Speedo Promotion Discount Code

Speedo is an example of a small business, Australian division, that has managed to stay in market leadership for nearly a century while changes rage all around (the logo is a boomerang).  It is an example of people finding joy in solving a problem they are passionate about, in this case swimmers designing the best suits for competition and recreation.  The Olympics sponsorship and reputation make it seem a much bigger company than it is.

wikipedia

Speedo will be 100 in 2014, yet they are doing up to the minute marketing.  The Gap and other clothing retailers are discovering if they pass out coupons to their employees, the coupons have a very good return.  It is affinity marketing, very tightly directed.

Speedo is doing the same now, with customers too.  Since I am a customer they say pass this Speedo $10 off discount code to your friends and family.  OK!  I want more Speedo gear, with which they will reward me.  But more to the point, since I can see the click-throughs from this blog and monitor the activity at Speedo, I can get a sense of how well this tactic works.

So go ahead, lotta new stuff and stuff on sale, if you're going to buy swim gear anyway might as well get it on sale now.  I'll tell you how this performs in say a month.



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Google Adwords Chagrin

The promise of Google Adwords, the access to billions in advertising development, delivery and analysis is one of the more important developments of the world wide web, within the narrow benefit of the internet, which is it only lowered cost and widened access to communication and research.

Advertising is a form of communication, and is best when it is back and forth.  With Google Adwords, you can link the ad all the way through to a paid transaction, so you can know exactly what you are getting for you ad dollars.

Next, you can tinker with the ad itself, keywords, pitch, execution, etc which is the other part of ad management.

Proof and testing pitch are the two bugaboos in advertising, and highlighting those is what made the career of David Ogilvy, the model for the TV series MadMen.  Back then to test and ad he insisted everyone be "keyed" and carry a coupon.  The coupon redemption proves the reach of the ad, and allows you to follow from ad to sales transaction.  What?!  Sheer madness.  How can you advertise Rolls Royce and offer a coupon.  In that instance, the coupon was for a free book and test drive redeemable at the dealer.

But still, you'd have to blow through a million bucks before you found out your ad copy was no good.

But with GoogleAds you can test with a mere few hundred dollars max, and learn what you need to know.  And you can target and test down to a neighborhood!  Billions in advertising capability, accessible by the start-up.

Except it is not true.  It truly is all there, but as a practical matter it is unusable.  For whatever reason, I and countless others I've spoken to say they cannot get it to work.  It is simply not possible to create an ad, post it test it and tweak it.  The process required is so counter-intuitive and perplexing, and the learning curve so steep, that we all just give up.

Google does have hapless telephone customer service people who will walk you through the jungle of the adwords site.  Sure, spend an hour getting one step of fifty sorted out.  But word to Google: one advantage of the internet is to code sites well enough so you do not need human intervention.  Is this news to you?

Of course this may be a error on my part of the narrow basis of comparison.  Just because I and everyone I know cannot make it work does not mean the rest of the world cannot.  But, if AdWords worked well you'd see not just one video of a success story at the GoogleAds site, you'd see "GoogleAds: 100,000 small businesses, One billion in advertising budgets, 220 billion in sales" or some such.

Now, there is an army of people, who for about $1500 above ad budget, will run a GoogleAds campaign for you.  They tend to all say the same thing, that payback is some six months later, after your campaign is fine tuned.  Really?  Will you guarantee it?

No!   Why not?  I've consulted on the basis "if I do not increase your sales, don't pay me."  I've taught seminars on the basis of "if you are not happy with the seminar, don't pay me."  Every waiter in the world works on the basis of "if you are not happy with me, don't pay me."  Why is advertising exempt?

My guess is the game is to line up clients, pick up about $10,000 a head plus kickbacks from Google on the ad spending, and then when the client is ticked off for noon performance, move on.  If you run through 100 clients a year, you are bound to have a couple of successes, which you can highlight as success stories and references.

Why does Google tolerate this?  Why have they not made GoogleAds user friendly?   Maybe because advertising is a lot harder than it looks.  Maybe having the agency model retailing and Google wholesaling is better revenue?  Who knows?

Two things:  If you are going to be in business, buy and read and re-read Ogilvy on Advertising.  He eill make you a good consumer of advertising services.

Next, I'd like to hear from people, and I'll list them, how much you spent on google ads, and what was your return?  Time and money.  $2000, 20 hours, and $400 in revenue?  Something like that.

If GoogleAds does not work, this will encourage others to enter the market with something that does work, like toogle once Trounced Yahoo.

