#to the niche of people who like only consume and accept the one main ship and also like the deuteragonist

[erb23]

It’s incredibly telling that, after this newest episode, the only people using the saline tags for this show both do not like saline and tried to run people who did like it into that tag. And nobody is using the saline tags for actual saline content. They’re using them for anti saline content.

#but that's what you get for trying to run people out of the main tags #eventually they stop caring and use them all they want #bc whatever nonsense the fun police over there are complaining about have not shown up in those tags at all #also there's a case to be made that by forcing others to not use the main tags for anything less than praising the show #that new people with grievances with the show now DONT know about the separate tags #and so the new people use the main tags because duh they're talking about the show #and now the circle of popular blogs for that show that will pout and whine if they see anything less than uncritical posts about the show #will pout and whine because new ppl don't know about the tags specific for complaints over the show #nice way to play yourselves. it'll keep happening btw. #its also telling that they seem to not understand that complaining about people with criticism doesn't make you better than other ppl #or that if you'd be willing to use the native tag block system that you could STOP seeing posts with the saline tag #they'd still populate the main tags but at least them people would know to use them #sidenote: these same people are also hypocrites because they complain about the show too #but have a major case of that 'because i get a lot of traffic i can control how other ppl enjoy the show' type of thinking #the bulk majority of the fans left that actively watch and use 80% of the public fan sites have kinda been whittled down #to the niche of people who like only consume and accept the one main ship and also like the deuteragonist #to the point where they'll ignore all his crap behavior and just kinda blame it all on the mc not loving him when he's been so #untrustworthy and lazy. esp. in reference to being a hero. which he isn't much of #but that's another story for a diff post #the fanspace bias is very clear though. I cannot deal with twits reds or youbes because the bias is even MORE present there #and do not get me started on the wiki. talk about oof #ignore me

[needthread2]

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Throughout these researches no adverse effects such as testosterone reductions or estrogen conversion happened. However, some people did have mild altitudes of liver enzymes (roughly 20%) and unfavorable changes of serum lipids (HDL down 27%). With the majority of the clients these levels were still considered within normal array as well as not a high or even mild cardiovascular threat. Ostarine is one of the most prominent SARM on the planet, although it is non-steroidal it is carefully related to anabolic/androgenic in its task. As it effectively promotes most significantly the Androgen Receptor in skeletal muscle and also bone.

In one study involving postmenopausal women, a SARM called GSK triggered a breakout in one ladies as well as no negative effects in any type of other participants. In one more study on 76 healthy and balanced males, the SARM LGD-4033 caused no unfavorable effects in any one of the guys after 21 days of dosing. While there's no "safest SARM" scientists understand of, the study on LGD-4033 recommends it is among the best. When you acquire SARMs UK products, you know you're obtaining the best SARM study chemicals, with clear details concerning each SARM included. We provide 10% off your order when paying with bitcoin or bank transfer, and also we ship by Royal Mail and worldwide shipping. You can comfortably purchase SARMs on the internet no matter where you live, but not all SARMs up for sale online have the same top quality standards. To stay clear of acquiring poor-quality knockoff items, be sure to purchase from a reputable seller as well as avoid getting SARMs from basic marketplaces on the internet such as Amazon or ebay.com.

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Info on its real communications with humans is based upon observation and story and so far, it suggests that S4 does generate recognizable gains in LBM and stamina together with substantial weight loss. MK-677 is likewise most likely to boost cortisol, ACTH and prolactin levels, however most of the time this spill over is not visible to the user. The S23 SARM is a SARM, developed by GTx, Inc as a potential male birth control. Yes, the purpose of this is absolutely nothing to do with muscular tissue and stamina but to do with your sperm. It binds to the AR much more highly than the older SARMs such as Anadrine.

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Neither had Jimmy Wallhead, a Ultimate Fighting Championship competitor based in Loughborough, UK. Yet he was approved with a nine month ban after a supplement he had used was found to consist of the material. Biosci AbstractsBioscientifica Abstracts is the gateway to a series of items that provide a permanent, citable record of abstracts for biomedical and also life science seminars. I have purchased twice with this business and both times the product has actually shown up the following day, I even entered my address wrong as well as they corrected it for me without sending. I can verify that UK SARMS is the only area you should be purchasing your PDs, why is straightforward, pure quality item, as well as great price, you obtain what you pay for people, also truthful fast next day shipping.

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Hair loss, as a common problem and by age 50, pattern hair loss affects about half of all males and a quarter of all females. Scientists may have found a cure using Cu-GHK, a peptide that was discovered to regrow hair with effects comparable to that of Minoxidil in treating androgenic alopecia.

" I had only altered two items in my training before that test. I changed by BCAA amino acids, which I purchased from a store in Loughborough. I likewise got a healthy protein pancake mix, which I carry an extremely rare occasion as a morning meal choice. Wallhead is a UFC boxer, so is controlled by USADA, despite being based in the UK ... Regrettably, none of this helps Jimmy Wallhead, who was blindsided via use a supplement that really did not list ostarine as a component on the tag. Wallhead has actually been signed to the UFC, which is not a signatory to the World Anti-Doping Code, for regarding 18 months. USADA consented to run the UFC's anti-doping program on 1 July 2015, an arrangement that was applauded by WADA. Unless you are a drug store or an anti-doping official, the chances are that you won't have actually come across ostarine.

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Young men as well as ladies are being lured into making use of a new "secure" muscle-building medication regardless of clinical fears over possibly deadly side-effects. A supplement belonging to the SARM group with a strong anabolic result and a limited danger of adverse effects. Lauren Barnett approved a six-month sanction, after the Globe Triathlon Firm accepted that her ostarine AAF resulted from a polluted salt tablet computer. Beth McKenzie approved a two-year sanction, as although the WTC concurred that her intake of ostarine was unintentional, she could not definitively verify that her ostarine AAF was because of infected salt tablet computers. A fast search on the UFC/USADA net site exposes supports Wallhead's claim that the UFC has actually managed six ostarine situations throughout the last year and also 8 in total amount. A search on the USADA website exposes 16 ostarine ADRVs in the previous year alone-- none of which include UFC competitors. " They did offer me a nine month ban as well as I obtain it, I understand it", he stated.

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To make it worth taking SARMS, it is needed incorporate its use with your very own training and also nourishment as you can not expect to construct muscular tissue without placing in the job; this item just aids the job you do in the fitness center as well as in other places. We have actually included "Selective Androgen Receptor Modulators" and SARM-like items into this group.

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Specifically, peptides incorporated into skincare products mimic the same peptides that you'd find when collagen is broken down. Thus, if large peptides are used in topical anti-aging products, it's possible for them to be broken down into smaller peptides, allowing them to be absorbed into the skin and become active.

We have actually made a team where sarms customers can share their progress, experiences and also to speak with each various other regarding their cycles and development. Cardarine is a pharmaceutical grade PPAR agonist which has some extremely helpful results for professional athletes. Your healing time will be significantly decreased which means you can increase the strength as well as duration of your exercises. CS is the pace-making enzyme of the citric acid cycle that is thought about as the main metabolic pathway under cardiovascular conditions. It is a pen for the mitochondrial web content as well as the oxidative capability of muscles and also is boosted by workout training (60-- 62). LDH catalyzes the conversion of lactate to pyruvate as well as back through the oxidation procedure (NAD+ ⇄ NADH).

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" On paper it's nine months, however they've been excellent to me really. They stated that although their providing me 9 months, the company as well as its site had actually been warning, and I ought to have googled the items. I just bought a bog-standard BCAA as well as I did examine the ingredients. " I recognize there were six UFC fighters who checked positive for ostarine in 2015, and each and every single one stated their virtue", claims Wallhead. If you know you are going to obtain drug checked 24/7, surely if you were going to cheat, you wouldn't choose ostarine.

A dramatically greater intramuscular fat content of the quadriceps femoris muscle mass was observed in the OVX+LG 4 team compared to the Non-OVX group. In OVX rats, the fat material of the muscle mass did not differ from that in the other groups. All four OVX groups revealed a considerably higher GM weight than in the Non-OVX group. Treatment with a high dosage of LG resulted in a considerably greater GM weight than in the OVX and also OVX+LG 0.04 groups.

We offer prominent products such as LGD-4033, RAD-140, SR9009, MK-2866, RU58841 and a lot more SARMs in liquid kind at very affordable prices. At Ligand Chem we provide the best items for the most affordable feasible price to the research study neighborhood. Belgium bpc157 how does it work know our clients demand pureness and safety and security most importantly else, which's what we attain with whatever we offer. At Ligand Chem we just make use of the finest components to offer you a seriously exceptional SARM to fulfill all your study needs. Buy SARMs from a dependable research study product distributor in the understanding that they come from a resource that you can trust. Dietary supplements consisting of Ostarine usually claim to advertise muscle building. Ostarine is a Careful Androgen Receptor Modulator which is a medication created to have comparable effects to testosterone.

The treatments with OS led to a considerably greater weight of the GM than in the Non-OVX, irrespective of does applied. The BW of the rats throughout all therapy groups was similar at the beginning of the research (244 ± 7.8 g). Ovariectomy led to a significant enhancement of BW in all 4 OVX teams compared to the Non-OVX group from week 2 message ovariectomy. OS and LG are still being investigated in medical trials, and also neither have actually been accepted as therapies to this factor.

UKAD provided no aid to Webster, despite the fact that its very own expert suggested that contamination may have been an issue. https://peptides-uk.com/bpc157/spain/ was required to spend his life savings in trying to uncover the resource of the ostarine, as well as was approved with the full four year restriction for not right away admitting an ADRV he said was not his fault. USADA provided to examine the items made use of by Wallhead, in spite of him being based overseas in the UK, and even sourced its own supplement tub to confirm his insurance claims. It sustained his effort to reduce his assent for an ADRV he suggested was not his mistake.

It manages the glycolysis as well as is consequently important for the cell metabolic rate of all neighboring cells under anaerobic conditions. Complicated I is the initial enzyme in the breathing chain in the mitochondrial membrane and essential for the typical cell performance. https://peptides-uk.com/bpc157/italy/ revealed that the intermediate dose of LG led to a higher task of CS than in the OVX team in the GM and also a higher activity of LDH than in the Non-OVX as well as OVX+LG 4 in the LM. OS had less result on muscle mass enzyme task, showing a higher CS task in OVX+OS 4 team than in the OVX group in the LM. Whereas, an elevated CS task is a pen for a boosted cardiovascular ability, a boosted task of both enzymes, LDH and CS, appears to be needed for a rapid muscle healing. Elevation of these enzyme activities complying with administration of SARMs could indicate an improved muscle mass feature. Additionally, the present research revealed that product CK as an indication of muscle mass damage was not impacted by either OS or LG.

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I used another supplier for caps formerly but this fluid item is without a doubt premium IMHO. Every one of our items are manufactured under excellent production methods in an ISO 7 medical-grade laboratory. Andarine S-4 was created to minimising muscular tissue wasting, promote stamina, as well as gain lean muscle. Ostarine was developed as a treatment for muscle mass squandering syndromes by boosting toughness and also promoting muscle development. Cardarine was developed to improve endurance, as well as boost weight loss. Ligandrol was established to raising lean muscular tissue, improve stamina, as well as protect against muscle waste. Get in touch today for more details concerning SARMs body building supplements and also we will certainly enjoy to aid with any kind of concerns you might have for us.

There are no researches reporting in vivo results of OS as well as LG on postmenopausal muscle framework as well as metabolism. The aim of the here and now research was to check out the impact of OS and LG on the muscle cells of ovariectomized rats as the conventional design for postmenopausal conditions. The OS effect on bone tissue and animal design as a component of Experiment I has been recently released. Hormone replacement therapy in postmenopausal females is connected with extreme adverse effects, such as an enhanced threat of coronary heart problem, breast cancer, stroke, as well as venous thromboembolism. Nonetheless, it is still one of the most reliable treatment for postmenopausal signs and symptoms and for meticulously chosen ladies, benefits could exceed dangers. Careful estrogen receptor modulators have beneficial effects on the musculoskeletal system like estrogen, they have fewer unfavorable events on busts and also the womb. Nonetheless, they are still associated with venous thromboembolism and also stroke.

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[tigerlover16-uk]

Do you think that Dragon Ball Super is going to hold up better than Dragon Ball GT did long term? Or do you think it'll eventually fade into the background for most of the fandom as well and become a niche thing?

Part of that I think is going to depend on how the movie and the inevitable follow up series(s) are received… but most likely, yes.

Here’s where Super has the advantage over GT in that regard… it’s canon.

Or at least, it’s being treated as canon and is being used as the foundation from which modern Dragon Ball stories and products are going to be built off of for the foreseeable future. We can get into debates about semantics and this fandom’s rather annoying “There is no canon except maybe the manga!” mantra that I’ve never been in favour of, but Toei is treating it as the current canon for the moment and so does Toriyama, it seems.

The upcoming movie is going to be a follow up on Super. FighterZ, the recent fighting game that blew up and became a huge success recently to the point of bringing in a lot of new fans, has it’s story take place sometime during the events of Super, has beerus and Whis show up in the story, and includes characters like Hit and Goku Black on the base roster while Merged Zamasu and Vegito Blue are DLC, while no GT character has been added yet. 

Even the Xenoverse games treated the events of Battle of Gods and Resurrection F as canon events, while GT was an afterthought in both, having DLC packs for the first game and it’s characters only appearing in side quests in the sequel, and it’s timeline treated as an alternate future on par with the old movies.

Even the upcoming PR anime for Dragon Ball Heroes is adapting an arc that’s more or less a follow up to the Future Trunks saga in Super. And when a ongoing “Canon” Dragon Ball show does get made (And it will. Toei aren’t going to keep it off the air for too long, Dragon Ball’s gotten too big and profitable again since Super started for them to want to let the franchise go dormant again for too long), it will inevitably be a sequel to Super.

Unless Toriyama changes his mind and decides to scrap everything from the last few years and start over with another new continuation of the manga (Which is unlikely considering how involved he’s been in Super’s production as well as the upcoming movie, and he’s shown no signs of wanting to stop putting out new stories), then it’s likely that for the foreseeable future, all future Dragon Ball series, movies and spin-offs are going to be made with the idea that Super and it’s follow ups are “Canon” events.

And that’s going to inevitably influence how hardcore fans, casuals, and the portion of general audiences who consume Dragon Ball content view things.

Whatever people’s perception of the Prequel Trilogy was initially, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that more people have watched those, and new fans getting into Star Wars for the first time are ENCOURAGED to watch them, than have watched, say, the Star Wars Holiday Special or the Ewoks cartoons and specials.

Why? 

Because love or hate them, the Prequel Trilogy is, now and forever, a crucial part of the Star Wars saga and the foundation for a large, important era of the franchise that has spawned a large number of spin off works, from comics to at least two cartoons, one of which is basically the predecessor to the most current Star Wars animated series, Rebels, and a number of it’s events and characters are followed up on in that show.

The Prequel Trilogy is an essential cornerstone of the Star Wars franchise, and even casual fans who aren’t interested in all the expanded universe stuff are going to watch them, because they’re episodes of the main film series that are the backbone of the entire franchise and whom millions and millions of people watched in theatres when they came out. For all the controversy and handwringing about “MY CHILDHOOD IS DEEEEEAAAAAAD!”, there’s no getting around the fact that the Prequel Trilogy will continue to have an overarching presence over the rest of the Star Wars franchise going forward. And over time, the movies have also been increasingly vindicated with more and more supporters feeling safe to express their support of it publicly.

As for the Holiday Special and Ewoks cartoon and movies? They’re not canon, never had as big a presence and impact in the first place, and the former is especially reviled among the fandom and is treated as a laughingstock that people only watch ironically, and considering it’s reputation for being terrible, not a HUGE amount of people are going to be inclined to watch it these days or in the next few decades because of that. I’ve never watched it, for example, and I never intend to.

No one is going to tell you that you have to, or even should, watch those products if you’re getting into the franchise. The general public who only care about the most mainstream installments of the Star Wars franchise, I.E the films, doesn’t even realize the Ewoks HAD their own cartoon and made for TV films. I’ll bet there are going to be people reading this post shocked about it.

This goes for the rest of the Star Wars expanded universe too, the old one and the new. If you ask people on the street or people who are generally casual Star Wars fans for the most part, they’ll probably be able to tell you who Darth Maul and Captain Phasma are… but significantly less people will know what you’re talking about if you bring up Thrawn, Asajj Ventress or Savage Opress. 

Not because they aren’t good characters who are memorable and interesting in their own right, heck they’re more developed and interesting than Phasma ever was. But because they’re not mainstream, and in Thrawn’s case he wasn’t even canon to the current EU anymore until Rebels introduced their own take on him (I haven’t seen the 4th season, so I can’t discuss how that worked out).

I think GT has, and is going to have a similar issue to a lot of those expanded universe and non-canon Star Wars works going forward.

Let’s not kid ourselves, while it might have had some support when it was first airing, GT came out at a bad time both in Japan and in the West, and here in the West especially didn’t leave a good lasting impression.

In Japan, franchise fatigue for Dragon Ball as a whole was starting to set in around the time of the Buu Saga. While the saga was well received there and is looked back on fondly, Z’s ratings were continuously declining after the Cell Saga, and they declined more sharply during GT’s early run because the majority of people found the Black Star Dragon Balls saga boring.

While GT did pick up momentum again with the Baby saga which restored some interest, it didn’t actually do a thing to help the gradually increasing sense of fatigue. Ratings still steadily declined later on in the shows run (Admittedly not much more than they were during the Buu Saga, to be fair), but merchandise and revenue for Dragon Ball was going down really fast, which caused Toei to hastily pull the plug on the series, recognizing the fatigue and that Dragon Ball needed a bit of a break. (This is likely why the ending felt so rushed and sudden, BTW).

 So while it wasn’t viewed as a disaster or anything and a lot of elements from the series are still well regarded and promoted in merchandise and video games like Heroes (Super Saiyan 4, some of the villains, etc), it’s never been as well regarded as the rest of the series and certainly wasn’t as successful in terms of profit and renewed interest in the franchise as Super has brought forth.

In the West, it’s case is even worse. The Buu Saga was much more controversial when it aired in America to the point that for years a significant segment of the franchise ragged on it as being the worst thing to come out of Z. Buu was supposedly the worst villain, Babidi stinks, “THEY RUINED GOHAN!”, etc. (I personally always thought that was nonsense and I love the Buu Saga, and in recent years the general consensus has improved, but these reactions were common and a lot of people still resent the saga to this day or at least hold it in less regard than the previous ones).

