Miguel Caballero’s Fashion Market Niche

In Los Angles, California, every eight minutes someone gets shot dead. But there are much more dangerous places in the world. Take Columbia and Brazil for instance, and most of South American for that matter. In Columbia, and now Mexico too, drug wars are openingly running virtually out of control. Sunday’s papers had an AP article, “Rio gangs shoot down police chopper, 2 cops dead.” It’s pretty obvious that personal safety is becoming a PROBLEM and PROBLEMs are fodder for entrepreneurs.

Into this fray steps Miguel Caballero with his line of fashionable yet bullet-resistant [NOT proof] clothing line. Here’s some background:

His creation started some 16 years ago when he was studying at Bogotá’s Los Andes University, Colombia where his rich classmates was a prey for kidnapping and crimes. They had to wear heavy protective vests

every time in public, so from there, an idea came up to design clothing that is light and stylish but comes at a price.

But the rich isn’t grumpy with the exorbitant price, obviously safety first in their mind, even at such high prices, its worth the investment. Caballero creations has made him a successful businessman and designer. He has expanded into 16 countries and his stores are found in exclusive prime spots such as posh London department store Harrods.

He is not doing business over the internet as yet, but has two web sites, the first [very heavy flash use] is a Global Site, the second U.S. only. While his organic clients “back home” don’t want publicity, he is picking up celebrity endorsements such as our President [the White House is mum however].  A video from a dude at Harrods about demand for the product is below. Hank

Who the Hell is Fred Astaire?

Here’s another great blog by Beth Carroll [BbB]:

Why, he’s the inspiration behind FredFlare.com !

Keith & Chris

“Great design should be as fun and entertaining as an old musical.  Our website reflects a sparkle pop presentation of our favorite things” states Keith Corrolo and Chris Bick.

Keith Corollo and Chris Bick moved from Chicago to New York City a little over 10 years ago. The two Midwestern boys were fascinated with the big city.  Longingly window shopping fabulous boutiques, they dreamed of one day creating a product they could sell in the stores they adored.  In 1998 they came up with their first product; a pad of disposable drink coasters, which they sold off the back of their “Pee Wee Herman” style get-a-way bike in Soho.  They grew their line to include a wide variety of products and eventually sold them to upscale boutiques across the country.  Tiring of the wholesale market, they decided to try setting up a website in 2003.  The site featured their own creations along with other brand names they loved.  Targeted to teens and young adults, the site took on a life of its own and retail became their new passion.   Today Fred Flare offers everything from shoes and clothing to wacky accessories like bacon bandages and a buttered toast wallet. It’s no longer a site just for shopping;  It also features contests, video pod casts, music they’ve created and performed and even recipes!    The site oozes with personality and is oddly appealing.  But, does anyone really need this stuff?

Everything Keith and Chris do is with love and enthusiasm and it spills over into their business.  You can’t help but smile when browsing their site.  Their bright colorful web design, spunky pop music, offbeat ads and kitschy offerings seem to generate happiness. After selling on the web for 10 years, Fred Flare recently opened their first and, for now, only Brick-and-mortar store in Brooklyn.  For a good time, shop Fred Flare! A video from them is below. BbB

Smell Good & Go Fast

Most of us have a favorite pen or pencil, shirt or blouse, or something we just have to wear or use to take an exam. Athletics and in particular racers of all kinds have even more rituals that they just must wear, see or hear before competition. Now Michelle Roark, a top freestyle skier who is also a couple of courses away from a chemical engineering degree from the Colorado School of mines at 35 years old, is rolling out a perfume of her own making named appropriately “Confidence.”

