Sounds + Food 'n' Retail

I bet you that these are two words you won't often read in the blogosphere. Usually when something ends, it is accompanied by a deafening silence, which, years later, is broken by a nice 404-page announcing that this page/blog no longer exists.

I don't like ending things, but prefer to do so as loud and clear as possible, as it both forces me to stop something and to do something else instead.

So this blog has ended! Which is logical, as it has, from the beginning, been a limited enterprise, a conduit into the world of food and retail, even though I'm pretty much decided—though never say never—that the food-industry is not where I am going.

The truth is that I have learned a lot these last 6-7 months, enough to form a relatively clear vision of what I want and what values I believe in. The food-industry is a great vehicle for that:

• It's low-tech, it's not rocket-science to follow the path of a good from the farm to a person's kitchen.
• It's a people-business (whatever Harvard business review may say), and understanding people's taste and expectations of food is translatable to any other industry.
• It's a global industry and affected by economic cycles, just like any other industry.
• It's got a variety of business models to choose from—from restaurants to supermarkets, from franchises to super—fmcg—companies.
• etc. etc.

I encourage anyone who has some learning to do on a subject, to start a blog about it (for a limited time) and write to their heart's content. Just don't confuse your learning-project with a media-project, or else you'll never end it! And know that your innocent passion in the beginning may take into a completely different direction in the end!

Reasons for me to stop are personal and I won't discuss them here*. These last few years, I wrote a lot, which means I had to come up with new ideas daily, find new and better ways to communicate them, and of course gather new information constantly. And I enjoyed it most of the time, though now it is time to put those creative and problem-solving skills to use in a different environment.

So… here I go and retire from this activity. That also includes my work on Tech IT Easy, btw., though I expect that my co-bloggers are more than capable of producing great content (and hope this post hasn't depressed them too much).

In the words of Mr. Hodgman, "That is all!", and in the words of Mr. Murrow, "Good Night, and Good Luck!"

Sincerely yours,
Vincent van Wylick

*: Anyone who knows me, knows that they can reach me anytime and discuss what's going on in their life and mine. To the visitors of this blog, you can also feel free to drop me a mail, knowing that, even though any subject will be treated with complete respect and confidentiality, my time is limited.

All right, in 10 mins or less…

I just started reading a series of essays, entitled "Wish I'd known: Insights and inspirations from the journeys of successful entrepreneurs." Do a search, and you'll find it for free online. One essay finishes with:

"I wish I'd started younger and wish I appreciated how much family and friends would support me beyond what was reasonable and fair. I wish I'd know it was OK to have fun and in so doing not taken myself so seriously—the journey is often superior to the destination."

Words to live by!

Last weekend, I wrote the acknowledgements for my thesis. The cherry on top, which I'd left for one of the last things to finish. And it would've been impossible to write it before anyhow, as even in the last lap there were/are people driving me on.

During the writing, one person died, another got terminal cancer. Both much too young and undeserving of such a fate. And both of whom I consider good friends, whom I trusted and who trusted me. In part it was the thoughts about them that prevented me from giving up.

But, strangely perhaps, it was also my little brother, just 19 years of age, that was unrelenting in pushing me forward and not letting me quit. It was as silly as him telling me 6 months ago, "I want you to finish this in three weeks," which got me to get my act together, perhaps taking longer than three weeks, but not stopping until I was done.

And it was all the people I interviewed for this study—my subjects, and ultimately my customers—all of whom unquestionably agreed to share their wisdom and whom I ultimately do it for.

It's only about a page worth of acknowledgements, but it is for the people on that page that I spent countless months writing, that I ultimately produced a 120 page-document for, and without whom I wouldn't be anywhere close to where I am today.

That… is the value of support and why nothing is impossible!

(No picture, as I found nothing that could do them justice)

Dear reader,
If you've been following my blog, which is kind of you, you may have noticed both a drop-off in posts, and, more importantly, a drop-off in relevancy.

To put it bluntly: I'm bored of the topic! I've been researching this industry to the extent that everything seems similar, rising food prices, fmcg-marketing strategies, the "organic" differentiator, etc. etc., it all feels like I've seen it before, and I'm struggling to come up with new and interesting topics.

In addition to this, and this is entirely my fault, I'm stuck with a project that doesn't want to finish itself, my thesis that refuses to get published, or rather that I refuse to be published. The effect is that I'm sitting behind a PC… a lot… and not experiencing/talking with insiders/etc. enough to get fresh perspectives on the field of "third places" and feel productive in that setting.

I'm not going to abandon this blog; no, very likely I'll continue to publish several posts per week. However, some, if not all, will not exactly be on topic; they will likely be discussing things going through my mind, on business, on art, on technology, etc. and hopefully on sounds + food 'n' retail as well.

Until I dig myself out of this valley, and I will, I hope you'll be patient and not hold my lack of focus against me. I still aim to be a producer of excellence in mine and your world.

Sincerely,
Vincent van Wylick
Main honcho @ foodandretail.blogspot.com

When I started this blog as an experiment, I purposefully kept it vague, while maintaining a fairly clear industry-focus. However, taking a value-chain view of food & retail only gives you so much. It allows you to identify tensions and possible opportunities, but unless you want to be a consultant regarding value-chain issues or are the strategist within a business, it doesn't really bring you all that much.

Where the imagination really kicks in—and you need that to think of new business ideas—is when you start matching you— the individual or groups of individuals with a particular skill- and experience-set—with a particular opportunity that you can feel both passionate about, and confident that your skills & resources are sufficient to add value to it.

Blogging about FnR allowed me to look at segments in the industry, such as:

• farming
• supermarkets
• franchises
• online-retailers
• electronics retailers
• coffee-shops
• restaurants
• cinemas
• furniture-stores
• and fitness-studios

As well as product-areas, like:

• fast-moving consumer-goods
• coffee
• beer
• private labels
• organic food
• and media

And of course a lot of business-issues around it.

