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Can We Ever Make It Suntory Time Again?

Aaron Gilbreath | Longreads | October 2019 | 23 minutes (5,939 words)

Bic Camera looked like many of the other loud, brightly colored electronics stores I’d seen in Japan, just bigger. Mostly, it was a respite from the cold. The appliances and electronics that jammed its interior gave no indication of its dizzyingly good liquor selection, nor did the many inexpensive aged Japanese whiskies hint that affordable bottles were about to become a thing of the past, or that I’d nurture a profound remorse once they did. When I found Bic Camera’s wholly unexpected liquor department, I lifted two bottles of high-end Japanese whisky from the shelf, wandered the aisles studying the labels, had a baffling interaction with a clerk, and put the bottles back on the shelf. All I had to do was pay for them. I didn’t.

Commercial Japanese whisky has been around since at least 1929, so during my first trip to Japan (and at home in the U.S.), there was no reason to think that all the aged Japanese whiskies that were readily available in the early 2000s would soon achieve holy grail status. In 2007, there were $100 bottles of Yamazaki 18-year sitting forlornly on a shelf at my local BevMo. One bottle now sells for more than $400 at online auctions; some online stores sell them for $700.

Yoichi 10, Yoichi 12, Hibiki 17 and 21, Taketsuru 12 and 17 — in 2014, rare and discontinued bottles lined store shelves, reasonably priced compared to their current $300 to $600 price tags. Those were great years. I call them BTB — before the boom. Before the boom, a bottle of Yamazaki 12 cost $60. After the boom, a Seattle liquor store priced their last bottle of Yamazaki 12 at $225. Before the boom, Taketsuru 12 cost $20 in Japan and $70 in the States. After the boom, online auctions sell bottles for more than $220.

Before the boom, Karuizawa casks sat, dusty and abandoned, in shuttered distilleries. After the boom, a bottle of Karuizawa 1964 sold for $118,420, the most expensive Japanese whisky ever sold at auction, until a Yamazaki 50 sold for $129,186 the following year, then another went for $343,000 15 months later.

Before the boom, whisky tasted of rich red fruits and cereal grains. After the boom, it tasted of regret.

I’ve spent the past five years wishing I could do things over. I remember my trips to Japan fondly — the new friends, the food and record stores, the Kyoto temples and solitary hikes — except for the whisky, whose absence coats my mouth with the proverbial bitter taste. I replay the time I walked into a grocery store in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro neighborhood and found a shelf lined with Taketsuru 12, four bottles wide and four deep, at $20 apiece; it starts at $170 now. I look at the photos I took of Hibiki 12 for $34, Yoichi 12 for $69, Taketsuru 21 for $89. I tell friends how I’d visited the Isetan Department Store’s liquor department in Shinjuku, where they had a 12-year-old sherried Karuizawa bottled exclusively for Isetan for barely more than $100, alongside a blend of Hanyu and Kawaski grain whisky that famed distiller Ichiro Akuto did exclusively for the store. Staff wouldn’t let me photograph or touch anything, but I could have afforded both bottles. They now sell for $1,140 and $1,290, respectively. I torture myself by revisiting my unfortunate logic, how I squandered my limited funds: buying inexpensive bottles to drink during the trip, instead of a few big-ticket purchases to take home.

Aaron, I’ve thought more times that I could count, you are such a fucking idiot.

To time travel, I look at photos of old Japanese whisky bottles in Facebook groups, like they are some sort of beverage porn, and wonder: Who am I? What have I become? There’s enough incredible scotch available here at home. Why do I — and the others whose interest spiked prices and made the bottles we loved inaccessible — care so much about Japanese whisky?

* * *

After the notorious Commodore Perry landed on Japanese shores in 1853 to open the closed country to trade, he gifted the emperor a barrel and 70 gallons of American whiskey, a spirit not well-known in Japan. As whiskey tends to do, it softened the nations’ encounter; one tipsy samurai felt so good he even hugged Perry. At the time, domestic spirit production was limited to shōchū and an Okinawan drink called awamori, made from sweet potatoes and rice respectively. Japanese companies tried to recreate the brown spirits that American and European companies had started importing, but without a recipe, the imitations were rough. The earliest Japanese attempts were either cheaply made locally or imported from Europe and labeled Japanese. When two boatloads of American soldiers stopped in the port of Hakodate in 1918, en route to fight Bolsheviks in Siberia, they found bars filled with knock-off scotch, including one called Queen George. As Major Samuel L. Johnson wrote in a letter, “If you come across any, don’t touch it. … It must be 86 percent corrosive sublimate proof, because 3,500 enlisted men were stinko fifteen minutes after they got ashore.”

It was in this miasma of bad imitations that Suntory’s founder Shinjiro Torii recognized an opportunity. Winemaker Torii had been importing whiskies and bottling them as early as 1911. He called his brand Torys. As whisky found a toehold in Japan, he realized that slinging rotgut like the other frontier opportunists wasn’t the way to create a market; he needed to learn to distill an authentic, higher-quality whisky. The way Suntory’s marketing materials later presented it, Torii wanted to create a refined whisky that also reflected Japanese natural resources and Japanese tastes, which he perceived as more attuned to delicacy and nuance than the Scottish palate and that paired with Japanese cuisine rather than overpowering it — anything that tasted of corrosive sublimate would overwhelm your food. In 1923, he used his wine profits to build a distillery near Kyoto.

Elsewhere, in Osaka, Masataka Taketsuru, the son of a sake-maker, had been working for shōchū-maker Settsu Shuzo. The company, like Torii, wanted to make whisky, so in 1918 its president sent Taketsuru to study whisky-making in Scotland. Taketsuru was a 24-year-old chemist and took detailed notes when the Scottish distillers finally showed him their facilities and techniques. After two years learning the art of cask maturation, pot stills, and peat-smoking, Taketsuru returned to Japan to find that his employer’s enthusiasm for making real whisky had waned. So Taketsuru took his Scottish knowledge and enthusiasm to Torii, and the two men pooled their skills to build what became the Yamazaki Distillery, the country’s first commercial whisky producer. Sticking with Scottish tradition, they spelled it without the ‘e.’

It must be 86 percent corrosive sublimate proof, because 3,500 enlisted men were stinko fifteen minutes after they got ashore.

Suntory gets all the credit for distilling Japan’s first Scottish-style whisky, but Eigashima Shuzō, the company that now runs the White Oak Distillery, actually got the first license to produce whisky in Japan in 1919, five years before Yamazaki. Founder Kiichiro Iwai, who later founded the Mars Shinshu distillery and designed its equipment, had been Taketsuru’s mentor at Shuzo and is often called “the silent pioneer of Japanese whisky.” But Yamazaki started producing whisky sooner, so the rest, as they say, is history.

Suntory’s Yamazaki distillery launched Japan’s first true commercial whisky in 1929. Ninety years later, around a dozen companies distill whisky in Japan, depending on how you count them: Suntory and Nikka. Chichibu in Saitama Prefecture, White Oak in coastal Akashi. Kirin at the base of Mt. Fuji, Mars Shinshū in the village of Miyada in the Japanese Alps. Upstarts like Akkeshi in Hokkaido and the Shizuoka Distillery near Shizuoka. All produce stellar whisky.

Whisky experienced a huge boom in postwar Japan, coming to represent success, the West, masculinity, worldliness, and Japan’s increasing importance on the world stage. “If you were to choose a drink to symbolize the rapid economic growth in the four decades after the war,” Chris Bunting writes in Drinking Japan, “it would have to be whisky.” In journalist Lawrence Osborne’s words, whisky was “the salaryman’s drink, a symbol of Westernized manliness and sophistication.” Initially, distillers flooded the domestic marketplace with mediocre blended drams and single malts that appealed to hard-working businessmen. Then Suntory relaunched Torys to reach the working-class masses; the stuff was cheap and tasted it, with a cartoon businessman mascot that the target demographic could identify with. Nikka also began producing different lines to offer Japanese drinkers an affordable Western luxury product. During the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, there was Hi Nikka, Nikka Gold & Gold, Suntory Old Whisky, and Suntory Royal. Many of these these brands used the same affectations as Scottish and English products: crests, gold fonts, aged labels, faceted glass decanters with boldly shaped stoppers, the British spelling of flavour. The approach worked. Whisky went from a drink of the well-to-do businessman to a drink of the average citizen, and it became common for working-class Japanese men to keep bottles at home. Production boomed.

