April 21, 2017--Dead Malls

I knew the culture had shifted when I needed AAA batteries, and rather than walking over to Kmart, which is less than two blocks from here, I ordered them on line from Amazon.

I wasn't looking to save money. The 8-pack of Energizers on-line cost all of $5.82 plus tax. And the weather was pleasant enough for the short walk and I wasn't being lazy. But, one-two-three, on semi-automatic pilot, I placed the order. They would be delivered the next day.

When I realized what I had done so reflexively, I thought it is no wonder that Amazon's founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is now the third richest man in the world as the result of selling AAA batteries, underwear, consumer electronics, and millions of other items. Of course, his success also comes from providing cloud-computing services.

If I had walked to Kmart, on Broadway, pulled up to the curb, I would have seen a truck and about half a dozen men unloading large plastic containers in which there were Amazon products for delivery to neighborhood apartment buildings. The next day, one of those containers would have my batteries and one of the Amazon workers would bring it to my building along with at least 50 other packages for residents.

So from the Amazon Website, to a huge fulfillment warehouse somewhere in central New Jersey, to lower Broadway, to East 9th Street, to my building's overflowing package room, my AAAs would find their way to me via Amazon's supply chain and Bezos would be a penny or two wealthier.

And in the process, aggregating this millions of times a week, the nature of retail business is shifting dramatically as more and more brick-and-mortar stores go out of business, including Radio Shack and, soon I am sure, my local Kmart. They cannot any longer do enough business to justify what it costs them in rent. I can see a bank or drug store moving in as they and restaurants are pretty much what Manhattan street-level commercial real estate is evolving toward.

The Department of Commerce projects that up to 100,000 retail workers will be laid off this year. Since October 89,000 already have been. Some of these, as economists put it, shifted from one sort of relatively higher-paying in-store retail employment to much lower-wage warehouse work, much of it part-time. And with fulfillment centers increasingly automated, the net number of retail workers of all kinds (including the delivery guys on Broadway) is falling at a significant enough rate to be of macroeconomic concern.

As Mark Cohen, director of retail sales studies at Columbia University's School of Business, says we are seeing a "slow-rolling crisis" rippling through the U.S. economy.

And then the malls themselves are dying. Macy's and Sears are going bankrupt. As they close their anchor stores in hundreds of malls around the country, shortly thereafter other shops that have depended on Macy's foot traffic are walking away from their leases and as a result the physical malls themselves are turning into ghost or dead malls.

On the other hand, as more people are leaving the suburbs to live in large and small cities, in many places downtowns are bouncing back. Small retailers, coffee shops, and restaurants are taking leases in recently boarded-up stores along Main Street.

But the bottom line still is a structural shift in the economics of retail as one in ten U.S. workers are retail workers. Along with traditional forms of manufacturing this is one more problem we need to address as it is yet another blow to the struggling middle class.

March 3, 2014--Pain Points

I had an idea for a business venture. Since it appears someone is already doing a version of it, I am comfortable sharing it.

I needed vitamins and we went to CVS to buy them. At checkout, I saw Rona struggling to find her Master and CVS cards. I had seen this struggle before in other stores. At Staples, Kmart, and Walmart among others.

This inspired my One Card idea.

Like a universal TV remote control where you can merge various remotes into one--your TV, cable system, DVD player, ROKU, whatever. So you don't have to juggle 3 or 4 of them while watching House of Cards being streamed by Netflix.

One Card would allow you to merge all your credit, debit, and store rewards cards into just one, making a busy life a little simpler. I even had thoughts about how to monitize this. "Monitize" being the current buzz-word for making money.

Since I knew absolutely nothing about the technical issues (or much about business for that matter) I wondered who to ask for a reaction, to assess its uniqueness, feasibility, and how perhaps to proceed.

Rona said, "Think about people we know who are younger than 35. Anyone older than that will not know how to evaluate this much less have the technical knowledge to know if it's doable or what to do next. It's a whole new world out there."

"Don't I know it," I sighed.

"So, who should we ask?"

"I know just who--JE. He's in his 20s, smart as a whip, is working at a software startup doing technical stuff, and has a good head for business. Maybe he'd be willing to help with this."

"Perfect," Rona said.

And so I wrote to him as follows--

JE 

We have a whole lot of credit, debit, and individual store cards from Staples, CVS, Kmart, etc. that are not credit cards per say but give points toward future discounts. So when shopping for vitamins, to pay, Rona has to dig in her pocketbook for two cards--her Master and CVS cards.  

