#i will sell everything here for $100 but shipping in two giant boxes would be...an undertaking

[nostalgicfun]

The council will decide your fate

[shockinglysubmissive]

One Day Down

WARNINGS: Stripping, Fingering (Reader receiving), Squirting

This is my piece for @missuga Love and Lockdown Collab

WC: 2K

“One day down, 13 more to go. Care to play a game to kill some time?” Your boyfriend asks, looking through your closest of board games. The pandemic had shut everything down, and Kuroo was unable to take the bus back to his apartment, so you two were trapped together for the next two weeks. He doesn’t wait for your response, finding a box and tugging it out of the stack carefully. “How about this one? It will kill at least two hours.” He holds out Monopoly, a smirk spread across his face.

“No way Tetsu! You get way too competitive! We still have nearly two weeks together. We can’t start hating each other already.” Despite your disagreeing words, you start to clear off the coffee table in front of you for the board. He sits down across from you, using a pillow to make the hardwood floor more comfortable.

“Oh. You are so mistaken. It won’t be a normal game of monopoly. Oh no no no Kitten, this will be so much more.” His eyes narrow, sliding a piece of paper over to you. You unfold it and scan over it quickly.

Shoes: $50

Socks or Tights: $50

Sweater or Jacket: $50

Shirt or Top: $100

Pants or Skirt: $100

Dress: $200

Bra: $300

Underwear: $500

“Are… are you serious? Strip monopoly?” You can’t help but giggle as he starts sorting cards. You don’t notice when he slips a stack of cards from his pocket, mixing them into the stack until they are mixed in fully. “If you wanted to see me naked you could have just asked to join me in the shower.” You add.

“ But this will be so much more fun. Seeing you all angry, your pretty tits pushed together with crossed arms because you realize you have to sell your panties and lose the game.” He sets the chance cards on their spot and sets the player pieces out on the board for you to pick.

Your fingers trace the ship, smirking as you pick it up and hand it to him. “Here you can be the ship because you’re going down.” You flash him an innocent smile as he picks up the dog.

“Fine, but you’ll be this one because I’m going to make you my bitch.” He says simply, eyes shining with joking excitement. You distribute the money, rolling your eyes as you start the game.

After a few turns, you had to sell your shirt for money to buy a property, and Kuroo sold his pants to pay for landing on your space. On your next turn, you land on a Chance space. You read it and blush bright red, having drawn one of the cards he had slipped in.

“Money is tight. Give another player a lapdance to steal an item of clothing from them.” Not giving him the chance to tease you for blushing, you move to his side of the table, straddling his lap and give him a half hearted dance. Tugging on the bottom of his shirt, you pull it over his head and put it on yourself. “Thank you for your shirt. Looks like I am fully dressed again.” You take your seat on the other side of the table again. He blinks at you slightly taken aback. “What? I never said that I would make this easy on you.“ You look at him innocently, Adjusting his shirt, which is too big for you.

A growl rumbles in his chest. He knows that you are winning, that doesn't stop him from being competitive. “The game's not over yet. I said I would make you my bitch, and I still intend to do that. I'm just letting you win for the moment because you look so cute when you smile.” Although he is smiling, there is a bit of anger in his words. You have known him for years, and Tetsu can be very competitive. He enjoys being the cunning one who wins. He hates when you are able to beat him without even trying to.

“ Mm.. Ok whatever makes you happy. I’ll let you believe that you will win.” You count your money, and organize the properties that you have collected so far. Unaware of the anger filling your boyfriend, his dick hardens seeing his shirt slide down your shoulder some.

The game continues for many more turns, clothes being sold, but chance cards giving clothes back. In the final few turns, Kuroo buys hotels for his blue properties, and you land on them. One having $50, and your panties left, you had to give up, letting your boyfriend win. Despite getting exactly what he wanted, he didn’t look happy. Your arms are crossed over your chest, a small pout settling on your face wanting him to look at you. Instead he just packs up the game.

“What’s wrong with you? You won! You get to see me naked and you’re still huffing and pouting like a child. What more do you want?” You demand, knowing that this game would end poorly. He glances up at you, his expression is unreadable. He stays silent, still refusing to acknowledge you, a slight scowl on his face. “Kuroo! I knew this game was a bad idea. I’m just going to bed. You can sleep on the couch if you want to keep acting like this.”

“You’ve been teasing me this whole game.” He says simply. You look shocked. Of all the reasons for him to be mad, it was because you teased him. Your boyfriend is known for being a giant tease, and he can’t handle receiving any.

“Hate to break it to you, but you were taunting me way more than I was with you. You get too competitive.” You mumble, grabbing your clothes to get dressed again. “I played the game that you wanted! You always tease me, so I thought I could do the same. Guess I was wrong. I will give you your space.” Houses and hotels are scattered as he drops them to grab your wrist, pulling you to make you sit on your knees so that you can see how his boxers have a large spot of precum soaking through. You swear that you can see him throbbing, even though the fabric.

His grip tightens as he begins to speak. “Biting your lip while thinking, letting your tits bounce when you get excited, slowly sliding off every piece of clothing. Oh and let's not forget the way that your fingertips would absent-mindedly drift to your exposed nipples. You would play it off like you were playing with your hair, but I saw the way your breathing changed.” He leans his face closer to yours, letting his warm breath fan against your ear. “We have 13 days let before we can leave this apartment, and I intend to fuck you so good you can’t walk right until then, understood?” He whispers in your ear. You swallow hard and nod, knowing that he will do just that.

Even when the sex between you both is slow and full of love and passion, he never fails to leave you so fucked out that you lose all ability to think. Seeing the look in his eyes from wanting you so bad, you knew that you were in for a lot of aches tomorrow.

He shoves the remaining game pieces on the floor, setting you on the coffee table. Using the fact that you lost, and were fully undressed to his advantage, he settles himself on his knees between your legs. “Think you can take me, or do you need me to stretch you out?” His voice is gentle as his fingers trace along your already slick folds. Unable to wait for you to answer, he slips his long middle finger into you. A soft moan leaves his lips as you lift your hips to feel his finger deeper. His own need is overshadowed by the desire to make you cum.

“Want more. Please Tetsu. I want you to stretch me out.” Your voice comes out a bit whinier than you hoped, desperate to feel the deep feelings that only he can give you. Taking mercy on you, he slides his ring finger in, curling both until he finds your g-spot. He quickens his ministrations, savoring in the way you react to him. His cock twitches, but he ignores it, too lost in the moans coming from your mouth.

When his thumb starts to circle your clit, you instinctively try to pull away, feeling pressure building in your core. “Ah. No moving.” He presses down just above your pelvic bone, creating more stimulation against your sweet spot. You squirm even more, feeling as if you may explode if the pressure builds any more. “Let go baby. Stop holding back. Relax.” His lips graze down your inner thigh.

At his words, the pressure releases, and you soak his hand with your cum. Your vision blurs and your hands roam to find something to hold on to. Settling for gripping your chest, your hips grind weakly against his hand until you become too sensitive.

He finally removes his hand, fingers dripping with your cum. Popping his fingers in his mouth, he lets out a soft moan. “Fuck I will never get tired of how good you taste.” He leans down and laps at your cum soaked folds. His delicate kitten licks move to your clit and you try to pull away.

“Tetsu… I want you to fuck me. I want you to feel good too.” You tug his hair to pull him up to look at you, eyes begging him to stuff you full. He hesitates for a moment, wanting to continue tasting you, but also wanting to fuck you so hard that neither one of you can think straight anymore. “Baby.” Your voice snaps him out of his thoughts, and he is hovering over you.

Wrapping your arms around his neck, you attach your lips to his, opening your mouth just enough that his tongue slips into your mouth. His tongue tastes faintly like your cum, and you can’t help but blush. You slide your hands down his chest, clumsily tugging his boxers down. Pumping his cock to smear the precum, you move to line him up with your entrance.

“My needy girl. Don’t worry. I’m going to make you feel so good. I’m gonna make you cum all over me.” He pushes into you with one fluid snap of his hips. Your walls clamp down around him, already trying to milk him for all the cum he has. “If you aren’t… fuck… if you don’t stop I won’t be able… oh god… to move.” He half begs, trying to keep control as he rocks against you.

“Can’t help it. You just feel so good in me. I want to cum around you already.” Your voice comes out as needy, body already teetering on the edge just from his tip kissing your cervix as he rocks against it. Still sensitive from your first intense orgasm, then his tongue teasing every inch of your pussy, you feel as if you could cum again.

“Not yet baby. Just hold off for a little longer. I want you to cum with me.” He grits his teeth as he builds up to a steady pace. Tears start to well in your eyes as it becomes almost painful to not cum. “It’s okay. Just breathe. It’s going to be okay. A little longer. It will feel so good when you finally cum with me.” He tries to calm your nerves, kissing away the tear that slipped down your cheek.

You cling to his shoulders, mind going numb, and only being able to think about how good his dick is making you feel. “Cum for me. Fuck.” His voice tugs you back to reality just enough to realize you no longer have to hold back. Creaming all over him, you moan his name against his neck, trembling in his arms as he fucks his cum into you.

It takes you both a few moments to come back down from your highs, suddenly aware of the discomfort you feel from the coffee table. “Game night was fun, but can we fuck somewhere more comfortable tomorrow?” You ask softly, giggling softly against his shoulder.

@bummie @izukine @writesmcgee

[pigeontheoneandonly]

Lemongrass

So this was nominally supposed to be about a cooking lesson (loosely prompted by a post from @dr-ladybird), but it came out much more bittersweet and melancholy.

Thanks to @pushingsian for the beta!

NB: In my version of Mass Effect, Nathaly Shepard is vegetarian, and Kaidan Alenko's mother is Thai.

Lemongrass

The haunting quiet of a Canadian night along the Sunshine Coast still kept Shepard awake, even after two months.  She missed the endless creaking of the ship, the muffled voices coming through the hatches and decks, the hum of the drive core lulling her to sleep.  Everyone thought space was silent. She snorted and wrapped her arms around herself as she shivered on the porch, drawing a blanket close like a shawl.  This was silence, this… lonely wilderness.

Footsteps fell soft on the cabin’s wooden floor.  She glanced over her shoulder, and saw Kaidan padding barefoot to the door, still rubbing his eyes.  Her face broke into a smile despite herself, quiet, tired.  “Hey.”

 “It’s cold out here tonight.”  He rubbed his arms.  “Can’t sleep again?”

“You don’t need to get up,” she replied, sidestepping the question. 

He glanced out over the property, towards the coastline a half-acre away.  “It wasn’t this quiet when I bought it.”

This was where he’d sunk his L2 reparations, into this piece of earth, though the house came after the war.  His neighbors weren’t ever sitting in his lap, exactly, but a fair number either hadn’t survived or hadn’t returned.  But the lack of people wasn’t the problem.  “It’s a planet.  It’s never going to be—”

Shepard stopped herself just in time.  But her startled guilty glance, at the near slip, said it all anyway.  His shoulders sank.  “Come inside.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

He put his arm around her and gave her a tug.  “Come inside.”

The door swung shut.  The main room was cozy in a hand-made sort of way.  Kaidan’s mother had sent a seemingly endless stream of crocheted blankets, which now hung off every chair back and piled across the couch.  Shepard made the metal-framed furniture herself in their own backyard.  Kaidan spent his free hours scouring local extranet ads for books, and a coffee maker, lamps, cushions, anything anyone was selling or trading in the mostly cashless post-war economy.  Earth could barely manufacture essentials, much less everyday comforts.

Now he walked over to the small corner defining their kitchen and lit the stove.  She hiked one of those blankets higher on her shoulders.  “What are you doing?”

“You’ll sleep better with something warm in you.”

She joined him, putting her hand on his hip, leaning towards his ear.  “I can think of something warm you could put in me.”

That got her a quick snort of a laugh, as she hoped.  “That just wakes you up more.”

But his brown eyes sparkled in the dim light of the slumbering house. 

She heaved a sigh, but pushed a lock of red hair behind her ear, and switched gears.  “Need a hand?”

Flirtatious interest turned to surprise.  “You want to help me cook.”

“Come on.  I haven’t boiled a pot dry in weeks.”  A touch defensive, but hell, she had been trying.  It wasn’t her fault she never had reason or opportunity to learn to cook.  At this point, her molecular composition verged on 100% military-issue freeze pack meals and MREs.

“That’s true.”  He jerked his head at the cabinet.  “Find me the coconut milk, and the stock.”

Kaidan’s kitchen staples came as something of a surprise.  Beer and bacon she expected.  His mother’s influence, not so much.  Not that she knew a whole lot about Thai food to start with.  “Where do you get this stuff?”

“My mom is friendly with every southeast Asian family in Vancouver.”

“Sure.  But… citrus?”

“You’d be surprised how many people keep a tree in their condo.  I’m negotiating for one, but nobody wants to give it up.”

“It’s just as well.”  She pulled out a box.  “I’ve killed every houseplant I’ve ever had.”

“You’re doing all right with the herb garden.”  Kaidan said it with a straight face, despite them both knowing he did most of the work, especially after he caught her burying leftovers in the dirt to fertilize it.  Gently, he explained about compost, but it still seemed like a load of middle-man work to her.  He also explained about raccoons, which she had to admit had the weight of evidence behind it, in the holes and broken plants they left behind.  But Shepard had learned to water and prune, even fuss over the plants, here and there.  They seemed to enjoy the attention.

What was the other thing?  Stock.  Right.  She opened the fridge and pulled out a plastic jug, the remains of a giant batch Kaidan made last week from all their vegetable scraps.  It had been an experiment, but somehow, all of Kaidan’s kitchen experiments seemed to work out. 

“Put that in the pot,” he said, pointing. 

She complied, with one raised eyebrow.  “Don’t you think this burner is up a little high?”

“It needs to reduce.”  He gave the pot an expert swirl and set it back down.  “We still have mushrooms?”

“I think so.”  They’d stored up too much in the lower drawer.  She sorted through the items.  “What’re we making?”

“Soup.”  He declined to elaborate, and began to slice the mushrooms.  “We’ll also need lemongrass, cilantro, and some of those tiny peppers from outside.”

“You’ll send me out in this cold?” she griped, but she was already reaching for the scissors. 

He put down the knife.  “It’s summer, Nathaly. It’s almost ten degrees outside.  And the garden’s right beside the back door.”

“Anything south of twenty is fucking frigid.”  Pulling the blanket tighter, she headed out.

The moonlight gilded the leaves in silver as Shepard sorted through the huddled plants, trying not to drop the blanket.  Cilantro reminded her of home, the first home she ever had.  Her grandmother grew bales of it in window boxes.  Bending to cut some, she might have been six again, and smiled to herself in spite of the cold.  Or maybe because of it— the Arizona desert took on its own chill at night.

Lemongrass was more foreign.  Its pungency stabbed through the air as she cut it near the dirt, gathering several stalks.  A side of Kaidan she hadn’t known, like the cooking, until recently.  Sure he fixed a few meals in the apartment, back when the apartment was habitable.  Seeing him now, it was clear he’d grown up watching his mother, and absorbed everything she had to teach.  That added new depth to her understanding of the damage BAaT did to his family.  It was easy to sense, lurking there even today, in every interaction between mother and son, but harder to interpret.

When she was done, she returned to the kitchen, and found he’d added tofu, galangal (not ginger, she reminded herself, firmly), the aforementioned limes plus some kaffir lime leaves he’d obtained god-knew-how, and fish sauce to the waiting ingredients.  He smiled as he heard the door shut. 

“Here you are.”  She dumped her handful of fresh produce beside his pile. 

“These look great.  Take this.”  He handed her the spoon.

Shepard held it like a dead mouse.  “Wait a minute—”

He took the lemongrass to the sink.  “Nope. This time, you cook, and I help.  Don’t worry, I’ll walk you through it.”

Everything about this read imminent disaster.  Kaidan noticed her frown, and pushed her arm towards the pot.  “Add the coconut milk.”

It trickled in, aided by her tentative stirring.  She put the spoon down.  “Kaidan, look, cooking… My biggest accomplishment is getting a microwave burrito thawed the whole way through without drying it out.  I know you want to do this whole domestic thing—”

He picked it up and put it back in her hand.  “I have never known you to admit defeat on anything.  What’s going on?  Talk to me.”

She stared into the pot, expressionless face flickering in the burner’s flame. 

Kaidan tried another tact.  “You’re not sleeping.  You barely eat.”

“I…”  She let the spoon go, and slumped over the stove, tiredly.  “I didn’t expect winning to feel like this.”

His face softened.  “That’s because we didn’t win.  We just beat the reapers.”

She brushed some of the hair out of her eyes.  He rubbed her shoulders, left a kiss on her neck.  “Let’s just make soup, ok?  Lemongrass is next.  Smash it first.”

The damp stalks left small puddles on the board as she ran the knife through them, and then upended it and brought the butt of the handle down on each piece, thump thump.  Then the same to the peppers.  The motion was almost comforting; Kaidan made this soup a lot.

Kaidan slid sliced galangal into the pot.  “Your turn.”

Picking up the lemongrass with the blade, Shepard watched it disappear into the white broth, only to bob back up again, filmed with coconut milk.  Already leeching all its intensity and leaving the herb softer, milder, spent; having sprouted and fought through the dirt to the sun, grown tall and proud, only to give up all it made to this.  Because she declared that this was its purpose and its end.

A fistful of bright leaves fluttered down over the lemongrass pieces.  Shepard started.  Kaidan’s brow furrowed, and he touched her arm.  “You sure you’re ok?”

“Yeah,” she said, distantly.  “I’m just tired.”

He watched her a few moments too long for comfort.  “Even the squirrels know that.”

It caught her off guard and she laughed, as he clearly hoped she would.  Just one chuckle.  But it helped. 

“Tofu and mushrooms next,” he prompted.  Shepard gathered them up and dumped them in.

She just about remembered to stir it every so often as they juiced limes and chopped cilantro.  To her endless gratitude, Kaidan took it back to finish it when it came off the burner; she never could get the amount of fish sauce just right.  Somehow, he’d gotten the rice cooker going while she messed with the soup, too.  She liked dumping it all into her bowl with the soup, a practice that never failed to earn her a look of mock-disappointment that was half the reason she kept doing it.