In the mid-1980s, consumer drinking habits shifted toward shōchū, whisky lost its allure, and some distillers from the postwar boom years closed. But Keizo Saji, the second son of Suntory founder Shinjiro Torii, saw an opportunity: premium whisky. In 1984, the year domestic whisky consumption dropped 15.6 percent, Saji launched Yamazaki 12, Japan’s first high-end mass-market single malt, transforming a downturn into a chance for the company to outdo itself with top-notch quaffs that would raise whisky’s domestic reputation and compete with scotches in the global marketplace. Nikka followed suit with their own single malt. Historians usually date the true start of Japanese whisky’s global ascendency to 2001, when 62 industry professionals did a blind taste test for British Whisky Magazine and named Nikka’s Yoichi 10 Single Cask the year’s best. “The whiskeys of Japan proved to be a real eye-opener for the majority of tasters,” the magazine wrote. As the Japan Times reported the following year, “Sales of Nikka’s award-winning 10-year-old single-cask whiskey, which has only been sold online at Nikka’s Web site, surged from about 20 bottles a month in 2000 to 1,200 in November after several Japanese newspapers carried an article about the taste-test events.”

For a long time, the majority of Japanese whisky was made following Scottish distilling methods: Japanese single malts were made from 100 percent malted barley (mostly imported from the U.K.) with local mountain and spring water, distilled in pot stills, and matured at least three years in oak. Japanese single malts moved to casks made from American or European oaks and that once held bourbon to age further and take on color and flavor, usually for 10 to 18 years. Like scotch, these single malts were rich, wooded, and highly aromatic. But Japanese innovation also created an astonishing diversity of flavors that tradition would never have allowed. Distillers age their whisky age in casks that once held sherry, bourbon, brandy, ume, and port, and, on a more limited basis, expensive casks made from Japan’s native mizunara oak. Every culture has masters and apprentices, but the Japanese have a particular respect for craftsmanship, and many people, from coffee roasters to cedarwood lunch box makers, dedicate their lives to a single specialty. Whisky writer Brian Ashcraft told Nippon that there’s a word for this: “In the Meiji period [1868–1912] there was a slogan, wakon-yōsai, or Japanese spirit and Western knowhow. So even if a product made in Japan is superficially the same as one made overseas, it’s going to be something Japanese because of differences in culture, language, food, climate. … This applies to anything from blue jeans to cameras, cars and trains. There are elements of the culture manifesting in the finished product.” Sakuma Tadashi, Nikka’s chief blender, told Ashcraft that by liberating themselves from tradition and embracing innovation and experimentation, the company can continue to improve its whisky. “At Nikka,” Tadashi said, “it’s ingrained into everyone that we need to make whisky that is better than scotch. That’s why if we change things, then we can make even more delicious whisky.”

* * *

Like whisky aging in barrels, Japanese whisky producers’ international reputation took years to develop, but gradually medals started weighing down their lapels. In 2001, the International Wine and Spirits Competition awarded Karuizawa Pure Malt 12 a gold medal. In 2003, the International Spirits Challenge gave Yamazaki 12 a gold award. Hibiki 30 won the International Spirits Challenge’s top prize in 2004, Yamazaki 18 won San Francisco World Spirits Competition’s Double Gold Medal in 2005, and Nikka’s Yoichi 20 was named World’s Best Single Malt Whisky in 2008. The World Whiskies Awards named Yamazaki 25 “World’s Best Single Malt” in 2012. Hibiki 21 was named the world’s best blended whisky in 2013. And on and on.

I’ve harbored an interest in Japanese culture and history since fifth grade. When I discovered the anime Robotech — one of the first Japanese animated shows adapted for mainstream American television — I sat for hours in my room, copying images of robots, missiles, and sparkly-eyed warrior women into my sketchbooks. As I moved away from anime and manga, I read more broadly about Japan and fell in love with Japanese literature, food, smart technology, and the Toyotas that never died, like the truck that took me from Arizona to British Columbia and back two times. Naturally, Bill Murray’s now-famous line in Lost in Translation “For relaxing times, make it Suntory time” made me want to taste what he was talking about. So I ordered a glass of 12-year Yamazaki at a bar.

Lively and bright with a medium body, the Yamazaki had layers of orange peel, honey, cinnamon, and brown sugar, along with a surprisingly earthy incense aroma, almost like cedar, which I later learned came from casks made from Japan’s mizunara oak — Mizunara imparts what distillers call “temple flavor.” I kept my nose in the glass, sniffing and smiling and sniffing, no matter what the other patrons thought of me. When Bill Murray raised his glass of Hibiki 17, Suntory’s Hibiki and Yamazaki lines were not widely distributed in the U.S. or Europe, and Western drinkers who knew them often considered them a novelty, or worse, a careful impersonation of the “real” Scottish malts. What I tasted could not be dismissed as a novelty. I knew that the people at Suntory who made this whisky had treated it as a work of art.

I loved it so much that I wondered what else was out there. There was little information in English: a single English-language book, Ulf Buxrud’s hard-to-find Japanese Whisky: Facts, Figures and Taste, which cost too much to order. Instead, I found a community of blogging gaijin who took Japanese spirits as seriously as the distillers did, sharing information, reviews, and whatever information they could find. Some of them lived in Japan. Others visited frequently and had Japanese connections who could translate details and source bottles. Clint A. of Whiskies R Us, Chris Bunting and Stefan Van Eycken at Nonjatta, Michio Hayashi at Japan Whisky Reviews. And Brian Love, aka Dramtastic, who ran the Japanese Whisky Review. They blogged about the domestic drams that you could only buy in Japan. They blogged about obscure drams from the decommissioned Kawasaki grain distillery; about something called owners casks and other limited bottlings made for Japanese department stores; and about what remained from the mothballed Karuizawa distillery, now one of the most fetishized whiskies in the world. They were my education.

At home, I searched for whiskies online and in bars and liquor stores and soon discovered my favorites: I preferred the smoky, rich coal-fired Yoichi to the woody, spicy Yamazaki. I liked the fruity depth of Hibiki a lot, but had an irrational prejudice against blended whisky, so I didn’t buy any bottles of Hibiki when they cost a mere $70. And I preferred the crisp, herbaceous forest flavors of 12-year-old Hakushu to them all; I still do. Even after I became moderately educated and increasingly opinionated, I kept buying $30 bottles of my beloved Elijah Craig 12-year instead of Yoichi or Hibiki. That’s the thing: The bloggers couldn’t teach me that the years when I discovered Japanese whisky turned out to be their best years, and that I needed to take advantage of my timing. They didn’t know. Nobody outside the whisky companies did, and nothing about their posts suggested that this world of abundant, affordable Japanese whiskies would come to an end around 2014.

The fan groups and bloggers praised Yamazaki and Karuizawa malts, driving worldwide interest and prices. By the time the influential Jim Murray’s Whisky Bible named the Yamazaki Single Malt Sherry Cask “World Whisky of the Year” in 2015 and San Francisco World Spirits Competition named Yamazaki 18 their 2015 Best in Class under the category “Other Whiskey,” U.S. and U.K. stores couldn’t keep Japanese whisky in stock. The student had overtaken the master. The $100 bottles of Yamazaki 18 no longer appeared on suburban BevMo shelves, and Hibiki 12 no longer cost $70. Everyone was asking stores for sherry cask, sherry cask, do you have the sherry cask? No, they did not. If you wanted a taste of Miyagikyo 12 in America, it would run you $30 to $50 a glass. The year 2015 was the first time Jim Murray named a Japanese malt the world’s best and the first time in the Whisky Bible’s 12-year history that no Scottish malt made the top five. Every drinker and their grandpa knew Johnnie Walker and Cutty Sark. Now they knew Suntory, too.

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In Japan, television fanned the flames further; a 2014 TV drama called Massan, based on the life of Nikka founder Masataka Taketsuru and his industrious Scottish wife Rita Cowan, helped the Japanese take renewed notice of their own products. Simultaneously, Suntory ran an aggressive ad domestic campaign to encourage younger Japanese to drink cheap highballs — whisky mixed with soda — fueling sales and depleting stock even more.

