Tag Archives: buy buy buy - Page 10

On Community

Posted by anachostic on September 26, 2013 No comments

The big, huge, #1, all-important “thing” right now in online business is “community”. No matter who you listen to, you will hear that you have to build a community with your customers. There’s one case where I feel this business dream was present long before it became a “thing” and just as the concept of “community” was gaining traction, they went and blew it all away. That business is Woot.

Woot has had spectacular growth in its relatively short life. It started as a deal-a-day website, offering one different product every day until it was sold out. We’ll call that Woot 1.0. Then there was the idea that Woot could offer more than one product a day, in multiple specific categories. Thus became Woot 2.0. Then there was the idea that Woot could offer many products in each category for periods longer than a day. This ushered in Woot 3.0, where it continues today.

Back in the 1.0 days, there was a very active community in the product forums. You could discuss a product all day. When 2.0 came along, this community became diluted. And if it wasn’t diluted, it was stressed in that the members had to participate even more. They didn’t have to, of course, but they wanted to because the brand was fun and all their friends were there. When 3.0 landed, there was simply no way to keep up with the sheer amount of products begging for discussion. And it showed. Products would go days without any discussion on them. Maybe due to lack of interest, maybe due to people not finding them or maybe not even bothering to look for them.

This change, while certainly increasing the bottom line of the Woot company – because stuff did still sell – created an environment totally different from past versions. Imagine walking into a room and there’s a product on a display stand in the middle. Also in the room are 50 friendly (sometimes sarcastic) people chatting. All of these people have an opinion about this displayed product and you can listen to them talk about it or you can directly ask anyone about it. Now, imagine a room with 20 products on display. Still 50 people, but some are huddled around one or another product. Your source of feedback is lessened and the credibility of the products and your business suffer.

So that’s the business aspect in favor of remaining small. You have a group of loyal followers and they’re going to support your choice of product (or limited products) because that’s what you offer. You’ve made the work easy for them to help support because your product offerings are limited. As much as it pains me to make the comparison, look at Apple. They have, what, like 5 products? Anyone can help you to some degree on those. On the other end of that comparison, just as painfully, look at Microsoft. Such a massive selection, it’s so difficult to find any assistance with some obscure product like Small Business Accounting.

But getting back to “community” in Woot, you have to look back to the 1.0 days to find where that community really shined: the Woot-off. Because you had one site, but the products constantly refreshed after being sold out, you’d have people discussing products all day. And if the products were slow sellers, the people would stick around and chat about anything else. It was normal for people to admit their work productivity dropping to zero because of involvement in the Woot-off. Today, in the current 3.0 incarnation, there is a Woot-off happening on five different sites. How are you going to possibly keep up on conversations on five different sites? Why would you want to? And the effect is very obvious. Products now turn over much, much more slowly during a Woot-off.

So you have a brand community that is stretched too thin over too diverse a product base. Could it be made any worse? Sure. These changes I described are also creating a strong sense of community apathy. No one really cares anymore because there’s just too much. I see some people becoming specialists in one category or another, and bravo to them. But you have to wonder if there’s any benefit to being a lone expert. Where are your peers? If you leave, then what happens?

There’s another change in Woot that is feeding this apathy – actually two changes. The first change is the “no dead air” policy Woot seems to have adopted. If a product sells out too quickly, another product is posted in its place. This goes against the old policy of “you snooze, you lose”. Yeah, you still lose out on the earlier offering, but there’s still something for you to buy, so no hurries. The other change is the recurring items. When you see Gunnar glasses sold for a week on one site, then sold for the next week on another site, then sold in a woot-off, then back again afterwards. Or if you see another product on a side sale also appearing in a Woot-off, or like what just happened – a product comes back a second time in a Woot-off, what are you supposed to think? There’s no shortage of supply, there’s no exclusivity, there’s nothing special about the sale at all. You are cheapening your offerings. Call it the Starbucks effect; or the Best Buy effect. When it’s always available, the desire to have it drops.

