Well I can only imagine the folks at Threadless must be pretty darn happy with their recent Inc. cover story. I mean, “Most Innovative Small Company In America,” it doesn’t get much better than that! If you somehow still are not familiar with Threadless, and why it’s so popular among democratization-of-everything biz theorists, the piece offers a comprehensive and extremely positive overview. (I attempted to make some different points about the Threadless model in this 7/8/07 Consumed.)
A few minor things interested me the most, though they were not the focus of the piece:
1. There’s passing mention of the break between co-founders Jake Nickell and Jacob DeHart; the latter is still on the board but “no longer works at the company,” and declined to be interviewed. I wonder what the story is there? Has someone else written about that and I missed it? The article says DeHart “had lost interest in expanding Threadless.” Why? This made me curious about what he’s up to, and I sort of wished for a sidebar about him.
2. The company’s Naked & Angry sub-brand or spinoff or whatever it is, is described as coming “later this year.” This idea has sort of been in a beta mode for an awfully long time. I’m sure curious to see what it develops into.
3. On a related note, I either didn’t know or had forgotten that Insight Venture Partners has a stake in Threadless. I wonder what this implies about the brand’s future? It doesn’t sound like they would have needed venture money, since the story says they’re making 30% margins. And by and large, venture capitalists are looking for blow-out growth, or rather blow-out valuation increases (and “liquidity event”). Threadless has started opening stores, and according to the story is open to other retail arrangements (including Urban Outfitters under the right circumstances). No doubt Threadless is a good business, but I don’t see it being an IPO candidate unless they make some pretty radical steps.
None of this is meant to suggest I see any particular trouble on the horizon for Threadless. I don’t. But they do seem to be reaching a crossroads of some kind. It’ll be interesting to see which way they go.
(Related: In addition to the aforementioned Consumed column, I did a Q&A here on Murketing with Threadless star Glenn Jones about his own brand.)
If you happen to have clicked through the link in the entry below about the “what’s a dead brand worth?” story where I mentioned I’d be responding to reader questions, you may have perused those 178 queries and wonder why I haven’t answered any. In fact I have. But you have to follow a different link to see the things I chose to answer and the answers I gave. That, if you’re curious, is here.
When I wrote about Crocs in Consumed (July 15, 2007), I suggested that the fact that many people hate Crocs was probably seen as a plus for those who wore Crocs (“maverick cachet,” etc.). Some, including the person I spoke with at the company, insisted that this was not so.
However, Crocs hatred is now apparently the brand’s new selling point, if this new commercial is any indication. Maybe the brand should’ve simply hired I Hate Crocs.
Via AdFreak.
So, looking at the post below, which I slammed out in a matter of seconds as the last thing before shutting off the computer after a long week … I’m not proud.
Reading it now it sounds like I was rooting against Nau. Not the case. Sounded like an interesting and well-intentioned company. I was interested in it. Etc.
Second, it also sounds like I’m being rather more hostile toward cool-stuff blogs than I intended to be. Particularly given the fact that the only thing I linked to that hyped Nau was actually a trad-press article. I don’t have a problem with either cool-stuff blogs or trad-press mags advocating stuff they think is cool or noteworthy or whatever they want to do.
What I should have been clearer about is the difference between those approaches and what I do. Not that one is better than the other, but what I do is write about what people are buying — not about what I wish people were buying, or what I think they should buy. And this was the problem I was having with Nau. It sounded interesting, and the brand was coming up in lots of places, but I was not finding much in the way of actual consumer enthusiasm.
Consider, in contrast, the response to my recent blip here about the Flip camcorder: Several immediate responses from people who have bought it. Not that that’s definitive, but it syncs with the casual conversations I have etc., that people are really buying it and they’re really enthusiastic. I tried to find a pattern like that regarding Nau, but it just wasn’t there, as far as I could tell. It seemed to me that Nau was popular among certain entrepreneurs or marketers or other professional participants in consumer culture — which is interesting and legitimate, but doesn’t add up to something that I can, say, write about in Consumed.
That was the point of the original Nau post on this site, of course. If you read Murketing you know I float stuff all the time just to see what people say, and sometimes I later write about that something in the column. I had put Nau in the “wait and see” file. I guess that was the right call, but I could have expressed that better than I did last night.
