Articles tagged: business
Saturday, 30 July, 2011 — business
community
The New York Times’ Nicole LaPorte has a neat pieces about independent video stores retooling their business in the sunset of Blockbuster and the ascent of Netflix, Redbox and other online options for movie watching.
They’ve done what a lot of declining industries like newspapers or record stores failed to do for a long time — recognize that just being what they were was not going to keep them in business. Being a commodity means when someone improves the commodity business, if you can’t match, you’re screwed.
I think this is a great deal to do with why Blockbuster, Borders, many of the chain record stores and so on are gone or fading quickly. They simply aren’t equipped to reflect their communities and be something other than a brick-and-mortar when Amazon Prime couldn’t get it to you fast enough.
The bookstores that are going to thrive in the time of Amazon, the record and video stores that are going thrive in the time of iTunes are going to do things like this, regularly and with excellence:
A campy sing-along night is just one component of their plan. Since Vidiots, a beloved institution among the area’s movie cognoscenti and stars, opened a sleek space called the Annex a year ago, it has offered a “Film Studies” program. It has had classes on anime mythology; lectures by filmmakers like Larry Clark (“Kids”); and spoken-word events, known as Tail Spin, where participants deliver improvised monologues on a theme (for example, “the stranger”) for five minutes before the thread is picked up by someone else.
Physically, too, the Annex symbolizes a new era. Its clean, modern design bears no resemblance to the graffiti-covered walls of the video store, which feels more like a basement clubhouse.
The special events have been integral to Vidiots’ transformation from a strictly retail business to a cultural hub and community center. They are intended as a riposte to what the store’s fans regard as the nameless, faceless quality of services like Netflix.
Thursday, 07 January, 2010 — business
software
Rafe Colburn on what my previous job called “a buy vs. build analysis”:
The question people need to be asking is how little custom software can they get away with having. The ideal number is zero. If you’re working at one of those web design [firms] that rolls a new content management system for every customer, you’re doing your customers a disservice. Honestly, if you’re selling them your own proprietary CMS you’re probably doing them a disservice.
Software developers like to build things. And most developers are confident that they can provide something that perfectly solves whatever problem they’re confronted with as long as they can write it from scratch. Developers are horrible at estimating the long term costs of building applications yourself. And they have an incentive to be bad at it, because if they were good at it, nobody would let them loose to write custom software.
When you do bend the business to fit the software, you can end up writing a lot of glue code to get one API to talk to another API; to push or pull data whichever way it needs to go. That’s probably OK, when you’re dealing with a competent developer community or vendor.
The counterpoint is lack of confidence in the “off-the-shelf” solution. At my last gig, my coworkers and I preferred in-house development because we had just about zero confidence in the abilities of our vendors to provide a stable API, accurate documentation and reasonable integration cost. This collective opinion came from years of bad experience. In our minds, it was lazier to build a solution ourselves than continually fix what we bought from someone else. We were far more trusting of RubyForge and CPAN (and building on top of that) than anything that involved a contract.
Also, pray the company answer to the central question, “Do you want to be in the software business?” is either “yes” or “no.” “Maybe?” is a really scary spot to be.
Saturday, 07 March, 2009 — business
CrazyLikeThat.com has two brand new products; a heart emoticon t-shirt and paired greeting card. The t-shirts feature a red <3 on the left side, printed on a black, 100-percent cotton, Gildan T. The card is thick stock with just a little bit of gloss. How much? T-shirts are $16 in sizes Small through XX-Large. Our first greeting card is $3.
It’s fun codeveloping products with 5x5. One of us mentions an idea and the other has a slight modification that makes it better. We can usually refine an idea in about five minutes. A few weeks later, we can offer them for sale. That’s pretty sweet in my book.
Sunday, 01 March, 2009 — business
journalism
social+media
There is so much cross-pollination between starting a neighborhood site and running a small business. Jeff Jarvis posted about CUNY and the New York Times beginning a partnership for a network of hyperlocal sites. Howard Owens, formerly of Gatehouse Media, is taking over The Batavian as owner and got into an interesting argument with Jarvis. He expanded on his point of view in a full post, “VCs chasing fool’s gold in funding ‘hyperlocal’ projects that ‘scale’”:
Now scale is being applied to “hyperlocal” start ups. And the meaning in this context, as I take it, is that a “hyperlocal” business needs to have the capability to expand in multiple towns and neighborhoods rapidly at a very low cost.
…
The “hyperlocal” approaches that supposedly “scale” don’t scale in one very important aspect: building new audience for community news.
Sure, they might appeal to a segment of the population that is already involved in a community, but they’re not tackling the “Bowling Alone” problem.
