A big change when I came back to Wellington late last year was the emergence of Green Cabs. What an overdue idea, and what a great one. It’s a triple play – better for the environment, better for the drivers and better for customers. Their fleet of bright green Toyota Prius cars cost …
Continue reading “Well done Green Cabs. Now – about that website?”
We hear that Obama is bringing fresh change to the White House. Perhaps least, the NYTimes reports, is the change of preferred Presidential drink: Honest Tea. Honest Tea (Horrible Flash Website warning) was co-founded by Yale Professor Barry NaleBuff, with a former student of his, Seth Goldman. They were appalled at the sickly sweet unhealthy iced …
Apparently rumours are circulating about Trade Me and eBay – not that I heard about them until just now. Mod has squashed them anyway, but oh what fun. The problem is that eBay traditionally purchases auction sites, then brings over the content to their own site and use their own model. They struggle to see …
Part four of a four part take on the end of Ferrit. We started with Market Space, then site idea and execution, and business economics. This is hopefully the last Ferrit post, but the most important in this series The Governance Failure There were failures at a number of levels from Telecom, including poor strategy, …
Part three of a four part take on the end of Ferrit. We started with Market Space, then site idea and execution, and governance failure will finish things off. The economics The business result had to be razor thin commissions, if any. The site depended upon the larger stores providing volume of products, which they …
Part two of a four part take on the end of Ferrit. We started with Market Space, and business economics and governance failure are next. The idea of the Ferrit site So while there was a space, the proposed way to address that space was flawed. The problem was that the proffered solution didn’t offer …
Continue reading “Final Ferrit: The site idea and execution”
Design flaws led to Ferrit’s downfall sings out the Independent, but it’s a bit more complicated than a pithy headline. I’m quoted in the article, and so am providing a bit more background to those quotes. I also promise that these are the final blog postings on Ferrit. Really. So here is a four part …
Over the weekend I finally managed to watch the New Zealand – Australia rugby league world cup final. The Kangaroos were expected to crush the Kiwis, but the Kiwis won, and won in style. Much has been written about the petulant response from the Australian camp after the match, but I want to focus on …
Continue reading “Business lessons from the Kiwis World Cup victory”
Perhaps we will never know, but some details are emerging on the likes of Twitter and personal emails. I’ve also had a conversation with Ralph Brayham, which is sadly confidential. All I can say that I won’t be purchasing Ferrit. Let’s start with the most interesting ones: Telecom’s own press release Telecom has decided to …
Continue reading “More commentry on Ferrit’s rise and demise”
Here are what other commentators are saying about the Ferrit closure. It is certainly a popular topic, and the themes are recurrent and certainly entertaining. Everyone brings a slightly different perspective, and it is worthwhile checking them out. This is also makes a snap nice survey of the New Zealand internet/business blogosphere, including a couple …
Continue reading “The blog and twitter comments on Ferrit closing”
While it is very clear that Ferrit has failed as a business, I do not believe it is as clear that it should be closed down. The reasons for the business failure are usability, costs and strategy. All three can be worked on, and from the evidence, I don’t think any have been given a …
Ferrit’s failure has been tipped enough times in these pages – so to make it easy here are the main posts over the past 2 years. I believe that Ferrit failed for three main reasons: Very poor usability, with the site proving far too difficult to use, especially at launch. This turned away customers, and …
Mathew Sanders raises an interesting point is comments to the last post. It is very difficult to report poor driving in New Zealand. It seems it is also difficult to do so in Australia. In other countries there are a few non-governmental sites that are sites in this space: betterdrivingplease (UK, 18000 reports, activists, plate based) …
Continue reading “Want to start a business to reduce the road toll?”
(Apologies for the “all about me” post. This sort of thing helps to motivate me for the year.) Early last year I posted a plan for 2008 – daring to call it a manifesto. I’d just turned down some very good corporate career options and dared to invest more time into smaller opportunities. How did …
After seeing the empty shops in Fremantle yesterday I wondered whether it was just that everyone was at the cricket. So here I am today at the WACA, on, the final day of a poised South Africa vs Australia test. All in the interests of research of course. But this place is also strangely quiet, …
Lance Wiggs 