Sam Kidd's thoughts on business

We are still trying hard to find a location for Sam&Dan's at the moment. We are talking to a few people about certain locations in Cork City. Unfortunately it’s just taking more time than we would like.
It's been a very painful few months, filled with so many ups and downs.  We had a massive bidding war to get the property that we wanted.  This was a really stressful time, and went on for bloody ages. It was so hard having to wait for days, and sometimes a week to hear if you were going to be out bid. Never knowing what’s going on was so frustrating, it's like your life is on hold. painful!

Anyway after a month came the big high, we won the bidding war and finally got the property. After all that bidding I was think ‘great now lets get moving’. Yea right! Now we had to stall as the waiting for legals with the lease began.
This is the part that really gets me. I don't understand why solicitors don't just say, “Hey lets get all parties into a room together and knock this about for an hour”. This going back and forth while each solicitor writes love letters to each other does my bloody head in. 
Ok I know why the solicitors don’t want to do this, but I don't understand why people don’t just say screw this for a laugh, lets get the business under way, or kill it now, and save some time and money. Lets meet up and talk face to face like real people. The only people who do well out of this love letter set up is the solicitors with their 'lovely' fees. 

I think a story I heard about a while ago from New Zealand summed out how I feel about this whole drawn out process.

A Mobile radio network operator TeamTalk is trialling a new technique for dispute resolution.
The Wellington based telco (19.9% owned by Telecom NZ) has been in dispute with MCS
Digital RT Ltd over access to their networks but there won't be any lawyers and protracted
legal proceedings in this argument. TeamTalk has challenged MCS Digital RT Ltd to settle
this with an arm wrestling contest.

"We can battle on and on and the only winners will be lawyers. This way we can have some fun and get on with doing business" says Mr Ware. You can read the full story here.

Guinness have just started a new ad campaign online. This ad campaign comes with a twist. You have to search for the ads in this one.  Guinness has hid an ad somewhere online, and to win the prize you must track it down.  The first clue is this video on YouTube .

I'm all for different ways of advertising, and I have to say I'm liking this idea. I had an idea for a hunt round Cork for AREA51. I was going to hide different signs for people to work out before we opened, but I never took it futher than just an idea.

I have watched the video and Googled a few ideas but no luck so far. I have also attached a sheet with what is said in the video. Let me know if anyone has any luck.

"V"

 

When you walk down Patrick St these days you can’t help but notice the amount of retail property that is for rent. Now you would think that because it is the city centre that people would be fighting to get into these places. But this does not seem to be the case. It’s not just Patrick Street either where you see vacant property. If you walk down Oliver Plunkett St and other surrounding streets in town it’s the same story. There are quite a few places for rent. Some of which have been sitting empty for over a year now.

I can’t help but feel it has a lot to do with greedy landlords.

These days a shop in Cork City is not just competing with the shop down the road anymore. Local competition has increased with the new large shopping centres out of town, and their offer of free parking. Now if that wasn’t hard enough., you are also competing with the rest of the world as well. Online shopping has grown massively in the last few years. Now it's not uncommon to purchase every day items online, and from other countries, and have it arrive at home the next day.

I keep hearing people giving out about the price of things in Ireland, and how the shops are ripping us off, and how expensive it is to eat out in town, and “man how the shops must be cleaning up”. I’m sure some are ripping us off, but I do feel that a lot of them are just trying to survive. To do this your going to need massive volume, and goods that have a high mark up on them. 
Everyone is blaming the shops for ripping us off but are the shops being ripped of first? The fact is, the reason most shops are charging so much is because they're being screwed from the top. Rent in town is nuts, rates are huge, of which I have yet to work out what they actually pay for, because you have to pay for rubbish charges, and soon water charges. Customers have to pay for parking in town as well, and if they're not careful could be clamped or towed. This does nothing to encourage people to come into town to shop.

I can’t help but wonder how the shops in town can survive.

Recently I have been looking at a lot of property in town, and the rent is just nuts. 40-50K a year for a place you couldn’t swing a cat in,and that’s for propertys that are not in prime locations. Most property in top locations are from 70k to 90k for better spots.

As an example say you had to pay rent of 50k.
You have to pull in €60,600.00 to just pay the rent. That’s because once you get hit for 21% VAT on the 60k it leaves you with $50,082.64. So that’s your rent covered.

You will have rates of around €8000 so that’s another €9500 you must pull in.

So before you pay any bills and have any staff or pay high insurance costs you must pull in profit of €70,100.00

That’s €192.00 of profit a day.

You can see why so many shops in town must stay open 7 days a week. €192.00 doesn’t look like much but when you have all the other bills on top it sure adds up.

If you look at a coffee shop as an example. It would take about 90 cups of coffee a day to make this.
It will be interesting to see if Cork City centre can survive and if the council will do anything to help traders. Now that Cork City centre is starting to look really nice it would be a shame for it to become a ghost town of retail units.

 

Myself and Dan were sitting down having our morning coffee, when we got talking about the fact that there are casino's popping up everywhere in Cork City. There is the Macau club, and a few doors up from that there is the VIC. There is also a casino at the top of Winthrop street, which has been given a face lift, and now there is the new one the on Father Matthew St, The Bank. I know there are a few more around the city as well.