They settled on the couch.  For a few minutes, they ate in the quiet dark of the cabin, lined in moonlight, wrapped in blankets.  Shepard had spent all her life in motion.  Now she was trying to learn how to live with stillness.

The soup-soaked rice felt good in her mouth, something she could bite down on.  Something solid and warm in her stomach.  She hadn’t realized exactly how cold she’d gotten, or how hungry; each spoonful brought a little more color into the room. 

Kaidan sipped at his own bowl, smaller than hers, with a slight smile.  “Feel better?”

She looked down into her nearly-empty bowl, and back up at him.  “How did you know?”

“You skipped dinner.  And lunch.”  His tone just a little too light.  “This isn’t easy for me either, but regularly crashing your blood sugar isn’t helping.”

There was nothing to say to that.  “I don’t know what to do with myself up here.”

“Yeah.” He set his food aside and inched closer to her, settling his arm around her waist.  “You’ve got a stack of requests piling up.”

“Busy work,” she scoffed.

“There’s never going to be another reaper war, and that’s a good thing.”  He gave her a squeeze.  “You’ll just have to subsist without the adrenaline and cortisol, high blood pressure, constant small injuries, and all those other things.”

“Tomorrow.”  It was too complicated to unpack right now.  She set the empty bowl aside.

“Tomorrow,” Kaidan agreed, and pulled her to her feet.  “Now, let’s sleep.”

[sabreean]

One word for you...

Where I have not gone plastic-free:

Bread box: There are no plastic-free, airtight bread boxes that I’ve been able to find and I *must have* airtight. I make my own bread in a bread machine just because I like to, and the first few loaves I made here on the humid island grew mold within three days because my old bread box was not airtight. Bread bags are more eco-friendly but aren’t airtight, and will hold the humidity. I could find no silicon boxes and also could not find silicone containers/bags that I could be sure would be big enough to hold a loaf of bread and still close completely. I’m considering a giant silicone bag I found online, for marinating meat, so if I get that I can see if a loaf will fit inside. But I haven’t pulled the trigger on that yet, buying something just to marinate meat doesn’t fall neatly into the “I really need it now” category. So I purchased a BPA-free plastic, airtight box and it seems to be working very well. It’s so airtight that I was able to store bananas in it as well and there has been no sign of fruit flies.

Suncare: I spent two days working on the porch. I was under a roof in shade the entire time but I sunburn if I stand next to a toaster, so at the end of the second day I looked like Roy Neary in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”. As in the right half of my face was bright red. I wasn’t wearing sunscreen because it breaks me out. All of it. Every single sunscreen ever. They all break out my face, neck and chest within 20 minutes of application. So I did some research and learned about mineral sunscreens versus chemical sunscreens and after reading a lot of recommendations and reviews, I ordered Alba Botanica Sensitive Mineral Sunscreen. Yes the tube is plastic, but there’s probably no avoiding that. The sport cream is 45 SPF, waterproof for up to 80 minutes, vegan, free of all the chemicals that turn my face into a Marscape, biodegradable and - get this - reef safe. That’s a “gee how nice” for most people but now that I’m swimming around coral reefs, shit got real. They also make a spray-on but it’s not legal to ship aerosol cans to Hawaii, something about them exploding under pressure blah-bibby-blah. Pretty bummed about that. For those wondering, until now I’ve worn a sun visor whenever I’m outdoors but it didn’t occur to me to wear it on a covered porch. I’m sure it didn’t occur to Roy on a dark deserted highway in the middle of an Indiana night, either. LATER UPDATE: Native makes a mineral sunscreen and I thought it wasn't water resistant, but it turns out that it is, although I should not have had to dig so deep into their website to find this out. Better than getting anal probed, all things considered. The Alba sunscreen is very thick and hard to squeeze out of the tube, and you can feel it on your skin at first but you forget pretty quickly. It is completely unscented. You have to make sure to rub it in well if you don’t want to look a little weird. It showers off clean and easy and after a few days with it, not a single blemish! Our pharmacy sells some water resistant mineral sunscreens. I didn’t price them the last time I was there to compare with online ordering and they are probably reef-safe because as of January 1 of this year, suncreeens containing oxybenzone and octinoxate are banned in Hawaii to protect the reefs. But my next purchase will be Little Hands because it is made right here in Hawaii. I have been a big believer in ‘buy local’ for many years and they are plastic-free.

Groceries: Groceries haven’t changed. I’ve been using cloth shopping and produce bags for many years, they just bloody well work better. I do buy some foods in plastic, often there just isn’t any alternative. This was true even on the mainland. The main change is that now I walk to the store more often than not. I was able to walk to almost everything I needed when I lived in Austin’s SoCo in the early aughts and I loved it, I am so so happy to be able to do that again. Knowing I’m just a pleasant stroll away also means that I only buy what I need in the immediate future. There are a few exceptions for items that sell out very soon after the weekly supply barge comes, and don’t always get restocked even then. I drive when I have to buy heavy or awkward to carry things, like a case of soda. I’ve found conflicts with grocery choices because of a weird contradiction: non-hippie products in cardboard/paper packaging versus hippie products in plastic. I first noticed this when I went to buy sugar the other day - do I get the organic non bleached sugar in the plastic bag, or the nonorganic bleached sugar in the plastic bag? It wasn’t much of a conflict in any real world sense, just something that grabbed my attention. (I went with the plastic by the way, for the organic foodstuff that was going to go into my body).

Probably the clothesline, I have no idea what the hell that thing is made of, most likely nylon. We don’t use it for everything because it’s too humid here to dry everything in a reasonable amount of time. But we use it for some things - especially towels and swim wear - and I’m glad that we have it and it saves money on electricity. Our electricity generation here on the island is likely solar but still, no need to be greedy about it. Lots of people here have clotheslines, they are a common sight I am glad to see.

Bandages: I use Wellys. Patch bamboo bandages sound great, but I am clumsy AF and so I need bandages that are going to stay on through wet and dry and everything else. Wellys are flexible fabric, latex-free bandages made in the USA, in reusable tins that you can buy refills for if you don’t want a new tin, and that create a seal around all four edges. They are a certified B Corp so even with a bit of plastic, the company is still in line with my ethics.

Makeup: I use mostly mineral makeup, because it lasts longer (no organic ingredients to breed bacteria) and many mineral brands offer smaller quantities that are more sensible for people who don’t wear it everyday, or at least don’t wear the same colors every day. On the mainland I went weeks without wearing makeup and here I’ll probably go for months, it’s just such a casual place. I might wear some when we go across to Maui for a long weekend. But there are a lot of all natural and plastic-free makeup options out there these days, I am glad to see. If I need to replace anything I will shop with them but it’s just stupid and wasteful to toss everything out and buy new. One thing I won’t compromise on is mascara, I use Thrive because it really does what it claims, and it is still a company that aligns with my ethics. Many zero-waste brands sell cake mascara and that’s a complete nope for me. I tried cake mascara in high school, when I was going through my Audrey Hepburn/Sophia Loren makeup phase and I really didn’t like it. I also tried cake eyeliner and must confess that this elder goth never ever got the hang of liquid eyeliner, Icarus winged better than I can. I gave up a long time ago, pencil me in baby. Also, I wear lipstick, the paint-on stuff that stays on through food, drink, sex and a nuclear blast. IMO, lip balms are a waste of money and do not count as ‘makeup’, unless you’re only intention is to prevent chapped lips and with a small amount of color that lasts few minutes at a time.

Hair brush: I need a new hair brush that is designed for my long fine mane because my hair is getting a lot of punishment here, between wind and swimming and so more frequent washing and lots of pulling and tugging into braids. I bounced back and forth between Ibiza (boar bristles, wood handle) and Mason Pearson (boar bristles, plastic handle), for about half an hour. I finally decided to bite the big one and invest in the Mason Pearson. It is universally reputed as the best hair brush to be had on planet Earth. The was company founded in London by a Yorkshireman named Mason Pearson (bet you didn’t see that coming) in 1885. The boar bristles are either shed bristles collected from the wild in India and China or sourced from the meat industry as they are a by-product of processing farmed boar; you may ask so I will answer and yes, I do eat boar. Mason Pearson is still owned and run by the Pearson family and the Pearson women have always played integral roles in the company. Indeed Mary Pearson was the CEO for the 20 years following the death of her husband, founder Mason, and one of their daughters ran the top floor of the factory on Old Ford Road in London for 50 years. You can purchase a brush with a handcrafted made-to-order wood handle but while I am willing to make the investment in a Mason Pearson brush, I just can’t bring myself to be so self-indulgent as to even send a price inquiry for the wood model. This is where my best friend reminds me of the lengths I went to and the price I paid to obtain a bottle of the finest Irish whiskey in the world to demonstrate that yes, I can be that self-indulgent without much convincing. I just can’t bring myself to do it with a hair brush. I purchased from Pasteur Pharmacy in NYC because they made their bones, if you will, in their early years in the 60s by catering to humans with dogs.

Bed blanket: I just couldn’t bring myself to buy a bamboo blanket/bedspread that costs in the $275 neighborhood when the dogs will be spending at least as much time on it as we will spend under it. So we went with half cotton/half bamboo for a much more reasonable price. The temps here are warm by the thermometer but the air is heavy with humidity (100% yesterday and that doesn’t necessarily mean rain), so when the fans blow it around it can be pretty damn chilly. And the dogs steal the covers.

Clothing: if I need new clothing I will consider bamboo but it’s damned expensive. I was shopping for a second bathing suit recently because I’m at the beach often enough that I need a suit to wear while the other one is drying or waiting to be laundered free of all the salt and sand that didn’t wind up in my ass or under my tits. I always thought that sand-in-uncomfortable-places was a joke, I was very wrong. I spent two hours searching for bamboo or other plant-based sustainable fabric or recycled fabric and found nothing under a hundred bucks. Nothing. Not even a thong bikini (I already have sand up my ass, I don’t need material there as well). I’m not lounging instagrammatically on Waikiki, I’m swimming in 5+ foot surf every weekend at least, so I am not willing to pay that much for a suit intended for plenty of use and punishment. I got a bikini because it will be easier to discreetly rinse most of the sand away before going back up the beach, if you know what I mean and I think you do.

[skepticalcatfrog]

Among The Stars Chapter 4

First Chapter Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Summary: Logan Watts is a famous scientist, known by almost everyone in the galaxy. His most famous invention is his friend and assistant, a healthcare android named Patton. When they are called to another planet for a meeting with the local ruler, they're expecting a completely normal trip. Little did they know, this trip would send them into a daring adventure to protect their galaxy and stop a war. Teamed up with unlikely friends, including a runaway gladiator and an infamous crime trio, Logan and Patton have to figure out how to make peace and save their universe (and beyond) from being destroyed.

Pairings: (Eventual) Logicality, Prinxiety, and Demus

Word count: 3,068

Author's Notes: The last three chapters were mostly introductory, but in this one things are finally starting to come together!

Logan stared at the sky, dumbfounded. His last chance of escape was gone. Patton was gone. He had to do something, to figure out how to get off of this planet. He speed walked out of the parking lot, not wanting to run so he didn't draw too much attention to himself. He walked up to the first person he saw, a woman with purple crystals around her eyes.

"Excuse me, does this planet have any type of public interplanetary transportation?" He asked. 

The woman glanced at him and walked away. He figured that there wouldn't be any point in following her, because if she didn't answer the first time then she wouldn't answer if he asked a second time. He approached a second person, a man whose eye color shifted through different shades of pastels and had round glasses resting on his nose. He kind of reminded Logan of Patton.

"Hello, I apologise for the interruption, but is there any public transportation on this planet?" He asked.

"You're Logan Watts, right?" The man asked. Logan nodded. "I'm sorry, but we're not supposed to talk to you."

"What? Why?" Logan furrowed his brow.

"None of us know, if I'm being honest with you." The man shrugged. "The president broadcasted a city-wide announcement a few minutes ago, he told us not to talk to you."

Logan let out a cry of frustration, which caused the other man's eyes to widen. "Of course! Of course this is his fault."

"O...kay?" The stranger raised one eyebrow. That also made Logan think of Patton, because the android would always make fun of him for his inability to raise only one eyebrow. "I have to leave, I'm really not supposed to be talking to you right now."

The man took a few steps backwards before turning around and speed-walking away. Logan couldn't blame him. He looked around at the surrounding buildings. A library, a supermarket, the presidential building, the arena… a mechanic. He sprinted down the street towards the shop. He burst through the front door to find the mechanic inside, with no other customers.

"Can you get me a ship?" Logan said, trying to catch his breath.

"Who's asking?" The mechanic crossed his arms. Apparently this guy didn't recognize him.

"Logan Watts." He answered. The mechanic started to say something, but Logan held up one finger to stop him. "I know what you're about to say. You aren't supposed to be talking to me. But I really need your help, and if you just give me a ship then I'll be out of your hair in five minutes. I promise that no one will ever find out."

"I don't sell ships, but chances are I can get you the parts to build one." The mechanic told him. "That is, if you have the money."

"I do, and I'll pay in full as soon as I get what I need." Logan shot back. He knew how to build a ship, he just needed supplies.

"I have a shipment of parts coming in next week. Think you can wait until then?" The mechanic asked.

"Alright." Logan nodded. The circuits on his face started glowing, and he made a digital note on the mechanic's computer. It was the code for his phone. "Contact me when it gets here."

He turned around and walked out the door. Everyone seemed to be ignoring him, which was actually very helpful. It would make it easier for him to keep a low profile that way. He went to a few stores to buy supplies, then to the edge of the city. He walked far enough away that he'd go unnoticed, but close enough that he could still see the city. Then he used his supplies to build a small shelter. That would probably last him a while.

Sure enough, a week later he got a notification on his phone. The message was an unknown number, saying that the parts for the ship had arrived. He went back into town and back to the shop. There were two large boxes next to the front desk that hadn't been there last time.

"Welcome back." The mechanic said. "Everything's here, and there's a blueprint in the box."

"Thank you." Logan nodded. "How much will it cost?"

"6,000." The mechanic answered. "Plus an extra 100 if you want something to carry the boxes with."

"Done." Logan's face began to glow again. A little machine on the desk beeped, and the parts had been paid for. He left with the boxes, which were sitting on a metal plate floating behind him. He brought them back to the shelter he'd built and got to work.

~2 months later~

Logan wiped the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. He stood up and looked at the ship. It wasn't anything special, but it was done. There wasn't even a second seat. Hopefully it would start. He opened the door on the side, sitting down and hanging his jacket on the back of the seat. Then he shut the door. He took out his phone and made it track his ship. Not the pod that had been stolen, but the main ship where his lab was. He balanced his phone on the steering mechanism. He pressed the button next to it, and he heard the engine start up. A rare smile crossed his face. The ship lifted off of the ground and he travelled out of the planet's atmosphere. Finally, he was on his way back home.

It didn't take long to get back to his ship, only as much time as it had taken to get to Xialea VII in the first place. He was lucky that his ship was stationary most of the time. He parked the new pod in the space where the old one had been previously. The second he was safely inside the ship, he practically tripped out of the pod and bolted to the stairs up to his lab. He fell into his desk chair in front of his computer and began typing frantically. He had given Patton a built-in tracking device a long time ago, if he could just get the signal then he'd be able to find him. And Logan knew how to get the signal in under a minute. A map appeared on a screen, with a tiny blue dot in the middle. That dot was Patton. Logan never knew why he decided to make it blue despite the fact that Patton was gold, it just felt like it should've been blue.

Based on the location displayed on the screen, Patton was currently located on Planet #739049287193. It didn't have a proper name because of the non-existent population. But now Patton was there, which meant that other people must've been there as well. However terrible the situation was, it was admittedly smart of Patton's captors to bring him to such an isolated planet. The trip would take two days, but he didn't have that kind of time. He would have to take the whole ship, that way he could travel using hyperspeed. Plus Patton would have a home to come back to right away. It was a flawless plan, in Logan's opinion. He transferred the data of Patton's location to the monitor in the pilot's bay. 

Once he got there, he sat in the chair at the front of the room. He turned on Autopilot and typed his desired location into the search bar. He switched the ship into hyperspeed. The surrounding landscape became blurry as the ship began moving faster. Within minutes, everything returned to normal. He looked at the surface of the planet below him. It could only really be described as unpleasant. A shroud of gray storm clouds covered the sky above him. The ground below appeared to be solid rock, stalagmites rising from the ground. Some of them were taller than others, some even looking like mountains.

Logan opened up a screen that would give him a closer view of the ground. It was the same all around, and it was so boring that if he wasn't doing something important then he might've fallen asleep. It took a while to find anything. And when he finally saw something, it wasn't what he expected. Near the base of one of the taller stalagmites, he saw what looked like a person cleaning a motorcycle. He stopped the ship, and the person looked up at him with wide eyes. Apparently a giant ship being parked above you is easy to notice. He opened the trapdoor that was behind his chair and climbed on to a ladder as it was being lowered to the ground.

When his feet touched the ground, he started walking. The stranger in front of him stood up from where they'd been kneeling next to the motorcycle. Upon closer examination, Logan noticed that this person had scales. But only on half of their face. Logan approached them and held out his hand.

"Hello. My name is Logan Watts. Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?" He requested, waiting for a handshake and an introduction.

"Dalton Sanders. Sure, shoot." The stranger answered. Logan quickly drew back his hand. He was talking to Dalton Sanders, the infamous thief. He narrowed his eyes.

"Have you seen an android around here recently?" Logan asked, even though he already knew the answer.

"Took you long enough." Dalton snickered. Logan tensed up at the sight of his fangs. "Come inside, he hasn't stopped talking about you for two months."

"Are you serious? No protest or anything?" Logan raised his eyebrows. That only made Dalton laugh even more. Logan was already starting to get tired of this guy.

"Not at all. We'll give him back, we just needed you for something. He was actually really nice to have around, he's good company." Dalton turned around and started walking away. Logan followed him through a door that he hadn't noticed before, into a large cavern.

"Logan!" He heard Patton's voice from the back of the room and saw him jump up. The android ran towards him and tackled him in a hug, holding on tight. Logan was surprised at first, but soon settled into it. "I missed you."

