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The Future of Marketing

I'm amazed that search advertising, the most pervasive new marketing tool, was not included in your New Basics of Marketing feature. Small and medium-size businesses are bailing out of traditional offline marketing mediums, like the yellow pages, in droves. That's because the vast majority of consumers are using the Internet to search for local goods and services. A recent study showed that 60 percent of customers are now using search engines as their primary source instead of telephone books. So as important as it was to educate your readership on the basics of marketing, search advertising is an obvious omission. It's the biggest slice of the digital marketing pie and quickly trending upward.

Zorik Gordon
co-founder and CEO
ReachLocal
Woodland Hills, California

Under the heading "Where should I go for ideas?" the authors write that you should visit your competitors' websites. I'd say a better plan would be to enlist a competent Internet marketing company to come up with fresh strategies and ideas. Just because your competitor has a website with different features than yours doesn't mean it's effective. Finding what works for your company's website takes planning, implementation, and testing.

Todd Muffley
President
Plan B Marketing
Carmel, Indiana

The Reell Deal

Bo Burlingham's article about Reell Precision Manufacturing was intriguing [Paradise Lost]. Employee-owned companies are at their best when they can help their employees focus on how the company makes money, and when they give employees the freedom to help increase revenue. Companies like Jack Stack's Springfield ReManufacturing, for instance, are classic "loose-tight" organizations, with lots of individual and team responsibilities offset by a lot of latitude from management in how to do things. Reell is trying to be just that kind of company, despite the upheaval in its market. Burlingham suggests that the fact that the company is 43 percent owned by its employees is an impediment to raising outside capital. Actually, many employee-owned companies have done that quite well, including Reflexite, which appeared on the cover of Inc. when all its employee owners were named Entrepreneurs of the Year. Other employee-owned companies have gone public, merged with other companies, or been through private placements.

Corey Rosen
Executive director
National Center for Employee Ownership
Oakland, California

Bo Burlingham's article about Reell Manufacturing illustrates one of the biggest dilemmas facing American businesses: How do you keep your company competitive while supporting the position that people are your most important assets? The article points out how tough it is to keep employees attuned to a new mission and vision after significant changes in strategy. In these situations there's always too much change and no one managing the change process. In my experience, Jack Stack's approach in The Great Game of Business is the best way to give employees the critical information they need to make the right decisions for a business.

Bill Lisowski
Naperville, Illinois

I suspect that if Reell Manufacturing didn't have a culture that valued employees, the struggles it went through would have been much worse. It's like the old "relationship bank accounts" concept. Reell made a lot of deposits to its relationship bank account, and it withdrew that capital when it laid off workers. For what it's worth, some of these problems could probably have been avoided if Reell had had a much greater sense of urgency about diversifying its products.

Michael Lee Stallard
President
E Pluribus Partners
Greenwich, Connecticut

The Five-Year IPO

Your story about the initial public offering of Reed's was accurate as far as it went, but I'm dismayed by the lack of detail regarding Chris Reed's misdeeds, micromanagement, and absurd decision-making process [His Way, February].

For six years, I educated Reed and funded his enterprise. He failed to mind my compliance lessons, and, in my opinion, he chooses his associates poorly. Reed lied to you. Nobody asked for $800,000 up-front to play underwriter. My lawyers were willing to work for shares, my accountants committed to a $50,000 cap, and the underwriters asked for $50,000 for due diligence. Reed rejected my people because they did not "get the reading."

Get the reading? Yes, Reed makes his decisions using card readings. Playing solitaire, he tallies the remaining cards at the end of each game and then applies numerology to answer his questions. That's why, instead of engaging the professionals I recommended, Reed used a solo lawyer in a Santa Monica condominium and low-rent accountants from Oxnard, who charged less per hour but exponentially more in total billings.

I protest the short shrift your article gave my efforts. I raised several million dollars for Reed over three and a half years while he burned cash and produced losses. In addition, I fielded calls from shareholders and solved problems for Chris and his staff at all hours of the day and night. In spite of this constant reliance upon my counsel, he treated me with disrespect and still fails to pay my long-overdue invoices. Reed raised $8 million in his IPO and another $9 million in a private placement -- and he is once more searching for money.

Chris Reed is a great creator and a poor manager. For the good of shareholders -- I'm still one -- the founder must now step aside.

Peter Sharma III
Sirius/pureprophet
Santa Monica, California

Attention, Please!

I'm glad that Norm Brodsky addressed the relationship between entrepreneurs and attention deficit disorder [Street Smarts, February]. He really hit it on the head in the first two paragraphs. It's too bad that ADD is something people do their best to keep in the closet. I wish more CEOs with ADD would come forward, as Bill Samuels Jr. of Makers Mark and Charles Schwab have with their dyslexia. ADD is an advantage for entrepreneurs in so many ways. I have to go now -- I'm about to get distracted.

Jeff B. Bannister
CEO
Serve-One Process Serving
Greenville, South Carolina

Norm Brodsky's mention of ADD and dyslexia in his column about Steven Friedman struck me at my core. I must admit I almost felt like crying. I have never been diagnosed, but based on my experiences, I know I have both conditions. I've always been ashamed to admit it for fear of ridicule. Like Steven Friedman, I've got so many ideas in my head. My main problem is that I've never been able to focus on one idea and make it work. I plan to take Norm Brodsky's advice. Reading your article has given me a renewed sense of focus.

Jacob Mani
Business development associate
Intellectual Capital Services
New York City

A New Set of Wheels

Steve Meginniss, the developer of Magic Wheels [Elevator Pitch, February], deserves credit for his success in commercializing the Sonicare toothbrush. But assistive technology for the disabled is a highly specialized market. The comments from the investors in this article didn't address a key question: Is this something people who use wheelchairs might actually want? The investors seem to think this is just a matter of pricing or partnering with a vendor. The truth is much more complex. Wheelchair users regularly pull the wheels off their chairs to stow the chairs while they drive. Do these wheels easily detach? How much do they weigh? This is a market that's as nuanced as any other. The investors who commented on Mr. Meginniss's product didn't have much expertise in this field, which was a disservice to your readers.

Randy Dipner
Founding partner
Meeting the Challenge
Colorado Springs, Colorado

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