washington Post story:
Since Google reported its earnings, analysts have finally started taking a harder look at the company's numbers. Google blamed the disappointing profit on income taxes, saying it wound up paying a higher tax rate than expected.
Devitt rejected that explanation immediately, saying that even without paying more taxes, Google would not have hit its profit target. By Friday, the Wall Street Journal was talking up the same theory, calculating that taxes accounted for only half the disappointment, and quoting Devitt.
Wall Street also is likely to start listening to some of Devitt's other concerns.
He thinks Google advertising is infected with "click fraud," a term that covers a variety of ways that advertisers, their competitors and others can game the system and manipulate the number of "hits" that online advertising attracts. He thinks Google's advertising rates are headed for a fall because advertisers aren't getting the results they want. And he thinks the simultaneous fallbacks of Google, Amazon and Yahoo could turn investors off to all Internet stocks.
Bush White House appointees
A 24-year old Bush White House appointee to NASA has resigned after being caught lying on his resume according to this New York Times story:
Mr. Deutsch's educational record was first challenged on Monday by Nick Anthis, who graduated from Texas A&M last year with a biochemistry degree and has been writing a Web log on science policy, scientificactivist.blogspot.com.
...A copy of Mr. Deutsch's résumé was provided to The Times by someone working in NASA headquarters who, along with many other NASA employees, said Mr. Deutsch played a small but significant role in an intensifying effort at the agency to exert political control over the flow of information to the public.
Such complaints came to the fore starting in late January, when James E. Hansen, the climate scientist, and several midlevel public affairs officers told The Times that political appointees, including Mr. Deutsch, were pressing to limit Dr. Hansen's speaking and interviews on the threats posed by global warming.
Monday, February 6, 2006
Email postage?
According to this New York Times story (registration required), a Silicon Valley company, Goodmail is going to help a few companies charge to deliver email to their email account holders:
Companies will soon have to buy the electronic equivalent of a postage stamp if they want to be certain that their e-mail will be delivered to many of their customers.
America Online and Yahoo, two of the world's largest providers of e-mail accounts, are about to start using a system that gives preferential treatment to messages from companies that pay from 1/4 of a cent to a penny each to have them delivered. The senders must promise to contact only people who have agreed to receive their messages, or risk being blocked entirely.
The Internet companies say that this will help them identify legitimate mail and cut down on junk e-mail, identity-theft scams and other scourges that plague users of their services. They also stand to earn millions of dollars a year from the system if it is widely adopted.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Amazon goes for change
According to this WSJ story (subscription required), Amazon and Coinstar have teamed up to give consumers 100% of their coins back as an Amazon gift certificate for its full value. I converted some $500 in change collected over the last few years a few months ago so the 8.9% commission wasn't too bad considering I got almost $450 in cash at the end but I may have thought twice if I were converting only $50 in coins.
Amazon, the company that has been synonymous with online shopping since it opened its virtual doors in July 1995, appears to be reaching out to prospective customers who don't have access to credit cards, particularly young consumers. College-age adults, for instance, are in the midst of establishing their buying habits. Adults who don't qualify for credit cards are other potentially attractive customers.
...The appeal of change-toting customers is clear. About 80% of U.S. households accumulate change, and an estimated $10.5 billion in coins sits unused in American homes in jars, dresser drawers and other crannies, according to Coinstar data. Coinstar says its average user is 40 years old with an income of $53,000. About 60% of its users are women. Coinstar's trademark green machines are in 12,000 U.S. locations, such as grocery stores, that are within five miles of 75% of the country's population.
Monday, September 12, 2005
Skype me -- eBay gets it!
So while most technology pundits are "scratching their heads" and going on and on about how eBay has made a huge $4.1B mistake (uh, guys, first of all it is a $2.6B purchase...with additional payments only in 2008 or 2009 (3 to 4 years after today!).
And the earnout is only if Skype meets certain performance goals. Well you know what, if the Skype guys are meeting those goals then that means Skype is meeting its potential and generating significant revenue and/or benefits for eBay. So fine they'll be getting more of the money they've helped eBay make. How is that a bad thing? Good for eBay to put some incentive in there. Since when was capitalism a bad thing?
So all of you who're punditing about this deal, please go get a Peet's latte and then try to get a grip on your narrow perceptions of Skype and eBay and think about how strategic and smart this is.
