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Revelations

Posted by on November 21, 2019 No comments

It was almost 3 years ago that I really started to rebuild my interest in having a home stereo again.  I had purchased a cheap stereo from a thrift store.  That stereo only had a cassette player.  Then, I followed that purchase up with a $10 CD player from another thrift shop.  At that point, I should have been done, and should have been happy to spend so little money on a stereo.  The alternative I had planned was a new system – amp/CD/speakers – on the order of $1200 or so.  My cheap CD player, paired up with the powered studio monitors I’d owned for many years, was a really good sounding little system.  At least that’s what I thought.

In the time since, I have bought other cheap CD players at thrift stores.  The reason for this was for experience.  One experience was the restoration and repair of the devices.  Of my purchases, one repair was successful, one wasn’t, and the latest one didn’t need any work at all.  The other experience was more audiophilic.  People that review stereo equipment have the ability to grade and rank such equipment and that’s really something the average person can’t really do.  No one goes out and buys five different CD players at $300-$500 just to compare how they sound.  But if the players are $10 each, well, that reviewing experience becomes just a fun little hobby.

The first player in my collection is an Onkyo DX-701.  It was made in 1992.  Being the first in my collection, it was my unofficial standard.  When I first set it up, I was thrilled with it.  It did exactly what it was supposed to do: play CDs.  For $10, it was all I needed.

The next player I got was a Scott DA980, in April 2019.  It cost all of $7.  There’s not a lot of information out there about this player, but its manufacture date is June, 1989.  It appears to be a Yamaha-manufactured device rebranded by Scott.  Unfortunately, it needed some work and I got my first experience repairing a CD player.  Comparing it to the Onkyo, I really liked how smooth and silent the loading tray was.  But what I should have really focused on was whether it sounded better.  To be honest, I couldn’t tell.  And that really disappointed me.  I thought I would be able to notice some difference, but I didn’t.  So at that point, I assumed that “digital is digital” and all decent CD players sound the same.  So then, I wouldn’t really need to focus on sound quality, but more on features.

Then, this month, I found yet another cheap CD player.  It was a Technics SL-P220.  It was marked at $16 and I happened to buy it on a 50% off day, so it cost me $8.  My luck in CD player purchases is remarkably consistent.  This player didn’t need any repair, just some cleaning.  Well, some of the cleaning was technically repair because the control buttons were intermittent.  I am a fan of the Technics brand.  It was the brand of the stereo system in my youth.  This player came out just about the time CDs were hitting the mainstream.  Just about the time I experienced my first CD at my friend’s house.  This is the oldest of the three players (June, 1987) and being that old, it would be expected to have the least refined technology for decoding digital audio.

When I did my first test play with the Technics, it was kind of a surreal experience.  It sounded different.  Way, way different, in a good way.  I put identical CDs in the Technics and the Onkyo and played them together, then switched back and forth to determine the difference.

And here’s where the difficulty begins.  When you read stereo reviews, you will usually find yourself rolling your eyeballs at the descriptions the reviewers use.  In fact, you will probably internally smirk at anyone that tries to describe the qualities of sound.  It’s just something that can’t really be done.  In my case, the first thing I thought of comparing the two is that the Technics was “brighter.”  And that’s a fair description.  Most people can determine bright sound vs dull or flat sound.  This is probably also what experts mean when they say “digital-sounding”.  But who knows?  What does digital sound like?

So, I had a word that I could use to describe how the Technics sounded better to me (that’s important).  But as I listened to it more, there were more differences and those were more painful to describe because it made me sound like a pompous high-end stereo reviewer.  I’ll not get into those descriptions and just say it sounded much, much better to me than the Onkyo.  As I always do when I get a new piece of equipment, I search for anyone talking about it.  And I found only two mentions of the SL-P220, one saying it was great and another saying they replaced it with something that was substantially “better”.

