Sophia Perl of Wisdom

Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner #3 was OK, but love the free schwag!

Tonight I attended the 3rd Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner in Palo Alto.  Unlike the previous two, this one was not hosted by any company (e.g., Facebook, Google).  I first want to say that I am for any girl in tech events.  I think that the organization is doing some good things and I want to see it thrive.

Now, my event experience overall was OK.  I did not have as good of a time as I have had in the past, but then again different environment, different people.  Over 200 people attended.  You could imagine it was like a Chinese wedding reception without the married Chinese couple.  The cost of the event was $20 to cover dinner at a Chinese restaurant.  I chose to sit at the entrepreneurship topic table which took a long time to fill up, not sure why.  Then the food started coming out - fried rice, bok choy and tofu platter, and chinese chicken salad.  For sure, I thought more food was coming, I mean where is the meat dish.  Two hours later, I finally was convinced no more food was coming out.  Drats!

In any case, I did meet some women at my table.  One girl worked at Cisco but I knew her, another girl at Apple, another girl at Google, another girl doing a startup, another girl at Watercooler, and three other girls who I didn’t know what they did b/c I couldn’t hear them or they sat too far away from me.  I do admit that there was some dead time while we were eating and I started to get bored.  I noticed the other girls whipping out their internet-enabled phones and all I had was my watch to look at.

Then there was a slew of raffle prizes with announcements from attendees.  Most of the announcements were about upcoming events and job openings.  I was quite surprised that companies are still hiring.  For some reason, the line for the announcements keep getting longer and never ended.  Once again, I was getting bored.

So the gist of it is I’m not going to let one Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner spoil my opinion about the organization.  I just think that the lack of food made me grumpy and perhaps I should have mingled more.  Although it is difficult to mingle during dinners.  I’m still trying to figure out if a networking dinner could be effectively executed in which people get to know lots of folks.  Still working on it.

Last, but not least, there was a ton of free schwag - pink google coffee mug, adobe clock, bay area girl geek mug / she’s geeky mug, and other items.  You can call me a schwagger.  If you have some free schwag and want to send my way, shoot me an email.  I’ll blog about your company if you do.  Gosh, now I feel like I sell out.  Oh well…hahahahaha.

Consider the “Underdogs” as a niche market

This weekend I’ll be traveling to Tampa for the Super Bowl.  My husband is a huge Arizona Cardinal fan and this is for sure a once in a lifetime experience, who knows when the Cardinals will go to the Super Bowl again.  Probably never.  Now, we have always had a tough time finding Cardinal gear in general and the Super Bowl hype helps a tiny bit.  For instance, at our local sports store, we can now purchase a Super Bowl Cardinal hat and Super Bowl Cardinal and Steelers t-shirt.  But it just doesn’t seem like enough.  How come sports stores do not have embrace the less profitable “Underdogs”?  Well maybe the word unprofitable throws it off, but I would say that there is the long-tail effect going on.  There are tons of professional sports teams that have a smaller following, but when they see items that have their team name on it, they will fork out the dough.  Why not have a sports store that only sells “Underdog” gear?

A related topic is on niche markets.  When do you decide to tap into a niche market?  Well, if you have a portfolio of products, you should consider playing in the niche market to have presence.  An example is Levis.  I did an MBA school project on high-end jeans.  Levis is definitely not the company when you think of high-end jeans, you will probably think of True Religion, Seven, or Rock & Republic to name a few.  One executive from Levis said that the reason they play in the high-end (niche) market was to have presence.  They could not afford not to play in that market although it was not the most profitable market for them.

So what if you only have one product that is in a niche market?  If you consider the simple formula = sell price of product * quanity, then you want to be sure that either the sell price of the product is high enough and/or your quantity is high enough in order to sustain your business operations.  The luxury market is sell a few, but charge a ton for each.  Also something to think about, would your competitor that has a portfolio of products want to play in your niche market.  Can they do so without confusing their customers?  Does it make sense for Mercedes Benz to have a car that competes with a Volkswagon Beetle?  Probably not.

Challenge of calculating TAM

Lately, I’ve been doing some calculations of total available market (TAM) for business cases / plans.  How many times have you sat through a presentation and someone says, “this market is $5B and if we capture 0.01% then we get $50M”.  Well, it’s a bunch of BS.  First, can your product or service even play in the entire market of $5B?  For instance, if you’re selling digital music players and let’s say it’s a $1B market, but that includes sporty digital music players and your product is not a sporty one.  Well then the TAM is really smaller.

OK, so if you wanted to try coming up with a TAM besides a shot in the dark although they are mostly a shot in a dark, you can start by doing some secondary market research.  I start by doing a Google search and mostly find what I need.  Now if you honestly think that your idea is a new market with no prior research done, then you can either hire a marketing research firm to do the research for you or you can do your best to think of a similar market that best describes your unique market.  Imagine if you said I’m going to come out with the next best lipstick for pigs, you can look up data for how many pigs as pets there are in the US.  Then you can see if there are any statistics on how many pig owners or exotic pet owners dress up their pets.  It’s a stretch but you get the idea.

