Ged Carroll

Category: ideas | 想法 | 생각 | 考える

Ideas were at the at the heart of why I started this blog. One of the first posts that I wrote there being a sweet spot in the complexity of products based on the ideas of Dan Greer. I wrote about the first online election fought by Howard Dean, which now looks like a precursor to the Obama and Trump presidential bids.

I articulated a belief I still have in the benefits of USB thumb drives as the Thumb Drive Gospel. The odd rant about IT, a reflection on the power of loose social networks, thoughts on internet freedom – an idea that that I have come back to touch on numerous times over the years as the online environment has changed.

Many of the ideas that I discussed came from books like Kim and Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy.

I was able to provide an insider perspective on Brad Garlinghouse’s infamous Peanut Butter-gate debacle. It says a lot about the lack of leadership that Garlinghouse didn’t get fired for what was a power play. Garlinghouse has gone on to become CEO of Ripple.

I built on initial thoughts by Stephen Davies on the intersection between online and public relations with a particular focus on definition to try and come up with unifying ideas.

Or why thought leadership is a less useful idea than demonstrating authority of a particular subject.

I touched on various retailing ideas including the massive expansion in private label products with grades of ‘premiumness’.

I’ve also spent a good deal of time thinking about the role of technology to separate us from the hoi polloi. But this was about active choice rather than an algorithmic filter bubble.

 

  • PopSlate failure

    PopSlate

    I’ve go in involved in a few crowdfunded products and some of them have worked out but the majority haven’t. The latest example was the high profile e-ink phone cover PopSlate. PopSlate got over $1 million dollars of funding and was widely covered by the media.

    “popSLATE 2 is E-Ink for your iPhone done right.” – Slashgear

    “It’s an evolution, not merely refinement.” – Wired

    Why crowdsourced projects fail?

    Generally I’ve found that crowdfunded projects like PopSlate tend to fail for three (non-criminal) reasons:

    • They underestimated the cost or complexity for batch manufacture of items. They have problems with getting tooling moulds to work and have to go through iterations that burn up cash
    • They get gazzumped; their product is sufficiently easy to make that Chinese manufacturers who go through Indiegogo and Kickstarter for ideas get the product into market faster
    • The engineering is just too hard. This seems to have been the problem for PopSlate who couldn’t innovate and get their product into market as fast as new phones came out

    On the face of it, the PopSlate is a great idea. Bringing the kind of dual screen technology to the iPhone that had been in the Yota phone for a number of years. Huawei had a similar snap-on e-ink back available for the the P9 handset in limited quantities.

    popSLATE – The smart second screen on the back of your phone

    PopSlate had already launched a mark I version of their product.  With the mark II version of their product PopSlate tried to do too much: they tried to make it a battery case but still ridiculously thin.  The following email was sent out on Saturday morning UK time:

    Critical Company Update

    This update provides serious and unwelcome news.

    Based upon your support, we have spent the last year continuing to develop our vision for “always-on” mobile solutions. Our goal was to solve three fundamental issues with today’s smartphones: we wanted to simplify access to information, increase battery performance, and improve readability. Unfortunately, the significant development hurdles that we have encountered have completely depleted our finances, and we have been unable to raise additional funds in the current market. As a result, popSLATE does not have a viable business path forward.

    This marks the end of a 5-year journey for our team, which started with a seed of an idea in 2012 and led to our quitting our jobs to start the company. Although we are very disappointed by the ultimate outcome and its implications for you as our backers, we are proud of our team, who worked tirelessly over the years to commercialize the first plastic ePaper display, globally ship thousands of popSLATE 1 devices as a first-in-category product, and re-imagine & further extend the platform with the second generation product. Despite a strong vision, high hopes, and very hard work, we find ourselves at the end of the journey.

    We are out of money at this juncture for two key reasons. First, we have spent heavily into extensive development and preparation for manufacturing;  as you are aware, we hit some critical issues that multiplied the required spend, as described in previous updates.