Just because eBay is not giving tours of the "factory" and doling out beach towels or something, suddenly all we hear about is how its business is maturing and the end is near. And then when they go out and do something big on the scale of the Paypal acquisition that too becomes proof that their business is maturing and the end is near. Sheesh. I'm wondering if these pundits the same guys who didn't get the Paypal acquisition at $1.5B?
If I remember correctly, eBay was supposed to have overpaid for that one as well. But do you guys think that today? Paypal now has almost 79M accounts. When it was bought by eBay it was barely making money, I believe, and under investigation with only 17.8M accounts in the quarter that ended just before the acquisition (according to Paypal's SEC filing). So eBay paid approx. $80 per user for Paypal.
From the July 8, 2002 eBay press release about the Paypal acquisition:
“eBay and PayPal have complementary missions. We both empower people to buy and sell online,” said Meg Whitman, President and CEO of eBay. “Together we can improve the user experience and make online trading more compelling. We can also capture greater value from the e-commerce opportunities occurring both on and off our site.”
eBay is a marketplace. Selling and buying requires communication between people: the buyers and sellers (have any of you even sold something on eBay or Amazon ever?). Skype brings very, very cool technology that enables that very effectively. It enables cross-border communication -- its software is available in 27 languages (including translation, ability to send documents, voicemail etc.). It brings a significant complimentary business that can go beyond eBay (in fact, already does). And it brings new users into the eBay and Paypal folds.
According to Skype, it has 54M registered users and over 46% of the North American Internet telephony traffic. That comes to an acquisition cost of less than $50 per registered user. Right now as I'm writing this there are over 3.5M users online on Skype. Here's what eBay had to say in its announcement this morning:
"Communications is at the heart of ecommerce and community," said Meg Whitman, President and Chief Executive Officer of eBay. "By combining the two leading ecommerce franchises, eBay and PayPal, with the leader in Internet voice communications, we will create an extraordinarily powerful environment for business on the Net."
Welcome to a new world. And make sure you go drink that latte. Here's a link to the eBay presentation of what it means to put eBay, Paypal and Skype together. Enjoy!
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Online email wars
With Yahoo! adding new search features, the online email wars continue. Some interesting stats from this WSJ story (subscription required) that show how far Gmail has to go to catch up. Most people I know, who really wanted a Gmail account, have reverted back to using their regular Hotmail or Yahoo or AOL account since it is such a hassle to have to tell everyone that you've got a new email address. Until companies make that very easy for the masses (not just the early adopters who're using Plaxo), Gmail may have a ways to go:
Yahoo, Sunnyvale, Calif., has a strong lead in email with a 30% market share and 64 million users in June, according to research firm comScore Media Metrix. That compares with a 25% market share for Microsoft Corp.'s Hotmail and MSN services and a 23.4% market share for Time Warner Inc.'s America Online. Gmail, a relative newcomer that is still officially in testing mode, is No. 8 with a 1.8% market share.
Unlike Gmail, Yahoo Mail will be able to run keyword searches that look inside email attachments. Both Gmail and Yahoo Mail allow rapid keyword searches within old messages' sender names, subject lines and message texts.
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Newspapers benefit from real estate bubble
According to this WSJ story (subscription required), newspapers are among the associated sectors that are handily benefiting from the real estate bubble thanks to a growing share of the shrinking offline classifieds market:
Real-estate ads accounted for about one-fourth of the $16.6 billion in classified-ad revenue collected by newspapers last year, according to the Newspaper Association of America. That represents a growing share of a shrinking market in general. Total classified-ad revenue was $19.6 billion in 2000, with real-estate ads making up 16%.
But online real-estate sites are steadily gaining a bigger slice of the business. Online sites captured an estimated 11% of the $12 billion real-estate ad market last year, according to the Realtors' association, with big players like Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. making major moves into the segment. This year's online real-estate ad sales will total about $1.8 billion, or about 15.7% of the total, Borrell estimates. Most of these online ads are placed by real-estate brokers, not individual sellers, the Realtors' group says.
Friday, August 26, 2005
Our Unfeeling President
A great column by the novelist E. L. Doctorow -- a resident of Sag Harbor -- from the East Hampton Star. Coincidentally I'm in the midst of reading Philistines at the Hedgerow: Passion and Property in the Hamptons, an entertaining history of the area.
But this president does not know what death is. He hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the weapons of mass destruction he can't seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man.
He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.
...They come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers and fathers or wives and children who will suffer to the end of their days a terribly torn fabric of familial relationships and the inconsolable remembrance of aborted life . . . they come to his desk as a political liability, which is why the press is not permitted to photograph the arrival of their coffins from Iraq.