For a more thoughtful response to the Nau news, see Indie Breakfast Club.
So.
Earlier I floated a post here about Nau, which was getting an amazing amount of “buzz,” from cool blogs, random people emailing me, and even the “mainstream” press (although less in category three than than in one and two).
I floated the post here because what I wasn’t getting direct evidence of was actual Nau consumers. I totally got the concept, as this article says: “the ultimate over-the-top, high-concept business. It makes striking, enviro-friendly clothing.”
Okay. But my job is to write about why people buy things, so I was trying to figure out: Who is buying this, and why?
On a recent visit to Portland, OR, I went to a Nau retail space, and it was basically me and the employees and the very aggressive marketing concept, and some stuff on clearance. So it was interesting to see, but I didn’t learn anything of use for what I write about. Meanwhile, my post did not get me any replies or comments from Nau fans.
Anyhoo, I bring all this up because it’s just been brought to my attention that Nau is ceasing operations.
Obviously, I’m glad I didn’t decide to write about the brand in Consumed. But that’s not why I bring this up. I bring it up because as far as I could tell, Nau got nonstop love from every “influential,” “tastemaker,” “thoughtleader,” blah blah blah blog you can name.
I thought that was the secret sauce? I thought if you win over the blognescnenti, then you flat-out win? Because the MSM is irrelevant? And stuff? So, what’s up? Could it possibly be that the whole bloggy-buzz thing is, oh, I don’t know … bullshit?
Just asking.
[Thanks Steve!]
The WSJ’s Wealth Report blog notes the Day&Night watch — “an exceptional timepiece that does not indicate the time!” It costs $300,000. “An avant-garde approach, that is different and even disturbing.” Robert Frank writes:
The company’s chief executive, Yvan Arpa, cited statistical studies to explain how the watch better reflects the time-philosophy of today’s wealthy.
“When you ask people what is the ultimate luxury, 80 percent answer ‘time’. Then when you look at other studies, 67 percent don’t look at their watch to tell what time it is,” he told Reuters.
He added that anyone can buy a watch that tells time — only a truly discerning customer can buy one that doesn’t.
And here’s the best part: The watch sold out within 48 hours of its launch.
Counterfunctionality in watches in particular and other products in general explored in this 10/27/08 07 Consumed, and followed up in a number of Murketing posts and del.icio.us links.
[Thx: Noah!]
Going through the list of things I’m behind on, here’s one I wanted to be sure to mention: Independent record label Ghostly International‘s collaboration with Adult Swim on a 19-track collection called Ghostly Swim. You can download the whole thing for free here — and see Ghostly “mascots” BoyCatBird in a video titled “City Suckers.”
Ghostly founder Sam Valenti IV gave Murketing a great Q&A last August, here. I wrote about Adult Swim in Consumed, 1/18/04.
Mr. Valenti talks about the Adult Swim project with Coolhunting, here.
Posted Under:
Music,
Subculture Inc.,
Update
This post was written by Rob Walker on April 26, 2008
Comments Off on Catching up: Ghostly/Adult Swim project
The Times plans to distribute its multiple podcasts on the device (thus users can literally wake up to the papers’ reporters). In addition, chumby users will be able to download a Times widget that will instantly deliver breaking news photos to the device’s screen.
More here.
I’ve (obviously) been thinking about the Chumby as a Consumed subject, but maybe this means I should stay away from it because it would look biased? I don’t know. But just for the record: You the Murketing reader know I’ve been on the Chumby trail for a while now.
Recently I was told by someone who knows a lot more about blog popularity than I do that having high-impact key words in a post’s headline is good for traffic, because I guess headline words mean more to Google’s algorithms. If true, then surely this will be the most popular post in the history of Murketing.com.
Even so, everything about this post and its headline is totally justified: According to some blog, that isn’t Photoshop above, that’s Pamela Anderson reading the recent book Unmarketable (“examines the corrosive effects of corporate infiltration of the underground”), by Murketing Q&A subject Anne Elizabeth Moore.