So in conclusion, just when other companies are discovering how to rally their customer base and make strong advocates for their brand, Woot has figured out how to lose one of the most valuable company assets it could ever have. If you’ve lived through Woot 1.0 and 2.0, you can see what you need to do with your business (and what not to do). If you came in with Woot 3.0, you can only read history of what it was like.

Triple Gunnars

Posted by anachostic on August 23, 2013 No comments

Ok, so now I have three pairs of Gunnar glasses. I figure I have enough experience with them now to make a compare and contrast review if you are considering any of these models.

My first pair was the Groove model. When I got it, I was somewhat disappointed by the rubber arms – I was thinking they were metal from what I saw in the pictures. The Groove has good-sized lenses and a decent wraparound design. However, the Groove’s nosepads are not articulating. If they don’t fit right, you need to bend them into a comfortable position. I actually gave up on the Groove for an extended period because I could not get the nosepads to stop digging into my nose. That is what led me to my second purchase. But while waiting for shipment of my second pair, I was able to find a position that fit and felt excellent, and they became my standard work glasses.

The next set I purchased were the E11vens. My primary reason for buying them was the hard plastic, fixed bridge. I figured that would be better than the nosepads that were burrowing into my skin on the Groove. When I got the E11vens, I was disappointed by the cheap black plastic. Plastic doesn’t have to be cheap-sounding, but this is. Very tinny and light sounding. However, despite that, the E11vens are lighter than the Groove and the bridge is comfortable. Also, this model excels in an area that the others don’t. It’s wraparound design is totally up on your face, like goggles. Because of this, if you get dry eyes, these will keep the moisture in your eyes and you will praise them at the end of the day. The other positive about the E11vens is they have the largest lenses of the models I own. This means you can look all around without needing to move your head as much. While I was using the Grooves at work and the E11vens at home, Woot had yet another Gunnar sale. This time, they had a model I’d been watching and hoping for.

I purchased the Emissary model last week and just got them today. The full name is Attache Emissary, to give you an idea of the image they are trying to convey. And when I opened the box and pulled the glasses out, I was stunned. They were beautiful. Where I was disappointed with the materials used in the other two, I was highly impressed with the sturdy feel of the metal frames and their hinged arms. The glasses felt feather-light, but they probably weigh about as much as the E11vens. It’s probably just a perceptual trick because the Emissary frames are so thin and the E11vens are so bulky. The lenses were tiny, unlike the other two. The Emissary looked very similar to the Ray Ban prescription glasses I wear. So from a stylistic perspective, there is no comparison. If you want style, this is the one to have. But that style comes at a price. The lenses are very small, so you need to move your head more to keep the your vision through them. Because they are small, they don’t have any of the wrap-around benefits like the E11vens, so your eyes may dry out quicker.

Looking at the Gunnar online store, The Groove isn’t available anymore, nor is the E11ven, and the color of Emissary I bought isn’t available. That’s all fine. Woot is a clearinghouse for older and discontinued stuff, and the glasses work just as well as the new models. The model I have my eye on now is the Epoch, which is similar to the Emissary, but with thicker frame lines. Go for four? Why not? I used to have a massive collection of sunglasses in my younger days. I guess this is the adult computer geek version of that hobby.

The Future Is In The Past

Posted by anachostic on May 3, 2013 No comments

Today I was forwarded an article about a new computer input device utilizing gestures and the article was teasing with a headline like “gestures replace keyboard and mouse.” Uh huh.

Go ahead and pile this technology on an ever increasing pile: Stylus, touch, multi-touch, swype, and Kinect. All of which are supposed to be revolutionary and every one has not replaced the keyboard. Or maybe that’s not true.

Long ago, computers were for highly-skilled people – researchers, academics, scientists. Then they went mainstream. Personal computers took over every household. Then, people started demanding less “computer-looking” devices, so the style element of PC’s was addressed. More recently, it seems the public has been clamoring for simpler interfaces, reducing the need for input devices. Enter gesture and touch input.

