Why do jeans never go out of fashion?

Forever in Blue Jeans?

 Sand washed, stone washed, sand blasted, acid washed, dark wash, boot cut, baggy, skinny, bell bottom, boyfriend, straight leg, relaxed fit, frayed, ripped, torn, patched, painted, cut off, cargo pocket, pajama, stretch, high waisted, low rise, hip hugger… 

The history of Blue Jeans according to Wiki:  The word “jeans” comes from the French phrase bleu de Gênes, literally the blue of Genoa. Jeans fabric, or denim, originated in the French town of Nîmes, from which ‘denim’ (de Nîmes) gets its name.   Jeans are trousers made from denim. Some of the earliest American blue jeans were made by Jacob Davis, Calvin Rogers, and Levi Strauss in 1873. Starting in the 1950s, jeans, originally designed for cowboys, became popular among teenagers. Historic brands include Levi’s, Lee, and Wrangler. “Blue jeans” are particularly identified with American culture.

Since our parents and grandparents first fell in love with jeans over 60 years ago, the styles have frequently changed, but as a product in the United States, the five pocket denim jean has been one of the most durable consumer goods.  Most of us have a favorite pair.  We are always on the lookout for that perfect fit.  Some think that jeans are appropriate attire for nearly any occasion; weddings, funerals…  Those who are able to wear them to work think of it as a privilege. When not in jeans, most of us can’t wait to change into them.   According to Cottoninc.com, 96% of us own an average of 7 pairs of jeans, accounting for 6% of all apparel items in our wardrobes.  It’s a 5.2 billion dollar industry.  Sales of premium quality denim jeans ($100 or more per pair) rose 16% for women and 21% for men in 2008 and continue to rise even in this economy.  The denim jean is probably our favorite clothing article, the thing we pull on when we want to feel our best.  Why do we love jeans so much? Beth

Copyright & Usefull Things

I ran across this article yesterday which addresses the coming Industrial Revolution 2.0 wherein 3-d copiers are common as regular printers are today. The article addresses the protection of and legality of copying physical objects, an area I had never heard of in copyright law. I suggest all students of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs read the article by Nick Bilton which was in the “Bits” section of Sunday’s NY Times from which the picture came. Hank

Oil & Entrepreneurs Texas Style

Texas, cowboys and oil kinda go together. While there have been several oil booms (and busts) in Texas, there is another one going on in South Texas where we have our condo for the winter driven by something called Eagle Ford. According to Wiki, “The Eagle Ford Shale is a hydrocarbon producing formation rich in oil and natural gas fields. The shale play area starts at the Texas-Mexico border in Webb and Maverick counties and extends 400 miles toward East Texas. The play is 50 miles wide and an average of 250 feet thick at a depth between 4000 and 12,000 feet. The shale contains a high amount of carbonate which makes it brittle and easier to use hydraulic fracturing to produce the oil or gas.^[2] The oil reserves are estimated at 3 billion barrels with potential output of 420,000 barrels a day.”

So what’s this have to do with entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs? According to an article in the Corpus Christi newspaper Caller Times (front page 11/13/11) in  2010 alone 12,600 jobs with $512 million in payroll resulted. All kinds of opportunity is knocking for those willing to take modest risks and start businesses related to and/or supportive of the requirements of extracting this new source of oil, from trucking sand (used in the process) to inventing new devices to more efficiently extract black gold from the ground. There is also a large pull of other services, such as housing, auto repair and sales (Ford’s sale of fleet trucks has more than doubled on an annual basis).

For entrepreneurs, you have to be able to find the hot spots, be there with a product or service that meets the demand, and in many cases be ready to move physically on a moments notice. Our Sunday paper is full of jobs, from IT-related, health care, to working behind a shovel. People just need to get off their collective asses. Hank

Have A Happy Friday: Great example of viral marketing

Viewed over 9 million times and loved by people around the world, especially French women. Hank

Of Mermaids and Eight Year-Old Entrepreneurs

Since returning to our winter digs on Padre Island, Texas, and turning my interests more toward sailing our 27′ Hunter, I’ve expanded my reading list to include several monthly magazines about sailing. One of them is named simply Sail. In this month’s issue (Nov 2011) on p.17 there is an interesting blurb about a then eight year-old girl named Emily Ehlers (now 12) who went on a yearlong cruise with her family. While underway, she invented a game called Mermaid Beach which was picked up by Gamewright of Newton, Mass and is now in its catalog. From the previous link, the game has won numerous awards including Dr. Toy’s Top 100 Children’s Products.

