Googling ‘Jew’

Search for “Jew” on google, and you’ll get a link to this: google.com/explanation

It seems that ‘Jew’ is used by people prejudiced against Jewish people, and Jewish people themselves refer to “Judaism”, “Jewish” or “Jewish People”.

What’s nice is that Google has not played with their algorithm to artificially manipulate the results, but simply pointed out to everyone that they are not happy with them either. Thus they remain honest to their technology ethics of a level playing field as well as their own ethics.

Apple iPhone

I’ve tried not to blog abut it, but it is puzzling to see the stock price of AAPL drop slightly when the prices were announced. There were essentially no surprises there, and the and the fan boy population will make sure these things fly out the door. The next question is just how good they are..

Air NZ gets it

The transformation of Air NZ to Jet Blue continues… they are putting video screens in the back of every trans Tasman seat. (I’d ignore the analyst comments in the article- this is about future profitability, and demnstrates nthing about current profits on the route.)

now let’s put those seats further away from each other (rather than closer) and change them to refreshing, comfortable and hygenic leather….

oh – and Qantas sold out, and the AirNZ lounges are getting an upgrade. So perhaps this is the first  sign of something we have not seen for a while – competition.

BurgerFuel: value or not?

Mark Clare just says No! to the BurgerFuel prospectus. A valuation that implies BF will grow from opening 20 stores from 1997 to now, to 700 in five years is something that he just can’t accept as realistic. I agree – even Subway, the world’s biggest franchise, only has 1200 stores in Australia and NZ, while more realistically Burger King has 380.

Meanwhile much lauded Gourmet Burger Kitchen went from 6 to just 31 stores in the period between it’s purchase for 10m pounds in Nov 2004 and May 2007.

Nandos – yummy chicken but a terrible Wellington store – listed with a valuation of 192m Rand, which is, well, just $34m NZD at current rates.  That’s $34m for a 700 store franchise, including stores in 5 continents. That’s just shy of $50,000 per Nandos store, versus $3,000,000 per Burger Fuel store. (I hope I got that right – but this information came from the BF prospectus, page 52. I cannot find their reference on the nandos.com site, and the referenced article is vague on whether the 192m shares are all or just some of the total.)

Another comparable is Chipotle, which has a soaring valuation of $2.5bn on $872m revenue and 600 stores. Thats $4m per store, but from a company that McDonalds acquired in 1998 and just flipped to the market this year. And the revenue per Chipolte store is $1.5m per year, versus $1m for Burger Fuel.

The terms are similar to Xero’s – 15m shares on offer at $1, at a total valuation of $60m.  There are also 3m options up for grabs in a 1 option per 5 shares deal – exercisable for $1 over the next 18 months. That will keep the price at or below $1 for a while. One nice touch is the 1m shares that will be gifted to employees and directors. Another is that you can give your share application to a BurgerFuel store, and do it all online or by credit card.

They do have revenues – system revenues of of $16m per year, and BF revenues of just over $3m for CY2006. However BF do not expect to make a profit for ‘the next few years’, and lost $420k last year.

They’ll use the funds to build company stores  in Australia, at $3-500,000 per store. That’s a strange decision given that franchising gives so much more bang for the buck. Why not pass the development risk to franchisees? They say they’ll try…

Overall I’m dismayed by the paucity of information provided for this and the Xero IPO, and will not invest. Despite what seem to be uninspiring requirements for disclosure from NZX, the onus is on these companies to demonstrate their value in potential investors. That means forward projections, robust analysis and discussion of their basis, and how they hope to get there.

How on earth can you put this disclosure on your prospectus and expect reasonable investors to invest? Why is this even allowed?

“… the issuer believes that it is unable to prepare meaningful projections of future returns and has elected not to provide projections of future returns. “

Average NZ card transaction size

The average electronic debit & credit card transaction size in NZ is $4.6bn/80m = $57.

From memory that average transaction size seems really high – I recall figures of closer to $30 from US and historical NZ experiences. <update – seems I’m wrong – this presentation is showing much higher numbers for the USA – $70 for credit and $36.5 for debit, or about $54 average>

The Stats.govt press release states that 56% of the value of transactions in the last year were by debit card, a number which has not changed in 5 years.

So how do I look versus the average?

The average for my American Express, used for travel (but not air-travel) is a paltry $34.74. That’s mainly cab rides.