Buy this or get it from a library:



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Fiscal Cliff and a Flicker of Hope

People are distraught over the coming impact of the fiscal cliff jump.  It is not even good theatre and people are getting emotional.  Months ago the cowardly politicians did the right thing and baked right action into what we are now calling the fiscal cliff.

Since we are engaging in pointless wars, as in murder for oil, and we are not paying for it, the proper thing to do is to cut back on the expenses and increase the income.  Right now we have achieved less oil, more murder and EZ Credit terms.    The fiscal cliff will require we actually begin to pay for murder for oil, as we cut back on this activity.  The fiscal cliff is in fact the only flicker of sanity coming out of DC.

Our murder for oil is so odious to the men doing the killing that we now have more soldiers dead by suicide than by combat.  Even the elite hero-worshipped SEALs have experienced suicide, by reports anyway.  Who knows what really happened.

The Wannsee Conference organized by Eichmann was partially in response to German soldiers recoiling at the participation in the process of genocide of the Jews.  The conference agenda as to work out a system of extermination that did not require so much effort on the part of the soldiers.  Every Tuesday there is a mini-Wannsee conference as Obama and his team work with playing cards on who gets murdered by drone.

Actually paying for our military action is a good idea.  We might find some people objecting to it once they begin to get the bill.  Cutting back on the military is a good idea, since this country was never designed to have a standing military.

Cutting back on war and paying for what we buy is the right first step.  This one flicker of sanity causes panic.  What a world we live in!

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Start-up Export

A commenter bird dogs this WSJ article on start-ups that export from the get-go.    The examples in this story are limited to hitech and services, so a trend this does not make.  Selling internet services across borders is not much of a challenge.  Try selling raw butter across borders as a start-up.

The article hilights the challenge of getting good people overseas to run your operations there.  yes, that is a challenge, buy why bother with that?  Why not just export the services to a local importer who will in turn set up their own operations and "buy" from the head office.  This gets you growth in sales and profits without the drag odf trying to reinvent the wheel and overcome cultural challenges.

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Mis-Invoicing

Mish has an article on the Chinese economy and gets around to mis-invoicing, with the point being a lack of transparency makes any calculations regarding the Chinese economy dicey at best.  Mis-invoicing is cited as one element that clouds the window.

Mis-invoicing, what I've always called falsifying documents, is nothing new.  Let me give you 4 examples:

1. An importer in USA faces 60% duty on goods from Vietnam.  He asks the Vietnamese to invoice at $1.00 each instead of $2.00 each, so on his $10,000 importation, the invoice falsely states $5000.00 and the duty would only be $3000.00, not $6000.00, as it would be if the invoice stated the correct $10,000.00. The USA importer pays $5000.00 to the Vietnamese exporter through regular banking channels so the importer can "prove" what he paid to USCustoms.  The USA importer arranges the other $5000.00 owing on this importation to be paid to the Vietnamese through some other back channel.  Here the opportunities are endless, for example, simply handing over $5000.00 cash to some restauranteur, a cousin in San Francisco of the exporter in Saigon.

2. An exporter in Vietnam desires to A. avoid Vietnam taxes on income and B. hide money overseas.  So he willingly engages in example #1, since by doing so his profits appear lower on a $5000.00 sale vs. a $10,000 sale, and the end result is not only lower taxes in Vietnam, but $5000.00 is tucked away in USA.

3.  An exporter in USA desires to avoid USA federal taxes on profits.   So he engages in 2. A and B.

4. An importer in Vietnam faces 60% duty on goods from USA.  So he engages in number 1 above.

It is the same thing, either way, import or export, goods or services, with a different party in each transaction.  It is not always the case that the counter-party to falsification is pursuing his own ends.

Things can get more complicated, for example when the Iranians stood up and were in the process of tossing out the Shah of Iran from Iran, the Shah's minions were clamoring to get their money out of Iran in anticipation of a revolution.  The Shah seeing these rats fleeing a sinking ship outlawed money expropriation.  So one common way around this was for Iranians to buy up Persian carpets and export them to USA or wherever, to sham buyers who "would pay on time."  So you spend $500,000 on carpets in Iran, ship them to New York, fly to New York, take a payment of whatever you could get ($250,000?) and then never return to Iran.  $250,000 in New York is far better than $500,000 in a Tehran that began practicing Islamic justice.

A more modern version would be for a Chinese exporter to invoice $2 million worth of goods as $1 million to a Hong Kong company, which in turn sells it to a USA company for $2 million.  Now the Hong Kong company, controlled by the Chinese exporter, invests the extra one million in China as foreign investment, with tax advantages, etc.  So you see, it is the same basic scam worked countless ways.  And it is nothing new.