Dragon Ball Z’s popularity and the initial hype the show had gained after finally catching on in America (And here in the UK) had started to wane by this point, and a large portion of viewers who had been watching jumped ship by that point. While GT enjoyed some acceptance by the fanbase at first, by the time it finished and in the years that followed, it became regarded as the black sheep of the entire franchise (Until Evolution came along, anyway), with loud and vocal hate thrown at it for years. 

People were quick and eager to declare it non-canon and shoot down the possibility of it being so, to the point that even before the franchise itself started gradually downplaying it’s significance in favour of the newer works, pretty much the majority of people were in agreement over it’s non-canon status. 

And the fact that it came out at a time where Dragon Ball Z was starting to slowly lose it’s hype among casual fans and the general public (And then became an internet laughing stock until roughly the start of the current decade when Kai’s dub came out and starting a gradual renaissance where the series regained a lot of respect in the West), means that GT, while a lot of people do know about it, has never had as much of a mainstream presence in the West (Kind of like the Original Dragon Ball, sadly), being mostly something the hardcore fandom was invested in enough to watch and discuss… and again, for years the consensus was that most people hated it.

It’s true that GT hate has calmed down in more recent times among the fandom, and while it’s still not well regarded it’s defenders are more vocal and comfortable about supporting the show than before. And there is a common consensus that the show had a lot of good ideas, even if most of them weren’t executed as well as they could have been. 

There are definitely people who have revisited the series and appreciated it more nowadays… and people like me who used to defend it but immediately started hating it after re-watching it :P.

But here’s the thing a lot of those defenders might be surprised or try to smugly lecture me about how wrong I am over… GT these days is, like you suggested anon… a NICHE.

GT’s fans may be vocal in a lot of places online, but in the grand scheme of things… people generally don’t care much about it either way. And the fact that it’s non-canon and has officially been replaced as the “Official” Dragon Ball follow up means that in the years to come, it’s only going to become less and less relevant.

Regardless of how much of a broken base there might be over the series in the fandom, you can’t argue that Super isn’t a big success for Toei and the Dragon Ball brand in terms of promotion and profits.

Here’s one of several graphs I can find online demonstrating the revenue the Dragon Ball franchise as a whole has been bringing in for Toei over the last decade.

Notice how when Kai first aired, it barely made a blip in merchandise sales and overall income for the franchise, and by the time it ended it’s initial run in Japan revenue kept falling until the year after Battle of Gods came out, and then in 2015 after Super was announced suddenly everything started to explode and it’s become super profitable, peaking this year even with Super’s conclusion?

Heck, it’s Toei’s most profitable franchise again nowadays, bringing in slightly more than twice as much as One piece even in Japan, which is a longtime juggernaut franchise. And general enthusiasm from both the public and fandom is at a high not seen in years.

It’s certainly not to the level of when it first aired. Super is also significantly less of a mainstream hit in Western Countries that aren’t Latin America than Z was aswell, certainly (Probably doesn’t help that the Toonami Block it now airs in is a late night slot that only fanboys stay up to watch).

But it’s still popular and watched by a lot of people, and the fandom is especially deep into it.

Heck, bringing up Latin American countries again where Dragon Ball has historically been extremely popular and a staple of pop culture, Super and the movies it spawned from are huge hits, to the point that across various countries including Mexico, huge public events were held in many cities and community centres where large crowds of people, many numbering in the THOUSANDS, gathered to watch the streams for the last two episodes of DBS. Which were huge hits, of course.

All things considered, Battle of Gods, Resurrection F and Super left more of a positive impact for the franchise starting out since, regardless of Super’s… very bumpy start and production, these works have been big hits that caused a franchise renaissance that generally brought Dragon ball back to a level of prominence and success it hasn’t seen in a long time.

A far cry from GT which pretty much signalled Dragon Ball’s leave of absence from the mainstream, during which time interest in the series waned for years even with Kai helping to restore it’s rep a fair bit (At least in America, said series was met with more of a meh reaction in Japan).

The results of this can’t be understated. Worldwide, Super has brought in a number of new fans. For many children and teenage fans, it’s going to be their introduction to Dragon Ball, or at least a cornerstone of their formative experiences with the franchise. 

Many casual fans who had long drifted off from Dragon Ball were drawn back into the fold when Super came out, many people becoming bigger fans of Dragon Ball than ever as a result of that. I’ve talked with a number of people on this site who have admitted that Super actually helped them to appreciate Dragon ball in general a lot more whereas they only had a casual interest in the franchise before.

And a lot of those people are probably going to stick around rather than drift off again in favour of other series, considering we have the movie coming up, potential new shows in the near future, and other high profile Dragon Ball products like FighterZ to keep them occupied.

For every fan who complains about Super or is put off by it, I’ve seen as many, actually more, express a lot of thanks to it. Right before my recent break I remember reading a post from someone who admitted to never liking the Dragon ball franchise, being a Naruto fan before that started to disappoint them later on to the point they felt nothing when it ended (A feeling I find tragically relatable).

Said person said they started watching Super at some point as a joke… and by the time of watching the last episode, they had become a big converted fanboy, loved the majority of characters, had watched the previous series (I think, I might be remembering that part wrong), and even cried at the last episode due to being so emotionally invested.

For as many fans as there are who like to pick apart Super (And to be fair it is a flawed series and I do think it’s fair to criticise it’s missteps, I have issues like anyone else despite overall loving it), it IS generally a well liked series.

It’s true that a lot of that could fade with time. Heck, I’m sure a lot of people will like it somewhat less with hindsight and the hype wearing down.

On that note, I think some people might also like it more after a while.

Did you know that earlier on in Super’s run, people actually complained A LOT about the Slice of Life episodes, finding them a waste of time and no different to DBZ filler? Even by the end of the Champa saga that opinion started to soften and everyone started realizing how fun the slice of life episodes were, to the point that everything between the Future Trunks and Universe Survival Sagas is some of the most beloved content from the show now.

Even the potaufeu arc, widely despised when it first aired, has a bit of a better reception now. it’s not considered particularly GOOD, mind you, but people generally regard it as okay and at worst harmless now, compared to the hate it got earlier on. Helps that Brian Drummond was cast as Copy Vegeta for the dub, I guess.

A lot of other elements of the show have been viewed more fondly over time too, in addition to the stuff that gets more flak.

So it’s highly possible that, if the upcoming movie and any Dragon Ball series that follow up on Super in the near future are generally well received, opinions on Super from people who are critical of it now might gradually soften over time, at least to the point that a lot of people complaining about how the franchise is supposedly being “Ruined” might stop and realize they might have overreacted a little.

The opposite could also be true, we could have another series that’s a complete trainwreck and that could sour the fandoms opinions over modern Dragon ball as a whole, lead to a great decline in public interest and probably put us back on a franchise hiatus.

Which would stink a lot, let me tell you, and Super probably wouldn’t be remembered THAT fondly in that case… but to be honest, I have faith things will turn out at least reasonably well. Everything I’ve heard about the recent movie and it’s production suggests that Toei have put a ton of care and effort into making it right, and giving us the best product possible for a milestone movie like this.

And that suggests to me that they’ve learned from their missteps.

The big issue with Super, both in terms of it’s production values and writing, was ALWAYS down to it’s rushed production. The show was rushed to be aired, and that had a catastrophic effect that the show never completely recovered from, even when it did mostly stabilise later on.

But between the big increase in it’s production quality later on, the care that seems to be going into the movie, and the fact that behind the scenes Toei and Shueisha seem to be restructuring a lot of stuff to better focus on producing Dragon ball content and planning out new directions for the franchise… it feels like Toei are making all the right moves to keep Dragon ball relevant, and more importantly, GOOD into the foreseeable future.

They seem to have learned from their mistakes. And considering Super DID have a number of talented animators and writers working on it who did do a lot of good even though they were in far from suitable conditions… I for one feel confident that Toei could produce a much better follow up to Super down the line.

And if that’s the case, and Super does continue to be the launching pad for future stories in the Dragon Ball franchise for years to come… that’ll help it’s image to an extent. 

Because even if the series itself is continuously acknowledged as having problems, if Dragon Ball is still relevant two or three decades from now and still producing moderately well received series… fans are going to encourage newcomers and casuals to watch Super to “Get the full story”. Just like Star Wars fans these days unanimously agree that, whatever the quality, you should watch the Prequels and yes, they do count (Even if begrudgingly to a lot of people).

GT… will never have that.

See, as much as it’s fanboy’s like to pretend the support for GT these days is bigger than it is… most people who watch Dragon Ball either haven’t watched it, haven’t watched it in years, and probably aren’t going to watch it anytime soon.

Heck, half the people watching Super these last few years haven’t watched Dragon Ball Z since it was initially airing. I have a mutual who’s a BIG Dragon Ball fangirl, who writes fanfiction (Usually Vegebul related) and is one of the most passionate and positive people you’ll see on this site when it comes to Dragon Ball… she also regularly admits that while she needs to get around to it, she hasn’t actually watched Dragon Ball of Z since she was a kid, just clips of it and I think Kai. (On that note she didn’t watch GT because she couldn’t get into it, she did watch the first two episodes recently but seemingly hasn’t found the time to get further into it).

This is actually surprisingly common among the fandom. I remember when the first episodes of the Super dub were airing someone who had clearly only watched the dub of Kai before was confused while watching Super and Kai: The Final Chapters back to back, wondering if Elder Kai as seen in Super was the same character as Shin The Supreme Kai. There’s a ton of people out there who’s only experience with Dragon Ball was watching Kai’s dub years ago and getting back into it now because the franchise is putting out new major installments.

FYI, this is also one of the big reason that memes, particularly TFS related, have taken over the fandom and warped the perception of the series and the characters so much over the years. A majority of people who call themselves Dragon ball fans are actually casuals who don’t re-watch the series often and look to the fandom side of things to refresh their memories and base their opinions off of since they probably never thought too hard about the series other than “This show is fun, and these characters are my favourite!” before.

And no, that doesn’t make those people less of a fan than people who re-watch/read the series yearly and are obsessive about it, because screw that elitist noise. I’m just pointing out that… well… many people’s interest in Dragon Ball, as with many mainstream franchises, is very much in the “Here and now” variety. Especially in the age of Crunchyroll, Netflix and online streaming, where anime fans are constantly binging and hopping around from one series to the next.

Hardcore fanboys and people who have nostalgia for it are the only people who actually care about GT more than enough to casually acknowledge it’s existence from time to time. And while you might get the impression by browsing the internet, fansites, forums, comments sections, etc that the hardcore fandom is most of the people that watch and talk about Dragon Ball… they’re really not, in the grand scheme of things.

Going by Star Wars comparisons again, this video by Moviebob should explain what I’m talking about better than I can. 

To sum everything up nicely though… GT is non-canon and hasn’t actually been relevant for two decades. It has long had a reputation as one of the worst things in the franchise, and while there are certainly things the fandom likes about it and plenty of people willing to go back and watch and then defend it (And people like me who re-watch it and end up hating it where we used to defend it, too), it’s status as non-canon and the fact that it has officially been replaced by a new ongoing continuity means that it’s only going to become more and more niche over time as the fandom grows and changes.

And about two or three decades from now, new fans aren’t likely to be encouraged to watch it when there are various other sequels to Z starting with Super to get through, even before you take supplementary material like the movies and video games into consideration than only people looking to go hardcore will want to look up.

However Super is viewed in the future, it seems highly likely to me that it’s going to be held in at least higher regard by a significant portion of the people who are really into Dragon Ball over the next few decades if only because it was the necessary flint that sparked the era of new content more ambitious than the occasional OVA we’d been getting every few years before Battle of Gods came out.

Heck, even in terms of content, I think people in the fandom are going to look back on Super more fondly than GT because it gives people more stuff that appeals to them.

Think about it, Super has given us a plethora of popular characters. Beerus and Whis and Jaco are holdovers from the movies sure, but the former two are easily more popular than literally any character to come out of GT.

And in Super itself? We have huge fan favourites like Hit, Caulifla, Vados, and various characters from the universe Survival Saga. Super arguably has introduced a lot more popular characters than GT did, which included… uh… Baby, Nuova Shenron and maybe Omega Shenron to those who don’t find him unremarkable.

And be honest… unless you intentionally go looking for it, when was the last time you really saw fanart or anything about Baby or Nuova Shenron floating around here? Now when was the last time you saw stuff for Frieza, Cell, Beerus or Broly?

There’s probably a big gap there. Sure is for me.

And Super did a lot more for the supporting cast too. Krillin and Gohan got their own character arcs, Android 18 was a highlight in the Tournament of Power and saw the most action she’s seen in any series (Plus a ton of extra insight into her and Krillin’s relationship and great shipping moments, plus new interactions with her brother and other characters). Frieza may have hit a rough spot with the RF saga, but the Universe Survival Saga showed him at his very best and made the fandom fall in love with his character all over again.

And Android 17? He went from being the least appreciated of the trio of him, 18 and Android 16 to being a huge fandom darling and is regularly agreed to be the MVP of the universe survival saga, if not Super PERIOD. 

I could go on too, because for all it’s missteps, Super actually did go out of it’s way to do things with the characters and expand the universe in various ways, leaving tons of potential for new stories for years to come in it’s wake…

GT though? Let’s be honest, the most popular thing to come out of that was super Saiyan 4. And while I love that form… in the grand scheme of things, transformations are actually one of the least important things about the Dragon ball series, so that right there is a sign that somethings off there.

GT really is designed to be a series that appeals to certain subgroups of fans, and feels alienating to many others. It starts off with an arc that jettisons the majority of the cast in favour of a trio featuring Goku reduced to a kid again, a grown up Trunks, and Pan… who’s portrayed as an annoying brat who’s more of a detriment to the group than anything. Plus a cute robot sidekick to boot, and they all go on boring space adventures for a while.

It has all of one arc that’s all around good (…mostly…), followed up by what’s almost unanimously considered a trainwreck of a mini-arc that, as I’ve said before, looks worse than ever in light of Super due to it’s mishandling of Android 17′s character and the past villains, in comparison to how 17 and Frieza were handled in Super’s last arc. And then we get a final arc that had an awesome premise that devolved into a huge mess due to poor writing and most of the villains being annoying, underwhelming monsters of the week and the final boss being very unsatisfying, capped off by an ending that’s always been wildly divisive.

I’m not going to say that GT, as a what-if spin-off like it currently is, was a complete flop. But it’s definitely a series that I think takes a certain kind of fan to appreciate, whereas I think that Super, for all it’s own faults, in general is a show that captures a lot more of what gave the previous series their wider appeal and generally gives more people what they want.

Not everyone of course… but unlike GT, which really isn’t going to have any continuations anytime soon to do any course corrections or make up for any lost potential, a lot of Super’s missed opportunities can easily be made up by whatever series and movies come after it.

In general I just think that Super has more stuff that a wider group of people are going to be inclined to want to come back to.

Heck, on that note, a lot of people only like GT because it’s pretty much their only resource for Next Gen, post EoZ official Dragon Ball content. People starved for content about Uub, Pan, Bulla, Marron etc especially still use their GT designs as a basis for aged up fan art, and a lot of people who are fans of said character look to GT because outside of a few video games, they don’t have a lot of content for them.

I guarantee you though the minute a new series is made someday set past EoZ again which does more with those characters or otherwise portrays them better than GT did, those holdovers will gladly jump ship, because who in their right mind is going to buy bread crumbs from a shady street vendor when that new bakery across the street is giving away whole loafs?

I could really go on and on talking about this subject, because I actually find this interesting to discuss and speculate on, but it’s getting late and this is getting ridiculously long, so I’m just going to leave it here for now and give you my conclusion.

Yes. I think for most people, Super will be remembered more fondly than GT in the long run. Whether Super will be viewed particularly well in of itself years from now is another matter entirely, it’s probably always going to be a big base breaker at the very least. But on the whole… regardless of how you feel about the two series, I think it’s safe to say it has the advantage.

#dragon ball super #dbs #dragon ball gt #dragon ball #dragon ball z #dbz #dbgt

[zenosanalytic]

Doom-Broom Looms; Assumes Costumed Groom will Fume in Tomb-Gloom: The Tune-Presumed Consumes

Yes I did it; No I’m not sorry; Shutup it’s a Gr8 Headline; Mild Spoilers below cut:

So I really liked this one, I’d say it’s at least as good as the first Avengers and probably better, making it the best of the Avenger films so far. As per tradition, I will start with what I didn’t like first and, aside from the first two, they’re mostly Quibbles:

The Bads

So:

Labeling the cruelty of an abusive guardian -who murdered his child’s family, surgically altered and experimented on her without her consent, forced her to kill, forced her to fight and sometimes kill her siblings to protect her body and her life from that parent- as love is some Buuuullshit >:( I can easily accept that Thanos would think he loved her, abusers tell themselves all sort of garbage to justify what they do, but that some omnipotent universe-stone would judge that situation and those feelings sincere is, again, Buuuuuullsheeeeiiiit >:( >:( Attaching that execrable nonsense to the killing of Gamora makes it so much worse, and then connecting that to how Thanos “wins” through Quill’s anger, makes it even, even worse. 

Their choices on who to “kill” were fucked up and bad. Bucky dealing with a world without Steve is interesting. T’Challa traumatized by the loss of his closest friends and torn between healing/protecting his people and helping bring Thanos to justice and potentially undoing what he did is interesting(not to mention how loved the character is. Though I’m p sure we’ll see a BP Shuri as a result, which I’m very much looking forward to). Scarlet Witch given the chance to grow on her own, instead of being tethered to a guy, is Interesting. Groot dealing with the death of their “parent”/Confidant/translator is Interesting. Having Banner “die” so that only The Hulk is left would have been interesting. Going with what they did was stupid. Killing off Fury and Hill was Stupid. Wiping out, to a duo(!), the Guardians of the Galaxy was Stupid. Killing Drax and Mantis is some Galaxy-Brained Criminal Ignorance! Killing Heimdall I understand BUT(!!!), at the same time, Elba’s a great actor and Ragnarok’s the only film to make even decent use of him, so I’d have liked to see him live through this one and into the next one, at least, before he was killed. And, as others have said, the general race&gender balance of the killings was, charitably, Iffy.

These are some seriously flawed ethical/political choices they made for this film, and they didn’t have to make them. Totally could have handled all of this differently, and better, than they did. So on to the Quibbles!