This is not the end of the world, but inconvenient. So, I was thinking, like a universal remote control, do you know of something that already exists to do this--to make it possible for someone to consolidate all these kinds of cards into a single, universal card? I've never come upon the existence of something like this, but what do I know?  

If this is a viable concept, I envision a kiosk kind of thing where someone could swipe all cards of this kind onto a single one. And if this is needed and can be made to work, I can see various ways to monitize this. 

Please let me know what you think. If it is something newish and of interest you, I'd be happy to pass the idea along to you, maybe help figure out how to get it financed, and work as a silent partner with you. 

SZ

Within 24 hours JE wrote back--

SZ 

Everything is going well. I'm starting a contract with a company that builds software for  ____ . 

There is currently a universal credit card called Coin.  You can check out their product, and watch their marketing video here: 

https://onlycoin.com/ 

They had their product crowd funded on KickStarter in November.  This was after a round inside an incubator called Y Combinator.  Anything that gets heavy funding on KickStarter draws a lot of media attention.  Y Combinator is also the most well known and respected incubator in the startup scene. 

Competing with their level of media attention, along with their community acceptance through Y Combinator's nod would be difficult this early on. 

There is also the issue of PCI compliance.  PCI compliance is a "proprietary information security standard for organizations that handle cardholder information for the major debit, credit, prepaid, e-purse, ATM, and POS cards."  It's extremely expensive to get right.
The current CEO of Coin, Kanishk Parashar, is especially well suited for running this particular type of company, because of his prior experience working within PayPal and starting a peer-to-peer mobile payment startup in 2010.  

I'm always opened to hearing new idea, so please feel free to share. 

I find that I'm most attracted to simple ideas, such as automating a specific work flow for a particular industry.  These ideas generally have an easily definable implementation, a simple business model, and a niche market with a strong need. 

For example I've worked for 2 different agencies, who had 4 separate clients asking for the same product.  A content dissemination system for sales aids to pharmaceutical sales reps in the field, which regulated the documents they received by expiration date, region and sales unit. 

If you could think of any pain points that involved heavy coordination, paper shuffling or just a lot of redundancy throughout your career, there could be an awesome, actionable product to be made.  There is an added benefit of you being an industry expert, which makes it much easier to pitch to investors.  Additionally, you can leverage the network you already have, to bring on early adopters who can provide extremely valuable feedback on the way to the product going mainstream within the chosen industry. 

I'd love to hear your thoughts. 

JE

Well, I thought and took a deep breath.

I sent back a quick note thanking him for taking this (and me) so seriously, turning to it so quickly, and blah, blah, blah.

Without acknowledging it I felt as if I was way out of my depth. More honestly diminished by the passage of time and a shift of generations. On the other hand, I've never been thought of as a hotshot even in a field where I was "an industry expert." In small consolation, I said to myself, "Thank you JE for thinking about me in this way. For being so nice to me as if you understand my . . ."

My ego wouldn't allow me to ask for translations of a few things he wrote so I could better understand what he was saying and thereby prepare me for a meaningful back-and-forth with him. 

For example--

"Product crowd"
"Peer-to-peer mobile payment startup"
"Content dissemination system"
"Pain points"

Pain I could understand. I know from pain. But more of the lower back variety than having to do with "incubating" business ideas.

Nor was my bruised ego going to allow me to ask more about KickStarter or Y Combinator. Even Rona, who has an MBA in marketing, had never heard of these and she was at an uncharacteristic loss for words. 

"Combinator?" I muttered.

"I told you, didn't I?" Clearly, Rona was not entirely at a loss for words.

Still deflated, with an edge, I asked, "Didn't you what?"

"Tell you."

"Tell me what?"

"That this is no game for people like you."

"Meaning?"

"It's a young person's world." She was trying to be kind.

"But," I puffed myself up, "My One Card is good enough so that a real hotshot came up with Coin, a stupid name," I said as an aside, "which is just like my idea and good enough to get financing."

"Fair enough," Rona said.

That made me feel a bit better. "But still I don't know from this product crowd business. One thing I'm sure about though--it doesn't have anything to do with a group of people. "

"I love you anyway, and JE too, even if you are older than you'd like to admit and don't know anything about content dissemination systems."

"I too think JE's great."

 "And, in the meantime, industry expert," Rona smiled, "see what you can come up with. JE said he'd love to hear your thoughts."

"About the real thoughts I'm having, I'm not so sure."