However, starting or working in a business is of course more than writing about it. It's the process of building up a vision, gathering up resources to execute it, and executing it. I was reminded of how powerful such a vision can be just last night when I was evaluating a business-idea and what it would take to execute it (I ended up dismissing it for now).

And of course, starting a business is not the same as running a business, the latter of which can be defined as a sustainable* process of making money (*: not in the environmentally-friendly sense of the word). So many stages to go still.

Will this have consequences for this blog? In the short-term, the next few months, probably not much. I'll still be looking at more industry-segments, product-areas, and business-issues. Ultimately though, I will have to focus on one particular industry-segment and one or a set of related product-areas. Of course, when that happens, I'll continue to share my thoughts here, as that is my not-so-secret way to build mindshare (insert: evil laugh).

Take care,
V.

Dear readers,

I'll be taking a few days to a few weeks off to reflect on my current state and activities, my goals and the steps needed to reach them. I'll likely post a few thoughts about this on Tech IT Easy in the near future, as that seems more suited for that somehow.

Until then, my links are being still updated and I'll discuss some of them this weekend again. At the end of this month, I'll also wrap-up what I've covered in February 2008.

Until then, take care,
Vincent

I'm in a philosophical mood today, after having spend an hour this morning sorting through the rough drafts for this blog (estimated at around 150), which I categorised as "idea," "rough notes," "feature complete," and "send it already." There were so many of them that I found myself a little overwhelmed to address a single one, a little afraid to miss seeing the forest through the trees, and instead decided to write about a core-principle in my life: story-telling.

I'm very attracted to the concept of telling stories. It's perhaps a little difficult to explain, but certainly related to the reason why I write so much, and also integral to what I want to do with my life.

When I grew up, I was reading all the time. From the back of cereal boxes, to encyclopaedias, to even the bible (which I thought was a great fantasy book). As a kid, I also remember building up cities in my room and garden, made out of toy-parts and characters, and constructing visual stories around what was happening.

I did not watch TV until I was 10, but, around that time, I fell in love with fantasy and sci-fi stories, both in book-form and on TV. I liked the way the story was constructed, and loved to imagine myself being there. I remember having magnificent visions of what I imagined the future of society, cities, and the home to look like.

Around 17, I decided to hold my first teen-party (the last one before that was probably around the ages 8-9). At that time, I was playing around in a band and very much into music-culture. I remember coming up with the party idea, which was essentially a visualisation of a club. It was lucky timing. We were just about to move and I had a huge house to my disposal.

The way I visualised it was to have rock-bands playing live in the living-room, a techno-room with a (borrowed, I think) strobe-light in the basement, and some other theme-related room elsewhere. Important were of course drinks and drugs, as, hey, I was 17. And equally important was the concept of complete freedom, which I think was communicated quite clearly.

A large inspiration was this video by the Prodigy - No Good (start the dance):


The end-result was great: around 50 people showed up, 2-3 bands were playing, and people did some crazy stuff, without getting me in trouble. In the end, I was still the one responsible, and took that seriously, but essentially everyone could do what they wanted. I repeated a similar party a few months later, which revolved around the same principles, with some restrictions, though around twice the amount of people.

That's where I'll end this. Lot's of stuff happened since then and will continue to happen, and I hope to write a second part in maybe 5-10 years from now (maybe sooner) about all the adventures I'll hopefully have, and evolutionary leaps I'll hopefully make.

Core to everything, I think, is vision and freedom. When you create a story, you have a vision of the components and the way they fit together into a dynamic process. At the same time, a story-teller must realise that his/her story is just the start for the listener/viewer/experiencer. It's a synergetic interaction between creator and beholder and the end-result can be both unpredictable and quite beautiful sometimes, a risk that, to me, is entirely worth it.

P.S. Happy Valentines day!

I'm still following my tradition of looking back at what I covered and processing it into a blogpost. The general aim is for me to process the stuff I wrote about before, and give a reader some compressed value of an otherwise unforgiving linear medium. Time waits for no-one.

Why did it take so friggin' long?
For Months 1 & 2, I did so on a monthly basis. Later on, I was interrupted for study-related reasons, so hereby a 3 month summary (though only about 6 weeks of real activity).

Now, if month 1 can be categorised as a focus on market research, design, core-values, the value chain, and trends in FnR, and month 2 on human resources, business strategy, branding & marketing, innovation, and finance, months 3-6 aimed at news & trends, operational issues, marketing & branding, entrepreneurship, and strategy. Phew, what a mouthful… this is going to be a long post, so let's get started.

Micro-topics

Following three headings cover, what I call, micro-topics. They delve into specific situations (news & trends) or issues in running a business (operational, branding & marketing).

News & Trends
I noticed a decreased focus on news these months, simply because I didn't want to re-blog other people's stuff, and found conceptual lenses, and micro-topics more interesting. Also, my links often covered some news, as do my continuously updated bookmarks.

Nevertheless, I tried to identified some trends, namely private labels, organics, and SEPA, which I discussed at some greater depth. For Private labels, I looked at what regions and product lines were doing best, and came to the conclusion that there's huge potential in terms of lifestyle-products and offering higher quality goods than manufacturers can, simply because of the savings in marketing. I discussed lifestyle in a number of other posts, but I will go into those later on.

For organics, which has seen a huge upsurge in the last 5 years, I remain bearish, simply because I see it as a very inefficient, resource, and human-intensive process, that, in combination with the high energy-costs and rising food-prices, may not appeal to consumers increasingly shrinking wallets. That said, innovations are usually inefficient at the start, organics fill a certain need, and more automisation in such production-methods may dissolve many of my arguments.

I also looked at SEPA—the single European payment area—which was just launched (and you should be seeing an option to pay via SEPA in your internet-banking site now). Arguably the most boring post, I've ever, ever written (well, there are some contenders), but since I want Europe to be a single market so that businesses can finally benefit from the same economies of scale as the US, China, India, and Brazil, I thought it be important to discuss it.

