I haven’t touched this blog in awhile, and now that Friendster has a new blog format, thought I should give this a try.
Last time I wrote anything, it was to trash the GAP. Now that the GAP has improved its image and quality and style of its clothing lines, and that Pressler and his cronies are out, there really hasn’t been anything that caught my attention…until now. For those of you living inside a reality black hole that is Silicon Valley, there’s a crisis going on around us. In a matter of days, two iconic American brands went into the abyss of history. Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, once the Titanics of the financial world, sank just as fast as the fated ship. And the iceberg? Consumer Idiocy, not Wall Street greed. OK. I said it, and some of you liberal consumers rights advocates will probably want to hang me for saying it. But come on. You, like the guy selling you his house, will eventually want to find the next sucker to dump your house on — for a profit. What your broker calls “trading up”. Only problem is, the music stopped and all the chairs were broken and you realized that you were that sucker. Capitalism at its finest.
Let’s get on with life. You make a gamble, and you lose. Take it like a pro. Stop whining. Stop asking the casinos for your money back. Stop your sense of entitlement. There was never an American dream of home ownership. Really, there isn’t. What you pay as a mortgage is just very expensive premium on your eviction insurance, until you can’t pay that premium anymore and your landlord the bank evicts you. Home ownership, indeed. 30-years of indebtedness and servitude is hardly owning anything, except the debt.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/04/11/national/a212252D92.DTL
Kurt Vonnegut, one of my most admired satirist of the 20th century, died today. He was 84. I am sad. Deeply sad. If any generation needs him more, it would be ours. Truly a great lost.
Ah, so after Mr. Pressler got the boot, I brought myself back into the Gap to see how things are going. I went to the flagship store in downtown SF, and almost didn’t recognized the place. For one thing, the 2nd floor is gone, closed off, no more, a casualty of cost cutting. However, I did noticed that the clothes have a fresher look: khakis, t-shirts and shirts, and my all time favorite: 1969 series jeans! Yay! they brought it back. And the new line is called Simple and Clean, which is exactly what the new Gap clothes look like. And, to top it off, this new line doesn’t look like those in the past when Gap was just a cheaper version of BR. They actually look like someone gave it some thoughts and designed them specifically for The Gap. Looks like there is potential yet for a comeback. Finally, there may be reasons for me to shop at The Gap again, which I did. I spent $7.99 on a t-shirt (peanuts, you say? cheap, you say? well, that’s $7.99 of my money that Mr. Pressler would never have gotten from me two months ago!). It’s a small step, but a step nonetheless.
Finally, I got myself a Wii. Well, actually, Jenny suckered her 21 year old cousin to stake it out in front of Target’s at 4AM in the rain to get me one. More power to Alan!
I’m sure by now, most of you have heard how fun it is. You won’t really get how fun it is until you tried it. I’ve been consumed by it over the last few nights, playing the WiiSports game that came with the console — mainly the tennis matches, but some boxing and bowling. One of the cool features that Nintendo did (kudos to them) was that they let you create an avatar of yourself that you can use across the various sports games. I’m not sure if that will be portable across other games, but perhaps someone can comment on that. So I created my own avatar, and he is awesome — tall, dark, lean, with lots of hairs. Basically, everything that I’m not, but, that’s the point of avatars, right? Masked digital identity that is anything but real. That’s why everyone in Second Life looks so good, or appears cooler than the real world. I digressed…
Between the PS3, the XBox 360 and the Wii, I think I’ve picked the right next generation console. Imagine not gaining weight playing video games. Every fat kids’ wet dreams, right? Nintendo did it right this time. Even Jenny’s participating. Well, not sure if that’s a good thing, since she’s already taken over my Gundam domain!
Gap Dumps CEO After Poor Holiday Season
Man, I was oversea when this news broke, else I’d blog instantly about this. So, finally, after many, many, many months of broken promises, even the clueless Gap board finally realized that Pressler is as clueless as they are. Well, actually, he walked away with $14MM severance, so I think he still has one up over them. Let’s see what will happen to the Gap in the next few quarters. I’m actually tempted to buy some shares at this point, NOT. Let’s see how the next few quarters will look like.
