For example, last week I went to the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, CA. I knew it was in the desert somewhere, and didn’t have the full address, so I put in Indian Wells, CA. Google then assumed I meant the significantly further, unincorporated community between Sequoia National Forest and Edwards Air Force Base, and gave me directions based on that, rather than the much, much closer Indian Wells by Palm Springs. Thankfully we only drove the wrong way for about 5-10 miles before we realized what was happening.

Here is what you get if you search for Indian Wells, CA with Google maps on the iPhone or at google.com: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Indian+Wells,+CA&sll=33.688907,-117.832607&sspn=0.008659,0.013754&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Indian+Wells,+Kern,+California&ll=35.771029,-117.957458&spn=1.080783,1.760559&z=9. Or just try the search yourself. Today is March 21, 2010, btw, just in case this behavior becomes obsolete one day.

This is what you get when you search at bing: http://www.bing.com/maps/#JnE9eXAuSW5kaWFuK1dlbGxzJTJjK0NBJTdlc3N0LjAlN2VwZy4xJmJiPTQ5Ljk3MjM3Mjc0NjEyOCU3ZS04OC4wNjM3NTEyMjElN2UxMy41Mjg0NDQ0MTkzNjAxJTdlLTE0Ny4xMjYyNTEyMjE=. Bing nicely points out that there are two possibilities.

So now I suddenly remembered how I was unable to find another address several weeks ago. My aunt invited me to a dumpling-making party in celebration of Chinese New Years. In an email, she gave me the address as “412 Broadway, Anaheim, CA 92805.” Much, much more complete than “Indian Wells, Ca.” We never found the place however. Fast forward to today. I found a paper invite, with an even more complete version of the address. “412 EAST Broadway, Anaheim, CA 92805.” Oh, damn. Again, if you dump “412 Broadway, Anaheim, CA 92805″ in Google, it will spit out one location. Bing will point out that there are two.

I’m starting to wish Apple would decouple the iPhone from Google maps and allow the user to specify a different map app (is there a way that I don’t know of?). But the Google maps integration is so good. All your contacts show up as bookmarks in your google maps if you have addresses listed for them, and you can access their phone number straight from the maps app, too. Handy if you’re about to arrive and need to call.

The skull logo seen at 0:42 is designed by his friend, Huck. Ken Block had seen a similar logo at Huck’s site, which can be seen here: http://huckgee.com/.

I guess he makes a pretty nice living as an artist/designer. They were just going to license the skull logo to Block, but QuickSilver wanted to buy the logo out completely (and they did, for a nice sum).

Huck also designs for kidrobot.com, which sells zany stuff, such as a Soviet walrus plush. The artists primarily have urban roots, according to my coworker.

I don’t know how this led to Nigo, and Bathing Ape, but it did. Nigo is some popular designer from Japan, and Bathing Ape is his brand of trendy clothing that people like Kanye West wear. All for ridiculous prices of course. Nigo has teamed up with two others to form the Billionaire Boy’s Club/Ice Cream, where you can buy $80 shirts, and $250 hoodies. Insane.

What was the point of this? I don’t know anymore, sorry. Well I stripped out all the business parts because I didn’t know how much of that I could talk about, but it looks like if you have talent, there’s some fun ways to make some money!

The story, which was picked up by national news outlets including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, detailed the accounts of local business owners who said that sales reps at the popular user-generated review site offered to move negative reviews of their businesses if they advertised.

Anyway, today, my friend told me about how one of his (very legitimate) reviews got removed:

A:
oh hey apparently yelp is like, fuckin 1984 shit
maybe that’s not the right analogy
they went all china censor on me
back in august 07 i went to this bed and breakfast in monterey bay, and it was dirty and filthy and had clogged plumbing and no toilet paper and BEBBUGS IN ALL THE BEDS
woke up in the middle of the night like omfg wtf and just left
so i wrote this harsh ass review of it on yelp, and posted pics of bedbugs

Ron Hsu
they deleted the review?