Microscopically, and just for fun, I also identified some trends in terms of cinematics, beers, and pie, as well as a changing perception of expertise (more on this when I discuss entrepreneurship later on).

Operational
A second focal point was on operations of food & retail-outlets. I'm fascinated by optimising internal processes of businesses, so one of the topics I focussed on was whether it would be possible to use lean Toyota principles in a Food / Retail environment. I think it is, but at the same time, should not act as a replacement for customer-service. Granted, competition is fierce and any cost-savings should be welcomed, but the differentiating factor should be the amount of cherries on top: service-quality, product-quality, etc. I still need to read the book, though, and I definitely have more to learn/write about this subject.

I also looked at real-estate, fairly extensively, though some topics for future exploration remain. Clearly one of the biggest pains for FnR-venues is location, location, location… (it is also an inherent strategic component to large franchises like McDonalds) and I started with looking at structuring search and using checklists. In a second post I looked at the competitive/cooperative context of choosing a location, and in the third post, I looked at a number of costs that are part of the location choice.

Marketing & Branding
M & B is a continuous micro-topic of mine, even though I don't consider myself a marketeer. Two of my favourite topics include "the service paradox - on self-service and customer-rentention," which discusses the strangely liberating effect that no service has on today's individualised customers and positively affects their loyalty in return… talk about an eye-opener, for me at least… and "Lifestyle products - the costs of educating a market," which looks at the significant marketing-costs associated with starting a company in an unmapped market. As for the latter, I'll definitely be writing more about the particularities of lifestyle-products pretty soon.

The other three topics were interludes—hence the reason why I don't consider myself an expert. I wrote about how much of marketing is based on arguments, how arguments are often designed to distract or confuse an audience, how the consumer is overwhelmed with them, and how their value is ultimately decreased drastically. Very abstract… I also proposed that this is exactly why simple products work exactly so well: kill the argument.

Two more interludes include a review of Malcolm Gladwell's books, which both offer great insight into how people think (and how to market products), and I re-blogged "a marketing plan in a nutshell," kindly provided by an MBA-student at MeFi, which should be useful as a general reference.

Macro-topics

Following are topics that are core to what I write about: entrepreneurship and strategy. The first aiming at starting, running, and growing FnR-related companies, and the second at the bigger picture: taking an industry-perspective, how to interact within the context of a value-chain, core-pains, etc. There is also considerable overlap between the links I discuss now and those that came before.

Entrepreneurship
Looking at my eship-posts, I found that I often take a more personal stance at issues, compared to other disciplines. I think that's related to that the human element is stronger in these businesses, something I found out from speaking to many start-ups, incl. ca. 300 start-ups for my thesis.

In "The business of HoReCa - Hotels, Restaurants, Cafes," I discuss the issue of semantics in regards to choosing a vocation, and the perspective of my father, who helps me think about this area a lot. This is somewhat contrasted by my post on my own generalised (vs. specialised) look at the food & retail-industry, in the sense that I care more about the big picture (for now at least). I'll come back to this in the future, I'm sure.

In my post on "lifestyle-products," which I mentioned before, I also try to approach the topic of starting such a business in a second-world country, through a friend's eyes. Similarly, my post on "How being in the right place at the right time translates to starting a business," takes a very personal, and perhaps subjective approach to the issue.

Some micro- and just-for-fun topics include the "10,000-hours-to-be-an-expert rule," in which I identify a trend that's pretty similar to crowdsourcing expertise. On Tech IT Easy, Georgia Psyllidou discusses a similar phenomenon about how people can find work nowadays, and I think I will approach this topic again in the future. Call it semantic, crowdsourcing, open innovation, etc., but the world is changing, it is getting flatter, which has both implications to finding human resources, as well as distributing knowledge. For instance, in a recent article on HBR, the topic of authentic leadership is discussed entirely from the perspective of 1000s of examples. Worth a read and thought-inspiring!

Another fun topic was the Lowest Common Denominator (LCD). I first approached this abstractly, while under thesis-stress, but I find it a useful way of thinking about simplicity of action. What is the simplest, most basic feature that your product needs, that your strategy needs, that your company needs to work? Later on, I explored this again concerning my friend's lifestyle-business.

The strategic lense
Strategy has always been difficult to conceptualise, I felt, because there's strategy to everything—war, running a business, running your life, getting the girl, etc. That's perhaps the reason why I never got around to writing a thesis for it, and chose entrepreneurship instead.

I discussed IKEA a number of times in my blog, and one strategic issue I approached, were the early years of growth for the company. My philosophy concerning business is that, generally, "where you are from and when you are from matters a great deal to where you are going," and the same applies to IKEA. Of course, IKEA went far beyond Scandinavia, and I hope to get around to discussing the later expansions the company went through.

Amazon & Jeff Bezos was another topic, in which I wrote about Amazon's approach to innovation (very customer-focussed) and Bezos' transformation from entrepreneur to CEO (from micro to macro, challenging for many).

Another topic was the growth strategy of Starbucks (wholly-owned), vs. that of Subway's (franchise), which is clearly receiving a lot of flack these last months. In the article, I commented on some of the reasons given by other smart people, about why these strategies differ. Some good economical reasons were given, however, none, I felt, went into the roots of the issue. Two factors affected Starbucks' strategy: the roots of the business and the roots of the founders.

Somewhat related, a few weeks ago, i discussed the intriguing strategy of Metro-Group, which has placed two electronics-chains into the European market, Media Markt vs. Saturn, seeming to everyone as competitors. Turns out they are the equivalent to a franchise-system (though certainly a more complex one than Subway), which I think are meant to saturate the market.

