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April 10, 2009

Backing down from the efficiency cliff.

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The same inefficient food supply model proposed in this Grist article by Tom Philpott could very easily be extended towards the entire marketplace of goods and services. Just as it makes more sense for quality food to be produced this way, it makes sense for large swaths of consumer needs to be produced in the same way. Etsy is doing well, indicating there’s a growing market for the handmade.

If we look at current conditions wherein people are buying less of everything, yet still need certain things, exploiting the flaws of the efficient marketplace with “inefficient” products should lead to increased regional prosperity. A good portion of consumer needs can be met in the so-called craft marketplace, by local tailors, cobblers, woodworkers, and, to repair the factory produced appliances, a sizable force of repair people. Needless to say, this inefficiency also has positive environmental outcomes as well, with less packaging, less shipping, and fewer large trucks on city streets.

There’s definitely holes to be filled in to make the plot work. Many of the skills needed to build a local economy have evaporated over the last 50 years. Our infrastructure isn’t particularly friendly to local living once you get out into the suburbs. People have to buy into the concept of well-made, slightly imperfect goods made inefficiently, rather than poorly made, perfect appearing goods made efficiently. However, we’ve also got an army of marketers and advertising agencies who are going to need something to do now that simply telling people to buy more stuff isn’t working.

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April 1, 2009

Challenges of aspirational lifestyle branding

This post on Off the Cuff , and this response on Name Development got me thinking about the issues of aspirational branding when it comes to developing clothes and accessories around bicycling.

Surf and skate have been thoroughly co-opted, as has the preppy New England lifestyle. The lumberjack/outdoorsman theme has been mined deeply as of late. The question is if the story of riding a bicycle is compelling enough to make people want to belong in the same way.

At least in the US, riding a bike has come to mean stretchy synthetics, silly shoes, and minimum style. Other than a brief lycra flare-up during the 1980s, there hasn’t been much impact on general fashion from the bicycle world. There’s been some cross-over with the track bike and fixed gear explosion, but nothing to qualify as widely aspirational as Vineyard Vines, Ralph Lauren, or Vans.

It doesn’t feel right to create a bicycle clothing brand as an “other”, since the goal of creating good riding gear for everyday people is to make clothes that function in the real world, rather than clothes that are acceptable at best when in a business environment.

However, at the same time, if bicycling becomes an aspirational activity at the level of summering on Martha’s Vineyard or surfing, then the branding will become self-perpetuating. More people will start riding to fulfill the lifestyle promised by the clothing, and hopefully, continue on to buy more of the clothing to meet their new-found needs as cyclists.

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March 28, 2009

Donation management for non-profits

For a recent project for a non-profit, I had to make a decision about using an out of the box solution for managing donations versus building our own solution.

We are still working on the decision, but here are the key points to consider:
1) Opportunity cost - What asking opportunities are we going to miss if we take the time to build our own?
2) Staff quality and availability - Do we have the staff and spare cycles to build a solution?
3) Upkeep - Can we maintain this solution with spare time and volunteers?

The outcome of my research indicates that the cost (on average, about $300 to setup, with 3 to 5% transaction fee, and usually a monthly fee) is often cheaper and will pay for itself in the first round of donations received on the platform, while freeing up staff and volunteers to focus on the core mission of the organization.

Groundspring seems to be the best of the non-profit tools available for donation management. Most offerings also include email list management, crm features, and other extras, all of which are better done with specific standalone packages.

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March 25, 2009

We’re all outta rock stars and ninjas

I subscribe to several niche job feeds. At least once a day, I see postings for “rock star developers” and “javascript ninjas’. Occasionally there’ll be a need for a Ruby on Rails wizard.

I’m pretty sure ninjas and rock stars are too busy being ninjas and rock stars to write code.

If you’re looking for solid talent, write a descriptive ad. Say what it is you’re really looking for, not just ninjas. Know the roles you’re hiring for, understand that (usually) a web designer doesn’t know AJAX, and most web developers (usually) can’t design. If you don’t know the job you’re hiring for, get some advice.

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March 4, 2009

Success

1) Goal
2) Metric
3) Measure & track
4) Action
5) Refine & repeat

Should get you to where you’re going.

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March 3, 2009

Investment wardrobe building

Style Savage has a good breakdown on creating a wardrobe to last, and the concepts behind building such a thing.

[A] man’s wardrobe was like a house - he bought pieces of clothing and he maintained them so they would last, shirts were mended and ultimately their character was enhanced.

There’s very little ambiguity about the value of living and dressing this way. Less consumption, shorter supply chains, more local jobs.

Check out Bobby Orr’s old hockey bag. It was repaired again and again from getting punctured by his skates. These days, the bag wouldn’t be considered worth the time to stitch up, and likely, the material wouldn’t take it.

Therein lies the defense of higher pricepoints for “investment” pieces. If one could buy a new duffel for $15, why would they spend half an hour fixing it? Make the price of the piece truly reflect the labor and other costs, and the equation changes drastically. Same for everything from shirts to shoes.