One other thing that I do is look to see if there is a similar growth trend with another industry.  For example, some say the state of the robotics industry is similar to the state of the personal computer industry back in the day.  Based on some growth rate, you could project how big the robotics industry will be in ‘X’ years.  Lastly, the Census is your friend.  I’ve often looked at the spending habits of certain groups of people (age, sex, geography, etc) on specific categories.  It will give you an idea of how much this group of folks will spend on an item that falls into a specific category.

The money in the traditional photography business

I recently ran into someone who has been in the photography business for a long time.  I was thinking about ways that she can make her business soar although I have very little experience in the industry.  However, general business skills apply to all industries.  I scoured the web and found some good postings too.

• 1. The money is in the printed products.  You should charge a premium for digital photos (or negatives).  I had a friend who just sent out her holiday cards.  All of the photos were taken by a professional photography and the photographer got the holiday cards made.  I asked my friend how much she paid for each card and she answered $10 a piece.  Whoa!  So, as a photographer you should first get the client to pay for the products, then maybe offer the digital prints as an addition at a high price.
• 2. Article on 52 ways to monetize your photos.
• 3. Article on Sending out holiday cards.  If you are sending out holiday cards anyways, might as well put your website and contact information on the greeting card photo.   This year, I actually put my blog website somewhere on my holiday cards.  I figured might as well take advantage of the print media and promote my blog to family members.  Hahahaha.
• 4. Spend more time marketing than behind the camera.  You need to find the clients first then take the photos.  Make sure your website rocks.  Give out your business card everywhere you go.
• 5. Be professional with your time lines.  If you are telling folks 2-4 weeks, then have the photos / products in 2-4 weeks.  If you want people to pay a lot for your service, then satisfy their requirements.
• 6. It’s OK to give your family members a discount, but be careful with the friend discount.  Like a hairstylist, you start to develop good relationships with clients who become friends or were already friends.  This is more so because of the time that you spend with the clients while taking pictures and what not.  Try not to get emotionally involved when it comes down to talking about business.  Your prices should already be set and probably already discussed before starting the picture taking process.  Stick to what you think that your work is worth.
• 7. Create packages so that your clients don’t have to think about what they want.

Have more ideas?  Post a comment!

Jennifer Convertibles lacks customer service

I rarely use my blog as a rant venue, but I thought this would be a good story.  A few weeks ago, I was shopping around for a sofa bed.  Since Jennifer Convertibles is known for sofa beds, I thought that I would start there.  This store is just off of Blossom Hill in San Jose, California.  There were two couches that I was deciding upon - a $400 one (fashion over function) and $300 one (very cushy, but not so fashionable).  I went ahead and decided on the more expensive one.  I asked the sales person Regi whether the bed mattress was the one that came with the sofa bed and she answered yes.  She even asked another store to confirm.  This bed mattress was memory foam one whereas the cheaper sofa bed had a coil mattress.  So the more expensive one had a nicer look and better bed mattress, let’s buy it!  I paid for the sofa bed and proceeded to head on out of the store, but wait a minute, why is the total over $700 including sofa bed sheets, shipping, and tax.  Oh, it’s because Regi charged us $100 more than the ticketed price on the sofa bed.  How silly!  Instead of fixing it right away, she completed the customer’s transaction after me which took another 15 minutes, then came back to me.  Believe it or not, it took an hour for her to figure out how to credit my credit card.  She even called other stores for assistance and no one knew how to do it.  Finally, she figured it out then we were on our way out of the store.  If Regi had treated me any differently besides nice, I would have thrown a fit b/c I do find it unacceptable to first overcharge, then to take an hour to fix her mistake.  I didn’t say a thing though, just waited patiently.

One day before delivery, I received a call from Jennifer, the store manager, about scheduling the delivery.  She first confirmed that I did not get the upholstery lifetime stain warranty ($99).  I told her we never buy warranties and we’ll just buy a new sofa.  By then, it’ll probably be outdated or we’ll want to give it away.  She responded with a remark indicating that I was crazy.  Umm, no, companies make a ton of money by selling warranties and they ask customers to jump through hoops to claim the warranty.  I’d rather not go through all of that headache.  In any case, delivery time was scheduled.

Now to the delivery day.  The delivery guys came between their allotted time period.  They put it in my office and I decided to check out the sofa bed functionality to make sure everything was working.  Then to my surprise, the freaking bed mattress was the coil mattress like that of the cheaper sofa bed.  I frantically called the store asking about what was going on.  Jennifer, the store manager, answered the phone and said that this is the couch that we bought.  We explained to her that Regi said that the sofa bed on the floor display would be exactly what we would receive and that Regi even confirmed with another store.  Jennifer said that Regi was new and so forth.  We said not our problem.  Regi got on the phone and told us that there is a $200 charge for the memory foam mattresses, hmm, seems that she left that off when we were buying the sofa bed.  Interesting how she is now telling us something totally different.  We tried to return the couch but Jennifer, store manager, said that we would incur a 20-30% cancellation charge.  I’m starting to think that I’ve been had.  They first sell me a couch that was not what I expected and now I’m stuck with a cancellation fee if I want to return it.  I told Jennifer I am not going to buy anything from your company again.  She said thank you and hung up on me.

