Building A Giant.

I'm sitting here sifting through the internet, determining what's on my list of things to do, over some warm tea and MGMT Electric feel playing in the background. Trying to sift any gold nuggets of information to add to the business plan we're building right now. It's amazing to go through this process and start to put things together. It's also fresh when you start to seek information and how sometimes it becomes readily available to you. I like to save the mornings and early afternoon for reading blogs, news papers or any other pertinent information, I also like to utilize this time to write because my minds more active.

In reading this morning I came across THIS article over at WWD online. It's a very interesting article about the state of the financial times, and the "new mindset of the consumer." They specifically reference H. Lee Scott, the CEO of Walmart and his outlook on the economy after this past holiday season and the upcoming Recession issues of 09'. He thinks consumers have adopted a new mind set - “People still have money. It’s very targeted to the thing they want. If you don’t have what they want, if you’re off by 1/30th of an inch, forget it. You’d better understand your customer and inventory and open-to-buy. How much depth of assortment you have will determine your profitability” so says Scott.

I thought this was very interesting as we begin to build our business. Going through the executive summary, building the numbers, and building our client base, understanding your market is essential to each step of this process. That's one of the first things your taught as a marketer - know your market. But as he said you have to know them very well, you can't be off by even the smallest degree. The mind set doesn't allow for conspicuous spending, nor does it allow for mistakes. If you don't have exactly what it is your clients want, it could be the death of your business.

With that being said, building a business in an economy rife with recession you have to have some understanding of what the consumer mindset is going to be we when the recession ends. "The recession will create a very different economy when we come out of it - than the one we had when we went in it" says Carl Steidtmann Chief Economist at Deloitte. As we build we are thinking of things that can give us an advantage in the midst of the recession, but also particular goods and services we can offer our particular clients once the recession is over, once the spending power and the want to spend is back in the consumers mind-set. Steidtmann furthers this point with, "Real Wages are up 6 percent since July. Consumers have the means to spend, they just don't have the will." I would add to that by saying with the job markets tightening up, and the credit market at almost a stand still its obviously hard for consumers to spend widely on a various amount of things, the are spending on exactly what is they want nothing else. So no more than ever you must use every resource imaginable to understand your market. Social networking sites such as Facebook, and the now popular Twitter, furthered with a vast array of blogs and online zines. You should know what music he likes, what magazines he reads, where he shops for clothing, etc. The more detailed and refined your information is the better chance you have for success.


With all this being said, we will add a lot of these types of things into our business model. Control inventory and liquidity, know our clients well because we are involved with them on a day to day basis. We'll do things like create communities behind the culture we're involved in and give them outlets and a place to communicate. I can't tell you everything we're going to do because that just wouldn't be fair. But from this you can see where we're headed and hopefully see its going to be a good ride.