Category: Business

Black Lists Matter

Business, Marketing / Advertising

Boycotting things and businesses has traditionally been a tool of the Left — flood a TV show’s advertiser with calls, threatening to boycott the company’s products unless they stop supporting [Tucker Carlson], etc.

We on the conservative side have had a few ourselves — anyone remember the anger when gun writer Dave Petzal  Jim Zumbo (sorry, Dave)  said that nobody needed an AR-15?  or the boycott of Smith & Wesson when the hapless gunmaker made a deal with the Clinton junta?  We will not even speak of Dick’s Sporting Goods, etc.

I myself have a list of businesses and brands that I will never consider, mostly because of their anti-gun positions:

  • Levi Strauss
  • Leatherman
  • REI
  • Patagonia
  • Starbucks
  • California Pizza Kitchen
  • AARP
  • Dick’s
  • Ben & Jerry
  • Doordash
  • GrubHub
  • Hallmark
  • Jack In The Box
  • Domino’s, Pizza Hut and Walgreens (they fire employees who protect themselves with guns)
  • Sara Lee
  • Costco
  • Panera
  • Waffle House
  • Target
  • Whole Foods

There are some companies that I “semi-boycott”, e.g.:

  • CitiBank:  I have a Citi Visa because I get airline miles from using it — but I only use it to make firearms-related purchases.  And if they stop accepting custom from the places which sell me those products, I’ll pay it off and cut it up.  I sent their marketing department a letter to that effect a couple years back.
  • Target:  I buy two products (and only two) from Target, simply because it’s the only place in Plano that carries them.
  • Waffle House:  I used to go to Waffle House weekly.  Now I only go there when I’m on the road, absolutely starving and there’s nowhere else to go.  (Maybe twice in the past three years.)

Some of the companies are easy to boycott, because I dislike their products, period (e.g. Starbucks, whom I treat like a public toilet facility, but never buy anything from), or I prefer the alternative anyway (Swiss Army knives over Leatherman, etc.).

Also, while a number of companies have official “don’t bring your gun in here” policies, the local branches (especially in Texas) adopt a “you must be kidding” attitude instead.  (Our local Kroger hadn’t even heard about Kroger’s policy when I asked the manager about it, and he just said, “Don’t worry about it.  I’m not about to risk losing half my business because of Corporate.”)

Anyway, that’s my blacklist.  Feel free to add your own, in Comments.

Silver Linings, Gloomy Futures

Business, Men & Women

Not every business has been adversely affected by the Chinkvirus and Gummint lockdowns:

A businesswoman who sells sex dolls has revealed how her company has been thriving throughout the pandemic, and that she’s noticed an increase in sales each time a new lockdown restriction comes into place.
Jade Stanley, 36, from Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, launched her company Sex Doll Official in 2018, and sells and rents plastic sex companions, some of which can cost up to £8,000, to ‘lonely’ customers.
The mother-of-four explained that due to widespread isolation during the coronavirus crisis, she saw surges in sales every time there was a change in lockdown rules, insisting customers want ‘more than just a sex toy’.

However:

She also revealed that she’s noticed a much bigger demand for male and transgender sex dolls, and told there’s a ‘big market’ for couples who want to involve a ‘safe third party’ in the bedroom.

That might just be the thunder of horses’ hooves you’re hearing in the distance.

So just what does this little hotbed town of kinky sex look like?  Something like this:

…and further down the High Street:

However.

Alert Readers may have noticed in the above pic one of Kim’s Favoritest Places In Britishland:  Greggs, purveyors of  fine pies and finer sausage rolls.  Things are not so rosy there:

Since reopening on July 2, the Newcastle-based firm’s like-for-like sales averaged at 71.2 per cent of its levels from 2019 for the 12-week period to September 26.
Greggs was performing well before the crisis its shares hit a record high of 2,550p in January. But they closed yesterday at 1,219p, down 47 per cent in the year to date.

So to all my Brit Readers, I beseech you:  start Kim’s “Every Meal With Greggs©” program with immediate effect, and to hell with your waistlines.

Your sex dolls won’t complain, I promise you.

Oh, Really?

