The Off Topic Topic

[Josquius]

 

[Malthus]

Bad publicity is ... a CEO kicking a puppy in a viral video.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/08/27/video-shows-ceo-kicking-puppy-in-elevator-a-friends-pet-caused-me-to-lose-control/

[CountDeMoney]

Bad publicity is ... a CEO kicking a puppy in a viral video.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/08/27/video-shows-ceo-kicking-puppy-in-elevator-a-friends-pet-caused-me-to-lose-control/

I am shocked, shocked that a CEO would display the kind of sociopathic lack of empathy that propelled him to CEO in the first place.  He must have an MBA.

Only thing more surprising is that you would totally expect that kind of behavior from the CEO in the wired community, not something as pedestrian and conventional as concessions.

[Malthus]

Bad publicity is ... a CEO kicking a puppy in a viral video.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/08/27/video-shows-ceo-kicking-puppy-in-elevator-a-friends-pet-caused-me-to-lose-control/

I am shocked, shocked that a CEO would display the kind of sociopathic lack of empathy that propelled him to CEO in the first place.  He must have an MBA.

Only thing more surprising is that you would totally expect that kind of behavior from the CEO in the wired community, not something as pedestrian and conventional as concessions.

Damn. I was so close to labelling this story "CdM Bait", but I restrained myself. I missed the boat. 

Edit: or, "Kicking puppies does not add to shareholder value".

[CountDeMoney]

Oh hell, you should've known I would go for that bait and land on the deck of your charter.

YOURE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BOAT

[CountDeMoney]

Centerplate has one serious PR issue, right on the eve of football season.

Google his name, and you see headlines from local papers like:

"Man in Video Beating Dog Is CEO of Vendor for Qualcomm Stadium, SD Convention Center: Report" in San Diego, and "Dog-kicking CEO of Portland Timbers concessionaire apologizes, may face criminal charges" in the Oregonian.  Bad news.  Americans like their sports and their pets.

Hey Yi, tell your country club buddies at Goldman Sachs to dump that stock macht schnell if you have any, you're going to take a bath on it within 48 hours.

[garbon]

Just now I got off my subway stop and there were 3 cops surrounding a black youth (i'd guess late teens) with his back against the wall. They were cracking jokes and every so often kept jostling him against the wall. I've no idea if he'd committed a crime or not, but I gotta say that I really didn't find it seemly to see three grown men pushing a kid around. Like I get this is your job and you become casual about it - but it isn't exactly a good image.

As I walked away, 2 more cops were walking over. Actually I think everyone was a bit surprise to see this happening in the village as everyone in front of me was turning around to look back at what was happening.

[Malthus]

Centerplate has one serious PR issue, right on the eve of football season.

Google his name, and you see headlines from local papers like:

"Man in Video Beating Dog Is CEO of Vendor for Qualcomm Stadium, SD Convention Center: Report" in San Diego, and "Dog-kicking CEO of Portland Timbers concessionaire apologizes, may face criminal charges" in the Oregonian.  Bad news.  Americans like their sports and their pets.

Hey Yi, tell your country club buddies at Goldman Sachs to dump that stock macht schnell if you have any, you're going to take a bath on it within 48 hours.

What surprises me is that they identify the guy, but blank his face out in the video.

[CountDeMoney]

Incidentally, the line went up in Israel too. And apparently, when they were apologising and saying that they will destroy the pyjamas, they also used a wrong Hebrew word and said they will "exterminate" the pyjamas. 

That's awesome.   

I'm just amazed that it got through the entire planning and production processes without a single "Uh, guys..."

I might've been on to something.  Considering traditional European anti-semitism is wholly embedded in the collective consciousness, production speed may make somebody who *might* notice to miss it completely.

Why Zara can't seem to stop selling anti-Semitic clothing
by Claire Zillman
Fortune.com

August 27, 2014, 3:39 PM EDT

First a swastika handbag, now a concentration camp shirt. The fast fashion retailer is perhaps too fast for its own good.

Spanish retailer Zara, known for its affordable apparel and accessories, has built an international empire of more than 2,000 stores on its ability to set and follow fashion trends.

