This arrived in my email a couple days back:
Cheap, direct flight, what’s not to like?
March in Helsinki, is what:
Pass, but thanks for the offer.
This arrived in my email a couple days back:
Cheap, direct flight, what’s not to like?
March in Helsinki, is what:
Pass, but thanks for the offer.
I’m not going to argue with the genius of Juan Trippe, the late head of Pan Am (as discussed in last night’s homework assignment). But the problem with genius is that it can overstretch itself, which is what happened to Trippe, and that had dire consequences for Pan Am.
But first, it’s time for yet another one of Kim’s Supermarket Stories (and I promise it has relevance).
I once worked for a chain which prided itself on the quality of its product — not only the merchandise, but the service of its customers. The Produce Department (Fruit & Veg to non-Murkin Readers) was as good as any “street market” or “farmer’s market”, for the simple reason that the store merchandisers tossed out a tremendous amount of any produce items which they judged sub-standard or even close to going “off” before they ever set it out on the shelves, in the bins, fridges or displays. The result was that you could pick any item off the display stand, and had no need to check it because you just knew that it had passed a stringent quality test. And the same was true of every department: (on-site) bakery, meat department, deli and so on. As a result, our average basket cost a little more than our competitors’, but then again, our typical shopper belonged to a higher income bracket: the kind who value quality over price and expect the best. Our average household, therefore, usually consisted of a high-earning husband/wife with teenage kids, who lived in the upper-middle class suburbs where (surprise surprise) 95% of our stores were located.
I was at the time the senior marketing manager for the chain — ran the loyalty program, worked with the Advertising department, worked with Purchasing on product selection and so on.
Then we had a huge management change: new CEO, new COO and new CFO. When I went to the first “welcome” meeting, the new CEO announced, without any fanfare, that our chain would henceforth be aiming for the lower segment of customers: younger moms with small kids, more “efnic” shoppers, and so on. After the meeting, I managed to get a one-on-one with the new CEO, and blew up at him.
To his credit, the new CEO didn’t fire me on the spot. But his lofty answer was that the board of directors had decided that we needed to “grow the business”, and as we had the upper end of the market more or less to ourselves, we needed to expand our customer base.
Which brings us back to Juan Trippe and Pan Am.
It’s clear that Pan Am had a quality product, and their clientele were not people who, let’s say, were at the bottom of the market. Their service was unparalleled, not only in the airline industry but anywhere, and it showed in all aspects of their business: hiring, training, equipment and cuisine.
Then Juan Trippe decided to “grow the business”, and open Pan Am up to the lower end of the market via mass-market people carriers like the Boeing 747.
I had always wondered why Pan Am ever, or could ever, have gone out of business. The YouTube video gave me all the answers. To be blunt, Pan Am went from “You can’t beat the experience… Pan Am!” to “We’re just another airline; check out our low prices.”
Their demise was as predictable as that of the above supermarket chain: both went out of business only a few years after making that calamitous decision to chase a new market.
Side note: I resigned a month after my meeting with the CEO.
Now, had I been Juan Trippe and wanted to “expand the market”, I would have done a couple things differently.
That’s the basic idea of the thing, but you get my drift. It might not have worked and Pan Am might still not have made it. But they failed anyway, so how much worse could the outcome have been?
But at least they wouldn’t have screwed up their Pan Am brand, which was priceless. And the actual blowing up of the Pan Am brand was the entire responsibility of its founder.
As the busy holiday travel season gets underway, millions of travelers flock to the nation’s major airports. This comes as a big shock to some of the nation’s major airlines, which apparently had not been informed that the holidays can be a busy travel time. As one distraught airline executive put it: “Suddenly all these people just showed up with tickets they apparently purchased from us. How in God’s name is anybody supposed to plan for THAT?” — Dave Barry
Wheeeee what fun!
Translation: We were going to lose our asses with all those cheap tickets we sold for Christmas, so here’s a handy excuse to get rid of them.
Feel free to change my mind.
You can follow the link and read the whole article, or just get the executive summary: Read more
Just got back late last night from a trip out of town. Details to follow.
In the latest insanity emanating from California, we see this:
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) passed a regulation aimed at “Small Off-Road Engines” on Thursday that will ban the sale of portable generators in the state — which includes generators mounted in recreational vehicles.
The ruling bans the sale of gas-powered leaf blowers and lawnmowers in the state beginning in 2024. Portable generators will be required to meet more stringent standards in 2024 and meet zero-emission standards starting in 2028.
In the 2024 model year, portable generators will have to improve their efficiency by somewhere between 40% and 90%, which seems unrealistic in such a short period of time, so the reality is, it will be very hard to find a generator in Cailfornia in two years.
The song will be rewritten to show that the lights all went out not in Massachusetts, but California.
Morons, fools, imbeciles.
N.B.: Insty wants to open up a portable jennie store in Nevada, just over the CA border. Won’t work: California will be stationing some Stasi state agents in the parking lot to report the car numbers back to the Fuehrer HQ , and woe betide the CA plates caught “smuggling” generators back into the Dark State.)