Depending on which camp you are in, this advancement – or decline – of computers is only a subset of the reality. Throughout all of it, the standard computer, with boxy tower case, keyboard, mouse and monitor (or monitors) is the mainstay of the creative computer users. The alternative input devices are too imprecise and too inefficient to actually create anything of quality, whether it be art, code, or engineering. The sacrifices made for aesthetic purposes limit the raw power needed to actually do work. So because of this, the computing landscape has split into creators and consumers.

The media keeps hyping that tablets are the future. This is actually probably true. The majority of people are not going to need or want the power of a full computer setup. Combined with the news that there are fewer students with computer programming skills than in previous years, this forms a scary trend. In a few generations, it’s entirely possible that the use of an actual computer becomes exclusive, just as it was in the early days of computing. If you have a full computer, you could be viewed as old-fashioned, or maybe you’d be viewed as a genius.

The media also keeps saying that the PC is dead. This in absolutely not true. If this were true, there would be no way to create future software and hardware. However, if they were to say, the consumer personal computer is dead, they may be on to something.

To me it’s very sad to think that we almost had something. It’s as if we were right on our way to having a super-intelligent global society and a huge shockwave hit and lowered the bar for everyone.

You Like It, You Buy It.

Posted by anachostic on March 19, 2013 No comments

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to overspend on a pair of shoes. I thought of the saying, “who would ever pay retail prices” and realized there are some circumstances where it may be warranted or at least justified.

First, I was in an upscale mall. Obviously, this is going to command high rent for the tenants. Things haven’t been so great for the retail sector, so it was good to see the shop even still in business.

Second, the store was not a chain store, just a mom-and-pop. If not being a reason to shop there, at least it’s a reason to give them a pass on higher prices since they can’t compete with the volume of a chain.

Third, and what I felt was the most compelling reason, was that the store had a selection of product that I had never seen anywhere else. It was very boutique-ish, but still had a good selection of sizes and colors for each model. There were a lot of high-end shoes – actually they were sandals – from brands you don’t see in all the chain stores. It was as if the owners deliberately chose to not stock anything you could get somewhere else, which might have been a wise decision.

Because of that uniqueness, I chose to patronize the store in order to preserve its importance in the retail space. Without business owners taking a chance like this and making obscure, high-quality brands and specialty models of better-known brands available, everything would be the same everywhere. Total homogeny. Plenty of people complain about the generic landscape of retail, but is anyone willing to put their money where their mouth is?

Mainstream Pawn, Not Just Yet

Posted by anachostic on March 16, 2013 No comments

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/pawn-shops-mainstream-141414562.html

I’ve been doing pawn shops long before it was cool. I’ve always been on the buyer side except for one time in my reckless youth, which I swore I would never do again after seeing my article with a “sold” ticket on it for $300, when I had received $30 for it when I pawned it. In the many years I’ve been visiting pawn shops, I’ve seen some changes and some things that never change. I’ve been in small mom-and-pops, large mom-and-pops, and chain/franchise shops and they all need help in some way.

No matter where you go, a clean pawn shop is a rarity. They may start out clean, but they fall into disrepair faster than any other retail location. A Cash Converters in PA used to be a pleasant “shopping” experience, but returning to it a few years later, it had become scary and depressing. It just doesn’t seem possible to hire a staff that can overcome the futility of the pawn industry. There is no incentive to make things nice, because it doesn’t seem to matter. My biggest pet peeve and the issue I least understand is why doesn’t the staff at least clean the items before putting them on display? Seriously, it’s maybe 15 minutes of time. Surely there’s 15 minutes in a day where there are no customers needing assistance.

The next issue is that you frequently have a dozen of the same things, which is usually the same thing you can buy new anywhere else for only a little bit more money (which is point #3). You can have six or seven Nintendo Wiis and XBoxes and PS3s. All kinds of generic DVD players. Bunches of power drills and other tools. In the smaller mom-and-pops, it’s like sifting through a garage sale. Larger mom-and-pops are like indoor landfills. One shop I visit has bins of wrenches and sockets. Bins. As if someone who needs a 1/4” socket will root through the 60 or so 1/4” sockets in the bin until they find the exact one they want.