Here’s the thing for me.  This latest player has changed my interest in listening to music.  I’m now excited to hear music from it.  It has the same magic as when I first heard the albums decades ago.  This is something the other two players didn’t do for me.  It’s revelatory.  I’ve read over and over that you have no idea what you’re missing until you hear the music you love on a good system.  But… this is an early player and even at that, isn’t a top-end model, just standard-grade.  It’s a $300 player back in the day which was average.  And, considering what I hear and what experts say, this is an example of poor early-era digital reproduction – tinny, thin, bright, “not analog sounding”, blah blah blah.

So fucking what!  The Technics sounds incredible to me and when I try listening to the Onkyo afterwards, it sounds dull and lifeless.  So if I like the sound of bright digital, why should I be ashamed of it?  So yes, I have a new favorite CD player and it’s my new benchmark.  It’s not going to stop me from buying more cheapo players and comparing them.  Maybe I’ll find something even better.

Judged By The Company You Keep

Posted by on October 28, 2019 No comments

In my state, you just cannot live without having tinted windows on your car.  Unless you actually want sunburn or cancer, that is.  When I got my MX5 nine years ago, I was dying during the few days between when I bought the car and I had my appointment for window tinting.  I had to keep a towel in the car to cover my forearm from the sun blasting through the glass.

Almost a decade later, I have a new car, a much bigger car, and this one also needs the tinting treatment for my own comfort and safety.  Maybe a bit surprisingly to me, the same shop that did the windows on my other car is still there.  Well, maybe it is.  It has a new name, but the logo is mostly the same, and the original name is now used by another shop elsewhere in the city.  Partnership gone sour, maybe?  Diversification?  Whatever.  They did a great job the first time, so I’ll go back there and generally hope for the best.

With services like window tinting, isn’t hoping for the best all you can do?  It’s not like it’s a service you utilize on a regular basis, so you build a level of trust in a company.  It’s highly likely you’ll use the service once before they go out of business (or change their name).  And it’s not even really about the business, it’s the quality and skill of their installers.  I doubt the same installers are there that did my first car.  So, it’s always going to be a crapshoot as to what you get.

Tint shops are sort of paradoxical. It’s kind of hard to find one that isn’t ghetto in some way.  I mean, window tint shouldn’t be anything illicit, but you know, it can be.  And those shops usually augment their business with stereo installs, which again, are not illicit, but stereotypically…  And that’s terrible that such a perception exists and that they seem to actively exploit it in their marketing and image.

But the paradox is that this is just the place you want to go.  Quality work comes from practice, so you want a shop that has done a lot of jobs, even if they are on ‘76 Malibus and Cadillacs.  Sigh, more stereotypes.  It’s kind of like certain dive restaurants that have incredible food for really cheap not only because they are more focused on the food than their image, but because they’re so busy with their cheap regulars that they are masters at cooking that food.

Back to my statement about not using window tint services often enough to build a relationship.  That statement was a little short-sighted.  Maybe you do utilize that service frequently if you’re in the cycle of buying $1000 cars and burning them out every 6 months.  I mean, that sounds horrible, but it’s the same as having a $200/mo car payment, right?  Seems almost legit.  Except you would have to get your new car retinted twice a year.  And those customers keep the installers well experienced.

So when I go in with my 2019 model car, the quality I receive could be built off the backs of people who don’t have the credit or ability to buy a car less than 10 years old and are in a constant cycle of upgrades.  Maybe not, but maybe.  What’s the alternative?  Find a high-end shop where they, for whatever reason, would not service those repeat customers?  Which is the greater evil?  Why did this post get so heavy?  I just want to not roast in my car.

You Get What You Pay For

Posted by on October 24, 2019 No comments

In posts leading up to this one, I’ve been talking about my garage and new cars.  Well, I finally got the new car and got in it the garage, only barely.

img_20191023_185442 img_20191023_185500

And I mean barely.  And with that car in the garage, there is no room for the other car.  I’m supposed to have a 2-car garage, and even so, I would classify the MX5 as a half-car, but still, there’s not enough room.  So that’s that.

Now, all about this new car.  As you see, it is a station wagon.  There’s only a handful of wagon models you can buy new in the US right now, and this particular one, a Buick Regal TourX, gets zero marketing and has zero recognition.  I saw this car once on display in a mall back in 2018, and have never seen one since.  So suffice to say, this is a rare vehicle.