After that, I decided to post a Yelp review on the particular store and email the corporate office.

Morale of the story:

• - If your company makes a mistake, do what you can to fix it.  Don’t cover it up.  The customer is always right.
• - Make sure your prices are marked appropriately.  If the product doesn’t include this or that, make sure that the customer knows upfront.  Customers hate being deceived.

Update 1/5/2009, email from corporate:

Good afternoon,
I am very sorry to hear that. I went ahead and forwarded your email to the appropriate person and showroom responsible for the issue you are experiencing, and they should be contacting you within 24-48 hours. If you do not hear from them, please notify me. Thank you for contacting Jennifer Convertibles.

Update 1/7/2009, sent email to follow-up to corporate:

Hi,

I have not received a phone call or email yet.

Update 1/11/2009, email from corporate:

I have forwarded this email to the general Manager in Northern California.
I’m sure he will contact you shortly, if he has not already done so.
Perhaps the previously sent email did not get through properly to him.

Jennifer Convertibles

Update 1/14/2009, phone call from a manager from San Francisco:

Summary: He was quite nice and offered to resolve the mattress issue.  He said that there was one on clearance that he would hold for us throughout the weekend.  I thought that was fair of him.  All and all, I just wished the JC management had treated me like this from the very beginning.  It was a drawn out ordeal.

Advice for MBA-destined Techies

Last week a current UC Davis full-time MBA student contacted me via email asking for an interest interview.  He had gotten my email from the school or alumni database rather.  I agreed, as if you can’t tell by now, I love to talk.  So he introduced himself saying that he had a PhD in Software Engineering, etc etc.  Then he started asking me questions.  Keep in mind that I attended MBA school as a working professional, so my perspective is a bit different.

• 1. Unless you switch jobs within your company, your MBA does not mean anything.  No one ever looks at your resume while you are still in your current job.
• 2. Not all jobs require an MBA especially in the tech industry.  Make sure that you’ve done your homework with what type of job that you want when you finish your MBA.  For instance, if you want to be a software manager or get into management, you don’t need an MBA.  Another thing to point out, if you are start-up bound, the first people that start-ups hire are not business folks.  At the early stages, they want people who can get their hands dirty and help develop the product.  What good is a business person if you don’t have a product to show or sell.  Perhaps you can argue that the business person can focus on customer requirements to bring back to the developers.  OK, I buy that, but then you only need one of these types of people.  This means less opportunities.
• 3. If you want a job that requires an MBA, make sure that the company’s headquarters are located in your city.  I see very few corporate jobs located outside the corporate headquarter location.  Increase your chances of getting that job and look for where the company headquarters are located.
• 4. Do a business plan competition.  What better way to showcase your business skills that cuts across marketing, sales, accounting, etc.  If you happen to place, what a better deal.  This is something that you can put on your resume.
• 5. If you are a full-time MBA student, get involved with club leadership.  I see very few MBA students who decide not to take on any leadership.  Take it one step further and make sure that the club was better after you got involved.  These are the types of things that companies want to hear during interviews.
• 6. Take advantage of networking events.  You’d be surprised at how many alumni are willing to help current students.  Don’t be afraid to get contact information from class guest speakers/panelists or alumni at a local happy hour.  Also, stay in contact.  No one does favors for just anybody.
• 7. Check out the MBA school career center.  How does the school prepare its students for internships and jobs?  What sort of companies does the school attract?  If you are still debating which school to attend, perhaps you should attend one of the school’s career fairs.  See who shows up and how aggressive they are recruiting the MBA students.
• 8. If you are currently working and have an employee directory, do a quick search for MBA education and see what job titles these folks have in your company.  When I did this, I realized not many MBA jobs were available in California except for sales positions.  It was an eye-opener.  However, for those that were not in sales, I sent them an email asking to chat with them some more.  I wanted to see how did the MBA education help them get the job that they currently have and if it was worth getting an MBA for that job.  The feedback was 50/50.
• 9. If you are looking into part-time programs, don’t focus so much on the part-time program rankings.  When you get your MBA degree, it doesn’t say part-time MBA.  So look at the full-time program rankings and based your decision on that.  You may encounter some part-time programs w/o full-time programs, in that case you are out of luck b/c how can someone compare your program with the full-time programs.  Make a careful decision as to what you want to do.  My advice, first consider part-time programs with full-time programs.

Alright, I hope that some of this advice helps someone out.  If you have more that you want to add, add a comment and share with the rest of us.