Wednesday, July 28, 2004
Grocery Buzz - Whole Foods
An article in Fast Company goes over how Whole Foods, the largest organic- and natural-foods grocer in the country, came about but more important how it is run.
"Every store was divided into about eight functional teams: You were hired to the seafood team, or the prepared-foods team, or the cashier/front-end team. But you didn't just get hired. You got hired provisionally. After four weeks of work, the team you had joined voted whether to keep you; you needed a two-thirds yes vote to join the staff permanently.
Additional pay (beyond base wages) was linked to the teams, so people were careful about who got their votes. Thirteen times a year, Whole Foods calculated the performance of the people on each team in every store. How productive had the team been against goals? Teams that did well shared in the profits -- up to $1.50 or $2.00 extra an hour was paid right back to team members, every other paycheck. So people didn't want buddies on their teams; they wanted workers -- people who were going to make them some money."
Others things Whole Foods does is provide each store with a salary book where every employee can see how much everyone else makes. A very honest approach. They also take employees from current stores and place them in newly opened stores to help create the Whole Foods atmosphere.
The artilce is a good read and to show Whole Foods is a buzz "Whole Foods beat Wal-Mart in both overall and comparable-store sales growth".
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"Every store was divided into about eight functional teams: You were hired to the seafood team, or the prepared-foods team, or the cashier/front-end team. But you didn't just get hired. You got hired provisionally. After four weeks of work, the team you had joined voted whether to keep you; you needed a two-thirds yes vote to join the staff permanently.
Additional pay (beyond base wages) was linked to the teams, so people were careful about who got their votes. Thirteen times a year, Whole Foods calculated the performance of the people on each team in every store. How productive had the team been against goals? Teams that did well shared in the profits -- up to $1.50 or $2.00 extra an hour was paid right back to team members, every other paycheck. So people didn't want buddies on their teams; they wanted workers -- people who were going to make them some money."
Others things Whole Foods does is provide each store with a salary book where every employee can see how much everyone else makes. A very honest approach. They also take employees from current stores and place them in newly opened stores to help create the Whole Foods atmosphere.
The artilce is a good read and to show Whole Foods is a buzz "Whole Foods beat Wal-Mart in both overall and comparable-store sales growth".
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Buzz Site - JibJab.Com
jibjab.com
If you have not seen Bush and Kerry sing This Land is Our Land then you owe it to yourself to go to a JibJab. Very funny no matter who you like politically. The creators of the site have been overwhelmed by the popularity. This of course is short term buzz but still a ton of buzz.
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Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Word of Mouth Marketiing Assoc.
I know the last two post have not been related to a product or technology but they are related to the general idea of what we are doing. I beleive this type of marketing is becoming more and more relevant due to the connectedness of the world. Everyone has the ability to find new products but in the internet age everyone also has the ability to read reviews on just about anything. The topic is involved but it needs to be examined. For my money what should be examined is the best strategy for getting your widgets in front of the people that influence others on what widgets to buy. I recomend the book The Tipping Point it examines the topic and is a very interesting read. I have not read all of WOMMA's website and i know they just started so I am curious to see where it goes.
I promise atleast two great products next week!!
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I promise atleast two great products next week!!
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Friday, July 16, 2004
Blogs Create Free Publicity!!!
This is a story about how blogs can influence people. Which is basically what I am trying to do here. (see my first post for what this blog is about) I am not necessarily trying to influence people to do anything but I am trying to bring products, companies, services etc, that I think are interesting, into the publics eye faster and more centralized.
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Wednesday, July 14, 2004
A smarter way to search the Web with Grokker
grokker sample
The above picture is a sample of what a search on Grokker looks like. The search software organizes searches visually on one page making your search easier, faster and from my experience a lot more efficient. After you do a search Grokker puts the different websites that are related to your search in to different bubbles and each bubble is a subject. The bubbles (which can be changed into other shapes) are setup like a hierarchy with general subjects being big bubbles and more focused subjects (bubbles) inside the big bubbles. I know it sounds confusing but I search a lot and think I am quite good at using the old standards of Google and Yahoo but Grokker is quite simply a better search engine. An interesting option to searching on Grokker is that it will search the web, Amazon or Google. So a search engine software searching a search engine! Weird but once you have your search results displayed and categorized on one page the word weird will not be used.
Now it does cost money but you can try out a trial version. I encourage all researchers, students and general internet users to try it out. The true test will be if my post here will make it to the search results of Grokker on Grokker!?
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Thursday, July 08, 2004
Buzz Products from around Web
Times Story about some retro fitted cell phones. It is a novelty but I could see myself buying the bluetooth version. (why this is in the home and garden section is beyond me.)
Bluetooth Headphones - I've been waiting for these to come out. Once the price comes down I will truly be wireless.
Sharp's E-Book
MP3 Holder for your bike - Just bought one will let you know how it works.
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Bluetooth Headphones - I've been waiting for these to come out. Once the price comes down I will truly be wireless.
Sharp's E-Book
MP3 Holder for your bike - Just bought one will let you know how it works.
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Thursday, July 01, 2004
Moblogging - A good use for a camera phone
Moblogs have become popular recently especially with camera phones. The way it works is you setup an account online at a site like Textamerica. Alot of these moblog hosting sites let you post for free, which textamerica does. Once you setup the free account you have an address to send your pictures or thoughts to, from your phone. So lets say you take a picture of Mark Prior with your camera phone. Well after that you can send the picture to the address textamerica gave you. Once sent it is posted on your personal moblog.
Up until now I have not seen the camera phone as a useful device because the quality of the pictures is low and the process of sharing the pictures was involved. But now with moblogging you can easily send the pictures to your own moblog. One application I see for moblogging is sharing pictures from a trip. An example would be a trip to Italy and you wanted to keep gramdma up to date with what you are doing.
Examples of a moblogs Leoville, Celebrity Sitings, Mullet Watch.
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