The TourX is rare because it’s really low production volume.  There’s aren’t many buyers for wagons, so dealerships don’t order many and so no one ever buys them and the cycle feeds on itself.  When I decided on a car to buy – a wagon – I looked at my available options and this one was the most economical.  Well, it was economical for reasons relating to its unpopularity.  Dealers wanted to sell these things and not so they could order more; they just wanted rid of them.  In my own research, I saw that the 2020 model is coming soon and there are still 2018 models being sold new.

I haven’t purchased a car in nine years.  This time around, I utilized a car buyer service – a person who would search for my car, negotiate a good price, manage all the paperwork with the dealer and basically make the process as easy as possible for me.  When I first got started, I laid out all my criteria and within an hour, he had found me a car.  When he ran the numbers, I was pretty underwhelmed.

The TourX can run up to $40k with all available options, and that is what this particular car had.  So, $40k MSRP and with all discounts and haggling, I could get it for $35k.  After all the taxes and fees were added in, I would pay $38k.  I don’t know… I understand taxes and stuff, but a final price only $2k less than MSRP didn’t do it for me.  And it was about $6k more than I was willing to finance anyway.  So I turned it down.

The buyer went back to work and found another car with fewer options (but all the ones I wanted).  The MSRP was $38k, sale price of $31k, final price of $34k.  That was doable, so I agreed to the offer and we went through the complete sale process, which wasn’t all that bad.  The car was transferred from one dealership to another where I would actually make the purchase.  I gave it a brief test drive and no red flags were raised, mechanically.  The car did have roof racks, which I didn’t want, but I determined I could just uninstall them.  And after two hours at the dealership, I went home with a new car.

It’s been a couple days now, and some of the reality is hitting me.  The first weird thing I experienced was a warning popping up on my dash: washer fluid low.  Ok, whatever,  I can buy a $3 jug of fluid and top it off.  I would have assumed the dealer would have checked all that stuff during the “dealer prep” or whatever that BS service is.

When I popped the hood to fill the washer fluid, I was left aghast.  There were leaves all jammed up under the cowl.  Not just a few leaves, literal handfuls of leaves.  And the plastic shrouds throughout the engine bay were not just dusty, but had a layer of dirt on them.  This hood had not been raised in many, many months.  Yes, the exterior of the car had been washed and the tires glossed up, but there was no detailing of this car in any sense of the word.

As I was pouring the washer fluid in, my astonishment grew.  It just kept taking it.  I poured the entire gallon.  All of the washer fluid in the reservoir had evaporated in the time this car was sitting on the lot.  And the mass of leaves reaffirmed just how long the car was sitting idle and suggested it was not even stored on the primary lot, but in a grass lot back by a tree line.  I found out where the original dealer was located and did some quick math on the mileage for transportation and my test drive. I then determined this car had never been driven once.  It left that original dealer on its way to me with probably about 10 miles on the odometer.

This poor car.  It came to the dealer and was completely neglected for its entire life.  Yeah, yeah, of course cars don’t have feelings, but everything deserves a small level of care.  And a dealer should care for each and every vehicle in their possession.  These are going to be in someone’s family soon (or not soon in cases like this), and they deserve to be treated well until that time comes.

Now, I feel a little conflicted.  I mean, I got a great deal on a car – $7k off sticker price – and I didn’t have to deal with salespeople or haggling.  It was a very low-effort transaction and I can recognize it was probably a low-profit transaction for the dealer.  But at the same time, I still would expect one of the two dealers involved would have opened the hood and at least noticed the mess, or checked the fluid levels.  The bottom line is that I feel like I purchased a car from auction and not from a dealership.  Was I expecting to build a relationship with that dealer?  No way; they are 40 minutes away from my house.  I have dealerships closer to my home and my workplace I would utilize first.  Did I still expect to be wowed by the “new car purchase experience”, where I can show the car off to everyone?  Sure.  I mean, doesn’t everyone pop the hood and show off how clean and new everything is (instead of dirt, leaves, and a post-it note that says “do not turn off”)?  Show off every feature of the car like the power liftgate (which would reveal dusty and dirty rubber seals)?