Some just-for-fun topics included another post on the lowest common denominator, which I felt was a good lens through which simple strategies can be designed; two posts (1 & 2) about big pains the food-industry is feeling (and which ties into my post from yesterday; and why fitness studios are employing such restrictive contracts, which I felt was caused by either an inelasticity of demand or because they were in trouble.

Clearly a number of other topics fit within the strategic paradigm, but I'm not going to discuss them here.

Wrapping up

What about those Sounds?
I'm considering dropping the "Sounds" from S+FnR, however, it is still a very strong topic in the back of my mind as I'd like to work in venues where people dance… No, seriously. The way I'm looking at it is that I have to focus on certain basics first, and music & media will eventually pop up. So the title stays as it is.

Final thoughts
The nice thing about blogging is that you can measure your progress. I measure them both by readers, by feedback, and by my own perception. During the first months, I was very much in the dark about this industry, and to a degree, I still am. But I notice that things start making more sense, there is a certain logic to how processes work, why certain business models are chosen, etc. So, mentally, for me, there is a certain growth and I hope I can continue at that rate in the future.

I'm still on a certain trajectory in my mind, regarding the amount of secondary and primary activities I have to do to reach new levels. On the latter front, I definitely have a much better idea of where I want to go, after having blogged/thought/discussed about these topics for so many months.

That is all! I can enjoy my weekend, enjoy yours, and until next week.

P.S. I'll be doing some housekeeping these next few weeks. Some of my interludes will be migrated to another personal blog of mine. I wrote it, read it, liked it, so it stays.

interlude |ˈɪntəl(j)uːd|
noun
1 an intervening period of time : enjoying a lunchtime interlude.
• a pause between the acts of a play.
2 something performed during a theater intermission : an orchestral interlude.
• a piece of music played between other pieces or between the verses of a hymn.
• a temporary amusement or source of entertainment that contrasts with what goes before or after : the romantic interlude withered rapidly once he was back in town.

I'm going to quit the interludes. When I'm back, I'm back.

Happy 2K8 !
Vincent

Hi all,
let's face it. This blog is on hiatus until beginning of 2008 and as such I can only post the occasional link.

Exhibit 1: 11 Myths of the Small Business Entrepreneur, by Susan Dunn, describes 11 misnomers about entrepreneurship, such as being the boss, being free, independence, etc. All of which are all somewhat incorrect. I already knew most of them, but a good reality-check, nevertheless.

Why am I thinking about a framework? With blogging there is a constant trade-off between providing content and linking to content. Well, trade-off is a big word, it would suggest that there is an opportunity cost. Since the only cost of blogging is time, there really is no trade-off in my mind—if someone can phrase words better than you (which comes from having done more research, usually), than you're better off linking to them.

Exhibit 2: Why early stage venture investments fail, by Fred Wilson, outlines two primary reasons why an investment may fail—a dumb and/or misdirected idea—and gave me a cool quote, which made the whole bookmark worthwhile: "the art of a successful deal is figuring out dead ends quickly and trying another and another until you find the one paved with gold (source: Dick Costello)"

I am also thinking about the nature of links because it's the 10-year anniversary of blogging, and I read a guide to blogs by one of the first bloggers on the net.

Exhibit 3: Top 10 Tips for New Bloggers From Original Blogger Jorn Barger, by Jorn Blogger, is a list of tips that really made me think. For instance: "if you have more original posts than links, you probably need to learn some humility." Or: "Being truly yourself is always hipper than suppressing a link just because it's not trendy enough." Or: "Always include some adjective describing your own reaction to the linked page (great, useful, imaginative, clever, etc.)." Yes, really an, ahum, insightful guide to being a link-blogger.

I don't consider myself a linkblogger, not like Jason Kottke or Robert Scoble at least, both whom I think excel in their craft. And, of course, if everyone were to become a linkblogger—and the rise of link-blogging platforms like Tumblr and del.icio.us would certainly suggest it—then it would lead to a fall in content.

But I feel that I need a framework for what links I post and what links I don't, as the latter are links that I plan to incorporate in my own "original" content (sorry for the lack of humility, Jorn).

I think it's as follows. When I read a cool story, which I think is well-researched and adds some general value to coming up with new ideas, or which falls out of my core-competencies, then I'll link it.

Exhibit 4: The Advertising Slogan Hall of Fame lists some noteworthy slogans between the years 2000-2003, such as: "All the news that's fit to print (NY Times)," or "Let your fingers do the walking (Yellow Pages)," as well as offers a—somewhat spammy—guide to developing your own slogan.

Any original content, which I plan to start producing again beginning of 2008, will be in the form of a brainstorm, where I write about what matters to doing business in the food & retail-space. Sometimes these will be somewhat long posts, at other times, they will be short bursts. But whatever happens, I hope it adds just as much value to your life as it does mine, and that it does the legacy of blogs proud.

Another thing I'm thinking about is whether I should be more or less specific about my links. For instance, I link a lot more to stuff about entrepreneurship, innovation, and design, than I do about e.g. food.

Exhibit 5: A bookreview of "Starbucked", by P. J. O’Rourke, NY Times, discusses what the rise of Starbucks may have had on the general coffee-culture in the US, competition, and the fair-use of coffee. I find it pretty balanced, and interesting that between 1989-2007, the number of coffeeshops in the US has grown from 585 to 24,000—57% of which are "mom & pop". And that Starbucks only sources 2% of the global coffee-supply and does not have as much an effect on "fair conditions in coffee" as people may think.

It's links like these that a reader of a food & retail blog will perhaps prefer to read.

But the framework should be, I think, one that is based on balance. Content, which i think is already well-produced, and for which the only value I can add, is a link with a well-phrased description, should just be just that: a link. Content, where I think I need to do more research for my own self-development, and where it helps that I write a good piece of text about it, should be written by myself.

Stuff on this blog, for the rest of 2007, will be limited. I plan to produce a list of perhaps my favourite albums of 2007, as music, I think, has a great influence on how people feel in environments that I want to create. After Xmas, I think. And next year, I'll start with an overview of what I've written so far, to continue with a clean slate.

