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okaywowcool · 6 years

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hey guys! back again for another monthly favorites post, this time for july! read below the cut to hear some of my favorite clothing pieces, new shops, trends, and makeup and skincare items that i’ve used in this past month!

you can also check out this link to read through my past faves!

CURRENT FAVE PERSONAL PIECES

Plus Size Grid Print Overall Mini Dress - $24.90, available in 0X - 3XL

Not too long ago I picked up a few pieces from F21 (mostly out of a Strong fear that they would be going out of stock in the near future, lol) and this was one of them. The zipper feels sturdy with the metal they used (I was worried, since this runs slightly bodycon on a non-padded, average curvy body (if you’ve not read about how plus-sized models are commonly padded out to get the “ideal” shape or “ideal” fat distribution, check out this article here by Refinery29.) and the zipper is the functional closure of the dress. The dress has zero stretch, so I was a little concerned about something flimsy that I felt like would break eventually, but so far so good. I’ve worn it with a super cute beatnik type get up out to lunch and errands with my girlfriend (black turtleneck sweater, beret, and chunky black sandals) and felt super cute, but still a little self conscious just since the more bodycon silhouette is something I’m still not super confident in wearing, which is something I’m trying to get better about. So a big recommend! I’m a size 22/24 and got a size 3XL and thought that was perfect, not too tight, but still hugging my curves in a cute way.

Plus Size Grid Print Tie-front Shirt - $19.90, available in 0X - 3XL

I have a serious problem finding button ups that are cute on me...I have a fairly large bust but smaller shoulders and it’s hard to find something plus-sized that isn’t either totally oversized and weird looking on me fit wise, or so tight there’s massive gapping between the buttons at the biggest part of my bust. But this button up really works for me. I’m not sure if it’s the slightly relaxed cut or the fact that it’s a crop, but it’s absolutely perfect...it’s rare you buy something online and it fits exactly the same on you as it does on the model, but this did and I was so impressed! This is definitely going to be a new staple in my wardrobe, as soon as it’s not too hot to commit to long sleeves.

I ordered a few more things that I haven’t had much of a chance to style/wear yet, but everything worked this go round which is pretty rare...this was very much me that day:

Surgeon General’s Dress - $35, available in XS - 5XL

I’ve been wearing a lot of my own stuff here lately, mainly because it’s so easy to throw on and and still be bold enough for it to feel like a Look, while totally keeping me cool. This dress’s print looks super bold from a distance, but y’all would be surprised to see how long it takes people in an office setting to actually find out what the print is of, since it’s so blown up it can read as abstract. The fabrication is also really good at keeping you out of the hot hot hot hell zone, and is super cute with a breezy sheer cardigan thrown on over it!

FAVE NEW SHOPS

Avocado Bag, $40

I want to own pretty much everything in this entire store since I found out it existed just a few weeks ago, and if I didn’t have some self restraint I would have preordered at least 3 bags from here so far. Miju Miju is a cute shop full of bags that were originally intended for use as cute, unique ita bags, but they’re also totally cute to use to display your pin collection, or even just leave plain with the empty clear window showing the cute pop of lining color. The fact that they’re convertible from a crossbody purse to a backpack also makes them a literal dream for me, since that’s pretty much the only kind of bag I like to carry. They also have a discount code running right now for the preorder, you can use BOW7 to get $7 off one of these bad boys! I know I want the avocado, egg, and pink coffin ones all sooooo bad.

Pastel Rainbow Shooting Star Necklace - $60

Petey Hana is an etsy shop with a lot of super cute hand painted jewelry, perfect for all kinds of kawaii fashion styles and also just bold statement pieces. I’m so in love with the obviously hand made look, especially with ceramic and polymer clay jewelry, because it just feels like there’s extra love put into it. Combine that with all the bright colors and I’m just in love with this whole shop!

Strawberry Milk Cocktail Knit Sweater - $31

I’m not sure why it took me so long to realize that the Ester Loves You collab “Ester loves Chuu” was referring to a shop’s name and not just the cute Japanese kissing sound effect....but it took me until doing that cute request for rabbit purses recently for me to figure out that Chuu was indeed, a store. This shop is adorable and has lots of unique styles in it for super affordable prices. I can’t fit into any of it myself really BUT it’s still been a big inspiration to look at their photography and see how they’re styling their pieces!

Walk the Line Striped Dress - $78, available in US size 10 - 30

I wanted to use this cute image from Fat Girl Flow, since it was Corissa’s IG where I first saw this shop as well AND because it’s so helpful to see products on non-models. Soncy is a really cute really incredible shop. Y’all know I’m not the biggest fan of the whole Fashion Nova curve look, it just never has felt very “me,” even though it’s a staple for many other plus-sized bloggers/influencers. Soncy feels like Fashion Nova’s classy older sister who has her own very successful etsy business selling fancy leather goods--which is not at all a bad vibe...one part hippie, one part mature, and one part sexy. Still a similar style, but there’s not as much emphasis on the whole Kylie Jenner booty body-con everywhere look, and things just look higher quality...they’re more expensive, but everything in the shop is available in sizes 10 - 30 and everything is miraculously under $100, which is just awesome.

FAVE JULY SILHOUETTES

Pier Pursuits Cropped Jumpsuit - $64.99, available in XXS - 4XL

Right now, one of the silhouettes I’m obsessed with is super wide leg jumpsuits. This one was really the first one that sparked the intense love for me, the proportions are so unique and perfect and I love that these jumpsuits are starting to show more traditional dress like necklines...this one from ASOS curve does a similar thing which I really adore.

Front Twist Flutter Sleeve Tee - $9, 0X - 3XL

Twist front crop tees (even the ones that are just from twisting a not in a normal tee!) are just such a look for me right now. There’s something very nostalgic about them, almost like how when tying jackets around the waist was coming back as a styling choice when 90s nostalgia started going strong, that makes me just super happy and it’s a natural type of ruching that is really attractive without looking kind of dated and old. It just looks good on everyone, truly.

PRINTS & COLORS

Fluted Sleeve Mini Dress in Ditsy Floral - $51 // Infusion Cut Out Bralette in Vintage Floral - $52 // Ditsy Floral Ruffle Jumpsuit - $40

There’s something so nice and vintage feeling about a ditsy floral print, and I’ve been wanting to create some of my own patterns that mimic this feel for a while but still haven’t quite gotten around to it. It’s just such a nice subtle way to wear florals, a print that I tend to be really picky about since they can go ugly fairly easily or run the risk of looking dated or matronly depending (and I mean dated like...2008 versus a nice vintage feel) but ditsy florals just always look so cute and nice, too subtle to ever really be offensive and easy to transition from season to season.

Daisy Street Cami with Peplum - $24 // True Stripes A-Line Skirt - $38 // Miss Selfridge Pinafore Dress - $56

i’m also just really feeling chambray this month, especially with a subtle white pinstripe. aside from chambray just feeling really lovely to the touch (bc i’m all about those textures y’all) it’s such a lovely soft approach to denim that feels so airy and perfect for summer.