Having Gamora and Peter’s relationship, which had, so well and realistically to two folks working through trauma and immaturity, been cooking low and slow over the two GoG movies, suddenly be physically and emotionally intimate and vulnerable, and having her saying things like “I love you more than anything” to him, when they live on a tiny ship with zero privacy with four(?) other people, and doing all of that purely for plot-convenience, was dumb and lazy and Lame. Character dev should serve the characters first and plot second; this complaint kinda dovetails with my issues with SW and Vision in the next para.  

There really should have been one more movie, and maybe two or three, before this one. The character writing was great and all, but Scarlet Witch and Vision just haven’t had the time to be developed enough as characters for their(rather central) place in the movie to be emotionally meaningful enough. A movie focusing on them, or maybe on Steve’s “unofficial” Avengers, would have really helped add some more depth and impact to Infinity War. The other movies I think would have helped are another Dr. Strange(I didn’t like the first one much at all and he didn’t really come off as all that capable to me in the first one and really seemed to just fall into the role of Sorcerer-Supreme by dint of being the last one standing), and Definitely another Black Panther. There are obvious scheduling reasons for not holding off for a second Black Panther(which are totally Marvisny’s fault, of course; for instance, if they’d just introduced the character earlier, so that CW would have been the 2nd BP movie and BP the 3rd), but Dr. Strange was 2016 and they could have totally gotten another one out, with some significant crew and writing changes, before this to flesh out, build up, and actually render interesting/likeable, the character. Though, I suppose maybe there were equally obvious financial reasons why not to roll the dice on that franchise again(though though, looking it up just now it topped Captain America: The First Avenger on box office, which is Insane).

Dispensing with Nova off-screen. I Mean: WTH. That should, at the least, have been an in-credit sequence(in GoG 2 or T:R). Something as simple as showing Thanos with the Power Gem, then panning out to show a devastated Nova Command or him taunting Nova Prime before killing her, would have been fine(though, the GoG movies gave me the impression the Nova Corps would have been a tough nut for Thanos to crack).

Probably my most niche opinion: they should have, FINALLY, done a movie crossover with the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. cast here, especially given the in-credit sequence. Marvel and Disney have been promising Chloe Bennet that AoS was going to be her vehicle into film work since the series started and this is, like, the third or fourth frigging times they’ve either reneged or passed on a chance to boost her up into the big leagues, and frankly it’s annoying. She’s a good actress, The Inhumans should have stayed a movie and been that vehicle(with the characters they made protags the villains S.H.I.E.L.D. was fighting), and, given the stakes and the nature of the conflict, it’d have been easy to ameliorate that mistake by bringing her, the rest of the AoS cast, and Fury in on this one as secondary characters. I mean, it’d have been better if they’d had two or three SHIELD movies spread out over the MCU by now, or always included them in the Avengers films to give also-rans like the show cast and Hawkeye places to shine, but barring that and given Disnal’s fuckup with Inhumans, they should have made a go of it here. Ming-Na Wen also deserves more time on the Big Screen and, while Johannson’s Fine in the films, Wen does her character-type Better u_u u_u u_u

Like I said, Quibbles, they don’t really detract from the movie. The main problems with Infinity War, to me, are it’s screwy plot-ethics.

The Goods

Not really much to say here other than “I liked it and had fun”. The character writing was good, the dialogue was funny, the fight choreography was, given the logistics of multicharacter combat, Fine, the fights were engaging, the camerawork was(mostly) clear, the costume design was great, the side characters(especially the Black Order) all got good beats of their own, the Heroes(except Black Panther and maybe SW, since she was restricted to just moving things and blasting things) all got opportunities to show off their abilities. IW really validated the “Comics=Wrestling” critical lens I was introduced to by @some-triangles, as it felt like a Wrestlemania or Battle Royale more than anything else to me. Related to that there were some really dumb moments, like when Scarlet Witch left the lab to enter the rin-, er, battlefield, but you basically knew that was going to happen the instant they told her to stay in the room because Tropes, and the Forms must be Honored u_u u_u The Russos are genuinely competent movie-makers, who seem to have that all-important skill of recruiting and keeping a talented crew around them, and they made a genuinely competent movie, despite the questionable plotting.

The Judgements

So that’s my opinion on the thing. Infinity War includes some highly fucked up ethical messages for the sake of plot convenience, and confirms the MCU’s refusal to make even basic use of some really top-notch acting talent, which just happens to be mostly non-white people, that they’re (presumably)paying fortunes to have access to; if you feel that sort of ish isn’t something you can sit-through or abide giving your money to, then don’t see the film. But it’s a technically competent film, 90% of the time the writing is wonderful, and overall it’s an engaging and entertaining film so, if you can tolerate that ish in some fashion, maybe you’ll enjoy it like I did.

Oh, and it’s really long(2h40m, and there were, like, 30mins of previews before it. Seriously >:| >:| >:| They played TWO[!!!!!!] flipping Jurassic World trailers, as if anyone wants to see that junk), so I’d rec you not get any drinks if you’re going to go see it(though it’s not a big deal as there are some nice-sized lulls, reasonably spaced, to take breaks in).

#Infinity War(Movie) #Infinity War Spoilers #Movies #Movie Reviews #Rhyming #zA's Outside Viewing

[aftgonice]

Why is Otayuri getting so much hate: a possible explanation

Don’t get fooled by my title, also reminder that explanation =/= justification.

I always try to analyze phenomena and their possible causes, that’s the scientist in me I guess. So I started thinking about ant///is and I was like: but why. I just said in a recent post that Otayuri is obviously not the first relationship portrayed in the history of anime with such a (small) age gap, and I found some posts that talk about how some age gaps in older (and even recent) anime are just outrageous (even when one of the parts is a minor), and yet those don’t seem to be getting any hate or discourse.

But why?

• The sheer number of fans.

The first probably obvious reason is that Yuri on Ice has a lot more fans than other similar fandoms, and it gained them within a very short time span. It’s getting more and more fans every day, so it’s a mathematical rule that in a huge fandom there will be all sorts of people (it’s like a huge sample group), and some of these are an///is. The bigger the fandom, the more the a///is. 

• The particular moment in history in which YOI came out.

It’s no secret that there’s discourse everywhere now, especially on certain types of social media. A lot of discourse is good discourse, but we also need to realize that not all discourse is good discourse. I think this discourse wave has played a huge role in the way an///is have suddenly decided to become active in hating on people over idiotic reasons. It’s like a marketing thing: they saw a discourse niche that was unoccupied and decided to take it over. Regardless of whether your discourse is right or wrong, writing about it is one easy way to increase your follower count, and who ain’t a slut for that. 

• The fact that many YOI fans aren’t used to anime and manga content.

This goes together with my next point, but I thought I’d still make it two separate ones. A lot of people who became hardcore YOI fans don’t usually watch anime or read manga (myself included). This without my next point wouldn’t give much info on its own, but keep this in mind because I really think that the majority of an///is fall under this (and the next) category of people.

• The fact that many YOI fans are from the US and aren’t used to content not made in the US.

Listen, I know I’m making a huge assumption here, but I think it’s one that is generally accepted within the fandom: most (if not all) an///is are from the US. It seems obvious to me because the US is one of the few places where (though not even in every state, I think) the age of consent is 18, and all their interactions with us non-an///is seem very US-centric, especially in the way they generally aren’t willing to acknowledge the fact that different countries have different laws and/or traditions and generally a different mindset. 

My goal is not to attack the US mentality here, but, again, I feel like what I’m saying is pretty much accepted even by many of my US friends. And what I’m describing is certainly what an///is act like, so I’m just going to keep explaining why I think this is the main issue (and why I think my assumption is generally right).

We’ve seen before how the US (generally speaking) are scared of importing recreational content from other countries and they’d much rather buy the rights to said foreign content and remake it with their own rules to make it more appealing to a US audience (sometimes even inexplicably and with ridiculous and disastrous results). Recent cases of this have been the US buying the rights to the Norwegian teen TV-show Skam and the popular anime Death Note getting remade into a Netflix movie. The US are screaming at the rest of the world: we only want the idea of your content, but we’d rather make it our own than show yours for what it is, never mind that your show reflects what your country is about and how your the customs of your country reflect on your personal (pop) culture. We don’t want your content EXACTLY because it reflects something that might differ from our views, and our viewers won’t like it. 

And I guess they never will if you actually don’t show them what the rest of the world looks like.

I went a little bit on a tangent there, but my point is: US audience isn’t used to consuming content that isn’t made in the US. I’m not even talking about language here: TV shows aren’t dubbed or subbed, the US literally remakes them and remakes the content to fit the US views and mentality.

That means that the average US citizen will very likely find anything that is untouched by americanization weird if not completely out of their moral values. Couple this fact with the previous one: many YOI fans aren’t used to any kind of content that isn’t perfected and polished specifically for their tastes. 

It’s amazing and it speaks for the quality of YOI that many of them could still get used to a different form of art (anime) and enjoy it and even become hardcore fans (and are now probably getting interested in other anime and manga etc), but out of these amazing people, a (thankfully smaller) group of them still couldn’t wrap their minds around the fact that fans from all over the world, with their own set of morals, ship something that in their minds is controversial (just because of a man-made law that not even every US state follows). They don’t care about what the law in Japan, Russia or Kazakhstan is and they’ve made this loud and clear. 

Bottom line: 

The key to this (like for many other issues) is just one:

EDUCATION.

There’s little we as a fandom can do in this case, especially we people not living in the US since we always seem to be dismissed. They send us anon hate and if we reply saying that Otayuri is legal in our own country we never hear back from them. There’s not much we can do if they aren’t willing to listen to us. 

But all I tried to do here is offer possible reasons why this phenomenon even exists, and maybe by reading this someone will have a brilliant idea on how to fix this. I don’t offer solutions, but understanding why and how something happens is always the key for the next step, whatever the next step might be. 

#yuri on ice #yuri!!! on ice #yoi #otayuri #discourse #fandom meta #yoi meta? #sort of #renee talks #long post #text #i just realized the title sounds like clickbait lmfao #i'm dead #it's 4:30am #bear with me

[tak4hir0]

Thomas Jackson/Getty Images Startups and established companies all face a dilemma when building new technology products.  If they hit upon something innovative that has high potential, they invite the scrutiny of large technology companies such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. Big Tech has the money, technology, data, and talent to replicate and enhance any technological innovation that is not fully protected by patents — which encompasses most digital products. Recent episodes have shown this copycat behavior to be quite common and life-threatening to startups. The copying comes in various flavors. Sometimes tech giants simply copy innovative features. When Snapchat was doing well with stories that disappeared after 24 hours, for example, Facebook retaliated by introducing the same feature to its products, including Instagram and WhatsApp. Subsequently, Snapchat’s usership stalled. It has had trouble regaining momentum, and its stock price went down dramatically. In more egregious cases, whole “form factors” (in Silicon Valley jargon) have been copied. After years of growing its user base at nearly 5% per month (!) Slack’s adoption rate has slackened and started to show signs of decline. The pivotal event? The introduction of Microsoft’s knockoff product, Teams. Microsoft did what it does best: waited to see signs of success (four years, in this case) then copied the offering and later integrated it into its other products. A third approach is to copy a niche product. Allbirds acquired a cult following by developing a line of wool shoes sourced in an environmentally responsible manner. In response, Amazon copied the top-selling product almost point-for-point and sold it online for nearly half the price. Despite this predatory behavior — and the resulting reluctance of some venture capitalists to invest — a few startups have managed to survive beyond their early stages and become sizable players in the same space as the tech giants. On the surface, it looks as if they succeeded due to luck or lack of interest on Big Tech’s part. In reality, though, these challengers succeeded by using the companies’ strengths against them. This strategic move, although counterintuitive at first, can lead to copy-proof innovation. Consider Wayfair. Today it’s the largest online seller of home goods and furniture. Back in 2014, a Harvard case I co-authored described how the company had just merged more than 200 niche product websites into the Wayfair brand. When I spoke with its co-founder and CEO, Niraj Shah, it was clear that Amazon was the constant threat. Over the years, Wayfair had implemented many features that it had seen work for Amazon, and Amazon developers also copied features from Wayfair. One thing that Amazon did not replicate — and that worked remarkably well for Wayfair — was taking its own pictures of and measurements for the furniture and home furnishings that it sold. This additional detail helped consumers visualize the home decor they were planning, and it helped Wayfair to differentiate itself and get traction. (Its five-year revenue growth has been an astounding 49% [CAGR], compared to Amazon’s 26%.)  Yet, Amazon continued to show only the pictures provided by the manufacturer. Why? I suspect it’s because Amazon has 3 billion items for sale, whereas Wayfair offers 14 million. The infrastructure and added cost that Amazon would require to take unique pictures of products is daunting, particularly given that more than half its sales comes from the marketplace listings that are managed independently by third-party sellers. And it’s not just about costs. To succeed with Wayfair’s approach, Amazon would need longer lead times for adding new products, reducing the speed of growth at the “everything store.” Plus, it would cause the website to load slower and be more visually cluttered. Amazon could have copied Wayfair, but it chose not to, as that was not in its own interest. Zulily, which sells women’s and children’s clothing online, found another approach to competing with Amazon in a way that the giant retailer chose not to emulate. Amazon is relentlessly customer-centric: Shoppers tend to get lower prices, quicker delivery times, and great customer service. However, in retailing, catering to the shopper above all else comes at the expense of the supplier — and Amazon’s suppliers put up with a lot. Amazon routinely withholds or delays payment, often arbitrarily. Worse, it copies suppliers’ products and undercuts them, often putting the supplier out of business. So it made perfect sense for Zulily to offer suppliers high-quality service, commit to volume purchases, and offer fair purchase prices. As a result of Zulily’s approach, many suppliers accepted exclusive supply deals with the startup instead of selling on Amazon’s much larger marketplace. This, in turn, allowed Zulily to offer novel and unique items not available elsewhere. The company grew revenues tremendously — from 2009 to 2014 at a CAGR of 161% — until it was acquired by Qurate, owners of QVC and HSN, in 2015 for $2.4 billion as this Harvard case study shows. Outside of e-commerce, in its early days Dropbox took advantage of Microsoft’s massive enterprise software sales prowess. For years, Dropbox was a tiny startup with only a few dozen employees and no salesforce to sell cloud storage to enterprise CIOs and CTOs. Instead, Dropbox offers its service for free to individual consumers. As people adopted the service and it grew, Dropbox got this network of people to start using its product at work. Over time, those users lobbied their bosses, CIOs and CTOs, to purchase and offer Dropbox for Business, the subject of a Harvard case study. In other words, they used personal consumption as a Trojan horse. This judo-like approach, in which a smaller challenger leverages the opponent’s larger size and strength, is promising, but it’s certainly not guaranteed to work or to be sustainable over the long haul. If they don’t copy you, the giant you’re challenging might opt to build a standalone competitor and still copy point-for-point what you built. That said, it’s generally easier to compete with a stand-alone spinoff than the “mother ship.” When TikTok offered a video-sharing app that allowed users to share music snippets, it appealed to younger users who thought Facebook was for their parents and grandparents, and it quickly grained traction. In response, Facebook launched a nearly identical stand-alone app called Lasso, which thus far has not gained traction. Alternatively, Big Tech might simply attempt to acquire the threat. But that’s not guaranteed to succeed, either. Acquisition is sometimes very costly and increasingly it’s just not an option. Facebook did try to buy Snapchat and was denied. Microsoft did try to buy Slack without success. In these cases, it was the startup founders and investors that rejected the offers. Amazon, reputationally the least acquisition-prone of the Big Tech bunch, has historically preferred to develop in-house rather than acquire from outside. I have been using this approach with the startups that I advise to various degrees of success. In order to leverage Big Tech’s strengths against them and avoid being besieged by copycat behavior, you will need to address these questions: Does the opponent have a major strength that is predominantly responsible for its success? Can you identify a product offering (niche, feature, or format) that a segment of customers value and the delivery of which is made harder by possessing the above-mentioned strength? Would mimicking the novel offering somehow hurt the larger opponent’s main business? If the product offering eventually has traction in the market, would the Big Tech opponent necessarily need to give up its strength to copy or compete? If you can answer “yes” to these questions, then you too may have found a way to deter blatant copying and to succeed unencumbered. Of course, no single strategy can deliver an advantage forever. In order to thrive, constantly creating copy-proof innovation is essential. Acknowledgement: Leandro Guissoni, Mark Hill, Greg Piechota and Hem Suri provided valuable suggestions for this article.