The buzz caught Suntory and Nikka off guard. After decades of patiently turning out top-notch single malts for a relatively indifferent domestic market, Nikka announced that their aged stock had run low, not just at retailers but inside their facilities. Unable to meet worldwide demand, they did what drinkers found unthinkable: They overhauled their lineup in 2015, replacing beloved aged whiskies with less expensive bottles of “no age statement” or “NAS” whiskies that blended young and old stock. Instead of Miyagikyo aged in barrels for 12 years, Nikka gave us plain Miyagikyo. Instead of Yoichi 10, 12, 15, and 20, there was straight-up Yoichi. Suntory had already added NAS versions of its age-statement Hibiki and Hakushu to conserve shrinking old stock and then went even further, banning company executives from drinking the older single malts to save product for customers. Yamazaki 12 still landed on American shelves, but in smaller quantities that sold out quickly, and Japanese buyers saw them less frequently back home.

Longtime fans greeted Suntory’s answer to the masses, called Toki, with skepticism and hostility. (In the words of one non-word-mincing Reddit poster: “Toki sucks. It’s fucking terrible.”) Time in wood gives whisky complexity. That’s how whisky works, but distillers didn’t have enough old whisky anymore, and they seemed to be rationing what remained in order to blend their core lines while they continued aging what they hoped to bottle again. They were victims of their own success, and they needed time to catch up. Nikka’s official press release put it this way: “With the current depletion, Yoichi and Miyagikyo malt whiskies, which are the base of most of our products, will be exhausted in the future and we will be unable to continue the business.”

On the open market, the news created a frenzy that fueled the resale business. Japanese citizens who previously bought few Nikka malts scavenged whatever bottles they could. Chinese investors flew to Japan to gather stock to mark up. Stores in Tokyo inflated prices to gouge tourists, selling $873 bottles of Hakushu 18 that retailed for $300 in Oregon. Secondhand liquor stores collected and resold unopened bottles, many of which came from the elderly or deceased, who had received them as omiyage gifts but didn’t drink whisky. Auction sites flourished. “We call this the ‘terminal aunt’ syndrome,” Van Eycken wrote, “you know, the aunt you never visit until she’s terminally ill.”

The boom times were over.

After the boom, foreign whisky fans took to the web to post about Japan’s shifting stock. Obsessive types like me — what the Japanese call ‘otaku — shared updates about which bottles they found where and which stores were picked clean. “The Japanese whiskys here are in short supply still, short of the cheap stuff,” said one visitor in Fukuoka. Another foreigner proclaimed “the glory days of $100 ‘zawa’s and easy to find single cask Hanyu’s are over.” Gaijin enthusiasts would search cities in their free time while in Japan on business; others drove out into inaka, the sticks, systematically searching for rare or underpriced bottles at mom-and-pop shops. “On the bright side,” the same commenter reported in 2016, “I went into the boonies and found a small liquor distributor who had 2 Yoichi 10’s and a bunch of dusties (Nikka Super 15, Suntory Royal 15, The Blend of Nikka 17 Maltbase, Once Upon a Time) all pretty cheap, between $18-$35 each. I know some of those dusties are not much more than mixer material, but it’s nice to have a piece of history.” Others found these searches pointless. “Well as a point of fact there is no point for any foreigner to come to Japan in search of Japanese whisky,” Dramtastic wrote in 2015. “You will in many countries almost certainly find a better offering at home and if not, one of the online retailers.” He titled his post “Buying Japanese Whisky In Japan — Nothing But Scorched Earth!”

It was right before the earth got scorched that I obliviously arrived in Japan.

* * *

When I finally got the money to travel overseas, there was only one real choice: Japan. For three weeks, I roamed Tokyo and Kyoto alone, where I shopped for my beloved canned sanma fish and green tea soy milk in grocery stores. I bought jazz CDs and Murakami books in Japanese I couldn’t read. I wrote about capsule hotels and old jazz bars. I photographed my ramen and eel dinners, and I photographed bottles of whisky on store shelves.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want them. I wanted them all: Yoichi 15, Hibiki 21, Miyagikyo 12. But as a traveler, practical considerations prevailed. I didn’t have much money. My luggage already held too much stuff, and anyway, the products would be there next time. I bought a few bottles of common whisky to drink during my trip and went about my business.

I unwittingly found the largest selection of Japanese whisky on my final night in Japan.

I was staying near the busy Ikebukuro train station and went out seeking curry. I wandered around in the cold, shivering and sad about leaving. As I passed ramen shops and busy izakayas, I spotted a cluttered electronics store. Music blared. The interior had a cramped, carnival atmosphere. Blinding white light spilled out the front door. Red lettering on the building’s reflective side said Bic Camera.

I didn’t know it then, but the Bic Camera chain had nearly 40 stores nationwide. The stores often stand seven or eight stories in busy areas near train stations where pedestrians abound. In 2008, the company was valued at $940 million, and its founder, Ryuji Arai, was the 31st richest person in Japan. When Arai opened his original Tokyo camera store in 1978, he sold $3.50 worth of merchandise the first day. Today, Bic Camera is an all-purpose mega-store that sells seemingly everything but cars and fresh produce.

Before the boom, Bic sold highly limited editions of whisky made exclusively for Bic, including an Ichiro 22-year and a Suntory blend. The stock is designed to compete with liquor stores that carry similar selections, though many Japanese shoppers come for the imported scotch and American bourbon. That night I couldn’t tell any of that. I couldn’t even tell if this was an upscale department store or a Japanese version of Walmart. In America, hip stories follow the “less is more” principle, with sparse displays that suggest they’re also selling negative space and apathy. Bic crammed everything in.

I rode the escalator up for no other reason than to see what was there. Cell phones, cameras, TVs — the escalator provided a nice view of each floor. When I spotted booze on 4F, I jumped off. They had an entire corner devoted to liquor and a wall displaying Japanese whisky. They had all the good ones I’d read about online but hadn’t been able to find and others I didn’t know. My luggage already contained so many CDs, clothes, and souvenirs that I’d have to mail some things home, but I grabbed two bottles anyway, I no longer remember which kind. I only remember gripping their cold glass necks like they were the last bottles on earth, desperate to bring just a bit more home, and I held them tightly as I wandered the aisles, studying the unreadable labels of aged whiskies and marveling at the business strategy of this mysterious store as I preemptively mourned my return to the States.

A clerk in a black vest approached me and said something politely that I couldn’t understand. With a smile, the man said something else and bowed, sorry, very sorry. He pointed to his watch. The store was closing, maybe it already had. He stood and stared. I looked at him and nodded. He stood nodding back. In that overwhelming corner, with indecipherable announcements blaring overhead, I considered my options and returned the bottles to the shelf, offering my apologies. Then I rode back down to the frigid street. The dark night felt darker away from Bic’s fluorescence, as did the winter air.

The high-end whiskies in a locked case. Tokyo grocery store 2014. Photo by Aaron Gilbreath

Like a good tourist — and like a dumbass — I photographed everything on that first trip, from tiny cars to bowls of udon to Japanese whisky displays. When I look at the photos of those rare bottles now, I see the last Tasmanian tiger slipping into the woods. The next season, it went extinct, and all I’d done was raise my camera at it. I had unwittingly visited the world’s greatest Japanese whisky city and I had nothing to show for it.

* * *

The trip ended. The regret lived on.

Partly, it was fed by money, or my lack thereof: Because I like having a few different styles of whisky at home, I wanted a range of Japanese styles, but I couldn’t afford $100 bottles of anything, which meant I’d never get to taste many of these whiskies.

Part of it was nostalgia: I wanted to keep the memory of my time in Japan alive, to prolong the trip, by keeping its bottles on display at home.

Mostly, it’s driven by something much more ethereal. When people ask why I like whisky, I tell them it’s the taste and smell. Scotch strikes a chord in me in a way that wine, bourbon, and cocktails do not. I spare them the more confusing truth, which even I struggle to articulate. Part of scotch’s appeal comes from scarcity and craftsmanship. Its spare ingredients include only barley, spring water, wood, and the chemical reactions that occur between them. And time: Aged spirits are old. For half of my 20s and all of my 30s — the time I was busting my ass after college, trying to build a career and learn to write well enough to tell a story like this — 18-year old Yamazaki whisky lay inside a barrel in a warehouse outside Osaka. That liquid and I lived our lives in parallel, steadily maturing, accruing character, until our paths finally crossed at a bar in Oregon.

That liquid and I lived our lives in parallel, steadily maturing, accruing character, until our paths finally crossed at a bar in Oregon.

