There are lots of public company quarterly reports I should be writing about, but I am going to step off that track and think, for a bit, the unthinkable. Or at least it was the unthinkable. But at this point the Eurozone seems to be moving towards two choices, either of which has huge implications for managing any international business. Let’s review for a minute. What are the three things you can More…
What Will You Do When Your Greek Receivables are in Devalued Drachmas?
November 17th, 2011The New LAUNCH LA Trade Show; I Wondered When This Was Going to Happen
October 26th, 2011Well, what a long strange trip it’s been. It was just about a year ago that the demise of ASR was officially announced. Since then, as the trade show environment has evolved and people have worked to figure out how to adapt, I’ve written a few times about trade shows. Here, here, here, here, here, here, and here actually, from oldest to most recent. You would think that would be enough, but More…
September’s Leap in Outdoor Sales
October 21st, 2011The Leisure Trends Group does a lot of good work. On October 20th, they sent out an email you may have seen announcing record September outdoor retail sales of $462 million up 17% over a year ago. Leisure Trends analyst Scott Jaeger said it was the strongest September since they started keeping records in 1998. Great news obviously. But I’d like to offer a perspective on those results that’s a bit different from More…
I Like Market Data
October 4th, 2011Even before they contacted me to ask if I was interested in writing about it, I’d seen that Krush had released the Executive Summary for the Krush Buyers Report and it seemed an intriguing idea. Most of my five loyal readers know I think three things about market research and data. First, that we don’t get enough of it, though that seems to be changing. Second, that when we do get good More…
Get Out of the Office! It’s Amazing What You Can Learn
September 29th, 2011Yesterday, I had occasion to meet up with Jaimeson Keegan, who’s the President/Floor Sweeper (according to his business card) of SUPERHEROES Management. It offers athlete and entertainment talent representation combined with social media strategies and some other stuff that I thought was a very sensible aggregation. Anyway, we’re both up here in the Northwest and just thought we should get together and meet each other. Not being from Southern California, we get lonely More…
Lessons From Interbike: Focus In or Focus Out
September 26th, 2011I had occasion to be in Vegas on business while Interbike was going on. The company I was working with was exhibiting there, so I took the day to wander around the show. I’d never been to Interbike before. There was something different about this trade show from all the others I’d ever been to. It took me a little thinking time with my favorite adult beverage after I got back to begin to More…
Cyberboutiques. I Don’t Know if this is a Great Idea or a Waste of Bandwidth.
September 9th, 2011My wife sent me this article from the New York Time’s Fashion and Style section. For some reason, I don’t read that section regularly. Not enough graphs, charts, and numbers to get me excited I guess. I played around a bit with the application at the web site. It was a bit jerky and slow, but I could certainly see the potential. Either that or I couldn’t, and I guess that conundrum is what’s More…
Popup Playgrounds; An Intriguing Marketing Idea
August 15th, 2011It’s not like I look to the New York Times for all my good industry advertising and promotion ideas. Still, once in a while, they come up with something that gets me thinking. Their “Presto Instant Playground” article is one such idea. You may have to register to read it, but it won’t cost you anything. “During a two-month period last year, seven civic coalitions in New York neighborhoods like East Harlem and More…
The 2010 SIMA Retail Distribution Study
August 10th, 2011The first thing to say is thanks to SIMA for making this study happen and to Leisure Trends Group for doing the research. We don’t get access to near enough industry and market data. As I’m not a member of SIMA, I don’t have access to the complete study. I’m working with the “Media Highlights” package that came out after the press release on the study. Two years ago, when the More…
The Agenda Trade Show, U. S. Open, and Other Trade Show Comments
August 9th, 2011As I walked around the Agenda Trade Show last week, I saw a lot of people sitting across tables from each other in the booths obviously doing business. That is the definition of a successful trade show. The sample of company executives I talked too seemed to confirm that. People were surprised by the number of buyers. I’m not that worried about the vibe. How busy or crowded a show is is More…