But, I got a good deal, right?  Now I just need to spend some personal capital on a detailed cleaning of every inch of the vehicle.  Then the TourX will be mine and it won’t need to dwell on its miserable early life alone in a back lot.

The Second System

Posted by on September 27, 2019 No comments

Last month, I upgraded my primary computer and one thing that sort of disappointed me about that event was that the old computer was still quite serviceable.  Aside from the need to support larger hard drives, it was perfectly fine.  After I finished the new built, I boxed up the old parts and left them stored for some unknown future day.

While I am still in my personal rebuilding phase, I’m playing around with a lot of ideas.  Most of those ideas are things from my past.  One specific one is music – playing, recording, etc.  So as I mulled this over, I considered the setup plan.  One thing I wanted was to not use my primary computer for the audio recording, as I had always done in the past.  While all computers are powerful enough to multitask like that now, I just didn’t want the clutter.  And that’s when I remembered I had a whole other quite serviceable computer sitting in a box.  All it needed was a new case.  That makes the idea much more reasonable from a cost perspective.

I got to work shopping for a new computer case, which was easy and not easy at the same time.  I wanted a desktop case (horizontal orientation), but it seems they just don’t make those anymore.  Too old fashioned, I guess.  So I shopped for the smallest tower case I could find.  And since this was a secondary system that would be limited in purpose, I bought the cheapest thing available.  And I bought a cheap power supply to install in it, too.  Maybe a total spend of $60.  Everything else I already had ready to go – monitor, cables, drives, RAM.

The case arrived the other day and I wanted to get a jump on things by installing the motherboard in right away.  Upon opening the box, I saw that all the front panels for the drive bays had popped off.  Then I noted the front panel was also popped off.  This gave me a bad feeling.  After extracting the case from the packing material, I was left with a collection of plastic tabs all over the table.  It appears the box was dropped or mangled in some way to basically shear the front panel straight off.  Every plastic tab that held the front panel to the case was broken off.  Not a single one was spared.

I’m not going to go through a bunch of RMA bullshit for a $30 case, but I’m also not going to just pitch it or give up on it.  I went to the garage and got my big box of miscellaneous screws and permanently attached the plastic panel back to the case with sheet metal screws.  That’ll show ‘em.  And without further incident, I installed the motherboard, video card, and hard drives in the case.  Now I just had to await the arrival of the power supply, which would come the next day.

This computer would be one of those unheard of systems that runs off-network.  No updates ever; first install-last install.  File transfer and backup would be via USB drives to my primary computer.  Ah, the good old days.  Time will tell if Windows 10 can even survive in this environment.  If not, well I suppose I could drop back to Windows 7.  Windows 7 is near end-of-life with security updates being phased out in January 2020, but on an unnetworked computer, what’s security?

Next up, software.

Making The Good Even Better

Posted by on September 18, 2019 No comments

I hate my kitchen sink.  I have hated it for a very long time.  The thing I hate the most about it is that the sides are so curved, you can barely put anything in the basins.  Any glass I put in there topples over.  It is infuriating to me.

So finally, I made the commitment to get a new sink.  Not only that, but I was going to get a hot water dispenser, a filtered water dispenser, a new garbage disposal, and a new, fancy, pre-rinse spray faucet.  I began my search online and was immediately overwhelmed by the potential options.  I mean, there are a LOT of sink options out there.  Eventually, I settled on a 50/50 split sink.  In the process, I learned a bunch about sinks.  One thing I learned was the gauge of the steel.  You can get anything for 16 to 22 gauge thickness.  16 is probably overkill and you don’t really want more than 20, so 18 is a great target point. 

Also, the thicker steel will reduce some of the tinniness when banging items around in the basins, but that can also be mitigated by sound deadening material.  I looked at my existing sink and it had something like a spray-on sound deadener all over the bottom.  When I bought my new sink, it said it had sound absorption as well.