Heh, a good way to present 5 links, I think. For more like these, check out my bookmarks or the Link-tag on this blog.

The picture is part of the Reuters pictures of the year 2007 collection (hope they don't sue me).

Hello friends and fauna,
I want to reassure people once more that this blog is not dead, though, for the moment, admittedly of little value to readers looking for food, retail, or related coverage.

As was hopefully made clear before, I'm busy with finishing of my master-project, which includes finishing some chapters on the practical data I collected, the conclusions, and the final editing. Since it is technology-related, you'll find my conclusions about it on Tech IT Easy, started with my latest thoughts about funding innovative start-ups.

There's plenty of stuff, I wish I could write about sounds + food 'n' retail every day, but I notice that I get so much more done when I focus on just one thing, and I'm very close to finishing this particular thing.

After this is done, I can get back to posting (my own crappy) drawings and learning/writing about the business and art of running a venue in my chosen industry.

Until then, you can always check out my links, which I do update continuously, and to which I added some cool and useful stuff for interested parties.

Until soon, I hope!
Vincent

The picture is courtesy of Aaron J. Louie.

Hello,

In this piece, I am planning to discuss my current thoughts about my thesis, this blog, and my plans for the future.

I suppose, to a great degree I like to be a focussed person. I like to have goals, pursue them, and not get too distracted by things. It's kind of a silly attitude, because life is an exercise in overcoming distractions. As Fred Wilson wrote recently about something that Dick Costolo, co-founder of FeedBurner, said:

"A startup is the process of going down lots of dark alleys only to find that they are dead ends. The art of a successful deal is figuring out that they are dead ends quickly and trying another and another until you find the one paved with gold."

I love that quote and I think it's a great attitude in life as well.

But, as I said, I love planting myself behind a project and shutting the door to everything else. I tried doing this here, 8 days ago, and, as a result, underwent a pretty amazing productive period since then. So what are my plans for my thesis?

My thesis on funding high-tech start-ups
As I said, 12 days break, which would give me another 4 days. Truth be told, I have to add writing a conclusion, writing mini-summaries per chapter, an executive summary, and editing the whole thing into the mix, so I will like likely be busy for another 10 days after that. The nice thing about conclusions is that they are already in your head, summaries happen automatically as you edit a piece, and editing is a perfect all-nighter activity.

The not-so-nice part is that we are currently at 150 pages of material, which would more or less make my thesis a book about innovation, entrepreneurship, venture capital, and incubators.

2 thoughts:

1. One of my thoughts is to edit it down to a reasonable size and publish the whole thing as a pdf.


2. A second thought is that as I write summaries per chapter, I might as well turn them into blogposts about innovation, entrepreneurship, finance, and incubators, and publish them in the form of regular blogposts on Tech IT Easy.

And if I have the chance to do either or both, I think it would be a great way to close of that chapter of my life, as well as increase my social capital a little.

Which brings me to this blog…

The status of (my blog on) sounds + food and retail
The funny thing about this blog is that it is interconnected with my life. Random readers may think this is a nice (or not so nice) blog about subjects concerning music, food, and retail, but it is in fact, what I see as, one of several stages towards forming a career and a business (or series of) in this industry.

So my head has not stopped thinking about this subject, and I've actually been making summaries about interesting topics, and thinking about the shape of things to come. I cannot interrupt this blog too long, at the same time it is reassuring (to me), that even though my publishing took a break, my mind did not.

Concerning this blog then, I will be back and I already have a huge backlog of material to publish here… looking forward to that!

The status of "real life"
As I speak with friends and strangers about my ideas I also realise that there is much that remains to be done in "real life" also. I believe everything starts with a good business-plan with realistic assumptions about what you want to set up. It is the ultimate "social object" towards getting my plans in motion, convincing partners, investors, employees to work with me.

Questions I have received so far include:

• What type of place do you want to set up? My answer has so far been: probably a night-venue, a restaurant or night-club, or something in between (this may come as a surprise to some of my readers, as I write a lot about retail). Ultimately though, I want to set up a successful venue and am flexible on the format.


• Where do you want to set it up? My answer: I'm flexible, but it depends on where I feel most comfortable to set it up.


• How are you going to fund it? My answer: I'll need to save a bit, but I expect my first business to be sponsored, probably over 50%, and will look for suitable working partners also.


• When do you want to set it up? My answer: 3-5 years from now would a realistic number in my mind.


• When do you want to exit? My answer: Depends on how much fun I am having, as well as other factors. I see myself as both a serial entrepreneur and someone who wants to create great things, and I'll have to find the middle-path between both.

Final thoughts
First thing first. Finish my current project, get a degree, close this chapter of my life.

Intermediary thing, publish blog-posts when I can and want to, in between.

Afterwards, blog more, look for a cool job to gain experience, contacts, and cash. I also want to travel for a bit through Europe to decide on a suitable location, check out different formats, and brainstorm with friends.

And then, take the plunge.

So, à bientôt, I hope!
Vincent

It's perhaps a curious thing to say, but I think a lot of things in life depend on semantics—the meaning of words.

I should actually be calling my blog "Horeca & Retail" Blog, just because the word horeca describes what I want to do so much better. Horeca is an (Dutch afaik) umbrella-term, that describes the businesses mentioned in the title: hotels, restaurant, and cafes.

I picked "food" instead of horeca, because I couldn't find an English term that described what I wanted as well. There's restaurants, gastronomy, cooking, catering, cafes, etc. but all that is too specific. Incidentally, if a knowledgeable Brit, American, or international happens to know an anglo-term as suitable as Horeca, please let me know!

Whenever I discuss my business ideas with my dad (much more inspiring than any internet-based research), we don't talk about food or retail. I begin with that, because that's what I cover in my blog, but the conversation always evolves to how to run a café or some other kind of drink-related entertainment-venue. In other words, we talk "horeca."

