All posts by Alison Meadows

About Alison Meadows

Alison Meadows has a PHD in Economic Trends in Modern Times and is a known writer who focuses on hedge fund investments. Meadows, her husband, and three kids live in Boston, where she grew up and attended college. Contact Alison at alison[at]businessdistrict.com

GMC Going Head to Head with Toyoto with New Midsize Truck

Automobile Industry, , , , ,

Offering consumers similar towing power to their competitors’ large-size trucks, GMC released their latest midsize truck as an attractive alternative.

Truck buyers will see the 2015 Canyon go on sale in the third quarter of 2014 together with

GMC's New Midsize Truck, the Canyon 2015
GMC’s New Midsize Truck, the Canyon 2015

a Chevrolet variety called the Colorado. Both models will have a maximum towing power of 6,700 pounds (3,039 kilograms), the highest in its class. General Motors is unveiling their new trucks one day before the North American International Auto Show which is opening on Monday, January 13, in Detroit.

The Canyon enlarges the number of GM truck choices to be the largest number of pickups by any other US-based company. GM already has a heavy-duty truck on their line-up; the new models are meant to compete with Toyota’s Tacoma, a large truck. GM has not yet released the price of their new models, but in general full-size trucks are priced about 46% higher than their midsize counterparts.

“Not everyone needs full-size capability, but they also deserve strength and true truck attributes that come in larger models,” Tony DiSalle, vice president of GMC marketing, said. “The Canyon will offer all the capability with confidence and GMC’s signature refinement that complements active lifestyles.”

Haggling is New Business Mode

Consumerism, , ,
Black Friday
Black FridayDa

Consumers are becoming bolder.  Since they have access to prices of the same item in other stores at their fingertips due to smartphones, they are using this is as a bargaining tool.  Rather than getting hot under the collar about this, some companies are following the old adage, ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ and using this to their advantage.  For example, during the holiday season Best Buy, invited their customers to come bargain with them on items, as long as they provided proof of lower prices.  Other stores are doing the same – although they might not be advertising this outright.

Still, employers are actually now training their staff in the art of making deals.  Bargaining still has to be conducted with style.  As VP for Consumer Strategy and Insights at Daymon Worldwide, Virginia Morris notes, it must be “consumer-initiated,” and offers made need to be reasonable and done in a polite manner.  And the customer realizes also that the store does not want to lose their custom.  So they will try to be accommodating as much as possible, should the haggle be reasonable.

It seems a lot of work is still needed if the US is going to recover its peak on shopping sales from last year.  According to figures from the National Retail Federation, even though stores were open for four days over the Black Friday-Thanksgiving time span, sales dropped 2.9 percent from last year’s figure to $57.4bn.  It should be noted that this figure is the first decrease in seven years since the Federation has been estimating spending.

So what else are stores trying in the hope of drawing in potential customers?  Leigh’s Fashions in Breton Village were handing out glasses of wine or cups of coffee in an attempt to de-stress the consumer shopping experience.  According to one of the store’s co-owners, Rebecca Weirda, they did this in an attempt to distinguish their store from the mall experience.  They also offer free wrapping services and shopping parties during December.

The week following Black Friday the amount of store shoppers dropped by nearly 22 percent.  However, economically, this figure does not account for those who are shopping online.  Still, the figure is tough for those retailers who anticipate making 40 percent of their revenue in the last two months of the year.

Online Marketing Trends You Cannot Miss

News

online marketingAs the influence of the internet on business increases, the importance of following the trends becomes a significant part of business planning and strategy. Any business which wants to stay competitive must constantly watch consumers and what they are doing and what they are attracted to. Not following closely can lead to a dangerous drop in rankings on the most popular search engines, no doubt bad for business.

Here are some of the most up-to-the-minute trends in web marketing:

1.    Content Marketing is still the crucial component of marketing practices. There is no getting around it: high quality content is the fuel the keeps Google steaming ahead, and your website afloat.

2.    Social Media Marketing is growing and will continue to grow. Let’s face it: Facebook and Twitter are the darlings of the consumer culture-get there or be square!

3.    Mobility is the key to keeping up. More and more customers are checking you out on their cell phones, or are they??

4.    Images- as we all know a picture is worth a thousand words. Some might say that in this fast-paced mobile culture the ratio is more like 1 million to one. Make those graphics work for you.

Brooks Brothers Venturing Into Upper-Crust Eatery Business

Consumerism, , , , ,

Brooks Brothers, well-known for its high-end men’s clothing has decided to expand into

Hungry? Soon You Can Eat with Brooks Brothers Style
Hungry? Soon You Can Eat with Brooks Brothers Style

the world of fine dining. This is a first for the retail establishment, joining the ranks of other such ventures launched by others such as Tommy Bahama and Macy’s.

Brooks Brothers business plan is strikingly different, however, than those of both Tommy and Macy’s. Tommy runs about a dozen or so restaurants inside their stores, dubbing them Islands. The original Island-bearing store opened in 1996 in Naples, Florida, and brings into the cash box about $2,000 per square foot, over two times the sales at the company’s non-Island stores.

Macy’s stores have also had restaurants within the walls of their mega department stores for many years. The recently opened Stella 34 Trattoria, at Herald Square, is run by the Patina Restaurant Group, the same company that runs their other eateries. Macy’s Chief Executive Officer Terry Lundgren told investors that, because of the great views and better reviews, “the restaurant is doing spectacularly well.”

Brooks Brothers has a whole other approach to feeding the hungry hordes in mind, however. Their store, which will go by the moniker “Makers and Merchants, will not be inside the premises, but around the corner from its main store in midtown Manhattan.

“As the restaurant concept is still in development and not planned to open at least until summer 2014, we have no further comment,” company spokesman Arthur Wayne wrote in an e-mail.

The restaurant will be housed in the 15,000 square-foot space that used to be the Brooks Brothers women’s line, on East 44th Street. This stand-alone paradigm means the restaurant will have to compete with every other fancy restaurant in midtown Manhattan, a distinct disadvantage over the Tommy Bahama and Macy’s models, which entices people to come an eat while they are in the middle of building up heady appetites spending money.

Emerging from Bankruptcy Kodak Redevelops its Focus

Companies, , ,
Kodak Led the Way in Developing the Camera Industry
Kodak Led the Way in Developing the Camera Industry

After spending 20 months reorganizing its business after filing for bankruptcy protection, Kodak announced on Tuesday that it will refocus its business model on technology, especially on business imaging solutions.

Many of Kodak’s most well-known, and even beloved products will no longer be part of their business. Closed down and divested are its retail film products, photography paper, and 105,000 photographic services kiosks around the world.

Kodak was forced to sell off these assets to its largest creditor, the UK Kodak Pension Plan.

“We have emerged as a technology company serving imaging for business markets — including packaging, functional printing, graphic communications and professional services,” said Kodak chief executive Antonio Perez. “We are setting a trajectory for profitable growth,” Perez said. “We have the right technology at the right time as printing markets increasingly transition to digital.”

The reorganization plan was approved in a New York bankruptcy court on August 20. After several last steps Kodak will then be allowed to emerge from its Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Kodak is based in Rochester, New York, and has been a leading company since its founding in 1892 in everything having to do with photography. Kodak helped make cameras, film, slide projectors and home videos available and affordable to everyone. Despite the fact that Kodak was among the first to develop digital imaging, it was not able to compete with competitors because it failed to sufficiently adapt its business model.