"I can tell." Logan said, a hint of happiness in his voice. "I came to bring you back."

"Oh, that's wonderful!" Patton pulled back with a smile, which quickly shifted into a frown. "But… there's just one thing I need to talk to you about. I-"

"Hey, hi, I'm Remus. Sorry for the interruption, but I have a question for you Mr. Scientist." A new person said, his tone revealing that he wasn't actually sorry. "Why do you not have an accent, but the android that you build does?"

"What? He doesn't have an accent, I would know, I programmed him that way." Logan frowned.

"Okay here, we just listened to you talking, now listen to him talking." Remus gestured to Patton.

"I don't have an accent. At least, I didn't think I did." Patton said. Turns out Remus was right, Patton had a very light Southern accent.

"How is that possible?" Logan muttered, talking to himself. "He developed feelings a long time ago, but I never expected this many changes to his programming…"

"I'm sure it's not that big a deal, Logan. Everything that's happened so far is minor." Patton reminded him.

"I suppose you're correct." Logan nodded. "There isn't a point in dwelling on minor issues."

"Speaking of issues, can we go back to what I was talking about before? Even though this is kind of a big issue." Patton requested.

"Of course, what is it?" Logan regained his focus.

"So, you know how a while ago I was talking about wishing I could meet another android? Well, it happened. But he really needs our help." Patton told him. 

He brought Logan further into the cavern, stopping in front of someone sitting in a desk chair. Logan could tell immediately that he was looking at an android. A very damaged one, from the looks of it.

"Can he speak?" Logan asked. The android's eyes began to glow purple. Patton pointed to the computer.

"No I can't. But I can do this if you want." Words appeared on the screen.

"He can connect to the computer." Patton explained quickly. Logan nodded.

"Alright. Firstly, what is your name?" He asked.

"I don't have one. They call me Anxiety, but I have a number too." Anxiety told him.

"And what is that number? It could be a code for something." Logan looked at the computer screen as numbers started appearing.

"229187912."

"Okay." You could tell Logan was concentrating. "If you split that up into sections, it could be letters. 22-9-18-7-9-12. If this is intentional then those numbers could turn into a name. The 22nd letter in the alphabet is… V. 9 is I, and that appears twice. 18 is R. 7 is G. 12 is L. So when you put those together in order, it becomes V-I-R-G-I-L. Virgil."

"Virgil." Anxiety smiled widely. He'd never had a real name, only ever his nickname.

"Do you want us to call you that now?" Dalton asked.

"Definitely." Anxiety (or Virgil, rather) smiled even wider. Dalton's heart soared seeing him so happy.

"Now, on to the next order of business." Logan brought them back to the current task. "What specifically is wrong with you?"

"I can't talk, or move. I have a glitch in my programming, but I don't think that's fixable." Virgil told him. "Basically, what I was built to do is predict outcomes. But the glitch makes it so that I can only see the bad ones."

"And how long have you had that glitch?"

"I've always had it. That's why I was a prototype."

"So, can you fix him?" Remus asked, a hint of hope appearing in his voice. Logan realized that all eyes were on him.

"Yes, yes I can." Logan sighed. "Patton, the ship is outside. Can you bring them to my lab, and make sure they don't cause any trouble?"

Patton nodded. "Come on, guys. We can take the motorcycle up to the ship, that'll make it easier."

As they left the cavern, Logan couldn't help but wonder why Patton was being so nice to them. They were criminals, not to mention the fact that they'd literally kidnapped him. It was just like Patton to remain optimistic in the face of danger.

Once everyone else had gotten to the ship, Logan took out his phone. He'd gotten to Patton, but he still had one more thing to find. The stolen escape pod. When he got the tracking signal, he couldn't believe what he saw. For one thing, the escape pod was on the very same planet. But the dot that showed its location was jumping around the screen. It didn't seem to be going in any sort of pattern, but it would occasionally come back to the same spot. Logan decided that must've been where it was. It wasn't even that far away, only a couple of minutes of walking. Once he got to the ship, he saw it right away. That was one thing he expected. One thing he didn't expect was to have a sword pointed at him right away.

"Who are you and why are you here?" The stranger asked. Based on his appearance, he was from Xialea VII.

"My name is Logan Watts. I believe you stole my ship." Logan answered. The stranger's eyes widened, and he lowered his sword.

"I did, and I'm really sorry about that, but I promise I had a good reason." The stranger explained.

"And what exactly is that reason?" Logan said skeptically.

"I… needed it." The Xialean said. Logan rolled his eyes. "It's true! It was a matter of life and death. You see, I'm… a prince! And I really needed to leave the planet, because I didn't like it there at all."

"But you're Xialean. They don't have royalty, they have a president."

"But you see, that's the thing. I'm not from Xialea VII, I'm from Xialea VI." He lied, hoping Logan wouldn't catch on. "That was the original kingdom, then some of the citizens broke away and made the city that became famous. I recently took a trip there, but apparently they still have some sort of grudge against us. I'm Roman Northbrook."

Roman was telling so many lies, and he knew it. But it wasn't like he was ever going to see this guy again. This was his chance to be who he'd always wanted to be, even just for a few minutes. At least he'd told the truth about his name.

Logan didn't acknowledge the introduction, simply moving on to examine the escape pod. It was completely broken, and had clearly been crashed. No wonder the tracking device hadn't been working.

"Okay, you know what?" Logan turned back around to face Roman. "Come to my ship with me. I'll bring you home, and you clearly need supervision anyway."

"Please don't take me home! I can't go back, they'd probably kill me for running away in the first place." Roman told him. At least that last part was true. "I can be useful, I'll be like a security guard or something!"

"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it." Logan began walking back towards the main ship. Roman followed him, not really knowing what else to do. The moment they got back to the ship, everyone was staring at them.

"Who's the new guy?" Dalton raised his eyebrow, pointing to Roman.

"This is Roman Northbrook, he is the person who stole my ship. He'll be staying here for a while." Logan explained. Roman waved awkwardly.

"Cool." Remus smiled. "Don't worry, some of us steal things too."

Virgil didn't have a computer to connect to, but he would've been to busy staring to say anything anyway. It was quite possible that this was the most beautiful person he'd ever seen. He looked away quickly. If androids could blush, he'd be as red as the streaks in Roman's hair.

Logan looked around at the group in front of him. He'd come to this planet expecting to get Patton and be on his way. Instead he'd gotten Patton, two thieves, a broken android, and a runaway prince. What was he getting himself into.

Taglist: @idkwhyimhere0o0 @icequeenoriginal @mostpeopleannoyne @007ardra @logan-is-my-spirit-animal

[businessbusy-love]

Reason why you need to manufacture your products yourself

we're going to discuss why you need to manufacture your products yourself now I know I've been talking a lot about manufacturing in the previous videos any advantages of how much money you can make by yourself and that you don't need anybody else in this day and age but Want to go into a little detail here so let's say you do have a simple plastic product that you want to make you don't make it yourself what you do is you design it yourself and then you farm out all the injection molding processes you're not going to bring in some giant injection molding machine to get start edit's a waste of time you don't have the space. You have to know the business current affairs to be success.

Those machinesare really expensive they take a lot of skill to run you need to make the moldsand it goes on and on and on the electric bill the employees you don'twant all that you're an inventor looking to make good money in the simplest waypossible I call people lazy for coming up with their ideas and then not doingaging with them other than trying to sell them to other people but the reality of it is we also don't want to work too hard either we want to work efficiently for the maximum amount of money and we do that by manufacturingthem ourselves think about this even a 30 $40 item through business news. 

If you can make $10 on eachitem after you've shipped it out the door to your distributor reseller oreven retail imagine how much money you can make simply just selling you know to300 units to 300 units at a $10 profit each is two to three thousand dollarsfor very little effort if all you're doing is slapping labels on and you needa bedroom or a basement or a garage somewhere just to store a few of them asthey arrive from whoever's manufacturing them for you this is a win win it shouldbe a dream come true for you guys. 

It's the way I started when I first started Iwas making a hundred pieces out of aluminum at a time I had a bunch oflittle aluminum parts I would have a made at the machine shop take them overto the anodized pick him up from there bring him homeand my wife and I would sit at a table in my garage and we'd put them togetherit really it was just a weekend and part time job but here's a thing about whenyou price your products correctly now those products of mine were sellingfor two three four hundred dollars apiecethey took me about 10 15 minutes to assemble but I was doubling triplingquadrupling what it was actually costing me to make them so when I was sellingthem at a few hundred dollars and only selling twenty thirty of them a week Iwas making thousands of dollars I mean literally out the gate. 

I started makingfifty a hundred thousand dollars with my first it was one product that I didn'tspun off to two products to raise the revenue a little bit more that went tothree then went to four five six products and then that was it and I didthat for god I think five six seven years by the time I was done with thatsimple product that only cost me a few thousand dollars for that initial run ofa hundred pieces I made close to a million dollars in the life of that oneseries of product that was it that was a five year run and a million dollars overfive years is pretty darn good when you consider. 

I was working fulltime in the movie industry and then coming home and just doing that as aside thing instead of watching TV those products they took me two days to makein my garage the original prototypes and then a fewhours to drill out the parts and also go over to the machine shop and talk withthem but once the machine shop had it in her hands they did all the workit was easy it was just me picking up the parts when they were done takingthem to the anodized ER waiting a few days getting the colored parts back andyou've seen anodizing in the previous videos I talked about it but you cangoogle it or look here on YouTube if you're not sure what I mean it's ahardening colouring process that they use onaluminum and some other materials it's actually a ceramic coating which isinteresting in fact aluminum becomes non conductive after you anodized it whichis really interesting because of the coating it's a process that you justdrop the parts off you wait you wait for them to be done you pick them up youtake everything home you buy your screws whatever else you need you keep them inbags on a shelf and you assemble them as you go it's kind of a no-brainer but nowyou can control your destiny with your products and here's the other thing weneed to talk about this. 

And I'm not gonna go just pro-america here I'm gonnatalk about America and I'm gonna talk about Europe and I'm even gonna talk tomy Indian friends because I seem to have a lot of like 5% of the people on hereare from India and I know they're coming from croire and that's one of the othervideos that I showed you on how you can use Quora to attract video views so Iknow that about 5% is Indian you guys have the opportunity in India with allyour little manufacturing facilities around you to make anything you wantcheaply and then put them on eBay and sell them worldwide and then us inAmerica forget about what they have available to them we have everythingavailable to us in every state I will be surprised if you guys in any state inthe United States cannot find a machine shop and an anodized er I guarantee youcan find both and if you need screws and all that other stuff you order it onlineit's you know that everything's right there it comes in the mail here. 

If Iorder from McMaster Claire in the morning my screws are here within fourhours so you have no excuse in America everything is available to you in aninstant it's really convenient and great for you to grow your business now allyou need is a small space in your apartment or house realistically couldbe a closet I mean my wife you know she didn't mind the garage but as thebusiness started to grow it took over the house so she would complain aboutthat but so I did have to move beyond thehouse pretty quickly but it was easy for years just to stock boxes on the shelvesand ship them after about five years of doing that I was looking for the biggeryou know the bigger revenue and that's when I came up with the product attractstick the last one I was talking about was hobby camp and that's no longeraround so I really didn't mention it but track stick you can go to the websitewhen I started thinking about track stick it was a couple years after 9/11and I knew there was some concern in the world about terrorism so that's whatgave me the idea for track stick it was a product that I designed completelyhands-off when I made track stick I knew I wanted it to be big and there wereonly two ways I could do that one way would have been to invest in equipmentlike you see here but this isn't even really high speed equipment this is justfor me to do small batch runs when we're talking high speed thousands of boardsyou need much bigger pick-and-place machines and I didn't want to get intoall that I'm in California I didn't want the rent the electricity to theemployees all the insurance all the retirement expenses the medical and itgoes on and on and on I was young I was like got 32 years old. 

I wanted to stillbe able to have fun travel the world it's what you want to do it's up to youif you want that responsibility I know a lot of guys that just drive off of thatI didn't want that I didn't want the risk of going out of business I didn'twant the risk of not being able to pay the rent those types of things but Icould tell you one thing I learned if you do it you will figure out a way topay the bills no matter how much more they are than the bills you have nowit's an amazing thing I've been saying I'm worried about the rent or themortgages or all the other costs for 20 years now I haven't gone bankrupt yetin fact I've done quite well I may not have you know the huge facilities likeyou see on some of these youtube channels with the manufacturing but mostof them aren't in California where real estate is really expensive and there area few like one of the guys I love is Titan C&C look him up he talks aboutmanufacturing in in America I could not take the pressureof his responsibilities he's actually talked about how he's going bankrupt afew time his credit is bad he's nearly lost his businesses I I would I wouldlose my hair that. 

I love it would all turn gray first and that's not what I'mlooking to do it's up to you if you have the money if you have the balls to beable to put up with that go for it I don't have it and I'm not ashamed toadmit that I don't have that kind of risk taking ability I tend to just do itlittle baby steps at the time and as I make profits pay my taxes that's anotherthing when you make money taxes are coming so don't forget that I can't tellyou how many Kickstarter projects I've seen go under not because they didn'tship a product but because of the taxes you and you're an inventor you're abusinessman too this is another thing we will talk about it in the future but notonly are there responsibilities for bills the taxes can be hugeand in California believe me they come knocking they come looking for youso you need to think about that that as you become successful you are a targetfor the taxman so prepare for it and these are the realities of manufacturingand it's really not manufacturing we're talking about in most cases here we'retalking about micro manufacturing we're talking about 100 200 500 pieces at atime we're talking about not big investments for you guys I know theprices if you do all aluminum products if you do injection molded parts you canmany times get in depending on your product to three to five thousanddollars at the most for your first product I think that's a good risktolerance and then as you grow you take on a little more maybe a fifteenthousand dollar product here's another hint so my most successful products andthis has been pretty consistent I have products that have cost meanywhere from $2,000 to make up to a quarter of a millionand I will tell you a little secret my most successful products this is true mymost successful products have cost me anywhere from $3,000 to $10,000 to makenow I have made hundreds of thousands of dollars in mistakes along the way takingthose $3,000 products to market I don't have to make those mistakes anymore butI did in the beginning I mean my track stick technically cost me less than$10,000 to invent but I blew twenty thousand dollars of my own money makingmy first mold that was useless because I wound up hiring people that had nevermade molds before and they were like two thousand miles away and here's thekicker so I blew twenty thousand dollars on that mold and I was so upset about itand I started googling there was a mold maker within walking distance of myhouse in California then. 

I wound up hiring and I think he did my first moldit was about 15,000 I told him I went broke for 20 grand could he please makemy next fold for 15 and I promised that I would give him more business which Idid I made about 10 molds with the guy it was just incredible the learningexperience and how much I could have saved if I knew ahead of time but that'slife and that's why we talked about you need to get out there and you need tostart talking to these people and learning the processes so you don't makethe same mistakes that I made in the beginning and if you are learningsomething from these videos I hope you're subscribing you're leavingcomments below you're giving me a thumbs up because I want to help I also want togrow this channel and you know I want to be here for you guys because it'sexciting as you guys are making things and talking to me it really encouragesme to keep going even when I have such a low view countright now thanks to YouTube and its new algorithms but we'll getthat if you just keep on leaving me comments so that I know were punchingthrough the slow views I don't care how many people are viewing this what I careabout is that the ones that are viewing this channel are learning something andimplementing it that's what you need to do because if you just start doing somemicro manufacturing invest a few thousand maybe and I know this in Indiayou guys are probably investing a few hundred the equivalent of a few hundreddollars with your friends and they're making you product so anybody can dothis in America it's gonna cost us a little more because we do have differentlaws and restrictions that don't allow us to be that cheap Europe the same wayEurope's going to be a little more expensive for manufacturing than inAmerica and definitely more than it's gonna cost in Asia but it doesn't matterit depends on what your interests are where you want to make your productswhat your commitment is I am like 100 percent make it in America butunfortunately in California because of all the environmental laws and all theother restrictions most of the time I get prices that are three times the costof what they are to make in Asia so you know if they can't compete you can'tjust say oh okay. 

I'll pay three times more that three timesrepresents the entire cost of my product which means that they've raised theprice by three times at the same C shops my retail is going to double my cost tothe distributors is probably going to triple I'm gonna price myself right outof the market so when it comes to manufacturing you'regonna have to pick all different places if you know something's cheap to makearound the corner do it around the corner don't send it to Asia you know doit locally but at the same time if you're good if you have a part that'smachined and let's say it'll cost you 75 dollars to make in the US but China willsell to you for $30 a piece in a quantity of 100 where do you think youhave to go you're going to have to go to Asia toChina and I'm going to mention Titan C&C again because I'm watching his videosthis guy gets me pumped up I mean he's different he's differentjust like I'm different big guy big strong guy I'll put a link down belowand he he's a genius I know a genius when I see one this guy's so smart andthe way he looks he may not even realize how smart he is because he talks aboutmachining like I've never heard it talked about before and I know machinisthe has beautiful shops Titan C&C has shops that you could eat off the floorseverything is pristine when I look at his machines they shine there's no chipsthere's no oil they're beautiful and it's not because he's not using them andthey're brand new this guy loves what he's doing and he's pumping me upbecause I gotta say he's making stuff in the US I'm saying make stuff in the USwe're both doing it and you can too and if you're in Asia make it in Asia ifyou're in Europe make it in Europe make your commitment to the people around youthat's all that's important it's not about nationalism it's aboutmanufacturing because manufacturing is what made America great we all need tomanufacture if we want to see our countries do well so look at Titan andwhat he says the only way that America is going to compete in the world is ifthe machines make the parts quicker we already know that especially inCalifornia labor is expensive and the liability that goes with itit is prohibitive for companies. 

it does create a burden for companies so what hesays is you hire less people but you make the machines run quicker you buynewer machines you program so they're fastyou make efficient ways to manufacture so you can get more product out the doornow I should listen to this advice because the stuff that I run on thesemachines many times gets back ordered by days by weeks it's frustrating for mebecause I can never predict the amount of sales that I'm going to get and nomatter what I put on the Shelf it seems to sell out so you can actually and thisis a weird thing about business even though my profits on purpose are high Ican actually put myself out of business by making too much product yes I knowthat people are going to buy it but at what cost to me in terms of stocking iton the shelves Titan talked about this too we're a company said we need to stopour orders but he kept going and these were expensive millions of dollars inparts it was actually a hundred million dollar contract you can look at hisvideo he just said you know what they're gonna come back and they're gonna ordermore so I'll just start keep making them for weeks maybe months he went on and hemade all these parts they never came back for them so when you do this yougot to watch how many you put on yourself manufacturing is a game youjuggle how many do I make versus how many I think are going to sell not howmany are actually selling because remember there's a delay after orderparts from Asia I order parts from down the street they all take time to come inthen there's processes like anodizing painting whatever processes you add tothat they all take time and god forbid one of those manufacturers get busybecause then the time that you normally get them in becomes longer so when itcomes to manufacturing start thinking of a plan because that's how you're gonnamake your money you.