    Most recently, we learned that the fix for the Apple OTA issues would involve more significant redesign. While we initially suspected that the Lightning circuit was the culprit, it turned out that it was a much more fundamental issue.  Namely, our housing material is not compatible with Apple OTA requirements. You may think, “Wait, isn’t it just plastic?  Why would that be a problem?” While the housing is indeed largely plastic, we used a very special custom blend of materials that included glass fibers. The glass fibers were used to solve two issues, both of which were related to making the device super-thin: a) they enabled uniform, non-distortional cooling of the housing mold around our metal stiffener plate (the key component that makes popSLATE 2 thin but very strong) and b) they added tensile strength to the very compact form factor. Unfortunately, we have concluded that these added fibers are attenuating the RF signal and that we would have to spend additional cycles to tune a new blend with required modifications to the tooling. This is an expensive and timely process.

    Second, we have been unsuccessful at raising additional financing, despite having vigorously pursued all available avenues since the close of our March Indiegogo campaign (including angels, VCs, Shark Tank and equity crowdfunding, both in the US and abroad). Many in our network of fellow hardware innovators have encountered this difficult new reality. You may have also seen the very public financial struggles of big-name consumer hardware companies—GoPro, Fitbit, Pebble, Nest and others—as highlighted in this recent New York Times article [link]. The most dramatic example of this phenomenon is the recent and sudden shutting down of Pebble, paragon of past crowdfunding success.

    There is no way to sugarcoat what this all means:

    • popSLATE has entered into the legal process for dissolution of the company
    • Your popSLATE 2 will not be fulfilled
    • There is no money available for refunds
    • This will be our final update

    While this is a very tough moment professionally and emotionally for us, it is obviously extremely disappointing for all of you who had believed in the popSLATE vision. Many of you have been with us since the March campaign, and a smaller set helped found the popSLATE community back in 2012. To you—our family, friends, and other unwavering backers—we are incredibly grateful for your enthusiasm, ideas, and support throughout the years. Just as importantly,  we deeply regret letting you down and not being able to deliver on our promise to you. We truly wish there were a viable path forward for product fulfillment and the broader popSLATE vision, but sadly we have exhausted all available options.

    Sincerely yours,
    Yashar & Greg
    Co-founders, popSLATE

    The problem as a consumer you have for much of these gadget is this:

    • If a product can be easily made in Shenzhen, it will be so you should be able to get it cheaper on lightinthebox or similar sites
    • If it can’t be turned out in a reasonable time, it has a low likelihood of succeeding

    There have been successes of more hobby-based products; I have a replica of Roland’s TB-303 synthesiser. It’s the kind of product that can be assembled whilst not relying a China-based supply chain. It also is based on well understood technology and there weren’t issues of with designing for very tight places or Apple’s requirements (in the case of iPhone’s accessories).

    What about the poster child of Pebble? Pebble managed to go for longer with a sophisticated product but couldn’t withstand the gravity of declining sales in the wearables sector. More related content here.

  • Toshiba chip sale + more news

    Exclusive: Japan to vet bidders in Toshiba chip sale for national security risks – sources | Reuters – I could understand that Japan probably doesn’t want China dicking them around on the Toshiba chip sale. China would happy interfere with the Toshiba chip sale, because of the pathological hatred Chinese authoritarian nationalism holds for Japan. Also the Toshiba chip sale would aid in ‘Made in China 2025’. China could try and mess up the Toshiba chip sale like they have been doing with the Lotte chaebol of Korea and have done in the past with rare earth metals

    Business

    Beijing industry minister says no discrimination against foreign companies | SCMP – empirical evidence would tend to suggest otherwise

    ‘Superstar Firms’ May Have Shrunk Workers’ Share of Income | NY Times – is this analogous to rent seeking and monopolistic power?

    BBC Radio 4 – PM, British Airways to cut legroom on planes – WTF – part of marketing is clear differentiation from budge airline experiences beyond the price premium that you pay. I guess IAG airline British Airways doesn’t buy into that concept. So glad I got rid of my BA loyalty card years ago.

    Economics

    Faulty Towers: Understanding the impact of overseas corruption on the London property market – Transparency International UK – so basically if you’re from a high corruption country Transparency International is tarring you with the same brush. This needs to be a bit more nuanced

    Brexit hole at the heart of British budget – POLITICO – Brexit as a term apparently now polls badly….