Marketing / Advertising, Travels

At first, I thought this was good news:

Given the uncertainties of COVID-19, major airlines stopped charging penalties to change your ticket through the end of 2020. Now, United Airlines says it’s locking in the policy — it’ll be free to change in 2021 as well…

That sounds great, until you finish the sentence:

…as long as you didn’t book the low-price basic economy seats fare.

Which accounts for the vast majority of airline tickets sold.  But wait!  There’s more:

Apparently this wallet-gouging feature will not apply to international travel — which is the type of ticket most likely to be affected by borders closed off by the Chinkvirus for the foreseeable future.

Here’s the best part:

Since 2010, Chicago-based United has scooped up nearly $6.5 billion in change fees. Last year, it took in $625 million, third behind Delta and American, according to Transportation Department figures.

I already have a built-in animus against United Airlines, for reasons too many and varied to tell;  so it will be a cold day in Hell when they drag me kicking and screaming onto one of their foul airliners.

Update:  And right on cue, from American Airlines in my inbox today:

Killing Golden Geese

Anarchist thugs, BaconLettuceMayo, Business, Gummint, Marxists

The late and great Margaret Thatcher had it right (as usual) when she said of Communists that sooner or later, they run out of other people’s money.  What’s happening in many of the neo-socialist hellholes like New York lately is that the “other” (i.e. wealthy) people aren’t necessarily running out of money, they’re running out of patience with the filthy nest their government has created, and are running away.

It’s snapshot simple. The wealthy and the companies they work for pay most of the taxes. The poor consume most of the taxes through social programs. COVID is driving the wealthy and their offices out of the city. No one will be left to pay for the poor, who are stuck here, and the city will collapse in the transition.

Of course, that would be bad enough, because even if the wealthy folks came back to their Upper East- or West Side domiciles once the Chinkvirus had subsided, NYFC could continue to fleece them in the manner to which everyone has become accustomed.  But if their toney little brownstone houses and chi-chi apartment buildings are surrounded by homeless, aggressive beggars and rioting assholes of the BLM / Pantifa persuasion, the millionaires and billionaires will say (and are saying) “The hell with this shit” and leave for more hospitable climes — and their companies will go along with them.

I have another post bubbling under about the death of the traditional office-work model, but that can wait for another time.

What’s really interesting, from a socio-political perspective, is how quickly this has happened.  It might have happened at some point or another anyway, as the Blue Model metropolises collapsed under the weight of their underfunded pension plans and failing social services and infrastructure — but the Chinkvirus has been the Catalyst Supreme for our little domestic Lenins and Maos.  What’s even more interesting is that, being economic illiterates, our socialist pols have looked to Europe, their favorite model, and said, “But France isn’t collapsing!”

Oh yes, it is.  The difference is that rich Frogs can’t exactly load up U-Hauls and move to — where?  Germany?  Belgium?  Britain?  It’s the same situation in those countries.  There are no prosperous and successful business-friendly, low tax states in Europe like Texas, Florida or Utah — they’re all soft socialist states;  and the Chinkvirus is having the same effect on their economies and traditional business models as it is in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.

So even in the best of times (booming Trump economy, no virus, no BLM / Pantifa riots), Illinois, California and New York — to name but three — would be sucking wind soon enough, and the writing has been on their walls for some time.  But in the current environment?  They’re screwed.

My only concern, as I’ve often said before, is that these fleeing rats don’t come to our happy little ships and infest them with their shitty ideas and political morality.

Exemplary

Business, Disaster

When I finally arrived in the U.S. following the Great Wetback Episode, I lived in northwest Austin with Longtime Buddy Trevor while waiting for my visa to be processed.  Having come from the supermarket business in Seffrica, I was keen to see just how good U.S. supermarkets were by comparison, so I went off to the local H.E.B. store just a couple hundred yards away from his apartment.  It was good, very good;  and I became a huge fan of the chain and its operation.  (Full disclosure:  I did once apply for a job at H.E.B., but I was turned down — not by HR, but by an exec VP who called me, complimented me on my resume, and semi-apologized for not hiring me because, as he said, I was not only over-qualified for a senior position there, but horribly over-qualified and they couldn’t fire someone just to take me on.  Classy move — executive to executive instead of fobbing it off onto some HR clerk — and it only increased my admiration for the chain.)