But it’s more than age. Something magical happens in those barrels, where liquid interacts with wood in the dark, damp warehouses where barrels rest for decades. Aged whisky is a rare example of celebrating life moving at a slow, geological pace that is no longer the norm in our instant world. You can’t speed up this process, and that makes the liquid precious. When you’ve waited 12 years for a whisky to come out the cask, or 20 years — through wars and presidencies, political upheavals and ecological crises — that’s longer than many people have been alive. And in a sense, the whisky itself is alive. That potent life force is preserved in that bottle. The drops are by nature limited, measured in ounces and milliliters, and that limitation puts another value on it. When the cap comes off your 750-milliliter bottle, you count: sip, sip, uh oh, 600 mils left, then 400, then a level low enough that you reserve the bottle for special occasions.

The limited availability of certain whiskies adds another layer of scarcity value; when distilleries close, their whisky becomes irreplaceable. No more of those Hanyus or Karuizawas will ever get made. No more versions of the early 1990s Hibiki, since Suntory changed the formula. For distilleries that still operate, their whisky is irreplaceable, too. The exact combination of wood, temperature, and age will never produce the same flavor twice. Even when made according to a formula, whisky is a distinct expression of time and place. The weather, the blender, the barley, the proximity to the sea, and of course, the barrels — sherry, port, or bourbon? — all impart a particular flavor along with the way blenders mix them. For Yamazaki 18, 80 percent of the liquid gets aged in sherry casks, the remaining 20 percent in American oak and mizunara. That deliberation and precision come from human expertise that takes a lifetime to acquire, and expertise, like the whisky it produces, is singular and therefore valuable.

When you sip whisky, you don’t have to think about of any of this to enjoy it. You don’t even have to name the flavors you taste. You can just silently appreciate it; it doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.

For me, Japanese whisky became more complicated, because I also wanted it to give me something more than it could: a connection to a trip and a time that had passed.

In Japan, everything looked a certain way. The way stores displayed bottles. The way restaurants displayed food. The way businesses signs hung outside — Matsuya, Shinanoya, CoCo Curry House — and the way all of those images and colors and geometries combined in a raucous clutter of wires and Hiragana and Katakana to create urban Japan’s distinctive look. When I returned home, I kept picturing those streets. They appeared in dreams and projected themselves on shower curtain as I washed in the morning. To stave off my hunger, I frequently ate at local Japanese restaurants, but even the most exacting decorations or grilled yakitori skewers couldn’t fully give me what I wanted. So I fantasized about creating it myself, and then I did: my best replica of an underground Tokyo bar, in the corner of my basement, the bottles lined up just so.

When my wife, Rebekah, and I took our honeymoon to Japan in 2016, I hoped to make up for past errors. Instead, I found the scorched earth. Japanese liquor stores and grocers sold few of the rare bottles they did just two years earlier. The fancy department stores had no Karuizawa or Hanyu. And the aged whiskies I did find had price tags too big to afford. I bought none of them on that trip either. For the cost of a $130 Yoichi 12, I could buy three great bottles of regular hooch at home. After we returned, I kept scheming ways to return to Japan for just a few days. Since I couldn’t, I satisfied myself with my display of empty whisky, sake, and Japanese beer bottles, and I kept scheming ways to get more domestic booze. A friend brought me a bottle of Kakubin while visiting her family in Tokyo. I asked a few friends in Japan to mail me bottles, even though regulations prohibit Japanese citizens from doing that. (They said no.)

There was only one way to get more whisky, and I couldn’t afford the ticket.

Then in January an email about a discount flight to Tokyo landed in my inbox. Flights were crazy cheap. I had to go.

When I proposed this to Rebekah, she said, “Seriously?” She lay in bed, staring at me like I’d asked if she’d hop on a plane to Amsterdam in 10 minutes without packing. “Just hear me out,” I said, and outlined my impractical business plan for recouping expenses by throwing paid, tip-only whisky parties for booze no one could find anywhere else in Portland, where we live. “Think about it as a stock mission,” I said. “I’m buying inventory.” She stared at me unblinking. It’s Japan, I said. It’s right there, next to Oregon after all that water. We were basically neighbors! The quality of the whisky I’d buy would be lower than all the now-collectible bottles I passed up on my first trip, but at least I would do it right.

It’s Japan, I said. It’s right there, next to Oregon after all that water.

I pictured myself flying to Tokyo in spring. The train from Narita Airport to Bic Camera in Kashiwa would wobble along the tracks, its brakes squeaking as it stopped at countless suburban platforms, with their walls of apartments and scent of fried panko. A 6 o’clock, the setting sun would cast the sides of buildings the color of summer peaches, and what little I could see of the sky would glow a blinding radish yellow. My knees would hurt from sitting on that plane for 11 hours, so I’d stand by the train door to stretch them the way I had during my first Tokyo trip, watching the 7-Eleven signs and giant bike racks pass, and posing triumphantly over time and my own pigheadedness. I’d buy as many bottles of domestic Japanese whisky as my one piece of rolling luggage would hold without exceeding the airline’s 50-pound limit. In a life marked by stupid things, this would be one of the stupidest. I’d feel endlessly grateful. The bottles would keep me connected me to Japan, to that trip, date-stamped by its ephemerality, just like the numbers on the bottles of aged whisky: 10, 12, 15, 20 years.

I never bought the plane ticket. There was little there to buy anyway. In 2018, Suntory announced that it would severely limit the availability of Hibiki 17 and Hakushu 12 in most markets. Soon after, Kirin announced it would discontinue its beloved, inexpensive, domestic Fuki-Gotemba 50 blend. Stock had simply run out. I’d bought a few good bottles for low prices before the boom and they stood in our basement bar, where we drank them, not hoarded them for future resale. Drinking is what whisky is for. The bottles stood as reminders that I had done a few things right. And maybe we should think less about what we missed and more about what is yet to come. In 2013 and 2014, Suntory expanded its distilling operations to increase production. It, Nikka, Kirin, and many smaller companies have laid down a lot of whisky, and when all that whisky has sufficiently aged there will be a lot of 10-to-15-year-old whiskies on the market — maybe as early as 2020 or 2021. “I always tell people not to worry about not being able to drink certain older whiskies that are no longer available,” Osaka bar owner Teruhiko Yamamoto told writer Brian Ashcraft. “Scotch whisky has a long tradition, but right now it feels like Japanese whisky is entering a brand new chapter. We’re seeing whisky history right before our eyes.”

Still, sometimes I can’t help myself. I’ll wonder if any Suntory shipments arrived at local stores here in Portland. They rarely do. Suntory doled out their remaining aged whiskies very carefully to try to satisfy their international markets. But when I checked Oregon State’s liquor search website recently, I found that a few stores had bottles of the very rare Yamazaki 18 for $300 apiece. Compared to auction sites, that was a deal. I still couldn’t afford that, but I was curious how many other interested, obsessive types were scrambling to secure bottles. When I called one store, a man answered the phone with, “Troutdale Liquor. We’re all sold out of the Yamazaki.”

“Ha,” I said. “Okay, thanks. I hope the calls end soon.”

He said, “Me too!”

I hung up the phone and got back to work.

* * *

Aaron Gilbreath has written for Harper’s, Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Dublin Review and Brick. He’s the author of the books This Is: Essays on Jazz and Everything We Don’t Know: Essays. He’s working on books about California’s rural San Joaquin Valley and about Japan.

Editor: Michelle Weber Fact checker: Sam Schuyler Copy editor: Jacob Z. Gross

#Longreads #Food #Ravishankar Sivasubramaniam #Aaron Gilbreath

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smartlegalconsulting · 7 years ago

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12 Reasons why to do business in Indonesia

Standing out among the G20 members, Indonesia would likely be an imminent Asian tiger disclosing ample opportunities for the world’s entrepreneurs to branch out in the near future. The 72-year-old nation flanked by two oceans is potentially great for investment and setting up business overseas as well. Its presence as a prevailing country in the economic sector is definitely inseparable from key factors such as top natural resources, a big number of youth, tremendous market, and so on. And these following reasons why to do business in Indonesia would automatically take your hesitancy down.

One of the World’s Most Populous Countries

Becoming a country with the 4th highest population in the entire globe is such a stupendous advantage which anybody needs to mark. According to Worldometers statistics, the average of population growth in the largest archipelago goes up by nearly 3 million people every year. It estimates that the total inhabitants will reach 272 million by 2020. This point of fact signifies that there is a large amount of potential for foreigners to set up a company in Indonesia, be it in agriculture realm or fishery affairs.