The last issue is value. I know first-hand how little a pawn shop will pay for an item and I have seen some internal reports on the profit margins of pawn shops. The reason pawn shops become incubators of worthless junk is because the owners or managers don’t understand turnover. The chain that does understand this is Cash America. They discount items based on how long they’ve been in inventory. Other chains and mom-and-pops don’t do this. So when I see a generic MP3 player that is priced higher than a current model would cost on Amazon, I know that item will never be sold and it will end up in the display case forever. For as big a deal is made over pawners over-valuing the item they’re pawning, pawn shop managers are just as much at fault for hanging on to unrealistic pricing.

See, if I ran a pawn shop (and it is a possible fallback venture if I ever became unemployable), this is how I’d do it. Obviously, the standard pawnbroker guidelines are followed, but…

The store is clean. And by clean, I mean floors, windows, counters, carpet, and seating.
The pawning area is separate from the sales area. This gives pawners some dignity and makes things less uncomfortable for buyers. I first saw this idea at Cash Converters and it stuck with me.
Items are cleaned before being put on the shelf (see #1). Items are organized well, like CDs and DVDs. You have no idea how many times I’ve wanted to just offer to alphabetize a pawn shop’s DVD shelves for free.
Believe it or not, a sparse sales area is more disconcerting than a jammed-to-the-walls area. There is a balance that has to be found. At the same time, there is no reason to have seven of the same model of anything on display when three will suffice. This is especially true with CDs and DVDs. No one wants to see The Matrix 20 times when browsing.
Items are discounted by age and social media would be used to communicate the discounts.
Online inventory searches would be a must.
My secret marketing trick: if there are multiple of an item, price one or two at the price you want to get, then mark all the others up at a higher price. When the cheap one sells, mark down one of the others. The buyer feels they got a better deal relative to the other ones offered.
Secret marketing trick #2: Bundling. Like in the example of the tool bins, bundle them. Find all the sockets to make a full set, match them up with some other tools and sell a whole tool set cheaply. Sell ladders with electric pruners, sell air compressors with bikes, sell matching component stereo pieces. Come on, all these pieces are your inventory, they don’t have to be treated as individual items. This reminds me of an estate auction I was at where if the auctioneer didn’t get his minimum bid, he’d throw something else in with it. If you wanted that new thing, you’d have to take the other stuff, too. Turnover. Do it or get buried.

Adjusting the Brightness

Posted by anachostic on July 25, 2010 No comments

I love how things work out sometimes. Friday morning when I woke up I was so, so tired. The sun is coming up later and I’m a pretty SAD person (meaning I get Seasonal Affective Disorder). So I thought this year I will finally buy a sunrise light. I know they’re around $100, so I started the buying process by mentally preparing myself to spend $100 on a light.

I went out for dinner Saturday and stopped by somewhere I’d seen but never looked in – an HSN outlet. I love outlets, junk stores, pawn shops, etc. So I get in there and right up front is a light therapy device with sunrise feature. Priced at $70. Awesome.

The store is pretty much how I thought it would be. Lots of crap I’d buy before I entered my mature "I don’t need shit" mentality. So, on the way out, I grab the device and head to checkout.

I didn’t pay attention to how the outlet priced their crap, but apparently, the longer a product sits there the cheaper it gets. This product must have been pretty old because it rang up at $17. Holy crap! I was mentally prepared to spend $100, happy to spend $70, and ended up paying $17.

Last night I hooked it up, but misunderstood and misprogrammed the sunrise alarm feature. I wanted to be up at 6:00, so I set the alarm for 5:30 with a 30 minute ramp-up time. That’s not how it works; it started glowing at 5:00 to finish at 5:30.

So, at 5:30 this morning, my room literally looked like the middle of the day. Damn that thing is bright! And I woke up. I woke up, immediately turned it off and went back to sleep.

It was interesting that the device really did wake me up. And the waking was pretty easy, not jarring like an alarm. This week will be the real test.

Yeah, and also on Saturday morning I got to stand my theological ground against a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses. The most interesting exchange was when they tried to convince me God was a person.

