Dear People of the Internet

Several days ago, I wrote a short blog post entitled ‘Dear People of Williamsburg’.

At the time, I was exceedingly drunk.

Nonetheless, it has since come to my attention, via email notification by roughly forty readers, that I incorrectly used ‘to’ instead of ‘too’ in that post.

And, relatedly, it has come to my attention, also by roughly forty readers’ emails, that I am an idiot.

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Down to Business

When I first met Jess, she was serving as the head of marketing and de facto COO of Liz Lange Maternity, a high end fashion brand. She had been there for nearly seven years, from when the company was still pretty much brand new, by the time it was acquired last November by a large private equity fund.

So, she took that company transition as a chance to step out herself, and start looking for other opportunities.

Pretty quickly, it became clear she was talking to basically two categories of companies: large ones, where they were eager to hire her, but where she was less eager to actually work; and small ones (with annual sales under, say, $5m), who were also eager to hire her, and with whom Jess was excited to work, except for their inability to actually pay a salary.

From the beginning, I suggested that she consider launching a consulting firm, the idea being that there were a lot of those little, sub-$5m companies that had bootstrapped their way to success, but had started topping out, and desperately needed strategic, marketing, financial and operational assistance.

Jess, however, was against the idea, mainly on the grounds that she was convinced she’d never find any companies willing to actually hire her as a consultant.

But, it turns out, she didn’t need to, because companies started finding her.

By now, JG & Co. (at the moment, the ‘& Co.’ being me) has signed on a slew of clients, including great brands like [Lucy Sykes](http://www.lucysykesnewyork.com/) (WASPy-cute kids clothing), [Lauren Moffatt](http://laurenmoffatt.net/) (a quirky contemporary clothing line), and [Hayden-Harnett](http://haydenharnett.com/) (bags, etc.).

More companies keep popping out of the woodwork, too, and so Jess is now trying to figure out how many she can handle, and if she needs a real ‘& Co.’ that ideally includes people who (unlike me) have at least some vague idea about the business of fashion.

Still, I couldn’t be prouder of her. I know, first-hand, how hard and stressful and nerve-wracking it is to get a company off the ground, and have been constantly impressed by seeing her handle it all with grace and aplomb.

I always wanted a sugar-mamma.

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Of a Feather

A month or so back, I was having drinks with one of the founders of Napster, discussing the future of the movie business.

In the parallel world of music, things look fairly gloomy – CD sales are down, digital revenues don’t make up the gap, and piracy runs as rampant as ever. Yet thus far in the movie world, the problems have been far less severe.

Most analysts, like my Napster friend, credit the difference to technology – from bandwidth issues (stealing a movie takes way longer than a song or album) through to how media is actually consumed (computers and iPods have quickly become where most people choose to consume music anyway, whereas the average viewer would still prefer to see a film on their television, and doesn’t have an easy way to get the digital download across those last twenty feet).

I, on the other hand, contended that movies’ relative success stems from a deeper cause: people think movies are worth the money, and think albums are hugely overpriced.

Yesterday, I ran across a recent study that backs my claim. Consumers, asked about perceived value for their money, placed movies in the next to highest position – second only to chicken. Albums, on the other hand, essentially fell off the bottom of the list.

In the world of music, some percentage of people already pay for downloads (hence iTunes’ success), and others never will. The dividing line, I suspect, is whether each believes a $9.99 price is too high for an album.

In the world of film, then, where a vastly higher percentage fall on the ‘worth the money’ side of that line, I’m increasingly convinced digital download revenue models can make sense.

Sure, the same technology problems that hold back film piracy equally hold back legitimate sales. And figuring out what those digital download revenue models actually look like is probably three or so years of ugly trial and error away. But there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

At which point, all we’ll need to do is to find a way to download chicken.

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Advice

“If you want to survive this brutal climate, you’re going to have to work a lot harder, be a lot smarter, know a lot more, move a lot faster, sell a lot better, pay attention to the data, be a little nice (ok, a lot nice), trust your gut, read everything and never, ever give up.”
– Mark Gill, former president of Warner Independent and Miramax, on the film industry today

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Experiment

So if blogging is a habit, and I haven’t blogged regularly for god knows how long mainly because I’ve lost the habit, then perhaps the way to start again is to just post something every day no matter what even if it sucks for thirty days. (Which is, I believe, is how long it’s commonly thought to take habits to crystalize.)

Let’s find out.

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Zen

My legacy –
What will it be?
Flowers in spring,
The cuckoo in summer,
And the crimson maples
Of autumn …
– Ryokan

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I’m Meeeeeelting

It’s 101 degrees here in Union Square, the humidity is off the charts, and, of course, the air conditioner in the Cyan office decided today would be a great time to take the afternoon off.

It’s time for a drink.

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