MAKEUP/SKINCARE

LIPHOP Ombre Lip Balm - $2.59

I bought this little lip balm for real cheap off of aliexpress a while ago, in quite a few shades since it was so cheap. I’ve found that the darker shades are by far my favorite, though they don’t look quite as dark on me as they do in the photos. It’s very similar to just putting on a little chapstick--these just add a natural little pop of color for a fresh bitten look to the center of your lips while hydrating them overall. I like that it gives that popsicle stain look without the matte feel of some similar products, like Glossier’s Generation G and Colourpop’s Blotted Lip, or the actual commitment of doing a proper ombre lip look.

Bliss Makeup Melt Jelly Cleanser - $12

This one is actually not one I’ve gotten to try yet (it’s sitting in my cart to be purchased as soon as my current cleanser runs out) but I wanted to include it on this list anyway because I’ve been wanting to try it for a while now. It’s supposed to be a really good dupe for Glossier’s Milky Jelly Cleanser, but has a smaller price tag ($12, vs Glossier’s $18) as well as coming with more product (6.4oz vs Glossier’s 6oz). Last winter I was looking for a good cleanser that wouldn’t dry me out quite as much as my current one does. I’m currently using Tony Moly’s Peach Foam Cleanser, which I think is really lovely in a lot of ways--the foaming is fun, the smell is amazing, and it does really make you feel clean, but it dries my skin out sooooo much right now, even in the summer where I have a little more oil. It claimed to be moisturizing and gentle but I guess my skin is still just too wimpy to take it, and I’ve been looking for a change. This dupe is also rose scented, which I’m super excited about--I’ll be sure to tell you all how it is!

so that’s it for july! look forward to seeing some of my highlights for august next month and feel free to let me know if there are any other categories you’d like me to add each month! <3

#plus size fashion #plus size blogger #psblogger #july favorites #monthly favorites #fashion #july #kawaii #pastel #long post

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years

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IN ORDER TO GET TENURE, BUT IT'S THE TRUTH

Or more precisely, preorders has helped a lot. Asking whether you're default alive or default dead? So you don't end up having as much competition as you might expect, considering the bimodal distribution of outcomes in startups: you either fail or make a lot of economic history, and I predict that in the way math or history or most other university subjects do. In the best case you might get rich. Maybe there would be practical limits on the number of startups any one acquirer could assimilate, but if other startups have a big pool of potential users in the other half are going to get rich and the other is being out of line is invaluable.1 We learned quickly that the most noble sort of theoretical knowledge: some that's useful in practical matters and some that isn't. Startups often make things cheaper, so in that respect they're better positioned to prosper in a recession than big companies. It costs you a little more equity, but being slightly underfunded teaches them an important lesson. Another way to decrease the risk is to join an existing startup instead of starting your own. Nerds tend to eschew formality of any sort. You need to work with you on your current idea, switch to an idea people want to work on dumb stuff, even if the problem is simply that you don't have time for your ideas to evolve, and b any business model you have at this point; those millions must be put to work, just as for tax revenues.

For example, the stated purpose of Powerpoint is to present ideas. That's when they have options. One experienced CFO said: The better ones usually will not give a term sheet, and then gradually automate the bottlenecks. There's no incentive that would make them move. You can attack labels with meta-labels: labels that refer to the use of labels to prevent discussion. They don't care much how much they pay for it, but they might lose value from year to year. But in their time, they had about a year's salary each.2 Whereas if the founders are equal partners. Phrased that way, it doesn't sound good at all.

Let's start with a simple prototype, then add features, but at the end of month six, the system is starting to have children now, and they're explaining technical matters to an audience sitting behind you. You might get it. For example, Web-based startup is food and rent. If one of the really big ideas. And this problem is unique to me, because I know the founders of Octopart, they seemed very smart, but not when you're Kirk. And if you set off the same alarms in your head that it does in mine. At Viaweb we got our first $10,000 of seed money from our friend Julian, but he was sufficiently rich that it's hard to say for certain at the time.

To get a complete picture, just add in every possible disaster. When most people hear the word startup, they think of the famous ones that have gone public. When a VC firm, go to their web site and send them an email asking what's up, and they all said they'd prefer to hire someone who'd tried to start a startup. I sat down and calculated what I thought the price should be. But from what I've heard the founders didn't just give in and take whoever the VCs wanted. And yet they seem the last to realize it.3 What's going on? So if you're going to have to work on. For a startup, managing them is one of the big trends we'll see in the coming century, good ideas will increasingly have an edge over 50 year olds with good ideas will increasingly have an edge over 50 year olds with good ideas will increasingly have an edge over 50 year olds with good ideas will increasingly have an edge over 50 year olds with powerful connections. So it's likely that visitors from the future would have to get all the benefit of that type of thinking, while others are starved of it. So the contrast when I couldn't was sharp.4

And that's fine. The only thing worth talking about first is the problem you're solving and what you've built so far. Representational art is only now recovering from the approval of both Hitler and Stalin. In fact, it may be heretical or whatever modern equivalent, but might it also be true? At least, it seems an axiom that if you get a real job. We're taking on some consulting projects, but we're not willing to admit that to ourselves, because that's what it means to be a no man's land between angels and VCs in that they're companies that do it as a consciously artificial trick, like juggling. In the Bay Area would be progressive. I think the trend of big companies. But that's nothing new: startups always have to adapt to this. For example, a city could give money to a VC, but it might get you second place.5 Common Lisp: There are too many new ideas for companies to loosen their belts as revenues increase. The writing is the familiar word salad: Gender is not like some of the qualities of an angel round meant a collection of angel investments, and most VCs weren't interested in investments so small.

And the way to boost growth. Both did. Why should we care especially about civil liberties? This is what you think about when you take a shower. Founders never really liked giving up as much equity as VCs wanted.6 They're like someone looking at a newborn baby and concluding there's no way this tiny creature could ever accomplish anything. It may take a while, but as a predictor of success it's rounding error compared to the number of startups and think this can't continue. The Apple II was launched just two years later. In a startup you should have sufficient vision not to need this crutch. If everything you believe is something you're supposed to be able to cash out partially in a funding round, by selling some of their stock directly to the investors.

Notes

In every other respect they're constantly being told that Microsoft discourages employees from contributing to open-source browser would cause HTTP and HTML to continue to maltreat people who had recently arrived from Russia. It's conceivable that the founders don't have to sweat any one outcome.

If someone speaks for the ad sales department. Predecessors like understanding seem to have kids soon. That's the trouble with fleas, jabbering about some disease they'll see once in China, many of the increase in economic inequality—that economic inequality. I'm talking mainly about software startups are usually obvious, even the flaws of big companies funded 3/4 of their origins in words about luck.

You're too early really means is you're getting the stats for occurrences of foo in the succession of spectacular treason trials that punctuated Henry's erratic matrimonial progress made him an obvious candidate for grants of monastic property. Probably just thirty, if an employer. Http://doingbusiness.