From the number and visibility of venture-backed, industry-supported hyperlocal flameouts, it’d be tempting to think that there isn’t money/eyeballs in being hyperlocal. Heck, the Washington Post failed to make a go of it. But it seems like all of the existing big media companies and venture capital-backed startups are trying to attack the problem the same way. Throw money at building a platform, put it in a lot of places. When it doesn’t work, it’s a failure. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a solution. Just that the way a lot of people have been trying to go about solving it isn’t working.
One of the things Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson of 37signals talk about frequently is doing only those things you absolutely have to do. Trying to instantly scale the platform is premature and distracts from learning what the business needs to work and executing on it.
I was ecstatic to read David Westphal’s piece at OJR.org, talking to various local sites and how well they’re doing:
Local news sites come in all sizes and shapes. Some are non-profits. Some aren’t trying to live off the operation. But for those who are, some survivable wages are being earned.
Tracy Record and Patrick Sand, another husband/wife team who operate West Seattle Blog, are getting revenue in the high five figures. Debbie Galant, co-owner of Baristanet, earned more from the site than she did from her free-lance writing business last year. And Bob Gough, who runs Quincy News, pockets $1,000 a week in wages from his startup that serves an Illinois community of only 40,000.
Right now, there are a lot of companies predicting doom and gloom and continuing to do exactly what they’ve done. There are also entrepreneurs who “don’t know” that they’re not supposed to succeed at providing a service and earning money where others have been before. But why are these sites succeeding?
Success for these sites looks different than it does for an established media company. They’re focused on solving a smaller problem and making it the problem they’re addressing. They’re risking the business on solving it. They’re climbing Everest by climbing Everest, not thinking about how they’re going to summit then climb K2 or the Matterhorn or Denali in the exact same way with the exact same tools and the exact same resources. They’re all mountains in the way that Raleigh, Miami, Paris, Mumbai and Houston are all cities.
Within those cities, distinct areas and boundaries. I’d pursue a site covering SoMA in San Francisco differently than I would one covering North Beach or the Sunset. In Paris, the Marais is different than the 5éme arrondissement. In Raleigh, Glenwood South isn’t North Hills or Oakwood. Sure, there are similarities, but you can’t treat them as the same thing. Neighborhoods don’t scale.
I suspect beyond the stories these sites are writing, they’re solving the advertising needs of smaller businesses, the sorts of businesses that live in smaller spaces along city blocks and next to strip mall anchor stores. These are, coincidentally, the sorts of businesses that don’t tend to buy any or much advertising at the major daily. Why not? Well, drawing on my own case, buying a print or section-specific ad at a typical newspaper would be beyond budget. I’m not going to reach the right people for my business, either. A neighborhood site is a much easier way to draw and address a specific audience. Plus, it’s far more likely I can see and talk to who’s selling me the advertising. With not a whole lot of luck, they’re probably a customer, too.
Maybe there is a way to abstract a platform and aggregate neighborhood sites, but, just as mountains have their own weather, neighborhoods are unique and not taking the time to dive into them and understand them is a mistake. The large, monolithic approach is not the workable one. There’s no rule saying there must be a way to build and sustain a larger business out of “hyperlocal” content.
Saturday, 07 February, 2009 — business
misc
photography
5,038 people got up this morning for the first nice day in about a week and decided it would be fun to run two miles, eat a dozen glazed doughnuts and then run another two miles. Oh, and try to finish in an hour or less. @5x5 and I were not two of those people. We paid someone to run for us.
As you can see from the numbers above, about 60,456 doughnuts should have been consumed by the registered runners. But let’s allow that not every runner ate his or her full dozen. So, I’ll knock it down to a nice round 60,000. The run benefits charity and this year raised $35,000 for the North Caroine Children’s Hospital. Kick ass, everybody!
This was also the first event that Rex Luther Corporation sponsored a participant at. Rick, our local running entomologist, ran, ate his dozen and returned in under 45 minutes. Certainly a better pace than I’d manage. Overall winner Cameron Dorn finished in 29 minutes, 50 seconds. And yes, if you’re chipped and running for an official time, they make sure your doughnut box is empty before leaving Krispy Kreme.
So, what did @5x5 and I do, other than wear the same t-shirt Rick was wearing? Photograph! My photo set is over on Flickr. @5x5’s is up, too. It’s also a gave us a great reason to have a sale. Get 10 percent off during the month of February at CrazyLikeThat.com when you use discount code “kkc” at checkout.
It was especially cool seeing several people in costume. Superman, Flash, Wonder Woman and Homer Simpson (of course), among others. Sure, you could be running for a serious time (as Rick was), but damn, what a way to show some personality. I love events like this, and I’m happy to live in a city that has them.
What else is out on the web from the Krispy Kreme Challenge? Check it out:
Now, how did it feel, keeping a fresh dozen down while running? As @landin_t put it: “If u puke, you’re only cheating yourself”
