ZARA has completely revolutionized my world. During my lecture on October 25th and my assigned readings, I learned a vast range of information about this Spanish chain store.

“Zara offers the latest trends in international fashion in an environment of thought-out design’ and offers women’s, men’s and children’s clothing and accessories at affordable prices”, are the words of Youlookfab.com’s article, “Zara: affordable exclusivity” by Angie. In my own words, ZARA is able to provide high-end couture to a market that would otherwise not be capable to possess.

In my lecture, I learned about ZARA’s inventory turnover, in which the Spanish company is able to introduce a new style every two weeks. During a brief discussion with Professor Talmar Milne, I learned that ZARA flies two airplanes per month to Vancouver in order to keep up with the astounding inventory turnover.

What ultimately captivated my interest, is ZARA’s ability to refrain from being a top trend setter and wait for until the trend has proven to become a ‘fad’. ZARA then uses takes this information and provides this trend. As the trend keep changes so does its stores’ inventor. To me, this was revolutionary.

Additional Readings

http://thirdeyesight.in/articles/ImagesFashion_Zara_Part_I.pdf

http://search.proquest.com/docview/940866553?accountid=14656

Guy Kawasaki has a blog named “How to Change the World“. Its sub-title describes his blog as A practical blog for impractical people. Kawasaki blogs about a variety of insightful topics that “impractical” or rather inquisitive people would be interested in.

A particular blog post entitled, “Raising Money: What Not to Say and What Not to Believe #OfficeandGuyK” provides great insight to entrepreneurs that are hoping to find support for their ventures. He has a “Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs” and a “Top Ten Lies of Investors”. To entrepreneurs, Kawasaki’s articles could be very fundamental to their success. Kawasaki clearly points out that in order to enhance their entrepreneurial efforts, one does not need a great quantity of monetary funds.

However, he does acknowledge that at some point, financial support and funding is essential for any entrepreneurial venture to take place. That is why he has provided such lists. So that entrepreneur know what not to say and how to recognized hollow responses from investors.

Lastly, he concludes with the remark that “the bottom line is this is one of the cheapest times to be an entrepreneur, so go into your garage and start prototyping“.

Have you ever dreamed of being rich? a millionaire? a billionaire?

Imagine for the duration of your reading throughout this post, that you have just incurred a financial windfall.

According to Stanely M. Tepner in his article “Dealing With Financial Windfalls”, “a financial windfall is any distribution of financial assets that leaves the recipient with dramatically greater liquid wealth than they had been accustomed to managing before the distribution.”

Tepner continues to raise very interesting insight regarding what the recipient of a financial windfall might undergo. Usually the recipient is very overwhelmed by the sudden increase in wealth. In turn, they seek the service of financial advisers.

“In becoming [their] advisor, we strive to educate, coordinate, evaluate and then allocate as we create and deploy a comprehensive financial plan for our client“, this is what Tepner states as his role as an adviser.

However, what caught my interest are the whereabouts of the wealth until the recipient evaluates and decide what to do.

The wealth is encouraged to take advantage of its Time Value of the Money. That is, to invest the wealth in a trust fund, savings account, bond, etc. until a well-thought-out plan is developed.

Gaby Herbert is a fellow classmates in my Business Fundamental course. She also has a blog, ‘Gaby Herbert’s COMM 101 Blog‘, in which she also blogs about how our world is intertwined with business concepts.

In her article “GETTING INTO YOUR AUDIENCE’S BRAAAAAAAINS“, Herbert talks about how Heart and Stroke Foundation cleverly captivates the attention of the youth audience who are quick to dismiss CPR as an important skill. She explains that by ‘tricking’ the audience into believing that the promo is some sort of movie trailer, the foundation is able to provide important information. Ultimately, Herbert emphasizes that the usage of different marketing strategies to target different audience is a very valuable skill. See for yourself.

Moreover, Herbert’s article not only teaches the importance of carefully planning marketing ads, but also serves as an example of its own lesson. The most noticeable point of difference that convinced me to blog about her article is the clever implementation of a video. Although it is not uncommon for blogs to have video’s embedded, not many, if any, of the other bloggers have figured how to embed them. This small detail turns Herbert’s blog into something more and different.
It’s smart ‘marketing’.