Last night i checked out the new Yo Sushi restaurant in Dublin. I love the Yo Sushi story, the entrepreneur behind and in general sushi – so i was looking forward to it and massively disappointed. In Ireland its run by the same group that run Abrekababra and alas, it has some of the flavourings of the 3.30am popular fast food joint.
It was a Total FAIL. We were pointed to our seats, nice ones in front of the sushi preparation area… that was it from our waitress. Seriously! not even offered a drink or Miso soup. At any one time there were less than 4 different types of food on the conveyor belt. Often the conveyor belt was almost completely empty and there wasn’t a free seat in the house. Realistically they could have done with double the staff.
The food preparation wasn’t what you’d expect from a sushi restaurant either. A machine made the rice squares which fell apart when the met with soya sauce. The only time we saw the food preparers with a knife was to open the cling film on the cooked prawn toppings. And if you wanted raw fish… the choices were slim.
The waitresses’ would complain to the sushi makers that customers wanted their orders / were annoyed there was no food on the conveyor belt and they would argue back that they would have to wait. Understandable but not what you want to see as a customer.
Granted its a new restaurant and hopefully they will get their act together, god knows Ireland needs a good sushi restaurant – I miss AYA in the early days when the chefs were really chefs.
The final nail in the coffin was us leaving, there were no deserts – which was the majority of plates when we started so we decided we’d go somewhere else for desert. I got near the front door and found a queue to pay – but no-one at the cash desk. The staff were busy seating new customers in our seats already but none were available to collect the money. One group who were walking out after 2 dishes just left cash under a stapler in frustration. Eventually a girl came over to the desk and apologized nicely, then went on to explain there would be no receipts as the till wasn’t working. I explained it was a work related trip and needed a receipt. Sorry was the reply. So i handed over the credit card, five minutes later i was told sorry our line isn’t working either. Again i explained that the very least i needed was a visa receipt. A blank smile. the customers in the queue who could pay cash jumped ahead and escaped the restaurant. “Sir, your just going to have to pay cash…”
Massive FAIL on the management part in YoSushi, Major FAIL.
An independently organized TED event is being planned to take place in Dublin. With the Announcement taking place on face book and sweaping Twitter by storm there is going to be massive excitement about this even.
TED is a concept of bring the smartest minds and speakers together to share their knowledge, in three categories Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED). With a mission of spreading Ideas’s they decided to share this knowledge and insight from the best the world has to offer, to everyone, free online. Anyone at any time can download and watch any of over 400 presentations of world changing ideas.
Aaron Quigley Is one of the organizers for the Dublin Eveny. – A lecturer in UCD and with the support of the online community 100% behind him this is bound to be a success.
Speakers and venue are yet to be announced, Date is June 12th, but keep in touch with the newly formed TEDx Facebook page for more info as it gets released. Thanks to the Science Gallery for hosting the event.
Business seems to have turned on itself in the last year, big companies now face problems and small businesses are either sinking or swimming. For those that are swimming, this time of uncertainty and cost cutting opens the door to clients that wouldn’t have considered them before.
Alan Keane Launched www.GuidedRelaxationMeditation.com an online download for stress reducing meditation and relaxation MP3 and CDs. A mixture between expensive therapy and Yoga, all done in the comfort or your own home – with ease and tranquility.
Realex did a 5 year deal to process payments for Virgin Atlantic. Awesome Irish company and Colm Lyon (CEO) is a great man to make it all happen.
Boards.ie are showing massive growth – I have to admit i find myself checking it more often there as the conversation gets more interesting.
Mike Hogan on Dublins 98 has become a sleuth detective and reporting new that really matters – are clown shoes really dangerous? I’d rather hear that then another nut job saying property will rally soon!
The guys in Entertainment Direct seem to be going from strength to strength – and growing fast with referrals and just doing a great job all the time.
www.TheBikiniShop.ie is going from Strength to Strength with some big news in the pipeline. Not far off meeting our goal of becoming Irelands biggest niche bikini store by the end of the year.
Ebookers gave us an amazing deal on Flights to LA! 50 quid plus taxes (337 in total) – Nice. Anyone who wants to meet up August 19 in LA drop me a mail.
Reflecting on the last ten years one has to ask toward the end of the boom did companies engage too heavy in competition and as a result did growth / innovation suffer?
Rather than businesses opening in regions where competition was low for example, the tendency it would seem was for Aldi in the supermarket industry, for example, as close open a store as close as possible to Lidl. As this practice became more apparent natural defensive strategies such as buying up other prime real estate to circumvent competition moving in also became the norm. Companies got so bogged down in innovation to keep existing customers rather than focus that same effort to grow a market differential.
With this fundamental shift in economics, the new focus it could be argued, now needs to be on niching and craving out new market sections that as a business you can become the market leader in rather than fighting to keep market share in diminishing markets.
Innovation and doing one thing amazingly instead of everything being just being the same as competitors and frankly average is no longer an option to do business. Is manager ego and sticking to proven strategies that worked in a business climate different to what we face today a sure-fire way to get washed away in the recession cleansing?
Eircom as a business are a joke. I’ve been waiting for about three weeks to hear if they can provide a 7mb broadband connection. Oh and the’re charging me while i wait!!!! There still looking into whether their lines are capable of carrying such speeds in the area or for that matter broadband at all. From what i heard its very unlikely they could deliver cause anyone i know with 7mb connections rarely gets consistent 7mbspeed tests, but in a fair portion of the country they have a monopoly still so its their way or become very patient with a 3g dongel.