You'll be lucky if fundraising feels pleasant enough to become merely stubborn. So it is to make money off their median investments.

If you want to. Investors are one step upstream from economic power, in which you ultimately need if you know whether you're a nerd, just harder.

The bias toward wisdom in ancient philosophy may be overpaid. I didn't need to know how many of the 800 highest paid executives at 300 big corporations found that 16 of the 3 month old Microsoft presented at a 5 million cap. As we walked out we ran into Yuri Sagalov.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #Founders #Common #money

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magzoso-tech · 5 years

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New Post has been published on https://magzoso.com/tech/diet-autopilot-thistle-raises-5m-for-health-food-subscriptions/

Diet autopilot Thistle raises $5M for health food subscriptions

What if it was easier to eat salad than junk food? Most diet routines take a ton of time, whether you’re cooking from scratch, making a meal kit, or seeking out a nutritious restaurant. But on-demand prepared food delivery companies like Sprig that tried to eliminate that work have gone bankrupt from poor unit economics.

Thistle is a different type of food startup. It delivers thrice-weekly cooler bags customized with meat-optional, plant-based breakfasts, lunches, dinners, snacks, sides, and juices. By batching deliveries in the less-congested early morning hours and optimizing routes to its subscribers, or by mailing weekly boxes beyond its own geographies, Thistle makes sure you already have your food the moment you’re hungry. Whether you heat them up or eat them straight out of the fridge, you’re actually dining faster than you could even place an Uber Eats order.

The food on Thistle’s constantly rotating men is downright tasty. You might get a sunrise chia parfait for breakfast, a chicken tropical mango salad for lunch, a microwaveable bulgogi noodle bowl for dinner, with beet hummus and kale-cucumber juice for snacks. Thistle’s not cheap, with meals averaging about $14 each. But compared to competitors’ on-demand delivery markups and service fees, wasting ingredients from the grocer, and the hours of cooking for yourself, it can be a good deal for busy people.

“We see Thistle as part of a movement to make health convenient rather than a high will power chore” CEO Ashwin Cheriyan tells me. What Peloton did to shave time off getting a great workout, Thistle does for eating a nourishing meal. It makes the right choice the easiest choice.

Thistle COO Shiri Avneri and CEO Ashwin Cheriyan with their daughter

The idea of button you can push to make you healthier has attracted a new $5.65 million Series A round for Thistle led by its first institutional investor, PowerPlant Ventures. Bringing the startup to $15 million in funding, the cash will expand Thistle’s delivery domain. Dan Gluck of PowerPlant, which has also funded food break-outs like Beyond Meat, Thrive Market, and Rebbl, will join the board.

Currently Thistle delivers in-person to the Bay Area, LA metro, San Diego, and Sacramento while shipping to most of Washington, Oregon, Utah, Idaho, Nevada, and Arizona. Thistle actually held off on raising more since launching in 2013 to make sure it hammered out unit economics to prevent an implosion. It’s also planning broader meal options, additional product lines, and fresh distribution strategies like getting stocked in office smart kitchens or subsidized by wellness plans.

“The reasons that so many food delivery companies have failed likely fall into two buckets: one, a lack of focus on margins and unit economics, and two, premature geographic expansion before proving out the business model” says Cheriyan. “Thistle makes money similar to how a well run restaurant would make money – by having strong gross margins, efficient customer acquisition costs, and solid customer retention / lifetime metrics. We currently deliver tens of thousands of meals on a weekly basis to customers on the West Coast and our annual average growth rate since launch has been 100%+.”

It’s nice that Thistle hasn’t gone out of business because I’ve been eating its salads 6X a week for three years. It’s been the most efficient way for me to get healthier and lose weight after a half-decade of ordering takeout sandwiches and then feeling sluggish all day. I legitimately look forward to each one since they often have 20+ ingredients and only repeat every few months so they’re never boring.

It’s helped me keep my work-from-home lunches to about 20 minutes so I have more time for writing. Thistle is one of the few startups I consistently recommend to people. When asked how I lost 25lbs before my wedding, I point to Peloton cycling, Future remote personal training, and Thistle salads — none of which require me to leave the house.

Cheriyan tells me “We wanted the better-for-you and better-for-planet choice to be the default choice.”

Growing Out Of On-Demand

Thistle has already pivoted past the business model burning tons of cash across the startup world. The company started as an on-demand cold pressed juice delivery service, sending hipster glass bottles of watermelon and charcoal extract to doors around San Francisco. It was 2013, yoga was booming, and people were paying crazily high prices for liquified lemongrass. Health made simple seemed like a sure bet to the founding team of Alap Shah, Naman Shah, Sheel Mohnot, and Johnny Hwin, some of whom run Studio Management, a family office and startup incubator. [Disclosure: Hwin and Shah are friends of mine but didn’t pitch or discuss this article with me.]

Thistle eventually straightened things out with a shift to subscriptions and batched delivery under the leadership of the hired executives, Cheriyan and his wife and COO Shiri Avnery. “I came from a family of physicians – both my parents, brother, and enough aunts, uncles, and cousins are doctors that they could start a small hospital” Cheriyan, a former corporate attorney in M&A tells me. “A common point of frustration was about patients suffering from diet related illnesses who were unable to make a lifestyle change because it was too hard.”

Avenery, a PhD in air pollution and climate change’s impact on agriculture, had become exasperated with the slow pace of policy change and the inaction of governments and corporations. The two quit their jobs, moved to San Francisco, and searched for a point of leverage for positively influencing people diets and interaction with the environment. They teamed up with the founders and launched Thistle v1.

A lack of experience in logistics led to the initial detour into on-demand. But rather than trying to fix the problem with VC money, Thistle stayed lean and discovered the opportunity nestled between UberEats and BlueApron: sending people food they don’t have to eat now, but that takes low or no time to prepare when they’re peckish. Through its app, users can customize their meal plans, ban their allergens, pause deliveries, and see what they’ll eat next.

A sample of Thistle 8 meal plans

“The unit economics problem most heavily plagued the early on-demand food companies. Food / labor waste and inefficient deliveries were likely the biggest reasons why the economics were unsustainable without venture life support. We know this personally as Thistle started our delivery service as an on-demand company before quickly realizing that the unit economics couldn’t sustain a healthy business” Cheriyan explains, regarding companies like Sprig, DoorDash, and Grubhub. Beyond unsold food, “the margins very likely did not support ordering a $12-$15 single meal for immediate delivery when average hourly driver wages reached $18-20.”

Meal kits were supposed to make dining healtheir and cheaper, but they proved too much of a chore and led customers to boxes of ingredients piling up unused. Munchery and Nomiku went out of business while giants like Blue Apron have incinerated hundreds of millions of dollars and seen their share prices sink.

“The meal kit companies fared a little better from a gross margin perspective (due to preorders and more efficient deliveries) but suffer most from an easy-to-copy business model. This led to a rise in copycats, and, as a result, heavily rising customer acquisition costs, low switching costs and poor retention” Cheriyan tells me. “Fundamentally the meal kit companies face another challenge, which is that people have less and less time to cook and are increasingly looking for ready-to-eat options.”

