February 2007

I have a problem with my tailors.

They make good shirts for my customers and me. In fact, I think they make great shirts - I love wearing them! (When for the first time you wear a shirt that’s been especially tailored for you… you can feel it.) So, that’s not the problem.

They haven’t yet missed a special request - I’ve taken a few and so far, so good. So that’s not the problem.

The problem is this : they could be faster. Quite a bit faster. On my site I say that Australian customers can get their shirts within 28 days (international customers 35 days). This is quite good for a remote tailor. For me though, it’s not. I want to raise the bar higher.

That’s why I’m hiring someone in Bangkok. He’ll physically take the order into my tailor. And rather than a two week slow back-and-forth email process about the different shirts, they’ll be able to deal with everything on the spot. Everything else can be fixed in a quick phone call the next day.

He’ll then go back the next week and pick up the shirts, mail the international orders directly to the customer, and bulk send the Australian orders to me. Because of this, I’m hoping to shorten the timeframe by 7-10 days.

And don’t Budweiser know it! Remember that “wasssssuuup!” campaign? Well, they actually had a record drop in revenue following that.

 This is from How to Manage and Measure the Word of Mouth Revolution” by Justin Kirby -

“Throwing money at the problem doesn’t seem to help—doubling campaign budgets for established products can lead to an increase in sales of just 1-2%. And quality over quantity doesn’t seem to impact on efficacy, either—great ads don’t mean great sales, as illustrated by the award-winning Budweiser “Whassup?” campaign in 2000. Budweiser’s US market share actually dropped 1.5-2.5 percentage points during the campaign, with sales in barrels falling 8.3%—the largest revenue drop the company had experienced since 1994. ”

http://www.marketingprofs.com/6/kirby1.asp

http://www.montanalinda.com Study Spanish intensively for one month in Costa Rica

http://www.workingabroad.org/teachenglish/teachenglish_spain.html Take the one-two month summer program and live in Spain doing English tutoring.

http://www.intrepidtravel.com/destinations/Mongolia Go to Mongolia.

I really want to go these things.

And guess what? I’m going to Mongolia in June! One down, two to go.