If you need many business blogs like this then you can visit VISHLOGIC BUSINESS.

[martincooneyart]

Hello and welcome to an important martincooney.com posting. Please take the time to read this article in full as I propose a serious solution to a problem of crucial and growing concern to…

The Great Carrara Marble Quarry Debate

Giant machinery is now so ubiquitous as to virtually blend into our world unnoticed. Wherever you look these days, if you peer around long enough they are usually to be spotted somewhere in the picture, even as you admire the scenery that frames them. There they are busily unloading ships, cutting out swaths of mountains, building our houses, shops and shopping malls; they fly us through the air, take us here there and everywhere, and pretty much do whatever it is that we want done.  And so, if we are so easy with massive machines doing what they do in the 99.99 percent of the non-marble world, why should not this same seemingly unstoppable force of progress be unleashed to benefit the extraordinarily successful Carrara marble quarrying industry?  Why should they be denied the very tools and equipment so readily available to every other sector of the economy – not to mention their direct rivals elsewhere across the world?

    The counter claim to all this positivity surrounding the various fortunes currently being made is that, far from bringing prosperity to the region, the current marble boom has brought naught but misery, poverty and despair. From the local’s point of view nothing in the way of benefit has come their way. All they see is an accelerated ecological nightmare tearing at the very heart of a long and extraordinarily proud culture. So aggrieved are the local population that plans are now progressing to close quarries, reduce production, and drastically curtail the scale of the global Carrara Marble brand.

  And there we have it, The Great Marble Divide: whether to tear ahead at full speed and remove as much and as fast as possible / or \ carefully manage the supply of marble and revere each precious block.

I know what your are thinking. Which side of this increasingly contentious issue am I on?

Sorry to disappoint but I am on neither side, for I feel strongly that – world’s apart as these two warring sides appear to be (as you are about to find out), I – yes, I Martin Cooney, have a solution.

Yep, (I can hear the hubbub, the merriment, the mirth… but) I have a solution.  Not THE solution that will solve everything in one fell swoop, but as I will outline as this post unscrolls, the sheer magnitude of the problem can make it appear almost unsolvable, and so I say let’s start by breaking this complex subject into the two separate issues.

Firstly there is the issue of volume, to which I have nothing of merit to add. Volume of trade is a subject of its own, and while I may harbor my own opinions I don’t really think they are worth sharing to be honest, for I am no expert on the subject. No, my expertise derives from what I believe to be is a unique understanding of the superb carving properties of what essentially comes down to ‘quarry waste’. That’s right; for second on the grievance list, after the sheer quantity of marble extracted from the mountains, what seems to rankle most people is the sheer waste involved in many modern day quarrying techniques. For in order to satisfy the slabbing industry’s insatiable desire for counter tops, much – and I mean very much –  of what would have been at one time prized marble – each block delicately pried from its perch in the quarry, and skillfully wagoneered into town – is  now unceremoniously swept aside and ignored, crushed to make toothpaste, or bulldozed to the side of the road.

It is this ‘quarry waste’, source of much rancor with the locals, that I think could provide a very real solution to the whole issue of what is and what isn’t waste. Granted some, even much, of this “debris” may be useless and ultimately bound for the crusher.  But I can tell you with absolute certainty that, here and there within the junk, there are real, true, hidden gems.  Hidden gems worth their weight in marble – and we all know how expensive marble is these days!

How do I know this? How can I say this with such certainty? Please, just look at my sculpture. Each and every piece of Marble Collection Series Sculpture was carved from a block of Colorado Yule Marble that, at some point in its long history, had been rejected, abandoned, and left to the elements.  Now each one resides on its own plinth, in a designated sculpture gallery, across from Aspen’s private and public air terminals. Furthermore they are selling, and have sold for several thousand dollars per.  To date I have carved 67 Collection Series Marble Sculptures, and have plans to sculpt a great deal many more.

The best way to illustrate my point is to review a short piece put out by Newsweek back in March of 2015

  I have read a great many accounts of this long-simmering feud, but have recently sensed that, after years of accusation, claims, insults and counter insults, perhaps this whole unfortunate state of affairs is at last rolling to a boil. And so, although I could have chosen perhaps a more clinical account,  I really thought that Veronique Mistiaen and Chiara Briganti, to their credit, but while in no way disguising their various opinions, never-the-less managed to transfer much of the raw emotion surrounding the subject – an aspect of the debate that I definitely noticed when I was there in 2014.

The ‘We care more about the land than you do’ syndrome

While the two sides appear more strongly divided than ever, from my perspective both were essentially claiming the same points: that they cared deeply for the land, the culture, the history, local economy, the lot.  And I have no doubt that they are both right. So if you keep on scrolling, and reading, I am going to explain exactly how such a miraculous solution is at hand. Right under our noses as it were.

I’ll add my views as the article proceeds, but if you wish to add a comment I will be leaving the box open for you to express your thoughts and ideas at the bottom of the page. I am eager to get involved and welcome discussion. Are you able to connect me with the industry?  Let me know what you think. You can call me at 970-319-1070 and leave a message. Email martincooneysculptore@gmail.com, or better still, arrange a KMJ GALLERY TOUR, then we can really talk.

  Here it is then, the article in question. Let’s read through it.

~ ~ ~

MICHAELANGELO’S MARBLE IS BEING SOLD CHEAP BY INDUSTRIALISTS

Newsweek

by VERONIQUE MISTIAEN and  CHIARA BRIGANTI  2015 3 27

One morning, citizens of this small Tuscan city, tucked away on the western slopes of the Apuan Alps in northern Italy, awoke to a strange protest. Grievance signs in blood-red letters had appeared overnight on the city’s statutes. “They have even taken my underwear,” read the sign strung around the neck of Moretta (Little Brown Girl); “Quarries to the Carrarini,” cried the note on the heart of the anarchist Alberto Meschi, one of the city’s most famous sons, who campaigned for better conditions for quarry workers.  A few hours later, all the signs had been swiftly removed.

Carrara is home to the world’s largest marble field, formed in the Apuan Alps over 200 million years. From the air, the marble mountains look as though they were covered in snow. From close up, the high vertical faces and giant benches of the open-cast excavations are like colossal white cathedrals in a moonscape. The landscape provided the backdrop for a car chase in the 2008 James Bond film Quantum of Solace. These quarries have been mined since Roman times. Under the orders of Emperor Augustus, slaves began working them in the first century BC, so that rich villas and public monuments – including Trajan’s Column and part of the Pantheon in Rome – could be covered in the whitest, most sought-after marble in the world. Some quarries still bear the marks of the slaves’ chisels. Michelangelo came here at the turn of the 16th century to select stones for his iconic David and Pietà statues. From Henry Moore to Louise Bourgeois and Isamu Noguchi, countless other artists across centuries and continents have been bewitched by the stone. The cathedrals of Florence and Siena, St Petersburg’s Hermitage museum, Marble Arch in London and Washington’s Kennedy Centre are all made from this celebrated marble.

~ ~ ~

OK, I think there is a lot going on in the opening salvo – way too much if I’m honest, and then there’s that title. Impartial, I’d say not. Hang in there though, for once they have set their “blood red” tone, anarchistic leanings, and laid down their obligatory historical guide to the area, they really do manage to pull us into the story, down into the nitty-gritty push and shove of it all, down to where it matters, to the very crux of the issue; pride and profit.

I’ve done a lot of travelling in my time, and it all that time I have never seen a region so strewn with vivid, graphic of often gory war memorials. Once you notice them you will continue to discover them practically everywhere. I’ll do an entire post about them one day, but the point I am making is why ever inflame passions, tensions and old blood feuds in order to make a point? Yes yes yes, much of the past was horrible, but much more wasn’t, and what is left of the past should be used to build upon the future. Do these old tensions matter in the grand scheme of things? No, we as a species must learn, grow and  move on – not lose ourselves to anger and recrimination. But keep reading and my solution will make more and more sense. Not only will it bring people together with a unified goal, but will generate much of the missing income that is really at the heart of the matter. My plan brings jobs, prosperity and dignity to those who currently feel hopeless, left behind and abandoned; isn’t that the ultimate goal of all parties here? Oh yes, and the quarry owners can continue to be just that, even if an amalgamation or two may become the order of the day.

~ ~ ~

THE ‘WHITE GOLD’ CURSE

For centuries, Carrara’s marble has been the backbone of the region’s economy and its pride. But now it has turned into a curse. The irreplaceable stone is being undersold, most of the small workshops where marble was carved have disappeared; a rare craft is dying and the environment is wrecked. This is a business with a yearly turnover of between €7–800m, according to the Guardia di Finanza police, who are examining the accounts of the industry. The only beneficiaries, however, are a few powerful families and businesses, while the rest of the town is blighted by the side effects of excavation – especially the dust and flooding. Despite its extraordinary natural resources, Carrara, a town of 66,000 inhabitants, is one of the poorest in Tuscany and one of the most heavily indebted in the country. The streets are dotted with abandoned buildings and, for years, scaffolding has hidden hotels and theatres (including the one where Puccini directed Tosca) because there are no public funds to complete restoration work. Up until now, the local administration has not taken any measures to “touch the privilege of the planet marble,” as local journalist Massimo Braglia puts it.

But now, for the first time in over a century, the people of Carrara, as well as smaller neighboring marble towns such as Massa, Seravezza and Pietrasanta, are fighting back. Over the past year, they have signed petitions, held meetings and organized demonstrations, and taken their grievances to court and to the regional government. The last time Carrarini dared to revolt was in 1894, says a local historian called Beniamino Gemignani. On that occasion, 454 people were tried and handed harsh sentences for claiming that the marble belonged to the town and not to a handful of families. “That was the last time that this sentiment was expressed publicly,” says Gemignani. “But it didn’t die; it lodged itself into the unconscious of the town. And now it has emerged again – loudly and clearly.” This time, the people of Carrara might have been heard. On 10 March, against all odds, Tuscany’s Regional Assembly passed a law that should bring added value to the city. But residents are only cautiously optimistic; it would not be the first time such a law has been ignored or weakened by loopholes.

~ ~ ~

 I suppose that, if its possible to ignore the unnecessarily inflammatory tone favored by the two journalists, they can point to what they are saying as fact verifiably true. For I must say that for during the three months I toured North West Tuscany, back in 2014, I made it a point to avoid the confusing town of Carrara. Definitely run-down in character, the place seemed beaten, bewildered and betrayed. All that marble – all that money, and yet the state of what obviously once was a proud civic community told me that precious little of it trickled into “world famous” Carrara. The social injustice that the authors hang their article upon is very real, that’s for sure, but the wider issue still remains firmly rooted in the day-to-day reality of modern marble quarry practices. Who they employ and how much they pay is to my mind a quite separate if perhaps valid issue. I’m sure that much of the unfairness/violence/incarceration unleashed upon the marble workforce was well within the dire (by 21st Century standards) norms of the day, and equally familiar to workers, unions, and political activists across the land and beyond.  Life  was tough back then, across the scale, across the world, and across every social spectrum; why can’t we simply acknowledge that and move on? People did what they needed to do to survive, so in that sense nothing has changed to this day. Anyway, our journalistic duo have laid out the ground: a few (of many) old injustices duly re-ignited, but into all this we are given a whiff of optimism in the form of a proclamation demanding drastic and immediate land reform.

Let’s see where this takes us.

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BIN LADEN BUYS TUSCANY

“Marble is in the DNA of the people of Carrara,” says Gemignani. “It represents our history, our skills and even our wounds (for working the marble). A pact of reciprocal respect bound people to their mountains… But now it’s all gone.” The pact has been broken by globalization, market forces and new excavation methods. In 1920, less than 100,000 tons a year was extracted from the area’s quarries. Today, the figure is more than five million, as local marble barons try to compete on price with producers in China, Russia and India by carving up the mountains at a relentless pace, using diamond saws and huge mechanical shovels.

Residents object that the industry’s insatiable demand for quantity is devaluing their precious stone – underselling it in bulk as a mere building stone instead of recognizing it as an artist’s medium. When this summer, the Bin Laden family quietly entered this very Italian industry, local fears seemed to be confirmed. In August, CPC Marble and Granite Ltd, a company constituted by the brothers and cousins of the deceased al-Qaida leader, Osama bin Laden, paid €45m to acquire 7.5% of the concessions of Carrara’s 81 active quarries (there are some 100 additional quarries in the area).

~ ~ ~

Again with the over the top headline. Bit dramatic, quite definitely not true, as in Bin LadenL did quite obviously not purchase “Tuscany”.  And of course such news is pretty out of date as I type this.  But once again, our journalistic duo are pretty spot on with their stats, and frightening they are: from .1 of a ton in 1920, to 5.0 less than a hundred years later. Remember, these are no ordinary quarries, many of them qualify as archaeological sites that have been worked for over two thousand years. I’d like to see the graph: flat, flat, flattish, up, straight up, vertical.  No wonder then that the locals are, shall we say, a bit upset.

As for the international marble market, BL’s family’s role in it, or anything else, I know nothing.

But one thing I know for sure is that, if all parties can agree to put aside differences and work to a solution, rather than succumb to settling long-held grievances, not only can all parties prosper, but a revival in the region’s fortunes will incorporate the entire population.

At this point please put aside anything you may have previously read on the subject, been told about it, or watched on video, because this next bit is important.

Marble, once quarried and suspended above ground, free of standing water, remains as prime and pristine as ever.  Only a thin shell, or ‘rind’ as I perceive it, is deteriorated – perhaps an inch but usually less. The rest of the rough block, ie 99.9 %, remains as gorgeous and pliable as the day it was coaxed from the quarry.

~ ~ ~

The conglomerate already controls 26 quarries around the world and has had longstanding commercial relationships with Carrara marble industrialists. But this operation ensures that the group now controls the supply of the “white” Carrara, which is experiencing a new golden era in Saudi Arabia, as well as in China and India. The deal marks the first time a foreign group – let alone one with such a loaded name – owns shares in Carrara marble district. Some greeted the news with disbelief, bemoaning the “Arabization of the quarries of Michelangelo”, but others hailed the process with optimism, scenting the millions of euros in investment and a potential boost for employment. “The deal shows that local marble families and businesses didn’t care enough to protect Michelangelo’s mountains,” says Eros Tetti, 37, founder of an association for the protection of the mountains. “They let foreign companies take away our raw resources. Carrara marble is one of the most precious kinds in the world. Because it is very soft, it is best used to create statues and works of art. We don’t want it to be taken away and used to build new skyscrapers in Saudi Arabia. We want it to stay here and be used to make art.”

Mayor Angelo Zubbani, on the other hand, enthusiastically supports the transaction. He says he is “optimistic” that it will create much-needed new jobs in Carrara and confident that the group will process the marble there, although no industrial plan has been presented. In 2013 alone, the mayor pointed out, the group placed orders for about €40m and used local sawmills to cut the blocks into slabs. In a town hit hard by the recession, this was a winning argument.

 “The odd thing is not that the Bin Laden family has acquired the quarry concessions, but that this doesn’t seem to play any role in the protest that has been gaining momentum,” muses Gemignani. It is, he adds, “more a measure of the disenchantment and anger with the marble barons and the local administration that people believe that any intervention is preferable to the status quo”. The status quo doesn’t speak well for the local companies and administration. Marble extractors pay a concession fee to the city – 8% of the average value of the excavated stone. In May, the mayor, his city council and business associations representatives will appear in court to learn whether they will be sent to trial for allegedly agreeing in 2009 to base fees on values significantly lower than the market value of the stone, a move that may have cost the town €25m.

Some companies have managed to avoid the concession fee, invoking an ancient law. In 1751, Maria Teresa d’Este, Duchess of Massa and Carrara and the owner of the land, granted local families the right to exploit the quarries and pass on the concession to their descendants. For 264 years, 30% of quarries have been subject to this archaic law; they are treated as private properties and pay no fees. Some of the concessionaires are also being investigated for a massive flow of money from Carrara into foreign companies and Swiss banks, and for the systematic under-invoicing of the marble. The investigation has led to the request for the indictment of 59 entrepreneurs.

~ ~ ~

Now we are getting down to the meat of it, and this is where I come in: “They let foreign companies take away our raw resources” They do indeed. “Carrara marble is one of the most precious kinds in the world. Because it is very soft, it is best used to create statues and works of art”, a heart felt but hardly financially sustainable notion, The truth is that there will be no solution without the billions of dollars garnered by the slabbing industry, and in all honesty, considering its global reach, I doubt if it is going away anytime soon. “We don’t want it to be taken away and used to build new skyscrapers in Saudi Arabia. We want it to stay here and be used to make art.”  Well, a percentage  – as in the lions portion – of quarried marble will always, and has and always, be rendered into building material, but you can sure understand the pride, frustration and even anger these people feel over what they see an outright betrayal of their culture, their craft, their way of life.  They want, nay demand to make their contribution to high civilization and its resplendent culture – and with their unique history and tradition I have to say that “they do have a point”.

