stlplaceWell, just a day after Steve unveiled the iPod phone (so called iPhone by many people, don’t know whether Steve actually used that name). Cisco obviously did not appreciate that its very own iPhone name being used…they filed a lawsuit. As we know, those kinds of lawsuits are about money, I bet there are some happy lawyers in Sillicon Valley today. Another picture from engadget.
My roommate, an American guy in his mid 20s, has been looking for a house (condo, duplex) for a while. By “a while” I meant he probablly have done this for about 9 months. I understand he has many reasons for this long process: first he was new to St. Louis when he relocated from another state to here, i.e., he need some time to get familar with the area; then comes the stagnant real estate market, in the down market everyone is waiting, as a buyer he certainlly don’t want to see the price drop after he buy the house; and most important of all, I believe he looked too many houses. I don’t know how many places he actually saw, but when he showed me the web listings from time to time, talked about the pros and cons of this house vs. that house, I know he looked too many.
Personal
Spend more quality time with family and friends; cut Internet and TV time.
Drive safely. Walk safely. Drive and walk safely.
Financial
Pay off the Home Equity Line of Credit (currently 8.5% interest rate).
Consolidate checking accounts (from 3 to 2); same for the credit cards usage.
Regular investment in stock markets: looking for fast grower, turn around story, and asset play…
Happy New Year to all the readers, whether you are from the US, or China (would be very hard these days), or Europe, or somewhere else,…
I started this blog about a year ago. My original intension is to share things related to my work and life experience in mid-west US, from software to things in St. Louis. This has been changed a bit since I changes focus to stocks, and personal finance lately. While I don’t think money is the most important thing in life, I do believe financial freedom is a dream for myself and many ordinary people. I hope we can all come close to that in the not too distance future.
It seems Heelys had a very good Christmas season. From my store visit to Journeys and Sports Authority, each account for 11.6% and 11% domestic sales in the fist 9 months in year 2006, the sales are doing well. I did notice one week before Xmas, SA offered some discount, and Journeys started discount after Xmas, both of which are normal business practice to clear out some inventories. The eBay sales number is here:
Heelys Faked
20Dec06 877 68
21Dec06 796 52
26Dec06 529 21
27Dec06 602 22
28Dec06 815 27
29Dec06 719 27
I noticed the Chicken price went up a little yesterday. I have not bought the whole roasted chicken from Schnuck for a while because usually when I got there at 6:30 or 7 PM, they are sold out. But I got it yesterday evening and I realized they are charging $5.99; it was $4.99 last time I bought (a while ago). So I did a little google search on “chicken price”, and found out the main reason: the corn is becoming more expensive as more corn is needed to make ethonal (alternative fuel), and rising energy cost. Note chicken ate corn so that they can grow. So don’t rush to buy “chicken producer” stocks such as Tyson yet. Although they charge higher price for chicken, they are paying higher raw material cost (corn) too.
I went to the SA store at Brentwood, and I saw they emptied half of the shelf which was originally for Heelys (they put on some Under Armour socks instead). Is that a sign they are sold out? I don’t know. But one thing I do know SA usually have all the available shoes on the shelf, in other words, a customer can try the shoes without asking help from the associates. This is opposite to specialty stores such as Journeys: in Journeys a customer would tell the size he/she wants, and the associates will go back to the warehouse and bring up the shoes. I guess that’s one reason Journeys’ shoes are fully priced.
There are some negative comments on Heelys, both the shoes and the stock. Barron had this article on the weekend paper. It mentioned two things: Heelys is not only faddish but aimed at a notoriously fickle customer (kids); there is also product-liability risk (kids got hurt when skating on Heelys). While these are both legitimate concerns, here is a parent’s comment I saw from fatwallet “Kids crack their heads riding bikes, skateboards, and scooters. Kids crack their heads on the playground. Heelys get your kids to turn off the TV and be active and there are health benefits to that.”
While the stock could take a hit from the Barron article, I believe ultimately it’s the sales and profit number that will matter. Interestingly, when I was about to leave the SA store, I saw a guy bought not one, but two Heelys shoes for his kids. Maybe they are really sold out?