Confidence is made from a secret [isn’t everything these days a “secret”] mixture of rose oil from Bulgaria, bergamot from Italy, and grapefruit from Florida, truly an international blend. She has an early stage startup named Phi-nomenal. Her web site states:

Seeking something that would be empowering, all natural, and perfectly balanced, Roark researched essential oils and their associated medicinal purposes. Utilizing her Chemical Engineering background, she combines the features of an all natural carrier base (that is not toxic to the body and lasts longer than commercial perfumes) with precisely the right essences to invoke confidence, focus, and energy. Balancing it all off, Roark applies her mathematical knowledge of Phi to the creation of all Phi-nomenal products (patent pending), resulting in a divinely unique, all-natural, well-balanced product line designed to empower the human spirit.

A Success — Phi-nomenal’s Confidence Natural Perfume Oil and Custom Crystal bottle sold out within a week of being introduced at Eve Boutique in Denver, Colorado. Roark was unaware of the immediate success as she was in Torino, Italy at the time competing in the 2006 Winter Olympic Games. Roark went on to finish the World Cup Season ranked 3rd overall in the World and 1st in the US. Immediately following the end of the World Cup season Roark had the official Phi-nomenal Launching Party where she introduced the rest of the Phi-nomenal Product line.

Back in May, Roark had the opportunity to meet the President and enjoy a formal dinner at the White House.  She also met with Senator Hillary Clinton where she was able to personally present the Senator with some Phi-nomenal Perfume … after all Phi-nomenal’s mission statement includes being the scent of the first woman President of the United States!

So the next time you are seated next to a female [or male] student who has a unique “smell” and seems to do well on all exams, think “Confidence.” There have been too many startups based on much less insight and problem-solving than Michelle has shown. A very noisy video clip is below. Hank

So where does startup $$$$ come from???

So there’s this dude Sean Conway, who started a company [with a partner] named Notehall.com, an online marketplace for college students to buy and sell class notes. He did so while a student at University of Arizona. Where did he obtain the funds to start and grow his company? And why did he start the company? Not because it “wouldn’t it be cool if?”, but because Sean has a personal problem. Specifically,

Conway has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which he said was a hindrance to him fully processing classroom lectures at the University of Arizona, where he graduated in 2005 with a degree in entrepreneurship. Read more here:

And where did funding coming from?:

• First and foremost, he used every last cent he personally had which lasted about a year
• He went to his grandfather who contributed $17,000 for marketing and operations. When this ran out, he
• Submitted his idea to DreamIt Ventures, a form of entrepreneurial boot camp in Philly and walked away with about $500,000 in investments. He then,
• Applied to be a contestant on ABC’s Shark Tank, where you can view the deal he closed in the video below.

Bottom Line: He worked to get from here to there. It didn’t fall into his lap. Expect no more for your aspirations and you will do well. In other words, you have to hustle! Hank

iLov’n Driod, iDrool, iLaugh, iBuy

This is a quicky post.  Verizon is leaking it has a new iPhone killer named Droid in the pipeline. This phone has had leaks for about a month now; here is what it looks like. It runs android 2.0 and it will launch Oct 30th at midnight. That’s not the story per se. How they are positioning it is. Watch the video below. Just wait until the Windows 7 wars start! Hank

Using Portable Apps on Purdue Computers

I’ve mentioned to my ENTR200 classes several times that it is possible to run your “own” applications inside your Purdue account. The trick is to use Portable Apps, which run totally within themselves and don’t require registry changes that Purdue prohibits.  Example: I run my personal Slingbox via sling.com from my Purdue account on campus. To do so requires a plugin, flash etc, which often burps on Purdue’s systems, as they always seem to be years behind on versions. So I’ve downloaded the Firefox Portable App, installed Sling.com’s required plugin in it, and I’m good to go.

Originally conceived to run from Thumb-drives, or the newer [now not so new] U3 drives , there are a wide variety of such apps available, from Office clones, to browsers, to graphical tools, to FTP-apps. Seventy such apps are presented at this link:

Adrive to the rescue

Purdue also limits your account to something like 5gigs. How to get around this? Try Adrive, which provides you FREE 50 gigs of cloud storage which is just as secure and accessible as mailing your PPT to your Purdue email account. Works slick too. Hank

BTW, unbelievable that Purdue beat Ohio State yesterday!

