notes.husk.org

"Changing aesthetics: Shopping online for clothes typically involves scrolling through pages and..."

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 18:22:47 +0100

“Changing aesthetics: Shopping online for clothes typically involves scrolling through pages and pages of images. Mary Kantrantzou believes that this has lead to shoppers paying more attention to designs that stand out - in particular unusual colours or prints. She believes this has been a factor in the resurgence of print.”

- Soundboy: How the internet influences what we wear (via new-aesthetic)

"If you’re a parent of a smart kid like me, you know the must-have toy this holiday is Lego..."

Sat, 08 Dec 2012 03:26:05 +0000

“

If you’re a parent of a smart kid like me, you know the must-have toy this holiday is Lego Minecraft.

The only problem? You can’t find one. Anywhere. At least not in Lego or other brick and mortar stores.

Sure, you can get one on Amazon, but only after shelling out $120 or so, more than three times the list price of $34.99.

eBay you ask? Good luck with that. You might some luck there, but like me you’ll probably watch bidders push the final price to over $90.

”

- Michael Wolf for Forbes: The Great Lego Minecraft Shortage of 2012.

I was lucky enough to get one during one of the (very short) periods of availability at shop.lego.com, and it’s a lovely little set. Probably not the best of the year (have a look at Brickset’s gift guide), but I can see why it’s popular.

"Democracy has a pretty poor track record of building great cities. The great cities of the world..."

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 20:45:53 +0100

“Democracy has a pretty poor track record of building great cities. The great cities of the world that we travel to see were built by benevolent despots”

- Eric Kuhne, head designer at the multinational firm CivicArts, and architect of Bluewater, quoted by Owen Hatherley in his Guardian article, Bluewater thrives by not alarming shoppers with anything new or strange. I’d argue London and New York disprove that one.

"That’s probably not what new Penney CEO Ron Johnson had in mind when he decided to spend his..."

Tue, 29 May 2012 02:02:55 +0100

“That’s probably not what new Penney CEO Ron Johnson had in mind when he decided to spend his marketing budget on those witty DeGeneres ads. A former Apple Inc. executive who took the Penney’s job in November, he thought he was lifting the store out of the brutal commodity clothing market. He may ultimately succeed at that.”

- Bob Sullivan, in the Red Tape Chronicles: ‘Fair and square’ pricing? That’ll never work, JC Penney. We like being shafted. The story notes that the “massive, creative and aggressive new advertising and pricing campaign that promises simplified prices” “appears to be a disaster. Revenue dropped 20 percent for the first quarter compared to last year. Customer traffic fell 10 percent.” The reason? “If a firm tries to educate consumers on tricks and traps, and tries to offer an honest product, a funny thing happens: Consumers say, “Thank you for the tips,” and go back to the tricky companies, where they exploit the new knowledge to get cheaper prices, leaving the “honest” firm in the dust.”

The point of interest to me (and perhaps the sort of people who read this) is that when I noticed that this was Ron Johnson of Apple, I thought of the way that I’ve never wondered when the best time to buy hardware from them was, or who from. Apple’s pricing is amazingly consistent - there may be 10% off on Black Friday, but probably not on the thing you want, and anyway, it’s not worth waiting for - and that’s true even across stores. (Try finding anyone undercutting the list price on an iPad.)

The product release schedules have also, generally, been well flagged, if you care. The iPhone generally goes on sale in June, and although last year’s 4S was late, pretty much everyone who cared knew it was going to be. iPods are announced in September. Intel’s chip launches are usually followed by refreshed laptop designs (and these days, the advances tend to be incremental enough that missing a release by a month isn’t usually heartbreaking).

Compared to the simplicity and honesty of Apple’s offerings, though, I can imagine the JC Penney product lines, of clothes, shoes, and other household goods, all of which are available from multiple chains and for variable amounts of time, is just so different that Johnson may have to back down from a promise that consumers don’t want him to keep.

Bing’s new mall maps: Get in, get out, and avoid the...

Wed, 15 Dec 2010 19:17:00 +0000

Bing’s new mall maps: Get in, get out, and avoid the crowds (via)

Well, that’s a crop of startups who’ve just run into one of the two gorillas of online maps. (I can’t imagine it’ll take Google long to do the same thing, either.)