Opinion/Analysis

I slept with Yoshi Shimano. Airline computers, those prankster accomplices of fate, had assigned us adjoining seats in the sold-out business class of an Alitalia red-eye going from L.A. to Milan. It was more togetherness than either one of us would have preferred, but we made the best of it.

Birthdays are dangerous for impulse buyers. My most recent one found me shivering in the alcove entryway at Elliott Bay Bicycles in downtown Seattle, waiting for them to open. A bitter February wind was blowing in off the Sound. An empty sixteen ounce malt liquor can rattled around at my feet. When Bob Freeman rode up on his classic Schwinn Paramount to open the store, he seemed surprised to see me huddled there by the front door. “It’s not mine,” I said when he glanced down at the empty can. “I haven’t had a drink in over a year,” I continued, sounding exactly like the kind of righteous jerk I was afraid of becoming when I quit. “Stumbling around in a hopeless fog of sobriety is no picnic,” I added, hoping to lighten the mood, as he unlocked the door.

In its own independent and disorderly way, Berkeley is a great bike town.

I’ve heard it said that no two snowflakes that land on planet Earth are alike. There’s also a theory that if one atom in the universe were to occupy the same space/time the whole cosmos would implode.  The same goes for your retail store, which is your brand! It’s what the alien nation calls DFD or ‘Death From Duplication’ for those of us that are acronym challenged.

Can You Turn Less Into More? 

Share your thoughts and memories of Russ Okawa in our comments section down below.

After two years, the final post in the series. (And about time, too.)

How bike companies profit by sponsoring zillion-dollar racing teams and advertising products that (almost) no one ever buys.

Today I sat with an anxiously ambitious CU student who interned for a client of mine.  A smart but obviously misguided youth, he asked me to be a mentor on his new web based product/services idea that took 2nd place in the business school competition. He’s chomping at the bit for some light speed online retail growth.