Lego employees receive these custom Lego toy figures featuring their name and contact information in lieu of the traditional business cards.
[Via]
Viewing entries tagged
Business
Rite Aid, Chrysler, Sbarro, Six Flags, Blockbuster, Krispy Kreme, Sirius Satellite Radio, Trump Entertainment Resorts, and more.
Rite Aid. (Ticker symbol: RAD; about 100,000 employees; 1-year stock-price decline: 92%). This drugstore chain tried to boost its performance by acquiring competitors Brooks and Eckerd in 2007. But there have been some nasty side effects, like a huge debt load that makes it the most leveraged drugstore chain in the U.S., according to Zacks Equity Research. That big retail investment came just as megadiscounter Wal-Mart was starting to sell prescription drugs, and consumers were starting to cut bank on spending. Management has twice lowered its outlook for 2009. Prognosis: Mounting losses, with no turnaround in sight.
I just bought floss from Rite Aid today so I'm doing my part.
[Via]
Some interesting facts from this year's holiday shopping season over at Amazon.com where 72.9 items per second were ordered for a total of 6.3 million items.
- One of our most remote shipments was Take Along Thomas & Friends toys, delivered to Unalaska, Alaska.
- Amazon.com sold enough "Breaking Dawn" books that stacked end to end they would reach the summit of Mt. Everest eight times.
- The weight of all GPS devices sold from Black Friday through December equals the combined weight of 151 Mini Coopers.
- Amazon sold enough Casio G-Shock watches to outfit every Kanye West fan attending the 2008 Glow in the Dark Tour concert at Madison Square Garden, N.Y.
- The last One-Day Prime order placed on Dec. 23 in time for Christmas delivery contained a "Dora the Explorer" micro-shell helmet, and was delivered to Sherman Oaks, California on Dec. 24.
- The last Same-Day Prime order placed at 7:25 a.m. on Dec. 24 in time for Christmas delivery contained a Pinzon 400-thread-count, 100 percent Egyptian Cotton Hemstitch full sheet set, and was delivered at 6:12 p.m. to Las Vegas, Nevada on Dec. 24.
Now whether Amazon turned a profit during this period is another question.
[Via]
Japanese business people relieve their stress at the "venting place" where people can smash dishes and plates. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDREuBAnf7M&fmt=18]
[Via]
This is an interesting read for any aspiring creative wondering how on earth they will be able to sustain themselves. Kevin Kelly argues that the "solution is to find 1,000 True Fans." But what is a True Fan and how will they support you?
A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can't wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans.
Read full text here.
Using a wide and creative range of recyclable materials, Brooklyn based Virgil O. Stamps will print your business cards, invitations, and stationary that reflects who you are, and not that of 3M card stock #583B. I want my business card printed on the pages torn from old National Geographic magazines.
[Via]
The 2007-2008 Birmingham International annual report on page 19 is pretty funny. But I figured none of you wanted to slosh through a pdf of it, so I took a screenshot of the report's unintentional hilarity for your enjoyment.
[Thanks Paul!!!]
Production of Zima has been discontinued.
Chief Marketing Officer Andy England says the decision was due to weakness in the "malternative" segment and declining consumer interest.He says distributors can get remaining Zima inventories most likely through December.
Sorry Cyrus.
[Via]
This $700 billion proposed bailout is raising a lot of red flags amongst the public, media, and Congress, both democrats and republicans. And as Forbes points out even the basic question of how this enormous figure of 700 billion was determined is unclear:
"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!?
[Via]
This receipt was found at a Chase ATM on 45 Wall Street showing a savings account balance of exactly $97,084.23 after he withdrew $100 (probably to buy lunch). As the Consumerist points out:
...this guy knows what he's doing; note how the balance is just under the $100,000 limit for full FDIC coverage.
Uhm, right! That's why I too keep my savings account balance under $100,000.
And I just heard that JP Morgan Chase purchased my bank Washington Mutual. So this means that I too now can access the same ATMs as this account holder without having to pay a transaction fee! Cha-ching! Money in the wallet and two dollars closer to $97,000.
[Via]
While Congress is debating the 700 billion dollar bailout money to Wall Street and how executives of these firms should be held accountable, this happened in India:
Corporate India is in shock after a mob of workers bludgeoned to death the chief executive who sacked them from a factory in a suburb of Delhi.
Lalit Kishore Choudhary, 47, the head of the Indian operations of Graziano Transmissioni, a manufacturer of car parts that has its headquarters in Italy, died of severe head wounds on Monday after being attacked by scores of laid-off employees, police said. The incident, in Greater Noida, followed a long-running dispute between the factory’s management and workers demanding better pay and permanent contracts.
Man, crazy.
At most, here someone might key Lehman CEO Richard Fuld's car.
Read more here.
[Via]
The following quip has been attributed to former British Chancellor Dennis Healey who is believed to have said:
There are three things in life you should never believe: yes, I will still love you in the morning; the cheque is in the post; and hello, I’m a politician and I’m here to help.
Man, ain't that the truth.
I don't know who the artist is behind this piece that Simko posted on her ever designlicious blog (Ashley, maybe you can enlighten?), but what I do know is that I like it.