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[topicprinter]

Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview.Today's interview is with DShawn Russell of Southern Elegance Candle Company, a brand that makes southern inspired candlesSome stats:Product: Southern Inspired CandlesRevenue/mo: $20,000Started: January 2016Location: RAEFORDFounders: 1Employees: 3Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?Hello! My name is D’Shawn Russell and I am the founder and CEO of Southern Elegance Candle Company. I started the company 4 years ago as a side hustle to make some extra money on the weekends and to get me out of the house. But it quickly grew to much more than I expected.Southern Elegance Candle Company is all about loving and living in the South. We created home fragrance products that all have a southern theme to them and all of our fragrances are based on Southern agriculture. Apple? Check! Pine? Check! Cotton (or course) Check! Missing the Southern Sunshine? We got a fragrance for you. Our core group of customers are women that live in the South or people that appreciate Southern culture.Our flagship products at the moment are our candles. We offer three different sizes; travel tin, mason jar and large tumbler. We also have wax melts and room spray. But, we will be slowly rolling out new products over the next year to include an apparel line.I started the company at our local Farmers Market making about $200 per weekend. We now average about $20,000 a month in sales through our retail site, wholesale site and Faire. Most of our income comes from our wholesale accounts. We were able to branch out from our core Southern states and are currently in stores all over the US.You can check out our brand story video here: Southern Elegance: Candles Crafted In The SouthimageWhat's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?I started Southern Elegance right after my son was born as a hobby. Initially, I made a bunch of random bath and body products in addition to the candles. When I decided to get serious, I looked at everything and decided to just focus on one product and chose candles because they had the potential to be the most profitable. I chose a niche that I could speak authentically about. My ideal customer was easy to identify because it was basically me. (But, don't use that a marketing strategy. It just happened to work in this case) I was born and raised in the South. I LOVE living here and couldn't imagine living anywhere else. I created a company around all the things that I love to do.I was working in education at the time and I absolutely hated it. One day walked into work and quit my job to make candle making a full-time career. I had absolutely no background in sales, manufacturing, marketing or anything business-related. I basically had no clue as to how it was going to work or if this was even a viable plan. Everything was a learning curve, and I spent hours learning a new skill then implementing it.With very limited resources, (basically no money) I went to the school of Google and Youtube. I took some online classes on Branding and Wholesaling. I hired a business coach and I literally hit the streets selling. For the first year, I would sell my candles at any Church function, fair, festival, school bazaar… I did not care. I sold candles outside in the middle of the summer and the dead of winter. I also sold on any and every online platform that would accept me. Etsy, Amazon, Faire, Modalyst, Houzz, etc. All the money I made went back into building the brand, I was lucky to have a husband to pay the bills but it was tight financially. When I finally felt comfortable I approached stores to carry my products. And we slowly built a base of stores to sustain the company.Eventually, I moved my retail site to Shopify and settled with Faire for wholesale.Interview with Candle Science about the beginning of Southern Elegance Candle Company!Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.Making candles isn't that difficult, melt some wax, add fragrance and color, pour in a jar and let harden. But, my first candles were terrible! I had to use local items. So I had wax and fragrance from Hobby Lobby and jars from Walmart. I quickly realized this wouldn’t work because (1) the quality was horrible and (2) you can’t scale a company buying supplies from local retail stores. So, I researched local candle supply companies. CandleScience became my main supplier. They were local and carried professional-grade products. I was also able to buy very small quantities in the beginning and now I order pallets. I am not able to buy direct from glass and wax suppliers so CandleScience serves as the middle man as my company grows.When I first started in my home, all I had was two pots and my stove. After a few months, I bought my first large wax melter and moved into the garage. Two months after that I bought another melter and started looking for my first space outside of my garage.imageMy GarageI live in a small town (approximately 5000 people) so the manufacturing space wasn't available. My first space was a small restaurant. We stored fragrance in the former freezers and wax in the former deep fryers. At the end of that lease, we moved into a slightly larger retail space. But, we covered the windows with paper and a coming soon sign because the area wasn’t zoned for manufacturing and we didn't want anyone to know what we were doing. We had supplies delivered to the back door and prayed no one would check to see what we were doing. After about a year of stress, a real warehouse space became available and we moved into it.Unfortunately, I had no idea how to set up a real candle business because everything up until this point had been ad-hoc. So I went back to the school of Youtube and watched every video I could find on manufacturing candles. I would stop the video and study them frame by frame. I used this information to set up my current space. We have 4 zones; An office area, a production area for each product, shipping and receiving area and finally an area for storage of supplies.imageYou can watch the process of how we make the candles here: Behind the scenesDescribe the process of launching the business.I didn't have a traditional launch. It was more of a slow-rolling out of the business. I quit my job and had to hurry up and figure out if I could make money doing this. So, I started selling at any event that would accept me. I really didn't have a cohesive plan and had no clue about E-commerce or how it works. I basically was shooting in the dark.After wasting a lot of time, energy and money going to events that didn't include my ideal customer, I narrowed down the types of events that I would attend. That allowed me to at least make some money on the weekends at Farmer’s Markets and local festivals. Hauling candles is hard and heavy and I soon got tired of that. The setup and breakdown is hard on the body and I was tired all the time.I decided to build a website and set it up using Big Cartel. Back then, they had a free plan if you had under 10 items. I created a basic site that I could send people to buy stuff when I wasn't on the road. It had ZERO personality but it worked.After about a year I moved to Woo-Commerce to have a more serious presence on the web. I chose Bluehost with Woo, again because it was cheap and I wasn't making that much money from online sales. I was doing my own photography (which sucked), printing my own labels and designing my own website (which was very basic). The website was hard to manage with all the Apps that I needed and security was a constant issue. It was constantly crashing so I eventually moved to Shopify.I still didn't understand how to drive people to the site and really made sales through the website. I was bootstrapping everything and was still broke. I had to make some changes. I chose the fanciest FREE theme from Shopify. I started having boxes and labels printed professionally. I found a Facebook group that had photographers that would exchange products for photos. I went to Upwork and hired a copywriter to review what I had written. And finally, I took an online class for FB ads.Then I began to see the turnaround. Then another class on Email marketing and google ads really rounded out what I need to start seeing sales. It was trial and error and I wasted money learning but eventually saw results.As online sales grew, I stopped doing the festivals and now totally depend on my online sales.As far as my wholesale side, I did several trade shows and have worked with Reps and really feel like they are pretty old school. It costs a ton of money (around $10,000 per show) and requires a lot of time and energy. (plus commissions) For the same price, I could run some paid ads and take my chances with my retail site for about the same return. (And never leave my couch) It’s just easier to go straight to the consumer now with social media. In addition, we do almost $100,000 in sales with Faire, so it doesn't make financial sense for us to continue to do trade shows. So, moving forward we are going to focus on growing our followers by creating engaging content. If new accounts approach us, we have the margins and systems in place to accommodate but it will not be our primary focus.imageBefore and afterSince launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?Below are all the things I WISH I had done when I first started. I am only recently able to see how all this fits together.Social Media Use your social media platforms to drive traffic to your website. Make your posts engaging and relevant to your community. BUILD YOUR COMMUNITY through social media. Facebook groups, Facebook business pages, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. Make sure people know what you do and what you SELL. Don't be afraid to sell… don't beat people over the head with constantly trying to sell them stuff, that gets old… but provide information and entertainment and then ask for the sale. Always eventually ask for a sale. Remind people of what you are selling and give them a reason to buy it. If you don't have time to post every day, use a scheduler like Buffer.Capture emails: Once you engage your customers, capture an email so that you have a direct link to them. My one regret is that I didn't get emails at the festivals. Literally, thousands of people slipped through my fingers. Have some type of pop-up. I used to spin the wheel for almost a year and now we recently changed back to a regular pop-up. Run contests and giveaways… always engage in some type of activity that is capturing emails. We are currently using Privy, but used Justuno also.Email Marketing; Once you get those emails… send out emails. My first emails were terrible. I eventually got better. And now I have someone that designs and sends them weekly. Stay in contact with your people and continue to provide relevant content. We used Mailchimp but recently switched to Klaviyo.Paid ads (google, FB, Instagram): This is the hardest part. I took classes and I know I will never be as good as a professional. I know the basics and can run a decent campaign. Yes, I lost money in the beginning. But, I learned what worked and who to target based off the losses. I've hired firms that lost just as much of my money as I did, so I don't feel bad. Ads are hit or miss. But, I know enough now to know if a campaign is being profitable and I know the right questions to ask any firm that may be running my ads.Retarget: You know how those ads follow you after going to a site? It works. Do it a lot.imageHow are you doing today and what does the future look like?In the big scheme of things, we are doing pretty good. The doors are open, taxes and people are paid. We are still in business and not in danger of going out of business. We have a strong wholesale business and a growing retail business. But, I think we are just scratching the surface.Southern Elegance will develop into a lifestyle brand. Now, before you roll your eyes (which I would have totally done at that statement last year), let me explain. If you create a community of like-minded people and create products they like, they will begin to trust you. And in turn, you can sell anything. Although we sell candles, what we really sell is a community. We sell culture and a sense of belonging, candles just happen to be the product. We are really going to focus on serving our community/customers in the coming years by leveraging social media.In 2020, we plan on introducing Southern-themed apparel. If that goes well, then bath and body products. Once we build the community, we can sell them anything that supports our mission of celebrating Southern Culture.The future looks like world domination.Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?Choose your partners carefully and trust your gut. I made very bad decisions by going against what I thought I should do and listening to “experts”. I lost a ton of money by hiring a fancy firm to run my Facebook Ads. Their results were on par with my own except I didn’t lose thousands of dollars per month paying them.I also lost money by paying a fancy firm out of NYC to do my social media. I do it myself now using Buffer to schedule, my free pics, and recipes & memes from Pinterest. A custom collab with a celebrity cost me almost $10,000 in time, inventory and design fees. I still get pissed when I look at those containers… but it is a reminder to trust my gut. If a mistake has to be made, do it early and cheaply. I’m glad I made those mistakes while small and it wasn’t too disastrous.What platform/tools do you use for your business?Shopify Easily the best place to have an eCommerce site.Privy Capture emailsJustUno Capture EmailKlaviyo Run email campaignsBold (Discount, Loyalty Points, Upsell) A better User experience on the websiteOrder Printer Makes the orders look pretty and less genericTax Jar Sale tax is a pain!!! This makes it so much easier.Yotpo Collect Reviews and use them on social media and marketing campaignsAffiliatly If you decide to use affiliates. It’s simple to set up and use.The Social Sales Girls Teaches you how to get reliable, predictable income when you build it the right way on eCommerce platforms. (FB ads, contests & give-aways for email, email marketing, etc)Lucky Break Consulting Assists with Smart Business Strategy for makers and designersimageWhat have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?All my books are on Audible. I listen in the car and whenever I have downtime.The Purple Cow by Seth Godin Explains why you need to stand out in a crowded market place.Clockwork Mike Michalowicz Helps to teach you how to automate the business processes.Crushing It: Inspirational stories from the experiences of dozens of entrepreneursTribes by Seth Godin: It’s our nature. Now the Internet has eliminated the barriers of geography, cost, and time. Find your tribe and make some money.The Blue Ocean Strategy: Blue ocean strategy is the simultaneous pursuit of differentiation and low cost to open up a new market space and create new demand.You are a Badass: Create a life you totally love. And create it NOW, Make some damn money already.Start with Why: it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be led, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY.The E-Myth (Highly Recommend) Gerber draws the vital, often overlooked distinction between working on your business and working in your business.Profit First (Highly Recommend) Offers a simple, counterintuitive cash management solution that will help small businesses break out of the doom spiral and achieve instant profitability.Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?Do it. Start something. Screw it up. Fix it and then make more mistakes. Rinse and repeat. There have been some spectacular mistakes made by myself… and I learned a tremendous amount from them. And I just kept on trucking. Mistakes happen and usually don’t doom a business. Learn as much as you can and do as much as you can for free...BUT don’t be afraid to pay for knowledge. Google and Youtube can only get you so far, then hire a coach. Take a class. Find people that know how to do what you want to do… and PAY them to do it.Eventually, you have to pass off roles and responsibilities, hurry up and do it as soon as you can afford to. Don't be like me, at the cardiologist wondering what’s going on with your heart. The Doc was like “Stress, it’s gonna kill you.”imageWhere can we go to learn more?WebsiteFacebook Business PageFacebook GroupInstagramPinterestTwitterEmailIf you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos, tools, books, and other data.For more interviews, check out r/starter_story - I post new stories there daily.Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a PM

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[thechasefiles]

The Chase Files Daily Newscap 7/18/2019

Good Morning #realdreamchasers. Here is your daily news cap for Thursday, July 18th, 2019. There is a lot to read and digest so take your time. Remember you can read full articles via Barbados Today (BT), or by purchasing a Daily Nation Newspaper (DN).

SENATOR TO BECOME ENVOY TO SURINAME –Senator Althea Wiggins has been appointed envoy to Suriname, President of the Senate Sir Richard Cheltenham announced today to the Upper Chamber.“I wish to report to all honourable members that Senator Althea Wiggins has been appointed as the Prime Minister’s special envoy to serve in Suriname.“Her duties will involve moving between Barbados and Suriname and to that extent she will not be resigning from the Senate to carry out her duties as special envoy.”The Senate President wished the Senator well in her new posting.“I just want to take this opportunity and I know I speak on behalf of all fellow senators in wishing her well in this new and important assignment,” Sir Richard said.Senator Wiggins served as Deputy High Commissioner to London under the Democratic Labour Party administration. She spent 12 years abroad. (BT)

ADAMS WARNS AGAINST OVER-REGULATING FINANCIAL INDUSTRY – The Mia Mottley administration is being urged to reform old legislation while guarding against implementing new ones that could place too much burden on this country’s financial services industry, a Government Senator who leads the financial technology industry has warned. Speaking on proposed amendments to Securities (Amendment and Validation of Fees) Bill, 2019, Senator Rawdon Adams said that while the amendments are a step in the right direction toward unencumbering the financial services industry, Government must maintain the balance between regulating and enabling capital. Senator Adams, chief executive of fintech firm Bitt, said: “We have to be very careful when we look at this type of legislation that we don’t encumber actors in the financial space with a burden of regulation that is really onerous. “Legislation to my mind is a living entity and it something that has to reflect changes and development in society, be they economic, technological, social or political. It speaks to balancing proscription against enabling. “With this type of legislation, we have to make sure that we don’t hamstring society.” The bill seeks to amend the Securities Act to exempt an issuer of a security, in specified circumstances, from the obligations imposed by sections 63 to 65; and validate the charging and collection by the Financial Services Commission, of certain annual registration fees payable by the Barbados Stock Exchange from January 1, 2016 to the date of commencement of the Securities (Amendment) Regulations, 2018. According to section 63 of the Act: “Subject to section 64, no person shall distribute a security unless a prospectus or a block distribution circular has been filed with, and a receipt therefore has been issued by, the Commission.” In section 65 it states: “No registrant shall sell a security of a class that is the subject of a filing pursuant to section 63 and for which a receipt has been issued by the Commission, within 90 days of the date of the receipt, unless he sends or delivers to the purchaser of the security  a prospectus or block distribution circular within two working days before the agreement of sale is made,” Noting that past administrations have frequently erred on the side of proscription, Senator Adams said it is therefore crucial for the one-year-old Barbados Labour Party Government to strike a delicate balance to ensure the fluidity of the industry. He told the Senate: “This type of legislation does not only have to take into account balance but also proportionality. “When it comes to small and medium-sizes enterprises governed by the legislation, we know that they cannot easily finance themselves through credit or equity. “So, it is really important that legislation like this and the related Acts on our books address this kind of issue.” (BT)

SMART PLAN FOR CITY - Bridgetown is getting smart! Yesterday, Senator Kay McConney announced in the Senate that Government was proceeding with plans to make Bridgetown more technologically friendly for both locals and tourists. Speaking during debate on a Resolution on the Final Report of the National Cruise Development Commission, McConney who is also Minister of Innovation, Science and Smart Technology, said the implementation process had begun and would be done in phases. Smart Bridgetown will have three components: Free Wifi; Smart Parking and a Tourism Mobile App. McConney explained that free wifi was being placed throughout The City; smart parking would be done along certain streets, while the mobile app was being built for tourism engagement. (DN)

‘STALE’ TOURISM OFFERINGS IN NEED OF FACELIFT – If Barbados is to get a bigger slice of the multi-billion dollar international cruise industry, then this country’s tourism product needs to be urgently refreshed. This is according to findings of the final report of the National Cruise Development Commission, which identified several key areas which have contributed to the worrying trend of low spend among cruise ship passengers and short-stay visitors. Speaking from the Senate floor this morning, Minister of Foreign Affairs Senator Dr Jerome Walcott laid out the findings noting that in the report, which utilised several surveys, it was revealed that there has been steady decline in visitor satisfaction, decrease in consumer interest and the general view that the tourism product offerings were stale. The report was divided into eight sections and covers several areas, looking at an analysis of the tourist industry against global trends. The report also looked at the current infrastructure versus what was needed to operate the cruise sector at an optimum level. “The report spoke of the port and the deficiencies there. Out of 34 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, in terms of the welcome at the port of entry, Barbados ranked at number 29. So this is an area which definitely needs to be worked on as well as the cruise infrastructure. The report calls for massive expansion or a new cruise ship facility,” Walcott said. The Senator further noted that the report also spoke to the upgrades to road infrastructure, clearer signage to attractions and intense marketing of several tourist facilities that have not lived up to their potential. The commission also urged Government to accelerate its plans for making Bridgetown a smart city, while increasing the number of bathroom facilities in the capital. “It also speaks to environmental issues where persons go to visit attractions and places of interest and the signs leading to those places are often covered in bush and debris and we need to address this. The report also spoke to a need to refurbish the Pelican Craft Centre in order for that facility to be given a new lease on life, he said, noting that the commission’s report also called for a refreshing of the popular Oistins Bay Gardens facilities The National Cruise Development Commission was established by Cabinet in August last year. Walcott noted that the cruise commission was charged with the responsibility of doing an in-depth assessment and analysis of the sector.(BT)

‘NO ROOM’FOR DISCRIMINATION AGAINST TOURISTS –Workers in the tourism industry have been told by Minister of Labour Colin Jordan that there is no room for discrimination against tourists. Jordan, himself a former tourism executive, took his anti-discrimination message to a seminar on inclusive tourism organised jointly by the gay and lesbian advocacy group, B-GLAD, the Royal Commonwealth Society, the Canadian High Commission and Virgin Holidays. “We are human beings who are interacting with other human beings”, Jordan said as he stressed the need to treat others as they would want to be treated. “In tourism, there is no room for stereotyping. “Human beings fear the unfamiliar, and we sometimes have to train ourselves to be kind, understanding, and respectful. “In tourism, there is no room for discrimination. We, as workers in this industry, do not discriminate because it is not the decent, human thing to do. “We do not discriminate because our guests are human beings. When we check in a guest, we are concerned only with the ability of the guest to pay. We do not ask if the guest has a temper, and is prone to destroy hotel furnishings. We accept people as they present, and we work to make their stay an enjoyable one.“Discrimination is an issue that must be addressed because it speaks of treating to some… as inferior and as not deserving of the same level of treatment and respect as those of the main group(s). “There are those who are traditionally discriminated against because of their ethnicity; racial identity; gender; sexual orientation; a disability; gender identity; religion; or in some cases their denomination.” The Labour Ministry is preparing legislation to combat discrimination in the workplace, and put a framework in place to prevent its occurrence, the minister said “Secondary to being the right thing to do, there are genuine economic benefits to rejecting stereotypes and discrimination, and rather being inclusive in our approach to the tourism industry,” said Jordan. He stressed tourism’s vital role as the main driver of the Barbados economy, earning approximately half of the country’s foreign exchange, and as the single largest employer in the Caribbean, considered the region most dependent on tourism.(BT)