In addition to the substantial number of people, the island nation lying off the Australian shore boasts demographics exceedingly propitious for the extended term economic growth. This one is consolidated by 50% of Indonesian residents whose age are under 2 years old giving the exceptional demographic dividends in days to come. It doesn’t stop at that; based on the World Factbook, today’s total median age in Indonesia is 30.2 years – the male is 29.6 years whereas the female is 30.8 years.

The Indonesian Middle Classes Grow Significantly

Not only is the tropical paradise famous for its considerable total of occupants affecting the globe’s market progress but also the local middle class, growing rapidly. Arguably, this awesome verifiable truth lets the group subjected to the economic empowerment. In other words, the category is such a valuable object for worldwide business people when it comes to making an investment in Indonesia. One of the reports says that the country has the fourth biggest middle class in the world coming with millions of households in recent years.

As specified by McKinsey, Indonesia will be crowded with around 90 million of people from the related group namely class of consumers by 2030. Surprisingly with regard to purchasing-power parity, they are capable of earning more than 3,600 USD per year – what a massive income it is! It is pretty obvious that the existence of this prominent class which keeps expanding from time to time will put the poverty down, boost the revenue equality, as well as strengthen the national economic power.

Going for Business is Much Easier than Former Years

There is no quality of being futile once you scheme a company formation in the pearl of South East Asia. Why that early statement clearly emerges as foreigners have easier access to an array of profitable activities. Before everything gets commenced, you need to understand that there are two sorts of business entities allowed to be built in Indonesia, i.e., the limited liability company referring to PT (Perseroan Terbatas) and the foreign-owned liability company commonly known as PT PMA (Perseroan Terbatas Pemodalan Milik Asing). And your overseas investment belongs to the second classification.

Related article: 5 things you need to know about PT PMA

Unlike last year when you required much effort to deal with the business setup application, now seems painless and undemanding. Yes, it remains true that to register a company in Indonesia might highlight a set of lengthy and wearisome process. However, seeing the one-sided facet truly is not reliable – thus, taking other key factors into account would blow everyone’s mind. Those include a couple of dramatic improvements in acquiring finance, international trade participation, and tax payment. And the same is true of an easier business establishment, uncomplicated contract system, and electricity access.

As stated by tradingeconomic.com, Indonesia in the term of ease of doing business in the country in 2017 has significantly jumped upward 15 higher compared to the previous year. This incredible achievement makes this nation place in the 91st spot. Don’t you know that it used to be in 128th position? Consequently, there is no ground for not choosing Indonesia when it comes to investing and getting the most out of the abroad business opportunity. Ignoring it means you put yourself in vanity.

The World’s 10th Biggest Economy and the Largest one in South East Asia

It is not such a secret anymore that Indonesia is regarded as one of the most emerging markets throughout the world. It obviously deserves to be called so due to its major role in controlling South East Asia’s economy. This freshly industrialized country is also the world’s 16th largest economy by total GDP. The GDP per capita always goes ahead and becomes the foremost component in the region. Yet unfortunately, it’s still below the world average. Some defining issues why the ranking position is far from people’s expectation include the domestic market dependency, government expenditure, and enterprise ownership.

The greatest sectors allowing Indonesia to remain at the top in regard to the nominal GDP cover agriculture, fishery, forestry, and livestock. Out of them, the agriculture sector of which contribution to the national GDP is about 14.43% is the highest of all. The central commodities dominating the exportation are no other than coffee, tea, natural rubber, spices, rice, cocoa, palm oil, and cassava. The presence of hydrocarbons cannot be disparaged. In 1999, this quarter contributed at the second place which is roughly 9% to GDP. While for gas and non-oil mining, the island nation has successfully expanded gold, copper, silver, bauxite, and nickel to the trans-border market.

Related Articles: TYPES OF DOCUMENTS TO BE PREPARED IN ESTABLISHING COMPANY IN INDONESIA

Favorable Business Culture

Once you set up a company in Indonesia and finally build an office, the initial impression you could feel is the unusual yet vibrant atmosphere. Some might get dumbfounded when running into an uncertain rhythm of work – it sometimes moves quickly or unhurriedly, depending on the company’s implied wisdom. Another attention-grabbing side of the business environment is the people for sure. Not only are the locals well-mannered and affable, but the individuals also generally show high respect to the employer and other workmates. It is no wonder that some foreigners do enjoy the vibrant surrounding while having a work meeting.

Apart from the extraordinary environment, a thing you will probably never find it in another place is the Indonesian batik attire worn during assorted business activities ranging from regular meeting with new clients to take a fresh project. This eye-catching outfit varying in color and pattern doesn’t only make the wearers feel convenient but also gives rise to joy, enthusiasm, and a new spirit at work.

Related: 10 Thing Startup Should Know Before Entering Indonesia

An Internet-Savvy Generation

Indonesia is also known as a country with the largest internet users all around the world. This tangible potential is totally perfect for creating a bigger market network enabling you to gain a fair amount of customers easily. Additionally, the fact that more than the half of Indonesian populations are under the age of 30 is mesmerizing – and most out of them are active in using social media from Facebook to Instagram. In order for your own PT PMA to become long-lasting; you are absolutely free to take advantage of the online approach. And to promote your products with the method has never been a difficult task.

Generally speaking, the millennial citizens whose smart phone is more than one are in line with running the tricky business tactics in a developing country. To let any single chance manifested, you are recommended to team up with the local operators in the name of optimizing marketing strategy. For reassuring your potential future customers, it is vital that you establish your own PT PMA website with great content and themes riveting their attention. Manage the basic information like company profile and full address to avoid misconception.

The Decline of Indonesia’s Public Debt to GDP Ratio

On the authority of Sri Mulyani, the Indonesian finance minister, the nation’s public debt to GDP in 2017 decreases below 30% — this one is much lower than the set of the legal threshold at 60%. Last year also had significant decline which was around 27% or nearly 3,200 trillion IDR. The debt carried is arguably manageable and safe, great enough for foreign-based entrepreneurs to set up the company formation. In comparison to other countries such as Brazil and Malaysia owning debt to GDP ratio – each is about 70% and 56%, the Asian archipelago’s debt is relatively low. The country’s debt ratio difference toward USA (105%) and Japan (246%) is also pretty far-reaching.

Interestingly, the public debt of Indonesia which is around 143 billion USD is actually the foreign one. The biggest creditors helping the nation’s finance include the Asian Development Bank known as ADB, the World Bank, as well as Japan. Meanwhile, 39% out of the total domestic debt is deeply related to the intervention of foreign visitor’s hands. This year, the local government looks forward to reaching around 290 billion USD. After fathoming this fact, it is totally obvious that there is no excuse to register a company in Indonesia.

Foreigners are Accessible to Land Ownership

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Aside from setting up a PT PMA in the archipelago, foreigners are permitted to have land. This policy applicable from early 2015 is based on Indonesia’s government regulation no. 103/2015 signed by the current president. It stipulates that expatriates have right to reside with the land and house ownership. There are three kinds of foreigner’s rights in respect of obtaining the estate and property – right to build (hak guna bangunan), right of cultivation (hak guna usaha), and right to use (hak pakai). In order for the certificate to be facile, a couple of requirements should be fulfilled. These following conditions need to be understood.

Right to build (hak guna bangunan) gives the certificate holder a privilege to make construction on the land. This one requires the foreign individuals to own the PT PMA (be it partial or full company ownership) and a valid temporary stay permit, known as KITAS. This type of certificate is handed out for around 30 years and lets the holder extend it up to 20 years. The renewal for another 30 years once the extension is over is possible. The special benefit of having the right to build is that you can sell, inherit, and exchange it.

The right of cultivation (hak guna usaha) is designed for those planning to cultivate land or expand their agricultural company. The certificate has 25-year validity and can be extended up to 35 years. You can’t obtain this unless establishing a PT PMA or foreign-owned company. Meanwhile, the right of use (hak pakai) is the most pertinent of all and often used by foreigners. It enables the people to either build a landed house or develop the land. The certificate holder has a right to take full advantage of the land for around 25 years with an extension up to 80 years.

Not Affected by the Global Financial Crisis

Although the economic crisis attacked the world in 2007 and 2008, Indonesia remained tough. The local financial circumstance was unbeatable due to the fact that the domestic consumption stayed stable. The up to date situation also indicates that this island nation is such an awesome site for the globe’s business people to build up a company. It has been shining since the foreign direct investment (FDI) constantly grows from year to year. The FDI into Indonesia has a significant increase which is about 12 percent out of 8.3 billion USD in 2017’s third quarter – the oil, gas, and bank investments are not included. The growth in the previous year was about 10.6 percent.

