Monthly Archives: November 2012

This past summer I was fortunate to visit New York with my family. While I was there I was  thrilled to see Canada’s Aritzia, opening on the most upscale street in the world in Midtown Manhattan, on the corner of 49th and 5th Avenue.  Aritzia’s largest flagship store, will be comprised of 2 floors in 13, 000 square feet.  Evidently, this highly sought after piece of property came with a costly price tag.  Briana Mussatto recently attended an event which was hosted by the founder and CEO of Aritzia, Brian Hill.  In her blog post “Artizia Spends 10 Million in Rent for New 5th Avenue Store” I learned that Aritzia will pay $10 Million in rent per year, which calculates to just under a million per month.  Briana raised a question about their forecasts for revenue.  She was unsure how Aritzia would be certain that their revenue would cover their large costs for the expensive piece of property.

Aritzia is aware that their store on 5th will bring in plenty of revenue, however I do not believe that was their sole reason for opening in the luxurious location.  I believe that their true motive for moving to 5th Avenue is for marketing purposes, such as positioning.  Aritzia is positioning their store in a location that is high in traffic.  Not only does it attract locals, but it attracts global consumers who are tourists or visitors to the city.

This is a clever tactic of promotion, because consumers from around the world visit 5th Avenue for fashion.  Furthermore, I believe the opening of the store on 5th will be beneficial to the company in regards to future expansion, as the world will become better aware of their products.

Aritzia already has a store in Soho New York, however the publicity they will recieve on 5th will be incomparable to any other location in North America.  In conclusion, I am very proud that a Canadian retailer has taken on the risk of opening on 5th Avenue as a marketing strategy.

Below is a link to Aritzia’s website, which includes details on their grand opening:

http://aritzia.com/hello-5th-avenue

The Samsung Galaxy Tab, Google’s Nexus 7, and the new iPad mini, are contributing towards the extinction of laptops in the classroom.  In the blog, “Tablets in the classroom will soon be the norm,” by Peter Nowak, there was emphasis that there is a greater number of students using tablet’s in classes, instead of laptops.  In his blog he mentioned that the Information Technology Department at  UBC conducted a survey recently which found that 13% to 15% of students are now using tablets.  Furthermore, 60% of students said that they will be purchasing tablets within the next year due to low prices.  Personally I find a laptop easier to use in classes because it enables me to use a keyboard, rather than a touch screen.   I own a MacBook Air, and I have no troubles with bringing it to various classes.  Nowak stated that more students are inclined to use tablets because of their size, and weight.  Marketers are working hard to differentiate tablets from laptops as it is a new product for the same target audience.  They are currently stressing the fact that e-books can be purchased and read on tablets.  This is seen as a great positive for students because e-books are affordable, and they add no weight to heavy backpacks.  This point does seem like a positive however it does not encourage me, a laptop owner, to buy a tablet.  I do not believe that this is a strong enough point of difference to capture the attention of students because, books can also be purchased online.  Apart from minor size, and weight difference I do not see any strong points of difference that tablets have.  However, I still believe that laptops are superior because they allow students to create word, powerpoint, and excel documents on them.  In conclusion, I do not believe that laptops will soon be extinct because they provide more services for a greater range of consumers.  Not all consumers are looking for small computers.  Moreover, most students need to have the ability to create various documents throughout the day, and this is most convenient on laptops.

This blog post is in response to an external blog by Peter Nowak