Category: Business

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Business Fun

Heelys and Under Armour

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I went to the West County Mall to check out Heelys: at the Nordstorm and Dick’s Sporting goods; I happened to see a grandma is buying a pair of Heelys for her grandson. Note Nordstorm is considered as high end department store. Dick’s Sportings also carries Heelys but I did not see anyone trying them.

For the second time, I saw a big display of Under Armour products at Dick’s (last time was couple weeks ago at Sports Authority): from its traditional sports underwear to outwear, accessories, caps…you name it; and what amazes me is they don’t have any discount. I did not visit Sports goods stores very often but I know even premier brands like Nike discount their products from time to time. I think Under Armour (UARM) will have a good holiday season: it seems to me they are eating market share away from Nike and other brands.

Under Armour Underwear

I also stopped by the Apple store, not surprisingly, that place is always full of people. I think this time iPod Nano is going to do well.  

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Business Fun

Google Checkout take on eBay’s Paypal

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Google is aggressively promoting its online payment service Google Checkout lately. It’s offering $20 off $50 purchase at online store buy com. The aim is very obvious, eBay’s Paypal. To counter Google’s attack, Paypal is offering free shipping with a number of partners including Dell. Who will be the winner of this war? I don’t know. But one thing I know for sure is Google has a deeper pocket (10 Billion in cash); they could do this promotion without hurting itself. If a customer needs to buy some electronics, buy com is a good place to checkout 🙂

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Business China

B2B Developments in China

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B2B, business to business, was a popular concept in dot com era. The idea was to connect the companies (suppliers, OEM, vendors…) using B2B software. In those days, there are a few B2B software companies such as Commerce One flied high. But B2B never grew as big as people dreamed in the US. On the other hand, Alibaba, the China company connecting Chinese manufacturers with foreign buyers, was very successful. The bar raised again recently as more players joined the party. One of them, is the Ninetowns (NINE), the company provides software for importing and exporting in China. The following is I saw from Andy Yu’s blog (in Chinese, see below).

We all know in business especially foreign trade, trust is very important. Essentially TooToo is creating its own rank system for the Chinese exporters. They have the raw data when providing the software and services for Chinese companies, and the rank is based on those data. When foreign buyers see an exporter is certified by TooToo, or “China Qualified Supplier”,  they can worry less about the quality etc. TooToo (Ninetowns) essentially is trying to create a credit report for the Chinese suppliers.

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Business Saint Louis

Election

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By now I think most people are happy with the election being over. At least we don’t have to bear with the silly ads on the TV any more. While I am not a political junkie, I went to the Jim Talent’s US senate re-election party in Frontenac last night. I figured rather than watching the TV at home, why not join the party as I used to saw people (mostly supporters) gathering for their canidates. I just want to get a feel of election party, that’all. The reason I picked Talent’s party because it’s only 10 minutes drive for me (hint, I lived near republican strong hold, Ladue). Later on I learned that Mclaskill’s party offered free bear. There are many interesting people there; I will post pictures later on and let them do tht talk.

Wall Streets obviously did not like the Democrats taking over house (expected) and likely control of the senate (unexpected). But in my mind, other than those stocks heavily influenced by the goverment policies, i.e., drug, oil/gas, defense, health care, stem cell, alternative energy, most stocks are unaffected by this. Also, (little noticed), Wall Street’s biggest headache, Mr. Elliot Spitzer won the Governor race in New York. That means he will leave the Attorney General post. I bet many people in the Street will be very happy 🙂

On the immigration issue, it could be positive because Democrats are pro immigrants in general. This could means the revival of immigration reform bill currently deadlocked in congress. Note President Bush is for the bill. Can we expect getting Green Card faster? I would not speculate on it because it’s way too early to tell — note there are some conservative democrats got elected, and they could make things uncertain.

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Business China

Mindray Medical International

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OK, enough about the Home Inns (HMIN) and New Oriental (EDU), both of which are well known consumer brands based in Shanghai and Beijing respectively. On Sept 26, a not so well known medical device company based in Shenzhen (by Hongkong), did IPO on NYSE and it was well received by the investors. The company is Mindray Medical International, ticker symbol MR. It’s not the first Chinese medical device maker listed in the US. China Medical (CMED) came to NASDAQ about a year and half ago. But this MR is much bigger.  I looked at its F-1 form, and it seems like a solid company.

mindray logo picture 

Some key numbers:

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Business China

New Oriental and Yu Minghong

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Amid all the craziness of Home Inns Ru Jia’s IPO, another well known Chinese company did IPO on NYSE on early Sept, that’s New Oriental Education group. For Chinese students seeking study abroad in the US in 1990s, New Oriental is nothing new. Although I have not attended their classes because at that time their classes are still limited to Beijing, I did got the vocabulary book nicknamed “Hong Bao Shu”. The book was edited by Mr. Yu Minghong, who also founded the school. From what I heard, when Mr. Yu speaks in the classroom, it’s pretty much like a rock star performs in the stage (or Bill Gates speaks in the stadium for his Microsoft employees).

