Merry Christmas 2011 from the Admin (Hank Feeser)

Have A Happy Friday: See you next semester (1/9/12)

What’s up with Pinterest.com?

Pinterest.com is a site that is growing like mad! See the Compete analytics for the site captured at 1pm 11/28/11. Not too shabby! According to Crunchbase, “Pinterest is a social catalog service. Think of it as a virtual pinboard — a place where you can post collections of things you love, and “follow” collections created by people with great taste.” Their Facebook page is here: And here is a great analysis of their past and future growth potential:

So for readers of this blog, what’s so unique about this relatively new site? Why are people streaming to it? How can you use lessons learned here for your own startup? There is a video from an avid user below. Hank

“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation” Henry David Thoreau: Substitute “entrepreneurs” for “men”

I had the pleasure of working as a business neighbor to Chad Shedron, the owner of Family Pharmacare, in West Lafayette for many years.  Chad is a good man.  He’s the father of six; one set of triplets, a set of twins and a daughter in between.  He worked hard to support his large family, went to church every Sunday, gave his customers exceptional service, and had loyal, happy employees.  He took time out of his crazy, busy business day to present to my Introduction to Business class a few years ago and was a wonderful speaker.   Chad is an entrepreneur in trouble.

On November 10^th of this year the FBI raided Chad’s pharmacy, took boxes of paperwork, and shut him down.  We can only speculate on what might have been the reason, but the outlook for Chad’s seemingly successful ten-year-old business doesn’t look good.  The fate of Chad, his family and his employees have all been affected by some bad business decisions.  What could Chad have done to avoid this mess?

http://www.jconline.com/article/20111111/NEWS/111110310/U-S-attorney-mum-visit-pharmacy

Just a decade ago Chad was an optimistic entrepreneur, happy with his life choices and excited about his new venture:  from ncpanet.org ( http://www.ncpanet.org/pdf/junior_partnership_transfer.pdf)

CHAD SHEDRON
From Residency To Ownership

When he was finishing pharmacy school at Butler University, Chad Shedron figured he would be buying his first independent pharmacy when he was 35 or 36. But there he was, 27-years-old in June 2001 signing a financing agreement with a local bank in West Lafayette, Indiana, and wondering if he’d done the right thing. “I’ve probably enjoyed it more than I thought I would,” he says, “even with the hours you have to put in. Sales are up 30 percent. We just had a great first year. I honestly don’t have too much to complain about.  I knew this is what I wanted to do when I did my residency,” he recalls. “It really turned the corner for me. Ownership was what I wanted to get into.”
Chad’s desperation, only ten years later, led him to make some bad choices.  When one owns a business, it’s hard to let it go, even when you know you’re sure to fail.  Desperate entrepreneurs sometimes make bad decisions.  I wish the best for Chad and his family, no matter what path his desperation may have led.  His entrepreneurial instincts betrayed him.    Beth Carroll (See video below for local news coverage of the closing.)

Kauffman Talks About Where Entrepreneurs Get Their Funding

 Kauffman Foundation’s latest animated sketchbook video features
Paul Kedrosky illustrating the give and take of new business financing.

 Watch the sketchbook presentation below. Hank

 PS: The oil industry in the Corpus Christi area is begging for workers! See article here:

What Have You Done Lately?:The Engineer Song by Mary & Elizabeth says it all

Normally I would run the following as a “Have A Happy Friday,” post, but it’s too uber and I know Purdue students will be heading out for Christmas break soon. I received the following email from a Navy colleague of mine recently and received his permission to post the video:

“My granddaughter Mary and her project partner designed and built an electric guitar for their high school Math Engineering and Science Applications class. They also designed and built the pickup. Pictures are attached. They also created and sang a song for the guitar. It is also attached. The alphabet characters in the lyrics are for the cords for the song.”

Mary Kwiatkowski (picture to right) and Elizabeth Hilstrom (the project partners), not only were very creative in authoring and staring in The Engineer Song, THEY ALSO DESIGNED AND BUILT THE ELECTRONICS AND THE GUITAR THE SONG WAS BACKED BY!!!!  Mary was 16 at the time, and a high school junior. Kudos to the young ladies, their parents, teachers, and a learning environment supportive of such effort. It’s students like Mary and Elizabeth that MIT and Purdue sorely need. You go girls.  And yes Gene and Bev, you have ample reason to be very proud! Hank

Have A Happy Friday: A Great Tribute to our Armed Forces

UPS & Innovation

UPS of “What Can Brown Do For You?” fame was started in Seattle in 1907 and has never looked back. They deliver more than 15 million packages a day to 6.1 million customers in more than 220 countries and territories around the world (Wiki). They are truly an innovative company. For instance, through operations research, they discovered that it is much for efficient for their delivery trucks to avoid making left turns. Simple, but insightful. Throughout the years, they have experimented with more efficient ways to make delivers. For instance, in NYC they have used electric trucks. In 2008, UPS started hiring bike delivery people in Vancouver, Washington; Portland, Salem, Corvallis, Antelope, Eugene, and Medford, Oregon (Wiki.)

