Starting out in Internet marketing is very much like taking drugs. The only difference is that marketing can be far less rewarding and dangerous for your health, and tends to cost an aweful lot more.
"I figured that for $125 a week we could do everything we wanted to do,' she says. "I liked the stimulation of work, and I wasn't prepared to do only child care. I chose the mail-order business simply because it was the only thing I could think of that would allow me to work at home and be with my children.Tired of those pesky notepads that bulk up your briefcase? Buy a personalized black leather jotter, "fine executive gift,' $8.98. Have paperbacks coming out of your ears? Try the handy book rack that hangs on a door, $7.98. A Lucite rack organizes your food processor blades and discs, $19.98. The triple magnifying mirror helps myopes put on makeup, $12.98."When we first were married, she took a clerical job,' says Hochberg. "She never showed any drive or ambition. Never before had she felt she had it in her to run a business.'Within six weeks of the first ad, Katz was at her kitchen table sorting through $16,000 worth of orders. That first taste of success brought out a driven side to her personality that no one expected to see.There are two important pieces of software every Internet marketer needs on his or her computer.The daughter of a Jewish industrialist, she was born Lillian Menasche in Leipzig, Germany, in 1927. Her family fled to Holland in the mid-1930s, then to Manhattan in 1937--presumably to keep her brother from fighting in a war that was clearly on the way. "As far as I know, we had no inkling that we were all in danger,' she says. "I just thought we were protecting Fred. He died anyway --fighting on the American side.'Copyright 2006 Richard AdamsThat's all very well, but the big question is what Sun does next. How does it get from engineers' and bond traders' desks to Middle America's desks? The answer is not by selling through Businessland. (That would have been nice, but with luck Sun will be able to win better, non-exclusive terms from other retailers when its products become better established in the mass market.) Unlike NeXT, Sun already has distribution into the commercial world, through 600 direct salespeople and 150-plus VARs of varying capabilities. Like IBM when it first started selling the PC (but in a much-changed marketplace), Sun will sell the SPARCstation to the top of the market, targeting high-salaried users in companies with large computer budgets. The good news is that this is no longer virgin territory, where the concept of computers must be sold; however, the concepts of UNIX and workstations and power must still be sold.Katz's buying style is quick and decisive, both in terms of quality and price. "We are tough negotiators,' she says. "We either go away with the money in our pockets, or the manufacturer goes away with it in his pocket. I might as well go away with it in mine. But the product is most important. If I see what I want, I just go for it. I want it, I buy it; I don't give up until I have it. It's good for the company.'Then there are the frothier items, aimed more squarely at gift-givers: stained glass windows, baskets, umbrellas with duck-head handles, even red and green Italian toothbrushes with a Christmas tree motif. And there are monogrammed gifts. You can celebrate a couple's first Christmas with a tree ornament with their name engraved on the attached plaque. Door knockers, lint brushes, contact lens cases, pencils and terry cloth bathrobes can all be monogrammed.Katz's relatively modest motivation of supplementing her husband's income did not foreshadow how those early years would affect the rest of her life.While Sun is pulling out all the stops on its hardware and scaring off competition with user-friendly pricing, NeXT is taking the high road, selling through a single chain (for now) that has committed to support the product. Sun is attempting to create an infrastructure to support its product that may include third parties, clones, customers and the entire UNIX community, while NeXT wants to build a tighter, more controllable edifice with support only from IBM (if that company can get its act together). For NeXT, Businessland is a big win; it has no other way of reaching commercial customers. By contrast, it's a small loss for Sun, and one for which we guess it didn't fight too hard, given Businessland's penchant for special terms.You'll be leaping and jumping around the house like a madman, whooping and yelling with excitement at having spent the last 3 months of your life and half your annual salary to finally get a commission of $1.22.Sun's stock in trade should be to provide access to all of these for mere mortals, as Apple did for single-user applications on the Macintosh. But while Apple could limit its attentions to its own proprietary environment, Sun's efforts, if they are to be meaningful at all, must provide seemingly transparent access to a variety of environments. In other words, Sun must atone for others' sins as well as for its own. Part of this effort will come from a broadening and simplification (for users) of the capabilities of Sun's RPC technology; see page 5.Just as a drug addict has his pipes, lighters, syringes and so on, so do Internet marketers have their accessories - most notably a computer.At the high end, Sun is not just trying to keep DEC out of the workstation market, but going after some of DEC's server business with the SPARCserver line. We suspect that anyone with enough imagination to leave DEC will probably want to take a look at NetFrame as well as the Sun line, but Sun's machine are available now.Like drugs, Internet marketing can be highly addictive and can start to comsume your life so much that you can start to forget to do other normal things - like washing, feeding the dog or picking up your credit card after you've bought groceries at the store.The Americanization of little Lillian did not take long. Soon she was devouring True Confessions magazine with her young friend, Hannah Mayer, who recently wrote her a letter: "I've been a Lillian Vernon customer since 1968. Could you be the Lili who went to Joan of Arc Junior High and lived on Amsterdam Avenue?' Her father also plunged into his new American life by making reconditioned zippers (zipper manufacturer Talon was busy outfitting the war). At war's end, he began making leather goods--first camera cases, then handbags and belts.Her first overseas excursion was to the Frankfurt trade show, where manufacturers from all over the world brought merchandise. It was her first trip to Germany since she left it as a child. "I broke out in a rash,' she says. "I don't harbor the same hatred toward Germans that some other people do. I now have many German suppliers. But I won't go back to Leipzig out of respect for my father.'The network is the computerSun is going aftr the world at large, venturing from a market it owns (albeit one it has fought for hard) into a new market where it's an interloper. Yes, Sun is taking a huge risk. But it would be a bigger risk to stay put.Neither involves burned thighs (except maybe friction burns if someone gets carried away at the seedy bar).
Copyright 2006 Richard Adams
Author: Richard Adams
No comments:
Post a Comment