  As for “archaic law”, “Maria Teresa d’Este, Duchess of Massa and Carrara”, “systematic under-invoicing”, no offence but, whilst these and many such problems plague and exacerbate Carrara marble’s Great Divide, I would hardly say that these sorts of issues reside exclusively within the Cararra marble industry.  Furthermore I have no doubt that with a common goal to unite both sides much of the acrimony will dissapate and each of these seemingly intractable problems may be dealt with under a spirit of communication, co-operation and transparency. I will say this though (and just this); Italy may be justifyable praised and exalted for its incredible history, its amazing food, wine, and all that goes into Italian fashion, architecture, cars, women, jewelry and style, but when it comes to, shall we say, Italians not just ‘bending’ the rules, but turning the proverbial blind eye, ah, yes, that’s when I tend to politely change the subject.

~ ~ ~

DEATH OF AN ART

Fabrizio Lorenzani, 52, a sculptor and teacher at the country’s only marble school, closes the door for the last time of the studio where he and his wife have spent years working. His is the last studio in the area to have been turned into a warehouse to store marble blocks awaiting shipment. “Ours was a place for dreaming… And now it is gone. Michelangelo’s marble city has no room for its artists,” he says. At the turn of the century, Carrara was one of the fastest-growing cities in Italy – a vibrant centre of culture and art, known worldwide not only for its exceptional marble, but also for its master sculptors, skilled artisans and stonemasons. Trained at the city’s Academy of Fine Arts (the oldest one in Italy) and the at the Marble School, they executed original commissions for renowned artists, reproduced copies of masterpieces and made decorative objects. Most of the marble fireplaces in London were made in Carrara’s workshops – including those in 10 Downing Street. So renowned were Carrara’s craftsmen that marble, granite and onyx quarried all over the world was brought there for shaping and polishing into slabs for architectural facing and paving, and for carving into decorative objects. Marble entrepreneurs invested in the city, building theatres and hospitals, developing skills, infrastructures and new technologies. There was social inequality, quarry work was dangerous and workers were exploited, but most people were employed somehow in the industry – mining, processing, transporting, transforming or producing artistic work.

~ ~ ~

Here it is that I and my own personal experience entwine with the story, for I myself trained and then worked as a Banker Mason. Having acquired my NVQ Level 2 credentials at the City of Bath College I carved stone professionally, upon a ‘banker’, within ‘banker shops’ in and around Bath.  One by one, piece by piece, we worked our way through an entire building; doors, windows, stair steps, ashlar, you name it. And once we finished one building we began on the next, and so forth. Even when I worked for myself over here in Colorado I worked this way. It is after all the only way. But, that was then. These days they have machines that would make your head spin. It’s no longer a matter of what they can do, but what they can’t. In short, machines have completely taken over what was the banker masonry industry. Sure the odd pockets of tradition still reside, but their numbers would seem to be dwindling by the day. So, its a problem, it is.

The solution however cannot be found in catering to the hobby tourists, but in the establishment of credible, professional artistic, artisan, and industrial centers that will, over the coming decades and beyond, systematically gleam through and render what is now a mountain of unslabbable fragments into, well whatever you can imagine. I can imagine a  million and one household items from soap dishes to cheese boards, exquisite and unique sculpture to hand carved marble tiles. The possibilities are endless. Why? because whereas much of that lovely marble was rejected due to some perceived defect of the day, the overwhelming majority of it is of quite superb quality. If however the block held too many intrusions, defect,  wrong shade or color, defect,  awkward shape (very common), defect, a large crack running through it, defect.  One way or another, strange as this may seem, many if not most rough marble blocks failed to make the grade, and so now you see them years, sometimes centuries, later scattered just about everywhere. So much of the prime quality marble is just laying around here there and everywhere that there is practically nowhere throughout the entire region where you will not see it.

Now what if I were to tell you that practically every scrap of this, er scrap, could be worth an absolute fortune, what would you think then? Furthermore my plan would see whole communities restored, jobs return, and prosperity across the region like never before. Please, read on.

 ~ ~ ~

Carrara’s fate started to change after the Second World War. The quarries were in new hands – some because the Fascist leader Benito Mussolini had stripped them from the old families, others simply through generational change. New technologies dramatically increased production while reducing the workforce. Still, throughout the 1950s, some 16,000 people were employed in the quarries and many more in related activities. Nowadays, fewer than 1,000 people work in the quarries and the industry at large employs barely 7–10% of the region’s population. Only a handful of workshops and studios remain in the city. Even Carrara’s own marble is rarely finished there, as overseas labour is cheaper. The modern-day marble barons and multinationals are not interested in investing back into the city and training new generations of artisans – and the marble expertise developed over generations is rapidly unraveling. Lorenzani and his wife have yet to find a new studio and the Marble School where he teaches – the only one in the country – has only 80 students enrolled this year, many of whom are not locals.

~ ~ ~

 I’m a little confused at the need to invoke the “F” word into the equation. And not wanting to get involved in this, I do however feel the need to point out that, from this account Mussolini, by ‘stripping’ the quarries from the ‘old families’ would seem to be fulfilling the dreams of said anarchist mentioned earlier. So, what happened? (I’ll find out and be back on that.) But whatever we may think about the rhetoric on full display here – a fine balance between accurate journalism, and simmering contempt, this is a very commonly held position. The stance these two reporters I would say is very reflective of public opinion, and so in that sense they do have their fingers on the public pulse.  They sure know their audience.  Anyway, this is very, very interesting stuff, for now we are getting to the very heart of the matter.

In fact it was this very sentiment, paraphrased so many times that snagged my interest in the issue back in 2018; “Whenever I look at our mountains, I see more destruction: their shapes are altered, their peaks are disappearing”. What a sad, depressing thing to read for the first time. What does he mean? When I first heard this I simply could not summon the pictures in my mind. Even after looking it up on line I still could not get my head around it; shape shifting mountains. All the mountains I had or have ever known have pretty much stayed the same. Exactly the same as it happens. But these quarries in Italy, so big they change the shape of the mountains – this I had to see. And so I did. And yes, they really are THAT BIG.

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MOUNTAINS AND MEMORY

“Whenever I look at our mountains, I see more destruction: their shapes are altered, their peaks are disappearing,” says Eros Tetti, who founded the campaign group Salviamo le Apuane (Save the Apuan Alps) in 2009. The association, which now has more than 10,500 members, has been studying the impact of the quarries and campaigning for the preservation of the region’s natural and cultural heritage. “When they are destroying the landscape, they are also destroying a large part of our lives and our past. If you walk in our mountains, you’ll see that people don’t work and live there any longer. Tourism and gastronomy had been a main part of our economy, but now it’s all gone because of the quarries.”

Modern mining techniques have not only increased marble extraction, but also the amount of broken stones and debris generated in the process. Of the five million tons of marble extracted each year, only 1.2 million is made of blocks; the remaining 3.8 million is fragments.

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This is great, we’re now talking about “fragments”, and it is precisely these fragmented pieces of perfect pure marble that I am, have been, and will be talking about to anyone who will listen. Three point eight million tons of fragments! Close your eyes and imagine that. As previously mentioned, I myself merely took a few scraps – a ton or two of bits and bobs, a ten ton slab of Colorado Yule Marble, and whatever I could muster from the floor of the Roaring Fork Valley, and turned them into sculptural pieces that have sold for upwards of five thousand dollars each. Now, turn you mind back to those marble rubbish piles, those heaps of future toothpaste, and ask yourself just how much in the way of money there is simply lying around, waiting for a direct method sculptor/artisan to hone it into a magnificent, say, Hand Carved Marble Bowl, unique marble sculpture or decorative architectural feature. For whereas the marble industry operates strictly upon a “six sided sawn” policy, we modern 21st Century Direct Method sculptors not only accommodate many of the supposed defects – discoloring, cracks and fissures etc – but actually exploit them to beneficial use.

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Quarrying companies used to pour this debris along the flanks of the mountains, “painting them in white”, but in the early 1990s multinationals such as Omya from Switzerland and Imerys from France discovered that far from being waste, these by-products were worth a fortune once cleaned and ground into a fine powder. The powder, calcium carbonate, is used as filler in everything from toothpaste, cosmetics and foodstuffs to paint and paper.

While the most expensive purest white statuario marble is worth between €2,700 and €3,000 a ton, processed calcium carbonate yields as much as €9,800 for 100kg on the English stock market. And the cost to these multinationals is a mere €4.20 a ton. Because the debris is so valuable, there is no incentive to carefully carve out the blocks of marble. Every day, 500 to 800 mega-trucks transport marble blocks and fragments from the quarries to the port and the processing plants.

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Kudos to Mistiaen and Briganti here for steering the conversation away from sentiment, tradition, culture, history and politics, and on to money. As the old saying goes; always follow the money.  Here’s the point though, and it is an extremely IMPORTANT point: when carving a block of stone via Direct Method, and especially when my own Curvilinear Reductionist principle is applied, all marble material that is not part of the finished sculpture – i.e. laying around on the ground, collected in the dust traps etc, may be gathered in dumpsters and delivered straight to the toothpaste factories for crushing. How about that? Now we are talking about a financial revolution, as most certainly this exciting newly available raw material – in the form of large marble fragments – will be worth a great deal more to the new burgeoning ‘Direct Method Fabrication Industry’ than a miserly 4 Euros a TON! Plus the region’s reputation, character, profile and esteem will be greatly enhanced once these new and exciting marble products begin to hit the world stage. So vast is this material stockpile that I can easily see the arrival of a proverbial second cultural and artistic Renaissance, perhaps just as lively, inventive and profitable as it was the first time around.

This time however, as opposed to grand civic commissions of yesteryear – palaces, monumental statues, grand staircases etc. – the revenue stream will derive from thousands, or even millions, of individual purchases of the domestic variety. The world has changed a great deal over recent years, and as I have found here in Aspen, Colorado, there is a growing interest in acquiring smaller light weight marble sculpture that is as easy to pick up and move around it is inexpensive to ship.  This in turn opens the door to a vast market of stylish consumers that is as yet untapped.

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Environmentalists worry that this unbridled exploitation is irredeemably mutilating their mountains. In 2011, a 40,000-hectare area between the provinces of Massa-Carrara and Lucca in the Apuan Alps was declared a UNESCO geopark to protect its exceptional fauna and flora and its unique geological landscape with deep crevasses and an intricate network of caves and karsts. Yet there are still some 50 active quarries there, in violation of the law. “Even Focolaccia, the highest pass in the Apuans, between Mount Cavallo and Mount Tambura, is now an open quarry – the old salt route ran through that pass,” says Tetti. In addition, intensive quarrying is affecting the hydrogeological cycles and destabilizing the mountains, and marble waste is affecting waterways. The Carrione River, which flows through many quarries, is now choked with detritus, causing devastating floods. In 2014, Tuscany’s regional assembly adopted its Regional Landscape Plan, based on a different concept of territorial governance. The idea was to prevent the Carrara-ization of the rest of the Apuan Alps and calls for the gradual closure of the quarries in the geopark, a ban on excavation above 1,200m and near water sources, and the replacement of mining in the park with a sustainable economy that would benefit the entire community. As a result of aggressive lobbying by marble companies in the area, a watered-down version is now being discussed. “Even the region is cowed by the marble barons,” says Riccardo Canesi, 58, a geographer and former Chief Secretary of the Ministry for the Environment.

~ ~ ~

photo Ron Bailey

I really don’t know what to think about all this. I think we can all agree that there has been massive exploitation, combined with a haughty disregard for nature wherever marble is quarried in and around the Carrara district. Evidence is everywhere. However that does not mean that no one cares, they care a lot as it happens. It’s just that when the abuses of such a long period of time pile up and up until there is nowhere left to stash them, then I think we can all agree that some sort of change of policy a top priority.

Clearly somethings have to change, but simply closing down the good quarries with the bad cannot be the answer. As for the quarries scaring the landscape – says who? Just look at our own “local quarry” here in the Roaring Fork Valley; Colorado Yule Marble.  Ask anyone how they manage their water run off – why, environmentally of course.  That’s why the aptly named Crystal River is as crystal today as when Yule marble was discovered almost a century and a half ago.  To my mind the only thing wrong with the Carrara marble industry is that is has mushroomed so quickly that it barely knows how to deal with the by-products of its runaway success. Whereas the astonishing volume of marble now being extracted is alarming, due to the vastness of the deposit (the world’s largest) I do not think volume is the main issue – rather they way the marble is being rent out of the mountains to the point that the mountain tops are actually beginning to disappear. But now I sense that a point has been reached whereby things simply HAVE to change, the people, whoever they are, will never give up on this.

A new approach to marble quarrying is needed, a recognition by “the marble industry” as to the legitimate concerns of local residents and environmentalists alike would help. The future of the marble industry can be many things, but it must remain robust, healthy and profitable. Colorado Yule Marble is living proof that a modern day 21st Century marble quarry can not only be a lucrative, productive and practical ‘pillar of the local community’, but can come out of the environmental/employment equation smelling like a rose, if you get my drift.

photo Ron Bailey

photo Ron Bailey

photo Ron Bailey

photo Ron Bailey

photo Ron Bailey

photo Ron Bailey

photo Ron Bailey

photo Ron Bailey

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TEXTBOOK DESTRUCTION

“Carrara will be studied in future textbooks as a prime example of economic and environmental regression: a century ago, we had the complete marble chain (mining, processing, transformation and artistic craftsmanship on site), now we have a mining monoculture aimed solely at the mass extraction and export of the raw marble, and, even worse of the calcium carbonate. It is incredible to find at the dawn of the third millennium, within the eighth-largest economy on the planet, such a shocking example of proto-industrial colonial style economy,” says Canesi. On 10 March, however, Tuscany’s regional assembly approved a law that might make Canesi reassess his prediction. The law declared the marble fields the “indisposable property” of the citizens of Carrara, ending the old Este privilege. In addition, all quarries’ concessions will be gradually reassigned through tender and only to those who commit to process locally at least 50% of the marble they extract. This could be an epochal decision, and the reaction of the industrialists has been explosive – furious, stunned, unable to imagine that their quarries might be auctioned off. And their lawyers are already getting ready for litigation. Carrara would rejoice, if its people had not become cautious through experience. Past attempts at legislating over marble were quietly dismissed through a series of amendments in favor of the industrialists. Now, with the combined weight of Europe and the Region leaning on him, the mayor has declared his commitment to returning the quarries to the town. However, circumventing EU regulations, the Region has already allowed extensions to the enforcement of this new law for a minimum of seven to a maximum of 25 years. Will Carrara see more than a few crumbs from a volume of business estimated at close to €800m a year? Will there be jobs for her people? Will they again have their theatres, their busy studios, a river that flows, but doesn’t kill? Will they rest assured that their mountains are not depleted at a frantic pace and transported, in block, to other parts of the world?

~ ~ ~

And so we end right where we began – more petrol on the flames of division. Textbook character assassination. “Proto-industrial colonial style economy”, ‘furious industrialists’, “old este privilege”, that sort of thing. Surely this is all the language of the past.

What for pity’s sake is a family to say once they realize that for the sake of ‘unity’ and the blind assumption that doing anything is always better than doing nothing, they are now obliged to turn over their quarry to the state? What would you say?

Look at it this way, North West Tuscany is far far far too beautiful, ancient and regal to let this pesky issue ruin the quality of life for its residents. Someone, I don’t know who it is, they don’t at this point, but at some time in the near future someone will connect the dots, make the calls, hear me out and then, together, we can begin to roll back the tide of public opinion by actually turning what is now a seemingly unsolvable problem, into a win win, win win win situation. Please, marble industry, don’t waste a minute, let’s get started – we’ve actually got a lot to do.

Please call me: 970 319 1070. email martincooneystonesculptor@gmail.com. Drop a message in the comment box below, or take up the offer I made earlier and stop by at THE KMJ COONEY GALLERY 111 Suite D, Aspen, Colorado where you’ll be able to see and touch the sculpture, and I’ll be able to convince you that there is far more to this seemingly madcap idea than you think. Much more. In fact, the more questions you have for me, the better I will be able to inform you of the complete sanity of my plan.

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Thanks for visiting martincooney.com

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Trouble in Carrara. The Marble Quarries: My Solution Hello and welcome to an important martincooney.com posting. Please take the time to read this article in full as I propose a serious solution to a problem of crucial and growing concern to...