BARBADOS ‘STILL NOT CATERING’TO DISABLED TOURISTS –A Government Senator is calling on his administration to do more to tap into the niche market of disabled tourists. According to Senator Dr Rommel Springer, while there continues to be cursory mention of catering to the disabled travelling public, there needs to be more meaningful steps towards making this a reality. During debate on the final report of the National Cruise Development Commission, Senator Springer contended that heritage tourism can be the catalyst for building out this niche market. He argued that heritage tourism can allow for the use of all sensory perceptions in the telling of the story and this could be especially appealing to those who do not have the benefit of sight. Speaking as a “student of heritage studies”, the senator suggested that Barbados could offer much to a visitor who is visually impaired. Senator Springer said: “There are a number of monuments in The City, where guided tours for these persons can be conducted and they can touch, they can feel and they can hear the history of these monuments.” He noted his experience of seeing people being inspired by touching names inscribed on war monuments. He added: “It is true that these persons may not have the power of sight but they still can create a picture in their mind, especially if the guide is talented enough to explain what is happening around you. “Even in terms of the Parliament building we could have miniatures of the structure built so that persons can have a feel of the overall architecture.” Without going into detail, Senator Springer contended that even some of the unpleasant odours of the historic capital could be integrated into telling a story. He said: “Sometimes it does not have to be the most pleasant smells because sometimes the unpleasant ones tell a story as well. “So, you can go into parts of Bridgetown and you can tell a story and you can have the evidence of the various odours be it the smell of flowers or the smell of something else but that will give a meaningful experience to that person who is visually impaired to get a sense of what life in Barbados might have been 100 years ago.” He pointed out that even the graveyards in The City could form part of this experience. The Senator further argued that Barbados could tap into the international trend of tracking down ancestral roots through genealogical research, noting that this could help visitors form a connection with the island.(BT)

HOTEL WORRIES STIR RESIDENTS –Traffic, a window-to-the-sea and the proposed size of the structure are chief among the concerns of residents in Blue Waters and Cot Road in Christ Church, ahead of the second town hall meeting today addressing the Blue Horizon project. There is a petition on website change.org named “Keep the Sea Window at Accra/Rockley Open”, which has attracted more than 3 000 signatures in just two days. Residents said they had no problem with Blue Tourism Inc. renovating the hotel, but did not think it was necessary for it to go so high – ten storeys, according to developers. Many of them said they would be attending the meeting this evening at Accra Beach Hotel to voice their concerns.  (DN)

CONCERN OVER WELL –People living in a St Michael community are demanding urgent action from authorities at the National Housing Corporation (NHC) to cover a “very deep” well in their area, which they fear is on the verge of collapsing.Less than two weeks after 17-year-old Kyrique Boyce plunged to his death in a 100-foot well in the Pine Government Housing Estate, an elderly woman from Friendship Terrace, Lodge Hill, St Michael and her daughter are pleading for authorities to prevent a similar tragedy happening there. Yvonne Hinds purchased a house in the 1970’s from the Government, with her now deceased husband. Prior to moving in, a communal well was dug next to her house, which was connected to the septic systems of approximately ten nearby residents. Years of wear and tear have caused the concrete slabs, which cover the well to slowly deteriorate until large chunks started falling in, leaving gaping holes, which people could fall through. “I called them (NHC) here perhaps for the entire time I have been here. My husband died calling them about that. They came and looked at it and then left. I am fed up with it,” said Hinds. She explained: “Two of the planks dropped in and the other sides dropped in. They came and placed a plank on it and they haven’t come back. All they are telling us is to keep far from it. How can I keep far when I have to walk around there to get to my place?” she asked. Approximately two months ago, NHC officials reportedly came to the well and placed caution tape around it, but did not fix it. With scores of children now at home on summer vacation, the elderly woman fears the risk of an accident occurring is now heightened. “I am busy telling children not to run on that well. It’s annoying me and I am upset because my son goes out there to cut the grass and I can’t manage if it drops in,” she complained. Numerous efforts to reach NHC officials proved futile but Yvonne’s daughter, Michelle Giles who grew up in the area is concerned about the wellbeing of her mother. “I have never seen a well in such bad shape,” she told Barbados TODAY. “Most people who visited just said this well can’t be fixed and it will have to be abandoned. That has been our issue, so when I got through to the NHC, they sent someone to put the caution tape around the well two weeks later and said they would conduct a site visit to see the status of these wells. Nobody has called us back,” said Giles. “It’s not looking very good, because we are expecting the well to fall in very soon.” Giles recalled that a man in a nearby avenue fell into a well in the 1980’s and survived, prompting authorities to abandon and replace the well. “We don’t want the fix to be a reactive measure after somebody falls in…. we can’t even cut the grass at the edge of the property because there is a hole there and we don’t know how close you can go to the edge. “My mother walks around there and we don’t want her going to the back gate because her house is at the end of the avenue and no one can see and we really can’t have her wandering around there until that is addressed,” said the concerned daughter.(BT)

ATM SKIMMING ACCUSED REMANDED -  The Argentine mechanic charged in connection with the skimming scam that touched scores of Barbadian bank accounts was remanded to prison when he appeared in court today. Joaquin Alberto Lobo pleaded not guilty stealing $3 040 in money which belonged to the Barbados Public Workers Cooperative Credit Union Limited between July 6 and 7. He is also accused, but not required to plead to stealing $79 770 belonging to CIBC FirstCaribbean between July 5 and 8.He was remanded to prison until August 14. Lobo, 33, of Caseros, Buenos Aires, Argentina, entered Barbados by air on July 3. (DN)

ACCUSED TO POLICE OFFICERS: I’M SORRY – A 31-year-old general worker was reprimanded and discharged after issuing an apology to two police officers. Brendan Oneal Bourne, of 1st Avenue Sealy Land, Bankhall, St Michael was accused of assaulting and resisting police constable Kemar White and resisting acting Sergeant Andrew Sandiford in the execution of their duties on July 14. After spending two nights at HMP Dodds, Bourne appeared before Magistrate Kristie Cuffy-Sargeant today and pleaded guilty to the charges. An assault case involving his wife was dismissed after she said she was no longer interested in continuing with the matter. Police constable Kenmore Phillips in outlining the facts said that the offences against the police were committed when they responded to a report of an altercation. “I really do apologise about what happened on Sunday. I was intoxicated but that is no excuse,” the first time offender, who was represented by attorney-at-law Marvin Patterson, told Sandiford who also accepted the apology on behalf of his colleague.(BT)

LAVINE RE-ARRESTED – Moments after being released on $2,000 bail a drug accused left the District ‘A’ Magistrates’ Court the same way he entered – in the custody of police officers. Lesanto Orelston Lavine, 33, of Well Gap, Cave Hill, St Michael arrived in handcuffs this morning on charges of two counts of possession, possession with intent to supply, possession with intent to traffic and cultivation of two pounds of cannabis with an estimated $4,000 street value. He pleaded not guilty to the offences after Magistrate Kristie Cuffy-Sargeant read them. Prosecutor, police constable Kenmore Phillips had no objection to bail. At that time the accused had no suitable surety in the court but was able to make contact with someone who later appeared before the court and secured the bail sum. “I have been in custody for the past five days and it seems that I will be taken again. I want you to see that I left here in good health,” Lavine told the magistrate just before signing the bail forms. As he approached the exit two officers in civilian clothes spoke to him briefly and then placed him in handcuffs and escorted him away.(BT)

NSC STARTS MOVE TO GYMNASIUM –The state-run National Sports Council (NSC), which is currently experiencing environmental challenges at its Blenheim, St Michael headquarters, started to relocate its operations today to the Wildey Gymnasium. However, Acting Director Neil Murrell told Barbados TODAY he did not expect the transition to be completed before early next week. Murrell said while some of the 25 administration employees were able to move to their temporary offices, others continued to function from the existing building on My Lord’s Hill today. “All staff were not moved. There were some other persons in the accounts department because we are still undertaking an audit. So those persons who have to do the audit, they have some timelines to complete…they were operating at the building,” he said. Yesterday, some workers were forced to evacuate the building after complaining of feeling unwell due to the effects of a strong chemical scent which has been lingering from a weekend industrial cleaning. The workers had also called in their bargaining agent, the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU) claiming an infestation of bed bugs.  They had also reported that the office chairs which had been sent for cleaning were brought back wet. Deputy General Secretary of the BWU Dwaine Paul, who was on the scene, welcomed a subsequent decision by management to close the offices for the rest of the week and relocate staff. “We should be able to get things across by early next week. I can’t give you a specific time because there are a lot of files here. Files were moved today and areas of the front office [and] part of the registry was moved today,” said the acting director this afternoon. He also responded to concerns expressed by the union as to whether the files which were being transferred to the gymnasium would be sanitized. “The files have been sanitized. We discussed it on Friday. Some of the people you may have spoken to were not at that meeting. We had a meeting with the staff on Friday last week.  There were persons who came to work this week who were not present last week,” Murrell added. (BT)

READING DICKEY HAS BROUGHT PLEASURE TO MANY BOOKWORMS – When Hollis Chalkdust Liverpool produced his classic calypso Too Much Quacks more than three decades ago, his target was principally fellow artistes who he believed were doing the art form more harm than good. Back then his song did not address private or public sector media moguls or managers. Perhaps 2019 is as good an occasion as any for Too Much Quacks – The Sequel. Calypsonian Ronnie De Announcer Clarke annually brings a waning feature of our Crop Over music back to the public – humour. Over the past three decades or so with the exception of the works of Red Plastic Bag, and the likes of Classic, Eric Lewis, Colin Spencer, Adonijah and a few others, too many of our calypsos have tended to be long-winded verse or unimaginative prose without any semblance of wit. We have had worthy offerings that touch on myriad issues of the day. But often the absence of wit or adroit turn-of-phrase renders many of our songs rather bland. Our calypsonians have from time to time had their songs banned by overzealous, uninformed media house moguls and managers. Of course, the raison d’être for this is usually that the song is vulgar, offensive to public sensibilities or libellous. Frequently, though, lurking in the shadows is a powerbroker who engineers the pulling of the guillotine on a song because of personal discomfort. This has been happening throughout the region wherever the art form is practised. One is often left to wonder at what stage does the interpretation or intent of the creator of a musical work becomes irrelevant and the interpretation and sensibilities of media moguls, managers, politicians, powerbrokers and even John Public override all else? And what makes the scenario even more confusing is when history churns up questionable material that passed whatever litmus test that engenders public acceptance. This year De Announcer finds himself on the wrong side of the powers-that-be for his quite witty and popular Reading For Pleasure. The selection has been banned from the airwaves of two broadcast agencies – public and private sector. And it all has to do with his pun on the last name of an author that actually exists – Eric Jerome Dickey. The artiste sings about the pleasures of reading, his preference of material, and also his suggestion of Dickey’s work to other prospective readers. Some of these, he relates in his song, had no time for the author because of work commitments. Now, interpretation is a personal quality and one is entitled to it whether right or wrong. But to ensure that a false sense of bruised sensibilities or discomfiture does not lead one to make decisions that negatively impact on the creator of a work, some dispassionate questions ought to be asked. Does the artiste’s treatment of his intellectual property work? Are the lyrics of the song in themselves offensive? Is there compatibility among lyrics, interpretation and intent? It is fairer to judge and accept a song on what is actually presented than to dismiss it on what one assumes has been presented. De Announcer has correctly pointed to some selections that continue to be aired on local broadcast stations, some of which pale in terms of creativity to his 2019 selection. He pointed to the likes of Popsicle’s Don’t Sell Cornwall, Mac Fingall’s Tonight You Eating Bacon, John King’s Singing Fuh Cree and Malik’s World Cup Cricket. In Edwin Yearwood’s Sugar Cane the artiste boldly and repeatedly exhorts his followers to “let’s go fuh cane”. These songs passed the test even though some of them might have offended the puritans in our midst. But, fortunately for these mentioned performers, their songs scarcely contained lyrics that might have caused discomfiture to the powerbrokers at the time. Therefore, persons manning the guillotine had no quarrel or received no instructions. It is ironic that we live in a society where our broadcast media over previous decades accepted on their airwaves that Mighty Sparrow envied the Conga Man and regretted that he never “eat white meat yet”; or that he was penniless and had pawned everything in the house other than a fat, lazy feline and thus encouraged his girlfriend to Sell The Pussy [title of the song] and bring the cash for him. We have had our radio stations regale us with the legendary Chuck Berry swimming across Turtle Creek – not with a copy of a Dickey novel in his hands – but his “ding-a-ling”, a toy which he pointedly sang he wanted someone to play with it. This was all art accepted because compatibility was found among lyrics, interpretation and intent. No such luck for De Announcer. When conservatism clashes with art in Barbados the former invariably wins. When political discomfort clashes with art in Barbados, the former always wins. De Announcer’s melodic and quite witty take on the pleasures of reading might be buried as the 2019 season progresses. And that would be a great shame. Should De Announcer consider paying homage in calypso to that brilliant late British organist and composer William Crotch next year? After this year’s experience, perhaps that is one Crotch he should not touch. Better to write a ditty that extends the understanding of too much quacks and invalids.(BT)

MARZVILLE OUT FIRST FOR SOCA MONARCH – Marzville will lead the performers at this year’s finals of the MQI/98.1 The One Soca Monarch Competition at the National Botanical Gardens on July 28. The draw was held earlier today at the venue and Marzville, who was also a competitor in the Yello International Bashment Soca Competition, will set the standard for the 15 other finalists. Meanwhile, last year’s Party Monarch, Mikey, will bring up the rear in the 16th position after swapping places with Jamal Slocombe. The other monarch in the line-up, Lil Rick, who won last year’s Sweet Soca crown, will appear in the No. 2 spot. This year’s competition also has four women in Betty B, TC, Faith and Nathalee. The Soca Monarch Competition, which is an amalgamation of the Sweet Soca and Party Monarch, is being held at the Botanical Gardens for the first time and the National Cultural Foundation is promising a green festival at the new venue. The full line-up of the finalists in the order they will perform is:

1.    Marzville

2.    Lil Rick

3.    Betty B

4.    TC

5.    Jamal Slocombe

6.    Sanctuary

7.    Jus D

8.    Biggie Irie

9.    Adrian Clarke

10. Faith

11. Leadpipe

12. Marvay

13. Nathalee

14. Skung Yung

15. Shaquille

16. Mikey

That’s all for today folks there are 165 days left in the year Shalom! #thechasefiles #dailynewscaps Follow us on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram for your daily news. #bajannewscaps #newsca psbystephaniefchase

[bittenpath-blog]

48cm:Trey Richardson: The bike industry doesn't really exist

By Trey Richardson

Editor's note: Trey Richardson is a marketing professional for hire who spent nearly three decades in virtually every supply channel of the cycling industry. In lieue of payment for this column, Trey would like to encourage appreciative readers to make a donation to World Bicycle Relief.

I started writing this several months ago but decided to sit back and chew on some popcorn and see how things fell after the smoke cleared (still waiting). Between Interbike's 2019 walkout, the ASI/Performance outcome, the number of companies changing hands and now brands like Trek and Cannondale partnering with REI ... that was a lot to take in over a period of about 6 months.

I took several steps back and looked at everything as if I had no knowledge of, or experience in, the church we call 'The Bike Industry' and came to a conclusion I have yet to hear:

The 'Bike Industry' has ended

We ... all of us, use that phrase 'The Bike Industry' a lot. If there was one thing I would say that may make many of the IBD woes go away, it would begin by putting a stop to perceiving 'the industry' as exclusive to who it belongs to and accept what it is and will (not) be in its future state. The days of trying to control how it operates in virtually every channel have been dissipating fast for some time now.

Since anyone alive can remember, bicycle and bicycle related manufacturers have (mostly) used the same, exclusive distribution channels. 'The Industry' had made it a practice to determine who belongs, who doesn't, and how it wants to operate without any outside influence. Add to that, retailers expected faithful support from their suppliers and demanded exclusivity, MAP, margins ... I could go on. Today, money flows in from a lot of different directions and most of it goes into a funnel that is the internet.

I have always said, three shops working together will increase ridership in their community more so than six shops working independently.

Many are upset by (fill in the blank), but the reality of it has ALWAYS been, a business (should) forecasts growth potential based on tomorrow's bottom line ... not how dedicated a retailer was in the past. Especially if said retail channel can no longer support the highest possible ROI for them.

It sucks, but that is how business works.

The new (big) kids on the block

Today, while many shake their fists at the Amazons out there, many don't see them for what they really are. Sure, they warehouse and sell items, but their real business is being a marketplace for others to use as a sales channel. That in itself is what has helped Amazon grow, (well, that and them streamlining the ordering and distributing process in addition to offering many outside services).

Then you have a company like REI. They have a massive network of stores who have managed to maintain if not increase foot traffic in their brick-and-mortar locations as well as have an e-commerce website that includes third party sellers: kind of like Amazon (but I wouldn't necessarily consider them a marketplace ... yet?)

History repeats itself

Around 150 years ago, general stores killed the specialty stores and street markets selling locally sourced goods when trains started delivering mass amounts of goods to populated areas. Then Sears & Roebuck knocked those out when their mail order catalogs made goods available to anyone with a street address (additionally, communication technology exploded with the telegraph and later telephone system, cutting the time it took to a company like Sears to make deals with their suppliers).

Sears managed to get a massive and wide range of products from their suppliers and into customers' hands in a fraction of the time it used to take ... Sound familiar? (The way things are looking, the IBD is going to far outlast Sears, once the pioneer in delivering goods to the mass market).

What was — The bike industry

A bike mechanic, company rep, and customer walked into a bar ...

Years ago, as we were wrapping up our shop's weekly pub crawl one night, a few of us were having a conversation about 'the state of the industry' over beers and burritos. One of our favorite regulars, who was never short on jokes, started making fun of our conversation.

"I never knew the bike industry was such an elite organization ... do you have a secret handshake?" (three fingers go up)

We went on to explain how there is a sort of dedication that puts passion above money and the entire industry works to support each other. "We're family" and not here for the money. I look back at my response as a reminder to not ever base a business decision on how much I like something ... but instead, hope the business decision I make ultimately leads to support that passion.

What happened?

What was 'the industry' is not what I (or most), would consider an industry today. It is instead a supply channel to the overall marketplace. For instance, the auto industry still relies on a closed-chain supply channel requiring their main products (autos), to pass from manufacturing and authorized dealerships before making it to the end user (though this is changing as we speak). Though there are fluctuations, all adjustments are made by companies within that closed supply channel. That closed-chain supply channel is what defines them as AN INDUSTRY.

Until recent years, every bicycle manufacturing, distribution, and sales channel had to pass thru the IBD in order to reach the consumer. Similar to the auto industry, that is what made it an industry.

Today, 'the bike industry' only supplies a niche product category to a small percentage of the marketplace through more 'generalized' channels. Manufacturers and distributors channels are selling through an endless number of nonexclusive retail channels (IBD, outdoor, e-commerce ...), as well as direct to consumer. The bicycle-related supply channel now lives in the same space as most consumer products do. While laying on a beach in Europe, I can order toilet paper, dog food, Swiss Cake Rolls, and a bike, all located in three different states, and have it all shipped to my address in Atlanta. That would take me as little as 5 minutes to accomplish.

In addition to my above statement, no matter how everyone wants to be recognized, the general, money spending consumer doesn't see us like some major player in the economy either. Bloomberg probably can't even spell Schwinn.