Industrial sectors highlighting this progress in regard to the foreign investment cover mining, electronics, metal, as well as machinery. The full amount of FDI in 2016 reaches 396.6 trillion IDR with an increasing number of 8.4 percent. Back in the second quarter of 2013, the progress of direct investment for foreigners was by 18.9 percent out of 6.54 billion USD whereas the domestic investment incredibly went up about 59.1 percent out of 2.04 billion USD. Arguably, the whole investment number for that year is 29.8 percent.

The Corruption and Bureaucracy Gradually Decreases

One of the clear reasons why to do business in Indonesia is the national finance transparency. It is definitely true that the corruption and bureaucracy issues have been affecting this nation for many decades. Yet, the government commitment to tackling down the social diseases in recent years seems blossomed. With the help of KPK (Corruption Eradication Commission), the number of public offense can be effectively minimized. The institution is officially appointed by Indonesia’s government to fight corruption.

A couple of stems to track corruption have been taken for the country’s economy betterment such as ratifying the UNCAC or United Nations Convention against Corruption and being active in the national strategy in preventing and eradicating corruption 2012-2025. In compliance with the corruption perceptions index, the archipelago is one of few countries in the world which has a stable improvement. A statistic graph released by Transparency International signifies that there is a marked increase from 2013 to 2016. The consecutive transparency index numbers are 32, 34, 36, and 37.

Being an Urban Nation

Owing to the fast development throughout the cities, the people inhabiting the rural areas massively enter the metropolis with numerous reasons for life betterment. This phenomenon commonly known as urbanization is likely unstoppable recently. It’s no wonder; Indonesia inevitably becomes an urban nation. What does it imply? The indication points out that more people now tend to be part of consumer society in need of products and services once occupying the modern places. It’s such a wider opportunity for foreigners to allow their PT PMA to be more expansive and well-developed.

According to indonesia.unfpa.org, there is an increase of urban population between 2015 and 2013 from 136.2 million to 118.8 million. The urbanization is predicted to rise up in the following years. In 2020, 153.7 millions of people will occupy the big cities such as Jakarta, Surabaya, and Bandung. The number will exceed 203.6 million in 2035. UNFPA also states that each province across the country will own 50 percent of urbanization rates or even more.

Many Cool Spots to Enjoy Vacation

Living in Indonesia is not just about focusing on business or fixing the marketing target. When the holiday comes, be sure to schedule a vacation so that you can beat your fatigue. There are a large number of options when it comes to picking out a cool spot to unwind. Are you a beach enthusiast? Don’t miss out Bali and Lombok. These regions literally are famous for their golden sand beaches and crystal clear water. If you love historical spots, hitting Borobudur and Prambanan temples is absolutely recommended. For the ultimate escape, you need to get lost in Raja Ampat.

In conclusion, setting up a company in Indonesia gives you more opportunities to stay productive. Apart from the reasons why to do business in Indonesia previously described, you need to know that the country will absolutely offer its best to make your company widely recognized overseas.

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The post 12 Reasons why to do business in Indonesia appeared first on SMART Legal Consulting.

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lydiaschilds · 7 years ago

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Cheap Postcards EDDM | Postcard Printing

Facts You Must Know About Cheap Postcards EDDM

Cheap postcards EDDM is a great way to promote your business in a locality with minimal investment. EDDM is a relatively new program launched by the United States Postal Service. When combined with the versatility of postcards, you can leverage EDDM to achieve considerable success. Budget Okay, if you are looking for a cheap printing service, then your budget is sure to be nagging on your mind.

Cheap Postcards EDDM

Nonetheless, there are many who are still unfamiliar with it. As such, take a look at the following points to get a better idea.

What is EDDM?

EDDM is basically an acronym for every door direct mail. As the name suggests, this allows you to send your mails to every door within a specified area. For a business, this holds incredible promise. After all, you can send affordable postcards EDDM at low rates.

In EDDM, you simply need to select a region. This can be as small as a neighborhood or as large as an entire zip code. However, the charges are minimal in both cases. Compared to traditional mailing methods, the prices are much lower. Therefore, EDDM is more cost-effective for businesses.

Which Business Can Benefit?

There are several kinds of businesses that can benefit from sending inexpensive postcards EDDM. However, the kind of business that benefits the most is one that deals with all types of customers. Businesses whose target audience combines several demographics can also use it.

As a result, businesses like lawyers, insurance companies, dentists, real estate agents and restaurants can benefit considerably. Retailers selling products used by most people will also find EDDM beneficial. Some examples include sports stores, clothing businesses and more.

Small neighborhood businesses can also give cheap postcards EDDM a try. They can send news of offers or sales to the neighborhoods near their location. In this way, they generate a lot of interest among their regular clientele. In turn, it gives a boost to their business.

On Cheap Printing There is No Mailing List Necessary

One of the best things about economical postcards EDDM is the lack of mailing lists. Mailing lists are generally one of the biggest hassles with postcard marketing. You need to spend a lot of time and effort into making these lists. Despite the importance of such lists, it is an added burden for the company. With EDDM, such mailing lists become unnecessary. After all, you are targeting all the customers within a region without exceptions.

Interestingly, you can actually use affordable postcards EDDM to build up your own mailing list. All you need to do is track the response generated by the postcard. Ask the customers to opt-in for the mailing program with the postcards. Interested customers are sure to sign up. This way, you can build a considerable database of potential customers. Later, you can run other marketing campaigns with the list.

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EDDM Gives You Options

With economical postcards EDDM, you do get options. There are certainly limits on the postcard size that you must follow. Nonetheless, there is still enough leeway for implementing variety. You can send slightly larger postcards to stand out from the crowd.

Making the Most of EDDM

In the case of EDDM, success is dependent on the regions you choose. You need to be careful with the choice of mailing routes. Conduct a basic survey at the very least. This will give you a good idea of whether the mailing route has enough of your target audience. If it does, it will be profitable for you to send cheap postcards EDDM there. Otherwise, you are simply wasting your marketing budget.

Of course, you also need to keep an eye on your budget. Opting for too many routes is an expensive proposition. This is the case in spite of the low rates charged for economical postcards EDDM.

Printing affordable postcards EDDM is not a major issue these days. Nonetheless, it is a good idea to take some time in selecting the right printer. In this way, you get better returns.

The post Cheap Postcards EDDM | Postcard Printing appeared first on Cheap 55 Printing.

from Cheap 55 Printing https://www.cheap55printing.com/blog/cheap-postcards-eddm/ from Cheap 55 Printing https://cheap55printing.tumblr.com/post/168139694567

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melissatellis · 7 years ago

Text

Cheap Postcards EDDM | Postcard Printing

Facts You Must Know About Cheap Postcards EDDM

Cheap Postcards EDDM

Nonetheless, there are many who are still unfamiliar with it. As such, take a look at the following points to get a better idea.

What is EDDM?

Which Business Can Benefit?

On Cheap Printing There is No Mailing List Necessary

EDDM Gives You Options

Making the Most of EDDM

Of course, you also need to keep an eye on your budget. Opting for too many routes is an expensive proposition. This is the case in spite of the low rates charged for economical postcards EDDM.

Printing affordable postcards EDDM is not a major issue these days. Nonetheless, it is a good idea to take some time in selecting the right printer. In this way, you get better returns.

The post Cheap Postcards EDDM | Postcard Printing appeared first on Cheap 55 Printing.

from https://www.cheap55printing.com/blog/cheap-postcards-eddm/

from Cheap 55 Printing - Blog http://cheap55printing.weebly.com/blog/cheap-postcards-eddm-postcard-printing7556665

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cheap55printing · 7 years ago

Text

Cheap Postcards EDDM | Postcard Printing

Facts You Must Know About Cheap Postcards EDDM

Cheap Postcards EDDM

Nonetheless, there are many who are still unfamiliar with it. As such, take a look at the following points to get a better idea.

What is EDDM?

Which Business Can Benefit?

On Cheap Printing There is No Mailing List Necessary

youtube

EDDM Gives You Options

Making the Most of EDDM

Of course, you also need to keep an eye on your budget. Opting for too many routes is an expensive proposition. This is the case in spite of the low rates charged for economical postcards EDDM.

Printing affordable postcards EDDM is not a major issue these days. Nonetheless, it is a good idea to take some time in selecting the right printer. In this way, you get better returns.