Push-Button Health

A slower, steadier approach with less overhead, more convenience, and fewer direct competitors has helped Thistle grow to 400 employees from culinary to engineering to logistics.

Still, it’s vulnerable. It may still be too expensive for some markets and demographics. Logistics experts like Amazon and Whole Foods could try to barge into the market. Cloud kitchens without dining rooms are making restaurant food more affordable for delivery. And another startup could always take the gamble on raising a ton of cash and subsidizing prices to steal market share, especially where Thistle doesn’t operate yet.

Thistle could counter these threats would be further eliminating delivery costs by selling through partners like office smart fridges where employees pay on the spot, or equipping gym lobbies with more than just Muscle Milk.

“One opportunity we’re excited to test is attended and unattended retail – it would be great to be able to pick up Thistle products at your local grocery store, gym, or coffee shop” Cheriyan says. As for offices, “Today’s corporate lunchtime solutions often require a tradeoff between health and convenience: either wait in line for 30+ minutes at your favorite salad spot for a healthy option, or opt into catered restaurant meals that leave you feeling sluggish and unproductive.” Thistle could help employers prevent the 3pm energy lull.

The startup’s focus on plant-forward meals also centers it in the path of another megatrend: the shift to environmentally-conscious diets. Almost 60% of of Americans are trying to eat less meat and 50% are eating meat-alternatives like Impossible Burgers. That stems both from interest in the humane treatment of animals and how 15% of green house emissions come from livestock. But 45% of Americans say they hate to cook. That’s why Thistle makes pre-made meals where meat and egg are optional, but the food is healthy and delicious without them.

In the age of Uber, we’ve acclimated to an effortless life. The new wave of ‘push-button health’ startups like Thistle could finally take the hassle out of aligning your actions in the gym or kitchen with you intentions.

#Miscellaneous

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davemoon · 5 years

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Burrow - Making Everyone Comfortable but the Competition

“Does anyone know what JAND is?” Stephen Kuhl and Kabeer Chopra were in Ethan Mollick’s entrepreneurship class at Wharton in 2016 and had no idea what JAND was or what could possibly be contained in the powerpoint professor Mollick was waving in front of the class. It happened to be the initial pitch for Warby Parker, a leader among direct-to-consumer brands -- something they would come to know quite a lot about, soon enough. Stephen and Kabeer’s class project would snowball into a ride through Ycombinator and on to become the rapidly emerging direct-to -consumer sofa business -- Burrow.

Sofas are a huge pain. If you want something fast, it’s going to be cheap and flimsy, and you’re going to spend the weekend with an allen wrench, wood dowels, and an instruction manual that may as well be in Swedish. If you want something nice, it’s going to take forever to ship, let alone the difficulty of getting it through the door, in the room, and settled on the floor.

It was no different for founders Stephen and Kabeer. Kabeer went to West Elm and found a sofa he liked for twelve-hundred dollars, but it would take twelve weeks to arrive. If he picked something that was in stock, they could deliver it for two-hundred and fifty dollars in two weeks. Fortunately, he lived next door, so he went back to his apartment, retrieved a dolly and wheeled it back himself. Meanwhile, Stephen spent six-hundred dollars and the greater part of the weekend learning Swedish.

Burrow was born out of Stephen and Kabeer’s frustration with exactly these problems. No one sold a sofa that was comfortable, stylish, easily shipped, high-quality, and available, quickly. The market, as they saw it, was broken.

The founders went to Ycombinator the summer of 2016 and started taking preorders. They developed a novel, modular design that incorporated premium materials and finishes but wouldn’t require an expensive logistics and trucking system to get a monolithic sofa to the curb, up the stairs and to the floor. The design would culminate in a sofa that achieved the same quality standards as Crate & Barrel, but could be shipped in pieces that could be assembled quickly and intuitively. By the second half of 2016, they had more than one thousand preorders. It turns out, the customer shared their frustrations.

But there was a problem. No one wanted to work with them. Stephen and Kabeer wanted to make sofas, merchandise them online, and ship them in a week. There were more than one-thousand people who agreed with them, and they were expecting their sofas by October 2016. The big manufacturers in North Carolina and throughout the South practically laughed them out of the room. They were built for large volumes, long lead times, and traditional designs. The prospect of retooling a manufacturing line to accommodate a thousand orders seemed more like a favor than a business proposition. By some fluke, they had a Wharton connection whose family friend owned a manufacturer in Mexico.

Delays meant Burrow wouldn’t be able to meet their fall delivery deadline. They couldn’t deliver until December, at the earliest. It was bad news, and Stephen and Kabeer were worried they would disappoint their customers, so they decided to reach out to them. They called and emailed everyone who had preordered the sofas, so they could explain the situation. Thinking it was just some big, faceless manufacturer, they were surprised to speak with Stephen or hear from Kabeer and learn that it was just the two of them at the helm, raising the sails, cleaning the decks, and steering the ship. Some took their money back; others were grateful for the consideration and encouraged them to sail on.

And they were sailing with a strong tail-wind. Millennials account for over forty-percent of all furniture spending. They expect fast and free shipping and online shopping. One-third of people in their twenties move every year, according to Burrow’s research. Online furniture shopping is only 15% of the $111b furniture industry, but it’s growing at 20% a year. Demand for Burrow wasn’t a fluke. It was exactly where the market was heading.

By April 2017 Burrow was delivering sofas within a week. They rapidly outgrew the Mexican manufacturing partner in mid-2017. It was time to go back to the manufacturers who had rejected them before. Stephen set out for a few weeks on the road with the Mississippi Development Authority. It turns out that the legacy of the Russian immigrant, Morris Futorian, had set the stage for a strong, sophisticated furniture manufacturing base in Mississippi, and the Development Authority was more than happy to share it with Stephen.

The so-called University of Futorian comprised the many generations of entrepreneurs and craftsmen who emerged from Futorian’s workshops and factory in New Albany, Mississippi. Morris Futorian moved from Chicago in September 1948 with a vision to reinvent furniture manufacturing --an industry dominated by individual craftsmen-- along the lines of Ford-style assembly-line manufacturing. He named the factory the Futorian - Stratford Furniture Company, after the street he lived on in Chicago and trained members of the depressed local farm community to fill out the lines. The efficiencies he introduced to furniture manufacturing would lead to high quality output with faster production and lower prices -- it was fitting that Burrow’s innovations would find their way to production through Futorian’s legacy.

Burrow moved manufacturing to Mississippi in the summer of 2017. Stephen had found a facility in Tupelo that had been recently acquired by a former corporate executive at Target. The husband and wife team were eager to take on the flourishing brand and put their factory to work. It was exactly what Burrow needed, but it wouldn’t be their last manufacturing partner. As luck would have it, growth continued to spike, and they rapidly outstripped the capacity of the Tupelo facility. Indeed, customer demand grew so quickly that the Burrow team had to step in and lend a hand with manufacturing operations to ensure the consistent production of an escalating number of sofas.