There’s a higher up front cost, but a much smaller lifetime cost to everyone, not just yourself. Less time spent acquiring replacement goods, more time to enjoy what you have.

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February 25, 2009

User-friendly email etiquette

I’ve read a few good guides to email etiquette and getting responses. Recently, I had a couple of experiences where I was on the wrong end of miscommunication.

I read an entire email from a friend, mashed reply and asked them a question that I could have answered myself IF I HAD CLICKED THE LINK HE PROVIDED.

My new ideal email format:

Subject (Verify that if this is a reply, the content is still a part of the thread. Break out new subjects into a new email).

Greeting line

Context sentence to set the tone, unless the email is a reply to a thread.

Information to convey with links summarized and key points from links or attachments inline with the text.

Calls to action, placed last and together so each one gets attention, rather than forcing the recipient to do the work of finding action items in the email.

I’m going to try this template for a while and see if I get better responses with fewer follow up questions.

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February 23, 2009

A tiny moment of packaging idiocy

The story about Tropicana’s failed redesign wouldn’t have caught my attention or ire if I hadn’t read the Brand Week article referenced in the New York Times.

The part that bothered me:

Here is the capper: Tropicana wanted a physical mnemonic for the brand. The design team at the Arnell Group took half of a mid-season orange and created a cap that mimicked its peel in both color and texture… The cap is made from a special gauge of plastic with a soft rebound to it, he said. “It’s got a tactile quality, not unlike an orange. It helped us create a whole new ritual for Tropicana.

Clever, but completely and entirely irresponsible. Creating a new plastic, non-renewable widget to sell a purportedly natural product seem counter-productive. The entire process of creating a new piece of plastic is destructive, even if the end-product can be recycled.

This was a golden opportunity to reinvent the packaging to reduce waste and materials, or the product to be pesticide-free, and they blew it on a squishy piece of rubber that no-one noticed or cared about.

Seth is right, marketers can be evil. And dumb. In this case, more dumb than evil.

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February 20, 2009

Renewable shoes

Patagonia recently announced that most of their footwear can be resoled by Mountain Soles out of Portland.

Resoling is nothing new to footwear, up until maybe 25 years ago. Shoes now have enough externalized costs that it makes more financial sense to throw them out and buy a new pair whenever the old ones are done. Blundstone encourages this behavior on their website, claiming:

“There have been many technical advances in footwear construction methods, which enable volume manufacturers to produce a quality product economically. As a company we have expanded our use of this technology, particularly through the use of direct injection sole moulding in preference to the method of ’sticking on soles’. The security of the sole bond and the economies realised through adopting this technology, make it impractical to repair and resole footwear…”

However, a little bit of research (ok, 30 seconds and Google), and I found out that my boots can get new soles for the princely sum of $65. Not a bad deal for boots I paid $120 for 5 years ago. I’m sending my boots in early next month, to see how it comes out.

There are better choices than after-market hacks for dealing with poorly thought-out (at least from the re-use / re-new side of the sustainability picture) footwear. Alden, Allen-Edmonds, Russell, White’s, Wesco, and a few other companies make shoes and boots that can be rebuilt, and usually for significantly less than a new pair of shoes.

None of these companies make an inexpensive product, but they’re made in the US, of quality materials. No global wage or environmental arbitrage is used to offset the cost of production, unlike the average pair of sneakers.

What’s the upside in this for retailers and marketers? This is another facet of selling less as more. One pair of White’s is going to cost your customer the same as 3 or 4 pairs of Kenneth Cole or what-have-you, but last well more than 4 times as long. Much longer, when you counted recrafting. It’s a value, rather than price sale.

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February 18, 2009

Small and Curated

From my twitter, a little bit ago :

“Small and impeccably curated is the new huge and miscellaneous.”

I can’t say if it’s a new trend, or my own tastes changing, but I am discovering more venues of objects or information that are tightly focused with a lower volume than I used to.
Even a couple years ago, my goal was to just collect as much music and video as I could, once the cost of aquisition dropped to near zero.  I didn’t account for the cost of consumption and storage in that goal. Now, I am trying to reduce my music to a very focused collection. It means making decisions about obscure or near obscure acts near the fringes of their genres, but the tradeoff is less selection anxiety with the iPod.  Do I need a dozen bands that sound like Bad Religion or yet another psychadelic pop throwback album (Fleet Foxes aside)?  How many Sabbath worshipping bands need to live on my hard drive?
The answer is always less than I have now. It comes back to enjoying what you’ve got, instead of stuffing your life full of more distractions, and more decisions.
I’m trying to narrow everything down, physical and information.  I currently have around 400 feeds in google reader, a bunch of social media accounts (which I will probably leave alone, seeing as I make a good part of my living from this),  a lot of books, a lot of records, too many shoes, and I may even have too many bikes.
I predict more curation and less aggregation as the future of successful ventures, from bloggers to businesses.
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