We’re trying out a new plugin-Apture

Today we’re trying out a plugin for the WordPress engine used to drive our blog, named Apture. Look for the small icons and hover over them for dynamic information. Here we go:

“Flying on Plant Power: By 2020, he hopes that  fuel for his companies’ jet fleets will be derived from algae or consist of isobutanol, derived from sugars. The advantage of isobutanol, he said, is that unlike some other biofuels, it does not freeze at 15,000 feet and continues burning very well in the subzero temperatures as high as 35,000 feet. It has another merit, he added. “The world is awash in sugar,” he said. “Sugar is bad for you, so let’s put it in planes.””

Here’s what CrunchBase has to say: “Apture allows readers to dig deeper into a subject without ever leaving the blog post. When you click on any link marked by the icons , , or , you will be able to view video, reference materials, images and other related media.”

In the first two paragraphs, I have made Apture links. When you see the foregoing icons, glide your mouse pointer over them and see how they work, and comment as to their efficacy for you. Did Apture add to your “experience” on the blog? Could be “Bad to the Bone! Hank

Here’s an embedded video about Apture:

:

Have A Happy Friday: Animals Are!

Getting Down & Dirty On Your Target Market

Tuesday Techcrunch ran an entry about a relatively new startup, peerset.com, that’s worthy of more than passing interest by readers of this blog. In the graphic above (from Techcrunch), a Large Coffee Co. wants to know more about potential customers who are active in social media. The Peerset System in the top center is Peerset’s “black box” out of which comes related interests which supports better targeting of customers. They accomplish this mainly with “content analysis,” which is an interesting statistical tool I once used to excerpt from the Russian newspaper Pravda information about how entrepreneurs were being reported on during a transitional period in the former USSR’s history.

CrunchBase has this to say about the company:

Peerset, science of infinite connections, is an advertising data tool that generates psychographic recommendations and ad placement, based on comprehensive content analysis.

Peerset’s technology links interests, values, lifestyles and attitudes, enabling advertisers and publishers to target expanded audiences across the web. The company is leading innovation in the emergent field of Social Psychographic research. Founded in 2005, Peerset is a privately held company based in San Francisco, California, and Toronto, Canada.

To test Peerset out, I entered “iPhone” into their search space and was provided the following:

Left to right above, is Main Result, More Interests, Psycho-Demographics, and Entertainment Connections. So based on Peerset’s analysis, anything related to Apple/Mac is a good way to reach iPhone users aka “fans boys.” I better think about advertising on 30 rock [double hit], and churn Twitter. How shoes gets into the Psycho-Demographics listing I’ll leave up to you to decipher. Good stuff! Hank

Are Europeans nuts or just fun loving people?

Here’s another one from Beth Carroll. Looks like she’s got a thing for beer. Hank

“Everyone gets Happy on board of the Beer bike!”

“A ride that simply is a must. De biggest beer bike in the world with 30 litres of beer on board. Ideal for a stag weekend, family day or spending the day with friends whilst enjoying the sights of Amsterdam. You see it all with a beer in your hand or even a nice cigarette, because smoking is allowed on the beer bike! Thanks to our driver/guide everyone on board can enjoy a beer, Cheers!”

Cost: E550 = $808

Includes: 30 litres of beer = 8 gallons

Holds 10-22 people and the tour lasts 2-3 hours, or until you fall off.

Drinkers help peddle the bike, but a sober driver steers.

And just when you thought it couldn’t get any better than this, now you can have your beerbike and Karaoke too!

There have been a couple of serious accidents involving the beer bus, but City officials in Amsterdam have chosen not to ban it. Why do you think that might be? Double decker buses have offered tours of US cities like Chicago and New York for years. Would a beerbike tour be supported here in the States? Beth

http://www.beerbike.co.uk/