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Made in China: Fake Stores

Laurie Burkitt and Loretta Chao — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 12:30:16 +0000

In China’s “fake world,” consumers can shop for furniture at an imitation IKEA store, eat a six-inch sandwich at an outlet strikingly similar to Subway, and then grab dessert at “Dairy Fairy”— where they might knock back an Oreo-flavored “Ice Storm” whose, thick, creamy texture takes unabashed inspiration from the famous Dairy Queen “Blizzard.”

Welcome to the modern era of copying in China, in which sophisticated proprietors of knockoff stores and chains are targeting increasingly sophisticated Chinese consumers with store experiences and customer service extremely similar to the real thing, down to the helpful store maps, coupons, shopping bags and employee uniforms.

The imitation retailers and restaurants go beyond the simple fakes of consumer goods that have long been abundant in China.

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Blockbuster Hangs "For Rent" Signs on 187 Stores

Tricia Duryee — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 23:57:05 +0000

Blockbuster plans to close 182 stores over the next few months as it tries to emerge from bankruptcy, reports Bloomberg. The once-dominant movie rental chain faces competition from Netflix and, increasingly, from alternative video-on-demand providers. The store closures are in addition to the 1,000 locations shut down during the past two years. Next year, the company expects to emerge from bankruptcy with the help of new owners, including shareholder activist Carl Icahn.

B&N Aims E-Books at Kids

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 12:00:54 +0000

Barnes & Noble Inc., intent on winning over a new generation of readers, including some who haven’t yet learned to tie their shoes, is launching a digital collection of more than 12,000 books under the name Nook Kids.

The works, aimed at children 3 to 8 years old, include picture books, novels and a selection of enhanced editions of classics, such as “Jamberry,” the tale of a boy and a bear who have a good time together finding berries.

An estimated 12,000 chapter books, among the largest digital collections for young readers, is expected to be available at NookKids.com by late Sunday. In addition, 100 or so picture books will be available in mid-November, while about 30 enhanced picture books will be available by the end of the year, or early in 2011. The collection, also available online at BarnesandNoble.com, will be accessible by year end via a Nook Kids app for Apple Inc.’s iPad and other devices.

Nook Kids represents a crucial effort by the nation’s largest bookstore chain to establish itself with children and their parents as a digital e-book leader.

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Chapter 11, In Which Blockbuster Does the Inevitable

John Paczkowski — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 16:06:12 +0000

Repudiating claims last year that Blockbuster intended to file for bankruptcy, spokesperson Karen Raskopf said the troubled video-rental chain had “lots of plans to grow our business.”

That may well have been the case, but they don’t seem to have done much good, because Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy today, beaten into submission by nearly $1 billion in debt, growing competition from Netflix, Amazon and Apple, and consumers’ developing affinity for streaming and on-demand video services.

Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes said the move will allow Blockbuster to “continue to transform our business model to meet the evolving preferences of our customers.”

Which presumably means further retail store closures as the company reduces its nearly $1 billion debt to about $100 million.

Hardly a surprise–particularly since the company alerted the six major movie studios of its plans to enter a “pre-planned” bankruptcy in mid-September.

Incidentally, the companies that have been instrumental in landing Blockbuster in the dire straits in which it finds itself are all doing quite well on the stock market today. At $162.13, Netflix (NFLX) is up 3.31 percent; at $155.20 Amazon (AMZN) is up 2.19 percent; and at $291.80 Apple (AAPL) is up 1.39 percent.

Apple Challenges Woolworths Over Logo Similarities

John Paczkowski — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:01:31 +0000

“• It is a stylised ‘W’ for Woolworths with the addition of an abstract leaf symbol representing fresh food;
• It is reminiscent of one of the most famous Woolworths logos of the 1970s;
• It represents a person–as in ‘The Fresh Food People’ and the Woolworths focus on its customers.”

– Woolworths announces its new logo.

