This month's letters to the editor.
A Man and His Monkey
Reading about Paul Frank is such a breath of fresh air [How I Did It, August]. Finally, here's a successful entrepreneur I can relate to. This guy lived at home until he was 31, borrowed $5,000 from his friend's stepmom, and now he's kicking ass. There are a lot of entrepreneurs like Frank who didn't have trust funds, degrees from Ivy League schools followed by six-month tours of Europe, or successful family businesses that were handed to them. (Yes, I'm jealous.) I think that his story will touch them. It did me.
I'm proud to say that Paul Frank is my son. He continually amazes our family with his creativeness and generosity. When he has the time, he holds art camps for children and visits local schools to show the students how to create art.
It is nice to know my family helped Paul Frank at the beginning. My great-grandfather, John Nelson, invented the sock-knitting machine, for which he was granted patents in 1869, 1876, and 1879. He incorporated the Nelson Knitting Co. in 1880. The Forest City Knitting Co. formed in 1891. These two companies manufactured the socks that were originally used to make the monkey dolls that became the inspiration for Paul Frank's cartoon character Julius. The red heel was added in 1932.
But Is the Future Bright?
The last line of your August article on smart ads [The Future of Advertising Is Here, August] says it all: "As if you had a choice." All the futuristic technology in the world won't help ads be more effective until we move beyond the traditional assumption that advertising has to be interruptive.
True innovation in advertising would be creating campaigns that fit into the customer's world (rather than trying to disrupt it), are honest, are easy to use, and show the customer how to take action without demanding it. Most of all, we need to find ways to make ads that deliver information that people actually want.
Seeing Claria on the list of trend-setting advertisers piqued my ire. Claria is a notorious purveyor of adware. I routinely remove Claria's products, which are flagged as threats by the major anti-spyware programs such as Spybot and Ad-Aware. Claria's products cross the line by showing excessive ads that degrade the performance of users' computers.
I'd like less advertising. I ignore commercials. If I feel I'm being bothered by an intrusive advertisement, I make a conscious decision to never buy that product. The same goes for pop-up ads. If a company uses them, it can count me as one sale lost forever.
It will be interesting to see which of these new forms of advertising will catch on. It seems to me that some of these new ideas are more creative than they are effective.
Ryan Treft
Ad manager
OnyxAdvertising.com
Salt Lake City
For a fee I would put an ad on my SUV. It would, of course, have to be something appropriate. I drive around in Orange County, Calif., so it would get a lot of exposure--and I wouldn't mind the extra cash.
Mary Platter
Property manager
Grove Investment Co.
Costa Mesa, Calif.
A-Blogging We Will Go
I think every business owner would benefit from reading Hillary Johnson's ode to the business section of the blogosphere [Why I Read Business Blogs, August]. Blogging is becoming the new media, and companies should hop onboard before they miss the boat.
Why SawStop Stopped
There are genuine issues that have prevented the power-tool industry from adopting SawStop [He Came, He Sawed, He Took On the Power-Tool Industry, July]. Elsewhere, I've read that adding a SawStop to consumer table saws would add at least $100 to the price. With low-price saws available for under $100, the 100% cost increase is not comparable to airbags, which add maybe 2% to 5% to the cost of a car.
Every time the SawStop brake engages, the brake and often the blade are destroyed. The cost of a brake is listed at $60 on SawStop's website. Blades come as cheap as $5. For a consumer, a false trip can cost at least $65, and the project must be stopped to replace the blade and brake. (It would often mean a trip to the hardware store, too.) While it's hard to argue against the what-is-the-cost-of-a-finger angle, I believe few consumers are willing to pay that much of a premium for safety technology. Many users already remove existing safety devices (such as blade guards) because they aren't convenient. Mr. Gass's crusade is admirable, but he seems far out of touch with his marketplace.
Maybe someday SawStop will become a standard safety device, but I believe the industry manufacturers are correct in their current assessment. If Mr. Gass is not confident enough in his technology to indemnify other manufacturers against failure, then they should not take on the litigation risks of adopting a first-generation safety device that adds tremendous expense and inconvenience to customers.
Users today have the option of buying a table saw with or without SawStop. Let's give the market a chance to show if consumers find this product valuable.
Clueless Customer Service
Tech companies are the worst when it comes to customer service [How to Lose Customers, July]. I've spent hours and hours on the phone with dweebs who have an instruction manual but don't know anything.
I think Norm Brodsky hit the nail on the head when he said that some of these service providers act as if "a customer exists only to help them maintain a comfortable lifestyle." It makes me wonder if bad customer service is written into some business models.
Fire When Ready
Vance Patterson was right to trim that dead wood [Case Study, July]. I had to do the same thing in my company. In order to get production rolling, I offered retraining to all employees. I laid off the ones who decided not to participate. I did one massive layoff of 22 employees in the company's corporate conference room. During the next two months I hired just seven new people, and they did a better job than the previous 22 combined.
I applaud vance patterson's decision to change the culture in his company. Just because things got out of control does not mean it will happen again, as one of the experts suggested.
It is not always the owner's fault when employees don't approach work with a positive attitude. We all know people who are always down about something. It is not good for a company to have so many people on staff with negative attitudes. Patterson should be congratulated for making changes to create a fun workplace.
Correction
In the August issue's "SBA All-Stars," a photo of a city skyline was mislabeled. It was Los Angeles. We regret the error.