The recent average for my Mastercard/Visa is $245.60, including flights and this computer

That mc/visa average drops to $79.86 excluding flights and this computer

But the combined average of both cards, excluding flights etc. is…. $60.

So I am average after all.

No point really – just interesting.

Are your customers retards?

Calling your customers retards on your Customer Relationship System is not great practice – it is just not professional, and symptomatic of poor training and processes.

Getting bits of your CRS published complete with “retard” comment – well that’s a public relations disaster – as it is for News Digitals Career One.

It also turns out that it is probably illegal, breaching privacy laws.

I do hope they have abandoned said system and turned to Salesforce.com.

Wellosphere Interconectedness

Brenda L (who this blog thinks, for some strange reason, is kiwgrll) has a great post on the interconnectedness of the Wellington blog community – the Wellosphere perhaps.

Let me tweak a few things. Rowan no longer works at Trade Me – he is at Xero, where Rod is the founder/CEO. I’m also gone from Trade Me where I was consulting and I’m now over in Perth (starting work today, but I was at Fairfax for a while before this). Rod does not work at but is on the Advisory Board of Trade Me.

You missed Don from Catalyst, who do the websites for Fairfax NZ and who met Che at Webstock Mini the other day (I was there when they met), not un-coincidentally which was organised primarily by Natasha (no blog) who works at Trade Me. Adam (blog down) and Liv are also at Trade Me, Siggy from SilverStripe is another Webstock organiser and Chris and Annie haunt Trade Me’s technical regions.

Let’s not forget Godfather Mauricio, who along with Juha attracts more traffic than everyone else combined and multiplied by 1000.

There are also a ton of other blogs out there in ad out of the business Wellosphere. What is cool to me is that many are very new, and the sphere is growing fast. Keep it coming I say.

New News Blogs

I notice the West Australian just launched blogs on Friday the 22nd of June.

Coincidentally so did we at Stuff. On The House is the first blog, and it is written by Colin Espiner, the political editor of The Press. His first post is a fun read of how things really work in the House.

The Stuff blog is powered by WordPress, and On the House is the first of many. Kudos to everyone involved for getting this going – you know who you are.
The West’s blog is also the first of many, and they’ll in addition be picking 2 articles each day and placing them in the blog  platform to get reader comments. That’s a good idea.

GMI’s Kiwisaver site is improved

I noticed while looking for calculators for the previous post that Gareth Morgan’s Kiwisaver.com now has a giant “How Do I join” link on the front page. That’s a great call to action, and a big improvement on earlier.

But sadly we still need to print off a completed application form and post it in. As a completely and utterly disorganised person who does not own a printer, loses bits of paper and cannot find a post office child of the internet I’ll struggle with this.

I suspect there are legalities involved, but can we make the application process fully online and completable in one session? If it is a Government requirement to have bits of paper (think of the inefficiencies) then why are they of all people not making it simple and easy for us to sign up for this new Kiwisaver thing?

smartkiwisaver not so smart

Good: creating a website that compares Kiwisaver options

Great: Getting coverage in the SST for your website

Not so great: being not “available to the public” when the article is published

Down right silly: charging $30 for the privilege of looking at your site, when you can get the information for free elsewhere, and when someone else can do what you are doing pretty easily and support it by advertising. But there may be enough fools out there.

Is Perth cool or not?

So everybody who I’ve talked to has raved about Perth, what a great place it is, the wonderful climate, fantastic people and so on. All that seems true.

But why didn’t anybody explain to me that Perth is closed from Saturday at 1230 until Monday morning? That late night shopping or 24 hour supermarkets don’t exist?  That ‘bagel’ means ‘inedible doughy monstrosity?

If just one motorcycle shop had been open today they would have sold me a motorbike. Heck – if a car-yard had been open then I would probably have bought a car instead. But sadly no. So rather than try to run back there on Wednesday night before 7pm (late late shopping night), or cope with the crowds on a Saturday morning, I’ll probably just look online and buy second hand.

Oh and yes – I’ve shifted to Perth for a few months.

More on Ferrit Quality

A little birdie sent me through the rest of the article (along with some rather serious complaining from a couple folk about the inadequacy of theline)

Some choice quotes

“Brayham believes the success of TradeMe will rub off on Ferrit. “TradeMe is probably one of the best training grounds for Ferrit,” he says. “

eCommerce should be lower barrier to entry than Auctions. With eCommerce we have to trust a retailer and a brand of product – both of whom we probably already trust. With auctions we have to trust somebody we don’t know selling something we have not seen.