The post Cheap Postcards EDDM | Postcard Printing appeared first on Cheap 55 Printing.

from Cheap 55 Printing https://www.cheap55printing.com/blog/cheap-postcards-eddm/

0 notes

marketingmbacasestudyhelp-blog · 7 years ago

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Comment on the question posed by Mr. Simitian in the roundtable “Do we have an ethical obligation to make the South Bay a place of opportunity for all

Assignment Solutions, Case study Answer sheets

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Business Ethics

Case Studies

CASE STUDY (20 Marks)

An experienced and knowledgeable Indian tourist guide suggested to a foreign tourist whom he was guiding that it would better to give up the program of going around the places in the city and instead visit a plush five star hotel whose nightclub featured a good cabaret. The guide, further, said that he would explain his life story which could give a clear picture of poverty in India.

Answer the following question.

Q1. Explain the unethical issues in this case.

Q2. Give an overview of the case

CASE STUDY (20 Marks)

Jill has always had trouble focusing. In middle school and high school, she has struggled to maintain her attention on class, homework, and other academic responsibilities. If not for her own determination and the encouragement of her parents, she probably would have never gone to college as she does now. However, with midterms just around the corner, her inattentive tendencies are flaring worse than ever. And with poor grades after her first semester, she needs to do well on these tests to keep her GPA above her scholarship’s cutoff. Fortunately, a friend of hers, one familiar with Jill’s problems, has a prescription for Adder all and offers some to Jill so she can concentrate better during finals. Jill only plans to take the pills this one time considering summer is so near. She doesn’t think she’s getting an advantage because her peers can already focus better than she can. She really needs higher grades this semester to keep her scholarship.

Answer the following question.

Q1. Is it right using stimulants without a prescription? Comment.

Q2. Give your views on the case.

CASE STUDY (20 Marks)

What's on the minds of the people serving on boards or hoping to be? What can be learned about corporate governance trends by knowing the answer? What do the issues business executives are wrestling with add to the picture? Santa Clara University's Markkula Center for Applied Ethics provides quarterly programming for Silicon Valley business executives through its Business Ethics Partnership. Stanford University's Rock Center for Corporate Governance provides annual programming for board directors and others aiming to explore corporate governance hot topics. The Silicon Valley Director's Exchange, affiliated with the Rock Center, provides monthly programming on similar topics. I serve on the board of SVDx, staff the Markkula Center's Business Ethics Program and attended the recent Rock Center Director's College at Stanford. Listening is perhaps an underrated activity, but opportunities to do so at these programs in the first six months of 2015 reveal these trends worth watching for the remainder of the year and into 2016. They also helped to illustrate the shifts in corporate governance trends over the past decade. The pendulum is swinging back from concern solely with shareholders to a broader set of stakeholders, from the vantage point of the corporate boardroom, based on comments across a variety of topical discussions and panels. Board directors and governance scholars readily accept a board's role in protecting the interest of shareholders but can also now draw links to shareholder interests from the interests of other constituents, such as employees or the environment, when considering the impact of climate change. The introduction of KKR's Green Portfolio, in partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund in 2007, is one example of direct ways environmental impact is being accounted for in business, but it is not the only way. Board directors are fully engaged on the impact to a company's Long term value not only of measures taken to ensure the company's sustainability, but the planet's as well. Thoughtful exchanges in discussions about public relations, mergers and acquisitions, and climate risk and opportunity as a disruptor suggest that directors accept that corporations need to account for broader interests because these interests do have an impact on shareholder value. Additionally, demographic trends, like the increase of millennial in the workforce, introduce a need to consider what those workers are seeking in their relationship with employers. Diversity of perspective has long been supported in research and practice as a goal boards should pursue when assembling participants. Corporations are experiencing greater vulnerability to activist shareholders if an investor's point of view is not represented on the board in the current environment. The rise of LBOs and the reality that many activists are larger corporations than the ones they target highlight a balancing act being played out in boardrooms: acknowledge more stakeholders as their interests affect share price over time but be sure current shareholders feel first among equals. At a minimum, add active investors to the matrix of skills to consider when seating an effective corporate board.

Answer the following question.

Q1. Give an overview of the case.

Q2. “Active investors are required to the matrix of skills to consider when seating an effective corporate board.” Discuss.

CASE STUDY (20 Marks)

In an address to Bay Area government officials during the Center’s quarterly Public Sector Roundtable, Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian spoke about affordable housing in the Bay Area, using the ongoing housing dispute at Palo Alto’s Buena Vista Mobile Home Park as a case study. Although invisible to many, Buena Vista has been a fixture of Palo Alto since the 1920s. But depending on how the litigation plays out, the mobile home park’s 400 residents (consisting of approximately 117 families and 100 children) face the very real possibility of having to leave their homes, their town, and maybe even the entire Bay Area. When Simitian, the son of a teacher, moved to Palo Alto in 1967, he went to school with a group of kids from varying socioeconomic backgrounds. He shared classes with the son of an air conditioning mechanic, the daughter of a high school custodian, and the daughter of the CEO of Hewlett Packard. Simitian recalled that in 1967, nobody thought it unusual that kids of modest means went to the same school as the daughter of HP’s CEO. These kids would eventually grow up to become mayors and middle schoolteachers; there was no limit to what they could aspire toward. Unfortunately, Simitian said, the uncertain fate of the Buena Vista Mobile Home Park vividly demonstrates that’s not the case in today’s Silicon Valley. A few years back, Buena Vista’s owners decided they wanted to sell the mobile home property. Given the high demand for land in the Bay Area, it was reasonable to assume that a developer would buy the park and immediately replace it with more lucrative housing. The average Buena Vista household currently makes $35,000 per year. Rent at Buena Vista is approximately $750 per month. If the residents are forced to leave as part of the sale, but wish to remain in Palo Alto, they’ll be faced with the prospect of paying three to four times that much. And the neighboring cities aren’t much costfriendlier. Despite the mobile home park’s invisibility, the people who live at Buena Vista do a

lot of the work that Palo Alto residents have come to rely on. One female resident makes sandwiches in the deli at Molly Stone. Another works at the Four Seasons hotel in East Palo Alto. A third resident was the Rotary Club president of East Palo Alto. Simitian noted that it’s harder to “otherize” people once you know who they are and what their place in the community is. The dispute over the closure of Buena Vista is ultimately a city issue, but Simitian felt early on that something had to be done for the 117 families. Months and months of work have resulted in public backing from local newspapers, school board members, mayors, council members, and an astoundingly successful rally in which 500 people from all parts of the economic spectrum gathered to support their fellow community members. The city of Palo Alto and the county have now set aside millions of dollars to help settle the dispute with the property owners and keep the residents of Buena Vista in their homes. Despite these impressive efforts, the opposing parties are still deadlocked in litigation. With many questions unanswered for the residents of Buena Vista, the question posed by Simitian to the Public Sector Roundtable was, “Do we have an ethical obligation to make the South Bay a place of opportunity for all?” In Palo Alto in particular, there’s a 3to1 jobs to housing imbalance. When new housing does pop up, it’s $4,000amonth housing for people who work at high tech companies. Simitian explained that this Bay Area housing problem has developed into a major traffic problem, as people who work in the Bay Area can no longer afford to live in the Bay Area. Monday through Friday thousands of people shuffle in and out of the Bay Area from remote places like Tracy and Gilroy. These people aren’t just sandwich makers and hotel concierges. They’re law enforcement officers, firefighters, and nurses. Additionally, local small businesses are having great difficulty attracting employees. It’s a dynamic that Simitian believes does not create the kind of community we’re looking for. One member of the Public Sector Roundtable suggested that the case of the Buena Vista Mobile Home Park is an argument for the need for common good. In Simitian’s 1967 Palo Alto, everybody in the community was given a shot. Not a guarantee, but a shot. Now as the community separates into those who can afford to live within the city limits and those who cannot, that opportunity, the participant said, may very well get taken away. Some members of the community will mattero ffactly state that not everyone gets to live in Palo Alto, or Mountain View or Los Altos. The economics simply don’t justify it, they reason. And while Simitian acknowledges that this may be true, he maintains that if we want to have the kind of community where we can go to the deli and say “Hi Sally,” we need to do the best we can for as many as we can. So exactly who is responsible for determining the fate of our community experience? The state? The city? The market? Simitian explained that it’s often human nature to pass the buck and task someone else with solving the collective’s problem. But when a man in a crowd drops to the ground from an apparent heart attack, isn’t it everyone’s responsibility to do whatever they can to help? Housing is usually a regional issue, but it’s typically handled city by city. Simitian pointed out that one challenge is that different cities have different visions for what their city is all about. For instance, the community members of a small, sleepy town might shy away from an initiative to bring affordable housing within its borders because of the stigma that “affordable housing” implies. A lot has been made over the last few years about the 117 families whose community member status hangs in the balance. The question has been raised: Why these 117 families? Simitian believes that one problem with talks about affordable housing is that the people who need the housing most are never in the room when the conversation is happening. The abstract affordable housing dilemma does not often have a human dimension, but with these 117 families, he pointed out, the human dimension is undeniable. You can go to the mobile home park and actually see these people. It’s a real, immediate concern.

