Forget “Suburbs” – there’s something called an “Exurb” now:
…blobby coalescences of look-alike, overnight, amoeba-like concentrations of population far from city centers. These huge, sprawling communities are where more and more Americans choose to be, the place where job growth is fastest, home building is briskest, and malls and megachurches are multiplying as newcomers keep on coming.
Read how a flyover by Disney, the man, on November 22, 1963 changed the “city” of Orlando at the National Geographic back then, Orlando was just a citrus farm, more or less. That is also about the time UCF was founded. Now, within 50 years, UCF is the seventh largest university by student enrollment numbers!
Kishore Biyani has figured out that in order to sell more, he needs to
- make the aisles in his supermarkets narrower, and thus more difficult to walk through
- spill some wheat and seeds on the floor
- introduce some semi-rotten vegetables into a bin of good vegetables
- make his stores noisier
Counterintuitive for westerners perhaps, but this offers a peek into the Indian middle-class psyche.
The article about Biyani’s chain of supermarkets that generates $600 million+ in profits at WSJ is worth a read. In it, Biyani says that making things chaotic enough is not easy, and that the trick to give the customers the impression that “they have won”. Hence the half-rotten vegetables mixed in with the regular good ones, and the choas and disarray. He is quite the man when it comes to inventory control, and modern business practices, and proudly display Sam Walton’s picture on his wall, next to Mother Teresa.
He sells to “India Two”, the Indian population that includes the drivers, maids, cooks, nannies, farmers and others who serve India One. He estimates that 55% of Indians — roughly 550 million people — fall into this category, says WSJ.
“We advertise in the language that people dream in,” says Mr. Biyani, who is proud he isn’t one of the many business leaders in India who has lived or studied abroad. Though he speaks the language, “I don’t dream in English,” he says.
Remarkably enough, everything that leads to more apparent chaos serves him well, including making the check out lanes more confused and chaotic, which apparently increased sales by 30%. It takes a different kind of business smarts to make money in India. No amount of western education can teach one that!
I don’t know if the people that used to read my blog read it anymore. There were many that I turned away by not writing regularly (or at all for a while), and by switching the URL for my feed. All capital sins.
So if you do read this blog, and think that you are one of the people I think read this blog, leave me a comment.
Or better still, take a look at this iBook for sale. If you need an iBook G4 that works, this is the one for you. It works, flawlessly and has been lovingly taken care of by someone who loves me.
No, I am not kidding.
If there ever was a pencil that was well-appreciated, it was this. I have a terrible urge to write with one of these.
I have been late to the party, but there is nothing like a legal pad, and a pencil, to get your thoughts flowing. I also hate yellow pencils. Which brings us to why pencils are mostly yellow, not counting the “Nataraj” and “Pinky” pencils I grew up on. Pencils are mostly yellow because that is the color associated (or previously associated) with royalty in China, and that’s where most of the pencils came from in the early days.