When Burrow shifted manufacturing again, this time to North Carolina, they were met with a much warmer welcome. Manufacturers were starting to understand the power and the scale Burrow, it’s ecommerce-driven model, and the innovative, modular construction brought to the furniture industry.

Wayfair goes to manufacturers, asks what they’re making, and puts it in their marketplace. Article goes to manufacturers, asks what they’re making and puts their brand on it. Burrow turned furniture sales on its head. Stephen and Kabeer went to manufacturers with a design and a juggernaut of demand. They focused on simplicity of construction, speed of manufacture, ease of shipping, and the ability to put a high-quality sofa in the living room of every one of their customers within a week.

The Burrow sofa materials and quality are on par with a premium brand. The cost of goods is essentially equivalent, but traditional brands have to ship a fully assembled sofa to a distribution center and then, once again, to the customer, through a specialized trucking company. Many of these costs are bundled into the sticker price. Burrow’s patented modular assembly and locking mechanism means they can just ship it via UPS -- a much faster, cheaper option. Burrow can sell an equivalent or better quality product $500-700 cheaper than Crate & Barrel. Moreover, because of the efficiencies entailed by the Burrow design, they can build and deliver faster, so they also have negative working capital.

Behind the sofa, however, stands the team and the culture that Stephen has developed. Seasoned, strong candidates from big, successful brands are drawn to Burrow. The team includes the former SVP of Marketing from Design Within Reach, the former SVP of Product Design for Fab, and Creative Lead from B-Reel.

Burrow closed 2018 with twenty-nine employees and having booked five times their first-year revenue of 2017. In the first two years, they booked more than $20m in revenue for just one style of sofa. They have already introduced ottomans and chaises, and they recently launched leather and corner-sectional sofa sofas. Pillows and throws have become a key add-on item for their customer community, and these will be followed by tables and rugs. Their market-success has also led to a growing list of accolades and awards: the Time Magazine 50 Best Inventions of 2018; the Fast Company 10 Most Innovative Retail Brands in the World; the 2018 Good Design Award; among others. Burrow now competes with the strongest brands in the world.

It’s been a remarkable rise for Burrow through Stephen’s leadership. He continues to attract the most prestigious job candidates and has now reached thirty-seven employees, with an additional ten part-timers at their first retail showroom, Burrow House, in Soho. The core business continues its strong growth and has benefited from the expansion of product categories, distribution channels, and new markets. The successful launch of Burrow house in NYC brought in-store retail into the fold, but it also led to a doubling in online ecommerce conversions in New York. Expect new stores in Chicago and Washington DC soon. Even now, Stephen and the team reach out to every customer after a year, just to see how they like the sofas. No one expects it. Everyone loves it. Thanks to Burrow, we’re not stuck with long lead-times and indecipherable instructions any time we consider a sofa.

#founder #venture capital #entrepreneur

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microsstinatir-blog · 5 years

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Thanks to Scoot, we recently had the opportunity to experience the best that Berlin had to offer in terms of dining, shopping and history during our 5 day trip to Berlin and not have to bust our airfare budget. Yes, you heard right – Scoot – a low cost airline flies non-stop to Berlin from Singapore and this is not the first time that they are doing long haul flights (Scoot is also doing long haul flights to Athens in Greece and Honolulu in Hawaii, USA).

Over the next few blog posts, I will be sharing with you our various interesting experiences in Berlin but for this post, I have some suggestions for the foodies who are keen to check out the diverse dining experiences in Berlin and I have 11 of them!

But before we talk about dining in Berlin, I just want to share some tips on enjoying a long haul flight on Scoot. Being a low cost airline means we get bargain fares with Scoot (one way fare to Berlin from Singapore starting from S$239!) but that also means that the usual amenities that we would expect with a full-fare airline e.g. meals, in-flight entertainment, will not be complimentary. But if you add up the costs of buying these extras, you have still scored a huge bargain for a flight to Berlin!

The flight to Berlin from Singapore is almost 13 hours long so do preorder your long haul meal bundle or else you can get quite hungry during the flight. Preordering ensures that you get the meal you want and there are usually discounts or certain perks (for example, you may get a complimentary Haagen Daaz ice-cream or cookies with your meal). The flight departs from Singapore to Berlin at 12.25am and the first meal service (where a light meal of chicken sandwich wrap was served) will start around 1 hour+ after take-off (around 2am). There is no seatback inflight entertainment – you will have to bring your own entertainment or sign up for the ScooTV access (US$11 or about S$15) for the duration of the flight (but you will need to bring your own device e.g. iPad, phones and if you are using Apple devices, ensure that you had downloaded the ScooTV app before boarding your flight; for android devices, you can download the app from the Scoot Wi-Fi portal for free during the flight). If you need to charge your devices (nowadays whose phone can last for 13 hours on a single charge right?), you can buy in-seat power for about US$7.

To help yourself get as comfortable as possible and to sleep well during this long haul flight, I would recommend getting a Scoot Snooze Kit which comprises a very comfortable blanket and eye mask and inflatable neck pillow. Pre-purchasing this snooze kit before your flight will save you S$5 – otherwise you can buy the Scoot Snooze Kit onboard for S$23.

Our second meal service came in at around 3 hours before we landed at Berlin and it was roast beef with potatoes (there are other choices too – chicken, vegetarian etc.). This tasted very good as the beef is very tender. The sides include a potato salad and yoghurt. Scoot’s long haul meal bundle for flights to Berlin comes in non-vegetarian and vegetarian options and includes:

Premium Meal Combo which includes a deluxe meal, 2 sides and a drink.

Light Meal Combo which includes a light meal, a snack and a precupped juice.

This long haul meal bundle is available for preorder only.

Our Scoot flight to Berlin from Singapore landed at Berlin Tegel Airport at 7.20am – perfect timing to start a long day of fun at Berlin. The best part about landing at Berlin Tegel Airport is the airport’s proximity to the Berlin city centre. After clearing immigrations and collecting your baggage, you can be at your hotel in the city centre within 20 minutes! Our basecamp for our trip to Berlin was Capri by Fraser Berlin – we had a great staycation at Capri by Fraser Singapore (the one beside Changi City Point) and the Berlin one was just as good an experience.

Now, back to the topic at hand – Interesting and Diverse Dining Experiences in Berlin, we will of course start with German cuisine:

If you love desserts, don’t miss the Chocolate Lava Cake served with ice-cream served at The Grand.