Answer the following question.

Q1. Explain why the affordable housing was necessary in the Bay Area.

Q2. Comment on the question posed by Mr. Simitian in the roundtable “Do we have an ethical obligation to make the South Bay a place of opportunity for all?”

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contentkingseo · 7 years ago

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The Way SEO Has Changed with the Possum Update — Digital Marketing & SEO NYC

Google is completely unpredictable.

Search engine optimization practitioners know very well that things can change in a minute, tomorrow, and also search engine dominance today means nothing.

Yesterday’s home runs don’t win the modern games.

Among the updates Google has been Possum.

In fact, it’s arguably the biggest change Google has created to SEO that is local because the Pigeon update back in 2014.

It has shaken things and has changed up the search engine optimization landscape as you may imagine.

Idescribe what you want to know moving forward as well as how it may have impacted your ranks and’d love to dive.

Why is it known as Possum?

The very first thing is exactly the search engine optimization community named it Possum. Their updates are usually named by Google after creatures, but a possum is not as cute as as astounding as a panda or a penguin. Possum? Really?

According to Search Engine Land, “Rozek suggested the title, pointing out that it’s fitting because many small business owners think their Google My Business listings are gone, when actually they’re not. They’ve only been filtered–they’re playing possum.”

Alright, so the possum title is supposed to make you consider some thing when it is not dead, playing dead.

The details

It all went down to September 1, 2016.

Though it was not supported by Google, it had been apparent that a change had happened that influenced.

All of a sudden, lots of the websites that had ranked had lost traction and watched a dip.

However, other sites that once had difficulty standing saw a spike in their own ranks.

In an effort to determine of an impact Possum had on search, Search Engine Land reached out to conduct a study.

In this study, Bright Local “took a look at the rank trackers to get 1,307 unique businesses, which have been monitoring 14,242 keywords. Then they compared the difference between September 7 and August 31 (the date earlier Possum).”

9 percent of the keywords had the business pop into the Local Finder if they were not there before.

11 percent of those keywords showed the business had increased in position by a couple of rankings.

15% of those keywords showed the business had increased in standing by one to two positions.

35% of the keywords showed no change in position for the business.

15% of those keywords showed the business had diminished by one to two positions.

14% of those keywords showed the business had diminished by over three positions.

Here’s a graph to illustrate just how this breaks down:

The main point is that “64 percent of keywords saw some sort of modification.”

That is significant, and it’s simple to see why a lot of folks freaked out over Possum those whose positions were affected.

What exactly does this mean to local SEO?

The most noticeable change was that businesses that are not located right within the city limits finally have a far greater chance of ranking well.

Say there is an Italian restaurant located in Hialeah, Florida. It is very near Miami but not located within town limits.

Ahead of Possum, that restaurant would have had difficulty ranking for keywords like “Italian restaurant Miami” or “Miami Italian restaurant.”

But today, after Possum, that restaurant offers an opportunity to rank for those keywords.

And this makes sense if you think about doing it.

Should businesses very near the city endure just because they’re not within town limits?

Odds are, a lot of these businesses would be just as relevant as the others located right within a city.

This update essentially raises the playing field between businesses located right inside businesses and a city located in surrounding areas and the suburbs.

As long as there is a business within a close proximity to some city, it gets the chance when the name of that city is used in a research query to rank.

In my view, this is. It spreads the wealth and also ensures that search engine visitors find exactly what they’re searching for.

IP address is a bigger factor

Results had been based upon the keywords.

But Google will have a search engine user’s IP address when generating search results.

That is the way of ensuring users get the most accurate results when doing a search of Google.

The major reason for this change is that the huge volume of people using mobile devices.

Google is searching for ways to accommodate search users.

This ensures they’re always getting the best outcomes according to their current site, because people tend to be on the move.

This is something you’ll want to keep in mind and use to direct your search engine optimization approach that is regional.

“Your QA team should test your work as a user within the area of the business and not simply examine it by Googling the business name and location.”

Doing so should definitely give you an advantage over rivals still basing their approach primarily on keywords (an obsolete strategy because this point).

There’s more variance in search results according to keyword choice

Ahead of the Possum update, users can enter similar keyword phrases and get virtually the very same outcomes.

As an example, entering “Italian restaurant Miami,”“Miami Italian restaurant,” or even “Italian restaurant Miami FL” would generate pretty similar outcomes.

But that’s no longer the situation.

There may be a significant variance depending upon the keywords a person enters.

Let us look at an example.

Listed below are the results I got after I used “Italian restaurant Miami” as a keyword phrase:

And here is what happened when I used “Italian restaurant Miami FL” as a keyword:

Notice by adding “FL” in the ending, I have totally different outcomes. Pretty interesting.

This only goes to show that Google is “spreading the wealth,” as well as a small keyword nuance can produce entirely different outcomes.

Why didn’t happen?

It is hard to state what their logic was, because Google has been secretive about this update.

We’re definitely not getting anything from Matt Cutts for now.

But with a little deductive logic, I came up with four most reasons that were likely:

It is likely a way to switch up the local search results and prevent not a lot of businesses from dominating.

It is one other way to ensure that search engine results take user intention into account.

It should enhance the mobile experience much further.

That’s my take on things.

A closing note

Unlike most other important updates, local search success affected.

That’s why I think it has not obtained the exact same amount of focus like Penguin, Panda, Hummingbird of updates that are previous, and so on.

You shouldn’t affect all that much if you’re attempting to reach a international audience. It is just business as usual.

But if you’re a mom-and-pop, brick-and-mortar sort of business with a much more small demographic in a particular area, it can have a huge impact on your approach to SEO.

In this case, you may want to restructure many components of your search engine optimization campaign that is regional.

Conclusion

Google is always reinventing itself.

That’s been a major contributor to its longevity and success.

Possum is one of many updates that affects the way SEO professionals approach matters, and I’d imagine this particular update has received a mixed response.

It probably didn’t go over so well with businesses found within city limits because their positions took an blow.

It has leveled the playing area for those that aren’t within city limits but are located within a close proximity.

I am certain these businesses are rather pleased about the updates.

I think their experience should improve when it comes to search engine visitors.

I know I wish to have the most accurate results when I am looking for a business I have been. This should be beneficial to me personally considering I am a heavy consumer.

And there is one final thing I’d love to point out.

Considering that Google never formally “fessed up” for this update, it is likely incomplete.

I get the notion that there are additional changes to be unrolled after doing a substantial amount of research about the topic.

We are going to see what happens in 2017.

Perhaps you have noticed any major adjustments to the regional search results because the execution of Possum?

from content king seo http://www.contentkingseo.com/the-way-seo-has-changed-with-the-possum-update-digital-marketing-seo-nyc/

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marketingmbacasestudyhelp-blog · 7 years ago

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Active investors are required to the matrix of skills to consider when seating an effective corporate board.” Discuss

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Business Ethics

Case Studies

CASE STUDY (20 Marks)

Answer the following question.

Q1. Explain the unethical issues in this case.

Q2. Give an overview of the case

CASE STUDY (20 Marks)

Answer the following question.

Q1. Is it right using stimulants without a prescription? Comment.

Q2. Give your views on the case.

CASE STUDY (20 Marks)

Answer the following question.

Q1. Give an overview of the case.

Q2. “Active investors are required to the matrix of skills to consider when seating an effective corporate board.” Discuss.

CASE STUDY (20 Marks)

Answer the following question.

Q1. Explain why the affordable housing was necessary in the Bay Area.

Q2. Comment on the question posed by Mr. Simitian in the roundtable “Do we have an ethical obligation to make the South Bay a place of opportunity for all?”

Assignment Solutions, Case study Answer sheets

Project Report and Thesis contact

[email protected]

www.mbacasestudyanswers.com

ARAVIND – 09901366442 – 09902787224

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