My only quibble with living here in metro North Texas is that there are no H.E.B. stores anywhere nearby (Central Market is owned by H.E.B., but it’s a different division altogether and caters mostly to upscale customers).  I don’t know why there aren’t — the common saying is that 50% of South Texas shopped at an H.E.B. last week — and as I see it, the only reason that it isn’t 50% of all Texas is that they don’t have any stores up here.

This article (found via the Knuckledragger, thankee Kenny) is just one reason why I respect their business and miss their stores.  If H.E.B. were to open one nearby, none of the others — Kroger, Tom Thumb, Market Street, Aldi or Wal-Mart — would ever see me again.

Come on, Steve;  get your South Texas asses up here.

Overvalued

Business, Travels

Back in the fall of 1982, I and Wife #1 came to the U.S. for the first time in my life — in fact, the first time I’d ever left the African sub-continent at all — and because I didn’t know diddly about New York City (our first stop), I booked us a room at the Hotel Edison just off 47st and Broadway because it was cheap.  I didn’t know, at the time, that the area was known as Hell’s Kitchen for a very good reason, but in those days I was tough and didn’t really give a damn — I was coming from fucking Johannesburg, how bad could New York be?  (Not bad at all by comparison, actually.)

Anyway, from memory, the room cost about $47+tax a night, and while it was awful, I’d stayed in much worse (errr South Africa, remember) and while we we assailed by Volkswagen-sized cockroaches a couple times, the hotel was close to most of what we wanted to see around Times Square, and was easy walking distance to Greenwich Village to the south and Central Park to the north.  Also, the delis on 8th Ave were fantastic — my first experience with a gut-busting NY-style pastrami sandwich was an eye-opener — and so we spent our days walking around the place, seeing the sights, eating deli food and holding our noses to block out the smells (garbage strike).

Anyway, years later (after the Great Wetback Episode of 1985) I had occasion to go from Chicago back to New York, this time on business, and as the Manhattan branch office was quite nearby, I booked into the Edison again, for nostalgia’s sake.

It was the same crappy hotel, same foul rooms, only this time the room cost $285+tax.  When I first saw the rate when I was booking the trip, I thought the hotel had to have undergone a huge refurbishment to justify that kind of price increase;  but of course it hadn’t:  it was just New York Fucking City.

Still later, I checked out the hotel again, just out of curiosity, and the rate was $385.  And from what I could gather, still no refurb of the place.

I should remind everyone that I have never shrunk from paying top dollar for a quality product, whether it was The Mayfair Hotel in London, the Madison in Paris, Imperial in Tokyo or wherever.  Five-star is five-star, and there ya go.  Paying five-star prices for total shit, however… nu-uh.  And from my experience, most Manhattan hotels were shit.  Even the “highbrow” ones like the Waldorf-Astoria or the Algonquin were overpriced flophouses, and their astronomical prices were justified either by the “cachet” attached to being in New York, NY [eyecross]  or else the high (overpriced) cost of the real estate.

So you can imagine my response when I saw this article via Insty:

During the second quarter ended June 30, average asking rents along 16 major retail corridors in Manhattan declined for the eleventh consecutive quarter, falling to $688 per square foot, according to a report from the commercial real estate services firm CBRE. The drop marked the first time since 2011 that prices dropped below $700, the firm said, representing an 11.3% decline from a year ago.
…
A number of retailers have outright stopped paying rent to their landlords during the pandemic, which in some instances is resulting in litigation.

Boo fucking hoo.  Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of supercilious chiselers and snooty price gougers.  And then there’s this, at the end of the article:

“I think there is a short-term and a long-term look at this,” NKF’s Roseman said. “Short-term, we are in survival mode right now. But when things do sort of turn back around, it will still be the same. There is only one Fifth Avenue in the world.”

If you look up “Wishful Thinking” in your dictionary, this sentiment will be under the heading.  (It probably links to “Dinosaur Perspectives” too, speaking as it does about L.A.’s Rodeo Drive and Chicago’s Michigan Avenue as being Places To See And Be Seen.  Dream on, Bubba:  we’re facing a new world.)

Anyway, I see that the Edison is “temporarily” closed because of the Chinkvirus — and from the looks of it, has had a refurb since I last checked — but one of the “business-class” hotels on Broadway, where I paid over $500 a night in 2007, is now asking $121.

No wonder they’re not paying the rent.