Watch this cool little documentary about a soda pop specialty store.
Would that I could live there…
LINKS
Marketing Posts
Trader joe’s trade secrets: be smart and clever and do good work
Fortune Magazine digs into Trader Joe’s secretive methods of doing business.
They make smart deals to keep prices low, they put high priority on customer service, and they know their business very well.
LINKS
Struggling to self-promote
This past weekend there was a local indie comics convention. I wasn’t able to make it as a customer or as an exhibitor.
Part of the issue is that I just don’t have the time or the material to put up the sort of table that I want at this point. But the other part is that I’m just not that comfortable with self-promotion yet.
So I pay special attention to articles like this one by Alex Mathers of Red Lemon Club on getting over your self-doubt in order to get done what you need to get done.
LINKS
How to Smash Through Self Doubt to Become a Better Self Promoter
Ralph Bakshi speaks plainly to young animators
I’m not a huge fan of the man, but he sure tells it like it is to an audience of aspiring animators at the San Diego ComiCon a couple years ago.
This rant also applies to those of us who wish for any kind of career in a creative line of work. Take heed.
Links
37signals’ take on the Shake Shack
Read 37signals’ very interesting analysis of an NYT piece on Danny Meyer’s Shake Shack.
1. Have an enemy. In Meyer’s case, the enemy is fast food that strips away the human experience.
“The whole experience is to cram people into a cookie-cutter space, to feed them as many unhealthy calories as possible — then get them to leave,” said Mr. Meyer, the president of the Union Square Hospitality Group and the Yoda of Shake Shack. “That stripping away of human experience? That is where fast food went astray.”
Contrast and compare, then, with the three Shake Shacks in New York City, where patrons are cheerfully welcomed at the counter of a neighborhood-centered, urban-fantasy version of a burger roadhouse. On the menu? Whole-muscle, no-trimmings, fresh-ground, antibiotic-and-hormone-free, source-verified-to-ranch-of-birth, choice-or-higher-grade Black Angus beef.
Furthermore, “people have to wait in line just to place their orders,” Mr. Meyer, 51, said on a recent afternoon. “After that? They have to wait for us to cook their orders. And then? We hope they’ll stay awhile, as they eat. To enhance the communal experience.”