“So you’re saying, like a person, he has likes and dislikes?” I asked.

“Yes, of course.”

“So he’s biased?”

“I wouldn’t use the word ‘biased’ with God…”

I pretty much summed up my beliefs for them in that I do give thanks for what I have been afforded, although I don’t feel compelled to give thanks to a specific being with a name. And lo and behold, that night I find something I put into my subconscious the previous day at a price I never imagined. So I’m giving thanks for my fortune here and now.

Resize, Reassess, Restructure, Relief

Posted by anachostic on May 6, 2010 No comments

Downsizing. No, upsizing. No. I’m not really sure. How about resizing? Yes, I have resized my vehicle. After 10 years of driving the same model car – an Acura TL – I have changed to a new vehicle. It is a new 2010 Mazda MX-5. I’ve been driving it for a week and I’ve had substantial time to reflect on the change on a micro- and macro-level. Going from a midsize, near-luxury sedan to a roadster is a pretty radical change. Most people add a roadster as a weekend car; I made it my only car. I had some logical reasoning going into the purchase, and post-purchase, I’ve affirmed these beliefs and realized others.

To begin, I simply wasn’t happy with my Acura. It had been purchased used and had the same transmission problem as my previous one. The “buying it used” part had a big effect on me. I never felt the car was really mine. I never had any emotional attachment to it – not like the first Acura, which I had bought new. So buying new was the only option for me. I felt that I wanted to be back in love with my car.

Looking at the vast choice of cars available, I was very uninspired with all the sedans. Even the sport coupes didn’t appeal to me. The thing that annoyed me the most was bulk and waste. I’ve hated SUV’s and trucks for a very long time. I’ve recently been on a simplification plan – downsizing and minimizing my footprint. Becoming a motorcycle rider helped with that. It’s simple, no-frills, no-baggage transportation. Looking at sedans, there’s two extra doors and an entire back seat area that will rarely, if ever, get used except to collect and haul crap. The two seat roadster was the answer. Of the available roadsters, of which there are very few, I didn’t want to deal with the cost of maintaining a BMW or Audi. Like I’ve said to others, “I could get a Z or a TT, but I like my money, too.” So the MX-5 was the answer.

So I satisfied my need for minimalism and initial-ownership. The roadster choice also fulfilled my need to enjoy driving again. With my massive commute in a bulky, heavy sedan, I had begun to despise driving. It was a chore. And I had to drive sensibly to save gas because my commute was so far. Riding the motorcycle was a totally different experience. The small engine meant I could go faster and ride harder without worrying about wasting gas. The light weight and general “bike-ness” meant I could handle it harder. The open air experience was unmatched. In the last few weeks of owning the TL, I drove everywhere with all the windows down and sunroof open. It was ok, but a convertible is a totally different experience, for the better.

So when I bought the MX-5, I was a little freaked out. The windshield view is tiny and I wasn’t completely prepared for it. It took a few days to feel comfortable with the car and then I could relax and understand my feelings in this new car. One thing that came into my head was an article I had read about people buying large houses. The article said that people don’t really feel comfortable in large open spaces. I applied that to my new-found comfort in my purpose-built driving cockpit. Everything is close at hand. It made sense. Then I thought of when I had my first Acura and I bought a cheap beater car: a Toyota Celica. The Celica was crappy in many ways, but I honestly think I liked it more than the Acura. Maybe because it was smaller and had a more sports-car atmosphere? Possible.

I think the TL was supposed to be my “all-grown-up” car. I had “made it” professionally, I was living on my own, and this was the next step. Grow up, be an adult, get a responsible car. I never considered that I didn’t have to follow the recommended path. So with the MX-5, I feel more like my old self. And that can’t be a bad thing.

And now that I’m here, the term “mid-life crisis” means something different. When you’re younger, it’s a joke. To see some middle-aged person acting like a teenager again seems dumb. They’re supposed to act their age. But when you get to “mid-life” yourself, you find yourself evaluating your life so far. You may discover you haven’t taken the time to have fun, maybe you’ve gotten wrapped up in work and chasing status and collecting “stuff”. You look around, see all the stuff you have, and while it’s nice to have, it’s also a pain to have.