The next 4.0 version of 'the bike industry' everyone seems to be waiting on simply doesn't exist. Like most, I will still call it the Bike Industry but we need to stop looking at it, as such, operationally. Complaining about MAP, margins, exclusive brands, etc. is a 'spinning your wheels' waste of time and resources.

We're the IBD Industry and need to champion that!

The IBD Industry is not new because theoretically, it's been like this for years ... but it needs to organize and make a better impact. It needs to make the RIGHT impact.

Since the playing field has been taken over by consumer demand and a more streamlined supply channel scrambling to fill it (while leaving the IBD in the dust), IBDs need to reset their approach to doing business. While this is hard to conceptualize because it goes against everything we've been (wrongfully) taught, retailers need to begin focusing on growth instead of survival ... like they should have 20 years ago.

A large percentage of people running things on the retail side are trying to justify how they can keep things the same with the same number of people while fighting for a harder to obtain than ever dollar. Most of those still around, live on a constant up and down 'net profit' roller coaster which has caused the health of their business to suffer ... much less grow.

THIS NEEDS TO END and shop owners need to make a huge shift in their personal roles.

Do you own a business ... or do you have a job?

This is one of my favorite questions to ask people who have or want to open a shop ... or any business. If an owner attaches themselves to the labor of their business, they have a job. No title or tax identity changes that. Not to sound like a complete tool, but if you own a shop and take on any of the day-to-day items like sales or service ... by 'business standards', you just have a job. A business owner's only responsibility should be focused on growth and branding. Owning a business of which you wear several hats is the number one growth stopper. If there isn't enough time in the day to follow up on what could be some great opportunities, you'll never get out of that up and down cycle.

This is also where I feel the hobby vs. business line gets drawn. Owners who prefer to make a difference from within the walls of their stores often do so because it's what keeps them motivated and/or they see it as one (or two) fewer payroll checks they have to divvy out. Many say it allows them to best serve and keep their customers ... but that only includes customers who willed themselves to go to your store in the first place.

I know 'hobby' is a strong word to use ... but would an owner be that willfully present in the day to day operations of their business if they were running a paper supply store? Would they strike up conversations about what their customer printed last week or tell war stories involving paper cuts and copier jams? ..."Hey, come look at this 32 lb weight almond paper made of imported linen!"

IBD Business owners in what was the 'Bike Industry'

So back to my statement of being an "IBD Industry." Shop owners have a lot of hard decisions to make and more often than not, overwhelm themselves. Many decided to give up because they only saw things getting worse. Most of the 'owners' I know who closed their shop were really only an elaborate employee at best because they were a manager first. In some cases, it may work out, but it is 100 percent not how the 'to grow a business' manual lays it out.

On the surface, the owner/employee role sounds like a thrifty way to start or even run a business. There are a lot of business gurus out there that make running business sound easier by resorting to laying out a plan with a bunch of bad or outdated habits based on low entry fees, first-person service, low head counts, etc. The mentality to run tight and efficient is today's poor excuse that most often results in a business's inability to nurture growth.

Changing tubes and selling bikes with a free tuneup isn't how you grow. Forget about that "right now" money and go hunt down some of that "next 5 years" money!!!

Business owners in today's IBD Industry ... You have ONE job

The IBD Industry is made up of thousands of community-based stores that have the ability to provide services far beyond their traditional means ... which will gain them huge amounts of exposure in return. Alliance marketing is one of my favorite topics. It involves forming partnerships with other lateral and local businesses who are willing to collaborate and even promote yours in exchange for the same.

STOP ...

Do not walk down the street and ask if you can leave some business cards or a countertop ad at the local gym or running store. You need to think bigger and do some old-school hustling. In fact, freshen up those roached out Vans, toss a sports coat over your shop T-shirt (or at least put on some deodorant ... this person knows who I'm talking to), and walk out the door.

If there is a bike shop, there is a 99.9 percent chance there is a community around it consisting of several other small business, associations and events. There may even be some larger companies who host a large number of events for their employees (see some examples below). A shop owner should be focused on knocking on doors, attending SBA meetings, asking questions, and finding new ways to be involved. This could include advocacy, community events, offering services to corporate wellness programs, and many other avenues.

The possibilities are unlimited so why would you limit your access to these?

Generally speaking, owners should spend two or more days a week dedicated to networking outside their shop and not just in the offseason. The best time to promote your business is when things are in full swing! I know I make this sound simple ... because it really should be.

If a shop owner is in a rut being one of two employees in their shop, well ... they're going to have to work a lot harder in order to achieve that level of growth. A common business practice in our industry is to cut corners to save money when in fact, it is likely costing what could be potential new business. Sometimes, a person will just have to say eff it, get out of the shop, and plan on doing some damage control, (that may involve coming back and working late or going in on your typical day off). If you stick with it, things will eventually level out and you'll begin to really appreciate your newfound perspective of running your business.

Competition is your friend!

I have always said, three shops working together will increase ridership in their community more so than six shops working independently. There are three competing shops around me who are great at working together. They often communicate and work together on things both have an interest in. From where I stand, it almost seems as if they are competing more on who can offer better community support than who can sell more bikes. Regardless, we have a healthy riding community that still loves to shop locally.

Bringing it all together — Branding

Once you have enough plates spinning in the air, you need to focus on bringing it all together and associating your efforts with your brand. A brand is different from a business in that it is the strategically planned out identity of your business. Holding a road ride twice a week brands you as a roadie shop ... supporting your community brands you as a pillar of that community. The best problem you could have is that your networking efforts have created a pile of opportunity requiring you to hire more help or professional outside services.

The best part, once an owner begins to nurture these efforts, they suddenly get excited . MOTIVATED even! Seeing your efforts increase the community's appreciation of your business will rewire your brain and relight that entrepreneurial fire I sure many have missed.

Stop letting things outside of your control run your business

Business 101: The structure of a business should be established so that any products or services brought in will only compliment that establishment ... not run it. Putting your trust in someone else's hands is the greatest risk an owner could take.

This is what a lot of past and current retailers are going through. Bike companies and distributors hung a super juicy steak out there making it irresistible to do business and led everyone to a level of dependency. Skip ahead to today, because those once 'dedicated' supply channels have been breached by 'outsiders', there is no more special treatment or entitlement being given to dealers. What you did yesterday or for the last 20 years does not matter to a company's future bottom line. Rather than burying yourself with how things like bad margins, MAP and who else is now selling your brand, affect your business ... focus on earning that loyalty back from your community ... one you've probably missed for a very long time.

Places you should network

I'll throw out some ideas but more so, want to spark some thought. If you have something that works, share it in the comments!

Schools & universities — In addition to NICA, find out when a local school is having a play day and offer to include a bike event. Offer a middle school a couple of bikes at wholesale to add to their PE classes. Park your mobile shop van in a high-traffic area of a university for a couple of hours each week and do repairs.

Large businesses — Most have a wellness program and LOVE when a health-related business offers to come out and give a class (we did this 25 years ago on everything from training to bike basics and maintenance). Even better, negotiate and see if a company will PAY YOU to repair or maintain their employees' bikes as an incentive to their employees staying healthy. (this is currently a thing). Help start a bike club within the company!

Small businesses — See what they're involved in, let them know what you're involved in, and find ways you can help each other out or make connections with people they know. Join or start a small business association.

Chamber of Commerce / city officials — If you sell e-bikes, take every person possible with any decision-making powers in your community, on a ride. This is how you open doors to bicycle infrastructure *bike companies may even want to help out with this so ask!

Charities — From the humane and cancer societies to helping someone local in a dire situation, find ways to be of service.

Other shops including co-ops — Get with other local shops and collaborate on how to do better on penetrating your market. If you have a co-op or shop who serves a great purpose like WeCycle Atlanta here, be a resource for them and offer anything you can to GET INVOLVED!

Churches, hospitals, doughnut/bagel shops, restaurants, rehab facilities, professional sports teams and the facilities that rehab them ... I could go on.

If it's not on LinkedIn — It didn't happen

For goodness sake folks ... polish up (ugh, or create) a LinkedIn account and list every business-related effort you do ... especially advocacy. I spelled this out a while back regarding how every person associated with an IBD should promote their professional identity to their customers. The goal should be to bring the community, your branding, and your business together in as many ways as possible to initiate and drive a more progressive way of doing business.

The funny thing is ...

In many ways, I am contradicting what I've stated in other articles. I said, in its current state, there are too many bicycle-related businesses fighting for the same dollar ... and the approach to increasing overall ridership to match what has become a bloated industry is a backward approach.

These things are still true when spoken as if there needs to be an industry-related effort to repair it. As individuals, that is not the case ... but you're going to have to wash your hands of any and all concepts related to any of your suppliers fixing things for you. If you have a business, GET OUT THERE AND OWN IT!!!

Your friendly neighborhood chucklehead — Trey

#48cm road bike #Bicycle Retailer and Industry News

[vanessawestwcrtr5]

First Blockchain Smartphones Appear on the Market: Sirin Labs’ Finney Unboxed

First Blockchain Smartphones Appear on the Market: Sirin Labs’ Finney Unboxed

After months of expectation and one of the top-five biggest ICOs of 2017, on Nov. 29 Sirin Labs has launched Finney, the ‘world’s first’ blockchain smartphone. Yet, even with the endorsement of football legend Lionel Messi and a $157.8 million token sale behind it, the $999 device has stepped into uncharted territory, where its built-in cold storage wallet and DApp ecosystem will have to contend with the dominance of Apple and Samsung — as well as the Exodus 1, a rival blockchain smartphone from HTC.

Features

Most of Finney’s key features had already been announced prior to Thursday’s launch: The smartphone comes equipped with an embedded cold storage wallet that’s physically separate from the main hardware; its Sirin OS is a “Google-certified” mod of the Android operating system; it boasts AI-driven, cyber-threat detection; and it enables the direct exchange of selected cryptocurrencies (Ethereum, Bitcoin and Sirin Labs Token) without the need to use a centralized exchange.

But at its launch event in Barcelona, Sirin Labs provided more concrete details as to its wider aims and expectations for Finney, revealing that the smartphone is just the beginning of its plans to bring blockchain technology to mobile devices.

Most of all, the Israeli company used the launch event to emphasize how Finney is a smartphone that makes blockchain technology more accessible to a mainstream audience and that provides diehard crypto enthusiasts with a more practical way of securely managing their coins.

“This is the most important computer of our generation — smartphone.”

“The Finney phone is a one-stop shop,” declared Sirin Labs’ co-founder and co-CEO Moshe Hogeg during his presentation. “Before the Finney, you needed a ledger, you needed a computer, you needed wallet software and then you needed to go to an exchange, and then you could convert. The Finney does all of this in one phone.”

By having a cold storage wallet, a Token Conversion Service and crypto-exchange apps on a single device, Hogeg affirmed that Finney will take “a huge step forward in bridging the gap between the blockchain economy and the consumer market,” making the world of crypto more accessible to an audience that doesn’t necessarily have the time or inclination to sign up for Kraken or Coinbase on their PCs and then buy a Ledger or Trezor wallet.

Image source: Sirin Labs

Another, more predictable facet of Sirin Labs’ plan to attract a mass market is that Finney comes with all the specs and functionality you’d expect from a 2018 smartphone. The phone has a 12MP (megapixel) rear camera, an 8MP selfie camera, as well as a 6-inch touchscreen, 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage memory. This puts it at least in the same league as this year’s iPhone XS, which also has a 12MP rear camera (albeit a dual one), but actually a smaller, 5.5-inch screen, 4GB of RAM and a 7MP selfie camera.

The fact that it boasts performance superiority in several departments here would help make the phone desirable to someone who may have been thinking about buying a separate hardware wallet and an iPhone XS (or Samsung Galaxy S9) — and just as importantly, so too will the ease with which its main features (the hardware wallet and DApp store) can be used.

The process of transactions is quick and painless, involving the physical opening of the wallet (which is slid upward from the top of the phone) and a few taps of its touchscreen, as well as a few taps on the smartphone’s display (e.g. to choose which kind of transaction you want to make). One nice feature is that Finney enables the user to easily compare the addresses and transaction amounts shown in both the wallet’s screen and the phone’s, something which ensures that they won’t end up sending coins to the wrong recipient as a result of a hack or bug.

Yet, Sirin Labs is aiming with Finney to make cryptocurrency more accessible and popular in a number of other ways. First of all, the company famously recruited Lionel Messi to be Finney’s brand ambassador back in 2017, hoping that ‘the GOAT’ and ‘a hacker on the camp’, according to Hogel, would be the best person to make Finney — and crypto — much more visible to a mass market.

“I think security and privacy is the number one priority right now. For everybody it’s important, because we have all our content, all our lives on mobile phones Privacy is very important now more than ever, because right now there are lots of hackers, and people can steal your identity or your money.”

Lionel Messi

DApp store

Added to Messi’s enviable reputation, Sirin Labs revealed that Finney will make crypto more accessible through the smartphone’s dCENTER. Not only does this feature provide users with a DApp store for decentralized, crypto-related applications, but it actually rewards them with SRN Tokens for engaging and spending time with the apps it offers. Moreover, Hogeg claimed that owners can claw back around $300 of the phone’s asking price by engaging with all of the apps available at launch.

The company is referring to this program as ‘Earn and Learn,’ and in conjunction with the outreach-focused concept stores due to open in December in London and Tokyo, it shows how Sirin Labs hopes that the smartphone will serve as a champion for the wider cryptocurrency industry, and not just Sirin Labs itself.

“Our entire concept is to bridge the gap,” Erin Brazilay — Sirin Labs’ Chief Commercial Officer — explained to Cointelegraph. “And as such, we’re going to open concept stores in London and Tokyo and other places. Our stores will be kind of an academy for the blockchain community; all the staff will be trained at the highest level, so people in the community can come and ask questions [about blockchain and cryptocurrency]. So that even someone who is a first-comer can come and get the full understanding of how the technology works. And there is nothing like that in the market.”

Blockchain-focused operating system

The company is also releasing Finney with its own blockchain-focused operating system, Sirin OS, which it ambitiously aims to take beyond its own hardware. “We have decided to develop the Finney, the first blockchain phone that runs Sirin OS. But this is only the beginning of the execution of our vision. Our vision is that every Android-based device would run Sirin OS. We are hoping for other OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] to adopt the Sirin OS and join us in the blockchain revolution.”

In other words, Sirin Labs doesn’t simply want to make blockchain phones, but to produce the platform for cryptocurrency and blockchain applications, becoming a kind of ‘crypto Google.’ If it can get a crypto-oriented operating system on, say, a Samsung, Huawei or HTC phone, then it will go a long way in making crypto mainstream, and this is why Erin Brazilay affirmed that Sirin OS is “at least” as important as Finney to Sirin Labs’ longer term strategy: “We need to put a lot of pressure on the OEM side, to convince them to adopt Sirin OS as the standard, de-facto technology to enable their phones to be blockchain-enabled.”

As can be imagined, Sirin Labs is hopeful for Finney’s future. Aiming to ship 100,000 units of the smartphone within one year, it’s already accepting orders for the device on its website — and in January, the phone will also be available to buy via the Amazon Launchpad platform.

Niche segment or mass market?

However, other voices and industry figures are skeptical that the smartphone will have much of an impact outside of cryptocurrency circles. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Gartner’s senior principal analyst, Tuong H. Nguyen, believes that it will appeal mostly to “tech savvy” individuals and “early adopters.”

“I would question the ability for this device to achieve mass market success. The broader question I think you’re asking is ‘what is the appeal/must-have functionality that this ‘blockchain phone’ is providing?’ The storage wallet applies to a niche segment of the mass market. Not only would it be appealing to the few people who own crypto, but it goes a niche deeper by trying to convince these few people they need a phone that specifically does this (put another way, why wouldn’t I buy a phone from a larger, more well-known OEM with tons of features — more than I would likely use — minus the crypto features?)”

Not only does Sirin Labs have to contend with the possibility that Finney might appeal only to a “niche segment” of the market, but it also has more than one competitor in the blockchain-phone sector.

For one, HTC is due to release the Exodus 1 in December — and like Finney, it’s a high-end smartphone that features a cold storage wallet, although it is currently $39 cheaper than Sirin Labs’ offering. And on top of HTC, there’s one other manufacturer of a blockchain phone, Pundi X.

Back in October, the India-based blockchain payment provider announced its very own “XPhone,” a smartphone due in Q2 2019 that can transmit phone calls, texts and mobile data using blockchain nodes, thereby avoiding the need to use centralized mobile networks. And as the company’s vice president, Peko Wan, claimed to Cointelegraph, this ability to provide basic phone services via decentralization makes it more of a blockchain phone than Finney.

“What makes the XPhone unique is that it actually uses a blockchain-based protocol for communicating data, making calls, sending messages and more. That means users communicate with each other securely and independently of a central carrier via nodes. We will stand by the uniqueness of the way in which we have reinvented blockchain for use as a transmission protocol for telephony and data of all kinds. In every sense, we have built a true blockchain phone.”

Regardless of such opinions on whether it is a ‘true’ blockchain phone or not, what is clear is that, with Finney, Sirin Labs has taken an important step for the cryptocurrency industry. Within the space of a year, it has delivered on a massive ICO by releasing a high-performance and secure product that will provide actual utility and value to its users. This is something not many blockchain projects can claim to have done, and while it’s hard to predict just where the future will take Finney and Sirin OS, it can only be a good thing that the crypto industry has finally begun producing gadgets all people can use.

Source link https://ift.tt/2KUbdiE

[bobbynolanios88]

First Blockchain Smartphones Appear on the Market: Sirin Labs’ Finney Unboxed

First Blockchain Smartphones Appear on the Market: Sirin Labs’ Finney Unboxed

After months of expectation and one of the top-five biggest ICOs of 2017, on Nov. 29 Sirin Labs has launched Finney, the ‘world’s first’ blockchain smartphone. Yet, even with the endorsement of football legend Lionel Messi and a $157.8 million token sale behind it, the $999 device has stepped into uncharted territory, where its built-in cold storage wallet and DApp ecosystem will have to contend with the dominance of Apple and Samsung — as well as the Exodus 1, a rival blockchain smartphone from HTC.

Features

Most of Finney’s key features had already been announced prior to Thursday’s launch: The smartphone comes equipped with an embedded cold storage wallet that’s physically separate from the main hardware; its Sirin OS is a “Google-certified” mod of the Android operating system; it boasts AI-driven, cyber-threat detection; and it enables the direct exchange of selected cryptocurrencies (Ethereum, Bitcoin and Sirin Labs Token) without the need to use a centralized exchange.