    How to

    Unwind by Sync Project – look at the site on your phone, it accesses your heart rate presumably via the touch sensor??? and plays music to help you unwind based on the data

    Ideas

    “Adulting School” teaches millennials grown-up skills like hanging a picture, fitting a sheet, and networking — Quartz – Some interesting stuff in here, some of the subjects remind me of night classes. The demographics points are good though

    Innovation

    Doppler Labs sues Bose for allegedly stealing augmented audio tech – Business Insider – new category of active hearing products

    Cathay Pacific rethinks in-flight meals with on-demand catering trial on long haul services | SCMP – really interesting change in process

    Luxury

    Report: LVMH to Launch Multi-Brand E-Commerce Site | News & Analysis | BoF – going after Yoox | Net a Porter and department stores

    Media

    Online Affiliate Marketing – ASA | CAP – making video blogs relations with brand clear by for instance having ad in the title

    Q&A: Nicholas Thompson looks to push Wired into the future by returning to radical roots – Columbia Journalism Review – glad its happening. Wired has lost its mojo over the past number of years. Now if they could revamp their typographic design as well that would be mint.

    Online

    Flickr Adds ‘Similarity Search’ to Help You Discover Visually Similar Photos | Peta Pixel – bloody handy for mood boards and presentations

    Retailing

    Urban Outfitters’ CEO says the US retail bubble is bursting, just like housing in 2008 | Quartz – time to think about shorting Gap, Arcadia, Sports Direct etc

    Security

    WikiLeaks Releases CIA Hacking Tools – Schneier on Security – this won’t end well. Next level hacking has been democratised. The toolkits will provide a learning experience for other states and building blocks for criminal hackers. More on security here.

    University of Twente | Electronic energy meters’ false readings almost six times higher than actual energy consumption | University of Twente – Enschede – which also explains why energy vendors love smart meters. It also will call into question the likely decisions made by smart networks and smart cities

    Software

    A brief history of blockchain | HBR  – nice technical 101

    Technology 

    Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up | Charged – damning indictment on the current state of the Mac. I haven’t got there but the butterfly keyboard is a piece of shit.

    Web of no web

    The Internet of Things and interaction style: the effect of smart interaction on brand attachment: Journal of Marketing Management: Vol 33, No 1-2 – pay wall

  • The World as Design: Writings of Design by Otl Aicher

    The World as Design author Aicher was a German designer. He is most famous of his graphic design and typography. His most famous font is Rotis  His impact was far wider. Aicher was a co-founder of the short-lived Ulm School of Design. Over its 15 years it developed a legacy that continues to echo through design education.

    He worked with prominent German brands including Braun, Lufthansa and ERCO the lighting firm.

    Aicher’s design language for the Munich Olympics was ground breaking. He designed the first Olympic mascot: Waldi a dachshund with multicoloured bands on his body. The posters for the Munich Olympics were hyper coloured designs that still had a system wrapped around them and now trade for hundreds of pounds.

    You can blame him for single handedly kicking off the use of stickmen pictograms on public signage in buildings like airports.

    Aicher and his colleagues at Ulm were about more than making things look pretty on their medium of choice, they thought about systems. Aicher’s holistic approach to systems influenced modern brand design.  Mark Holt, a co-founder of 8vo; who worked on everything from Factory Records to billing systems for mobile carrier Orange cited Aicher as a major influence.

    otl aicher

    Aicher’s book The World of Design collects a series of his essays across a wide spectrum of topics. Culture and political essays sit alongside examinations on the process of design and typography. Design and art do not exist in isolation but as part of the wider world. Something that you become keenly aware of as being central to his thinking – alongside his advocacy of reinvigorating modernism.

    Probably most striking is Aicher’s delivery and style of writing. He writes with absolute confidence as each item has been thought about, despite feeling like a stream of consciousness in the way those mulled over thoughts are put down. He also completely dispenses with capital letters, sentences flow into each other from a visual perspective. This gives his work a sense of urgency and authenticity – but doesn’t make it any easier to read.