[dippedanddripped]

Zac leans into the pair of sneakers in his hands and takes a great big whiff—the sort of noisy inhale typically reserved for fresh-out-of-the-oven cookies and the heads of newborn babies. Zac is a sneaker authenticator at Stadium Goods, the New York-based sneaker-resale company, where people frequently buy and sell footwear for thousands of dollars. They are entrusting Zac’s nostrils to safeguard their investment. Today, he is eagerly hoovering the vapors from a pair of Nike x Supreme SB Dunks from 2002 that have been on a long and telling voyage—one that says a lot about the booming, and still-growing, sneaker resale industry. The sniff, Zac says, is his favorite way to tell a legitimate shoe from a fake one. He guesses he’s personally checked over a million shoes by now—and because he smells each and every sneaker he’s looked at, that means he’s smelled over a million, too. Folks at the Stadium Goods consignment desk, which resembles a UPS store with its L-shaped counter separating customers from stacks of boxes, typically laugh, Zac says, but the joke’s on them—he’s never been fooled. Smell is especially important when it comes to these Dunks, a shoe of the hypest order that, unlike the latest Jordan retro or Yeezy release, doesn’t regularly come through Stadium Goods. Zac doesn’t so much look for a specific scent as he does try and sniff out the noxious signs of a fraud: “This fume-y, fake glue smell,” he explains. Real shoes, he says, have a singular aroma—there is New Shoe smell the same way there is New Car smell. It’s syrupy and medicinal—a cure-all, maybe, for bad outfits. The inspection merely starts with the smell test. Zac rotates the shoebox and inspects it for the smallest details. If the shoes are tightly crammed in the box, they’re likely fake; if Nike’s trademark orange is lighter than usual, they’re likely fake; if the zeroes listing out the shoe’s code look wonky, they’re likely fake; if the wrong text in the shoe’s description is bolded, they’re likely fake; if the wrapping paper inside the box rips too easily, they’re likely fake. From there, Zac goes further down the rabbit hole, to the shoes themselves, which take inspiration from the classic Air Jordan 3: the craggy “Elephant”-printed pattern should actually cut into the grey leather, the perforations on the white toebox should all line up to form a series of increasingly smaller “U” shapes, the eyelets should be spaced evenly. Zac has touched so many shoes he knows what the leather should feel like, and while the tongue on this Dunk is yellowing, it’s a natural yellow, not “like a piss-yellow,” he says, which would suggest fraud. Zac can tell if a shoe is fake in less than 30 seconds. Speed is important, because roughly 600 shoes a day come before him and his small team of authenticators. Zac says that at one point, before the team expanded to around a half-dozen, he was authenticating around 200 pairs daily. Stadium Goods is just one of several shoe resellers that have become multi-million dollar companies over the past few years, as a veritable sneaker boom has blossomed. As sneakers have grown exponentially more in-demand, a secondary market experts believe is worth anywhere from $300 million to $1 billion—driven by sneaker owners reselling to consumers willing to pay a premium—has bubbled up. Naturally, criminals have attempted to get rich by knocking valuable shoes off, making people like Zac essential. The thing that Stadium Goods believes separates it from its competitors is its ability to guarantee, without fail, a shoe’s legitimacy. Which means that Sneaker Authenticator is now a very real career. “Am I surprised [this is a job]?” asks Zac, who’s worked in sneaker retail for almost a decade. “No. Maybe because I'm just into shoes, I've always known how deep the culture was.”  The shoes in Zac’s hands right now tell a story—one about the cottage industry, built around facilitating the flow of sneakers, that is raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in investments, but also about the way sneakers have transcended footwear and become something more like gold or oil—an investment worth sitting on until it peaks, maybe 17 years later. Tracing the path of a single pair of shoes through this massive, bizarre, and new economy, from sniff test to sale, tells us plenty about how we shop now—and even more about the future of an already massive industry. Even before a young man named B.J. walked into Stadium Goods with his Nike x Supreme Dunks in December, the shoes were something of a powder keg. They represent the very first sneaker collaboration between Nike and Supreme. Lines formed outside the latter’s retail stores when these sneakers were first released in 2002—the first of a now-weekly tradition at Supreme. Seventeen years passed without someone taking a step in this particular pair: they bounced around among different resellers, kept in pristine, unworn (or “deadstock”) condition, before landing in the hands of one based in Japan. While multiple platforms have emerged to professionalize the sneaker resale business, for years, it operated mostly on the margins: on web forums, and more recently social media. B.J., a US-based reseller attuned to those backchannels, discovered these particular Dunks on Instagram, on the page of that Japanese reseller. B.J., who works as a sneaker consultant and supplements his income by regularly reselling, sensed a steal, and paid $1,200 for the pair. He brought them to Stadium Goods and did his best to forget about them, assuming that shoes that expensive would take a long time to sell. Today, after Zac clears the Dunks, they get logged into the system that spits back a suggested price. Stadium Goods is vague on how it lands on prices, but the company’s co-founder John McPheters says it has a lot to do with data around “velocity of sales”—meaning that if a given shoe sells quickly, future sales of the same model might be given higher suggested prices. Release days provide the most up-and-down, as frantic customers and sellers find meeting ground. B.J. has some agency here, too: while Stadium Good suggests the price, he’s free to set it himself. When pricing his Dunks, he looked at past prices paid for the same shoe, considered its rarity—”It’s such an exclusive piece, almost an art piece within sneakers,” he says—and landed on his number: $3,000. That might seem monstrous for a pair of sneakers, but B.J. would later feel he had set the bar too low. Stadium Goods rarely says no to authentic sneakers, even if they aren’t SB Dunk-caliber. The store’s basement is a sort of sneakerhead heaven, filled with endless rows of shelving units stacked high with everything from rare Jordans to ho-hum Vans Pro Eras. Still, it’s only a fraction of what Stadium Goods holds. Most of the shoes live out in New Jersey—“the warehouse is the bulk of our inventory,” McPheters says. And there is a lot of inventory. In that monthlong span, the shoes traveled approximately twenty yards—but went on a wild journey, one of an impossibly large number of shoes changing digital hands. Stadium Goods says it receives, either in its Manhattan store or New Jersey warehouse, where customers can mail shoes, roughly 2,200 pairs of Kanye West’s Yeezy 350s every day. That means Stadium Goods should receive 15,400 pairs of Yeezys a week, 61,600 a month, and 739,200 pairs a year. Yeezy represents a large chunk of the shoes on the secondary market. On a random day this year, the intake at Stadium Goods broke down as: 25% Jordan, 20% Nike, 20% Yeezy, 15% Adidas, with the remaining 20% filled out by some combination of Vans, Reeboks, New Balance, Asics, and others. Every time one of these sneakers sells, Stadium Goods gets a percentage of, say, the sale of every $300 “Sesame” Yeezy 350s. And unlike retailers, which make just a single sale, many of these shoes ping-pong back and forth through the system multiple times before reaching a person who actually wants to wear the shoes rather than make a quick buck off them. This is key to what Stadium Goods does. Before launching the company in 2015, McPheters worked at Flight Club, an early entrant into the resale game. There, he saw a gap in the market in terms of how sneakers on the secondary market were treated. From the start, McPheters says, Stadium Goods’s mission has been to “clean up the aftermarket and present it [with] a premium luxury aesthetic,” he says. Part of Stadium Goods’s pitch is that, unlike most companies operating in the secondary market, it holds stock in that warehouse, so it can send sneakers out immediately after a customer clicks purchase. 20 additional authenticators work out in the warehouse to make it a one-stop shop. That quality helped entice the e-commerce giant Farfetch, which acquired the company for $250 million in December. Stadium Goods’ customers, and by extension Fafetch’s, expect even rare sneakers bought on the secondary market to arrive via two-day shipping just like their laundry detergent—or, more specifically, a regular, brand-new pair of sneakers. Stadium Goods is now one of four companies making a concerted play for king in an exploding secondary sneaker market. Last year, Grailed brought in $15 million. Early this year, Goat received $100 million from Foot Locker. This summer, StockX collected a $110 million investment that pushed its valuation over $1 billion. The numbers are astronomical, yet McPheters believes we are still in the early days of sneaker reselling. “There's a ton of juice left in the orange,” he says. Out of all the options, B.J. prefers Stadium Goods because he feels like he’s “not just a supplier.” Companies like Stadium Goods are currently engaged in battle over B.J.s: the high-volume sellers who bring plenty of shoes to resellers. “These companies tend to have winner-take-most, winner-take-all dynamics,” Roger Lee, a general partner at Battery Ventures, told me in September of last year after leading a $44 million investment in Stadium Goods competitor StockX. Whichever company can sort out the preferences of top resellers might be that winner Lee prophesied. Here’s how you satisfy a highest-end seller: When B.J. brought his SB Dunks into Stadium Goods, they were clipped with the company’s security tagging before being whisked away to their new home. Stadium Goods’ physical space is large for Manhattan, the walls lined with hundreds of shoes shrink-wrapped and stored on shelves. Towards the back is where Stadium Goods keeps its “trophy case,” a glass trophy case for only the most gawkable of grails, which will serve as home for B.J.’s Dunks until they leave. B.J.’s shoes will rest there alongside other certified jawns, like a pair of navy-blue Derek Jeter Jordan 11s, one of a rumored five pairs in existence. (They were priced at Stadium Goods for $50,000.) Other items aren’t sneakers, strictly speaking, but carry the same impressive resale value. Another shelf holds a Supreme crowbar, Supreme x Fox bike hand grips, a Supreme coffin keychain, and a small metal cherry-red Supreme box. Nearby is the entire collection of Virgil Abloh x Nike sneakers, otherwise known as the Fuccboi Royal Flush. The glass chest is a good way to protect the store’s most valuable goods, and also to serve as a showcase for customers who don’t know what they want beyond the fact that they want the absolute-best shit. Zac recalls a customer who came in, asked for the most exclusive thing in the store, and purchased a pair of Drake’s then-unreleased Jordans, paying $6,000 and wearing them out of the store. (He chucked the box on his way out—a sneakerhead no-no.) That B.J.’s SB Dunks make it to this all-important case ensures that they get in front of the most—and highest-spending—customers. Other potential buyers might look online, where the experience resembles any other retailer's. Shoes are guaranteed to be unworn and practically any size you want is available—only the prices are drastically different. On the seller’s side, during the ensuing weeks, B.J. receives weekly reports on the shoes he has on the market. A spreadsheet listing out every one of the 50 to 60 shoes he’s listed with Stadium Goods arrives in his inbox—”Like a stock report, almost,” he says—along with suggestions to modify prices based on sales data from Stadium Goods. A little less than a month after listing his Dunks, B.J. gets the news: his sneakers have found a home. Someone has pulled the trigger for the whole $3,000. (The buyer didn’t respond to requests for comment.) After Stadium Goods takes its 20 percent cut, subtracting the $1,200 he initially paid, B.J. ends up clearing close to $1,500. The shoes will be spirited out of Stadium Goods’ store and into their new home within two business days. There, they might sit on a shelf like a trophy. They might be (gasp!) worn outside. Or they might be flipped yet again, to a new highest bidder, their new owner convinced there’s still a higher margin to be made. If that seller uses Stadium Goods for their sale, that means another cool 20 percent for the company. For his part, B.J. considers the process a learning experience, not a pure victory: “The fact that it sold within a month told me, ‘Okay, next time I can price it a little higher.’” I ask him what he’ll do with the money. His answer will surely be music to McPheters’ ears. “It will probably go back into buying more shoes,” B.J. says. “And seeing how else I can make another $1,500 bucks.”

[rolandfontana]

The China-US Trade War and the Winner is….MEXICO

When I was about 10 years old, one of my best friends managed to score us two free tickets for a professional wrestling match in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where I grew up. Both of us were huge sports fans but neither of us were wrestling fans but when you are 12 and you get free tickets, you go and go we did.

What I still vividly remember about that show (and that’s what it was, a show) is the anger of the crowd. I actually wrote about this previously in China’s Service Sector Will Reign, Part XVIII — WWE And Skimpy Bikinis:

When I was a lad of maybe ten growing up in small town middle America, one of my best friends, Pete Collins (a/k/a/ The Big Man), somehow managed to snare some tickets for a professional wrestling event in my town. So we went to some disgusting patched together arena for the event and what an event it was. The Sheik was there (I think). Tony Marino was there (I think). Bobo Brazil was there (of that I am almost certain). The women wearing skimpy bikinis who would come out between rounds and between matches were there (of that I am 100% certain).

The crowd was at least half of the show. People would get so worked up for or against a particular wrestler, huge numbers of security would constantly have to rush in. These people clearly thought it was all real. In doing a bit of background research for this post, I came across a bunch of disparaging blog comments about those “idiots who actually thought this crap was real.” I have to admit that at ten, I was a professional wrestling agnostic; I just was not really sure.

The wrestlers and the announcers would play up the wrestler’s nationalities in a way that the adult me finds repulsive. We were all encouraged to hate the Sheik because he was an Arab and because he used razor blades (I am NOT making this up) to surreptitiously cut other fighters. Wikipedia tells me that he was a Lebanese-American, born in Lansing, Michigan, which is maybe two hours from Kalamazoo. Bobo Brazil was billed as “the South American Giant,” though his Wikipedia page reveals he was actually born in Arkansas and spent most of his life in Benton Harbor, Michigan, also about two hours from Kalamazoo. I do not remember if we were to hate him as a foreigner or not.

What I also remember from that event was a match between a wrestler allegedly from Mexico who wore Mexican flag shorts and a Mexican flag jacket and a wrestler from the United States who wore US flag shorts and a US flag jacket. Again, I am NOT making this up. And if I remember correctly (which I doubt I am) about half the audience seemed to be from Mexico and they all sat on one side of the fairly small auditorium while everyone else (Pete and me included) sat on the other side.

To make a long story short (and there is a China point to this post), the alleged Mexican fighter soundly beat the alleged US fighter and then the Mexican fighter grabbed the microphone and said something in Spanish to a raucously cheering (taunting?) side of the room with the Hispanic fans. The announcer then translated what the allegedly Mexican fighter had said: “this was not just a win for me, it was a win for all of Mexico.” Needless to say, this was met with loud booing from the non-Hispanic side of the room.

I thought of that match this morning when I read a WhatsApp from a Mexican attorney friend of mine who sent me a Bloomberg article, titled U.S. and China Got Into a Trade War and Mexico Won, along with a note essentially saying that what the two of us had been predicting would happen had happened.

So everyone, let’s cue the lights and keep going with the wrestling theme. The US and China got into a big wrestling match and to the extent that match has ended, Mexico can raise its arms as THE victor. What exactly does this mean? Should we be booing or cheering?

I am writing this from Mexico right now — my law firm does a lot with Mexico and we have a ton of lawyers and staff fluent in Spanish — and I have always believed the United States should be doing more business with Mexico, not less. The US economy overall is likely to end up net negative from this trade war, but in my view, business going from China to Mexico should go into the “win” column for the United States.

A few months ago, in The US-China Future: Meet Vietnam, Thailand, Mexico, Malaysia, Turkey, and the Philippines, I wrote about how my law firm’s manufacturing lawyers were getting a steady stream of American and European and Australian companies looking to move out of China entirely or reduce their dependence on China and I had this to say about Mexico in that post:

Mexico is very much open for business. Some companies refuse even to consider Mexico because of security fears. We see this as a huge mistake because there are plenty of great areas in Mexico that are shockingly safe.

I concluded that post with a weak rallying cry for China:

But China is not going to “just go away.” No way. It’s not going to become “an even larger, more powerful North Korea,” as I have heard some threaten will happen if the United States and the EU were to hang tough against China. No way. What I see is American (and European and Australian companies better recognizing what it is like to do business with China or in China. The days of so many companies having stars in their eyes about China are over and this newfound realism can only be a good thing. Will American and European and Australian companies continue to do business with China? Absolutely yes, but in lower numbers than previously. How much lower? Hard to say, but I would anticipate seeing a steady decline (maybe totally around 30%) over the next five years. China will remain a big and important country and that should not be discounted. But the big change we are seeing and expect to see accelerate is foreign companies that would in the past just check the China box are now exploring other countries as well. And this too can only be a good thing.

The Bloomberg article calls the US-China trade war a “windfall” for Mexico and though it does not mention other countries that have also benefitted, you should add Vietnam and Thailand and the Philipines and Indonesia to that list. One of our manufacturing lawyers is in Indonesia right now with a couple Taiwanese factory owners scoping out possibilities for our clients looking to move production from China to Indonesia. Another client wrote me this morning about moving its production to Vietnam or Thailand. Many countries besides Mexico are benefitting from China’s stumbling.

According to the Bloomberg article, “U.S. imports of goods from Mexico surged 10 percent to almost $350 billion last year, the fastest growth in seven years while growth in shipments from China slowed by about a third.” Not surprisingly, Mexico “has seen big gains in shipments to the U.S. in categories where competing Chinese goods were hit with tariffs, everything from poster board to air conditioner parts.”

 The article then mentions the following examples of companies moving production from China to Mexico:

A Chinese maker of paper cups and straws for U.S. restaurants just opened a “$4 million factory in Monterrey, Mexico, that will soon begin shipping millions of paper straws across the border.” This company set up production in Mexico to “avoid the tariffs and it says it will make up up for pricier Mexican labor with lower shipping costs.

Texas-based Taskmaster Components “has for almost 20 years imported large wheels and tires from China, and assembled them for companies making trailers and recreational vehicles, but tariffs pushed it to look at investing in a factory in Mexico. Its COO, says  “A lot of people are moving production down there . . . . its close proximity, access to ports and an educated workforce make everything about Mexico attractive.”

It then lists out product after product, where China losses have become Mexico gains:

“After the U.S. levied tariffs on metal ores and their byproducts, Mexico’s exports to America more than doubled, while China’s sank by a quarter.”

“Tariffs on aluminum products helped wipe out almost $500 million in imports from China. Mexico saw a 20 percent increase in sales to the U.S.”

“Peeled garlic cloves from China sank by almost a quarter after receiving tariffs while Mexican exports rose 54 percent.”

“After the U.S. put 10 percent tariffs on silk yarn, one of China’s iconic exports, Mexico’s shipments to the U.S. jumped from basically nothing, just $5,500 in 2017, to $1.6 million last year.”

“China’s imports of knitted and crocheted fabrics fell by about $3 million, almost the exact amount Mexican imports rose.”

U.S. imports of Mexican passenger vehicles with gasoline engines jumped 17 percent while shipments from China declined.

Per the article, “Chinese labor rates and Mexico’s proximity to the U.S., especially important in the e-commerce era of quick shipping had been chipping away at China’s dominance even before the trade tariffs.” It is just so much easier and cheaper to fly to and from Mexico (which is only one hour earlier than Seattle — the same time as Denver) is as compared to China. This matters. And just ask how many people at your company speak Spanish as compared to Chinese.

The Bloomberg article notes that the “Mexico bump” could be short-lived if the U.S. and China strike a trade deal, “reducing the impetus to move production to Mexico.” I disagree. The US-China trade war has opened people’s eyes to how China how difficult and inhospitable China is for foreign companies and how countries like Mexico are far more welcoming of foreign business and can offer their own distinct advantages.

The Chinese paper cup company in the Bloomberg article is quoted as already contemplating “shifting more work to Mexico” and “possibly start selling to the local market and then to South America.” I am not going to tell you that operating in Latin America or selling your product here will be easy, but I will most emphatically tell you that as compared to China, it truly is. The World Bank ranks Mexico at 54 for “ease of doing business” and Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica and Peru all rank between 65 and 70. China ranks 46, but that number is incredibly deceptive because the World Bank rankings are based on the ease of doing business for domestic companies and China so it fails to account for China’s rampant discriminates against foreign companies.. Were these ease of use rankings  based on the ease of foreign companies doing business in each country, I would expect China to fall out of the top 100, with the rankings of the Latin American countries mentioned above barely impacted.

What are you seeing out there?

    The China-US Trade War and the Winner is….MEXICO syndicated from https://immigrationattorneyto.wordpress.com/

[musicxmakerx3]

New Year, New Blog! (Sorta)

I am going to start treating this an actual blog so here we go. I am going to post weekly updates about what I learned/did at work.