“I’d love to have a dozen cars!” Really, no, you wouldn’t. You have to store, insure, license, maintain, and wash all those cars. “I wish I had a house with a few extra rooms.” No, you have to heat, cool, clean, furnish, and pay taxes on that extra square footage. People ask me how I’m going to get anything home in my tiny new car. First, if I’m buying more stuff than can fit in the car, I’m buying too much stuff. Second, if it’s too big to fit in the car, I should have it delivered. Third, if it can’t be delivered, I call Enterprise and rent a bigger car for a day. The likelihood that I would end up at the final choice is very slim. Buying a bigger car enables bad choices like buying too much stuff. I can’t take a bunch of crap with me because there’s no room in the car. If I have trash, it comes out right away, there’s nowhere to put it in the car.

Less is truly more.

Going Above and Beyond

Posted by anachostic on April 21, 2010 No comments

A couple of days ago I bought a piece of jewelry to extend a bracelet, since my wrist was between link sizes – one link either made the bracelet spin freely or cut off circulation. So I purchased a small extender, $8 after shipping. It arrived today. This is what I bought:

This is how it was packaged:

Nice and fancy. That kind of stuff is lost on me. But that’s not the end of it.

So, a bracelet link in a poly bag, in a mesh bag, in a poly bag, in a shipping box, wrapped in the shipping invoice, wrapped in tissue paper and shredded packing paper, in a plastic shipping envelope.

Now that’s how it’s done. That’s http://chainextenders.com for everyone that insists in having their jewelry treated like gold – even if it’s not.

This Place Sucks, So Let Me Help

Posted by anachostic on February 27, 2009 No comments

I’m nearing the end of watching a George Carlin DVD box set and I have to say I’m pretty pessimistic on our culture. The whole idea of "gotta have it now" is becoming pretty offensive to me. TVs, cell phones, computers, iPods… the behavior of Zune users during the 24 hours the Zune was inoperable was outrageous. People can’t live without a music player for 24 hours, or more realistically 12 hours, since you can’t be awake listening to a MP3 player for 24 hours.

Carlin will do that to you after a while. So you have a couple of choices: accept it or battle it. I’m going to make the most of it.

To that end, I’m going to convert this to my “eating out” blog. They say you should blog about something you’re passionate about and I do enjoy fast food (see previous post on state of food). I had planned on developing a web site that would allow anyone to rate fast food places, but I just don’t have the energy for that right now, so this will have to do.

Vultures

Posted by anachostic on January 18, 2009 No comments

So now Circuit City is going under and the vultures have arrived. I dropped in on day two of our local store’s liquidation and it was a madhouse. People were all over the place picking at the carcass of the former leader of electronics sales.

One of the first thoughts I had was "Where were all you damn people only a few weeks ago?" This company needed you then, but you’re here now after the pulse has stopped. But judging by the people crowding the store today, they weren’t there for the company; they just wanted the plunder. Maybe a "Yeah! We killed the dragon, now let’s rob the treasure room!" kind of sentiment.

The other thought I had was that some people scrambling for purchases took their local store for granted. They just always assumed it would be there to provide an alternate shopping location when Best Buy pissed them off. Now, Circuit City is going away and these people need to grab what they can before it’s gone. Because when it’s gone, so is their option of buying somewhere else.

It has been reported that the liquidation company marks up the prices to mark them down over time. These first few days of the sale would be the most profitable Circuit City would experience in a long time, if only it were them that got the revenue.

The shopping atmosphere in the store was pretty harsh. The liquidator had obviously taken over. They blocked off one entrance so you had one door to enter and exit through – inconveniencing incoming and outgoing customers at the same time. But what do they care? The liquidator is operating under another company’s name and has no obligation to please anyone. The customer has no power and no rights. A threat like "I’m never shopping here again!" would be met with "You’re correct."

So when the company selling off another company’s inventory purposely deceives customers into thinking they are getting good deals and purposely disposes of customer service because there is no value in it, who are the real vultures?

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