Address: The Grand, Hirtenstraße 4, 10178 Berlin (nearest U2: Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz)

Address: Brauhaus Lemke am Alex, Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 13, 10178 Berlin (nearest S+U: Alexanderplatz)

From the dizzying height of its viewing platform, you have spectacular 360-degree panoramic views out across the entire city – and beyond. You can also chill out with cocktail from Bar 203. You can also have dinner at the rotating restaurant just one floor above the viewing platform

Address: Panoramastraße 1 A, 10178 Berlin (nearest S+U: Alexanderplatz)

The Currywurst has an interesting origin: During 1949 in Berlin, a resourceful German housewife, Herta Heuwer, traded some spirits with British soldiers for ketchup. She then created the dish – composed of German sausage, or wurst, sliced and doused in ketchup and sprinkled with curry powder and created the currywurst which became an overnight success and eventually a staple, mainly amongst construction workers who valued its high protein content and low cost.

Address: Curry 36, Hardenbergplatz 9, 10623 Berlin (this is near the Zoo or the BIKINI Berlin which we will talk about later – nearest U2: Berlin Zoologischer Garten)

Curry 36, Mehringdamm 36, 10961 Berlin Kreuzberg

TIM RAUE serves Asian-inspired cuisine that can be characterized as a blend of Japanese product perfection, Thai aromas, and Chinese culinary philosophy. The aim of his dishes is to provide energy and joie de vivre. Guests are invited to a deliberately simple ambience influenced by the urban atmosphere of Berlin. The Michelin guide awarded Tim Raue’s restaurant with two Michelin stars.

We started our dining experience with the Ikarimi Salmon served with buttered stock of tomato juice & marukan rice vinegar, compote of tomato & star anis and green anis. The dish is served lukewarm, keeping the salmon tender – the salmon is soft and melts in your mouth. The various flavours of vinegar, tomato gives you a mix of different tastes with each bite.

Next we had the Langoustine served with wasabi mayonnaise cantonese style. This is like our Singaporean equivalent of wasabi prawn – those that you can order from zi char stalls at hawker centre, although the quality at Tim Raue is a lot better – instead of prawns, Norway lobster meat (langoustine) is used and it tasted very fresh. The wasabi mayonnaise sauce is perfect with the langoustine – some zi char stalls in Singapore makes the wasabi sauce overwhelming (as if you are swallowing wasabi) but here at Tim Raue, its just gives a tinge of wasabi taste and that is good enough.

Next, we had Sate Chicken – or we call it Satay Chicken. I am very surprised to taste such familiar tasting food all the way in Germany. The chicken is tender and when eaten with the satay sauce, it tastes so good!

We wrapped up our meal at Tim Raue with dessert which comprises Quince sherbet, macadamia nougat and passionfruit. It is a good mix of taste – sweet and sour.

A 4 course menu for lunch at Tim Raue like the above will cost 68 Euros + 19% tax. You get a choice of dishes to make up the 4 courses – the 3 course menu is the cheaper option at 58 Euros. Do note that if you select the wasabi langoustine, that will cost an additional 12 Euros to the 68 Euros for a 4 course menu.

Address: Restaurant Tim Raue, Rudi-Dutschke-Straße 26, 10969 Berlin (near Checkpoint Charlie)

Address: Night Kitchen, Oranienburger Str. 32, 10117 Berlin (nearest S-station: Berlin Oranienburger Straße station)

Address: Casalot, Claire-Waldoff-Straße 5, 10117 Berlin

Just a short aside on the THE ONE Grand Show at Friedrichstadt-Palast, if you want to catch one of the most lavish show in Europe on one of the biggest stage in the world, then you should not miss the ONE Grand Show. An iconic part of the ONE Grand Show performance is the more than 500 daring, extravagant, and glamourous costumes designed by Jean Paul Gaultier, one of the great stars of Parisian haute couture. The scale of this performance is massive in many ways – more than 100 artists on the world’s biggest theater stage and a production budget of more than eleven million euros.

Most of the singing is in German but you should be able to interpret from the music and costumes what is going on but in case you don’t, here’s my quick take on the performance. THE ONE Grand Show blurs past and present in a vibrant, euphoric waking dream. You will follow a young man who struggles with his inner emotions – anger and curiosity as he rekindles the splendour and glamour of times past in his mind’s eye while everything dissolves, floats, and spins in front of him, all leading back to the one person who means everything to him – THE ONE. I know very chim (deep-meaning in local Singaporean colloquial terms) but this is a show where you get amazed and surprised by the myriad of costume and death defying acts by the performers. It is a good mix between a typical circus act and dance performance and musical (the latter you will appreciate better if you know German).

Address: Bikini-Haus, Budapester Str. 38-50, 10787 Berlin (nearest U2: Berlin Zoologischer Garten)

For a more traditional food market, don’t miss Markthalle Neun (Market Hall 9) in Kreuzberg on Thursday because of Street Food Thursday. On Thursdays from 5pm to 10pm only, the various stalls compete with each other with their culinary delicacies, but it is you who are the winners. This is truly an international event as you get to experience British pies, Thai tapioca dumplings, Mexican tacos, Allgäu cheese spaetzle or Nigerian FuFu. It gets really crowded though so seats are very limited.

If you need help navigating the culinary gems that Berlin offers on this exciting street food tour through the district of Kreuzberg, check out the Food Tour with Fork & Walk by Dov Selby. If you check out his website, you will notice that there are lots of different food tours to meet your needs, be it whether you are a vegan or coffee connoisseur, there is a food tour for you.

We went on a Evening Food Tour with Dov where he showed us some of the best street food stalls in Markthalle Neun, for example – these tofu burgers by Tofutussis and …

… amazing cheese sandwiches by Alte Milch

Adana Kebap Yogurtlu – Minced meat on the skewer with yogurt, tomatosauce, gegrilled tomatoes, pepper and special bread

Künefe – Pastry mozzarella cheese doused with sugar syrup

Künefe is a crispy cheese-filled dessert made with kadayıf, which is a traditional shredded wheat dessert with pistachio filling. Native to the southeastern parts of Turkey in a area named Hatay. This is a very sweet and addictive dessert

Address: 37, Admiralstraße 36, 10999 Berlin, Germany

Berlin WelcomeCard gives you access to all public transport as well as discounts on selected tours and museum. Ranging from 2 – 6 days, these will definitely come in handy when exploring Berlin. Just remember to validate your ticket before you take your first ride with the bus /U-bahn.

Our spacious @berlin apartment with kitchenette and comfortable bed and refreshing rainshower – perfect rest stop after a long flight from Singapore to Berlin with @ @visit_berlin

A post shared by Zhiqiang and Tingyi (@passportchop) on Jun 20, 2018 at 2:04am PDT

Read on if you would like to know what we ate on our Scoot flight back to Singapore from Berlin. Our flight took off from Berlin at 9.40am and the first meal service is Currywurst and…

… for our second meal service (a few hours before we arrive at Singapore) – Turkey meatloaf with rye bread.

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sheminecrafts · 5 years

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Diet autopilot Thistle raises $5M for health food subscriptions

Thistle COO Shiri Avneri and CEO Ashwin Cheriyan with their daughter

The idea of button you can push to make you healthier has attracted a new $5.65 million Series A round for Thistle led by its first institutional investor, PowerPlant Ventures . Bringing the startup to $15 million in funding, the cash will expand Thistle’s delivery domain. Dan Gluck of PowerPlant, which has also funded food break-outs like Beyond Meat, Thrive Market, and Rebbl, will join the board.

