Foodchain may have lost David Jones almost $40 million in operating expenses, write-downs and provisions in 2002, but that doesn’t stop us noticing one thing the gourmet food stores are getting right: providing noticeboards on which customers can comment on the service and products. The boards invite customers to take a moment to “let us know your thoughts about us”.
Recent posts
AFR Boss: Who moved my management book?
From AFR Boss in 2002. And i still haven’t got around to writing one yet. So you want to write a business best-seller. Even if you do, you are still unlikely to get rich quick, reports Ed Charles MANAGEMENT BOOKS are big business for Australia’s publishers, however many copies they sell. But they aren’t necessarily a money-spinner for authors. Locally, respectable sales for any book would be 20,000 copies; for a management title, selling 5,000 is very good. Dymocks has […]
Nova breaks new ground…again
Sure Nova’s ratings have dropped off. But Paul Thompson is at it again launching a radio station aimed at people born between 1960 and 1965. I wrote this for the Financial Times on the launch of Nova in Melbourne in 2002. Now as Crikey reports Thompson is at it again. It’s anybody’s guess what programming tricks work in radio nowadays. But Paul Thompson, chief executive of Daily Mail Group in Australia was gob-smacked when his Melbourne station Nova hit the […]
The hydrogen economy is so happening.
This was written for a state government department a year or so ago. How can the state’s and the Federal government be so at odds on the environment and energy policy? Whatever happened to hype? We live in a hydrocarbon world. Eight out of ten of the world’s biggest companies are dependant on hydrocarbons. But within fifty years the focus of the world’s energy needs will be a clean non-polluting fuel, hydrogen. The hydrogen economy will be born. In theory […]
Rember Enron? The energy industry will
This was written for a state government department a year or so ago. How can the state’s and the Federal government be so at odds on the environment and energy policy? Enron changed everything. When the company, at the time the sixth largest in the world, collapsed investor sentiment turned against the seemingly copper-bottomed energy sector. In the report A world of difference – strategic options for Australia’s energy sector published by PricewaterhouseCoopers last November, the consultancy noted that Enron […]
Mandatory renewable energy targets
This was written two years ago for a state government department. And things have got worse for the renewables sector… Who is the most unpopular person in the renewable energy sector at the moment? It’s easily the author of the Council of Australian Government (COAG) energy market review published late last year – the Hon Warwick Parer. Parer attacked the federal government’s Mandatory Energy Renewables Targets (MRET). The report concluded that the energy industry was facing large costs because of […]
Beomag: Extreme Chocolate
If you’d follow my tastes in Tomato Magazine you’d have discovered my views on chocolate. Incidentally, Fair Trade chocolate company Green & Black’s has been bought by Cadbury, which some people say compromises it on the ethical stakes.
Beomag: Anglepoise icon
The likelyhood is if you work at a desk you’ll have one of these lamps. Or you will at some point in your life have worked with or owned one of the many variations of the Anglepoise. I wrote this article after discovering the original patent for the lamp, the design of which is based on the articulation of a human arm, on the excellent Patent Office website in the UK.
Australian Flying
What was I thinking doing it. More to the point what was my instructor Evan thinking as I became known as the worst trainee pilot out of Bankstown. What he didn’t know was that as a magazine editor at the time I was out at various “dos” until 2am before rising at 5am forr an early start flying. This might exlain why I so frequency bounced from the runway rather than executed the perfect landing. And he should have also […]