Brayham… “says the company spends one third of its budget on IT and software development, one third on marketing and the other third on business operations.”

That is staggering, given the size of their marketing budget. This is a huge budget operation.

“After one and a half years in the market, Ferrit has 80 per cent brand recognition,”

and just what do those 80% think and feel about the brand? Can you publish that?

“The “shock price” factor is also integral to Ferrit. Recently, Ferrit sold 1000 iPod nanos in two weeks. Brayham says this was due to the fact they offered the product for $20 less than the rest of the market.”

That’s a $20,000 campaign (plus packaging), which is about the same as one or two weeks on the homepage  of a major site, or a tiny slice of a TV campaign. That’s good use of money as it drove people to the site and through a transaction. Given the lousy launch with no product, Ferrit is wise to use this as a promotions strategy. I’d stop the offline marketing campaigns entirely though, and focus on online spend and discounts.

“This “shock price” factor has proven its worth, with 280,000 unique browsers recorded last month, compared to Christmas levels of 250,000″

Well – that’s nothing to brag about really. I’d be more interested in tracking the number of transactions per week over time – the campaign post campaign analysis should be looking in particular at the retention rate of the folk that chased the bargains.

psst – Want to earn over $100,000 per year?

We can influence our income level through a variety of means. Let’s look at the ones tracked by the Census of 2006 – thanks to no right turn for pointing it out. (No Right Turn is coincidentally the first website that comes up when I press the ‘NZ’ button on Safari, so I read him every day)

First – be male*. 5.4% of males earn over $100,000 per year, compared with just 1.4% of females.

Second – be 45-50 years old, or at least in the age-range 40-60. 6.4% of 45-49 year olds earn over $100,000, and at least 5.7% do so in the wider 40-60 range. Pity those 25-29’s (0.9%) and 30-34’s (3.1%).

stats.govt.nz

The double-whammy is that 10.2% of 45-49 year old males and over 8% of all males 35-60 earn over $100,000.

Third – consider yourself a ‘New Zealander’, or at least ‘European’. 3.98% of ‘Europeans’ and 5% of ‘New Zealanders earn over $100,000.

Next – have a Doctorate, or at least a Masters degree. Now we are starting to really improve the odds – 26.2% of those having a doctorate, and 14.3% of those with masters earn over $100,000. If you are male, then that’s 31.1% of Doctorates and 21.24% of Masters degree holders.

You’ll also want to live in the Wellington region, and in particular – in Wellington city. 5.23% of those in Wellington region, and 7.9% of those in Wellington city earn over $100,000 per year.

stats.govt.nz

That 5.23% for Wellington region rises to 28.2% if you also have a Doctorate – but if you do, you’ll probably want to consider living in Southland, where 42.4% of everybody with a Doctorate earn over $100,000.

stats.govt.nz

Oh – but watch out. You see having a Doctorate and living in Southland is no guarantee that you’ll end up with the loot. Consider these Doctorate holders who are living in the top regions, yet earning under $20,000 per annum. Note that you are equally likely to be earning over $100,000 or under $20,000 if you live on the West Coast.

But I’m impressed with the idea of a Doctorate in Gisborne – second highest chance of earning over $100,000, and 0% chance of earning under $20,000. Sign me up! Let me join the other, err, 21 (a number disguised by Statistics NZ) people in that category.

stats.govt.nz

So I live in Wellington – region and city, am male 40-44 (begads!), and have a foreign masters degree – a combination which would make it unlikely for me not to be earning 0ver $100,000. Statistically.

*Caution – use of statistics may offend.

Keepmore – a Xero lookalike targets eBay sellers

Keepmore is a US product in the same space as Xero – simplified accounting through the web. ‘Accounting for the rest of us’ is their slogan, and they offer a package so that you “don’t need to know accounting, where to find deductions or keep up with tax laws”.
Their costs are a lot more reasonable than Xero’s at $19.95 a month, or $199 for 12 months. (To me Xero’s prices are sky high, and they would do well to drop them down and increase the rate of customer acquisition.) Keepmore offer several add-on features at a fee, including tax services – a nice way to get some price discrimination.

Another cool thing KeepMore is doing is automatic import of eBay transactions. I’ll leave it to the reader to assess the chances of that happening between Xero and Trade Me.

Keepmore’s usability is ok – the application does not use much of my screen, the UI is not super slick and – well I imagine the Xero’s star studded team will do a lot better.

Auctionbytes has more