WTF?

I liked the look of Sketchy 2.0, where be it now?

Power of the Melbourne Cup

Here is an interesting fact.

The curry paste “Rogan Josh” used to be the worst selling flavour for Riviana Foods during the 90’s. That was until a horse called Rogan Josh won the 99 Melbourne Cup; since then it has not only been the highest selling flavour, it outsells the second highest by almost 2 – 1.

The message in this story… If you want to sell something, name it after a Melbourne Cup  winner…

 

Dodgy Brothers Inc.

I thought I would start a thread along a creative line. Touching on Lethal’s search for an entrepreneurial idea, what could a bunch of guys like us come up with? We come from different backgrounds which is a great strength and we are all smart and talented fellows. I propose Dodgy Brothers Inc. (DB) and will kick it off. From crazy to simple…reinvent the wheel or just make a better one…all are welcome…you just never know

DB’s Express

• Cross between home/online shopping and traditional push a trolley shopping.  There seems to be a lot of resistance to online shopping in many countries, even though it is simple and readily available. Instead of trying to break this human behaviour, why not improve the process.

• Upon entering each customer will be given a simple scanning device. This allows the customer to scan the product they want, multiple if required, delete option if needed and has a progressive total on the screen. Once finished they walk to a cashier which takes the hand held and swipes the total, you then pay and leave. Groceries are then delivered to your door just like online shopping and you are free to wander off without lugging shopping bags.

• It still gives you the wandering around shopping experience, which I have to say I don’t mind, combined with the convenience of online services.

• Capital expenditure is vastly reduced as floor space is kept to a minimum. Staff costs are also minimal as you remove the need for stocking, excessive cashiers and security/floor personnel. Stores can be designed in a nice simple way, with standardisation also allowing for a Franchise model.

• Sourcing would be the major problem as developing some economies of scale and supply relationships could burn some time and cash at the beginning.

Wages

I have an economics related question for anyone who wishes to try and answer.

 

Over the last few days my activities at work have required me to look at the payrolls of a couple of different companies. One of which manufactures furniture for the interior of boats and ship, while the other refurbishes and repairs the outside, so both companies are similar in that they require skilled labour.

 

While I was going over the payrolls for them I noticed that most workers there are not on huge salaries and even those people who had been there for quite a few years and had quite specific jobs still did not receive much more then new employees.

 

I realise that in general market forces set wages and those jobs that require higher education and specific skills, and jobs that are in high demand will and short supply will have relatively high wages; and those specific jobs that add a lot of value to an organization such as CEO, CFO, etc… will also demand very high salaries.

I also understand that these lower paid skilled workers are in very short supply and that these companies and many like them are always looking for more people to work often resorting to temp agencies to fill gaps in the short term.

 

This being the case, why do wages for these skilled labour jobs not rise as quickly as wages in more specific trades like plumbing and building where people can earn in excess of $100,000 if they are good at what they do?

Google going down the Youtube?

i’m sure everyone has heard about Viacom planning to sue Google because YouTube has copyright material streaming on their site. What does everyone think? Do you think Google made a mistake buying YouTube in the first place? Me, myself and I have not come to a decision on that but here are my thoughts about a few different aspects of it –

Lets say Google does get done for a billion. Will it really hurt them? Last year, besides buying Youtube, Google bought 5% of AOL for $1bil to lock up search and ads, $900mil to News/Fox to lock up search and adspace on Myspace. So they now have ad space and search control on Google, Youtube, AOL and Myspace. Basically Google has control over how and what price marketers pay to reach customers on probably the top 4 sites/networks on the net.

Advertising dollars is where these sites survive. YouTube has 992 million streams with over 150 million visits per month, thats a pretty good return on your spend if you’re looking for exposure. Google runs it’s ads as pay per click, you only pay if some one clicks on your link. Next time you google you’ll see them in a seperate list to the right of the organic search. Costs can be as low as a dollar per click or up to 5 or 10. Now think how many people are on Google globally every day. So I guess being sued by Viacom won’t really hit them too hard.

Other thoughts –

* Viacom is the first big player to sue. YouTube has been going for a while now and many people are suprised this hasn’t happened already due to the amount of copyright material on site. Why not? Because a lot of the ‘copyrighted’ material is placed by the companies who produced them eg music videos, film trailers, tv. Sneaky but true, it’s their way of reaching customers through a more credible source becuase the media channel is user generated.

* NBC and Fox are launching a high end content service that will give users access to their content. If you could get episodes of Lost, Heroes, Prison Break etc at high quality almost as soon as they are screened on TV for a minimal cost would you do it? Is this the first step before TV networks move content exclusively to the net?

Doesn’t really contain a question or an answer but I look forward to roastings

Outsourcing: Good or Bad?

I’m sitting here at the computer with A Current Affair on in the background (for some reason) , and the current scare-mongering topic is outsourcing. They’ve taken the predictable stance of complaining that “Australian jobs”* are going overseas, and this is bad for everyone.

However, these are the exact same people who whinge when things in the supermarket start costing more! As we know, labour costs is a massive part of the cost of producing products and services**. So which is it – protecting “Australian jobs”, or cheaper shit to fuel your consumerism?

* I use quotes because I can’t really see how someone can claim a job as “Australian.” Sure, an Australian may happen to be doing a job at a certain point in time, but do we call them “Indian jobs” when they go overseas?

** As an example, about 60% of IBM’s annual cost in Australia is labour.

Fuckn’ interesting

http://catallaxyfiles.com/?p=2126

Dave – we were sort of talking about this last night. Idea of Ebay as not only a tangible bartering service, but as a means of communication and trade inanything – in this case debt.

Lethal – would be interested to hear your point of views on this one, given your place in the banking industry. Specifically – what impediments exist to prevent individuals “selling” debt to the highest bidder (i.e. most competitive interest rate/loan structure). Theoretically it could happen, but realistically its a long way off. The cattalaxy blog offers the trust built up between individuals on ebay as the selling point – I guess the main issue is that loan arrangements are based on risk though. I’m not sure if an insurance market would exist for ebay financial arrangements ( if it got going I’m sure one would be created), but this would deter potential lenders. Thoughts???

I guess the market would find a way eventually