Academics spend a lot of time studying this but can get no hard data.  Estimates are that from 2001 to 2011 the flow of this from China is about $3.5 trillion dollars.  The academics do their job by claiming this makes the rich richer and the poor poorer, and also "costs governments" and so we need more controls.

Well, if there is really no way of knowing, then the estimates are not very reliable.  But let's say the numbers are accurate.  We already have excellent means for combatting this practice, in 2 parts: 1. on every customs declaration, you must state if the counter-party is related to you.  Yes or no.  You either are, or are not.  2. Customs can see where the valuation of your goods falls on a bell curve.  Any worthwhile shenanigans will fall outside the bell curve, and warrant an investigation.  The fact you claimed NOT to be a related party leaves you dead to rights.  It is a simple scam with a simple solution.

If the numbers are that large, then there has been no enforcement of the laws.  If the numbers are that large, then there can be no enforcement of the laws, for the trade is too big to curb.  It would be clear that political appointees are directing law enforcement to refrain from prosecuting these particular crimes.  How would more pointless rules help?  Why would anyone think that the people who populate government are not happy with the situation, and the prosperity it brings to society in general, and the politicians in particular?  Crime pays.

Now Mish wants to know what it is so he can better factor risk.  But that is what we get with states, and that is chaos.  With no state, anarchy, we get straight forward trade since people are not constantly gaming the system, to make an impossible situation ordained by the state work.

A side issue among academics is the issue of trust among traders who engage in this activity.  Are you kidding?  This is an example of a profound blind spot among most academics.  people in business do not need the state because they honor agreements.  This is unthinkable among people who presume there is no power except the state, and all is lost if the state does not control all.

If you engage in world trade, you'll often be asked to falsify documents.  For example, once I was exporting two 40' container of Bartlett Pears to Brazil, and the importer asked me to falsify the documents to assist in avoiding duty.  I said no.  No problem, they will just falsify the documents themselves.

It has never occurred to me to comply with any such request, and I've had even tailors as a matter of routine hand me invoices that stated the suit at half value.  Instead of being censorious, I simple thank the benefactor and then throw away the falsified document at my hotel, not willing to give offense.

I suppose I would be much richer if I engaged in such acts.  I have no problem with others engaging in such acts, and would plead with a court to offer leniency in the case if, contrary to past practice, someone was actually prosecuted for such a crime.  The problem is not with people making business, the problem is with legislators writing stupid laws, and states proceeding with stupid economic policies.

Competing on design, with customers proven they will cover all of my costs and profit, why do I need to cheat?  We at the small business level, competing on design, have no reason to do so.    And since each transaction is so small, what would be the point of running afoul of a federal felony to obscure a couple thousand dollars?  It would make no sense.

And what is extremely valuable to me is the freedom to point out just how deplorably stupid our government and its rules are.  If I was cheating on the rules, then I would have no basis for complaining, since I was not burdened by the rules.  But since I comply I can complain.

(Now, note I am not claiming to be better than anyone else, just that this is a non-issue to me.  Should I find that some big score was in the cards, who knows what I might do?  It is not the hand you are dealt, it is how you play the cards.)

One other point.  All of these articles point to China.  USA is the #1 offender world wide in this regards, as it is #1 in everything.  That is just baked into the world economy.

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Tal on bass with Jagger and Beck

Jagger wrote a politically astute song.

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Heap, Beck & Wilkenfeld with Colaiuta

Imogen Heap backed by Jeff Beck...  a triumph!  Very young Tal Wilkenfeld on bass... Vinnie Colaiuta on drums.... wow...



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Chinese Ecommerce Export Platforms

There is no doubt Alibaba.com and Made-In-China.com are wonderfully successful trade lead and ecommerce platforms, for the owners.  I would never recommend using either service, or any other. I am standing by my argument they are a net-deficit for the users, at least at the small and medium enterprise lever.  But let's look at the numbers:

Trade through electronic platforms in China grew from 1.5 trillion yuan ($240 billion) in 2006 to 5.9 trillion yuan in 2011, according to Nie Linhai, deputy commercial counselor of the ministry's Department of Electronic Commerce and Informatization.

"In the current global economic situation, e-commerce trade will help reduce costs for Chinese manufacturers. And a growing number of domestic exporters have realized the importance of doing trade through electronic platforms," Nie said.

