This & That, Ceci et Cela » Business

Extreme Soccer

Geekette — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 17:56:18 +0000

The BBC reports that Last month Fifa decided to prohibit international tournaments and World Cup qualifying matches anywhere above 2,500m (8,200ft). The decision, which affects many South American nations, has been seen as an insult in Bolivia. … Bolivian President Evo Morales has snubbed Fifa’s ban on high-altitude football matches by playing his own at 6,000m (19,700 ft) above sea level.

Well, for every reaction, there is usually an equal and opposite reaction. So, in this day of paying mondo moolah to relish some toil & hardship (sometimes known as detox, adventure, or “eco” travel), I’m predicting that the latest addition will be extreme or high-altitude soccer holiday packages. Word. You heard it here first. Check it out: jet to beautiful places like South America, practice the fastest growing religion (aka soccer) at extreme altitudes, maybe even get a chance to hang out with peeps like El Presidente de Coca, Evo Morales? Sounds like a hot business plan to me! Shoot, I’d like to see all those “extreme athletes” out there put their money where their mouths are and kick us a goal or two at 20,000ft!

UPDATE:
BBC reports that Fifa has relaxed its ban on World Cup qualifiers being played at altitude, imposing a new limit of 3,000 metres. … The increase now allows Colombia to play in their capital Bogota (2,640m), and Ecuador to play in Quito (2,800m). Bolivia are still banned from playing in La Paz (3,650m), and Peru cannot stage internationals in Cuzco (3,400m). Fifa imposed the ban on medical grounds, and claimed high altitude provided an unfair home advantage. Fifa’s executive committee re-examined its controversial ban amid differing medical opinions on the effects of playing at altitude. Andean doctors on Conmebol’s medical panel insisted that it causes “no major problems” provided there has been a period of acclimatisation. Other medical experts claimed playing at elevation causes headaches, nausea, fatigue and insomnia.

Extreme soccer potential still holds.

Ten Good Reasons Not To Buy A Franchise

Geekette — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 15:49:27 +0000

Excellent advice from Nolo on why you may be better off investing your time and money elsewhere:

1. Questionable profitability.
Most franchisers do not provide much information to potential franchisees regarding earnings possibilities, making it difficult to assess how lucrative investment in the company could be. Even the franchisers who do supply this information usually give only average sales figures and profits before expenses are deducted, numbers that aren’t very helpful when trying to determine if your individual franchise will be successful.

2. High startup costs.
Before opening your franchise, you may be required to pay a nonrefundable initial franchise fee, which can cost from several thousand to several hundred thousand dollars. In addition to the initial fee, there are also usually high startup costs associated with furnishing your franchise with the necessary inventory and equipment. It can easily take several years to recoup the expenses connected with getting your franchise off the ground.

3. Encroachment.
Imagine the following scenario: You have just spent thousands of dollars opening your own GasMart station when another GasMart station opens across the street, essentially cutting your customer base in half. This type of thing happens to franchisees all the time, as nearly every franchiser reserves the right to operate anywhere he or she wants.

4. Lack of legal recourse.
As a franchisee, there is little legal recourse that you can take if you are wronged by the franchiser. Most franchisers make franchisees sign agreements waiving his or her rights under applicable federal and state law, and some agreements contain provisions allowing the franchiser to choose the venue and the law under which any dispute would be litigated. Shamefully, the Federal Trade Commission, which is supposed to regulate fairness in franchising, investigates less than 6% of the franchise-related complaints it receives.

5. Limited independence.
When you buy a franchise, you are not just buying the right to use the franchiser’s name. You are buying its business plan as well. As a result, most franchisers impose price, appearance and design standards on franchisees, limiting the ways you can operate the franchise. While these regulations can help promote uniformity, they can also be stifling to franchisees who feel they could run the business more effectively their own way.

6. Royalty payments.
Franchisees are generally required to make continuing royalty payments to the franchiser each month based on a percentage of his or her franchise’s sales, eating into the franchisee’s net profits.

7. Inflated pricing on supplies.
In many cases, the franchiser can designate your franchise’s supplier of goods and services. Franchisers argue that this is done to maintain quality control, but almost all franchisers receive kickbacks from the vendors. By not allowing you to shop around and subsequently limiting competition, you are forced to pay higher prices on supplies.

8. Restrictions on post-term competition.
Let’s say that you decide to purchase a McDonald’s, but after a couple of years you determine that you could run a higher-quality, more profitable burger joint on your own. Unfortunately, due to noncompetition clauses built into almost every franchise agreement, franchisees are not allowed to become independent business owners in a similar business after termination of the franchise agreement. By purchasing a franchise, you may be unwittingly limiting your business opportunities for years after the expiration of your contract.