When I got the sink and unpacked it, I saw the deadener on the sink.  It was a 4” square pad on the bottom of the basins.  What good is that going to do?  I knocked on the sides of the basins and the gong was obnoxious.  Sigh.  This is fine.  I can fix it.  The fix idea isn’t mine or even a new idea at all, you can see plenty of examples of the technique online.

When I was installing my stereo in my car, I used a material called Dynamat, which is essentially the same deadening material that is stuck on the bottom of my sink (although much thicker).  When people deaden their cars for improved audio quality, they usually go overboard and cover every exposed bit of metal.  But the key is that you really only have to cover the areas that resonate.  Corners?  No.  Large flat panels?  Yes.  Cover them entirely?  No.  Cover about 50% of the area?  Yes.

So I made a small purchase of Dynamat online, about $18, and applied it to the edges of the sink.  Each of the flat walls got a treatment.  I made a short video of the before and after effects of the treatment.

The Whim Becomes A Wham

Posted by on July 19, 2019 1 comment

The other day, I jumped on an idea to upgrade the storage in my computer.  Lucky for me it was Amazon Prime day, so I got a pretty good deal on a couple of 8TB hard drives.  I laid out the technical idea in another post, which at the time seemed all very logical.  It’s been about six years since I built this computer and it’s been serving me very well all this time.  The only thing it really needed was a better storage structure.

With the new drives arriving in a couple of days, I began planning the conversion.  I don’t do much hardware work anymore, just software, so I have to look some stuff up as I go.  In order to use a drive that is over 2TB in size, you need to partition it as GPT (guid partition table).  All of the drives I have now are 2TB or less and all of them were MBR (master boot record) partitioned.  So the first thing I checked was if MBR and GPT drives could coexist.  I didn’t really get an answer on that, because my question changed to: does my computer support GPT partitioned drives.  And the answer to that turned out to be, no.

In short, I had two drives coming in the mail that I could not use in my computer.  No problem (actually a minor problem), I’ll just upgrade the motherboard.  As I soon found out, you don’t just upgrade a 6yr old motherboard.  Technology has moved on.  Ok, so I’ll get a new motherboard and CPU.  Sorry, your RAM isn’t compatible with newer motherboards.  Ooook, I guess I’m buying a new motherboard, CPU, and new RAM.  Essentially, I’m buying a whole new computer.  Falling down a technological rabbit hole.

And that kinda sucks, because my computer is working just fine.  It doesn’t run slow, it doesn’t crash, it’s fine.  But in order to utilize modern hard drives, I need a modern computer.  And it kind of shows that I’ve gotten off the technology train a while ago.  Computers now are super-powered, because they’re used for a lot of really high-powered gaming.  I don’t game, so I don’t need that level of computer.  Good for me, I guess.

At this point, the thing I have to do is evaluate what I need from my new motherboard.  When I bought my current one back in 2012, I was coming from a small desktop and I wanted as much expandability as possible.  Over time, the cards I had installed in my system came and went based on what hardware I was using, and now, I have to determine what’s really being used anymore.  For example, I have an expansion card that gives me more USB ports and FireWire.  I don’t think I have anything plugged into that card at all.  I have a card that gives me eSATA and also a couple extra SATA ports with RAID.  I don’t have my eSATA dock anymore and I use Windows RAID now.  My motherboard has 6 SATA ports – plenty.  So what’s remaining?  I know I have a video card and a video capture card.

Oh but wait, the motherboard has some new features on it, like support for M2 SSD drives.  Do I need something like that?  Well, it’s pretty cool, and the drives are pretty cheap.  Geez, I paid a couple hundred for my 256GB SSD and now, I can get one twice as big for $55.  Again, do I need it?  Well, I am modernizing my computer; I don’t want to be left behind again, right?  And then there’s the video card.  It’s pretty old, too.

Hold on, stop.  Let’s just focus on what’s needed here.  I quickly placed the order for CPU, motherboard, and RAM.  $311 total.  That’s now in addition to the $300 I spent on the new drives.  So back in 2012, I spent $430 on CPU/MB/RAM, plus a case, and this year it’s $311 for CPU/MB/RAM.  Seems like things are about the same.  And that’s what, about $50/yr to stay current?  Not too bad.