Here's some stuff I learned from him (he used to own some bars and cafes):

• Try to imagine your place as a theatre - you're putting on a show every night.


• Personality of ownership is important - whenever he was active in this business, he tried to look for good partners: people who understood this world and had certain social qualities.


• When looking for investors, look for breweries - this is something I'll have to research.


• Location is not the top-priority for a horeca-venue - people will come if it's worth it.


• Horeca is a troublesome business - somewhat of a general statement, which I hear from a lot of people. Basically, it suffers from weird people-related issues—lot's of stress, lot's of alcohol, terrible working-conditions, funny contractual agreements, etc. And lot's of businesses go bankrupt (well, what else is new).

How should I summarise this? There are aspects to a horeca-business that are hard to put into words. Atmosphere, taste, entertainment, people-dynamics—how management, employees, investors, customers interact. All that is relevant to starting and running a business in this field, and stuff I'll have to learn.

So, over the next few months, next to continuing to cover certain, universally applicable, retail-topics, I'll try to find out more about how to run entertainment-venues.

Today should be called Meta-Monday… I seem to be in some kind of reflective or introverted mood. And as any blogger probably knows, moods and blogging, that's like a burger and fries—they go hand-in-hand. But no worries, tomorrow it's business as usual.

One thing I discussed in my last post was finding a job. Yesterday, during a jog, I thought it would be a good idea to crowdsource my application-letter when the time comes. I'm not sure if it's the best idea—no one I know does it, and probably for a good reason—but I'll consider it.

Another thought I had yesterday, was on the type of job I would be looking for. I already wrote about "one with broad development-opportunities," but that doesn't say anything about where to start. Yesterday, I actually argued with my father about this, as his vision of my vision is somewhat different of my vision of my vision—if that makes sense. Essentially the conversation went somewhat like this:

Me: "So, what would you guys think about me getting a job at a place like Ikea (just an example, don't get any ideas!)?"
Dad: "That's idiotic. If you want to start a restaurant, you should just start one. No detours. What does Ikea have to do with a restaurant anyway?"

What does Ikea have to do with a restaurant anyway?
That's a good question. First of all, I'm pretty sure I don't want to start a restaurant. Everything I've seen so far leads me to believe that it is a terrible environment: People are stressed and unfriendly, chefs are arrogant, long hours even after a start-up is no longer a start-up, etc. I might change my mind, but that just doesn't fit my vision.

Second, my attitude on business is that the product doesn't matter. But that said, I am more passionate about some products than others, namely food, media-related stuff, technology, etc. and I care a great deal about the atmosphere of the place.

So what does Ikea have to do with a restaurant? It sells goods to customers, which it sources from suppliers. It thinks about the customers, it competes with other businesses, it expands nationally and internationally, it works with suppliers, etc. Not to mention that it also has a restaurant. It's a business and its principles are just as applicable to a restaurant or any comparable business. The product doesn't necessarily matter.

That doesn't mean I want to work at IKEA per se, I'm making a different point.

Meet Mr. Generalist
The stereotype of a generalist is probably that he or she cares about everything and anything. I, being a generalist myself, don't agree with that. Instead a generalist, to me, means:

"To care about nothing specifically, instead to care about everything that produces an outcome. In business this means to care about the four dimensions that I mentioned in my last post: the components of the business; the value chain; the past, present, and future of the industry; and how people fit into the picture."

That said, nobody cares about nothing and the more experience you get, the more you will care about certain areas more than others.

In terms of people, I am constantly on the look-out for specialists—people with in-depth knowledge about a certain field—and to some extent generalists—people who also have a broad view about what makes a business function. The phase and size of a business certainly affects the need for either type of person. I can't say much more about this, except that just to find the best (wo)man for the job, is always the right attitude.

In regards to finding a job, being a generalist (probably) puts me in a similar conundrum to when I studied strategic management. There are no starting jobs as strategists, and I'm not sure that—at least in large firms—there are starting jobs for generalists either.

I think that I will have to decide in what function I want to start in and see what happens from there on in. I'm thinking logistics, but I will keep an open mind.

The image is courtesy of acponline.org

A blog is a service—both to me, and to you, the reader. To me, it serves as a way to collect a large amount of information, and, more importantly, process it so that it stays in my brain. The better, and more focussed the information is, the more it helps me, and the more it becomes useful as a general information-source for you too. There are a couple of specific goals I have, which will certainly affect the status and value of this blog. These are, as follows:

1. Develop a framework of how everything in a food- and retail-business fits together
The reason why I write about a large number of topics is because I see any business as system or a machine made up of a number of components. I need to think on four dimensions: the business-components; the value chain; the past, present, and future of this industry; and how people (incl. me) fit into the picture.

Implication: This simply means that my broad coverage of topics will continue, but that the implicit understanding is that it all needs to fit into one of these four dimensions. It also means that, in addition to researching these topics, I need to start converting the broad framework I have in my mind, to paper.

2. Gain practical experience
I see this on two levels. One, I need to seriously understand the process of retail or food business from start to finish. The best way to accomplish this is to learn by doing. This can be achieved in two ways: the more logical one would be to work at a business that offers a good amount development opportunities—allowing me to see many aspects of that business; and eventually I see myself starting my own business also. The second reason why practical experience is important is reputation. This business in particular is pretty resource-intensive. To start a business you need to have access to a good network of people, and investors. Both trust you more, the more practical experience you have. Put your money where your mouth is.

Implication: This is still some months off, because I still need to finish some business before that. When it does happen, I think it will affect the blog in two ways: one, I will have less time to blog. And two, I will have more practical data that I can share (within reason).

There is a third point—starting my business and everything that involves, but that's a topic for another day. For now, if you have questions or comments about the above, feel free to share.
This blog will continue as usual for now. Expect a new post tomorrow!