9. Advertising fees.
Many franchisees are obligated to make regular contributions to the franchiser’s advertising fund. Franchisers maintain broad discretion over how to administer the advertising fund, and the money you contribute does not necessarily need to be used to target your specific franchise. In a case against Meineke Discount Muffler Shops, for example, it was discovered that Meineke was using the advertising fund for costs wholly separate from advertising, yet the case was ruled in Meineke’s favor under a verdict that stated that the franchiser has no fiduciary duty to its franchisees!

10. Unfair termination.
Even the slightest impropriety on your part, such as being late on a royalty payment or violating the franchise’s standard operating procedure, can be cause for the franchiser to terminate your agreement. While most franchisers are not this strict, the possibility of losing your entire investment for being late on a payment is a scary thought.

Piracy 2.0: hijacking the entire brand

Geekette — Mon, 01 May 2006 16:14:42 +0000

While product piracy and counterfeiting becomes increasingly widespread, another dimension has reared itself: brand hijacking or corporate identity theft. Most counterfeiting usually centres on specific products within industries like electronic hardware, software, or luxury goods, not the companies themselves. With personal identity theft, the thief assumes the identity of the victim by utilizing personal information (social insurance number, credit card details, etc). The corporate version involves organizations fraudulently assuming and conducting business with the identity of another company. For example, electronics firm NEC recently discovered that a large, extremely organized group had set up a parallel brand faking the entire NEC company top to bottom, including management and operation layers.
The counterfeiters had a network of more than 50 factories in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Posing as NEC, the pirates used the factories to produce fake NEC products, and even developed entirely new product ranges under the NEC brand name. Indeed, some of the factors that tipped off the real NEC included receiving complaints about products that they had never made or provided warranties for. –Imagine getting a call complaining about your square doughnuts when you’ve only ever made round doughnuts!
The IHT article also notes that the factories involved cannot necessarily be blamed; many of them believed they were dealing with the real NEC. They even paid royalties to the fake NEC for the rights to produce “licensed” products. In return, they received bogus paperwork certifying them as authorized partners/licensees so they had no reason to suspect otherwise. Additionally, while the counterfeiting occurs in China, in many cases, the person or organization placing and funding the orders is not in China.

Datagraphic candy: Africa

Geekette — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 17:48:33 +0000

Some candy for all infographic/datagraphy pimps out there. Also for those with the ignorant habit of referring to Africa as one country rather than as a continent containing 61 specific countries/territories; school yourself with this comparative map via Hash:

And while you’re at it, some factoids via the Wikipedia peeps:
Africa is the world’s second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia.

At about 30,300,000 km² (11,700,000 mi²) including adjacent islands, it covers 5.9% of the Earth’s total surface area, and 20.3% of the total land area.

With more than 840,000,000 people (as of 2005) in 61 territories, it accounts for more than 12% of the world’s human population.

Missed Dubai? Get Qatar then!

Geekette — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 06:00:00 +0000

Those who missed the China trade boat (early fishers get the best dibs) are latching onto the India services train. Likewise, if you missed the Dubai money/real estate flight, you can still catch the Qatar resources rocket. The tiny gulf nation is due to overtake Switzerland’s per capita GDP next year and become the biggest global exporter of LNG (liquefied natural gas) by the end of this decade. LNG is currently being pimped as the cleaner, safer fuel of the future and Qatargas expects LNG exports to rise to 17.3 million tons annually by 2009, with supply agreements in place for 25.2 million tons by 2012. With heavily populated, fast-growing economies like that of China and India feening for such resources, its a win-win outlook.

Not that you needed further proof, but if he’s sniffing around Qatar, you bet there’s some liquid gold up in there:

Not one to put all its eggs in one basket, Qatar is also embarking on economic diversification into areas like real estate, travel and education.

N’Orleans: It ain’t over until it’s over.

Geekette — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 06:00:00 +0000

From random looting to architectural theft in New Orleans:

Professional photographer Keith Calhoun is resigned to the hurricane that destroyed his studio. And he has even reconciled himself to the pilfering of negatives he had stored there. But what has him spitting nails is the recent looting of the fat cypress beams that had kept his Victorian-era building standing — and that would be key to putting it back together. The beams — or joists — long pieces of dense, 19th-century timber that support roofs and floors and are virtually impossible to purchase new, fetch about $10 a running foot at a salvage yard, Mr. Calhoun says. He reckons he lost a truckload of antique wood.