Two points: Emily is off and running in the world of entrepreneurship, and second, with Christmas around the corner, you might think of Mermaid Beach for one of your gifts. Hank

Fashion: Needed or needless?

Food, shelter and clothing are the basic necessities of life.  The style of each changes over time.  Food trends evolve with new diet fads.  Housing trends today lean toward being green.   It makes sense that our taste in food changes because we learn that some foods have more health benefits than others.   Living in a home that is sustainable, saving you energy and money, is clearly a positive change.  But what is the importance of fashion?    How can a new style of jeans improve your quality of life?

Of all of these necessities, fashion evolves and changes much more often.  What once made you feel hip and cool when you wore it suddenly makes you feel like a total doofus .   You look in the mirror and decide that this fashion faux pas needs to be replaced with something new and you go shopping.  Wouldn’t it be easier to just stick with the classics, which seemingly never change?    My husband’s wardrobe consists of the same thing he wore in college.  When his blue oxford polo wears out, we replace it with the exact same shirt.   When we look at pictures from the past, he looks the same, and I sometimes can’t believe what I was wearing!

Certain people stay on top of fashion to conspicuously convey what they can afford.  Others want to fit in with a specific crowd.  Some want to show the world they are a non-conformist by how they dress.   No matter who you are, or what you wear, you are participating in some sort of fashion trend, even if it isn’t current!

So, what is the point of fashion?  What would our world be like without it?  Does it have a positive impact on anything?  If everyone wore the same thing year after year, only replacing it when it wore out what would happen to our economy?   I’d like to think I’m doing my part to keep the economy alive by keeping up with fashion trends.  My husband, on the other hand, is a non-participant of economic stimulation.  Beth Carroll

Occupy Wallstreet versus Sustainability

Unless you have been residing under a rock in Siberia, you are aware of the Occupy Wall-street dealy; I don’t really know what to call it. It is not a demonstration, a political movement, nor support of a particular class. According to Wiki, which in this case is as accurate as anything, “According to a survey of Zucotti Park protesters by the Baruch College School of Public Affairs published on October 19, of 1,619 web respondents, 1/3 were older than 35, half were employed full-time, 13% were unemployed and 13% earned over $75,000. 27.3% of the respondents called themselves Democrats, 2.4% called themselves Republicans, while the rest, 70%, called themselves independents.” So they are from divergent social, economic and political groups. What seems to tie the group together, is an intent to “get their just share.” In fact, “”We are the 99%” is a political slogan, Internet meme and implicit economic claim used by demonstrators involved in the “Occupy” protests. It is intended as a statement of a trend, since the 1970s, for wealth and income to become concentrated within the top 1% of the United States population (also from Wiki link above). ”

In another life, I teach Sustainability Strategies, an elective graduate course at Krannert School of Management at Purdue University where I am on the graduate faculty. In Sustainability Strategies, we look at the three Ps businesses must strike a balance between – People, Planet and Profit. Although there are those who would argue otherwise, the balance is somewhat of a zero sum game. More for people, less for Profit and perhaps Planet. Obviously the measurement being used is $MONEY$. What the Occupy Wallstreeters are calling for, is LESS Profit, and MORE for People, wherein People is defined as exterior to the business, but society in general??? They are calling for the ubers to GIVE/Turn Over/Bequeath wealth rightfully (at least most of it) earned to People who have no stake or skin in the business game because they are what? Entitled? (I’m beginning to really dislike that word!)

