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Decay had begun to show in some HP offices. Mice skittered in the corridors. Spiders fell from cracked ceilings. As the company cut back on trash pickups, detritus piled up, and in one location workers took garbage home in their cars. Upon arrival, Apotheker was informed that HP was missing 85,000 chairs. The figure was so farcical that he had to check to make sure it was right. It was.
How Hewlett-Packard lost its way - Fortune Tech
This article on HP’s recent troubles reads more like European history of constant warfare and shifting alliances.
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You’d see this brand-spanking-new KFC in the middle of this sea of brown shacks, and people were in there, loving the product,” he says. While there’s little doubt that the continent will be more challenging than China, he thinks it’s ripe for explosive growth: “Nothing shows that we’re more global than if we can build a business in Africa that no one else has.
KFC’s Big Game of Chicken - Businessweek
Fastfood colonialism. KFC sales are sagging in the US but booming overseas in countries such as China.
Posted on April 17, 2012 with 1 note
Source: businessweek.com
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Only one problem: Nobody could find any certified organic and fair-trade farms that produced some of those ingredients.
The solution: Get into the farming business. By 2008, Dr. Bronner’s owned a 200-employee fair-trade coconut-oil operation in Sri Lanka and a 150-employee palm-oil plant in Ghana, and had partnered on a peppermint-oil operation in India. Maybe the most audacious fair-trade project so far has been a partnership that combines olive oils from farmers in the West Bank and Israel, and has become a symbol of Israeli-Palestinian coexistence.
The Undiluted Genius of Dr. Bronner’s
You should dilute Dr. Bronner’s soap, but take in their amazing ethos full-strength. A feel good story that will leave you tingling like their peppermint soap.
Posted on April 13, 2012 with 1 note
Source: inc.com
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You see them all across the country, in shopping malls and street corners, suburban towns and city centers: zombie restaurants.
Many of the undead are part of familiar chains that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this year: Friendly’s, Chevys, Sbarro, Perkins. The zombie restaurants, barely bringing in enough cash to cover basic expenses
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Mr. Fallon said that zombie operators cut costs to the bone to stay in business.
“It has nothing to do with the quality of the food or serving the customer,” he said. “It’s just a financial play.”
Bankrupt Chain Restaurants Are Still Holding On - NYTimes.com
The business of feeding America. Time to stay home and cook instead of feeding these zombies.
Posted on January 1, 2012 with 22 notes
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The board, according to an ex-member, squelched many of Koppelman’s ideas, including attempts to do a deal for Martha-branded vitamin supplements and Martha-branded clothing. They were also opposed to a deal with TurboChef, which wanted to bring out a Stewart-branded $6,000 convection oven. “It was exactly the opposite of what we preached,” this person says, “which was that we didn’t just put our names on things—we create things.” But the deal, which included a multi-million-dollar first-year license fee, eventually went through. By last year, the company had done a hodgepodge of licensing deals, including video games, a wine with Gallo, branded weddings at Sandals Resorts, and frozen dinners at Costco.
Martha Stewart, the business, isn’t making as good a comeback as Marth Stewart, the person. People are back to associating Martha with Connecticut mansions and fussy foodstuffs rather than orange jumpsuits and house arrest anklets. But no one is buying Martha the brand.
I love that bitch Martha, but I admit, since she moved her TV empire to the Hallmark channel, I haven’t watched a lick. Her uncomfortable guest banters during cooking demos were one of my favorite unintentional and unscripted TV moments.
Posted on August 28, 2011 with 2 notes
Source: New York Magazine
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Unbeknownst to their bosses, software developers were running off to cloud services—in particular, Amazon’s—to test out ideas, often using their own credit cards to pay for work. For the first time, cube dwellers with ambition had the freedom to tinker on serious computing systems without much overhead.
When something clicked, the developers could then take it to their bosses. Just such a thing happened at Northrop Grumman (NOC), where a research and development team used Amazon’s cloud service to develop an advanced cybersecurity system. The team rented Amazon’s computers for less than a day to train machine-learning algorithms on more than 1.3 million files. When Justin Kessler, an applied mathematician at Northrop Grumman Information Systems, showed the results of the project to his managers, they were struck by the low price tag. “It was eye-opening, and they were thrilled at how efficiently we solved the problem on someone else’s infrastructure,” he says.
The Cloud: Battle of the Tech Titans - BusinessWeek
A primer on cloud computing. Is this concept new, though? Isn’t the public library a form of cloud? Isn’t Baskin Robbins 31 flavors a cloud ice cream storage?
Posted on March 14, 2011 with 1 note
Source: businessweek.com
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According to insiders, XL refuses to gamble on stuff it thinks could be successful but doesn’t like. It encourages staff to continue projects they were working on before they joined the company – writing, promoting, DJing, whatever. And it cedes an incredible amount of control to its artists, the theory being that artists know how to make and market their own music better than anyone else.
XL Recordings, the record label that’s tearing up the rule book | Music | The Guardian
Sadly, I only worked at record labels that almost always took the worse fork in the road. Having spent my 40 hour week in a freezing warehouse up to eyeballs in CDs/LPs no one wanted anymore, I know the gut feeling of staff is crucial in A&R.
The mistakes with so many labels is the failure to say no to middling bands. One of the biggest frustrations working at a record label is when the company basically becomes a loan center for shitty bands who play shitty music. The money spent on those warehouse space-fillers could have been spent on the good bands. This never happened. It makes my stomach boil now just thinking about it.
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What happens after Yahoo acquires you - (37signals)
It would be interesting to compare this with startups acquired by Google. Anyone wanna take that on?
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By the end of next year, you’ll begin to see some big brands rolling this out,” says Robert Stidham, president of Franchise Dynamics LLC, a Homewood, Ill., company that helps businesses develop franchises. Mr. Stidham says he’s been involved in “serious” discussions with about a half-dozen national food franchises on strategies for going mobile. He declined to name specific chains.
Big Chains Try Food Trucks - WSJ.com
In my experience, food truck/cart offerings have been amateurish and disappointing. That being said, I feel badly if they have to compete for customers and limited space with corporate chain mobile units. But do people really want to huff chain food on a sidewalk or in an alley if the same meal can be had seated, indoors?
Even the most insipid lumpia filled with frozen vegetables (srsly) is wonderful when it’s mouth-searingly hot and fresh, eaten in an alley on a balmy summer evening with others who sought out the cart. The corporate trucks have money and a marketing department, but the indie trucks will always have the Dumpling Effect.
Posted on October 28, 2010 with 1 note
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I was laid off 2 days before my birthday in 2009, a dismal blessing. I miss health insurance and payroll, but I haven't bought bread since the pink slip because I have time to bake.
Sometimes I'm a serious job hunter, sometimes a serious slacker, but mostly, I'm an underemployed, freelance Jaqueline of many trades including writing and dogsitting. Either way, I scrapbook my finds and activities here for your benefit and amusement.
Follow me on Twitter if tv/movie/pro-cycling spoilers and unplanned live tweets won't hail on your parade. And yes, I do work blue so don't be huffy with me if you don't like cursing or merciless roasting of public figures.
You can look at my other blog Fashion Corpuscle if you like fashion. The ruins of my crumbling Tumblr blog empire awaits internet archaeologists.
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