“Over-worry” is probablly not a good word to describe the Americans because if you go to malls these days, you know why: people are shopping like everything is free. Just kidding. I do think the consumer spending of developed nations especially the US is a big driver for the economy growth in developing countries such as China. Holiday shopping in the US means millions jobs in China: from engineers to migrant workers; from Fedex to UPS; from iPod to Shoes…America is an optimistic nation and American consumers will put everything on credit card. This is good, except everything should have a limit.
But I am talking about the other extreme today: the over worry or over reaction to some new unknown phenomena. I remember before year 2000, we were all so worried about the “Y2K bug” in computers and put billions of dollars into information technology, software upgrade(a lot of Indian IT firms grew out of this Y2K scare). When Jan 1 2000 finally arrives, the planes still fly as usual, and eBay still works,…but no one questioned whether the money spent on Y2K is worth or not.
A few years ago, year 2002/3, the US economy was in recession while the real estate was flying high, people started to get nervous: housing bubble! Sell your house now! Well, the bubble last at least until 2005/6, and the real estate bubble is only seen in over heated area such as CA, NY, Boston, Vegas and Phoenix.
Back to my favorite topic, the stocks. This Feburary, Crocs, the funky footwear (for summer) company, did IPO and some “experts” started saying “stay away from the stock CROX, it’s a fad won’t last”. Well, the stock almost doubled in Nov. When I went to malls these days, I saw people buying this thing like crazy.
This remind me the word at the tower of UT-Austin: you shall seek the truth and the truth will make you free. To be honest I worried about my stocks after I bought it from time to time, the only thing I am doing now is learn more about the financials, business of the companies.
I got my Heelys on Friday. Have not tried to “heel” yet because I don’t want to hurt myself before Christmas. But I did some store visits for Heelys and found the buzz is still there. I also did some check on eBay, which I think is a better indicator than the local store numbers. Here are my findings on eBay:
Date #heelys #faked
12Dec06 1628 178
13Dec06 1300 128
14Dec06 1294 119
15Dec06 1270 81
16Dec06 1250 100
I visited Sport Authority, Journeys (those two counts the 11% and 11.6% of Heelys domestic sales for the first 9 months of 2006), Nordstrom, Dick’s Sporting Good, FinishLine, and Kids Footlocker.
1) Jouneys: every mall in St. Louis has this store. It seems selling well. I saw two instances people are looking or buying the Heelys. On a separate note, I was really impressed by Journeys’ efficiency in such a small space, their sales revenue per square footage should be very good. In a way I think kids like to “learn the fashion” from each other, in other words, the kids are helping Jounneys marketing the shoes, for free. Also, I found the associates in Jounneys are interesting young people, by “interesting” I mean they ususally have tatoos, strange hair style (young guys), and wear jeans with holes.
2) Sport Authority: while Journeys is a specialty store (it does not do discount very often); SA is a super market for sports goods (it gives discount for more stuff). I found the SA in Manchester Rd. is taking $10 off for all the kids’ Heelys. I am not particularly concerned on one instance. But if they continue to mark down the price (and in other stores), I will be concerned.
3) Other stores: Nordstrom is still the premier store (full price); FinishLine is a sports shoes store and it seems is not selling too many Heelys.
4) Knockoffs: I saw the knockoffs kiosk in the South County Mall yesterday. They are exactly same as the ones I saw on eBay. It starts from $49.99 after “30% off”. Again I questions the Parents/Grandparents’ mentality on buying knockoffs: I think they are just dumb, will you give your kids faked cars to drive?!
The malls are packed with people these days, and finding a parking spot is not easy. While online shopping is becoming a norm in this web 2.0 era, it seems to me the joy of windows shopping can not be replaced by the mouse click. OK, here are the list of things I considered to be cool in this holiday season. Note I am not affiated with any of the following companies, i.e., I won’t get paid if you click on the link. These are just from my objective view. With that in mind…
1) Gadget: iPod nano (AAPL, the stock ticker), yes, they are not new (generation two now), but with the Nike Shoe kit, you can record your jogging data with nano and upload it to your PC/Mac, isn’t that cool?
2) Shoes: Crocs (CROX) for summer and Heelys (HLYS) for other seasons.
3) Sports Apparel: Under Armour (UARM), although they don’t have endorsments from Lebron, Dywane, Tracy, Kevin, Tim or Yao, they are much cool than Nike, Addidas and Reebock.
Of course, there is something money can not buy, for anything else, there is MasterCard (MA) or Google (GOOG) Checkout.