In November I started working at the local string shop. It is a very small business with an in-house staff consisting only of the owner, a bow specialist (who has another day job and another side job), a repair apprentice (also has another job), and myself. My initial task was to do inventory and generally clean up and organize everything. Since I have been working there for nearly two months I am going to have to do a bit of a recap here before starting weekly updates.

Both the owner and the bow tech had/have day jobs with the City so normal business hours for us start at 5pm and go until we get tired enough to leave (usually midnight but sometimes earlier).

November:

- I spent my first day 5 hours going through the online order invoice cache and “completing” orders that had been sitting there since July.

- I took inventory and organized all 7 of the bow cases. Four of the bow cases hold up to 24 bows, the other two hold 12. This is how I learned to tell the difference between violin, viola, and cello bows. I also have tons of manufacturer model codes burned into my brain.

- My job description in our time clock app is “inventory” and my brain processed that like a robot with a single command. I was unpleasantly surprised to learn that so many things in the shop were never recorded in any sort of inventory sheet so I took it upon myself to fix that and count everything I possibly could. I started by counting all of the cheap bows that sit in a mess of cardboard boxes in the back room. Next, I inventoried every cello bow hanging on the rack of pegs in the show room.

- Our back room remains a horrifying, unusable disaster area. I spent a while considering how to make it more organized and functional and made a game plan. I also demanded my boss buy more pegboard so I could fix the show room.

I think that covers it for November. I started on 11/13 and had a concert cycle in LA that started two days later. There were plenty of other rehearsals and concerts that month that prevented me from working in the evenings. It took me a while to learn that I could come in whenever I want during the day as long as I could find something to do.

December:

- More bow inventory. I also inventoried all of the rosins. Sadly, our webstore host service is kinda derpy so I can only set up inventory tracking management for products that have NO variations. Anything like strings (different strings or sizes) or something that comes in different patterns or colors cannot be tracked because things get janky when we set up product options that way. This forces me to do inventory the old fashioned way by literally touching and counting everything once a month and entering it into a spreadsheet.

- Received and installed pegboard in the show room so it became a shopable area as opposed to a jumbled mess of stuff no customer feels like they are allowed to touch. The skills I learned about merchandising a wall at the Halloween store really helped with this task. Since the “chachki wall” was completed I believe every single customer that has entered the shop has approached and spent time looking at the wall. Some have even bought things! (most of our business is online so walk-ins aren’t frequent)

- Organized the back room by putting all of the packing materials in plastic storage bins so they no longer spill out all over the floor.

- Watched and took notes on how to rehair a bow. I also learned how to prepare one for repairing by “taking it to the spa.” Every rehair we do consists of checking that the mortis angles are correct or correcting them, filling any crazy-deep mortis with ebony, removing rosin residue from the stick, polishing all the silver bits, and lubricating the eyelet and screw of the frog. We might also do a bit of straightening at no extra charge if we notice things are a little wonky.

- Learned how to do shipping. I still have some stuff to learn about where things are in the shop or if we even have the item in-store. We offer TONS of stuff on our website, some of which we are out of (because nobody every inventoried it) or some of it we get dropshipped directly from the company to the customer because we don’t have the model they want in-store. We have lots of shipping options so learning how to do them all and remembering how to do each one correctly is tricky.

- Took inventory of all cellos needing repairs and sat down with Boss Lady to categorize them as “quick fix”, “slightly involved”, or “nightmare”. Customer cellos are just a whole ‘nother category of “DO THIS NOW REGARDLESS OF HOW INVOLVED IT WILL BE.”

**Now we are getting to the good stuff**

- Learned how to tie hanks (small sections of hair) to rehair bows. I also learned, or taught myself rather, how to DYE hanks. Boss Lady (who also has neato colorful hair) asked me what I thought about dyeing bow hair and I told her I was 100% on board. I will do a more in-depth post about this later but if you want to see the finished product check out http://www.lindawest.com/Color_Bow_Rehair_p/colorrehair.htm

I think that is it for December. I spent a week down in LA rehearsing for the Yeethoven II concert (freaking AWESOME btw. Check it out on YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter) because the Thomas Fire had me concerned for the safety of my cat if I were to get an evacuation notice while 90 miles away. A very kind friend let me spend the week in his house. He even gave me his room despite the fact that he is allergic to cats (thankfully Baron didn’t seem to be messing with his allergies.) Between Yeethoven II and a NYE concert out of town I missed another week of work, essentially.

JANUARY! Week 1:

- How do I start every month? Counting things! I have reorganized the bow cases, updated the sheets that are taped to the cases, and made an index card for the top and bottom of every case so that bows can be easily put back in the spot they belong when someone is trying out many bows at once. I didn’t come in FOR ONE DAY and I came back to find bows everywhere and cases laying open on the floor. When my boss came in this evening I said “So the index cards didn’t work, huh?” And she was like “well, they would have! If... well...” and started putting the bows back where they were supposed to go. Sort of. It is still a mess. Maybe she will try harder next time. Or maybe I will be there next time. I am so fed up with how quickly these bow cases go to shit.

- I touched almost every string in the shop. I counted all of the full size and fractional strings that were in packaged and then untangled and learned to identify all of the strings that had formed a rat’s nest on the bench. Each string was rolled and put into a small plastic baggie and labeled as “tried but new” (strings that we literally took out of the package and put on an instrument for someone to try and that person didn’t like it so we took it right back off) or “for rentals.” The really busted strings got tossed into a horrific box of “donation” strings for school cellos.

- *crazy singsong voice* I counted all the bows again. All the bows in boxes. And all the bows on the rack in the show room. I still have to inventory the violin/viola bows on the other showroom rack though... TOMORROW!

- Figured out how to wrangle the mountain of fking gig bags: roll them up. I have spent the past two days rolling and strapping most of the gig bags in the shop. We mostly use them for rentals or donate them to schools (or toss them in the garbage when we get way too many because Goodwill doesn’t want them and selling them on EBay doesn’t really work.) I ran out of bag-wrangling straps today but Boss Lady ordered more.

- I learned how to fit pegs. You might think that you just put pegs into the holes and *boom* you’re done. In reality you have to reshape pegs that are out of round with a giant pencil sharpener, ream the holes of the peg box, and make sure the length of each peg is correct. It should barely peek through the hole on the opposite side of the peg box so if it is too long you grind the end down with an electric sander. Once you have it at the length you want you shape the end by hand by rubbing it on sand paper from 120 - 600 grit until it is that smooth dome-shape you are familiar with. You can even do this with plastic pegs. I helped to fit a set of new geared pegs onto a rental cello. Geared pegs seem like a luxury item but it actually just helps to keep people from snapping strings when they tune so in the end the cost of one set of geared pegs on a rental makes up for all the strings we would have to replace because kids or parents break them.

Side note — we had a bow returned to us from a renter that was literally the most busted thing. The Thomas Fire really dried things out so the hair got very tight even when the bow was technically loose. I guess the girl kept cranking on it trying to get it to tighten and either she or a parent took some pliers to the bow screw. Technically, the bit that you turn to tighten or loosen the bow is called the button and the screw is the long piece with threads that is inside the button/frog. These people busted the button by using pliers, stripped the screw out of the button AND the eyelet it screws into, and cracked the stick from the force of it all.

PSA: If you ever think of using a household tool to solve a problem with your instrument you should probably stop and take it to a professional instead.

- I learned how to take the top off of an instrument. The top meaning the whole piece of wood with the f-holes on it. After taking the top off I learned how to glue the center seam crack, make cleats, reglue the top, mix watercolor and wood stain to match the varnish, and set/cut a bridge.

I also sat down with my boss and had her tell me what she wanted me to do each week and each month. Counting will basically be a monthly thing: strings, bows, cello cases, rosin, anything else I can find to count... Weekly things will be mostly be computer tasks. It is also apparently my job to keep Boss Lady on task so now that this junior high violin has been repaired I am going to have her teach me how to do a sound post patch so I can start fixing that which is a problem with many of our cellos needing repair. I also want to learn how to sharpen blades properly because most of our stuff in the shop is dull and that makes it hard to do things accurately. Tomorrow I am going to force Boss Lady to start on the very broken customer cello that has been sitting downstairs for a bit.

Well, it is 3am and my brain has definitely stopped working so I’m going to stop this post here. I’ll post more info about the colorful rehairs at some point and aim to write a post every Sunday evening about what I’ve done and learned that week so I can keep track of my progress as a “chihuahua doctor.” I work in a cello shop so violins and violas are referred to as “chihuahuas” and sometimes turned down for repairs because Boss Lady hates working on the tiny little things. Being the only violinist/violist in the shop means I not only am in charge of familiarizing myself with our stock so I can help our customers find what they want, but I will eventually become the high strings technician because Boss Lady doesn’t want to do it but we are the only shop for at least 90 miles that is capable of doing this kind of work.

Be back next week with more tales of counting things and learning repair skills.

[samiam03x]

How to Manufacture Urgency to Blow through Conversion Roadblocks

We don’t need things.

We might need a six-dollar, almond milk, sea salt caramel mocha (no whip) when it gets a little chilly outside.

But we don’t need-need.

The lights are on. Roof over our head. Heating or AC blasting in the background.

That applies to most things you’re trying to sell.

Doesn’t matter if we’re talkin’ ‘bout that shiny new app you deployed or the fancy new eComm product. People don’t need it.

Which makes your life tough. How are you going to move the needle, get more subscribers, and scale revenue, when the vast majority of the people you’re speaking to have zero actual need to buy your widget?

You need urgency. Or more specifically, you need to manufacture urgency out of thin air.

Here’s how a few of the web’s top converting sites create urgency out of thin air to get visitors to finally commit once and for all.

Why Urgency Works

People don’t need your stuff. But it gets worse. Because people also resist change at the same time.

So you’ve got two problems. You need to shake people out of their inertia. And then somehow get them to act.

Thankfully, the solution’s no secret. There’s a book on it. Along with countless studies.

For example, ConversionXL explains one account where just a little bit of urgency sprinkled onto a product page lifted revenue by over 27% for Bob & Lush.

They came up with the idea to that “clarity of deliver time on a product page would push more customers to convert.”

Sound familiar? It’s what some of the best in the business, from Amazon all the way down to the QVC have gone to great lengths to employ.

So they made one relatively small tweak to their product pages.

The new variant included a little simple text box that highlighted when someone would receive their product if they ordered within a short time frame.

Image Source

Not only did revenue jump (27.1%), but the the number of purchases (9.5%) and checkout visits (10.1%) did, too.

Of course, the inclusion of this delivery date estimate wasn’t just a hunch. An epiphany. Or a ‘growth hack’ some growth hacker wrote about in their Bible to Growth Hacking on GrowthHackers.com

Instead, the hypothesis came from a place that good ideas always flow. But few rarely tend to go.

Consumer Research (AKA The Part Everyone Always Skips)

In 2012, Marcus Taylor of Venture Harbour launched a ‘Groupon deal for musicians.’ (And wrote about the experience in another excellent ConversionXL case study. Yes, I’m completely ripping them off today).

He reportedly invested months and even dipped into personal savings to fund it. The boats were burned. There was no going back. It had to churn a profit.

Image Source

No need to bury the lead. He increased conversions from a mediocre-but-fine 2.5% up to an astonishing 10.8% by infusing urgency into every pore of the site.

That incredible conversion lift wasn’t the part that got me, though.

This was:

When people think of conversion optimization, they go to landing pages. They go to headlines. CTAs. Images. And other similarly miniscule details that kinda don’t move the f-ing needle.

But all of those elements (which we’ll touch in soon) are at the mercy of one giant thing: the audience.

All of the CTA tweaks in the world can’t save you from targeting the wrong audience in the first place.

That’s the critical difference Marcus understood. And acted on. (Emphasis, mine.)

“Prior to launch, I “tested” hundreds of traffic sources, from Reddit Ads, to specific music forums. I wanted to know was which traffic sources I need to prioritise during the real campaign.

I ended up with a custom Google Analytics dashboard like this, which made it clear which traffic sources delivered the most relevant traffic.”

Image Source

“Not only did I know where my customers would come from ahead of time, but I knew more about my audience, such as how guitarists were almost three times more likely to buy than drummers, and that my conversion rate was highest in the UK and Australia.”

Similarly, when ConversionXL worked with Bob & Lush initially they didn’t haphazardly start throwing stuff on a DIY landing page builder. Rather, they begun with a boring, tired, old survey.

One hundred eighteen people opted in. And many agreed that their biggest fear centered around “running out of food for their dogs.”

That’s the catalyst. The trigger.

It manifested as a purchasing roadblock based on “knowing when the food would arrive.”

So that’s what ConversionXL leveraged. You’ve already seen the updated landing page variation that was a success. Just by using simple language to entice people to buy now (instead of waiting around).

The tactic – the thing you see on the screen – isn’t the point. It’s the impulse it targets. The underlying motivation that’s already preventing people from feeling like they need your thing.

It’s no coincidence that this is the exact same strategy that one of the interwebs top converters implements.

Expedia recently announced gross revenues of $16 billion. Up 8% from online sales.

Which should come as no surprise when you see what they’re doing.

How Expedia Manufactures Urgency Out of Thin Air

Visit Expedia.com.

The homepage is fairly bare. A giant reservation form takes over almost everything above the fold.

Below that, a few of “Todays Deals” are highlighted.

So far, not much is happening. It’s not until you actually search for a trip that things start to get interesting.

Vegas sounds fun. Pool season sure beats reading another blog post like this in your pajamas.

Plug in some dates. Hit Enter. And here goes.

Whoa. Lots happening.

You see plenty of greens (good!) and reds (bad!) to help you instantly understand their meaning.

In the lower right-hand corner, multiple little callouts keep popping up, sliding in and out of the screen, emphasizing the same thing: a BUNCH of other people are looking at booking these deals right now – so they might not last long.

Then of course, the Daily Deal hits you at the top of the screen. A classic countdown timer that ticks away. My heart rate sped up. Palms sweaty. Despite not having any real interest in booking this initially.

Once again, that was no accident. As this case study featured on Behave.org (formerly WhichTestWon) indicates.

Image Source

All that was added was a countdown timer. That’s it.

They even removed a few elements, including ‘free delivery’ and ‘order now’ in order to remove extraneous distractions and focus viewers on what mattered most: that countdown timer.

The result after 50,000 viewers? An instant 8% conversion lift.

Ok. Enough boring marketing stuff. Back to Vegas.

How Expedia Uses Price Anchoring & FOMO to Make this Trip Look like a Steal

Those FOMO callouts slide in and out of view.

The countdown timer continues ticking down. And then the product attributes help you decide.

For example, scroll down a little bit until you reach Cosmo.

It’s garnered a little yellow “Top Hotel” badge. It literally screams “Wonderful!” with excellent ratings and reviews to match.

Price anchoring in full effect, with the ‘sales price’ slashed down to the new effective one.

Scarcity comes into view with the strip of text in red that highlights the number of people who also booked this hotel in the past forty eight hours. Along with when it was last booked.

So. If we’re even remotely serious. We need to move fast.

Let’s select Cosmo. Because c’mon: wraparound terraces!

You look at available rooms and are immediately met by an “Unreal Deal” that will “save you 100% on your flight.” That’s backed up by the pricing, which shows you’ll ‘owe’ $0.00 more to select it now.

Deals like that won’t last. Don’t last. Which means you should act.

Not later, but now.

How Expedia Forces You to Take Action (Now)

Words matter.

It’s not that people absorb every letter in detail. They don’t. Hell – people don’t even read. ‘Specially not online.

But the sum is greater than the parts. It’s scanned in a moment’s notice and the meaning hits home.

For example, email marketing service AWeber ran a simple copy test on their call to action.

The only change? A single word.

Image Source

AWeber added the word “Now” to their call to action. And they saw a 12% increase in paid signups with a credit card.

An online travel booking flow is no different than any other conversion flow. Doesn’t matter if we’re talking about signing up for a new email marketing app or trying to go through a shopping cart checkout sequence.

The stats are remarkably the same, too. Online travel bookings see a 81% abandonment! While shopping cart abandonment averages right around 70%.

61% of those cart abandonments are because of ‘extra costs’ (including shipping, taxes, fees, etc.)

Image Source

You know how this feels. You’re super pumped about that new pair of plastic jeans (yes, that’s a thing) you just found. Except when you head over to checkout, you see that another ~30% has been tacked on due to taxes, shipping, and fees.

Guess what Expedia does, instead?

First, they ‘drop’ the price. Two cents. Literally. But it’s green and happy and there’s a check mark exclaiming “Good News.”

The other thing it says? “Book now to secure this price.”

Zooming into the pricing area on the right, you also see the savings of booking the flight and hotel together. Then, down below, you see the total price (again first – price anchoring).

And then a “Due at hotel” line item that cleverly buries all of those damn resort fees that we hate so much.

But they’re almost invisible because of how Expedia has positioned this pricing and sale.

Instead of being ‘thrown off’ the conversion scent at the moment of truth, you’re practically already packing your bags. #Humblebragging about your upcoming Vegas trip.

Conclusion

Ranchers use a cattle prod to get those big, dumb, slow moving animals to do what they want.

Whether that’s to eat, find shelter, or head to the slaughterhouse.

Consumers don’t need to do anything.

They might want lots of things. But they lack nothing. And so there’s no inherent desire to purchase your widget.

Instead, you have to create it. Manufacture it and bring it into existence.

For guidance, start with the web’s top converters. Expedia is a master at creating urgency by using countdown timers, product attributes, prince anchoring, FOMO, and a host of other psychological tactics that would make Cialdini proud.

Increasing conversions online isn’t about tricks or gimmicks or hacks. It’s about building up the value of your offering so much that people can’t help but convert.

About the Author: Brad Smith the founder of Codeless, a B2B content creation company. Frequent contributor to Kissmetrics, Unbounce, WordStream, AdEspresso, Search Engine Journal, Autopilot, and more.

http://ift.tt/2mNJfHR from MarketingRSS http://ift.tt/2py8Szi via Youtube

[marie85marketing]

How to Manufacture Urgency to Blow through Conversion Roadblocks

We don’t need things.