OK, is that all ecommerce sales, or is that only export?  Goods and Services?  I'd like to see more detail. But no doubt the business is vast. And no doubt both services can provide satisfied users who have done well.  My argument gets to the unseen, as opposed to the seen.  The process of starting up a viable successful company has to do with customers and product, and a focus on the exact market you desire to serve.  These two services, and the ones like them, take too much time with too many sources to get to the best supplier or customer.  Whether you are buying or selling there is just too much to wade through to get to a reliable partner.  As an importer in USA, I can find better partners faster without these services, plus I am not plagued by useless offers and spam I'll get when I register my interests at either.

Now, I will sing the praises of the Hong Kong Trade Develoment Council, with started as a private initiative and then became public-private, as it is now semi-governmental.  I normally do not appreciate government involvement, but in this case the Government takes a junior position and their services are rational, clean, direct, smart.  So I do recommend, especially for USA importers, if trading with China, to consult the HKTDC.com.

For Chinese firms that desire to export, I'd certainly list myself with HKTDC.com, but there is more an individual company must do.  There are so many companies with fantastic skillsets yet excess production capacity, that Chinese capacity and USA market could grow should he two manage to meet and work together.

Many Chinese exporters had USA customers, at at one point had to turn business away. But the economic downturn has opened up production capacity, and Chinese exporters are keen for new business.  These are not the low-cost mass producers, these are the precision manufacturers who usually claim a premium price for their expertise.

Word of mouth referrals, or new business when an old buyer changes to a new company, or joint ventures, and then just plain reorders are the sources of business.  That is not fruitful enough.

With so much business in the past, they never bothered with alibaba, made-in-china.com and such.  They never even bothered to put up a website, for that would just bring in time-wasting inquiries.  Now these firms are looking for new business and rethinking a web presence.

My advice would be to affirm that a website is a good idea.  But the few exporters websites I see are not very well done, from a buyers point of view.  If anything, the websites are way too overworked.

First, less is more.  An exporters website should make clear precisely what advantage the exporter has: "precision after-market auto parts."  Let's look at this one for bridal shoes.

This is well conceived, but needs help in execution.  A website is an advertisement, meant to generate sales.  All sales pitches need the word "you" within the first three words:

Shenzhen Rose Bridal Shoes Co.,Ltd is a shoe factory majoring in wedding shoes,parts of dressshoes and evening shoes. We can supply high quality bridal shoes with competitive price.

No "you" at all in the first paragraph, and there is some confusion as to what the core business is about.  Is Shenzhen Rose about high quality or low price?  If I was looking for a supplier of shoes, I would pass on this company since I cannot tell what they do.    It does not matter if I am looking for low price, because if so I do not care about quality, but Shenzhen Rose claims to be quality.  If I am looking for quality, I would avoid Shenzhen Rose because although the say "quality" they also mention "price" which means they make cheap products.  First rate importers do not buy cheap products, since their customers do not want junk.

So Shenzhen Rose needs to figure out what business it is in, and then offer that.  Say they do truly make first rate shoes.  If so, then never mention price.

"We provide you with wedding shoes to your specifications, and OEM parts of shoes."

That replaces the two sentences quoted above.  Next Shenzhen Rose makes reference to their customers:

Most of our goods are for export worldwide, we have longtime cooperation with customers from USA, Germany, UK, Greece, France, Czech, South Korea, Japan, Italy, and South Africa.

Why not name names?  Shenzhen Rose should name their USA customers, as well as UK, Greece, Italy, etc.  In time I will always ask for references anyway, and if Shenzhen Rose will not provide references, I will not do business with them.  Might as well get that information out immediately.

It may be true some customers may not want Shenzhen Rose revealing their name, but not all customers feel this way.  Any customer of Shenzhen Rose who is happy will often agree to allow their name to be listed.

Now Shenzhen Rose might be afraid that competitors will see XYZ company in USA is a customer of Shenzhen Rose and try to steal the USA customer with lower prices.   In real life, this risk is minimal for many reasons.  In any event, fear fails in business, and open communication wins.  If Shenzhen Rose sells to USA, they should be happy to name their customers.

In fact, Shenzhen Rose should simply list reviews of their work by their customers.  For example, if Shenzhen rose was to get a letter from a customer complimenting Shenzhen Rose on their work, Shenzhen Rose should instantly ask that customer if Shenzhen Rose might quote the USA Customer on the Shen Zhen Rose website.

So the new layout of Shenzhen Rose would be the header, a picture of wedding shoes, the quote
"We provide you with wedding shoes to your specifications, and OEM parts of shoes." and then reference reviews from satisfied customers around the world:

"Excellent quality and we are very pleased with the service." XYZ Company USA

"We sold through immediately and we need another order"  ABC Company UK

"Although we presented our designs, your ideas made them even better."  LNO Company Italy.

