Monthly Archives: July 2013

July 15, 2013 · 11:07 am

Non-virtual Commerce Portals

I do most of my non-food shopping online and I think I might have made a mistake that’s all too common among business folks:  I assumed I was just mirroring that habits of the public at large.  I also figured that shopping malls would be on their last legs.  After all, if you never have to leave your house to go shopping or stand in a checkout line while some whiny baby serenades you, why wouldn’t you choose to do that?

Shopping mall

(Photo credit: pix.plz)

Not only am I way off base, but there is research that shows just how far wrong I am.  Despite some fairly big gains with respect to share of market by online merchants, 95% or shopping still occurs offline. According to a recent Nielsen report, in the fourth quarter of 2012, 5.4% of retail sales came from online channels, up from 3.6% in Q1 2008.  Big gains, a lot of dollars, but still a fraction of the retail world.  Why do I think this might be of interest to you?

Other than media, there is no other sector of business so dramatically affected by the grown of digital than bricks and mortar retail.  Since shopping malls have replaced the “downtown” in most places outside of major cities, they are sort of ground zero to feel the impact of this change.  Yet although many of them are suffering through high vacancy rates and others (as shown in this Dead Mall site) are dead and gone, something else is happening that is instructive.  As Nielsen found:

Malls are changing their focus and aren’t just places to buy things. They’re social centers, places for entertainment and employment hubs. They’re also transforming what consumers can expect from a shopping experience.  The line between shopping, entertainment, and community building has blurred. This blending of experiences has created an opportunity for retail to strengthen social ties within communities looking for communal experiences.

In other words, “Malls” are now non-virtual commerce portals.  I think they can go further.  Imagine a “guy” mall, for example.  Instead of Macy’s or Target as an anchor tenant, maybe it’s an indoor driving range, a shooting range, a bowling alley and a sports bar, surrounded by men’s shops, hardware stores, etc.  Why not stretch the thinking a bit and develop that property next to one that’s female oriented.   Combine each with an active social presence (Instagram and Pinterest will be very helpful here) and you’ve transformed the “mall” experience into something more akin to how people shop online.

We all need to think out of the box before they put our business in one to bury it.  You with me?

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July 12, 2013 · 8:50 am

Seeing vs. Doing

It’s Foodie Friday, and the topic today is culinary school. There is an ongoing debate in food professional circles about the value of, and need for, culinary school educations and I think it’s a discussion that has broader implications for those of us not in the food business.  Basically the debate boils down (should I say “reduces” since we’re discussing cooking?) to this:  is it preferable for new cooks to learn in school or learn by working?

Chef

(Photo credits: http://www.myparkingsign.com)

Some very high-profile chefs have weighed in or either side of the question.  Some such as Daniel Boulud feel that a formal culinary school education is indispensable.  Other such as David Chang think that path is overrated and that the time is better spent working in a professional kitchen.  Or as he puts it:

If you look at all my heroes, the chefs around the world, most of them never went to cooking school. What they did is they had a great mentor. You name a chef that’s awesome and people want to work for him, I’d say a majority of the time they never went to cooking school.

He goes on to make a point that culinary school students will learn skills in a very elementary fashion without any frills or shortcuts that they might learn in a professional kitchen, which is also a great broader business point and that’s my focus today.  I’ve worked with people who went to business school and with those who spent the time working.  While there was no question that the B-school folks knew what to call certain types of analyses, many of them had a totally unrealistic view of what business was about.  As many of you know, it’s not exactly as it appears in textbooks.

Technical training is valuable.  I think, however, it’s most valuable in fields such as law or medicine where there are standards to be met.  Most other businesses have no such standards – the food world certainly doesn’t.  I think a young person is better served working in a profession and, and Chang says, finding a great mentor.  Coming out of a culinary school or a B school laden with debt affects how you can approach your career – and life – every day going forward.  Is it really needed?

I suppose it’s Twain‘s reference to schooling vs. education or maybe it’s just seeing vs. doing.  I come down on the side of doing.  Where do you stand?

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July 11, 2013 · 11:03 am

Fewer PCs And Fewer Cords

I saw two articles in the last day that might not seem to have much to do with one another but in my mind point to the ongoing changes in the media world.

English: Desktop computer Français : ordinateu...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The first is from the Gartner folks along with IDC and it’s their quarterly report on PC shipments. Not surprisingly, the numbers aren’t good.  They are reporting around an 11% decline in shipments which continues a downward trend from last quarter.  There are a number of reasons to which analysts attribute this trend but the one with which I agree the most is the thinking that we’re now consuming media mostly on tablets.  PC’s are something that are used for heavy lifting – video editing, lengthy writing, spreadsheets, etc.   Families aren’t buying multiple units for the home any more (at one point we had four PC’s here for school work, business, and leisure usage among the family).

The second piece has to do with cord-cutting and comes from the folks at eMarketer:

Research company GfK surveyed US households with TVs and found that in 2013, 19.3% of respondents had broadcast TV only and did not subscribe to any pay TV service. That’s a 37.9% increase from 2010 when only 14% of households shunned pay TV services and relied solely on broadcast TV…The study suggested that while wider online video viewing and more internet-connected TV options may have boosted cord-cutting, basic cost savings is at the real heart of the move toward broadcast-only TV. The study found that 60% of those who cancelled their pay TV service cited cost-cutting as the reason.

I disagree with the notion that it’s the cost alone.  I think it’s more the cost/value equation (the expense to get the programming live vs. the cost of other sources on a delay) coupled with the wider penetration of tablets as cited in the first piece.  The market favors tablets over low-end computers, content producers are doing a better job of populating that channel, even to the detriment of their traditional distributors, and the business model (selling ads against an audience that’s viewing simultaneously) has been seriously disrupted.

I’m watching to see who moves to accept the new world and who denies that things are moving.  It’s sort if a climate-change analogy in my mind.  You can deny it right up until the ice pack mets and floods you out or you can take preemptive measures and move to higher ground.  Which are you doing?

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