A podcast about books, art & life — not necessarily in that order
Actually, it’s not much of a trip: we have a conference in NYC this week, so I’ll be staying at a little hotel near Times Square for the next couple of nights. Since the exhibit hall doesn’t open till 10am, I should have a little time for blogging in the morning. On the other hand, we’ll also be taking clients out for dinner, etc., so I may be in no shape to write in the morning.
Don’t expect so much outta me, okay?
Here’s an article from BW about how Wal-Mart’s flat-panel TV pricing for the 2006 holidays helped destroy a number of electronics stores. Looks like the chain’s decision to sell a 42-inch Panasonic for under $1,000 sent its (partial) competitors off a price-war cliff:
Along with Wal-Mart’s determination to lower prices, two other factors played key roles in last winter’s 40%-to-50% flat-panel price drop and the ensuing turmoil. For one, many more retailers such as Sears and CompUSA were starting to stock a wider selection of flat-panel TVs after seeing demand soar over the previous two years. Also, manufacturers like Samsung, Sony, Panasonic, and Westinghouse had ramped up production last year with new factories in Asia and the U.S. They began flooding the market with new TVs in the latter half of 2006. All these forces combined to make a commodity of what just six months earlier had been a solidly high-end, high-margin entertainment product. “It’s Econ 101: Best Buy and Circuit City had seen fat margins from flat-panel TVs for a while, and as it happens with any product, eventually the margins come down and the music stops,” says David Abella, a portfolio manager at New York-based Rochdale Investment Management, with assets of $2 billion.
Wal-Mart is the second-largest electronics retailer today, behind Best Buy, which has fared relatively well compared to many of its rivals. But it has done so by imitating some of Wal-Mart’s best practices, most notably an efficient supply chain, by the admission of CEO Brad Anderson himself. It also has more diversified merchandise than other specialty-electronics retailers.
I think the collapse of CompUSA — and maybe some of the other retailers — was also triggered by the post-holiday delay of Windows Vista and the ensuing realization that Vista wasn’t a compelling reason to buy a new computer, but that’s just my pet theory. I’m sure the demolition of flat-screen margins was the biggest factor, given the amount of floor space all of these chains devoted to those TVs. I’m fascinated by the way different sectors become commoditized.
The pharma biz, which I cover, has historically been insulated against that (until a drug’s patent life expires, that is), leading to less concern about reducing manufacturing costs. That’s changing nowadays, insofar as major companies are trying to wring excess costs out of manufacturing processes, but the market prices (and the high cost of regulatory compliance) still insulate them.
The Milan Design Fair started this week. Read a preview and check out the slide show!
It was a busy week, but that didn’t stop me from almost writing about some articles. Here’s a sampling of the stuff I didn’t get around to!
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: Apr. 20, 2007”
I just finished reading Taliban
The book is also a product of its time, of course. One of the “problems” with Taliban is that oil was priced around $13/barrel in the years leading up to its publication. That fact was a key to his understanding of Russian and Iranian policy, and it’s completely understandable; who would even entertain the notion that oil would someday trade for 5x that price?
I found myself marveling over how the country, long seen as the prize in The Great Game, achieved its present-day notoriety only when it fell under the radar and became an utterly failed state. Once “we” stopped paying attention to it, Afghanistan became the engine of the new world.
Which brings me to the end of the book. Usually, I don’t give away endings, but I don’t think I’m doing Rashid any disservice in this case. Here’s the final paragraph:
But if the war in Afghanistan continues to be ignored we can only expect the worst. Pakistan will face a Taliban-style Islamic revolution which will further destabilize it and the entire region. Iran will remain on the periphery of the world community and its eastern borders will continue to be wracked by instability. The Central Asian states will not be able to deliver their energy and mineral exports by the shortest routes and as their economies crash, they will face an Islamic upsurge and instability. Russia will continue to bristle with hegemonic aims in Central Asia even as its own society and economy crumbles. The stakes are extremely high.
I don’t mean to goof on Rashid by writing this, but isn’t it amazing how much worse it got than his most pessimistic projection?
Happy 64th birthday, LSD!
Back in college, I remarked that the weirdly pointillized head-shots on the front page of the Wall Street Journal looked like they’d been put through the “Drew Friedman-izer”. I’m not sure if it was funnier to make a joke about a cartoonist best known for The Incredible Shrinking Joe Franklin, or to make a reference to the Wall Street Journal at Hampshire College.
