Recent Reading

Black Friday edition.

"If you don't have to put it on sale and people are still going to buy it, why put it on sale?"

What's the data say? Black Friday prices aren't the lowest.

Damn, that flash sale site might not be a better deal, either.

Recent Reading

In praise of "lower grade" maple syrup.

12 pasta myths debunked. (Mixes well with my notes on pasta cooking.)


There's a website for everything.

And then there's this, from the annals of totally f*#%ked up:

What does it take to be a Victoria’s Angel?:

She sees a nutritionist, who has measured her body’s muscle mass, fat ratio and levels of water retention. He prescribes protein shakes, vitamins and supplements to keep Lima’s energy levels up during this training period. Lima drinks a gallon of water a day. For nine days before the show, she will drink only protein shakes – “no solids”. The concoctions include powdered egg. Two days before the show, she will abstain from the daily gallon of water, and “just drink normally”. Then, 12 hours before the show, she will stop drinking entirely. “No liquids at all so you dry out, sometimes you can lose up to eight pounds just from that,” she says.

Other Merchants...Etsy, darling

I just bought something from an Etsy seller in Hong Kong — which is one of the amazing things about Etsy — and this was the note they included. Obviously English isn't their first language. But there's no way they looked up a translation and got "Darling" unless they wanted to say something that bizarrely intimate, which I think is kind of great.

I also like some of the cards from this seller in Indonesia.

A lot of people bash on Etsy, some of it for good reason. But the way it's created a personal way to sell things internationally is fascinating.

Recent Reading

Artisan: another good word becomes meaningless.

How many of the product reviews you're reading are fake?

Hospitals using kanbans.

GMO foods — you are eating them right now.

Will the Sikhs save Parmigano-Reggiano?

Unrelated to food or reading: where children sleep, in photos. 
This gets crazy.

What if grocery stores were like websites?

Other Merchants...J. Crew

There are a lot of merchants I learn from, big and small. I'll write about some of them in a new category of posts (click "Other Merchants"). If there are any you think I should know about please shout!

J. Crew

I don't think there's a better clothing mass merchant these days than Mickey Drexler at J. Crew. He's like the Steve Jobs of moderately preppy. His taste, fit and overall merchandising are diabolically good. Their stores are fairly well run, which is saying a lot for a company that has over 200 locations, mostly in malls. Stylistically, Mickey almost never makes a wrong move and, eight years in, he just seems to be getting better. If I had to compete with him I'd be very scared.

I particularly like how he's picking iconic brands both popular (Timex) and somewhat unknown (Loro Piana, the legendary Italian fabric maker) and mixing them in. Sometimes they're sold as an item with a J. Crew twist. Sometimes they're part of a garment. In either case, he doesn't hide them, but he also makes sure you know it's J. Crew that's running the show in how they're included. He also uses facts and education to help sell clothes rather than just trend, which is how I've always tried to sell food.

Recent Reading

Is junk food cheaper than good food? Bittman says no.

Is Groupon a bad idea?

Vinyl record sales are way up—and not just in the USA.

 

The guy who runs Zappos fines his employees for saying the words "Social Media." Also, he loves orders by phone.

The Parking Lot is a documentary on a group of parking lot attendants that turns into a pretty funny take on the metaphysics of the service industry. There are so few films that get anything right about work life. This one does. (For one of my favorites go see Office Space.) It left me wondering, do you need to be a hopeless romantic to enjoy being in service?