If anyone out there is familiar with this sales gimmick called "Friends and Family Day", I got another good story about The Gap and it’s incredibly stupid policies and customer services. So, I received an email from a friend after Thanksgiving for all the great F&F sales that’s going on. Natuarlly, I printed one of these out, and went shopping over the weekend. At the retarded Banana Republic, we selected a few items and stood in line. Ahead of us, another lady had literally two armful of clothes that she intended to buy as gifts. During checkout, she handed over a printed copy of the Friends and Family Discounted Card that she received via eMail. The lady who rung up the purchases said that she cannot accept a printed copy and that she must have the original card. I didn’t hear much of the conversation that went on afterward, but I think the lady had mentioned that it was forwarded to her via eMail by a friend who works for The Gap. Sorry ma’am, not accepted. Now, this lady was extremely nice and obviously patient, but she forgone 1/2 of her purchases and only buy one or two items after that.
Now, I know there’s a policy in place for the F&F card, but if you truly want this to be an exclusive event, perhapes you should close the doors and have a special sales event for invited shoppers only??? That way, you don’t make your customers feel like total retards or common thieves, and you don’t make yourself look like a total arsh! But, what do I know, right? Mr. Prissler is DA MAN who knows it all. So, by sticky it to this nice lady, they ended up losing probably $300 bucks in sales. And as for myself, I dropped the two items I was about to buy, so another $200 bucks in sales lost to The Gap because I can’t use the printed card. So, within 5 minutes of each other, The Gap lost $500 bucks in sales. Multiply that by the hours and the number of stores they have across the country. I wonder why Gap sales figures look so aweful each quarter.
The other night, my wife and I did a little shopping at Banana Republic, the supposed high end brand of The Gap. At the time we were paying for the gifts, the girl behind the counter was kind enough to let us know that they ran out of gift boxes, but to advise us to come back a little later, as they are bringing more from storage. So, I did, while my wife went to meet with a few of our friends at the food court. I approached the counter, but another guy told me that I cannot get any boxes without a receipt. OK. MInd you, I have the shopping bag with me, but since my wife paid for the gifts, she had the receipt. I told the guy behind the counter, "but these are your clothes. I still need to get a receipt to get the boxes?". For which he replied, "yes.".
Annoyed, but completely understandable, I called my wife who came over with the receipt. The guy went down the receipt, and checking it twice, and handed me exactly three boxes for the three items I bought, which was fine. But check this out. No tissue paper. So I asked the guy, "can I have some tissue papers?". And to this he replies, and his exact words:
"We are not allowed to give out tissue papers!"
What???!!!! I was dumbstrucked, and it took me about 3 seconds to recover. Did I hear you right? You are not running out of tissue papers, but rather, you are NOT ALLOWED to hand out tissue paper? Sensing my annoyance, he looked into my bag, and said that he already gave me a tissue paper. I was like, you are kidding, right? That’s one tissue paper that you wrapped my purchase with, and you expect me to reuse it to wrap 3 SEPARATE GIFTS????!!!! I was beyond annoyed then. I was pissed!
Thank you, Mr. Prissler, for turning a once-great American brand into a piece of shit, just like you are. Imagine the ego that these guys still have despite a year over year dip in sales and a stock price that is pathetically PATHETIC. Keep on at it, Prissler, so that you can accomplish another Great American killing, just like you did with Mickey and Crew.
Anyone’s else also think that this Lebanon conflict is another Bush conspiracy so that we don’t have to withdraw troops from the Middle East? I mean, right after we announced that we would withdraw our troops from Iraq, Isreal decides to attack Lebanon over the kidnapping of two troops. I don’t know the specifics, but it smells fishy. And when Bush and something fishy happen, well, it’s fishy.
Has anyone seen the price of gasoline lately? It crept up 25% since Christmas, or 50 cents per gallon! How come there’s no public outcry? Where is the Congressional inquiries? What’s the difference now and just a month ago? The answer is simple, Christmas has come and gone and New Orleans is no longer in people’s mind. That’s how much our nation’s attention span is on current issues — one month!. Anyway, tell me if my conspiracy theory wrong:
The Retail Guy went to the Gas Guy and said, "dude, your gas price is gonna bankrupt us during the holiday seasons. high gas price, no one can ‘afford’ to buy anything. i’ll send my Lobby Guy to my Congressman, and we’ll make your life miserable. Do something about it".
The Gas Guy thought for awhile. "hmmm. that’s not a bad idea. let’s cut gas prices for now. we’ll justify it by saying there’s less demand for gas because of the holidays. we’ll get the public off our backs."
Christmas came and went. Retail Guy saw that his sales were decent, so he called and thanked the Gas Guy, who in turn said, "cool, I’ll bring my prices back up again and we’ll say that people are back from vacation, so demand is back up now." For which he did, and sure enough, there were no public outcry this time, cuz we all bought our presents already, (albeit that most of which are on credit cards), and had a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.