Way back when I started my Ph.D. studies in the early eighties, we were drilled that the duty of management is to maximize stockholder wealth. In fact, management has a judiciary duty to do just that. Toward the end of my studies (1987 time-frame) the concept of stakeholders started gaining traction. Stakeholders were anyone who had a stake in the company – employees, communities, customers, governments etc. But, nothing was really said about decreasing profits to massage the gonads of the extended “People” now considered to have a direct “stake” in the business. Rolling toward today, we have businesses under the gun to appease the 3Ps, and recently, to extend their People “P” to providing employment and entitlements to both members and non-members of the business. Even entrepreneurship has not escaped this extension of the “purpose” of business. Your own president talks of supporting entrepreneurs because they are the source of jobs, which equals employment per se.

I disagree with all of this current BS and agree with Milt Friedman when he stated “the business of business is business.” The goal of entrepreneurship is NOT to create jobs for society, or to share its generated wealth at the expense of Profits or Planet, but to give rise to tomorrow’s businesses. Occupy Wallstreet is on the wrong street.

Mike Meier, a student from St. Louis, MO who is going to the University of Chicago and is a sophomore studying Cinema and Media, made the video of Occupy Chicage below. Thanks to Beth and her brother for the clip. Hank

My Original Droid Is No More but LG Optimus V Is!

Two years ago, the day Droids first became available, I signed up with Verizon for one. Yesterday, 11/6/11, my two years of servitude to Verizon was over, and I cancelled the service. In retrospect, it’s been an interesting two years. While I am not a texter, and didn’t use the keyboard, I found the original Droid to be a capable smart phone. It introduced me to the first public iteration of  Android, was a decent “phone,” and when it first came out would even support tethering via June Fabrics’ PDANet. Then Verizon got shitty, and cut off tethering, raised prices, and in general fell into the trap that Occupy Wallstreet is all about. I am not sad to see it go, saving almost $90/month which is not chump-change.

So what’s in my pocket now? Within the last year, Virgin Mobile introduced the LG Optimus V running Android 2.2 which you buy outright for $129-149 depending on the “deal” running. It’s sold at Radio Shack, Wal-mart, etc. It is a smart phone in every respect – runs Android Market, has a decent 3.2 MPixel camera etc. Is it a iPhone 4S – no, but it is “adequate.” Sprint provides the 3G service which for me, with taxes, is $27/month. For that I an entitled to 300 minutes/month talk, unlimited text, and unlimited data use. For data here in Corpus Christi, TX, I get about 1.6 down, and 2-300 up, plenty for email and text. It tethers nicely too, with nada hacking to root and doesn’t need PDANet either. Sprint doesn’t have nearly the coverage of Verizon nationally, but in the area in which we live six months out of the year, it just works. It shoots decent video (see two minutes of interior of our Hunter 27 sailboat directly below) and quality pictures (see bottom of us underway in Corpus Christi Bay.) What’s not to like? Hank

Have A Happy Friday: Some primary research by Carlsberg

The producers of this beer commercial borrowed a small 150 seat cinema playing a popular film, and filled 148 of its seats with rough-looking, tattooed bikers, leaving only two free seats in the middle of the theater. They then allowed theater management to sell tickets for the last pair of tickets to several young couples.

What would you do?

Watch till the end …..Thanks Gene!

Dear Future Entrepreneur … from the Inc. 500 / 5000 Conference

I received the following from Kauffman Foundation Monday, 10/31/11. Very unique presentation!

Please enjoy this slideshow of photos taken of attendees at the 2011 Inc. 500|5000 Conference & Awards Ceremony held Sept. 22-24, 2011, in National Harbor, Md. Conference attendees expressed their messages for future entrepreneurs, which were captured in motivational photos.

A special thanks to Dear World founder Robert Fogarty for being on-site to take the photos. Started as “Dear New Orleans” to allow victims of Hurricane Katrina to express their feelings, Dear World has grown to showcase a new form of expression across with world. Highlighted by inspirational photos, Dear World encourages anyone to share a message, regardless of race, religion, or language.

http://www.flickr.com//photos/kauffmanfdn/sets/72157627687152629/show/