Mr. Calhoun suspects that common thieves working his neighborhood wouldn’t be going after antique building materials such as joists, mantels and Victorian shutters unless they were being directed to by someone in the know. The value, he says, is only clear to renovators and aficionados of historic design. … Police say they have begun to see evidence of architectural pilfering, and they suspect out-of-state work crews are the source of much of the looting (WSRJ).

Pimp this: Russian Lawyer latte-whips Starbucks

Geekette — Sun, 20 Nov 2005 07:00:00 +0000

Got to love his opportunism!

“For Seattle-based Starbucks Corporation, famous for its coffee beverages, Zuykov has for a long time represented a barrier to entry on the Russian market. This Russian lawyer who registered the Starbucks brand for himself said he acted in accordance with Russian laws. These laws in no way contradict the U.S. legislature in this sphere. It is the Americans, Zuykov says, who invented annulling rights for brands which are effective when a brand is not used for a period of time in a certain territory.
Starbucks registered its trademark in Russia when the company was not interested in entering the country’s market, and it was annulled, Zuykov told The Moscow News. Everyone could follow in his footsteps. After learning that the brand is not used in Russia it can be annulled in the chamber on patent disputes. Then anyone can register the brand under his own name. The registration costs some $20.”

Riots in France: one perspective

Geekette — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 06:00:00 +0000

Interesting insight to the socio-political landscape that frames the riots. Specifically:

“A French employee works 30% fewer hours than a British worker, and a much smaller percentage of the French population than the British works at all, yet total French output is very nearly equal in value to British. In other words, the French are much more efficient economically than the British. But their relative efficiency has been bought at a price: the creation of a large caste of people more or less permanently unintegrated into the rest of society.

A Martian observing France dispassionately, without ideological preconceptions, would come to the conclusion that the French had accepted with equanimity a kind of social settlement in which all those with jobs would enjoy various legally sanctioned perks and protections, while those without jobs would remain unemployed forever, though they would be tossed enough state charity to keep body and cellphone together. And since there are many more employed people than unemployed people in France, this is a settlement that suits most people, who will vote for it forever. It is therefore politically unassailable, either by the left or the right, which explains the paralysis of the French state in the present impasse.

The only fly in the ointment (apart from the fact that the rest of the economies of the world won’t leave the French economy in peace) is that the portion of the population whom the interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, so tactlessly, but in the secret opinion of most Frenchmen so accurately, referred to as the “racaille” (scum) is not very happy with the settlement as it stands. It wants to be left alone to commit crimes uninterrupted by the police, as is its inalienable right”.

Hit WSJ for More

One downside of pimping your school name

Geekette — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 06:00:00 +0000

Canada’s Queen’s School of Business has announced that it is returning a $1m donation from David Radler and stripping his name from a wing of its business school. Mr Radler, a former right-hand man of Conrad Black at Hollinger International, faces 29 months in prison for his role in a $32m fraud at the media conglomerate.

This comes soon after an announcement in August by Seton Hall University in New Jersey that it has stripped Dennis Kozlowski’s name from the building housing its business school. The decision came after Mr Kozlowski, a Seton Hall alumnus who was convicted in June of looting millions from Tyco, had called the university’s president and requested that his name be removed. Officials at Imperial College’s Tanaka Business School in London may be hoping for a similar call from their benefactor, Gary Tanaka. Earlier this year, Mr Tanaka was charged with theft from the Amerindo investment fund he once managed. All these schools could learn a lesson from the City of London University which renamed its business school after Sir John Cass when Sir John’s trust fund gave it a generous donation. Sir John’s name is unlikely to be slurred. The former Lord Mayor of London died in 1718 (via Economist).

Yahoo to earth: it’s always about the ka-ching!

Geekette — Mon, 24 Oct 2005 06:00:00 +0000

“Yahoo has suffered a good deal of opprobrium since it was revealed last month that, when government officials came calling, the company’s Hong Kong division simply surrendered information on a Chinese citizen who had presumably sought refuge, anonymity and a bit of freedom in the bosom of a Yahoo e-mail address: huoyan1989@yahoo.com.cn.
Shi Tao, the journalist using that address, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for sharing with foreigners a message that his newspaper had received from Chinese authorities, warning it not to overplay the 15th anniversary in June of the killing of pro-democracy demonstrators near Tiananmen Square. Yahoo, meanwhile, gets to keep its piece of the gigantic China pie, insisting like most Western companies doing business there that it must abide by the laws of countries in which it operates.”

Well, silly us for thinking it was ever about anything else but the bottom line! Thanks for the reminder.