Some of America’s CEOs give Obama a 6 month video review with BusinessWeek. The overall message, he has great leadership qualities and can deliver a clear message, which is something we all knew. But the key question is can he get from “Yes we can, to yes we did.”
Everything is Negotiable
Like most people I have started to think of myself as a mini corporation. And in this corporation I have to take a hard look at not only my product and my branding, but also my bottom line. Your personal budget is very much like a corporate budget, only maybe with less zeroes and commas. Because of this I have started negotiating every aspect of my spending. But one item I never thought of negotiating on was medical bills. After reading the Forbes article linked below I am already strategizing on how to reduce a recent surprise dental bill.
Luxury is Not Dead Yet, but the Crocodiles Are
I’ve never considered myself a recessionista. I’ve always just preferred 
quality, luxury goods at a “sensible” price. But my mode of thinking has spread— from the Palisades to Dallas to the upper eastside—and happily to the luxury providers themselves.
Luxury goods groups are thinking outside the box. From breeding their own crocodiles to tapping new low-cost centers for raw materials, they are stepping up efforts to improve sourcing of goods, labor and expertise in the global economic slowdown.
“In today’s market, when something is real expensive, it doesn’t mean that it is necessarily better; it just means it is more poorly sourced,” U.S.-based luxury designer Jonathan Adler told the Reuters Global Luxury & Retail summits in New York this week.
So the least luxurious job at Hermès may soon be crocodile farmer as the French luxury retail group makes plans to breed its own crocs on a farm in Australia to meet the demands of their customers. It should be noted that despite hard times Hermès reports that their sales rose in the second quarter. Hence the need for the crocodile farm.
Retailers Need Converts Not New Customers
During this downturn, Wal-mart and other bargain-hunter satisfying retailers have profited while others have struggled. While high-end retailers are seeing their numbers plummet, Wal-mart is experiencing significant growth. The question is whether this growth is sustainable. When the bad times are over will Wal-mart and other retailers like them be able to keep the new customers driven to their stores by the recession?
Of course, there are those who will be so scarred by the memory of this downturn that they will stick with cheaper retailers even when the American economy is booming, much like some of our grandparents who lived through the Depression still roll pennies and re-use scrap paper. But in the end, unless bargain retailers can make a lasting impression on them now, most Americans will return to their Abercombie and J.Crew spending habits as soon as the economy recovers
A current article in BusinessWeek takes a close look at what Wal-Mart is doing to make sure these customers stick around. In this same article Ryan Mathew’s of Black Monk Consulting, which works with retail clients, says “If the recession ended tomorrow, they would lose a lot of [customers]. But the longer the recession goes, the smarter Wal-Mart will be about holding on to those customers.”
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_24/b4135000941856_page_2.htm
Kindle 2: The Future is Now
When I was sixteen I was fortunate enough to intern at Sony Music USA in TV & Radio Production. This was in the early 90s. And there was rumor of a coming revolution in the world of music. A lot of Sony mentors would mention “digital recordings” to the interns and young assistants, telling us of a day when our disc man would be a relic and CDs would become coffee coasters. We couldn’t believe it. Carrying around our entire music library in our pocket sou
nded like the stuff of fairy tales. Now I can barely remember life before the ipod, and it really wasn’t that long ago.
Now we are in the midst of a literary revolution. Kindle 2 has arrived and is looking to clear your bookshelves the way the ipod made your cd racks obsolete. But that is the question everyone is asking. Will electronic readers, like Kindle 2 and the Sony Reader, destroy or save publishing? One way or another it has and will continue to change the way publishers, book vendors and book buyers think about books. The debate is on, take a look at a recent article in Slate.
Scoundrels going out of business
It’s in the hardest times that people’s true colors come through. Those who routinely take shortcuts decide to cheat, while authentic leaders roll up their sleeves, don their hardhats, and begin to dig through the rock.
It is in these tumultuous times that the men are separated from the boys. This is also the time when those who have been taking the shortcuts all along will have their transgressions come to light. It is no fluke that, without a wildly growing economy, Madoff and other alleged bad guys are now being exposed—like the one tried to save himself from prosecution by faking his own death, parachuting out of his own plane.