I want to know what Shenzhen Rose makes and what their customers think.  The website should tell me that immediately.  Shenzhen Rose spends a lot of webpage space talking about what Shenzhen Rose thinks.  Nobody cares.  Buyers want to know what other buyers think.  So take all of the other information away.

Next, be specific in claims:

Rose bridal shoes offers the very best DYEABLE satin bridal shoes,  or SILK satin,with handmade quality beaded and embroidered styles, decrorated with longlasting crystle ornaments which never turns color or been oxidized. Quality thread and brilliant  hand-done stitching is our advantage.

Never say "quality thread" that is a waste of time.  Say "We use 64HS Polyester 6s Coretex 5m Dual Duty in a double thread lockstitch on the sole."  Every claim should be specific.  If I am a real buyer, talk to me like a real buyer.

Also, for maybe $300 from 99designs.com, they could have the English perfect and the layout more professional.

As I read through more of Shenzhen Rose website, it seems to me they want the mass merchandise business, so If I was looking for top quality shoemaker, I'd keep looking.  If I am wrong, Shenzhen Rose should redesign their website.

And if they are not sure, then ShenZhen Rose should have two websites, one for upmarket business, and another for mass merchandise business.  With all of the cheap computer power, businesses should be aggressively testing new ideas.

There is more I would say this website, but my point is with all of the information available out there, websites should speak clearly and directly to a real buyer.  The website should save the buyer time, and ruthlessly eliminate anything that waste a buyer's time.  People pay too much to have websites do too much.  If so, your company will be just another exporters website with which serious buyers will not bother.

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What to Do?

Turn off your computer, step away, and spend the next three days with family and friends.

Merry Christmas!

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First Vs Last Samurai, 10 Points

At the demise of an epoch people look back to a golden age that never was.  There was a movie called the Last Samurai, in which curiously, the last samurai turned out to be a yankee officer.  Whimsical!  No, the Mayan calendar thing was never going to happen, and the fiscal cliff will result in a slight uptick in the false economy.  But otherwise, it is not the end of the world.  Being the last anything is to call for defeat.

Forget about the end of anything, and focus on the beginning.  never mind the romantic "Last Samurai," become the first samurai, given the circumstances we are in.

Capitalism and communism both create a terrible mismatch.  In capitalism we have an economy with many people who want something for nothing, what we call “entitlements.”   Think Mirosoft, Boeing, Google, Walmart, and to a lesser degree, people to whom the mayor of Detroit was referring when he observed we are an entitlement society.

We do have productive members of society, the butcher, the baker the candlestick maker but often their work is generally misallocated, and therefore unable to carry the weight.  It sets up a wonderful class struggle, the stuff of capitalism and communism.

It is this malinvestment in the form of misallocation and overinvestment that has a fisherman coding Java at $9 an hour when subsidized massive fish processing plants are scrapong the oceans clean clean of life, with a little help from BP, so we will depend on Archer Daniels Midland to be the Frankenfood Supermarket to the World.  When you vote, you renew your demand to be oppressed.  

So what do we do? 

1. Accept this system is not ideal, or even good.

2. Look at how it works, and then start looking at alternatives.   There is an alternative in place at all times. Read outside the canon.  Kill your TV, lay waste any video games.

3. Begin to figure out what you truly love, and seek that passion/joy balance.  Search this site with those terms and you’ll find lots.

4. Forget about success, which is defined by others, and concentrate on happiness, which is experienced by your self.

5. Dont’ keep score on yourself. Don’t look at what you are getting, look at the good you are doing.  The rest will follow.  And dont keep score on others. Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord”  

6. Don’t be afraid of a profit.  You’d be surprised at how much people will pay for such a small narrow help.  Think Nike.

7. You cnanot know what will come next, what “prepping” you will do will be perfectly useless in the face of reality.  

8.  never think “self-employed” always thing “customer-employed.”  If you are an employee in the traditional sense, change your mind from being an employee of that company to that company is your client.  You already lend your employer money, now think about how you will make him successful, so you can add it to your portfolio when you move on from your resent job in a feww weeks, or at most, months.

9.  Stay out of the American “health care system”  Act as if it does not exist.  Having said that, now look at alternatives.  They are plenty, cheaper, superior.  You just have never heard of them.

10. Steve Jobs changed the world and millions gladly followed.  People will follow.    Forget aboutt eh end, and the last Samurai.  Be the first samurai.

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