Lately, actually since last month (October 2011), I have been seeing golf cart-type vehicles running around Padre Island Texas where we live. The Island Community recently made it lawful to drive golf-cart type vehicles on the Island’s secondary roads. So what does UPS do? They are now making deliveries on Padre Island using a gas-powered, open vehicle (see picture to right). A delivery was made today (11/30/11) to our complex, and I took the opportunity to talk to the driver, a young lady. She really likes the new cart delivery vehicle over driving a truck as it is much more maneuverable and easier to park.. She also enjoys being “outside” in the warm winter Texas sun (it’s 70 today.)

So what and how do the logistics work? UPS has, with the Island’s blessing, positioned a POD in two strategic places on the Island. Regular trucks in the dead of the night bring the next day’s deliveries to the PODs, where the carts are also stored over night. The drivers also hand carry gas for the carts and make certain they are filled and serviceable. What a way to save on fuel, have more efficient delivery of packages, and be kinder on the environment. UPS has been responsive to changes in local regulations and taken competitive advantage of the evolving laws for vehicles and in so doing changed their business model for Island delivery. Now that’s being entrepreneurial! Hank (A picture of one of their PODs is below.)

Is Thanksgiving an endangered holiday?

Who is to blame for rushing the holiday shopping season; the retailer or the consumer, and why? 

Stores opened on Thanksgiving Day this year, which meant that people gave up family time to work and shop.   My son drove back to Bloomington to report to work at 12 a.m., so we had our dinner early and said goodbye.  “The mall was packed” when he arrived, “people were everywhere, we couldn’t even move around in our store”.  I asked if they sold a lot and he replied “not really”.

According to Fox News a record 226 million shoppers visited stores and websites during the four-day holiday weekend starting on Thursday, the Thanksgiving Day holiday, up from 212 million last year, according to early estimates by the National Retail Federation released on Sunday. Americans spent more, too: The average holiday shopper spent $398.62 over the weekend, up from $365.34 a year ago.

Sales on Black Friday were up 7%.  Retailers were open for business much earlier and longer than last year.  Analysts are wondering if the early rush to the holiday season will result in shoppers spending more for Christmas overall, or if they will instead finish their Christmas shopping sooner.   With extended store hours, payroll and energy costs will increase.  At the end of the season, how will profits fare?  Retail hours have always been difficult to endure during the holiday season, but this year is going to be brutal.  I wonder how employee moral will be affected.  My son worked until 8 a.m. after reporting to work late Thanksgiving night, went home to sleep and reported back to work Friday afternoon.  I admire his dedication, but I wouldn’t have expected that much sacrifice from my employees and their families.   Maybe if I had gotten a great deal on an HDTV I’d feel differently.  Beth Carroll

http://www.ksdk.com/news/article/287611/3/So-what-happened-to-Thanksgiving

Marketing Touchpoints Evolving Under Social Media Influx

Above map from here:

In marketing of old there was a concept named “Touchpoint” which like many subjects, once academics get hot for it takes on many meanings, all argued and debated about without adding any clarity or substance. In its simplest form, a Touchpoint is any interaction between a company and “customers,” where customers may be past, current, or potential future buyers. Also in the past, these interactions were very much managed by marketing. In its simplest form in the past, marketers were involved in “Push” marketing, where the attributes of a company’s product and/or services where positioned in media commonly frequented by customers (as defined above) to entice them to engage in or continue a brand experience. For instance, guys are the heavy half of beer drinkers, and guys watch lots of football and NASCAR, so beer makers support such sports (if indeed NASCAR is a sport) through product placement and ads throughout. Budweiser for instance, is a perennial winner of Super Bowl ads. Touchpoint management was an integral and extremely important function of marketing. Note “WAS.”

Enter Social Media such as blogs, forums, Facebook and Twitter. Try as they might, marketers found they have lost the handle of who sees what when and how about a company’s brand. Yes, companies have “specialists’ in these areas, attempting to “control” what is said by whom about their brands, but the social movement is very much uninhibited and rails against any form of “guidance,” regardless of the source. Thus, companies have evolved from marketing being in charge of touchpoints, to everyone in the company being responsible.

But herein lies another larger problem: Who in the company is accountable for touchpoint management? In the military, responsibility is never assigned without associated accountability. Think of it in terms of who gets paid for great customer management? See the conundrum? Hank