Jennifer Zhen

A quirky Youtube video went viral in March 2012, skyrocketing the small razor-blade company, Dollar Shave Club.  Dollar Shave Club offers monthly subscriptions of $1, $6, or $9 razors and offers extra add-ons such as shave butter and wipes. Spearheaded by CEO Michael Dubin, the unique online-video marketing campaign gained over 10 million views to date and generated over 12,000 orders within 48 hours.

It faced a website crash and lacked logistics during it’s early months. As a small company, it was not ready to handle the volume of traffic and customers could have been lost. My suggestion to other start up businesses would be to invest in a strong server and sort out effective logistics, as well as other overlooked areas before opening up to customers.

“Our blades are excellent. But I don’t see us as a razor blade company. We are a lifestyle company,” states CEO, Michael Dubin.

Now, what I like the most about this company is that it’s fresh and fits the lifestyle of a busy, working man. But there’s a problem: they focus only on men. As a woman, I am certainly interested in a razor-blade subscription like this, but we’re not being targeted what so ever. If they want to stay competitive with brands like Gillette, they need to start targeting Gillette’s consumer base, and that includes females.

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Gathering data from a customer online is easy and makes companies like Amazon thrive. Whereas offline retail stores lack the level of data that enables them to better improve staffing, layout, and marketing tactics.

Some stores have utilized information technology to the next level. In a recent article on the Huffington Post, it stated that Hugo Boss has implemented heat sensors to measure the activity of customers to better place premium products. As well, Tesco has implemented face scanners at gas stations to scan the faces of queuing customers to determine gender and age to personalize advertisements.

How Tesco’s face-scanning technology will work:

I can say for the majority of people, most of us value our personal privacy and would not appreciate the tactics that stores are using to compete with online retailers. While I acknowledge that we are ever growingly being preyed online regarding our privacy, those methods are far more tolerable because no parts of our body or phones are being traced or documented. Offline retail stores need to implement information technology that complies with customers’ privacies in order to retain their brand image and decrease the risk of losing customers. However, it is likely that if majority of stores implement such tactics in the future and becomes widely accepted or inevitable, these new management information systems will serve to bridge the gap between offline and online store competition.

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Are the CEOs of a startup company crazy to decline an offer of $3 billion for a company that doesn’t generate any profit? In the eyes of some they could be, but being crazy isn’t exactly what Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, the two CEOs of Snapchat, a company that recently gained popularity for sharing temporary videos and photos with friends, identified themselves as when they declined the offer from Facebook.

An analyst at Forrester Research, Julie Ask comments on the situation being,

“[A] classic bird-in-hand versus bird-in-bush. Snapchat must believe the bird-in-bush is bigger.”

The CEOs of Snapchat, believe that holding out in the long run will generate more money in the future compared to cashing in the company at this moment. They intend to follow the path of companies like WeChat and Line, and make money from virtual goods, games, and services. It is a profitable stream after witnessing Line generate $10 million from emoticon sales in a month.

I believe that Snapchat should remain as a standalone company and not give in to the current offers, even at a high $3 billion. Snapchat has identified possible streams of revenue based on what applications in other countries have done, making it one of the few social media companies that can be profitable in the future. Also, the two startup CEOs are both young, being in their early twenties, and have a lot of time to invest in building Snapchat. I am sure Snapchat will inevitably make revenues upwards of $3 billion, thus surpassing current take over offers.

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Rich Abend, 43, managing director of Scout Wellness.

There has been a great deal of interest amongst consumers to live a healthy life style, and now agencies have caught up to this idea.

Horizon Media, an independent media service agency, will have a subset unit named Scout Wellness and offer clients media services based on wellness and health marketing.  This was triggered by the trends of consumers purchasing goods such as herbal tea, health insurance, or hand sanitizer. As well, there has been an increase in researching and contributing to social media topics regarding health and wellness issues.

The company has hired Rich Abend as the new managing director for Scout Wellness. Rich comments that,

“[health and wellness are] less about losing weight and more about being in control of how you live your life.”

While some see that the media agency could be branching off further than needed, I feel that the company truly understands the new age of the century. Through health and wellness, as described by Rich Abend as “how you live your life”, the company will offer their clients a way of marketing that promotes the company and products as an integral component to how consumers live their lives. Marketing via health and wellness is a smart approach because soon enough, there will be consumers who feel as though they need certain products as a staple in their lives.

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What seemingly appears to be faux feathers on a headband on the shelves of H&M, instead angers a Ojibwa-Mohawk woman, Kim Wheeler. The $15 headdress was in the new line of a summer music festival collection, “H&M Loves Music” and based off the trend of experimenting with wild, exciting accessories.

While others viewed it merely as a statement piece, Kim was baffled to see an item that represented her Native culture be exploited.

Kim Wheeler states, “Headdresses are a sign of respect and leadership,” “You wouldn’t find a colorful hijab or a colorful yarmulke on the shelves as some sort of fashion accessory to wear out to a nightclub or to a music festival.”

As a result, she emailed the company to express her negative views and her complaint was heard by H&M Canada. The following Tuesday, the company promised to pull the “hipster headdresses” from all 61 stores in Canada. A spokesperson for H&M comments:

“Music festivals these days are really about experimenting with fashion and dressing your personality. And they’re very heavily based on accessories, really accessorizing your look… Of course we never want to offend anybody or come off as insensitive. We’re always about being there for our customers.”

I admire the actions of H&M for respecting the 3 complaints that they received over this matter. However, the public needs to understand that while an item seems inoffensive, others view it differently. We should be understanding of the feelings and cultures of others and H&M Canada has done the right thing in listening and acting upon it.

The issue now is, why do the headdresses remain on the shelves at other H&M countries?

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