Where To Go, What To Do?

Posted by on May 29, 2019 No comments

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/amazon-to-unleash-a-long-feared-purge-of-small-suppliers/ar-AAC1xhQ

For me, it’s the growing dawn of a new realization.  It’s not really anything revelatory; it’s a topic that has been bantered around for years.  Essentially, the thought is, Amazon is getting too big and too powerful, much like Walmart was before.

It sure is easy to be addicted to quick shipping, which is what Amazon is very good at.  I was disappointed by an online order from Lowes that took a week to arrive, and an item I ordered on Ebay just the other day is going to take a week to arrive (shipped from Canada, so, ok…).  Some other things, I’ve ordered recently have also taken time to arrive, like a new kitchen sink, or lights, or CDs.

But notice something, all of these items were not purchased from Amazon.  That realization is somewhat important to me.  Amazon is not the one-stop, end-all, be-all shopping destination for me.  And, with recent news like this, I feel I should wean myself from Amazon’s grasp further.

It’s not all bad.  There’s a lot of things that don’t need to be received in a couple of days (and there are some that do).  There are times I’ll use Amazon’s no-rush shipping option, and never claim the little reward they offer for doing so.  Price-wise, other places can be competitive and sometimes even much better.  Home Depot beat out Amazon by almost 50% on one item I needed.  When it comes to selection, not even Amazon can match a specialized online store, especially when it comes to furniture and other home goods.  And in a lot of those cases, Amazon’s selection is only much broader because they have a massive selection of cheap import products.  If that’s ok with you, EBay can be just as fruitful.

I’ll admit, sometimes, I find what I’m looking for on another site and will check it against Amazon.  If Amazon is close in price, I’ll usually order it from Amazon.  This is solely because I don’t want to have to go through the hassle of creating a new account on a new site.  But, with my planned dependency-reduction, I may begin doing so to spread the wealth a bit further.  For some people, this might not be as feasible, because if you are reusing your email address on many sites, you are increasing your risk of having your email harvested for spam.  Since I use a different email address for every site, I don’t have this worry.

This reliance on Amazon for a lot of things is sort of a downward spiral.  As we buy more stuff online, stores make fewer items available to purchase in-store, which forces us to buy more online.  I wish there was a way we could reverse it.  Some places have an in-stock check, like Lowes, Home Depot, and Staples for example.  So you can check to see if an item is there before driving to the store.  And if it’s not in stock, well, would you order it from there to be shipped or held for pickup, or would you just return to Amazon to buy it?  I know I’m going to have to be more proactive in that choice.

Why can’t someone with more business connections than I have make a website that tracks who sells what.  This should be easy as hell.  Any store that has an electronic point of sale system must have a list of products they sell, and that list of products would contain a UPC.  It should be trivial to upload a list of UPCs to a website to indicate what products your store sells.  The website allows someone to search by product and a list of who sells that product is displayed.  It could work the other way too, where manufacturers upload a list of UPCs and the retailers they distribute to.  The data is there, it just needs aggregated.

Old And Desirable

Posted by on May 7, 2019 No comments

Today, out thrift shopping, I happened across a couple of pieces of stereo equipment.  You know, that’s exactly what I need is more stereo stuff.  I must have a third stereo in my house.  Maybe it will go in the guest bathroom.

That’s not what I was thinking, exactly.  The thought I had was, “I’ve seen this before.”  I’d seen pictures of it in forum posts of people bragging about their systems and others drooling and praising those people’s stereos.  This was one of those stereos.  It was old, like older than me, old.  And it was neat looking in that retro way.  From pictures I’d seen, I knew what it would look like powered up.  The power level meters would have a beautiful, soft aqua glow.  But on the whole, it’s not my aesthetic.

BUT, it is one of those impossibly rare finds, and the price was reasonable.  Only $20 per piece, $40 out the door.  This is the same thrift shop at which I bought my other retro stereo.  That stereo only cost me $18.  So I walked swiftly back up front to get a shopping cart (because these components are easily 60 pounds together) and made off with my spoils.

