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What can an unrepentant hippie teach you about business?

Jansport backpacks have been around since 1967 — the Summer of Love, baby– when Skip Yowell’s cousin had an idea for a better backpack, built around a lightweight, adjustable aluminum frame. Murray formed a company. His girlfriend was a virtuoso on the sewing machine. Murray promised that if she’d marry him, he’d name the company after her. She did, and he did, and JanSport was born.

In 1967, no self-respecting flower child was thinking about business plans. In his book, The Hippie Guide to Climbing the Corporate Ladder & Other Mountains, Yowell describes the JanSport team as “three hippies…no business plan…even less money…All we had was Murray’s innovative design, Jan’s skill, my creative instincts and a shared affinity for Dylan music and beer.”

One message is clear, says StartUpJournal:

Enthusiasm matters. We never really learn, from reading the book, just how much money Mr. Yowell has made or how big his company is. (Answers: a lot and very.) But we do learn about how he took dealers on climbs of Mount Rainier, joined an Everest expedition and got involved in goofy promotions like the “Bak-A-Yak” fundraiser for a Himalayan excursion.

Sounds like having fun is a solid core business principle — one that’s too often neglected in today’s frenzy for power and profits. How about you? Are you having fun yet? If not, maybe you should take a tip from an ex-hippie. Maybe we all should…

Groovy, man!

The $800,000 Olympic logo

What’s in a logo? What should a graphical representation of your brand or company really say?

There’s a lot of buzz right now because London’s Olympic committee spent almost $800,000 (and a year’s work) on a controversial new logo for the 2102 Olympic games. And as anyone can tell, it’s crappy. Choppy and misshapen, it looks like some pieces of paper cut out and slapped together by a kindergarten kid.

A good logo is an empty vessel, a clean, simple abstract image. It should have no intrinsic meaning until you bring meaning to it. For example, the swoop of the Nike logo meant nothing until the company filled it with meaning by infusing it with their values.

If your company needs a logo, hire a graphic designer to create a simple, abstract image. Add your company name is nice letterforms. Don’t worry if it doesn’t “say” much, if anything, yet. As Seth observed, later you’ll add meaning — i.e., the values your company represents to your customers.

Do that and you’ll save about $798,000 on your logo. And you won’t have 50,000 people signing a petition to ditch it.

How do New York City businesses make money?

How do companies make money? How much do (can) they make? Those questions pop up in the minds of anyone who is contemplating starting a business.

New York magazine wondered, too, and sent reporters out to dig up the facts and stats for a variety of NYC-based businesses, from cab driver to drug dealer to private eye, from four-star restaurant to diner to pizza joint, from department store to quick-copy shop to sex-toy shop.

The results are fascinating and revealing — although keep in mind these are New York City numbers. Your mileage may vary. Remember, too, the figures were provided by the companies themselves. Some may be motivated to fudge the facts a little, either to make themselves look bigger — or to avoid embarrassing questions from the IRS.

A few fun examples:

For a private eye, men are the best clients. They’re nearly always wrong when they suspect a cheating spouse, but they often won’t believe it and continue the surveillance. Women, on the other hand, are 90% correct when they suspect their husbands of straying.
Pfizer, the giant drug manufacturer, makes average gross margins of 60% on its products.
Goldman Sachs’ most-glamorous activity is investment banking, but that’s its least-profitable activity. Trading and investing are best, with 41.5% profit margins.
Even at $28 per ticket, the MOMA loses money on every admission. Their cost per visitor is more like $56.

So — should you start a business in the one of these fields? If not, what other areas do you see as most promising right now? Why? Let’s discuss in the comments.

New York Magazine via 37 Signals

Bob Bly on refunds

No marketer likes giving money back. But a solid, no-questions-asked refund policy is an essential selling tool, especially in our cynical times. It reduces buyer hesitation and increases sales. Master copywriter Bob Bly recently explained four things you should know about refunds.

A refund request doesn’t mean your product is bad or the customer doesn’t like it. It’s more likely they just can’t use it. It’s not for them.
Offering a refund doesn’t cost you money. It makes you money. The increased revenues and profits from a guarantee are much greater than any loss you suffer by issuing refunds.
Longer guarantees are better than shorter guarantees. If you currently offer a 30-day guarantee, try a 60- or 90-day. The longer guarantee term invariably increases response rates and sales, Bly says, because it eliminates the concern many buyers have with a short guarantee.
Generous guarantees sell better than miserly guarantees. The more unconditional the guarantee, the higher your response rates will be. Conditional guarantees (e.g., only if the product is returned “in saleable condition”) actually reduce orders.

Sure, a few unscrupulous people might take advantage of your refund policy. But it’s a mistake to assume that most of your customers are like that. I’ve found that people have a way of living up (or down) to your expectations of them. If you expect them to be crooked, they will. And vice versa.

Wal-Mart's mixed marketing message

The other day I wondered about Dell’s mixed marketing message. Now it’s Wal-Mart’s turn.

Traditionally the low price leader, Wal-Mart has been trying to swim upstream — I mean, move upscale. They want to hold on to their marketing base while attracting upscale consumers shopping for higher-quality goods.

But a confidential report based on interviews with scores of consumers concludes that being the cheapest store in town — gasp! — somehow conflicts with what upscale consumers are looking for. The chain’s low prices suggest they sell low quality goods, which turns off upscale consumers.

… (T)he report says the chain “is not seen as a smart choice” for clothing, home décor, electronics, prescriptions and groceries, categories the retailer has identified as priorities as it tries to turn around its slipping store sales, a decline likely to be emphasized Friday during Wal-Mart’s shareholder meeting. via NY Times

“The Wal-Mart brand,” says the report, “was not built to inspire people while they shop, hold their hand while they make a high-risk decision or show them how to pull things together.”

On the other hand, Target, with its designer-inspired clothing and furniture, is perceived as the ‘new and improved,’ while Wal-Mart often feels like the ‘old and outdated.’

Are you attracting the wrong kind of customer?

Who’s your perfect customer? You don’t need to be an FBI profiler to pin down the kind of customer you want.

Now consider: What kind does your marketing actually attract? If there’s a disconnect between the two, you have a serious marketing problem. As Seth put it:

“Many of the products and services we use are now about our identity. Many small businesses, for example, won’t hire a coach or a consultant because, ‘that’s not the kind of organization we are.’ Wineries understand that the pricing of a bottle of wine is more important than its label or the wine inside. Price is the first thing that most people consider when they order or shop for wine. Not because of perceived value, but because of identity.”

One of the most fundamental jobs of your marketing communications is to identify and attract the right kind of customers, i.e., the ones who can relate and identify with what you offer.

If your marketing consistently attracts the “wrong” kind of customers, it’s past time for a marketing makeover.

What is Dell trying to tell us?

What’s happening to Dell? Do they know who their customers are? Their marketing is shattering into a mish-mash of competing messages and brands.

On the one hand Dell is peddling low-end PCs in Wal-Mart stores. On the other hand, they’re now selling PCs preloaded with Ubuntu, a flavor of Linux, the open source darling OS.

Can you say incongruency?