The Power of Retail

Backgammon Masters is going Latino! Backgammon Masters has become the first company to focus on the Latin American market and has introduced online version of Perudo, an extremely popular dice game. The company has also introduced it’s other games such as poker and backgammon and with the increased activity has ended up opening a branch office in Central America. The company is understanding the global market and launching itself with the most popular games in that regions, so that it can maintain itself as the company with the largest community game network. It’s recent promotion with Jean-Claude the animated tiger has pulled in viewers and players from across the world.

Backgammom Masters is the only site that has an all-in-one game concept that all games can be played on the site, just by making a single download and from one game lobby. This is a really great feature and a definite advantage on all other game sites. Games range from backgammon, perudo, poker and blackjack will soon be added to the list. All games on BackgammomMasters are developed as multi-player games to promote a community feeling among players. The company owns and operates its own backgammon software, which has some great graphics and a realistic playing experience.

Another innovative product that is on the market is a personalized timepiece, something that a lot of people are already going crazy about since it launched on May 14th this year. Personalization has been a hot trend for a while but this one is would make a really fun and interesting Personal gift. IGotClocked.com puts photographs that customers have taken to become timepieces, a trend that is quite popular in Asia and Europe. How it works is that customers take pictures of themselves and send them to IGotClocked, who will make a real functioning clock with them, with hands rotating around the dial to relay the time. Once you send them your pics, they take 36 hours to create an animated GIF file so you can see what it will look like, and once approved it takes three weeks for your clock to arrive.

The retail scene in Dubai has always been quite vibrant and continues to be as such even today. Yesterday I visited the newly opened Dubai Mall, built by Emaar and billed to be the largest mall in the world. I was disappointed in many ways, but mostly because so many of the stores are yet to open and one can hear the sounds of construction everywhere. Outside the mall, towards the back where the fountain is to be eventually, its a maze of construction vehicles, pipes and so on.

As in all malls in Dubai, the main attraction is not its shops, but the extra stuff to pull the crowds. The older Mall of the Emirates has a ski slope, Ibn Batutta Mall has seven courts and is built along these themes, Wafi City is all about the glory of the Egyptian pyramids, an The Dubai Mall is vying to outdo all of them with its enormous aquarium, complete with sharks, sting rays and thousands of other fish, 33,000 other fish to be exact.

Nothing is small scale here, the aquarium window is the largest in the world and has already been included in the Guinness Book of World Records. There is also a 48mt long tunnel through the aquarium and a Discovery Center that covers three zones: Rainforest, Rocky shore and Living ocean. The Rainforest Cafe is located conveniently nearby, although it is yet to open.

If the aquarium doesn’t interest you, there is also an Olympic sized ice skating rink at the mall. Yes, yes this still is the desert, but who’s to know once you’re inside, right?

Of all the malls I have been to, this is definitely the most technology savvy. All of its internal maps of the malls are touch screen, so you can find the store you want to go to with ease. There are huge electronic boards that change color and move up and down to create an amazing look and feel. I don’t think I’ll be going to the mall much for shopping, but these extras are definitely interesting.

Ikea has always gone all out to make things comfortable and easy for their customers and it will be no different when it opens it’s new store in Brooklyn, where it will offer a free ferry service to the store. The ferry will be run by New York Water Taxi and will shuttle between lower Manhattan’s Pier 11 and the Ikea dock in the Red Hook neighborhood. According to Joseph Roth, this service will be available to everyone, and not just customers of the store. In the future, the company will be offering shuttles from the subway lines and expanding its bus routes to bring customers to its 346,000 sq ft store. The new store will be opening on June 18th, 2008.

As we get settled in our new home, we’ve been thinking of investing in an entirely new system for our computer. The ways of connecting earlier used to be quite basic, but as we progress in Internet connectivity, the way we work has also changed. Using something like the Cat6 would probably be a good option to streamline things and to make the system more efficient. The way that technology is progressing, it can be hard to keep up with things but one has to be able to attune them to one’s requirements. Since I work from home, I need to have a system that is flexible and use friendly and one that does not need much maintainance or upkeep.

After foreign shoppers it is the turn of foreign retailers who are rushing to New York City to take advantage of the weakened dollar. The dull Christmas season didn’t see many shoppers but foreign shoppers, especially Europeans have been coming to the US, specifically for shopping, which did give a much needed boost to retailers in the US. The trend has become so popular that some designers have raised the price of products in the US and are also limited the number of items they can purchase to try to control consumers buying products in bulk only to sell them or return them in Europe for higher prices. Foreign retailers are finding it quite lucrative to open stores in NYC in places such as the meatpacking district and SoHo, which are traditionally not visited by domestic tourists, who prefer to go to Times Square and so on. Real estate prices are lower in these neighborhoods and locals are more open to creative arts and new ventures, which is able to give new store owners a slight boost in marketing.

Iconic designer Isaac Mizrahi will be leaving Target to turn around the Liz Clairborne label, which has been struggling for several years. The designer has been at Target for five years and has created a very successful line of home and fashion products there, with his collection sales reaching $300 million each year. Isaac Mizrahi has been named as the creative director of the Liz Clairborne brand and Target was not willing to match the company’s offer to keep the designer for another term. Target itself has been seeing a slowdown in sales, with same store sales falling 5% in December 2007. Its CEO Robert J. Ulrich also announced his resignation at the end of the year.

Yahoo has made its first purchase under the new leadership of Jerry Yang, with its purchase of Rivals.com, a college sports website. The company is likely to be making changes in the way it operates with the departure of its CEO of six years, Terry Semel. With this new purchase, Yahoo will be competing directly with News Corp.’s Scout.com which is a similar site to Rivals.com, as they both deal with sports fans who are looking for specific details on college sports.

Hilton Hotels announced that the company had formed a strategic partnership with Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton(LVMH) brands Acqua di Parma, Guerlain and Spa Chakra for an exclusive spa service and boutique products. This agreement will have an impact on Waldorf-Astoria Hotels, Conrad Hotels & Resorts and some of the other selected hotels across the world. According to Pamela Baxter, president and CEO of LVMH Perfumes and Cosmetics for North America, “The goal of our alliance with luxury hotel spas is to match up the right LVMH brand with the right luxury hotel or resort. The Guerlain Spa within The Waldorf-Astoria and Acqua di Parma at Conrad Hotels & Resorts are fine examples of this strategy.” Spa Chakra will be providing the design and operations consulting services to Hilton Hotels and will also operate leased spas in some locations, including those at the Waldorf-Astoria. Hilton Hotels will be investing around $200 million to develop 70 spas, which with its current 65 spas will give it a total of 135 spas by end 2009.

Did you know that even though there are over 1.3 people in China, there are just about 100 surnames that are used by 85% of the country.   According to a survey, there are 93 million people with the surname Wang, 92 million people with the surname Li, 88 million with the surname Zhang and several million by other top names on the list such as Chen, Zhou, Lin. In a different report, the Chinese Academy of Sciences estimated that there were 100,000 people in the country having the most popular name Wang Tao. The Ministry of public security is creating a new regulation that will allow citizens to combine their surnames for children, which will create 1.28 million new options.