Back at work and back online, I do a quick search on the eBay for the components.  Each one is selling for about $1000.  So, assuming these pieces work, I have a $2000 stereo for the price of $40.  But again, it’s not really my thing.  There seems something sacrilegious about running a CD player through a 60’s era stereo.  This system was made for vinyl, and that’s not what I do.

In fact, to give an idea of what the preamp is capable of, it has inputs for two turntables, three (3!) tape decks, radio tuner, and another input.  You can output to three different destinations including a monitor output.  It almost seems like a piece of equipment you’d find in a broadcasting studio.  It has a function called “expansion” that is supposed to work the opposite of a compressor: make quiet parts more quiet and loud parts louder.  Crazy.

So my initial plan is just to clean it up and flip it, assuming it works well.  Even if it doesn’t work well, the place I plan to sell to is a repair shop.

The New Retail

Posted by on May 6, 2019 No comments

Here’s one of the ideas that could be extremely lucrative until the tide changes and the master takes control.  By that I’m referring to cases where the market fills a need until the need is fulfilled natively.  For example, a lot of add-ons, plug-ins, and utilities are written to work around shortcomings of software apps, either online or otherwise.  This is great, until the application developer writes the functionality into the main program, making all the plug-ins unnecessary.  The plug-in writers lose a potential large chunk of customers and if they aren’t on to the next big thing, they’re out of business.

My idea is one of those things that is probably going to be inevitable, so it’s really a matter of how quickly can someone implement this and can they bank enough and have a solid enough exit strategy to not lose it all when the hammer falls.  And I’m talking about an Amazon-sized hammer.

Enough teasing.  This is the idea: Create a showroom for Amazon products and provide ordering stations that use Amazon’s affiliate program to gain revenue.

So what does this take?  Lots of space and either enough money to buy floor samples or a really good salesperson to convince manufacturers to provide a free floor model for promotion.  Considering the current retail apocalypse, space is easy to come by.  But, I’m going to predict, Amazon is going to eventually do this themselves and no one is going to compete at the scale of which they are capable.

But let’s give some consideration to the idea in general.  We know that retail is dying and most all sales are moving online.  But there are some products that you really want to see and touch and experience before you purchase them.  Furniture is a strong example.  Appliances can also be in that category.  These are large purchases.  But to a lesser degree, electronics are also something people want to see in action.

What happens now is people go to a retailer and get their touchy-feely on, then go to Amazon and buy it for less, screwing the retailer.  So then, let’s just eliminate the retailer and use their space for what it was used for anyway – showrooming.  Wipe out all their back-room space for stock and open it up for more display.  Also, invite manufacturer representatives.  Schedule demonstrations.  Or even better, take it to the next level.

Schedule shootout demos.  Have three or more competing products and have a representative pitch their product to a crowd.  It’s totally different when you’re at a store that specializes in one brand; there’s no competition.  But put against each other, there has to be a more honest product placement strategy.  It’s not a battle royale with one winner.  It’s a legitimate selling point to say your vacuum cleaner doesn’t have the power of a Dyson because maybe you only have two rooms of carpet.  So why spend so much on a tool that would be used so little?  Record the show and put it on a video channel.

But, I digress.  This concept is about creating a showroom to sell Amazon products.  Now to make the money.  Every product would have a digital sign which would display the current price, availability, and a QR code to place an order.  The QR code would contain an affiliate code so the showroom gets a small portion of the sale.  There could also be kiosks around the store to place orders or look up more information on larger screens.

And that’s the income concept in a nutshell.  Maybe you could sell off floor models when they get discontinued for some extra income.  Maybe manufacturers would pay you to have a premium display.  So what would the expenses be?  Rent, utilities, a small amount of labor, typical things like insurance and licenses.  But rent would be the biggest expense.  Now, how much would you need to sell to make enough affiliate income to cover all those expenses?  Well, I don’t know.  I didn’t do any research to see if this idea was even feasible.  It’s just an idea.