But at its launch event in Barcelona, Sirin Labs provided more concrete details as to its wider aims and expectations for Finney, revealing that the smartphone is just the beginning of its plans to bring blockchain technology to mobile devices.

Most of all, the Israeli company used the launch event to emphasize how Finney is a smartphone that makes blockchain technology more accessible to a mainstream audience and that provides diehard crypto enthusiasts with a more practical way of securely managing their coins.

“This is the most important computer of our generation — smartphone.”

“The Finney phone is a one-stop shop,” declared Sirin Labs’ co-founder and co-CEO Moshe Hogeg during his presentation. “Before the Finney, you needed a ledger, you needed a computer, you needed wallet software and then you needed to go to an exchange, and then you could convert. The Finney does all of this in one phone.”

By having a cold storage wallet, a Token Conversion Service and crypto-exchange apps on a single device, Hogeg affirmed that Finney will take “a huge step forward in bridging the gap between the blockchain economy and the consumer market,” making the world of crypto more accessible to an audience that doesn’t necessarily have the time or inclination to sign up for Kraken or Coinbase on their PCs and then buy a Ledger or Trezor wallet.

Image source: Sirin Labs

Another, more predictable facet of Sirin Labs’ plan to attract a mass market is that Finney comes with all the specs and functionality you’d expect from a 2018 smartphone. The phone has a 12MP (megapixel) rear camera, an 8MP selfie camera, as well as a 6-inch touchscreen, 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage memory. This puts it at least in the same league as this year’s iPhone XS, which also has a 12MP rear camera (albeit a dual one), but actually a smaller, 5.5-inch screen, 4GB of RAM and a 7MP selfie camera.

The fact that it boasts performance superiority in several departments here would help make the phone desirable to someone who may have been thinking about buying a separate hardware wallet and an iPhone XS (or Samsung Galaxy S9) — and just as importantly, so too will the ease with which its main features (the hardware wallet and DApp store) can be used.

The process of transactions is quick and painless, involving the physical opening of the wallet (which is slid upward from the top of the phone) and a few taps of its touchscreen, as well as a few taps on the smartphone’s display (e.g. to choose which kind of transaction you want to make). One nice feature is that Finney enables the user to easily compare the addresses and transaction amounts shown in both the wallet’s screen and the phone’s, something which ensures that they won’t end up sending coins to the wrong recipient as a result of a hack or bug.

Yet, Sirin Labs is aiming with Finney to make cryptocurrency more accessible and popular in a number of other ways. First of all, the company famously recruited Lionel Messi to be Finney’s brand ambassador back in 2017, hoping that ‘the GOAT’ and ‘a hacker on the camp’, according to Hogel, would be the best person to make Finney — and crypto — much more visible to a mass market.

“I think security and privacy is the number one priority right now. For everybody it’s important, because we have all our content, all our lives on mobile phones Privacy is very important now more than ever, because right now there are lots of hackers, and people can steal your identity or your money.”

Lionel Messi

DApp store

Added to Messi’s enviable reputation, Sirin Labs revealed that Finney will make crypto more accessible through the smartphone’s dCENTER. Not only does this feature provide users with a DApp store for decentralized, crypto-related applications, but it actually rewards them with SRN Tokens for engaging and spending time with the apps it offers. Moreover, Hogeg claimed that owners can claw back around $300 of the phone’s asking price by engaging with all of the apps available at launch.

The company is referring to this program as ‘Earn and Learn,’ and in conjunction with the outreach-focused concept stores due to open in December in London and Tokyo, it shows how Sirin Labs hopes that the smartphone will serve as a champion for the wider cryptocurrency industry, and not just Sirin Labs itself.

“Our entire concept is to bridge the gap,” Erin Brazilay — Sirin Labs’ Chief Commercial Officer — explained to Cointelegraph. “And as such, we’re going to open concept stores in London and Tokyo and other places. Our stores will be kind of an academy for the blockchain community; all the staff will be trained at the highest level, so people in the community can come and ask questions [about blockchain and cryptocurrency]. So that even someone who is a first-comer can come and get the full understanding of how the technology works. And there is nothing like that in the market.”

Blockchain-focused operating system

The company is also releasing Finney with its own blockchain-focused operating system, Sirin OS, which it ambitiously aims to take beyond its own hardware. “We have decided to develop the Finney, the first blockchain phone that runs Sirin OS. But this is only the beginning of the execution of our vision. Our vision is that every Android-based device would run Sirin OS. We are hoping for other OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] to adopt the Sirin OS and join us in the blockchain revolution.”

In other words, Sirin Labs doesn’t simply want to make blockchain phones, but to produce the platform for cryptocurrency and blockchain applications, becoming a kind of ‘crypto Google.’ If it can get a crypto-oriented operating system on, say, a Samsung, Huawei or HTC phone, then it will go a long way in making crypto mainstream, and this is why Erin Brazilay affirmed that Sirin OS is “at least” as important as Finney to Sirin Labs’ longer term strategy: “We need to put a lot of pressure on the OEM side, to convince them to adopt Sirin OS as the standard, de-facto technology to enable their phones to be blockchain-enabled.”

As can be imagined, Sirin Labs is hopeful for Finney’s future. Aiming to ship 100,000 units of the smartphone within one year, it’s already accepting orders for the device on its website — and in January, the phone will also be available to buy via the Amazon Launchpad platform.

Niche segment or mass market?

However, other voices and industry figures are skeptical that the smartphone will have much of an impact outside of cryptocurrency circles. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Gartner’s senior principal analyst, Tuong H. Nguyen, believes that it will appeal mostly to “tech savvy” individuals and “early adopters.”

“I would question the ability for this device to achieve mass market success. The broader question I think you’re asking is ‘what is the appeal/must-have functionality that this ‘blockchain phone’ is providing?’ The storage wallet applies to a niche segment of the mass market. Not only would it be appealing to the few people who own crypto, but it goes a niche deeper by trying to convince these few people they need a phone that specifically does this (put another way, why wouldn’t I buy a phone from a larger, more well-known OEM with tons of features — more than I would likely use — minus the crypto features?)”

Not only does Sirin Labs have to contend with the possibility that Finney might appeal only to a “niche segment” of the market, but it also has more than one competitor in the blockchain-phone sector.

For one, HTC is due to release the Exodus 1 in December — and like Finney, it’s a high-end smartphone that features a cold storage wallet, although it is currently $39 cheaper than Sirin Labs’ offering. And on top of HTC, there’s one other manufacturer of a blockchain phone, Pundi X.

Back in October, the India-based blockchain payment provider announced its very own “XPhone,” a smartphone due in Q2 2019 that can transmit phone calls, texts and mobile data using blockchain nodes, thereby avoiding the need to use centralized mobile networks. And as the company’s vice president, Peko Wan, claimed to Cointelegraph, this ability to provide basic phone services via decentralization makes it more of a blockchain phone than Finney.

“What makes the XPhone unique is that it actually uses a blockchain-based protocol for communicating data, making calls, sending messages and more. That means users communicate with each other securely and independently of a central carrier via nodes. We will stand by the uniqueness of the way in which we have reinvented blockchain for use as a transmission protocol for telephony and data of all kinds. In every sense, we have built a true blockchain phone.”

Regardless of such opinions on whether it is a ‘true’ blockchain phone or not, what is clear is that, with Finney, Sirin Labs has taken an important step for the cryptocurrency industry. Within the space of a year, it has delivered on a massive ICO by releasing a high-performance and secure product that will provide actual utility and value to its users. This is something not many blockchain projects can claim to have done, and while it’s hard to predict just where the future will take Finney and Sirin OS, it can only be a good thing that the crypto industry has finally begun producing gadgets all people can use.

Source link https://ift.tt/2KUbdiE

#IFTTT #Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin

[cryptnus-blog]

First Blockchain Smartphones Appear on the Market: Sirin Labs' Finney Unboxed

New Post has been published on https://cryptnus.com/2018/12/first-blockchain-smartphones-appear-on-the-market-sirin-labs-finney-unboxed/

First Blockchain Smartphones Appear on the Market: Sirin Labs' Finney Unboxed

After months of expectation and one of the top-five biggest ICOs of 2017, on Nov. 29 Sirin Labs has launched Finney, the ‘world’s first’ blockchain smartphone. Yet, even with the endorsement of football legend Lionel Messi and a $157.8 million token sale behind it, the $999 device has stepped into uncharted territory, where its built-in cold storage wallet and DApp ecosystem will have to contend with the dominance of Apple and Samsung — as well as the Exodus 1, a rival blockchain smartphone from HTC.

Features

Most of Finney’s key features had already been announced prior to Thursday’s launch: The smartphone comes equipped with an embedded cold storage wallet that’s physically separate from the main hardware; its Sirin OS is a “Google-certified” mod of the Android operating system; it boasts AI-driven, cyber-threat detection; and it enables the direct exchange of selected cryptocurrencies (Ethereum, Bitcoin and Sirin Labs Token) without the need to use a centralized exchange.

But at its launch event in Barcelona, Sirin Labs provided more concrete details as to its wider aims and expectations for Finney, revealing that the smartphone is just the beginning of its plans to bring blockchain technology to mobile devices.

Most of all, the Israeli company used the launch event to emphasize how Finney is a smartphone that makes blockchain technology more accessible to a mainstream audience and that provides diehard crypto enthusiasts with a more practical way of securely managing their coins.

“This is the most important computer of our generation — smartphone.”

“The Finney phone is a one-stop shop,” declared Sirin Labs’ co-founder and co-CEO Moshe Hogeg during his presentation. “Before the Finney, you needed a ledger, you needed a computer, you needed wallet software and then you needed to go to an exchange, and then you could convert. The Finney does all of this in one phone.”

By having a cold storage wallet, a Token Conversion Service and crypto-exchange apps on a single device, Hogeg affirmed that Finney will take “a huge step forward in bridging the gap between the blockchain economy and the consumer market,” making the world of crypto more accessible to an audience that doesn’t necessarily have the time or inclination to sign up for Kraken or Coinbase on their PCs and then buy a Ledger or Trezor wallet.

Image source: Sirin Labs

Another, more predictable facet of Sirin Labs’ plan to attract a mass market is that Finney comes with all the specs and functionality you’d expect from a 2018 smartphone. The phone has a 12MP (megapixel) rear camera, an 8MP selfie camera, as well as a 6-inch touchscreen, 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage memory. This puts it at least in the same league as this year’s iPhone XS, which also has a 12MP rear camera (albeit a dual one), but actually a smaller, 5.5-inch screen, 4GB of RAM and a 7MP selfie camera.

The fact that it boasts performance superiority in several departments here would help make the phone desirable to someone who may have been thinking about buying a separate hardware wallet and an iPhone XS (or Samsung Galaxy S9) — and just as importantly, so too will the ease with which its main features (the hardware wallet and DApp store) can be used.

The process of transactions is quick and painless, involving the physical opening of the wallet (which is slid upward from the top of the phone) and a few taps of its touchscreen, as well as a few taps on the smartphone’s display (e.g. to choose which kind of transaction you want to make). One nice feature is that Finney enables the user to easily compare the addresses and transaction amounts shown in both the wallet’s screen and the phone’s, something which ensures that they won’t end up sending coins to the wrong recipient as a result of a hack or bug.

Yet, Sirin Labs is aiming with Finney to make cryptocurrency more accessible and popular in a number of other ways. First of all, the company famously recruited Lionel Messi to be Finney’s brand ambassador back in 2017, hoping that ‘the GOAT’ and ‘a hacker on the camp’, according to Hogel, would be the best person to make Finney — and crypto — much more visible to a mass market.

“I think security and privacy is the number one priority right now. For everybody it’s important, because we have all our content, all our lives on mobile phones […] Privacy is very important now more than ever, because right now there are lots of hackers, and people can steal your identity or your money.”

Lionel Messi

DApp store

Added to Messi’s enviable reputation, Sirin Labs revealed that Finney will make crypto more accessible through the smartphone’s dCENTER. Not only does this feature provide users with a DApp store for decentralized, crypto-related applications, but it actually rewards them with SRN Tokens for engaging and spending time with the apps it offers. Moreover, Hogeg claimed that owners can claw back around $300 of the phone’s asking price by engaging with all of the apps available at launch.

The company is referring to this program as ‘Earn and Learn,’ and in conjunction with the outreach-focused concept stores due to open in December in London and Tokyo, it shows how Sirin Labs hopes that the smartphone will serve as a champion for the wider cryptocurrency industry, and not just Sirin Labs itself.

“Our entire concept is to bridge the gap,” Erin Brazilay — Sirin Labs’ Chief Commercial Officer — explained to Cointelegraph. “And as such, we’re going to open concept stores in London and Tokyo and other places. Our stores will be kind of an academy for the blockchain community; all the staff will be trained at the highest level, so people in the community can come and ask questions [about blockchain and cryptocurrency]. So that even someone who is a first-comer can come and get the full understanding of how the technology works. And there is nothing like that in the market.”

Blockchain-focused operating system

The company is also releasing Finney with its own blockchain-focused operating system, Sirin OS, which it ambitiously aims to take beyond its own hardware. “We have decided to develop the Finney, the first blockchain phone that runs Sirin OS. But this is only the beginning of the execution of our vision. Our vision is that every Android-based device would run Sirin OS. We are hoping for other OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] to adopt the Sirin OS and join us in the blockchain revolution.”

In other words, Sirin Labs doesn’t simply want to make blockchain phones, but to produce the platform for cryptocurrency and blockchain applications, becoming a kind of ‘crypto Google.’ If it can get a crypto-oriented operating system on, say, a Samsung, Huawei or HTC phone, then it will go a long way in making crypto mainstream, and this is why Erin Brazilay affirmed that Sirin OS is “at least” as important as Finney to Sirin Labs’ longer term strategy: “We need to put a lot of pressure on the OEM side, to convince them to adopt Sirin OS as the standard, de-facto technology to enable their phones to be blockchain-enabled.”

As can be imagined, Sirin Labs is hopeful for Finney’s future. Aiming to ship 100,000 units of the smartphone within one year, it’s already accepting orders for the device on its website — and in January, the phone will also be available to buy via the Amazon Launchpad platform.

Niche segment or mass market?

However, other voices and industry figures are skeptical that the smartphone will have much of an impact outside of cryptocurrency circles. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Gartner’s senior principal analyst, Tuong H. Nguyen, believes that it will appeal mostly to “tech savvy” individuals and “early adopters.”

“I would question the ability for this device to achieve mass market success. The broader question I think you’re asking is ‘what is the appeal/must-have functionality that this ‘blockchain phone’ is providing?’ The storage wallet applies to a niche segment of the mass market. Not only would it be appealing to the few people who own crypto, but it goes a niche deeper by trying to convince these few people they need a phone that specifically does this (put another way, why wouldn’t I buy a phone from a larger, more well-known OEM with tons of features — more than I would likely use — minus the crypto features?)”

Not only does Sirin Labs have to contend with the possibility that Finney might appeal only to a “niche segment” of the market, but it also has more than one competitor in the blockchain-phone sector.

For one, HTC is due to release the Exodus 1 in December — and like Finney, it’s a high-end smartphone that features a cold storage wallet, although it is currently $39 cheaper than Sirin Labs’ offering. And on top of HTC, there’s one other manufacturer of a blockchain phone, Pundi X.

Back in October, the India-based blockchain payment provider announced its very own “XPhone,” a smartphone due in Q2 2019 that can transmit phone calls, texts and mobile data using blockchain nodes, thereby avoiding the need to use centralized mobile networks. And as the company’s vice president, Peko Wan, claimed to Cointelegraph, this ability to provide basic phone services via decentralization makes it more of a blockchain phone than Finney.

“What makes the XPhone unique is that it actually uses a blockchain-based protocol for communicating data, making calls, sending messages and more. That means users communicate with each other securely and independently of a central carrier via nodes. We will stand by the uniqueness of the way in which we have reinvented blockchain for use as a transmission protocol for telephony and data of all kinds. In every sense, we have built a true blockchain phone.”

Regardless of such opinions on whether it is a ‘true’ blockchain phone or not, what is clear is that, with Finney, Sirin Labs has taken an important step for the cryptocurrency industry. Within the space of a year, it has delivered on a massive ICO by releasing a high-performance and secure product that will provide actual utility and value to its users. This is something not many blockchain projects can claim to have done, and while it’s hard to predict just where the future will take Finney and Sirin OS, it can only be a good thing that the crypto industry has finally begun producing gadgets all people can use.

[legit-scam-review]

First Blockchain Smartphones Appear on the Market: Sirin Labs’ Finney Unboxed

After months of expectation and one of the top-five biggest ICOs of 2017, on Nov. 29 Sirin Labs has launched Finney, the ‘world’s first’ blockchain smartphone. Yet, even with the endorsement of football legend Lionel Messi and a $157.8 million token sale behind it, the $999 device has stepped into uncharted territory, where its built-in cold storage wallet and DApp ecosystem will have to contend with the dominance of Apple and Samsung — as well as the Exodus 1, a rival blockchain smartphone from HTC.

Features

Most of Finney’s key features had already been announced prior to Thursday’s launch: The smartphone comes equipped with an embedded cold storage wallet that’s physically separate from the main hardware; its Sirin OS is a “Google-certified” mod of the Android operating system; it boasts AI-driven, cyber-threat detection; and it enables the direct exchange of selected cryptocurrencies (Ethereum, Bitcoin and Sirin Labs Token) without the need to use a centralized exchange.

But at its launch event in Barcelona, Sirin Labs provided more concrete details as to its wider aims and expectations for Finney, revealing that the smartphone is just the beginning of its plans to bring blockchain technology to mobile devices.

Most of all, the Israeli company used the launch event to emphasize how Finney is a smartphone that makes blockchain technology more accessible to a mainstream audience and that provides diehard crypto enthusiasts with a more practical way of securely managing their coins.

“This is the most important computer of our generation — smartphone.”

“The Finney phone is a one-stop shop,” declared Sirin Labs’ co-founder and co-CEO Moshe Hogeg during his presentation. “Before the Finney, you needed a ledger, you needed a computer, you needed wallet software and then you needed to go to an exchange, and then you could convert. The Finney does all of this in one phone.”

By having a cold storage wallet, a Token Conversion Service and crypto-exchange apps on a single device, Hogeg affirmed that Finney will take “a huge step forward in bridging the gap between the blockchain economy and the consumer market,” making the world of crypto more accessible to an audience that doesn’t necessarily have the time or inclination to sign up for Kraken or Coinbase on their PCs and then buy a Ledger or Trezor wallet.