Like most tech people i would imagine, i never use a home phone (simply my contacts are in my mobile) so getting shafted for a 31.33 a month phone line is just an extra cost to get broadband. But what really pisses me off is that for them to sit on the arse for 4 weeks to check if they can even provide a broadband service they insist on charging you for the “service” that they can’t yet and don’t know if they will ever be able to provide!
Its a disgrace. Minister Eamon Ryan’s Broadband Promises and national broadband scheme are laughable.
If the gov want to get the economy stimulated, they need to get their act together. The future is very much online and tech exports, companies like mine bring in much needed fund the exchequer by exporting through online businesses or even simply businesses that need email to make job creation happen. Forget fancy stimulus packages and bailing out slothful companies, get back to basics and lets give people the basic tools that people need to function in today’s environment.
********Update 11th May 2009******************
After a months “subscription” they finally tested the line, due to a line being down for several months (which they informed me of when first running the cables to the house) and not being fixed they Eircom cannot provide ANY BROADBAND service. I’m starting to question if they really needed a month to test the line or if that was a revenue generating ploy???
With many businesses finding themselves forced to cut costs, the smarter ones are turning to new and innovative ways of getting their message out their. Guerilla Marketing is a low cost high impact form of marketing which regretfully Ireland has never truely taken on board, but i can see in the current times it becoming more prevalient.
Found on Trend Hunter, here are my two favourite Guerilla Marketing camapigns:
Best Ever Anti Smoking AD
Raising Awareness
At the moment i’m working on a killer Guerilla marketing campaign, hopefully as effective as the above ones but for a large commercial entity. Actually to be honest, were building the campaign and later we’ll choose the client, i have a few in mind. The more i get into the mind set of a Guerilla the more i begin to think – is traditional marketing dead?
Saw this video on Karina’s 121BizNet blog. Harvard business offer free insights on their blogs and TV networks that allow dedicated business people to keep up to date with the latest trends in markets – which i’ve always found to be amazing help when your stuck on certain topics. You don’t need a degree anymore to understand and take advantage of best market practice. In fact it could be argued that in a recession people with degrees stand, on occasion, a slight dis-advantage as high paid jobs become scarce and companies fear employing someone with high qualifications at a lower wage will lead to them leaving as soon as the economy starts to recover. I personally know a few people who are omitting their masters qualifications on their CV to help seek employment, but i digress, watch the Vid if you have a spare few mins.
It got me thinking about how people who are not massively income effective are buying into the recession simply due to consumer sentiment and in turn how to refocus strategic marketing to facilitate the mindset of the consumer, hence growing your market over all and thus market share, even in the bad times.
One questions wanna be entrepreneurs always ask is “how do i identify the perfect product” to start a business around.
If you’ve decided to make the leap and start a business, but have yet to decide on the “perfect” idea, your about to find out there is no “perfect” idea’s just good ones – all of which need a lot of work to make them great.
But for those of you who are looking for idea’s here’s a few questions to get you started:
1. Can you solve a problem or even lessen the impact a problem causes? 2. What do you find really annoying, could you find a way to make it less annoying? 3. Is there a way you can save people time, effort or energy? 4. What are people doing successfully and making money from – and how can i improve it? I love this one, if your completely stuck for idea’s go travel to some wierd and wonderful places – i guarantee if you have your eyes open idea’s will fall into your lap. If you’ve never been outside Europe / America, get yourself a plane ticket – in the Medieval times travel was considered an education unto itself.
Another important part about finding the “perfect product” is that it has to be something you can get passionate about, without passion you’ll fall at the first hurdle. Just because its a good idea, doesnt mean its a good idea for you to take and run with.
Remeber the questions you ask yourself will steer the answers that you think up. Anything can be achieved if you put your mind to it and work hard enough. So when asking questions a key point is to state them in the positive! This is a key way to program your mind for success, if you ask yourself why can’t you do something it is programed to tell you why you can’t. If you ask yourself how can you it is programed to give you idea’s about how you can.
Often when i bounce idea’s off friends they say stupid things like – “sounds good but if it was such a great idea surely someone would have done this before!” (Although in the last few years people that know the businesses i own know better than to throw this one out). If you suffer from this see the below video, which i saw today and found totally inspiring.
Yesterday was the launch of Zartori’s latest venture, an online Bikini Store called TheBikiniShop.ie
The Bikini Shop
Its a project that i’ve been deeply engaged in from a strategic side and i’d consider it to be one of the most, if not the most efficient business models and plans drawn up to date.
For those of you who tend to follow entrepreneurs only after their one proven successful business you rarely get to see the most exciting aspects of start up which is the first few months where daily jumps of 100% or even 1,000% increases can be the norm. This is one to watch, i stake my reputation on it!
One big reasons start up businesses fail is because they are so busy trying to do everything that they don’t take the time to do anything really well. Customers, suppliers and stake holders all have their own interests to focus on. Sometime entrepreneur’s spend so much time trying to make everyone happy they forget that the reason they started the journey was because they had an end in mind. If what your currently focusing on isn’t helping get you to your goal then just say no!
Just Say No!
Business owners should regularly look at the customers that they spend the most time appeasing and work out the cost of doing so – often you’ll find that they customer who takes so much of your time is in reality not the profit center you think. Sometimes it’s better to take a Jack Welsh approach, fire your bottom 10% – it forces continued growth! Now i wouldn’t be as full on a Mr. Welsh, but the theory stands to offer some insight! Don’t be afraid to fire customers, or suppliers for that matter, that are counter productive to you meeting your goals.
