Year: 2006

Shopping for Shoes I

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Last Updated on December 12, 2006 by stlplace

Did quite a bit shopping lately. This all started one Monday evening I felt bored and went to shopping mall. I stepped into a “Sleep Solutions” store and the associate showed me the “personal computerized sleep profile analysis”. This reminded me of similar computerized thing in a shoe store. Basically it helps the consumer choose the right product and at the same time, it has some promotion effect (see, this thing is computerized so it must be advanced). Anyway, the old lady bragged about the mattress they got (the most expensive one is $2300!), and she told me she won’t be stingy on two things: the bed and the shoes. Because we as human beings usually spend much time on those two things. And the quality of beds and shoes can have big effect on our health. I think what she said is right. Since I don’t want to shell out that much money for the new bed, I decided to get a pair of new shoes right away.

There is a “New Balance” store near my home and I visited there and got some education about the sports shoes. Basically there are 3 main categories, walking shoes, running shoes and in-court shoes. The store has all kinds of things but it does not have my size. Also it’s full priced. My friend mentioned the Sport Authority to me so I visited them. And I found the Avia 2050 Running shoes which I bought. Here is a picture:

Another good thing is on sale.

One of my coworkers ran a full distance Marathon in the weekend. While I don’t expect run as much as him, I am going to run a little more now that I got a new pair of running shoes.

Tags running-shoes, shopping

Site Info

Changed Location URL

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Last Updated on May 28, 2009 by stlplace

I changed the location of this blog from http://www.stlplace.com/blog to http://www.stlplace.com/. I don’t expect anything to break because of this change. You should see some improvement on the web page loading time after the move.

Since nothing is perfect in life, do let me know if you see any problems. Thanks!

China Stocks

Analysis of Home Inn and Jin Jiang

Post author By stlplace
Post date October 22, 2006
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Last Updated on October 25, 2006 by stlplace

I saw this Chinese article about Home Inn and Jin Jiang. The author obviously did a good job here. For those who can not read Chinese, Jin Jiang Star is a competitor of Home Inn (Ru Jia). Jin Jiang Group started this economy hotel chain in 1997 (note Ru Jia started in 2002). From Home Inn’s F-1 Form, I saw Jin Jiang, Home Inn and Motel 168 had 20%, 18% and 16% of the China economy hotel market share, respectively. I stayed at both the Xing Ya Star (2002) and Jin Jiang Star (2004), and they are both comfortable.

It’s interesting to see, although Jin Jiang is the “first mover” in China’s economy hotel market, and they have lots of experience in the industry, they are not the dorminant position or even No. 1 brand. One reason it grew from the Jin Jiang group, whose main focus is the high end market. I think they are serious about this segment now since Home Inn is doing the IPO.

By the way, you can see Home Inn’s road show video from IPO home.

Tags homeinns, Jinjiang

Saint Louis

World Series T-shirt

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Last Updated on October 25, 2006 by stlplace

I saw lots of World Series T-shirt coming to the stores since Cardinals clinched a spot on Thursday night. Of course here in St. Louis most shirts are in red, the color of Cardinals. I found the following one at local Sams Club store, which is neutral, and the design is kind cute.

Being a Cardinals fan myself, I was happy to see them winning the first game. I hope they can still keep this underdog attitude and eventually prevail.

Tags worldSeries-tshirt-stlouis-detroit

Saint Louis

St. Louis goes to World Series

Post author By stlplace
Post date October 19, 2006
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Last Updated on October 19, 2006 by stlplace

St. Louis Cardinals won the NY Mets 3:1 tonight. It was a close game, and a good one. The only thing is I watched it at home just by myself, should have gone to some sports bar and seen some happy fans. I took a few pictures from TV screen.

China Stocks

Staples and Walmart

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Last Updated on October 17, 2006 by stlplace

Jim Cramer mentioned Staples in his Mad Money program today. He is talking about Staples (SPLS) traded at a discount although it’s the best in the breed among office supplies companies (vs. Office Depot and Office Max) . A caller asked him the international growth prospect. Interestingly, I saw an advertisement board of Staples along Yan An Road express way in Shanghai (note: unlike previous photos, the following photo is clickable).

Do you know the lady in the ad? Hint, she is a famous TV personnel.

Separately, Walmart China is in the news because they are buying Trust-Mart (好又多), there are many English news source on this. Here is a Chinese one.

It’s interesting to see, besides Yum Brands (KFC, Pizza Hut & Taco Bell) and Starbucks (SBUX), those two US retail giants are counting on China for growth.

Saint Louis

Panera Bread Crispani

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Last Updated on October 16, 2006 by stlplace

Panera Bread stock (PNRA) had a quite good run recently. There are mixed reactions from the Wall Street, Jim Cramer likes it (regional to national expansion), while Herb Greenberg is cautious about it. In my opinion, its new product, crispani pizza (intended more for dinner) is the key for growth. I have tasted the free sample three times when I was in the store lately. In other words, Panera is aggressive promoting it. It comes with many styles and are different from pizzas from other places (I think it’s better than Pizza Hut, which is very popular in China these days). Here is a picture of Crispani.

Crispani

Saint Louis

Missouri Wineries

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Last Updated on October 17, 2006 by stlplace

Visited a few wineries in Augusta this past weekend. I have been there couple times and still enjoyed it. The view from Montelle Winery is always good (see the picture below). Not many people are aware that Missouri is the second largest winer maker in the US (second to California). Here is a link of some wineries.

China Stocks

My take on Home Inns IPO

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Last Updated on October 15, 2006 by stlplace

I read the F-1 Form in the weekend. While I am not a financial analyst, I have the following comments.

1) Home Inns probablly has the best management or directors. Three of its directors, Neil Shen, James Liang, and Qi Ji are founders of Ctrip and have extensive experience on Investment, travel and IT industry.

2) Business outlook: the economy motel in China is booming, because of the increasing business and leisure travellers. There are 2 strong competititors: Jin Jiang Star and Motel 168. I stayed in Jin Jiang star and they are good too. I heard from Motel 168 from Taxi driver (later I found Wang Jianshuo mentioned it in his blog.)

3) Consumer experience: fair. It’s clean. But the rooms in Shanghai Pu Xi areas are ususally old and its condition are not great (sound insulation, bugs, etc.) The staffs are usually friendly (above average in China), but can not compared with the “customer first” attitude in the US.

4) Risks: The directors and management award about 650,000 shares of stock options on Oct 2 (before this public offering), while this does not dilute the stock too bad, it’s something they do for their own benefit. Of course the biggest risk is the China economy slow down. I am not an economist, but I know an economy can not run at this speed (10% growth annually) forever.

China Stocks

Stock lesson V

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Last Updated on October 15, 2006 by stlplace

I’ve covered the “buying” in my last post. I want to add a little more about “buying” here and then jump into “selling”. I think the quality of the stock (a company business, especially the management and the moat) is more important than the price itself in the long term.

For the managment of a company, I like to see a team of experienced, growth minded and honest people (remember Enron and WorldCom). As for the moat, it’s something Warren Buffett likes to emphasize), basically it’s the competitive edge of a company. For example, it’s difficult to break into cola market because Cokecola and Pepsi have established in the market very well. On the other hand, Google broke into the “web search” market because a few years ago Yahoo did not pay enough attention to this technology. Besides great product and service, good customer relationship is also important. Buying a stock of a good (solid) company gives you more “margin of safety”. Even if sometimes things go wrong, say a company missed a quarterly earning because of a one time event (say, Coke messed up with their product and made customer unhappy). They ususally recover from it later on, because of the good management and moat.