And feasible or not, it’s only a matter of time before Amazon decides to do it themselves.  They could buy an entire mall and turn it into a massive showroom for their products, plus a Whole Foods.  They would have the clout to negotiate free samples from manufacturers, or just use customer returns.  They have the means to create closeout, as-is centers in their showrooms to sell off excess inventory.

Maybe the future of retail is stockless.  You never walk out with anything, it always gets shipped to you.

It Just Doesn’t Come Cheaply

Posted by on May 3, 2019 No comments

In another blog of mine, I discussed improvements I was making to my house.  In some posts, I talked about making quality purchases and how we have all become conditioned to expect great stuff for low prices.  In reality, that doesn’t happen.  You might get good or ok stuff at low prices, but when you really want something good, something unique, something that will last and continue to look good all the while, you’re really going to have to pay for it.

Of course, I’m not talking about a $12,000 chandelier, although there may be a rationale for it, especially for uniqueness.  But I am talking about buying things 3-4 times more expensive than you might originally have in mind.  In my current situation, I want a chair.  Just one chair.

You might think, ok, go to Walmart and buy a $30 chair.  No, this is a listening chair for my music room.  Ok, go to Staples and get an office chair, maybe $150.  No, I really want something like a recliner.  Then go to Ashley Homestore and get a recliner, they can’t be more than $300.  I want leather.  Ok, $400.  I want a modern style.  (After searching modern leather recliners)  You’re not thinking of a $5,000 Herman Miller Eames, are you?  No, but you’re thinking the right way.  You have to see where you could end up so you feel better about where you actually end up.

So, I’m not planning on getting an iconic art piece of furniture for $5k.  More reasonable is another famous brand you might have heard of, Stressless by Ekornes.  I was surprised to see they’re almost in the $2k range.  But it seems you can get them just about anywhere.  Stressless is a very popular brand and that lends it to a lot of flattery in the form of imitation.  So yeah, you can get a chair that looks like a Stressless for $300.  Great, you say.  Cheap and done.  Looks the same, is the same.

Well, no.  Far from it actually.  First and foremost,  I’m not buying a piece of furniture my ass has to enjoy until my ass has given it the thumbs up.  So no blind internet ordering for this piece.  With that restriction in mind, I begin stopping at furniture stores in my surrounding area.  One thing I quickly learned is that my vision of “modern” is not the same as theirs.  If it doesn’t look like an overstuffed box with tufting and pillowtops on every edge, then it’s “modern”.

I began being more specific in what I was looking for.  I started with a half-apology because the question could rub a salesperson the wrong way.  “I hate using a brand as a description, but I am looking for a recliner in the style of Stressless.”  You might think I was just a cheap bastard – wants a Stressless, doesn’t want to pay for a Stressless.  One salesperson clearly had no idea what I was talking about and showed me a typical recliner, (as I’d begun referring to them) a box.  You’d think if he was selling furniture, he’d be knowledgeable about top brands.  I guess not.

So I looked on and on.  Of the six places I visited, only one had any recliners of the style I wanted.  So I guess they won by default.  But I didn’t just concede the win.  I went online and researched the chairs and found out who the manufacturer was and compared prices to Internet stores (it was comparable, actually).  And I went back to buy the chair the next day, while the store was having a 20% off sale.  The chair is on backorder for oh, about a month, so I have plenty of time to look forward to it.

And how much was this not-$5k chair?  $700 before discount.  I did see similar chairs online for $300, but during my research after finding this chair, I learned a lot about leather.  The key takeaway I got was that a lot of “leather” is of “bonded leather” construction, which is complete garbage.  What you want is top-grain or full-grain leather.  A lot of the lower-priced chairs were upholstered in bonded leather, which is why they were so cheap.  They wouldn’t last a few years before flaking apart.

The chair I bought is top-grain leather with a caveat.  It’s leather on all seating surfaces and vinyl everywhere else.  I’m actually ok with this design since I won’t be sitting on the back of the chair, nor on the sides.  It saves natural resources and keeps the cost down, but still has the durability wherever it will be used.

With my recent purchase of patio loungers, I will soon be able to nap just about anywhere in my house I want.