Posted by: Mitch/Ralph on: September 9, 2009
Effectiveness is doing the right thing. Efficiency is doing things right. Being efficient without first being effective is waste. In other words, doing the wrong thing well is wasted effort. Most experienced business people know this, and often still forget it.
Not to get on a Starbucks focus, but they have reminded me about this again. [...]
Posted by: Mitch/Ralph on: July 28, 2009
The San Jose Mercury News ran an article today on opening a business during a recession. The writer did a good job of profiling various businesses, especially retail businesses, that open during a recession and the thinking behind how and why the entrepreneur did what they did.
A key emphasis in the article is the idea of [...]
Posted by: Mitch/Ralph on: May 26, 2009
Selling through channel is always a challenge for manufacturers. They often expect the channel to support them in ways that are not appropriate for the channel. Alternatively, with the increasing dominance of category killers in retail, manufacturers look to get favorable treatment (or shelf position) with those retailers. This is a major shift from 30 [...]
Posted by: Mitch/Ralph on: April 16, 2009
I read an interesting article about a small company called OpenDNS. The purpose of their business is to speed up your Internet access by directly connecting you to the actual address of the website you are looking for. Without going into way too much detail, the domain URL that you type into your browser is [...]
Posted by: Mitch/Ralph on: February 22, 2009
Several years ago I noted that buying a book from Amazon.com was much faster than buying the same book from BN.com or Borders.com because the site was easier to use and faster. I have watched over the years as Amazon.com has added additional products to their site, many of which I have purchased because I know the [...]
Posted by: Mitch/Ralph on: February 11, 2009
One of the issues in a down economy is the need to get those things you do exactly right. While it is still necessary to take risks in business, you can’t afford to be wrong too many times in this market. That reinforces the need to focus the company’s efforts on those areas where you [...]
Posted by: Mitch/Ralph on: January 28, 2009
I have been surprised that since January 21, the press has not put a more positive spin on the economy. (I did predict that on this blog and even noted that it had appeared to start even before the inauguration.) Wish they would, since consumer sentiment is tied to what the media tells them, and [...]
Posted by: Mitch/Ralph on: December 28, 2008
Headlines yesterday stated that retail sales had “plummeted” 4% over the holiday season. Not quite as bad as the 20% drop that MasterCard allegedly reported the day before. As I said in the immediately prior post, we’ll see how it turns out. But, two things struck me about the 4% plummet:
1. When sales rise by [...]
Posted by: Mitch/Ralph on: December 27, 2008
While I have no doubt that this holiday season’s retail sales will not have been great, I will look forward to hearing the actual numbers. And I suggest you look at them in detail. Since the report will come out before the new Obama administration takes office, the press is still likely to put as [...]