Relatedly
There's also this:
Despite the turmoil in Wall Street and the national economic distress, a few acclaimed chefs wants to introduce three epic dining event, starting November 11 at Per Se, featuring 20-course dinners that will cost $1,500 per person (seating limited to 65 people at each dinner).
This fall Sir Thomas Keller and culinary whiz kid Grant Achatz will join together to host three 20-course dinners at Per Se, Alinea, and The French Laundry. Each chef will prepare ten alternating courses, "creating a tasting menu that spans the very best of their creations while honoring a 12-year relationship that has defined 3 of the very best restaurants in the world."
If your life is fucking awesome, I mean, really fucking awesome, like you shit money, and you are dating Megan Fox and having more sex than you know what to do with, then swing by this website for more information on dates and reservations. And then afterwards let me know how it feels to be a GOD.
Gas prices are still wallet emptying high, the housing market is crashing, Wall Street is imploding, and in such a climate what is Chrysler going to do? Roll out with a massive advertising campaign that is centered around a web-based reality show promoting their updated Dodge Ram pick-up truck.
The promotion of the truck centers on a Web site, RamChallenge.com. The Challenge is an obstacle-course driving competition with four pairs of competitors, which Ms. Meyer said mirrored typical Ram drivers: cowboys, military men, firefighters and contractors.
While I actually applaud Chrysler's strategy of circling their wagons around one of their marquee core products, I'm skeptical about this reality show advertising concept. This is exactly the sort of stuff that companies such as Chrysler should avoid, because it comes across as trying to repackage what is essentially a lengthy commercial into something that it is not, or in other words putting lipstick on a pig, to use the parlance du jour. And this RamChallenge.com represents the worst of this: a Frankenstein shoe-horning of a hot TV format (reality shows) mashed onto a web platform, and then "ramming" it down the throat of consumers.
1. Kaizar, Associate Editor at Newstrust recommends this featured article from the Washington Post that helps to explain what the fuck is happening on Wall Street:
Indeed, it is increasingly clear that Wall Street chief executives themselves didn't fully understand the risks they were taking on during the boom years of this decade; they have seemed as blindsided as any regulator.
The problems on Wall Street may go deeper. Financial firms have expanded vastly in the past decade, hiring tens of thousands of bright business school graduates to engineer new financial products, find ever more complicated ways to manage other peoples' money, and dream up new ways to combine, divide, and recombine corporate America.
Some large portion of that work, it now appears, wasn't really creating any value for the company's clients or for the U.S. economy. No matter how many times crummy mortgage loans are recombined into clever packages, they're still crummy.
In a perfect world, those excesses would be corrected by a gradual, orderly decline, in which a few firms get bought out by competitors, some modest layoffs occur, and Wall Street cuts back on its hiring for a few years.
In the real world, that correction is occurring before our eyes, through a series of convulsive weekends in which the entire financial world appears at risk of coming off the rails.
2. There's also an informative Q & A about this turmoil at the New York Times:
Q. How will this affect the mutual funds in my 401(k)? I'm beginning to think I should move my money fast! — Toni Hilton
A. To put it mildly, it’s likely that your mutual funds aren’t having their best day: the Dow Jones industrial average closed down more than 500 points, or about 4.42%. But markets are mercurial beasts, and we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, the day after — or six months from now.
That's why it's so important for investors to be diversified across different asset classes and investment types. It’s one of the most important ways investors can produce more consistent results, while helping cushioning against sharp declines. You want to make sure your money is divided across different slices of the stock and bond markets: that means domestic and international, large, mid-sized and small, as well as other alternative asset classes.
It also might be time to review your risk tolerance: if you’re tempted to move your money around on a difficult day, it might be time to rethink your stock allocation (in other words, you might want to lower it).
Also keep in mind that market declines work in your favor: they allow you to buy more stock or mutual funds shares cheaply.
3. Although brokerage firms such as Lehman, are forbidden from filing Chapter 11bankruptcy, nonetheless Lehman Brothers officially filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this morning "listing debts of $613 billion and naming as unsecured creditors owed hundreds of millions of dollars banks from Tokyo, Hong Kong, New York, Singapore and Taipei, among others."
Slate's Explainer answers the question: How was Lehman able to do this, and how exactly does a financial-services firm declare bankruptcy?
So how did Lehman manage to file for Chapter 11? It has separated out its businesses. Lehman Brothers Inc., the firm's brokerage arm, is expressly not included in the filing, and Monday afternoon's news reports suggest there may still be outside investor interest in the brokerage arm.
Is Lehman Brothers Holding Inc. - the parent company - in the clear because it can reorganize under Chapter 11? Not likely.
Read more here.
Similar to Radiohead's pay-what-you-what plan, you can purchase an annual subscription to non-profit Good Magazine for a cost you determine...well, the lowest you can pay is $1. You can also subscribe for $20 and in addition to the magazine, you'll also get free admission to their Choose Good parties. This is a great deal for a great magazine started by a fellow Brown class of '02 alumnus.
The rules for interns at the New York Sun, newspaper that makes the New York Post look like a NPR mouthpiece, are downright draconian! Gawker helpfully got a copy and highlighted the extreme ones.
I cannot wait to say "goodnight" to this rag of a newspaper when it goes out of business. The day will come.
To see rest of the "Guidelines for Interns" click here.