Month: October 2003

I’m now doing renovations to my showroom at an extremely low budget and I have to somehow create a miracle and transform the showroom into a showroom that people will give good comments to while displaying as many items for retail sales and yet create some level of exclusivity to make some items more up-market.

We all know we can’t have the cake and eat it, but what happens if that is your task? Darn, there will soon be a food fight.

Other then just doing renovations together with a few enthusiastic staff, there were lots of thoughts racing thru my mind and the issue of Cost and Value came to mind. Whats the difference between cost and value? At first it might seem almost the same thing, but when you really understand those terms, they are almost miles apart. I’m no business guru, but would love to share some of my thoughts.

Cost
The cost of something is how much it takes to actually acquire the darn thing.

Value
The value of something is how much someone is willing to part with in order to acquire the darn thing.

So i might buy a thing for $X, thats my cost. Now whats its value?

Scenario 1

I leave the thing at one corner to collect dust, i don’t talk about it, I just leave it. Some people touch it, some people drop it, now whats the value of it? How much someone is willing to part with in order to acquire the darn thing.

Scenario 2

I display the item nicely with good lighting, nice packaging, with a nice salesperson doing a demonstration. I market it and subtly tell people what its all about and somehow it gets a cult following, now whats the value of it? How much someone is willing to part with in order to acquire the darn thing.

i had one of the best sunday lunches ever! its nothing to do with the food or olio dome, but i think its the first time that only the three of us had lunch together on a sunday afternoon. drinking nice mushroom soup, nice sandwiches, reading nice magazines… its the ideal lifestyle…

now i know what i’m working so hard for. this lunch is such a recharger for me and i look forward for maybe a short trip soon… maybe thailand or malaysia.

Georg Jensen cutlery by Arne Jacobsen. simply beautiful…

Little Tommy was doing very poorly in math. His parents tried everything…tutors, flash cards, special learning centers. In short, everything they could think of to improve Tommy’s grades just wasn’t working. As a last ditch effort, they enrolled Tommy in the local Catholic School.

After Tommy’s first day at the new school, he came home with a very serious look on his face. He didn’t even kiss his mother hello, but walked straight to his room and started studying. Books and paper were soon spread out all over the room with Tommy hard at work. His mother was amazed. She called him down to dinner, and to her shock, the minute he was done, he marched right back to his room without a word and started hitting the books as hard as before.

This went on day after day while his mother tried to understand what was making the difference. Finally, little Tommy brought home his report card. He placed it quietly on the table and walked directly to his room to hit the books again. With great curiosity, Tommy’s mom opened the report card, and to her delight little Tommy got an A+ in math!

She had to know why the Catholic School had made such a difference, so she went to Tommy’s room. “So, what was it? Was it the nuns?” she asked.

Little Tommy kept his eyes on the ground and shook his head “No.” “Was it the books… the discipline, the structure, the uniforms?”

Little Tommy again shook his head “No”. “Then what was it?” Little Tommy looked at her, with a fearful expression on his face, and finally answered. “Well, on the first day of school, when I saw that guy nailed to the plus sign, I knew they weren’t fooling around.”

I remember when itunes just came out i fell inlove with it right away, now its on mac and pc!

iTunes 4 is the best software jukebox in the world, with a great music store inside. With it, you can create your own personal digital music library to manage and listen to your music collection, all with drag-and-drop simplicity.

iTunes encodes high-quality MP3s as well as pristine AAC, all in a free application. If you don’t like getting charged a subscription fee or paying for additional features like fast CD burning, your digital music experience is about to get a whole lot better.

iTunes 4.1 is available for Mac OS X.
iTunes 4.1.1 is available for Windows XP and Windows 2000.