paul smith's Snaps & Bytes e-home
October 1999: Things to try at home.
For me this years ECTS was a freebie free wilderness. I collected not a single baseball cap, pen or key ring. I left with a single, small carrier bag, which showed no signs of bulging. All I got was a nice drink and nibbles on the NASCR stand and a play of GT2 from Sony. I even felt the totty was not up to previous years standards. (Sorry girls.) Conceivably it's because I went on the Tuesday that I got to see the bum end of the show but can I be the only person to think it's lost a bit of its gloss? Conversely, for the first time I actually made some good contacts and lined up some nice business, so perhaps it's all for the best?
Right about now (funk soul brother) you'll be waiting for your big pile of Dreamcast machines. I hope they'll fly out of your shop like a rabid Jack Russell after a juicy postman, rather than sitting there eyeing you with a look of sneering contempt. Incidentally, has anyone else noticed the chilling similarity between the spiral Dreamcast logo and the recurring helix image from a film called 'Dark City' about aliens experimenting on the human soul? I'm praying there's no link. If the 8% margin of the Dreamcast (bad name, or is that just me again?) isn't lighting your fireworks, perhaps you should be branching out? In these crazy days of £399 PCs, give-a-way PSX software, free Tiny systems and rife piracy isn't it time you found a new niche? Maybe that's why the stuff HSM's don't like to bother with (2nd hand, Mac, etc.) seem to be a hot topic with Indies at the moment. If you're starting to feel like the local greengrocer who closed five years ago when Supermarket X opened up down the road, then here are a few suggestions:
o Open 24 hours. Why not? It apparently works for Tesco. Vital PCs and networks go wrong in the middle of the night and you could charge just about whatever you like to fix them at 2am.
o Deal in a specialist area overlooked by most multiples. Laptops, for example. I've a customer who closed his general PC retail business and opened an internet site selling portables instead. He's halved his overheads and doubled his turnover, which says to me: 'Quadruple your profits, close your shop'.
o Design a prettier PC. I've seen iMac style PC cases mushrooming around the place. It's always just been a matter of time before home systems had to stop looking like kitchen appliances and bumper-like, get colour coded. If people are happy to pay £1500 for a nice veneered box to hide their telly in, I think a margin can be squeezed from mock Tudor PC cases. Executive desks where an LCD screen and keyboard glide effortlessly out of the wood-work at the subtle touch of a button? It may sound like a Bond Villains' favourite bit of office furniture, but I can imagine several fat-cats reaching for their expense accounts for something like that.
o Target a specialist audience like flight-sim fans or arty types. If Apple can sell a machine with no floppy disk drive, you should easily be able to find yourself some men with sandals and beards and sell them iMacs to be creative on. Or alternatively you could always start a religion with them.
Product News: Papering over the cracks.
CDR media, Inkjet cartridges and Zip disks. You love them all. Because once you're sold them, you know your customer, Arnie style, will be back. It's a repeat sale. It's a customer who will wander in every couple of months, all wide eyed and innocent, hungry for more consumables. A customer who will be dazzled by your display of software/hardware/charm/audacity and perhaps make an impulse purchase. Consumables are your friend. And unbranded or 'copy' consumables can be your bestist buddy. Although Original Canon® Cartridges and Sony® CDR media will always be in demand, you can find plumper margins with a good quality copy. Since you already know this, why do so few Indies stock anything but Epson™ coated inkjet paper? And I'm not just saying this because we've just taken on distribution of the Pzazz range of retail boxed papers, with prices from just £4.16 for 100 x A4 720dpi coated 95gsm paper with an R.R.P of £7.99. Ok? We also do wilder stuff like thermal transfer paper for making your T-shirt too sexy to wear. Should you be selling this kind of stuff? Let me put it this way. No High Street Multiple I know of gets paid two grand to put some packets of inkjet paper in its window.
784 words and not many of them rude.