    Theses essays felt as if they were born on the internet not written sometime before Aicher died in 1991, which says a lot about how fresh and contemporary his work still is.

     

  • Have we reached peak streetwear?

    At the end of January I wrote a blog post about the landmark luxe streetwear collection by Louis Vuitton and Supreme.

    I delved into the history of streetwear and the deep connection it shared with luxury brands. This linkage came from counterfeit products, brand and design language appropriation.

    This all came from a place of individuality and self expression of the wearer.

    obey

    I reposted it from my blog on to LinkedIn. I got a comment from a friend of mine which percolated some of the ideas I’d been thinking about. The comment crystalised some of my fears as a long-time streetwear aficionado.

    This is from Andy Jephson who works as a director for consumer brand agency Exposure:

    The roots of street and lux that you point to seem to be all about individuality and self expression and for me this is what many modern collabs are missing. To me they seem to be about ostentatious showmanship. I love a collaboration that sees partners sharing their expertise and craft to create something original. The current obsession with creating hype however is creating a badging culture that produces products that could have been made in one of the knock-off factories that you mention. Some collabs that just produce new colourways and hybrid styles can be amazing, reflecting the interests of their audience. But far too many seem gratuitous and are completely unobtainable for the brand fans on one side of the collaborative partnership.

    The streetwear business is mad money

    From Stüssy in 1980, streetwear has grown into a multi-billion dollar global industry. Streetwear sales are worth more than 75 billion dollars per year.

    By comparison the UK government spent about 44.1 billion on defence in 2016. Streetwear sales are more than three times the estimated market value of Snap Inc. Snap Inc., is the owner of Snapchat.

    Rise of Streetwear

    It is still about one third the size of the luxury industry. Streetwear accounts for the majority of menswear stocked in luxury department stores. Harvey Nichols claimed that 63% of the their contemporary menswear was streetwear. Many luxury brands off-the-peg men’s items blur the boundary between luxe and streetwear.

    The industry has spawned some technology start-ups acting as niche secondary markets including:

    • Kixify
    • K’LEKT
    • THRONE
    • StockX
    • SneakerDon
    • GOAT

    Large parts of the streetwear industry has become lazy and mercenary. You can see this in:

    • The attention to detail and quality of product isn’t what it used to be. I have vintage Stüssy pieces that are very well-made. I can’t say the same of many newer streetwear brands
    • Colour-ways just for the sake of it. I think Nike’s Jordan brand is a key offender. Because it has continually expands numbers of derivative designs and combinations. New Balance* have lost much of their mojo. Especially when you look at the product their Super Team 33 in Maine came up with over the years. The fish, fanzine or the element packs were both strong creative offerings. By comparison recent collections felt weak
    • The trivial nature of some of the collaborations. This week Supreme sold branded Metro Cards for the New York subway
    • Streetwear brands that sold out to fast moving consumer products. This diluted their own brand values. While working in Hong Kong, I did a Neighborhood Coke Zero collaboration. The idea which had some tie-in to local cycling culture and nightscape. Aape – the second-brand of BAPE did a deal wrapping Pepsi cans in the iconic camouflage

    Hong Kong brand Chocoolate did three questionable collaborations over the past 18 months:

    • Vitaminwater
    • Nissin (instant noodles)
    • Dreyer’s (ice cream)

    By comparison, Stüssy has a reputation in the industry for careful business management. The idea was to never become too big, too fast. The Sinatra family kept up quality and selective distribution seeing off Mossimo, FUBU and Triple Five Soul. Yes, they’ve done collaborations, but they were canny compared to newer brands:

    “The business has grown in a crazy way the past couple of years,” says Sinatra. “We reluctantly did over $50 million last year.”

    Reluctant because, according to Sinatra, the company is currently trying to cut back and stay small. “It was probably one of our biggest years ever — and it was an accident.”

    Sinatra characterises Stüssy’s third act as having a “brand-first, revenue second” philosophy, in order to avoid becoming “this big monstrosity that doesn’t stand for anything.”