Would it be fair to infer that Anderson got hip to this fine book by reading Murketing.com?
No? It wouldn’t?
Okay, then. Just asking.
Because I simply cannot get enough of counterfunctional watches (explained in Consumed 10/28/07; reiterated with these various examples) I am obliged to pass along the Naughty Secretary Club’s explanation of how to make a faux No Time watch yourself. Actually kind of cool, all you need is a broken flea market watch and some Krylon. Possibly the ultimate in (https://www.liobesitysurgery.com/propecia-finasteride/) useless watches.
Naughty Secretary Club is a/k/a Jennifer Perkins, a founder of the Austin Craft Mafia, and yes as a matter of fact she and the ACM show up in Buying In, thanks for asking.
[Update: This DIY project later picked up on by Craft, and then BoingBoing. But you, the savvy Murketing reader, read it here first. Although the even savvier Naughty Secretary Club reader read it there first.]
Some of the Wal Mart video mentioned yesterday is making it to the airwaves, although so far it’s pretty disappointing.
Both ABC and MSNBC have chosen to highlight a clip of some Wal-Mart guys in drag at what I guess is a shareholder meeting. The spin is that it’s somehow relevant to claims of entrenched sexism in Wal-Mart management, but as far as I can see the networks are running it because it seems funny.
More interesting is this clip that ABC ran of former Wal-Mart board member John Tate shouting in a vaguely crazed manner that unions are “blood-sucking parasites.”
I believe that this is the Flagler YouTube channel, but looks like most of what’s there is more geared toward promoting Flagler than anything else.
[Thanks Braulio for the ABC clips.]
What a lame headline! Oh well. Three things I wanted to link to and that’s all I could come up with. Here goes.
1. New York Magazine recently had a good story about the various travails of the Trump SoHo, probably I only read it because I wrote about the Trump SoHo in Consumed (10/14/07), but it turned out to be quite interesting.
2. The Times Magazine‘s most recent issue of Key, its real estate-focused spinoff, had a really fascinating piece abouta kind of strange real estate investor named William Gottlieb who died in 1999 and left behind a portfolio of more than 100 buildings, many of which other investors now really, really want to buy and convert.
3. Elsewhere in Key, David Leonhardt sifts the data of the real estate crash and argues: “Inequality hasn’t just increased among workers; it has also increased among cities.”
Posted Under:
Place,
Update
This post was written by Rob Walker on April 9, 2008
Comments Off on Real estate news
Lettering Sketchbook, originally uploaded by Linzie Hunter.
Linzie Hunter is the illustrator I wrote about in Consumed whose pieces based on spam subject lines became a bit of an online sensation (12/2/07 installment). Lately she’s posted a really appealing set on Flickr, of her “Lettering Sketchbook.” Two samples here. Fun to look at.
Lettering Sketchbook, originally uploaded by Linzie Hunter.
Posted Under:
Pleasing,
Update
This post was written by Rob Walker on April 9, 2008
Comments Off on Lettering Sketchbook pages: Pleasing
I get the impression that maybe the Crocs thing (Consumed 7/15/07) has peaked — but on the other hand I keep seeing them on the feet of otherwise respectable-looking people at the grocery store and whatnot. And now Adverblog points out a Japanese site that gathers of Crocs photos — “My Crocs Contest.” Not clear to me how new or old this is, but it seems like bad news for Crocs-haters. Popularity in Japan would, I can only assume, break down the American consumer segment that has most ferociously resisted Crocs — the cool-taste-trend-hunter-spotter-setters.
The newfangled barcodes I wrote about in Consumed the other day come up in another variation in this interesting NPR piece. The main focus is a firm called Scanbuy.
In San Francisco … hundreds of restaurants and businesses already sport the little black and white boxes outside their doors [even though] most people aren’t currently equipped to scan them.
And the latest Trendwatching roundup includes Dutch brand Wickd: “Wickd combines clothing and 2D barcodes technology to allow wearers of Wickd shirts, longsleeves or jackets to take their favorite websites with them. “
Posted Under:
Update
This post was written by Rob Walker on April 3, 2008
Comments Off on More 2D barcode examples
"
. With 
.
.
Kim Fellner's book 
.
A