Hasta La Gadget!

Trend Friend is an online (and smartphone accessible) gift idea database that allows users to quickly find the trendiest gifts based on their search criteria. The site then lists which physical retailer carries the item allowing buyers to walk into a nearby store and walk out with their gift.

The website is the first of its kind to offer consumers accessibility via the Internet and smartphone while linking each gift to a physical retailer. By entering “who” you are shopping for, the occasion and the price (range) you would like to spend, Trend Friend generates a list of the most-popular and trendy gifts from major retailers across North America that fit the selected criteria.

Macmillan’s US CEO, John Sargent just confirmed that Amazon pulled its inventory of Macmillan books in a powerful response to Macmillan’s new pricing demands. Macmillan offered the new pricing on Thursday, just a day after Apple announced Macmillan as a major publishing partner in its new iBookstore — a revelation that certainly factored into the discussions along with Skiff and other emerging e-book distribution and publishing models. During the meeting with Amazon in Seattle, Sargent outlined what he calls an “agency model” that will go into effect in early March. Under the terms offered, if Amazon chose to stay with its existing terms of sale then it would suffer “extensive and deep windowing of titles.” Amazon’s hardball response was to pull all of Macmillan’s titles from its Kindle site and Amazon.com by the time Sargent arrived back in New York.

Macmillan claims that its new model is meant to keep retailers, publishers, and authors profitable in the emerging electronic frontier while encouraging competition amongst new devices and new stores. It gives retailers a 30% commission and sets the price for each book individually: digital editions of most adult trade books will be priced from $5.99 to $14.99 while first releases will “almost always” hit the electronic shelves day on date with the physical hardcover release and be priced between $12.99 and $14.99 — pricing that will be dynamic over time. So when Steve Jobs said that Apple’s and Amazon’s prices would be the same, he was almost certainly referring to the $12.99 to $14.99 e-book pricing originally rumored by the New York Times — not the $9.99 price that Amazon customers have been enjoying so far. Funny how Jobs, the man who once refused to grant the music labels’ request for variable pricing on digital music so that Apple could maintain a low fixed $0.99 price per track, is suddenly the best friend of a new breed of content owners. Guess the old dog just learned a new trick, eh?

Update: Amazon has conceded, but not willfully. It has decided to give the consumer the option of paying too much for a bestseller, and frankly, that’s the right thing to do. Let ’em vote with their wallets, we say. The full response is after the break.

Continue reading Amazon pulled Macmillan titles due to price conflict — confirmed (update: they’re back!)

Amazon pulled Macmillan titles due to price conflict — confirmed (update: they’re back!) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 04:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Convenience store giant Family Mart is to change over around 10% of its stores, some 500 branches, to am/pm.

Family Mart purchased am/pm in late 2009 and is hoping its tactic will turn around its subsidiary’s fortunes. Currently together they hold 8,700 stores throughout the country, taking the group close to the 9,600 branches of number two convenience store Lawson’s. Family Mart, however, announced at the time of the acquisition that they would keep am/pm wholly independent. The fact that they are willingly to switch some of their own stores to their smaller former rival indicates they are serious about building it up.

[Image courtesy of jpellgen on Flickr.]

It begs the question, how much does the consumer care about which specific convenience store they are shopping at? The number one factor in the appeal of the conbini is, well, the convenience — it is always nearby and there are a plethora of basic groceries. As long as it has all the right range of food, drink and essential household items, does the consumer care what is the name above the door?

The answer, it seems, is yes. Am/pm has failed to rise beyond number seven partly because it has not established a name for itself — there is little unique about it in terms of its branding or the products it offers. Family Mart, on the other hand, has MUJI products, its own products, and tie-ups with the T-Card. Lawson’s also has a distinct character through its Natural Lawson and Lawson 100 range of stores, plus a fondness for exciting collaborations and campaigns.

Given Lawson’s plan to start the PONTA point card this year as a direct challenge to the Family Mart-Tsutaya T-Card (which has 33 million members and 56 affiliates), could this decision by Family Mart fatally split their forces against their arch-rival — or will it shore up its smaller subsidiary into a more formidable, mid-level convenience store? The change-over between the Family Mart and am/pm branches will be happening through to February next year, and we will see over the months what the new name does to the sales at the stores.

Diesel’s streetwear sub-brand 55DSL’s Japanese side has done an interesting collaboration with Coca-Cola that evolved from a simple bottle design contest. We first found these a couple of months ago while scouring Harajuku with a client (conveniently an FMCG client), and the bottles immediately grabbed our attention as we walked by.

The design contest started with a call out for designers to make their own contour bottle for Coca-Cola, and the finalists were boiled down to fifteen choices. From there, a winning design was chosen and made into t-shirts and skate decks for sale.

We actually thought that the bottles were cool enough on their own, but, alas, they weren’t for sale.

Not sure if the display is still up, but the bottles were all on display for a while, as well as the winning design’s goods.

We don’t know about you, but every time we hear of a Walkman, we think of the old school cassette players, and are left strangely disappointed by the slinky modern variants and their tons of storage. The 16GB S745, which has absolutely nothing to do with Mickey Mouse we assure you, has entered North American retail channels, only it seems to have skipped the US for its more peace-loving neighbor up north. Eagle-eyed Canadian shoppers have spotted the more advanced version of the S740 on sale in Sony Style stores (for 200 CAD or 188 in real American currency), replete with a 2-inch screen, noise-canceling earphones, and an unhealthily thin case. Still, suspicions abound that Sony is merely waiting for CES to roll around to make its big US unveiling, but if you really can’t wait it’s not like driving up to Canadia would be that terrible anyway.

Sony NWZ-S745 on sale in Canada, US given cold shoulder originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Dec 2009 07:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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