    The Evolution of Streetwear. The newfound reality of Streetwear and its luxury-like management academic study uncovered careful brand custodianship.

    It’s not clothing; it’s an asset class

    Part of the bubble feel within the streetwear industry is due to customer behaviour. For many people, street wear is no longer a wardrobe staple. Instead it becomes an alternative investment instrument. Supreme items and tier zero Nike releases are resold for profit like a day trader on the stock market.

    Many of the start-ups supported by the community play to this ‘day trader’ archetype. It is only a matter of time for the likes of Bonham’s and Sotherby’s get in on the act.

    A key problem with the market is that trainers aren’t like a Swiss watch or a classic car. They become unusable in less than a decade as the soles degrade and adhesive breaks down.

    There is the apocryphal story of a Wall Street stock broker getting out before the great stock market crash. The indicator to pull his money out was a taxi driver or a shoe shine boy giving stock tips.

    Streetwear is at a similar stage with school-age teenagers dealing must-have items as a business. What would a reset look like in the streetwear industry? What would be the knock-on effect for the luxury sector?

    More information
    USA Streetwear Market Research Report 2015 | WeConnectFashion
    Louis Vuitton, Supreme and the tangled relationship between streetwear and luxury brands | renaissance chambara
    New Balance Super Team 33 – Elements Collection | High Snobriety
    New Balance ST33 – The Fanzine Collection | High Snobriety
    1400 Super Team 33 (ST33) trio | New Balance blog – the infamous fish pack
    How Stüssy Became a $50 Million Global Streetwear Brand Without Selling Out | BoF (Business of Fashion)
    The Evolution of Streetwear. The newfound reality of Streetwear and its luxury-like management by de Macedo & Machado, Universidade Católica Portuguesa (2015) – PDF

    * in the interest of full disclosure, New Balance is a former client.

  • POSIX + more news

    POSIX compliant

    POSIX has become outdated by Atlidakis, Andrus, Geambasu, Mitropoulos & Nieh (Columbia University) – this seems arcane but will impact every part of information technology from mainframes and web infrastructure to Macs and smartphones (both iPhone and Android). POSIX is an IEEE approved standard. It was developed to maintain the comparability between different operating systems. POSIX defines APIs (application protocol interfaces) at system and user levels. It also includes command line shells and utility interfaces. This allows for software portability between different types of Unix and other operating systems. The Mac that this is written on runs an operating system (macOS) that is POSIX compliant and has been for a good number of years. So is my iPhone and iPad. So are banking mainframes and many of the computers that run the internet.

    Business

    General Motors Is in Talks to Sell Opel – WSJ – General Motors Co. has entered talks to sell its European business Opel to Peugeot as the U.S. auto giant seeks to shed money-losing operations abroad – I imagine that China and the US will be its main focus. Surprised Ford hasn’t taken a similar move

    The Mighty Middle Market – Edelman – the US’ mittelstadt

    Finance

    Banks Eyeing Dublin After Brexit Face Trader Shortage – Bloomberg – all this will change of course as things kick off

    Ideas

    Below Deck — The California Sunday Magazine – this kind of work was the prototype for the Ubers of this world

    Luxury

    Are luxury brands taking their eye off Gen X? | Luxury Daily – lets be honest about it, its a market that marketers haven’t bothered addressing due to the size compared to the book end generations

    Media

    Facebook’s autoplay videos will now play with the sound on – Recode – expect audio branding to make a resurgence

    Facebook agrees to independent metrics audit following pressure – AdNews – guess the pressure from FMCG businesses demanding proper data and trying to stamp out ad fraud is working

    Security

    ICSR Report – Media Jihad: The Islamic State’s Doctrine for Information Warfare / ICSR – how ISIS is looking to move from a real to a virtual organisation as it suffers real world defeats

    Into the gray zone – George Washington University – interesting white paper on hacking back. Not the smartest thing to do but interesting (PDF)

    Wireless

    Nokia 3, Nokia 5 and a “modern” Nokia 3310 will be unveiled at MWC 2017 – Gizchina.com – the modern Nokia 3310 probably the most anticipated phone launch since the iPhone