They are now the new type of business to set up by the looks of it. Hopefully it's taken over from the "lets set up an Internet shop" craze that's been going on since we set up AREA51. Cork must have some amount of Internet cafés now. They all open, need customers fast so offer crazy low prices, and this in turn ends up making them no cash at all in the long term. I'm never quite sure why people want to set up a business,  drop the price so much to try get customers and end up killing off their business.

As we have found out, the price doesn't seem to be as important for most people as you would think. So long as you're not too much more, and if you offer a great service, and you build up a good loyal customer base that's the most important thing.  

Looking after your customers, going beyond what they expect is the most important thing.  I believe whole heartily in 'the customer is always right' mentality.  A good experience for a customer is just worth so much to a business. Because a happy customer is the best sales person you can have. (And they work for free)
 I'm sure people just aren't doing the maths on how much a place costs to run these days. Rent, rates,repairs and power all add up fast once you're up and running. If I look back at our business plan that we had for AREA51, we would have died a death so fast if we had only brought in what we had put down in that.  It's amazing how much you actually have to pull in to survive.

Still this happens in every business type I imagine. I haven't been into the casino's here but I bet there is a load of price wars and bitching of other casinos happening here at the moment. I wonder how they are all doing, and if there are the amount of people around to keep them all going.  It will be interesting to see what happens.  I must one of these days actually go into one for a look.

This cool coffee shop is opening up in New York City, between November 28th and December 28.
It's made from an shipping container, and at the touch of a button is turned into a fully kitted out designer house. Of course this one is complete with an illy coffee shop.

 

The shop is able to transform from useless ugly shipping container, into sexy cool modern coffee house in 90 seconds.



Wish I could get my hands on one of these,  slap it in the middle of the Grande parade and open Sam&Dan's to operate out of it. I would love to see them tow that away.
I wish Cork City council would be open to having something a bit different in the city. I would love to see someone try get this passed by planning here!

There is an animated pic here of one of these push button houses opening.
The website for all the other houses this guy has designed is here.

While trawling through the net last night, I came across this very nice free rss reader called BlogBridge.  Today was the first time I got a chance to give it ago, and so far I'm impressed with it. It has been nice and easy to use and has plulled in some nice sites and stories with my tags that I gave it.

Features as they appear on the BlogBridge site

Why BlogBridge Rocks

1. It handles hundreds of feeds with the greatest of ease … (more)
2. It has super powers. … (more)
3. It looks cool and is easy to use … (more)
4. It works on YOUR computer … (more)
5. It is Open Source … (more)

I like the one that says it has super powers, it was that which sold it for me really.

 

This is a very depressing post for me to write. It looks like Sam&Dan's has hit a bit of a bump in the road. Well more like a huge mountain actually. The landlord of the property we were taking will not give his consent to a change of use. This is something I have to say that I was not expecting. I was expecting a bit of a fight with the planning board from the city, but this has really come out of left field and knocked me for six.
>>It's been a very depressing week with that news.  This property has consumed about 4 months worth of work so far, so to get this news at this stage has been a killer.

So I guess it's back to trying to find a property that will suit and to keep pressing on. I will keep you posted.......

There is a problem with trying to change yourname in Team Fortress 2. To Change your name in Team Fortress 2 you just need to enable the console. I have been having this problem down in AREA51 and in the end its really easy to fix.  Valve has tied the whole name change thing into the Steam friends section which sucks. Anyone who knows Steam Friends, especially if you’re a Steam Cafe owner,knows how painful it is. The Steam friends login just doesn’t seem to work.

A quick work around for this is to go into console and type:

setinfo name Kiwi 

Just replace Kiwi with whatever your gaming name is. I think you will have to do this at the start of each level change, but hey it’s better than been called ‘unknown’

I'm just sitting at home on this dull Sunday evening,(still trying to get over NZ losing) I'm at the moment going through blogs and trying to find interesting sites to pass the time . I just came across this site called dealdotcom. It's a interesting idea they have. They work by only have one product on their site for sale each day. The other kick is that you have no idea how many of these items they have to sell. So if your not fast, it could sell out. I have to say I kind of like this concept. 

Would be interested to know how this marketing/sales tactic is working out for them.
All the stuff they sell is products and services that help save you time and money when it comes to running your online business. There are loads of these types of site out there, but these guys definitely have an angle on doing it.

 I can't believe the bloody French have knocked the All Blacks out the Rugby World cup again.

Also to all the smart people who sent me text messages, thanks alot for them they really helped cheers me up.....NOT....You are now all crossed off my Christmas card list.

I would say the South African team are over the moon. Australia and New Zealand both knocked out. They could not have hoped for more.

I want a fight!! well I do if I have a suit made from the stuff in this video on SkyNews.

What a savage product. It's called D3o.  D3o technology is a specially engineered material with intelligent molecules that flow with you as you move but on shock lock together to absorb impact energy.

This is a video from YouTube but the skyNews one gives you a better idea of how a fight in gear made from this would be a laugh.

 

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Well it looks like the opening date for Sam&Dan's is going to be pushed back at the moment. We unfortuantly are still at the legals stage of the lease.  I have to say this part is taking an age. It's a good thing I have other work to keep me sane and to take my mind off the painful wait. It's becoming very frustrating waiting for people such as solicitors and their clients to get back to us.

It's definitely killing the buzz at the moment.  I would love to write here when we are to open but I at this stage have no bloody idea.  It does make me realize how luckly we were with AREA51 when we opened that.