- The Remote Life OS Newsletter
- Posts
- The Connection Newsletter 70 - Greatest of all time. ALL TIME.
The Connection Newsletter 70 - Greatest of all time. ALL TIME.
The Connection Newsletter 70 - Greatest of all time. ALL TIME.
Hello!
This is edition #70 of
The Connection
, the weekly email I send family, friends, and future friends (hello!) Glad you're here.
One thing you might not know about me: weddings are my favorite. Went to my cousin’s wedding this weekend in Beacon, New York and had a terrific time.
No other updates, so let’s jump right into the articles :)
(Want less email? No problem, you can unsub at the bottom. We'll still be friends.)
Technology
When a friend recommended this article, I anticipated a frou-frou piece on mindfulness and calming breaths.
Jenny Ordell’s piece on doing nothing is not what I thought it was going to be. By doing nothing, she doesn’t mean meditation or being lazy, but simply getting back to what makes us human. She presents a nuanced and meaningful take on doing nothing.
My only critique (which she discusses as well) is that it takes a certain amount of privilege (her word, not mine) to embrace the idea of doing nothing:
“I can go to the rose garden, or stare into trees all day, because I have a teaching job that only requires me to be somewhere two days a week, not to mention a whole set of other privileges. Part of the reason my dad could take that time off was that on some level, he had enough reason to think he could get another job. It’s possible to understand the practice of doing nothing solely as a self-indulgent luxury, the equivalent of taking a mental health day if you’re lucky enough to work at a place that has those.”
The idea of doing nothing is nice, but in my opinion, it’s a luxury of those who grew up with a degree of self-entitlement. Doing nothing is not in the lexicon of those who grew up with an immigrant mindset.
I'm the first to admit I didn't understand the hype behind LaCroix at first. All of my SF friends were drinking the stuff by the case, and I thought it tasted like watered down juice. But at some point, I converted, and today, my fridge is stocked with a combination of Coconut and Cran Raspberry LaCroix, plus a few bottles of Starbucks Iced Coffee.
The question now is: Can LaCroix fend off its bigger competitors as players like Coca-Cola and Pepsi enter the fray?
“In late 2017, the biggest sparkling water brands began flooding the market with heavily discounted products. Retailers in turn asked for discounts on LaCroix and more in-store spending to continue prominently displaying the brand.
“Top managers at Whole Foods, a major LaCroix customer… implored the Caporellas to provide concessions to the retailer as a way to secure prominent positioning in the stores, according to three people familiar with the negotiations. In particular, the company wanted LaCroix to be more aggressive with matching discounts and promotions being offered by the new brands. When the company didn’t yield, Whole Foods eventually decided to reduce the number of prominent in-store LaCroix displays and replace them with its competitors’, according to people familiar with the decision.”
The bubble battle raises a good question: when do you shift from the tactics that got you to the dance (in LaCroix’s case, historically they refused to discount or cut sweetheart deals with their biggest vendors) and when do you hold fast to the playbook?
American newspapers have lost 238,000 jobs from 2001 to 2016. Recently, digital publishers haven’t fared better, cutting 3,000 jobs in the first five months of 2019.
In the last two years, sports news media company The Athletic has grown from 65 editorial staffers to over 400, covering 270 teams in the US and Canada.
What’s most impressive is how grassroots this whole venture was: the co-founders initially funded the company themselves. They focused on a specific niche, then pushed for a subscription model when most media companies were riding social media traffic. The co-founders spend hundreds of hours messaging potential hires on LinkedIn, and then encouraging journalists to focus on doing their best work, not writing to beat a deadline.
The question is whether The Athletic can make money. It has yet to turn a profit.
“Venture capital investors have poured more than $90 million into the site to date; in the most recent fundraising round, a $22 million investment the Founders Fund led in May, the company was valued at about $500 million, says a source familiar with the offering. (The Athletic declined to comment on its valuation.) The early numbers are impressive, but more than one person interviewed for this story made comparisons to the ill-fated National Sports Daily. The tabloid started in 1990 and spent $150 million to poach top writers before folding 18 months later.”
Profiles & Hollywood
Source: Seth Poppel/Yearbook Library
In a
, Ethan Hawke said of Nicholas Cage:
“He's the only actor since Marlon Brando that's actually done anything new with the art of acting. If I could erase his bottom half bad movies, and only keep his top half movies, he would blow everyone else out of the water. He's put a little too much water in his beer, but he is still one of the great actors of our time.”
What I admire most about Nicolas Cage is his work ethic: in the last three years he’s done 23 films. He’s appeared in 90 movies in his career, and talks about why he wants to make 150 movies in his lifetime.
“That’s me speaking to my golden-age heroes. Those guys all did like 150. I also want to argue with the concept of supply and demand. I grew up in the ’70s watching Rock Hudson on “McMillan & Wife,” Dennis Weaver in “McCloud,” Charles Bronson in the movie of the week, Peter Falk in “Columbo.” I began to develop a relationship with these characters and these actors. The more I saw them, the more I wanted to see them. And by design, with video on demand, I felt that if I made more movies, not only was it good for me financially, people would be able to tune in at home and go, “What’s the next movie that Nick made?” They’d have a large selection. So I’m not worried about too much supply and not enough demand. I’m just trying to get back to a feeling that I enjoyed as a child on my little Zenith television in the ’70s.”
Desperate Hollywood hopefuls are getting scammed by the Hollywood Con Queen - a man luring them to Indonesia with promises of their big break, then fleecing them for anywhere from $7,000 to $150,000.
“Kenny remembered how the con man would blame him for messing things up and making payment difficult, threatening to ruin his name. ‘I think she—he—uses that back-and-forth on people who are very hungry to succeed in this industry, which is very hard to get into, and you don’t want to have a bad reputation in an industry that is built off reputation.’”
Fashion
"Stadium Goods says it receives roughly 2,200 pairs of Kanye West’s Yeezy 350s every day. “That means Stadium Goods should receive 15,400 pairs of Yeezys a week, 61,600 a month, and 739,200 pairs a year. “Part of Stadium Goods’s pitch is that, unlike most companies operating in the secondary market, it holds stock in that warehouse, so it can send sneakers out immediately after a customer clicks purchase.”
This was a fun profile of Stan Smith, who partnered with Adidas for a tennis shoe in 1972 and created a piece of pop culture still riding strong today.
What’s particularly fascinating is the question: what's it take to build a product that sells organically, with little marketing, no secret drops, and no recognizable (in today’s celebrity landscape) behind it? (That’s not a criticism of Stan Smith, but how many people today could pick him out of a line-up compared to, say, Jordan or Kanye?)
“The Stan is the highest selling Adidas sneaker for a very good reason.” says Simon Wood, founder of the trainer publication Sneakerfreaker. “It’s the most classic/boring/basic sneaker design of all time as well. That’s no diss either. It takes a lot of humble smarts to be this simple and still look hot. “Every sneaker company would kill to have a shoe that just sells and sells and sells…“We have seen the Stan Smith become one of most consistent and best-selling footwear styles over the last six months or so.” says James Trivunovic, buyer at END Clothing. “This is all organic sales growth with no marketing or social media pushes.”
Thanks for reading!
Last thing: Is there anything I can help you with?
If there's any way I can help out, please let me know. Or if we just haven't chatted in a while, I'd love to hear from you. Just reply directly to this email.
Reply