I did not pay enough attention on its IPO because I was in China at that time. Now I have a little time to look at its F-1 forms, quarterly report, web page, listen to the conference call and reflect what I heard about the English education in China. I believe it is a good company and its stock may be a good long term investment. Compared to Home Inns’ position in China, I think it has a more dorminant position. But there is negatives too: it’s very dependent on Mr. Yu, both as owner (to set vision) and as management (execution, operation), I don’t know how can he manage that? Also it is not Wall Street friendly as Home Inns because Mr. Yu is not known to Wall Street (unlike Home Inns founders, they already made name from Ctrip).   

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Business Web

Its the capitalism

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Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle, surprised the IT/software world again yesterday with the Unbreakable Linux annoucement of “support of Red Hat Linux support and charge less than Red Hat does”. That news crushed the Red Hat stock today, it went down 24%. There are many good technical blogs explains and discusses Oracle’s move. Here is blog one and two. I am going to put it in plain English terms and share some of my thoughts on Open Source and Linux movement.

So Oracle is the guy who sells beer at baseball stadium, and Redhat sells peanuts. Sometimes they work together (parter) because a customer needs both beer and peanuts. They are happy because they both make money; Oracle makes more money because it has a higher sales revenue and profit margin. One day this Oracle guy decides to roll out its “Larry” brand peanuts, at half the price Redhat guy sells. As much as customers like Rehat’s personality, many customers decided to buy peanuts from Oracle.

Seriously, I think this is a big blow to the Open Source and Linux movement. Open source and linux have been buzz words in the technology world in recent years, partly because of people don’t want to see Microsoft taking all the market share, partly because its superior technology. Note many innovations are made by volunteering programmers all over the world, for the benefit of the technology community. IBM, the big blue, also put great effort behind Linux development for competition reasons (hint, to compete with Microsoft). To be fair, Oracle also contributed the Linux development in the past. Of course Redhat is the biggest player in the Open Source world: unlike all the proprietary software companies keep the source code inside company and derive revenues from software licensing, Redhat shares its source code with the community and solely derives its revenue from support and service. Now with Oracle’s jump into the ring, where is Redhat’s future? The following is what I saw from Redhat web site.

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Business

Shopping for Shoes II

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I bought my second pair of shoes on the web. You may wonder how can I buy the shoes without trying out in the store. Yes I did. I found out the price is much cheaper in the online store, $85 vs. $130. I felt pretty bad for the store clerk who showed me the product. But again I am not a rich guy now. As you may know, the world second richest man Warren Buffett also uses coupon at the “Diary Queen” store. By the way, he owns the Diary Queen Inc. So essentially he is putting money from the left pocket to the right  🙂  

This is my first shoes purchase from web. Online shopping (and banking) is nothing new to me. Amazon started it with books and CDs about 10 years ago. The interesting part is, with the development of e-commerce, we can now combine both the web and brick mortar stores to buy almost anything online: from appearel, cosmetics, electronics, shoes and even cars. This does not mean the real store will phase out. I think they need to provide more value (better service, better price, more choices) if they want to compete with the online stores. In other words, they have to earn it. Otherwise, people will just go online and buy everything from Amazon. Also, the stores both have online and offline presence such as WalMart, Best Buy and Target will have some advantages providing customer services (compare to pure online stores).  

For those curious minds, I got this Johnston Murphy Shuler Bicycle Toe from Zappos. 

johnston murphy shuler bike 

Categories
Business Technology

Nothing to lose

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Google buying YouTube is a big news for the web 2.0 community. Its effect is felt more than that (I got two emails from friends regarding this :-). Interestingly, I recalled just a few weeks ago, Mark Cuban, the outspoken billionare investor (who made a fortune in the 90s dot com era), said “anyone who buys YouTube is a moron”. Now Google buys it. So according to his comments, and a little bit reasoning, Google is a xxx. Just kidding. When Cuban made this comment, he meant the potential lawsuit fallout because the copyrighted materials are all over the YouTube. And I believe there is some merits to his comments. But Google guys are not crazy either. As matter of fact, they have probablly the smartest people both in business and technology (and laws maybe). There are lots of analysis regarding why/how YouTube thrived amid all these competitions. Or how lucky they are ($1.65 billion payout). But I am not going there. I think they are genius, both with their technology and business model. But they would not accomplish without the “nothing to lose” attitude. Why would I say that?

About 6 months ago I found out YouTube from another web site. It’s a video titled Meat on a stick (lamb kebab, 羊肉串).

 

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Business China

Comfortable zone

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I came back to Shanghai last Saturday. To be honest, after stayed in Midwest US for long time, I felt not very comfortable at Shanghai. The most obvious thing is the physical distance between people is much closer. The traffic and the (need to) walk instead of driving. I am not complaining here. I think similar thing will happen to me if I move to New York or LA.

On the other hand, getting out of my comfortable zone gives me new perspective about the “boringness” of life in Midwest. I guess a lot of times, we just can not get the best of the both the world. It all depends on what you treasure/appreciate most.

This applies to work place too. If we do the same thing for a long time, we are good at doing it and will feel very comfortable. Sometimes we are afraid to try new things. This way we may not grow much and achieve the full potential in our career.