A
and a few weeks ago
i got an email
from “Frank @ yelp hq” saying they were removing my pics from that business because they “fall outside our local business photo guidelines”
a couple of days ago, i got a personal message on yelp from the owner of the business offering a free night’s stay at his business (which, since I went there, has apparently undergone new ownership and a total renovation) so that i might have a better experience and change my rating
i wrote him back saying thanks, if i ever go to monterey again maybe i’ll take you up on your offer
and for now i’ll add a line to the beginning of my old review saying “note: i haven’t been back, but apparently there is new ownership and the place has been renovated”
and today, i got a message from “Casper @ Yelp HQ” telling me that one of my reviews was deleted “because it lacks a first-hand experience of the business”
and i was like what the fuuuuuck how was my review not a first hand experience of hte business
it was ANYTHING but secondhand
smells like BS to me
i suspect you can pay off yelp or bitch to them or do something shady to delete bad reviews
which, of course, defeats the purpose of yelp in the first place

http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-inn-at-del-monte-beach-monterey-2

check it
only 5 reviews
used to be 6
mine got killed
they have to be a yelp sponsor of some sort to be able to list that “grand opening! rates start at 79!” ad rectangle right?
the only review from the last two years is from someone with 2 reviews, who just started yelping in january 2010
fiiiiishy fiiiiishy
yeah yelp sold out or something, cus that is bullshiiiiiit
i sent a message to that hazel q chick, yelp oc community organizer or whatever, no response
dunno if she has any power or say in the first place
but yeah, bullllshiiiit
“your review was deleted because it lacks a first-hand experience of the business,” LOL

Ron Hsu
actually i had just read an article about something like your experience a few days ago

The only legitimate rationale I can think of is the new ownership angle, and thus, perhaps, my friend’s review no longer counts since he hasn’t been to the “new and improved” version.

And yet I had a feeling it was successful (as far as small businesses go), mainly because I feel like I’ve seen the site before (or something similar). That and my friend hawking the site on FB for some reason. So then I looked up the owner of the site through DNS tools, and voila, the address of a very nice, large home in Yorba Linda came up, occupied presumably by a woman (if you want your info public, hide it when you sign up for sites, or use an alt. address). It sounded like my hunch was correct.

Anyway, I guess the point of this post is to invoke some confidence in my peers who may be thinking about starting a e-tailer business, one of the easiest types to start it seems like. The hardest part seems to be securing suppliers. I wonder where she gets her stuff. But the website and cart, those are all easy to build these days. And she proves you don’t need a enterprise level site to pull it off. Order fulfillment from a warehouse can be contracted out, too.

Cursory cost rundown:
Website: Cheap.

Design: Use Joomla or some other framework. Free, and fast to style. Probably as easy as configuring WordPress.

Cart: There are free plugin’s for joomla I think. CC processing can be done by Google or Paypal. Or the commonly used Authorize.net. Yahoo has a cart, too. Business minded coders could make their own pretty quickly.

Advertising: Google AdWords. This could get pricey, but you control your spending limits.

SEO: This has been made into some kind of voodoo art form. Find a guy, or try your hand. I’m not really sure what the “best practices” are these days, but I think the gist of it consists of fresh content, no duplicated content, keywords, and inbound links. I think hiding keywords in code gets you punished.

Warehouse: Your house to start off. That seems to be the most common until one can transition to a real warehouse.

Fulfillment: Yourself from your house. But there are lots of companies that specialize in fulfillment. Or you can have FedEx come by. From what I recall, FedEx is not unionized, UPS is, hence FedEx is cheaper, when dealing with negotiated rates. And then there’s USPS. Cheap, but the tracking blows.

DSLR (or whatever you got lying around): $500? So you can take your own photos of your products. Pretty sure that’s what this woman did. My old boss did that, too.

A white board and photo lights: No idea. $200?

Great products: That’s a tough one. Selling spoons will probably get you no where.

Suppliers: Better get your charisma on.

Those are the basics to start. The tech-minded person will probably have an advantage. If you’re not tech savvy, find someone who is. Things seem to get more complicated once you try to scale further. Order management software, product management software, accounting software, integration, reporting, personnel, blah blah blah.

Why haven’t I started a business? Because I suck. And I have nothing to sell. Well, I did find a supplier for digital photo frames, but I don’t really have faith in that market. Especially now.