The non-sensical picture is a few months old… until I get my camera back from the store (any week now), my ability to draw and and scan into the PC is somewhat constrained.

It's time for another monthly summary (a few days late). This time, rather than the rather unattractive list-view which I used for my month 1-summary, I'm going to try turning the past month's posts into a little story. As I wrote, this blog is my way of learning about this industry, so let's take a look at what I've covered so far.

The Human element
I started the first post of month 2 with one related to self-development, and I kept that thread going for a while. This post was on the the way that leadership has evolved throughout society, from an individualistic to a social kind of leading. A lot of developments today, in business, politics, or other arenas, are so complex, that a form of collaboration is more constructive than tyrannical leadership. This is perhaps made clearest in in the example of Ikea and eBay, who—often by necessity—used collaborative methods to develop and introduce new features and innovations.

Again related to self-development, I also looked at particular careers in retail (with a nice chart) and in knowledge-based firms. Apart from simply researching the functions out there, my conclusions were that different roles require different talents, and that a manager/founder/entrepreneur should take care to surround himself with a diverse kinds of people. A similar point was made in a post on doing what you do best. Again, in the eBay-post, I discussed professionalising your firm quickly, by bringing in talent that can help in growing the business.

The strategic lens
A second big thread last month was business strategy. I started with the coffee-business, mentioning some examples like Coca-Cola, who is expanding into canned coffee, and Leonidas, a chocolatier, who is starting coffee-shops. Later, in two follow-up posts (1 and 2), I drew the conclusion that the coffee-arena is pretty crowded and that I wasn't sure if that was the best area to start a business in.

I also looked at the area of value chains and Porter's five forces, using examples like Ikea, Apple, and Amazon, and before that China and the issue of meeting it's exploding beef-demand. Generally, and the same applies to coffee, I think it's useful to take a horizontal and vertical view at how the industry is organised and find opportunities that way. In the case of China, which imposes some barriers to beef-imports, the answer was to import methodologies and grow beef on Chinese land. Other examples are mentioned in my five-forces post.

Another big topic is climate-change and it again helps to analyse this in terms of the value-chain, i.e. looking at all the internal and external activities related to your company and related to bringing value towards customers. And optimising those to take the cost of climate-change into account, which can later be turned into a significant competitive advantage over your competitors.

And I looked at some examples of Franchising in Germany, noting that retail is clearly leading in that field, and that a big challenge is to transmit tacit knowledge down your (largely decentralised) organisation.

Branding & marketing
Another large topic this month was the issue of customers, and how you market to them. IBM presented a nice white paper, of which I discussed the Well Curve as a possible methodology to understand the customer decision process, which was a second post on this topic.

I also looked at the way some business interact with customers, including T-Mobile and Harvard Business Review, and observed that conversational marketing is definitely a way to increase price-elasticity.

I have not looked much at food-business so far, but I did manage to discuss two restaurants: a pancake-place, where I discussed methods on how to make me remember its damn name, and a restaurant in Germany, which I thought received excellent advice in a show called "Rach - the restaurant tester," in regards to geographic marketing and building a brand.

Finally, even though my forte is not advertising, I came up with a—possibly stupid, but fun—idea on how to advertise a new concept coming to a town near you.

Innovation
Somewhat of a micro-topic, I looked at the way that music-media and money evolved and how that illustrated that customers love convenience, as well as how the Ford SYN-US was developed from start to finish. The latter is very interesting for thinking about what it takes to come up with new innovations.

Finance
Another micro-topic, which I will have to spend more time on in the future. I approached this in two posts. In the first, "other people's money," I reflected on some of the different types of investors there are and how some can add considerable value to growing your business. Also, in the eBay post, I looked at why it was so important for eBay to involve venture capitalists, even though it didn't need the money. The right kind of investor for your business will help you professionalise your business, by helping you find more talent, setting targets to meet, pressuring you to grow, and (hopefully) much more, all besides investing in your business, and taking shares.

Final thoughts
So, pretty diverse stuff I think, and while I could be writing more about food and retail—which will happen—I'm happy to have written and learned about all of these interesting topics.

For the future, I hope to look more at franchising, in-store activities, and particularly at supply chain topics, such as lean manufacturing, logistics, and anything dealing with the supplier-perspective. My future reading-list includes: The Disney Way, The Great Good Place, and The Toyota Way, as well as countless articles, pdf's, blogs, HBR-magazines, and so much more.

Well, here we are. Another month flew by! I enjoyed writing this post, and hope you enjoyed reading it too! For past coverage, you can check my slightly less aesthetically-presented month 1 summary. For more in the area of food and retail, I do encourage people to check my blog-roll on the right, and my bookmarks, updated 24/7.

The picture is an exercise of drawing a (my) hand in 5 min. or less.

Over the years (I've been actively blogging for about two), I must have read around 50 blogposts advising me how to blog. I won't bore you with details, but it all starts with a good title, a good picture tells a 1000 words, and if you can use 5 words instead of 10 to explain something, use 5. That's all true (note that in this post, I'll ignore all of this advice). In addition to that, there are ways to game Google, ways to monetize blogs, ways to draw in crowds, etc. etc.

But really, blogging is nothing new, it's just the word that was new, 5+ years ago. What all this advice, I read about, is for, is copywriting. For that purpose, I'd like to refer people who want to find out how to copywrite, to a blog called "copyblogger," because that one seems to capture most of the essentials. I like their latest post on blogging.

Now, for myself, why do I write? I'll make no pretences, I don't necessarily write for others. http://foodandretail.blogspot.com is the first serious attempt I made at blogging—everything before and during has been and is just for fun. But to me S+FnR is more of an information-system being built, instead of a "copyblog" for others. Sure, it's important to (learn to) write for an audience. I would call it an essential skill, as better writers are also better at a number of things, like debating, analysing, logic, etc.