Woolworths Supermarkets describes its new logo as “an abstract leaf symbol” intended to represent fresh food. But to Apple, the stylized “W” looks far too much like its own namesake fruit, which could be problematic should the supermarket chain someday decide to peddle its own brand of consumer electronics. And so Apple is petitioning IP Australia, the local agency that governs trademarks, to reject the Woolworths application for the mark.

It seems an overly litigious move, even for Apple (AAPL). As Hans Hulsbosch, the Woolworths logo designer dryly notes, “Based on this logic, they would have to take action against every fruitseller.”

That said, the Woolworths application is for a blanket trademark on a broad range of goods, including electronics, specifically “apparatus for recording, transmission or reproduction of sound or images…calculating machines, data processing equipment and computers…computer devices and computer peripheral devices…[and] computer hardware and software.”

While it might seem unlikely that the supermarket chain would ever manufacture devices, it did recently begin dabbling in cellphones, so it’s not entirely out of the question. Said a Woolworths spokesman: “While we can’t rule [computers, musical players, or other devices] out, we haven’t got any plans at the moment.”

This isn’t the first time Apple has challenged a trademark. Last year the company went after New York City’s GreeNYC campaign claiming its logo would create confusion in the marketplace. And in 2007, Apple settled a long-running trademark dispute with The Beatles’ parent company, Apple Corps.

Sun Rise, Sun Set

John Paczkowski — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 22:16:15 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Why Are Music Sales Dropping? Because It's Hard to Buy Music

Peter Kafka — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 12:34:52 +0000

Digital is the future, but analog is the present. Which is why CD sales remain the biggest revenue driver for the music business. But big-box retailers, who sell almost all of the industry’s discs, are determined to change that, by relentlessly cutting back on the amount of floorspace they allocate to CDs.

Latest example: Borders Group (BGP), the struggling book chain, has cut its music inventory by 30 percent in the last year, the company said. Music now occupies about seven percent of its floorspace, and the space it used to take up has been given over to higher-margin products like children’s books.

Borders makes up a relatively small portion of U.S. music sales, but most big retailers have been doing the same thing for more than a year. If you don’t believe me, try to find the CD section next time you visit a Target (TGT) or Best Buy (BBY) this month.

The big stores will embrace individual albums–if they have an exclusive, like Best Buy’s deal with Guns N’ Roses, or Wal-Mart’s (WMT) recent AC/DC promotion. (That’s Best Buy’s GNR promotion, pictured above. Lonely, isn’t it?) But beyond that, they are basically telling music shoppers, who bought some $7 billion worth of discs last year, to take their business elsewhere.

[Image Credit: Idolator]

3-D: Coming to a Theater Near You (at a Glacial Pace)

Kara Swisher — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 16:38:41 +0000

A billion dollar investment in digital technologies, struck between a handful of Hollywood studios and a consortium of big theater chains, got little notice earlier this week.

Under terms of the deal, the entertainment companies agreed to help defray the costs of rolling out more advanced digital technologies in 20,000 theaters, which will eventually lead to being able to see more movies using technologies like 3-D.

Even though there will be about two dozen 3-D movies released in the next few years–think Hannah Montana and the Jonas Brothers in concert popping out of screens–a very small number of theaters across the U.S. can handle the advanced technology 3-D requires.

Why? Well, it apparently costs about $70,000 to upgrade a screen. While studios are only paying a small fraction of that cost, one hopes they understand that upgrading theater facilities will be increasingly important in the years ahead.

Because while the gimmick of getting audiences to wear polarized lenses–yes, you still need them–3-D alone is probably not what will prompt most people to up their movie theater attendance (although 3-D movies do attract more people and command much higher prices).

But, even as digital technologies have exploded everywhere, the theater experience has changed in a negligible way over time.

While questions swirl around whether such upgrades pay off, there is no question it will be hard to know without some effort on behalf of the entertainment industry.

One might imagine a much more immersive theater experience or new ideas from filmmakers–I am not creative enough to come up with any good ones–to amplify a movie.

So we’ll just have to wait for Hollywood to come up with something–well beyond Miley Cyrus or Nick Jonas jumping right into the seats.