Anyway, if there was ever a perfect example of the Journal‘s Drew Friedmanizing process, it’s this pic of Tom Ford from an article in today’s ish:
The article’s about Ford’s post-Gucci career, because he’s about to launch a line of menswear, which will include “classic custom-made suits, shirts, ties, shoes, luggage, jewelry and fragrances.” Here’s some drivel about it:
Mr. Ford says he isn’t aiming only at fashionistas but also at rich businessmen in the U.S. and developing countries who “have been deprived of luxury.” He doesn’t plan any womenswear, “having nothing new to say.”
To me, the only interesting things about the article are that incredible pic and the fact that Ford is launching TWELVE fragrances this month with Estee Lauder. I’m holding out hope that one of them is “Friedman.”
There’s a bizarre article in the NYTimes today, about the appointment of two editors at Consumer Reports and the mag’s upcoming redesign. It begins:
As it struggles to recover from a recent flawed article about children’s car seats, Consumer Reports has named two new editors and announced a redesign.
Hmm. Sounds almost like the flawed article has led to the appointments and the redesign. We learn that Kim Kleman has been named editor-in-chief, while retaining her position at the mag’s parent company. Greg Daugherty will cover editorial personnel.
From there, we’re told that the incorrect article about child safety seat tests has damaged the Consumer Reports brand:
In a “Safety Alert” article in its February issue, Consumer Reports said that 10 infant car seats failed its safety test and called for one seat to be recalled.
In an editorial in that issue, the magazine’s president, James Guest, wrote that the images he saw of the tests “filled me with dread: Dummies tumbled like Raggedy Anns, seats flew across the lab, plastic bases cracked.”
Within weeks, the magazine’s executives retracted the article and apologized, saying the tests, which the magazine said were conducted by an outside company, had been botched. The May issue contains an explanation of the mistake.
“When Consumer Reports has to come out and apologize in public and in print, that’s big for a magazine that has been trusted for years,” Mr. Husni said. “This is going to require a big forgiveness.”
Wow! This is terrible! No wonder the magazine has appointed two new positions and undergone a redesign! It must be on the verge of collapse! Wait. . . what’s the very next paragraph say?
Circulation did not drop at Consumer Reports, nor has its subscription growth slowed since it retracted the car seat article, said Ken Weine, a company spokesman.
Newsstand sales have reached 160,000 each month this year, twice those three years ago. The magazine, which does not accept advertising, has 4.3 million print readers, and 2.8 million who pay to read its online version, Mr. Weine said.
The redesign will provide more information about the magazine’s product-testing methods, but Ms. Kleman said that the change was not in response to the car seat episode. Instead, the additional testing information will be provided as a way for the magazine to set itself apart from other sources of product information like consumer review sites, she said.
Oh. So, the magazine’s actually doing fine? The safety seat alert and retraction didn’t cause mass cancellations, and newsstand sales have doubled from 3 years ago? The redesign isn’t in response to the alert? (I’ve worked in magazines for more than 10 years; a redesign isn’t something you frivolously roll out.)
All of which is to say, this article is bullshit.
The writer (or her editor) is trying to shoehorn the child seat controversy into an article about pretty standard day-to-day operations at a magazine. Neither appointment appears to have anything to do with that story (that editor-in-chief slot has been vacant since October), the magazine’s credibility is unaffected (except in the eyes of the chairman of the journalism dept. at U of Mississippi), and the redesign is an attempt to create more brand awareness for CR (to help it stand out from online review-sites).
When you get down to it, I bet its retraction of that child seat article was a lot more comprehensive than the corrections that the Times is in the habit of running. Of course, Consumer Reports depends on the trust and goodwill of its readers, since it doesn’t accept advertising.
Here at my illustrious day job, I get a lot of invites to pharma-conferences. Some have good presenters whom I can work with to write articles for the mag. Others are hardcore technical science conferences, which are beyond the scope of what we cover.
Now, the 10th Annual International Conference on Drug Metabolism/Applied Pharmacokinetics, is definitely in the latter class but, on a whim, I looked through the event schedule just now to see if there were any presentations that might be adaptable for the mag. What did I find?
11:00am – Brain Transporters – Jashvant (Jash) Unadkat, Ph.D., Professor, School of Pharmacy, Department of Pharmaceutics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
And it’s followed by a tour of Wollersheim Winery!
Now I’m kicking myself for not being a scientist.
It’s a Museum of Plagiarism! With a slideshow!
(Note: Well, it opens on April 1, so it may not be real, but hey!)
(Note: the design of this blog was adapted from Roy Tanck‘s Tranquility White template)