But what really motivates me is to engage my brain, learn more about how businesses in my sector of choice work, work in that industry, and start my own business there. Over the last year, we've had a lot of discussions on the value of comments over at Tech IT Easy, a sister-blog on technology. The general consensus was that comments are great if they add value. A community is great. But what we wanted over there was to primarily create a group of intelligent contributors, who could maybe teach each other something. I think we have succeeded, though the Tech IT Easy roadmap is long.

For S+FnR, the roadmap is long also, and somewhat mapped out in stages, but mainly a way to grow for me, and hopefully my readers… though the value for them depends entirely on their level of development (mine is low) and their areas of interest.

S+FnR is nearly two months old now, meaning another monthly recap will be posted soon. And I will continue to post a lot of stuff that I find interesting and potentially relevant to this industry, whether it be on marketing, strategy, innovation, finance, logistics, tech, design, food, merchandising, career-choices, music, other media, and whatever else could fit.

I'll also try to post daily, which I started because I thought it might be good for readers, but I also began to get addicted to, not to mention learn more in less time. Of course this is entirely dependant on my time and energy to post!

What else… blogging? Forget about it! This is an information-system which I'm updating 1 day at a time, which you can always comment on/add to, and which will hopefully someday, become a valuable resource for other like-minded people.

P.S. there is of course another, slightly more subtle, motive. The more drawings I create and post on my blog, the closer I come to reaching my goal of becoming the next Vincent van… Gogh… hahahahaha (evil laugh)! The above was a copy I made of this one.

Every blog comes with its opportunity costs, in this case: writing or designing. For today I chose the latter, using a Wordpress-theme, called K2, modified for Blogger. I think it looks better, and gives me a little more width to play with when I write text and add images.

Since this took the greater part of an hour, I've decided to not write anything today and instead wish you a happy weekend!

Oh, and the header is inspired by the most beautiful toilet in the world. If you are going to install a toilet, you might as well make it a nice one. This is not in any way meant to be an analogy on how to design blogs (though if you are going to have one, you might as well make that nice too).

So it's been nearly 30 days since I started this weblog, and not much longer since I decided to endeavour on the journey of learning about the world of sound + food and retail, and eventually opening a business there. The posting-rhythm on this blog has been going relatively well, I pretty much always have ideas on what to write about and, right now, already have material for the next 20 days (1 month of blogging), which is crazy!

I want to make it a monthly tradition to recap, both for my own benefit, because my topics tend to be very diverse; and for the benefit of the few readers that are passing by, because I think that blogs navigate terribly.

I will start with a recap of this blog, and then go through what I'm currently thinking about, and what the future will bring, both on- and off-line.

Previously, on Sounds + Food 'N' Retail...
So far, I've tried to approach the fields from different angles and relating pretty much any material I could find to it. User-response has not been great and the cause is probably that I need more focus, but let me attempt to bring together what I've thought about so far.

There are several issues, I felt I needed to focus on. One were my own vision and ideas about the business I would like to start, and initial thoughts were phrased in my posts on:

• My vision and inspirations part 1 and 2;
• Music venue scenarios.

I also thought about market-research issues, in:

• Where to start;
• What it might cost.

And design, in:

• Music venue scenarios;
• Use Cases.

Along with that, I thought about values:

• regarding transparency part 1, 2, 3, and 4;
• regarding people organisations, part 1, 2.

About the value-chain, aka working with partners, suppliers, etc.:

• P&G's approach to shopper-marketing;
• NBC's disassociated relationship with Apple's iTunes and customers in general;
• Starbucks and how it works with 3rd parties to create a better space;
• Platforms - how Facebook does it.

I spoke of trends and how to forecast them, in:

• The Eco-trend;
• The art of forecasting.

I approached success in

• The four principles of enduring success.

And discussed a number of companies, such as:
Tschibo and LaPlace; NBC; McDonalds; Starbucks, as well as the country of China and its explosive growth.

Coming up, in Sound + Food 'N' Retail...
So, so, so much! If this enterprise were climbing Mount Everest, I would say that I'm still planting my tent. So far, I have looked at a number of topics and formed some understanding of the principles of people-organisations, as well as some understanding of my own values towards running a business. That will continue for some time.

Generally, for this blog, I've decided on some regular features that I want to hold in the future, including:

• News from the hive - where I discuss stories of note about retail and/or food;
• Media-interludes - which really is just an excercise in taste;
• Strategic discussions - like the HBR-discussions, where I discuss issues of how to structure business-activities;
• Personal development - where I discuss methods of improving both yourself and your staff;
• Personal vision - where I discuss my own plans in the industry (much of this is also engrained in the material that I write about);
• Inspirations - where I highlight people and businesses that I admire and discuss their sites / books / work etc.

As well as all expanding on the past topics: values, people, partners, design, growth, market research, etc. etc.

I have to admit that, at this stage, anything can change. I am looking for a relevant job, and have a number of considerations regarding this, which I will write about in the near future. I think that being in the right place at the right time can accelerate a lot of things, alternatively, I may love my job so much that I could decide to stay for a while longer. I'm also composing a list about what people I want to talk to and what places I need to visit. One event is still on my agenda, visiting a workshop for entrepreneurs in this field, next month in Amsterdam. I hope to meet a lot of interesting people there.

My passion for this field has been with me since I shopped for food with my parents as a teenager; or went on holiday, or ate at restaurants and danced at clubs. It is part of me, so this blog, in whatever shape it may develop, will continue for a long time to come. 

Dear reader(s),

No apologies as those don't really mean much in this digital world of information-over- and underload. Just an explanation.

I've been sick with the flu for the last few days, which affected my creative drive and ability to update this weblog, as well as do a number of other things. I was planning to go on a catering-related workshop today, something I'm sure was going to inspire me plenty but had to postpone that to next month. It sucks, but c'est la vie!

That, and the other work I have to catch up on, means that updates to this weblog will be delayed by a few days, though I will post good ideas as soon as they appear.

Feel better? Good, so do I!

Vincent