We might need a six-dollar, almond milk, sea salt caramel mocha (no whip) when it gets a little chilly outside.

But we don’t need-need.

The lights are on. Roof over our head. Heating or AC blasting in the background.

That applies to most things you’re trying to sell.

Doesn’t matter if we’re talkin’ ‘bout that shiny new app you deployed or the fancy new eComm product. People don’t need it.

Which makes your life tough. How are you going to move the needle, get more subscribers, and scale revenue, when the vast majority of the people you’re speaking to have zero actual need to buy your widget?

You need urgency. Or more specifically, you need to manufacture urgency out of thin air.

Here’s how a few of the web’s top converting sites create urgency out of thin air to get visitors to finally commit once and for all.

Why Urgency Works

People don’t need your stuff. But it gets worse. Because people also resist change at the same time.

So you’ve got two problems. You need to shake people out of their inertia. And then somehow get them to act.

Thankfully, the solution’s no secret. There’s a book on it. Along with countless studies.

For example, ConversionXL explains one account where just a little bit of urgency sprinkled onto a product page lifted revenue by over 27% for Bob & Lush.

They came up with the idea to that “clarity of deliver time on a product page would push more customers to convert.”

Sound familiar? It’s what some of the best in the business, from Amazon all the way down to the QVC have gone to great lengths to employ.

So they made one relatively small tweak to their product pages.

The new variant included a little simple text box that highlighted when someone would receive their product if they ordered within a short time frame.

Image Source

Not only did revenue jump (27.1%), but the the number of purchases (9.5%) and checkout visits (10.1%) did, too.

Of course, the inclusion of this delivery date estimate wasn’t just a hunch. An epiphany. Or a ‘growth hack’ some growth hacker wrote about in their Bible to Growth Hacking on GrowthHackers.com

Instead, the hypothesis came from a place that good ideas always flow. But few rarely tend to go.

Consumer Research (AKA The Part Everyone Always Skips)

In 2012, Marcus Taylor of Venture Harbour launched a ‘Groupon deal for musicians.’ (And wrote about the experience in another excellent ConversionXL case study. Yes, I’m completely ripping them off today).

He reportedly invested months and even dipped into personal savings to fund it. The boats were burned. There was no going back. It had to churn a profit.

Image Source

No need to bury the lead. He increased conversions from a mediocre-but-fine 2.5% up to an astonishing 10.8% by infusing urgency into every pore of the site.

That incredible conversion lift wasn’t the part that got me, though.

This was:

When people think of conversion optimization, they go to landing pages. They go to headlines. CTAs. Images. And other similarly miniscule details that kinda don’t move the f-ing needle.

But all of those elements (which we’ll touch in soon) are at the mercy of one giant thing: the audience.

All of the CTA tweaks in the world can’t save you from targeting the wrong audience in the first place.

That’s the critical difference Marcus understood. And acted on. (Emphasis, mine.)

“Prior to launch, I “tested” hundreds of traffic sources, from Reddit Ads, to specific music forums. I wanted to know was which traffic sources I need to prioritise during the real campaign.

I ended up with a custom Google Analytics dashboard like this, which made it clear which traffic sources delivered the most relevant traffic.”

Image Source

“Not only did I know where my customers would come from ahead of time, but I knew more about my audience, such as how guitarists were almost three times more likely to buy than drummers, and that my conversion rate was highest in the UK and Australia.”

Similarly, when ConversionXL worked with Bob & Lush initially they didn’t haphazardly start throwing stuff on a DIY landing page builder. Rather, they begun with a boring, tired, old survey.

One hundred eighteen people opted in. And many agreed that their biggest fear centered around “running out of food for their dogs.”

That’s the catalyst. The trigger.

It manifested as a purchasing roadblock based on “knowing when the food would arrive.”

So that’s what ConversionXL leveraged. You’ve already seen the updated landing page variation that was a success. Just by using simple language to entice people to buy now (instead of waiting around).

The tactic – the thing you see on the screen – isn’t the point. It’s the impulse it targets. The underlying motivation that’s already preventing people from feeling like they need your thing.

It’s no coincidence that this is the exact same strategy that one of the interwebs top converters implements.

Expedia recently announced gross revenues of $16 billion. Up 8% from online sales.

Which should come as no surprise when you see what they’re doing.

How Expedia Manufactures Urgency Out of Thin Air

Visit Expedia.com.

The homepage is fairly bare. A giant reservation form takes over almost everything above the fold.

Below that, a few of “Todays Deals” are highlighted.

So far, not much is happening. It’s not until you actually search for a trip that things start to get interesting.

Vegas sounds fun. Pool season sure beats reading another blog post like this in your pajamas.

Plug in some dates. Hit Enter. And here goes.

Whoa. Lots happening.

You see plenty of greens (good!) and reds (bad!) to help you instantly understand their meaning.

In the lower right-hand corner, multiple little callouts keep popping up, sliding in and out of the screen, emphasizing the same thing: a BUNCH of other people are looking at booking these deals right now – so they might not last long.

Then of course, the Daily Deal hits you at the top of the screen. A classic countdown timer that ticks away. My heart rate sped up. Palms sweaty. Despite not having any real interest in booking this initially.

Once again, that was no accident. As this case study featured on Behave.org (formerly WhichTestWon) indicates.

Image Source

All that was added was a countdown timer. That’s it.

They even removed a few elements, including ‘free delivery’ and ‘order now’ in order to remove extraneous distractions and focus viewers on what mattered most: that countdown timer.

The result after 50,000 viewers? An instant 8% conversion lift.

Ok. Enough boring marketing stuff. Back to Vegas.

How Expedia Uses Price Anchoring & FOMO to Make this Trip Look like a Steal

Those FOMO callouts slide in and out of view.

The countdown timer continues ticking down. And then the product attributes help you decide.

For example, scroll down a little bit until you reach Cosmo.

It’s garnered a little yellow “Top Hotel” badge. It literally screams “Wonderful!” with excellent ratings and reviews to match.

Price anchoring in full effect, with the ‘sales price’ slashed down to the new effective one.

Scarcity comes into view with the strip of text in red that highlights the number of people who also booked this hotel in the past forty eight hours. Along with when it was last booked.

So. If we’re even remotely serious. We need to move fast.

Let’s select Cosmo. Because c’mon: wraparound terraces!

You look at available rooms and are immediately met by an “Unreal Deal” that will “save you 100% on your flight.” That’s backed up by the pricing, which shows you’ll ‘owe’ $0.00 more to select it now.

Deals like that won’t last. Don’t last. Which means you should act.

Not later, but now.

How Expedia Forces You to Take Action (Now)

Words matter.

It’s not that people absorb every letter in detail. They don’t. Hell – people don’t even read. ‘Specially not online.

But the sum is greater than the parts. It’s scanned in a moment’s notice and the meaning hits home.

For example, email marketing service AWeber ran a simple copy test on their call to action.

The only change? A single word.

Image Source

AWeber added the word “Now” to their call to action. And they saw a 12% increase in paid signups with a credit card.

An online travel booking flow is no different than any other conversion flow. Doesn’t matter if we’re talking about signing up for a new email marketing app or trying to go through a shopping cart checkout sequence.

The stats are remarkably the same, too. Online travel bookings see a 81% abandonment! While shopping cart abandonment averages right around 70%.

61% of those cart abandonments are because of ‘extra costs’ (including shipping, taxes, fees, etc.)

Image Source

You know how this feels. You’re super pumped about that new pair of plastic jeans (yes, that’s a thing) you just found. Except when you head over to checkout, you see that another ~30% has been tacked on due to taxes, shipping, and fees.

Guess what Expedia does, instead?

First, they ‘drop’ the price. Two cents. Literally. But it’s green and happy and there’s a check mark exclaiming “Good News.”

The other thing it says? “Book now to secure this price.”

Zooming into the pricing area on the right, you also see the savings of booking the flight and hotel together. Then, down below, you see the total price (again first – price anchoring).

And then a “Due at hotel” line item that cleverly buries all of those damn resort fees that we hate so much.

But they’re almost invisible because of how Expedia has positioned this pricing and sale.

Instead of being ‘thrown off’ the conversion scent at the moment of truth, you’re practically already packing your bags. #Humblebragging about your upcoming Vegas trip.

Conclusion

Ranchers use a cattle prod to get those big, dumb, slow moving animals to do what they want.

Whether that’s to eat, find shelter, or head to the slaughterhouse.

Consumers don’t need to do anything.

They might want lots of things. But they lack nothing. And so there’s no inherent desire to purchase your widget.

Instead, you have to create it. Manufacture it and bring it into existence.

For guidance, start with the web’s top converters. Expedia is a master at creating urgency by using countdown timers, product attributes, prince anchoring, FOMO, and a host of other psychological tactics that would make Cialdini proud.

Increasing conversions online isn’t about tricks or gimmicks or hacks. It’s about building up the value of your offering so much that people can’t help but convert.

About the Author: Brad Smith the founder of Codeless, a B2B content creation company. Frequent contributor to Kissmetrics, Unbounce, WordStream, AdEspresso, Search Engine Journal, Autopilot, and more.

[ericsburden-blog]

How to Manufacture Urgency to Blow through Conversion Roadblocks

We don’t need things.

We might need a six-dollar, almond milk, sea salt caramel mocha (no whip) when it gets a little chilly outside.

But we don’t need-need.

The lights are on. Roof over our head. Heating or AC blasting in the background.

That applies to most things you’re trying to sell.

Doesn’t matter if we’re talkin’ ‘bout that shiny new app you deployed or the fancy new eComm product. People don’t need it.

Which makes your life tough. How are you going to move the needle, get more subscribers, and scale revenue, when the vast majority of the people you’re speaking to have zero actual need to buy your widget?

You need urgency. Or more specifically, you need to manufacture urgency out of thin air.

Here’s how a few of the web’s top converting sites create urgency out of thin air to get visitors to finally commit once and for all.

Why Urgency Works

People don’t need your stuff. But it gets worse. Because people also resist change at the same time.

So you’ve got two problems. You need to shake people out of their inertia. And then somehow get them to act.

Thankfully, the solution’s no secret. There’s a book on it. Along with countless studies.

For example, ConversionXL explains one account where just a little bit of urgency sprinkled onto a product page lifted revenue by over 27% for Bob & Lush.

They came up with the idea to that “clarity of deliver time on a product page would push more customers to convert.”

Sound familiar? It’s what some of the best in the business, from Amazon all the way down to the QVC have gone to great lengths to employ.

So they made one relatively small tweak to their product pages.

The new variant included a little simple text box that highlighted when someone would receive their product if they ordered within a short time frame.

Image Source

Not only did revenue jump (27.1%), but the the number of purchases (9.5%) and checkout visits (10.1%) did, too.

Of course, the inclusion of this delivery date estimate wasn’t just a hunch. An epiphany. Or a ‘growth hack’ some growth hacker wrote about in their Bible to Growth Hacking on GrowthHackers.com

Instead, the hypothesis came from a place that good ideas always flow. But few rarely tend to go.

Consumer Research (AKA The Part Everyone Always Skips)

In 2012, Marcus Taylor of Venture Harbour launched a ‘Groupon deal for musicians.’ (And wrote about the experience in another excellent ConversionXL case study. Yes, I’m completely ripping them off today).

He reportedly invested months and even dipped into personal savings to fund it. The boats were burned. There was no going back. It had to churn a profit.

Image Source

No need to bury the lead. He increased conversions from a mediocre-but-fine 2.5% up to an astonishing 10.8% by infusing urgency into every pore of the site.

That incredible conversion lift wasn’t the part that got me, though.

This was:

When people think of conversion optimization, they go to landing pages. They go to headlines. CTAs. Images. And other similarly miniscule details that kinda don’t move the f-ing needle.

But all of those elements (which we’ll touch in soon) are at the mercy of one giant thing: the audience.

All of the CTA tweaks in the world can’t save you from targeting the wrong audience in the first place.

That’s the critical difference Marcus understood. And acted on. (Emphasis, mine.)

“Prior to launch, I “tested” hundreds of traffic sources, from Reddit Ads, to specific music forums. I wanted to know was which traffic sources I need to prioritise during the real campaign.

I ended up with a custom Google Analytics dashboard like this, which made it clear which traffic sources delivered the most relevant traffic.”

Image Source

“Not only did I know where my customers would come from ahead of time, but I knew more about my audience, such as how guitarists were almost three times more likely to buy than drummers, and that my conversion rate was highest in the UK and Australia.”

Similarly, when ConversionXL worked with Bob & Lush initially they didn’t haphazardly start throwing stuff on a DIY landing page builder. Rather, they begun with a boring, tired, old survey.

One hundred eighteen people opted in. And many agreed that their biggest fear centered around “running out of food for their dogs.”

That’s the catalyst. The trigger.

It manifested as a purchasing roadblock based on “knowing when the food would arrive.”

So that’s what ConversionXL leveraged. You’ve already seen the updated landing page variation that was a success. Just by using simple language to entice people to buy now (instead of waiting around).

The tactic – the thing you see on the screen – isn’t the point. It’s the impulse it targets. The underlying motivation that’s already preventing people from feeling like they need your thing.

It’s no coincidence that this is the exact same strategy that one of the interwebs top converters implements.

Expedia recently announced gross revenues of $16 billion. Up 8% from online sales.

Which should come as no surprise when you see what they’re doing.

How Expedia Manufactures Urgency Out of Thin Air

Visit Expedia.com.

The homepage is fairly bare. A giant reservation form takes over almost everything above the fold.

Below that, a few of “Todays Deals” are highlighted.

So far, not much is happening. It’s not until you actually search for a trip that things start to get interesting.

Vegas sounds fun. Pool season sure beats reading another blog post like this in your pajamas.

Plug in some dates. Hit Enter. And here goes.

Whoa. Lots happening.

You see plenty of greens (good!) and reds (bad!) to help you instantly understand their meaning.

In the lower right-hand corner, multiple little callouts keep popping up, sliding in and out of the screen, emphasizing the same thing: a BUNCH of other people are looking at booking these deals right now – so they might not last long.

Then of course, the Daily Deal hits you at the top of the screen. A classic countdown timer that ticks away. My heart rate sped up. Palms sweaty. Despite not having any real interest in booking this initially.

Once again, that was no accident. As this case study featured on Behave.org (formerly WhichTestWon) indicates.

Image Source

All that was added was a countdown timer. That’s it.

They even removed a few elements, including ‘free delivery’ and ‘order now’ in order to remove extraneous distractions and focus viewers on what mattered most: that countdown timer.

The result after 50,000 viewers? An instant 8% conversion lift.

Ok. Enough boring marketing stuff. Back to Vegas.

How Expedia Uses Price Anchoring & FOMO to Make this Trip Look like a Steal

Those FOMO callouts slide in and out of view.

The countdown timer continues ticking down. And then the product attributes help you decide.

For example, scroll down a little bit until you reach Cosmo.

It’s garnered a little yellow “Top Hotel” badge. It literally screams “Wonderful!” with excellent ratings and reviews to match.

Price anchoring in full effect, with the ‘sales price’ slashed down to the new effective one.

Scarcity comes into view with the strip of text in red that highlights the number of people who also booked this hotel in the past forty eight hours. Along with when it was last booked.

So. If we’re even remotely serious. We need to move fast.

Let’s select Cosmo. Because c’mon: wraparound terraces!

You look at available rooms and are immediately met by an “Unreal Deal” that will “save you 100% on your flight.” That’s backed up by the pricing, which shows you’ll ‘owe’ $0.00 more to select it now.

Deals like that won’t last. Don’t last. Which means you should act.

Not later, but now.

How Expedia Forces You to Take Action (Now)

Words matter.

It’s not that people absorb every letter in detail. They don’t. Hell – people don’t even read. ‘Specially not online.

But the sum is greater than the parts. It’s scanned in a moment’s notice and the meaning hits home.

For example, email marketing service AWeber ran a simple copy test on their call to action.

The only change? A single word.

Image Source

AWeber added the word “Now” to their call to action. And they saw a 12% increase in paid signups with a credit card.

An online travel booking flow is no different than any other conversion flow. Doesn’t matter if we’re talking about signing up for a new email marketing app or trying to go through a shopping cart checkout sequence.

The stats are remarkably the same, too. Online travel bookings see a 81% abandonment! While shopping cart abandonment averages right around 70%.

61% of those cart abandonments are because of ‘extra costs’ (including shipping, taxes, fees, etc.)

Image Source

You know how this feels. You’re super pumped about that new pair of plastic jeans (yes, that’s a thing) you just found. Except when you head over to checkout, you see that another ~30% has been tacked on due to taxes, shipping, and fees.

Guess what Expedia does, instead?

First, they ‘drop’ the price. Two cents. Literally. But it’s green and happy and there’s a check mark exclaiming “Good News.”

The other thing it says? “Book now to secure this price.”

Zooming into the pricing area on the right, you also see the savings of booking the flight and hotel together. Then, down below, you see the total price (again first – price anchoring).

And then a “Due at hotel” line item that cleverly buries all of those damn resort fees that we hate so much.

But they’re almost invisible because of how Expedia has positioned this pricing and sale.

Instead of being ‘thrown off’ the conversion scent at the moment of truth, you’re practically already packing your bags. #Humblebragging about your upcoming Vegas trip.

Conclusion

Ranchers use a cattle prod to get those big, dumb, slow moving animals to do what they want.

Whether that’s to eat, find shelter, or head to the slaughterhouse.

Consumers don’t need to do anything.

They might want lots of things. But they lack nothing. And so there’s no inherent desire to purchase your widget.

Instead, you have to create it. Manufacture it and bring it into existence.

For guidance, start with the web’s top converters. Expedia is a master at creating urgency by using countdown timers, product attributes, prince anchoring, FOMO, and a host of other psychological tactics that would make Cialdini proud.

Increasing conversions online isn’t about tricks or gimmicks or hacks. It’s about building up the value of your offering so much that people can’t help but convert.

About the Author: Brad Smith the founder of Codeless, a B2B content creation company. Frequent contributor to Kissmetrics, Unbounce, WordStream, AdEspresso, Search Engine Journal, Autopilot, and more.

How to Manufacture Urgency to Blow through Conversion Roadblocks