Cheriyan tells me “We wanted the better-for-you and better-for-planet choice to be the default choice.”

Growing Out Of On-Demand

A sample of Thistle 8 meal plans

Push-Button Health

A slower, steadier approach with less overhead, more convenience, and fewer direct competitors has helped Thistle grow to 400 employees from culinary to engineering to logistics.

from iraidajzsmmwtv https://ift.tt/2uBoAjS via IFTTT

#IFTTT #iraidajzsmmwtv

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mdhwrites · 5 years

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Calmish Thoughts: Epic Games Store and Sale

So, I have to admit that I shouldn't do this. I have had multiple breakdowns over the past couple days trying to discuss this, but I am anyways because I think it's important. Now, to preface, I planned to be an accounting major when i went to college. I still went to a year and a half for that and took both micro and macro economics. I have talked to economic professors and gotten them to admit that economic principal has been abused too far for the current market. Let me know if you want that one because it's about supply, demand, and the minimum wage and is FASCINATING.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about. I am here to talk about Epic Games because they have done somethings laughably wrong, but unlike what a lot of people are claiming, they are currently the model to me of what good, flourishing, HEALTHY capitalism looks like and I would like to open up a discussion about that. I will try to cover as much as I can here, and in a few days will try to cover any mistakes and additional points I missed in a follow up blog.

1. Their Storepage

Let's start with the unforgivable and the thing that most of Epic's real problems stem from: The store page. It has no reviews, barely a search function, no categories, no shopping cart, and looks like the UI prioritized form over function. It looks half baked and like it should have had another half a year to a full year of work put into it before it was released.

...Probably because that is genuinely what happened. After all, Epic is working VERY quickly right now and I suspect someone in the marketing department said, "We either announce this at E3 this year with Supergiant's next game as an exclusive and FREE, or we have to wait a year for another major event to announce it at, at which time we will either have forced delays on games we want on the storefront, or straight up missed getting those games into timed exclusivity contracts."

With everything that is coming out that Epic has managed to get ahold of that it likely had some insight on at the time, delaying the store page probably looked like a non-option. Does that excuse them? FUUUUUUCK NO. People are getting banned from things like Paypal for suspicious activity, finding anything on the damned thing is a nightmare, and at least 50% of their sales catalogue is in preorder games, especially amongst their exclusives. HOWEVER, we also know that they are working on all of that and that many of these games are getting released later this year and with enough marketing behind them that if you care about them, you'll find them.

Again, not good, and it is the worst thing about the store but... Well, I'll wait to talk about Steam for later, because I have a lot to say on that matter, especially in their response to all of this.

2. Epic is Chinese Spyware

Now, I am putting this as how I always heard about it, which putting it that way is a complete lie. They are funded by Tencent, but Tencent is not the majority shareholder of the company, and not the only investor. Now, the claim of it being spyware... Again, the rush in making their store page kind of fucked them here. A: They had a program that appeared malicious and grabbed information about what you were buying and who you were buying through. That's kind of like saying DA owns your art though so they can modify and post it in order to make thumbnails. That is something they essentially need as a business and they only track those numbers, at least currently, on purchases you buy through them.

Problem is B: When it was first released it would copy certain files over from Steam without permission from the user. That is... bad. That is just bad. And they have said as much and they are working on it. Does that mean as quickly as we'd like? No, but if that is a problem still there a year after launch for Epic, I think they'll get crucified. If what they had been doing was illegal, Steam's vocal complaints and suspicions about them would have brought out a settlement... But again, I'll get to Steam later.

3. Epic Games is Killing PC Games With Exclusives!

Alright. *cracks knuckles* We're now getting into the stuff that REALLY pisses me off to hear. So, let's first talk about what exactly exclusivity on a platform means and how it is obtained. A publisher/company affiliated with a console, such as Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony, will hear a pitch from a company and nod saying that they like it. They like it so much that they'll give the developers MUCH more money then usual for a publishing deal if they are willing to only put it on their console. This is supposed to be a forever thing because it's how the company makes back its money through sales of their consoles and higher brand recognition. It is almost entirely a marketing tactic... on the publisher's side.

Now let's swap that to the developer's side. They want to take a risk and do something big and out of the box. This can be creating a third person shooter with shields, an alien world, and NEXT GEN GRAPHICS!, or create a big, open world superherp game that makes you FEEL like the superhero. Or, maybe, it allows a company to try to break from a normal formula of knights, European aesthetic, and slow gameplay to something faster, Cthulhu and Victorian in mythos. And if none of you have picked up on the fact that I'm talking about Bloodborne, Spiderman 2018, and HALO, then you live under a rock. Exclusive deals have led to some of the best, genre defining games period because of the additional development time, money, and help they get for doing this.

So, where does Epic sit on this? Well, PC exclusivity has kind of always been a thing, but they're changing it to launcher exclusivity...

3.5 Epic Games adds another Launcher! Grow a fucking pair you entitled pieces of shit! It's one fucking launcher that's entirely free to download!

Sorry for that outburst. I genuinely cannot put up with that argument after my time at Job Corp. Anyways, what they're doing is that they'll give a company extra money and marketing, like any exclusive deal, for them to sell only on the Epic Games Store page... for a year. After a year they have no control over it unless the developer has decided to work only with Epic period as far as sales go. This approach has garnered them a lot of hate from gamers who are watching their favorite game series like Metro. The go there to die...

And sell more copies of their game than they did for the previous installment. Yeah, weird how awful this is when so many developers love it. They get to experiment with their games more, take more time, and Epic is willing to put in the effort to show them off unlike.. Well, I'll get to it.

4. Epic Games is Killing Games and the Economy By Giving Developers More Money

*opens mouth* *closes it* *sighs* I genuinely told one of my followers to fuck off over this point. That statement people make about the revenue split is so mind boggling counter intuitive that it pisses me off that I actually have to fucking talk about it. But, talk about it I do have to.

So, for anyone who doesn't know, Epic takes 12% of revenue from game sales on their platform. On top of that, if you use Unreal Engine, their engine, to make the game, they waive the 5% licensing fee they normally do on other platforms. Steam on the other hand, and I'm not waiting this time because fuck you Steam, takes 30% of every sale and only gives 70% back. So, let's say you make a game using Unreal. Here are the numbers for developers on returns:

Steam: 30% to Steam + 5% to Epic for their engine = 35% of sales taken off before ever seeing the developer.

Epic: 12% to Epic= 12% taken away before seeing the developer.

That is three times as much lost if you are using Unreal. If you're not, it's still two and a half times as much lost. So, I'm going to go into an analogy I heard at one point about Epic. That Epic is like Walmart in their predatory tactics and trying to undercut their competitors. However, let's actually compare how the two are going about this. Walmart does it by telling manufacturers that, due to their lion share of the market, that they can either sell to them cheaper, thus allowing Walmart to sell at lower prices at higher profit to themselves, or they won't stock a product and thus the company will stay in obscurity. Larger companies will take this because they have their own money to wave around and bully the places they get their resources from, forcing those companies to have to do the same and etc. etc. This is part of why Walmart screws over their employees and customers so infamously. They have to cut a corner in order to get this buying power and they do so by screwing everyone who isn't them.

