New York Series: Contingency Plans
It’s no secret I’ve spent some time abroad recently – the tile of recent entries has been a total giveaway.
One of the areas I reckon all entrepreneurs should cut their teeth in is a bit of gardening. The skills required for successful gardening happen to be highly transferable for entrepreneurs. I always keep my my garden in good nick. But this is the condition is was in upon my return.
My beloved box hedges are not very healthy to say the least.
Sure we had some hot weather. But I knew it was the middle of a Melbourne summer which regularly gets temperatures above 40c / 100f . So why didn’t I prepare for the resources to cater for the ‘potential challenges’ the hot weather could present to my garden? It’s pretty simple really. I assumed it would be OK for a few weeks. I assumed that things would progress as normal and we wouldn’t have the hottest temperatures on record – which we did.
I failed to prepare for the worst case scenario. Actually I failed to have an infrastructure set up so things would not only continue in my absence, but have the ability to respond to extraneous circumstances. The net result is business failure. Dead garden. Which means that my garden business is still a sole trader, a side interest or maybe just a hobby.
We only have a business when we can be absent and;
- things get done anyway
- emergencies get attended to
- our customers are unaware of our absence
- we return with no ‘noticeable’ difference
So the questions we must ask ourselves as entrepreneurs, is how we are building an infrastructure which doesn’t rely on us? It’s only once this is in place, that we actually have a business.
New York Series: I like Dogmatic
I stumbled across this fast food place – good food quicky place in New York. It’s called Dogmatic, and they serve really nice gourmet sausages in bread. Really that’s all they do. Oh, and some some home made sodas.
What I really like is how simple the back end of their outlet is:
- They cook different types of sausages.
- Put all of them in the same type of bread roll
- The bread rolls which are hollowed out simultaneously on a hot bread pole.
- You choose a sauce(gourmet of course) and off you go.
Not only is the consumer end a great single minded proposition, the back end is too. Something few startups ever really recognize the benefits of.
Consumers only have 2 choices to make – Sausage type, and sauce flavour…. which are of the ilk of Pesto & Garlic – you get he picture. And so did I, so here they are:
This is the type of food idea with has a replicable formula. And it doesn’t have to be in a major populous like New York to work. It could work in pretty much any city.
So the question for entrepreneurs is this: Which food category will you spin, change and own in your startup?
New York Series: ‘Food Porn’ from Dean & Deluca
What is gourmet today, is mainstream tomorrow. We’ve already seen the gourmification (yes, I just made this word up) of products, including Chocolate, Yogurt, Soup, Coffee, Softdrink, Bread, and Ice-cream to name a few. So in the spirit of stimualting ideas for entrepreneurs, here’s yet another photo essay of the high end supermarket experience at the Dean & Deluca store in NYC.
It’s again clear that this photo set can do much more than more words:
The question for young entrepreneurs is this:
Which category in a boring old supermarket can you re-invent?
Maybe you can show some of the old boring food conglomerates like Kraft & Nestle how out of touch they are with emerging consumers and ‘real’ food values.
New York Series: Barbie Celebrating in Style
It’s not secret that Barbie has had her challenges in her 50 year history, from promoting ridiculous body image, to the more recent market share battle with Bratz.
But on her 50th birthday I saw one of the coolest promotions I had seen in some time. Bloomingdales New York. It has the entire history of Barbie on display. Nearly every doll ever made in uber cool glass cases, right through the entire ladies clothing floors. It cannot be missed. and demands attention. In addition they have some life size barbies who have been dressed by leading fashion designers. Here’s a photo essay, and some important comments about it below:
If we are in the fashion business (which more of us are than we think) then we must constantly be re-inventing, and reminding our people why we are the coolest.
How does your startup show how cool it is?
New York Series: Bloomingdales – You’re Welcome, really.
The historically significant department store Bloomingdales do some pretty cool stuff. This includes the ‘Visitor discount’ they provide:
Yep, if you’re from another country you automatically receive an 11% discount on everything you buy. Now, this isn’t one of those trick promotions, impossible to get, with 100 other conditions. You simply go to the visitor center pictured above and show them your passport, or overseas license and that is it. And the discount is real, even if an item is on promotion or already discounted, you get the 11% on top of that. I was fortunate enough to get an incredible winter jacket which was already half price (end of winter discount, even though it was actually snowing outside) with an additional 11%. I was pretty happy. They also have a gift incentive if you spend over $200, and yep, I got my gift…
It get’s better, they also have personal shopping assistants, Multi-lingual assistants to take your around store and free hotel delivery for purchases greater that $250. You can read more about it here.
Sure, discounting isn’t always the path to profitability, but when you are taking one time customers, making them feel special, with ‘money to spend’, under your wing, it’s pretty clear that they are ‘inventing revenue’.
What does your startup do to ‘invent revenue’?
New York Series: Interesting Promotion
This photo below is something I have never seen before at a restaurant. These are actual dishes of food cooked and prepared and set on a table out the front of a restaurant to entice people to enter their establishment.
It turned me off more than anything. In real terms this could only possibly be enticing for a few minutes while the meals are aromatic, hot and fresh. None of which they were by the time I took the pic.
It comes down to simple common sense. Are there more benefits, or problems with an idea? Ideas are great, but not when it is easy to see they will result in more problems than good stuff.
PS – Lucky for them it was too cold for flys to be buzzing around the food
New York Series: the FAO Shwarz Toy Store Greeter
Here is a little Youtube Clip I took of an FAO Shawrz greeter. The greeting we received was after arriving at the infamous 5th Avenue New York FAO Shwarz Toy Store after closing. Instead of saying – Sorry were are closed. He said this (in video).
This guy is a real thespian. He puts his soul into what he does. And he kept delivering the message in this fashion when ever anyone came and asked if the store was open.
It was so cool, sincere and awesome they way he delivered this message. It’s the way, all companies would love their employees to be – that is, to be into what they do!
New York Series: Naming a Brand
This is the oldest marketing lesson in the book – What to call our brand. It seems it doesn’t matter how many times the story is told, but some businesses never seem to learn. Here’s a bad example of a clothing brand name which I saw in Bloomingdale’s today.
Yep, Acne. Which means pimples here in Australia. I’m surprised it even made it instore. So here’s the startup blog rules for brand names. Which I’ll keep short:
- Try to invent a word that currently has no meaning. (our job is to invent meaning under it)
- Ensure you can ‘own it’ globally. (No confusion, registerable)
- Make sure it doesn’t mean something ridiculous, in your country or another.
That’s all that matters in real terms. Other rules are made up by people who are focused on stuff which doesn’t really have much to do with brand building.
New York Series: Nice copy writing
Here’s a nice piece of copy writing I found on a store in Soho. The thing I like is that ‘fun’ have finally entered categories which go beyond toys, chocolate bars and candy.
Life was meant to be fun, so I think it best we inject it into our startup regardless of what category or industry we play in.
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