But you know what's never in style? Children's clothes that are near replicas of concentration camp uniforms. Also: swastikas.

On Wednesday, Zara confronted a wave of criticism after the blog +972 pointed out that Zara's "striped sheriff t-shirt" for kids looked a whole lot like the striped garments and yellow stars that Jews were forced to wear during the Holocaust.

It's hard to argue with that assessment, and Zara didn't try to. It told the blog that the shirt was inspired by classic western films (the word "sheriff" appears, faintly, on the star) and apologized for causing any offense. It said the unsold shirts would be "reliably destroyed."

It might be easier to look past this incident if a similar one had not transpired in 2007, when Zara sold a $78 handbag displaying four green swastikas. When customers complained, Zara apologized and said it hadn't realized that the handbag's pattern contained swastikas. The bag came from an Indian supplier and the approved design didn't feature the symbols, the company said at the time.

The two screw-ups are surprising, first, because of their blatant offensiveness and, second, because they come from a company that, in most other senses, has performed tremendously well. Zara's parent Inditex, which owns seven other retail brands, recorded sales of $550 million—propelled mainly by Zara's growth—and beat analyst expectations in its most recent quarter; all of this in a unforgiving retail market.

But Zara's secret to success could also be to blame for its political gaffes: that is, its incredible production speed.

The company lives and dies by how quickly it can get its products into its stores and on to the backs of its customers. "The key to their entire business is speed; speed is life. That's what fast fashion means," says Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates, a retail industry consultancy. Zara differentiates itself by coming up with creative designs in a very timely manner, he says. If a retailer offers the same clothes as the next, the only differentiation point is who marks them down first.

Inditex did not return a request for comment.

Traditional retailers—like The Gap, for instance—typically decide on the majority of their designs about six months in advance, Davidowitz says. Such pre-planning secures factory time and locks in manufacturing costs.

Zara determines some of its designs in advance, but it places about half of its orders in the middle of each fashion season in order to cash in on ongoing trends. Zara can operate this quickly because it has in-house factories that reserve 85% of their production capacity for last-minute orders. The end result is a two-week turnaround time between a designer's concept and an item's potential sale. This speediness is reflected in the 840 million garments that Zara parent Inditex produced in 2012, according to The New York Times, and the twice-a-week replenishment of its stores' stock.

"Zara has constant newness. The newness just doesn't stop," Davidowitz says. That fashion churn has made Zara's parent company Inditex, with 6,300 stores in 87 countries, the largest fashion retailer in the world. But it looks like it also translates to occasional carelessness in its design vetting process.

"Zara doesn't want to bore the customer. The customer loves new things," Davidowitz says. "When you're in that kind of environment, some crazy things slip through."

[MadImmortalMan]

The end result is a two-week turnaround time between a designer's concept and an item's potential sale.

I have to admit that's pretty impressive.

They probably think it's worth the tradeoff for the occasional whoopsie. Plus, free publicity.

[CountDeMoney]

Yes, that two-week turnaround is impressive.  Schindler's List, by contrast, is only 196 minutes.

[Admiral Yi]

How did they get the idea that sheriffs wore shirts like that? 

[CountDeMoney]

Just now I got off my subway stop and there were 3 cops surrounding a black youth (i'd guess late teens) with his back against the wall. They were cracking jokes and every so often kept jostling him against the wall. I've no idea if he'd committed a crime or not, but I gotta say that I really didn't find it seemly to see three grown men pushing a kid around. Like I get this is your job and you become casual about it - but it isn't exactly a good image.

As I walked away, 2 more cops were walking over. Actually I think everyone was a bit surprise to see this happening in the village as everyone in front of me was turning around to look back at what was happening.

Sounds like business as usual by guys that just don't get it.  Unfortunately.

[garbon]

New York's Finest

[Liep]

Got a text alert from work: "All drivers look out for [generic description of an Arabic man], he was last seen rushing out of a train after panicking after someone had stumbled into his bag. Shortly before that he was seen reading a book labeled 'Terror'".

I thought it was a bad joke, but when I arrived in the airport terminal there were multiple policemen in full combat gear with machine guns.