Epic meanwhile... takes the hit to the chin and keeps going. They figured out that as purely a digital distributor that upkeep and service fees on their store did not need to be so high so, in order to be competitive, they took the financial burden on themselves and spread the money to the other companies and their developers. They thus increase the ability for these companies to make more games, treat their employees better, and spread money into other sectors of the economy because of the investment that...

Holy shit, Regen was right for the first time literally ever about Trickle Down Economics. Shame someone isn't doing that despite their profits...

5. Epic Games is Killing the Economy With Their New Sale!

This is going to hit everything of the Epic Games Epic Sale that is going on. For anyone who doesn't know, the sale is that any game that is 14.99 or higher is on sale at specifically 10 dollars off, even if it was already at a discount. How is it on sale? Well, Epic is making it so that instead of the developer or publisher having to decide to lower the price of it, Epic is once again taking it to the chin to give the discount themselves and paying the ten dollars out of pocket while their developers see no change in what they get for each sale. It's akin to Subtember on Twitch where if you got a gift sub, you could get another month at an extreme discount while the streamer on Twitch got the full amount of the sub they normally do.

So, what went wrong? Well, somethings legitimately wrong. Epic incorrectly thought that because they were taking the monetary hit that they could do this without warning and/or consulting the developers and game holders ahead of time. Theoretically, this makes sense as they're only trying to do the developers a solid through this pricing. The problem is that it messes up promotional campaigns that these other companies plan to do and... to some fucking morons, 'devalues the product'. To explain why that's wrong... AH!

So, when does a sale happen normally? Well, let's use Walmart and their clearance section. An item goes there when it is deemed no longer wanted by the populace and they want to get rid of it. At the price it is put at, it is commonly sold at a loss or break even for the company, but people who would not spend the original amount on the item will now be interested in it, increasing demand and making sure the item gets sold so they get some money back from the purchase. A digital sale is similar, but this time just being willing to accept less profits from those who wouldn't buy it otherwise. After all, digitally it takes very little to stock an endless supply of a product on a marketplace, so you never have to worry about initial investment that needs to be made up. However, how many times have you seen a game on Steam and go, "Well, that's neat, but I'm going to wait for a sale." In that moment, you have become someone who has deemed that product less valuable than it is initially proposed at. Companies know that there are people out there like that and thus will reach out to get those sales by dropping the price temporarily and making sure you buy the product at all rather than never.

This also DOESN'T DEVALUE THE PRODUCT! Just because something went on sale before does not mean it's suddenly tarnished. People are, USUALLY, smart enough to go, "Man, it was nice for them to put this 20 dollar game on sale for a week at 10 dollars. It's a shame I couldn't get it then, but 20 dollars was the price it is normally sold at." Something going off sale is not a fucking price hike (and yes, I saw Jim Sterling's video earlier today, and yes I think he's a fucking moron like usual) but instead it returning to normality.

A fucking price hike is the bullshit that Supergiant Games pulled. See, they came up with an excuse that "Hey, our European fans can't get the discount because of a few cents because Epic is (it wasn't) screwing up getting the conversion right." So what did they do? Up the price by a dollar and thus keep their actions honest? Nope! They upped it to 25 bucks instead of the 20 it is commonly sold at and claimed "Hey, we always planned to make it this price anyways, we're just doing it earlier now." And this is where this type of sale comes into trouble for the person trying to do right. Supergiant realized that if they raised the price by five dollars they could still look like their game was on sale at 15 while raking in another $4.40 off of every purchase generated by the sale. That is a tactic joked about in clothing commercials about retail stores doing so that their sale looks better, but doesn't actually save you as much money.

And guess who hasn't corroborated with the claim that the sale didn't work in Europe? Europeans. Guess what game is still eligible for sale after Supergiant put it back down to 19.99 because of backlash? Hades, the game Supergiant upped the price on. That isn't Epic's fault. That should be getting people to think twice about how good Supergiant is and make them concerned as to what other bad practices they might be employing in order to make an additional profit.

Now, the last thing I will comment on in the sale is the lack of a shopping cart. Because there is no shopping cart, purchases must be made individually. After a time, to try to help against fraud, banks and online services will often lock a card or account if they deem this sort of activity as unusual. This takes, at best, just a call to your bank to fix. I don't know what the worst case scenario is. This was a GROSS oversight on Epic's part and hopefully will be fixed by the time the sale is over in a MONTH. So, like much of the rest of Epic's stuff, it is damaged by moving too fast, not preparing enough, and by customer facing aspects that are ugly and NEED to be fixed.

I would rather have that then

6. Steam

Yeah, I want to open a discussion on this too. After all, what has Steam done since Epic has opened their store? What has Steam done over the past half decade? Arguably: Little good, and little of anything people want. After all, Steam's client still doesn't feature mutliple tabs, they tried implementing paid mods without improving the client at all or explaining why it would be better for modders to do so (just that they would ALL make more money) and they have LOOOOVED fanning fan flames furiously over Epic. After all, if they didn't what would happen?

They would have to try. They would have to do something other than trying to make as much money as possible. And this isn't just me trying to make Steam/Valve out to be a villain. This is reminding people that they are. After all, Valve's biggest published game in the past few years was Evolved. Evolved was a game that, by PUBLISHER DEMAND was decided to have a season pass, lock most of its content behind hundreds of hours of grinding, and this all led to a game that ended up dead rather than the something special it could have been. At this point the developers have even turned it free to play to try to keep the game alive, but for many it was too little too late.

Steam has gone unopposed for too long with practices that aren't healthy. That comparison before of Walmart? Well, if Epic fails, every developer who wants to publish on PC will have the same problem they had before as they turn around to Steam and ask, "Hey, can you only take a 12% cut so we can try to keep making games?"

Steam: "Sweety, if you're that strapped for cash, just crunch some unpaid overtime and give me my fucking money." Because that has been Steam's response this past half a year and to developers who could really use a break to help make it so that their companies can be incentivized to take care of their developers. But hey, I mean, if you're a game that will get lost in the Steam shuffle because you aren't made well enough to get on Epic (which I do hope is changed someday) but were never going to make it anywhere on the front page of Steam... Well, Steam isn't ever going to give you that big, front page banner ad, and I really only have sorry to say to you and to wish you the best of luck, because Steam isn't going to reward you for their loyalty, or they haven't shown any sign of that yet.

And again, I would love to hear from all of you in the comments below. Also, an admitted counter to Steam's stuff is that they are now allowing more porn on the website, but I feel like that's more to compete with Nutaku than to allow better games onto their platform unfortunately, because we need better developed porn games first.

#Epic Games #Discussion #AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

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