Image source: Sirin Labs

Another, more predictable facet of Sirin Labs’ plan to attract a mass market is that Finney comes with all the specs and functionality you’d expect from a 2018 smartphone. The phone has a 12MP (megapixel) rear camera, an 8MP selfie camera, as well as a 6-inch touchscreen, 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage memory. This puts it at least in the same league as this year’s iPhone XS, which also has a 12MP rear camera (albeit a dual one), but actually a smaller, 5.5-inch screen, 4GB of RAM and a 7MP selfie camera.

The fact that it boasts performance superiority in several departments here would help make the phone desirable to someone who may have been thinking about buying a separate hardware wallet and an iPhone XS (or Samsung Galaxy S9) — and just as importantly, so too will the ease with which its main features (the hardware wallet and DApp store) can be used.

The process of transactions is quick and painless, involving the physical opening of the wallet (which is slid upward from the top of the phone) and a few taps of its touchscreen, as well as a few taps on the smartphone’s display (e.g. to choose which kind of transaction you want to make). One nice feature is that Finney enables the user to easily compare the addresses and transaction amounts shown in both the wallet’s screen and the phone’s, something which ensures that they won’t end up sending coins to the wrong recipient as a result of a hack or bug.

Yet, Sirin Labs is aiming with Finney to make cryptocurrency more accessible and popular in a number of other ways. First of all, the company famously recruited Lionel Messi to be Finney’s brand ambassador back in 2017, hoping that ‘the GOAT’ and ‘a hacker on the camp’, according to Hogel, would be the best person to make Finney — and crypto — much more visible to a mass market.

“I think security and privacy is the number one priority right now. For everybody it’s important, because we have all our content, all our lives on mobile phones […] Privacy is very important now more than ever, because right now there are lots of hackers, and people can steal your identity or your money.”

Lionel Messi

DApp store

Added to Messi’s enviable reputation, Sirin Labs revealed that Finney will make crypto more accessible through the smartphone’s dCENTER. Not only does this feature provide users with a DApp store for decentralized, crypto-related applications, but it actually rewards them with SRN Tokens for engaging and spending time with the apps it offers. Moreover, Hogeg claimed that owners can claw back around $300 of the phone’s asking price by engaging with all of the apps available at launch.

The company is referring to this program as ‘Earn and Learn,’ and in conjunction with the outreach-focused concept stores due to open in December in London and Tokyo, it shows how Sirin Labs hopes that the smartphone will serve as a champion for the wider cryptocurrency industry, and not just Sirin Labs itself.

“Our entire concept is to bridge the gap,” Erin Brazilay — Sirin Labs’ Chief Commercial Officer — explained to Cointelegraph. “And as such, we’re going to open concept stores in London and Tokyo and other places. Our stores will be kind of an academy for the blockchain community; all the staff will be trained at the highest level, so people in the community can come and ask questions [about blockchain and cryptocurrency]. So that even someone who is a first-comer can come and get the full understanding of how the technology works. And there is nothing like that in the market.”

Blockchain-focused operating system

The company is also releasing Finney with its own blockchain-focused operating system, Sirin OS, which it ambitiously aims to take beyond its own hardware. “We have decided to develop the Finney, the first blockchain phone that runs Sirin OS. But this is only the beginning of the execution of our vision. Our vision is that every Android-based device would run Sirin OS. We are hoping for other OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] to adopt the Sirin OS and join us in the blockchain revolution.”

In other words, Sirin Labs doesn’t simply want to make blockchain phones, but to produce the platform for cryptocurrency and blockchain applications, becoming a kind of ‘crypto Google.’ If it can get a crypto-oriented operating system on, say, a Samsung, Huawei or HTC phone, then it will go a long way in making crypto mainstream, and this is why Erin Brazilay affirmed that Sirin OS is “at least” as important as Finney to Sirin Labs’ longer term strategy: “We need to put a lot of pressure on the OEM side, to convince them to adopt Sirin OS as the standard, de-facto technology to enable their phones to be blockchain-enabled.”

As can be imagined, Sirin Labs is hopeful for Finney’s future. Aiming to ship 100,000 units of the smartphone within one year, it’s already accepting orders for the device on its website — and in January, the phone will also be available to buy via the Amazon Launchpad platform.

Niche segment or mass market?

However, other voices and industry figures are skeptical that the smartphone will have much of an impact outside of cryptocurrency circles. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Gartner’s senior principal analyst, Tuong H. Nguyen, believes that it will appeal mostly to “tech savvy” individuals and “early adopters.”

“I would question the ability for this device to achieve mass market success. The broader question I think you’re asking is ‘what is the appeal/must-have functionality that this ‘blockchain phone’ is providing?’ The storage wallet applies to a niche segment of the mass market. Not only would it be appealing to the few people who own crypto, but it goes a niche deeper by trying to convince these few people they need a phone that specifically does this (put another way, why wouldn’t I buy a phone from a larger, more well-known OEM with tons of features — more than I would likely use — minus the crypto features?)”

Not only does Sirin Labs have to contend with the possibility that Finney might appeal only to a “niche segment” of the market, but it also has more than one competitor in the blockchain-phone sector.

For one, HTC is due to release the Exodus 1 in December — and like Finney, it’s a high-end smartphone that features a cold storage wallet, although it is currently $39 cheaper than Sirin Labs’ offering. And on top of HTC, there’s one other manufacturer of a blockchain phone, Pundi X.

Back in October, the India-based blockchain payment provider announced its very own “XPhone,” a smartphone due in Q2 2019 that can transmit phone calls, texts and mobile data using blockchain nodes, thereby avoiding the need to use centralized mobile networks. And as the company’s vice president, Peko Wan, claimed to Cointelegraph, this ability to provide basic phone services via decentralization makes it more of a blockchain phone than Finney.

“What makes the XPhone unique is that it actually uses a blockchain-based protocol for communicating data, making calls, sending messages and more. That means users communicate with each other securely and independently of a central carrier via nodes. We will stand by the uniqueness of the way in which we have reinvented blockchain for use as a transmission protocol for telephony and data of all kinds. In every sense, we have built a true blockchain phone.”

Regardless of such opinions on whether it is a ‘true’ blockchain phone or not, what is clear is that, with Finney, Sirin Labs has taken an important step for the cryptocurrency industry. Within the space of a year, it has delivered on a massive ICO by releasing a high-performance and secure product that will provide actual utility and value to its users. This is something not many blockchain projects can claim to have done, and while it’s hard to predict just where the future will take Finney and Sirin OS, it can only be a good thing that the crypto industry has finally begun producing gadgets all people can use.

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Basic Start With Amazon FBA!

Recognizing which books to supply on Amazon.com could indicate the difference in between a good income stream as well as overall failure. Taking into consideration that bestselling writers launching new titles has a higher effect on overall sales compared to the basic market, it would be unjust to merely make use of year or year contrasts to determine whether or not Christian book sales are reducing or increasing. By defining a particular niche target market and targeting my service to this target market, I have actually built a devoted network of links as well as customers, as well as have developed an online reputation in this area as a trusted professional in internet marketing, e-commerce and Amazon.com FBA. When you have discovered your market you after that have to obtain an old book or reference work from the general public domain to use as the basis for creating your entirely possessed new product, ready to earn wonderful amounts of cash money for you. Though no one is going to say the worth and also impact of on-line purchasing on business world, there are plenty of people that acknowledge a should satisfy the pressing consumer pain points in order to create more effective and also acceptable online buying experiences throughout the board. Citing a surge in the expense of transportation, a statement from Amazon.com said that the cost for a one-pound standardized plan, which make up a "substantial section" of the bundles in the gratification program, would certainly increase by "just" $0.09. That $0.09 might not sound like a whole lot, but it's a considerable dive each product in addition to other fees, consisting of delivery rates. Based upon Amazon's data, its third-party vendors around the world obtained orders for 28 million items as early as Cyber Monday-that's a 21.7% increase from exactly what they got on Cyber Monday in 2015. Although the Kindle ($ 79) and also Kindle Fire ($ 199) are fairly cheap, he states it doesn't take long for Amazon.com making their cash back on e-book sales. Decrease your prices and also be one of the most affordable vendor on the site. 3. Vendor Met Prime- you straight deliver the product to the client but with the same terms as Amazon.com does. Marketplace is suitable whether you just want to make some spare cash part time, however also if you intend to start a 'proper' small business. You will be accountable for advertising and marketing, marketing, as well as marketing, and when a client places an order, the wholesale supplier will then package the product and ship it to the customer. Sells products for other people, it does not buy its own items to sell. As an income opportunity, there readies extent to gain from Amazon.com products. Ecommerce or open resource Business is an online store-management software program and also therefore an essential element when it comes to ecommerce. Also the web design as well as development firms enhance the sites to be watched correctly on mobile devices. Slow Relocating Products Ought To be Closed Down - Products that remain on your rack for quite a very long time as well as offer slowly can decrease the growth of business as well as reduce the capital. Effective execution not only urges sales, yet also constructs commitment by offering consumers a reason to return. Difficulty returning products that verified faulty or otherwise as explained likewise contributed to less people buying from foreign 53 percent of those that acquired items in other countries, used the address of a family members or a friend in another nation. One downside is that occasionally you will market the exact same book on a number of websites in the exact same day when you only have the one duplicate. Ecommerce local business are currently phoned call to see just how they can make use of curated material proactively to enhance their consumers' experience online. Third-party sellers that use our Market solution should follow our guidelines and those who don't undergo quick activity including possible elimination of their account," a representative for Amazon.com told Company Insider. E-Commerce becomes one of the preferred means of purchasing as they appreciate they are on-line in today's the world, because of its ease and ease. Just clicking on Efficiency Over Time, sellers can check their performance over Twelve Month, both in portion and also in worth. Joanne Nelson of Nelson Beads has actually been a seller on Amazon.com for 15 years. Net sales for that year topped ₤ 30bn in the UNITED STATES who were the main individuals of on the internet buying during that time.

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ENERGY: A HUMAN History is an impressive book that covers a host of inventions and innovations as well as the careers of some of the people who shaped the ways we live. The author of 20 books, Richard Rhodes knows how to handle an enormous subject like energy and how to balance breadth and depth as he wends the way through the history of energy production and consumption in the United States and United Kingdom over the past few centuries.

Energy begins with the burgeoning population in the United Kingdom in the 1500s, the need for timber to build ships, and the time it takes to reforest. A hundred years later, the shift from wood to coal kept Londoners warm as the city’s population increased by 75 percent. This brought high cancer rates among chimney sweeps, a ubiquitous tarnish on buildings, and an increase in respiratory illnesses among city dwellers. Coal mining was dangerous, exhausting work, often done by children until laws curtailed such practices. But the biggest challenge was water, and solving the drainage problem led to a variety of experiments and inventions. This notion that demand for energy leads to innovation that leads to unsavory consequences that spur further innovation is a driving force in this book that provides momentum — dare I say energy — from page to page, beginning to end.

Rhodes explores innovation as a complex interaction of access, collaboration and correspondence, failure and success, and timing. James Watt, for instance, created a hub for innovation out of a job maintaining mathematical instruments for the university in Glasgow. He started experimenting with steam on his own, sharing ideas with collaborators. Often, in this larger history of energy, one inventor has solved one problem but not another, while another inventor has solved the other problem but not the first one, so that, by the end, the accumulation of work has addressed more problems than any one person was trying to solve. By the end of this chapter, Watt finds an ambitious partner, and the Boulton & Watt engine is used not only to drain mines but also for mills and factories. This breakthrough comes with pollution, though, a recurring topic for Rhodes.

Electricity is elucidated as an even more complex challenge than steam, taken up by Benjamin Franklin, Luigi Galvani, Alessandro Volta, Humphry Davy, Hans Christian Øersted, Michael Faraday, and others whose names may sound familiar from high school history and science classes. In fact, one of the wonderful things about this book is its ability to draw from disparate areas of study. The story of alternating current electricity and Westinghouse Electric Company is one example of Rhodes’s deft intertwining of business, history, science, and engineering. These interrelationships — and the relationships of these pursuits with humanistic concerns — could be considered the main point of the book.

Some of my favorite parts of Energy are those that might seem less necessary to the book’s arc. American journalist Ida Tarbell makes appearances, offering contemporaneous commentary on such matters as environmental destruction resulting from oil wells. In fact, in the early 20th century, Tarbell wrote a series of articles that became a history of Standard Oil and paved the way for investigative journalism as we have come to know it today. She led a fascinating life and a varied career, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the dexterous Rhodes, who has written a biography of actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr, tackled a biography of Tarbell as his next project.

The chapter in Energy on whale oil is especially playful; it reminds me of Herman Melville’s beautifully written everything-I-know-about-whales chapter in Moby-Dick. Rhodes’s chapter on the role of horses is also captivating. It’s difficult to imagine today the streets of New York piled inches high with horse manure, for 30 to 50 pounds of solid waste is the inevitable daily output of a working horse. Rhodes goes on to connect this waste with the larger increase in urban garbage as well as including a few words about the disease-carrying flies who bred in the manure. He does not, however, directly connect this municipal solid waste clearly to energy production, even though, in 2014, 13 percent of such garbage was burned to produce electricity and heat, according to the US Energy Information Administration. His focus on waste is mainly on air pollution, particularly as a result of coal use and, later, on waste from petroleum use, both of which deserve the rich analysis Rhodes offers and remain contentious issues under the new administration.

Rhodes gives short shrift to both wind and solar power, however. That’s to be expected. The author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb has long advocated nuclear energy based on its public health record and overall cost. He argues in Energy that accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima Daiichi “need not have happened.” He also says the disposal of nuclear waste is “a political problem in the United States, but it isn’t today and has not been for many years an intractable technical problem. The notion that such waste must be successfully protected from exposure for hundreds of thousands of years is counter to how humans handle every other kind of toxic material we produce.” Three hundred pages into this history, readers can see that cleanups are necessary after each energy innovation.

The argument for nuclear energy may be Rhodes’s real main point, in the end. Because “technologies improve over time,” Rhodes trusts that “our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will have better ways of dealing with our detritus than we do.” While his writing and his knowledge are compelling, not every reader will share his trust or feel comfortable pushing responsibility for toxic waste to the future, even if our parents or grandparents started cleaning up air pollution 50 years ago.

Because Rhodes rightly emphasizes that “[t]echnologies themselves need time to develop” through the spread of ideas, incremental innovations, and shifts in infrastructure, both wind and solar deserve more space in the human history of energy. Granted, in March 2017, wind and solar energy accounted for 10 percent of energy consumed in the United States. But that small percentage represents rapid expansion. Earlier this year, Fortune reported, “Solar and wind projects made up roughly 62% of new power construction in 2017.” This ascendance corresponds to fits and starts Rhodes chronicles along the previous several hundred years of energy production. When the newest US nuclear power reactor (with some parts from the 1970s) became commercially operational in 2016, it had been 20 years since the last one got up and running. The average age of the 99 nuclear reactors in the United States is 37 years old, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Meanwhile, the largest solar generating plant in the world was finished in Nevada in 2014, though, admittedly, it is not without problems.

Rhodes makes clear that any energy production comes with drawbacks. Both wind and solar require a lot of land and are more feasible in the Western United States than on the East Coast, for instance. His insight makes me curious about possibilities of geographically targeted energy development, akin to targeted medical treatments that take into account individual characteristics, lifestyle, and genetic markers to adapt the generally accepted course in a balance of scale for efficiency and customization for effectiveness. Rhodes’s deft accounts of political, social, economic, and geographical interplay suggest to me, if not to him, that niche energy production might be useful, even as petroleum and natural gas continue to vie for the top spot in this country. While Rhodes could not have foreseen the current administration’s plan for tariffs, the resulting stifling of solar power construction is much related to topics and concerns Rhodes raises in Energy.

The story of the past that Rhodes pieces together and recounts beautifully in Energy is important for the decisions and innovations we are making now and for the future we are creating. The history of Energy is sweeping, and the writing is marvelous. Moreover, Rhodes’s attention to factual information, his nimble analysis, his ability to draw connections, and his optimism are necessary additions to global conversations about energy production and consumption.

¤

Anna Leahy is the author of the nonfiction book Tumor and the poetry collection Aperture. See more at www.amleahy.com.

The post What Makes the World Move appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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[mud76]

An Overview of Personal and Business Loan Categories and Their Uses

The number of loan products have significantly grown over the last 20 years as a demanding public and economic requirement in demand of specialty to solve circumstances. From loans, student loans, business loans and municipal loans. The entities which participate in the invention of the several financial products are actuaries, risk management professionals, "information and informatic engineers" and Wall Street among other people. It had been crucial to create, enhance or break for better or for loan providers and goods to keep money fluid at a marketplace that funds to deal with market demographics. Personal Loans Signature Loans - A signature loan is just as it seems. This amount of time is known as a "loan duration " and may be from six months to five decades. Signature loans usually need credit as well as the criteria for loan approval are dependent on the borrower's credit and and also to a lesser degree on assets. Not all signature loans have the same parameters for credentials. Some loans will require the borrower in spite of good credit to accounts to demonstrate the institution for underwriting purposes. The institution may or may not place a lien but nevertheless wishes to have documentation demonstrating that there are really fiscal or physical assets owned by the borrower. Signature loans normally come with lower interest rates than other types of consumer loans like money loans, credit card advances, title loans and some loans. More on these issues. Who are the creditors in touch loans? They vary for banks, savings and loan associations, finance companies and payday loan businesses. These loans are easily available to the general public and doesn't need a credit rating. To get the card than probably required a credit rating or at least the procedure for identification . Credit card loans advances come with interest rates that are higher and also other penalties for having access. Various entities allow access to this credit card cash advances from bank tellers, check cashing centers and automated teller machines (ATMs). The fees vary based on. To lower the fees for cash advances some use check cashing facilities to have the card billed and get money back in turn without needing to pay off the charges of ATM machines as cards are assessed a charge twice; original by the ATM company and also their lender. The rates of interest on credit card loans or improvements are generally higher than unsecured loans. There are a number of states which have laws that have interest rates on credit cards. The loan or advance on a credit card is not a "term loan" as with the majority of signature loans. It is more or less a line of credit that the borrower has access to when they need it so long as there are funds. Interest rates on unsecured loans are no longer tax. Most have come to use their own credit cards or between paychecks although they have been created for short term borrowing needs. Wedding Loans - a form of loan to carve out a niche for the lending business and fulfill the needs of the rising prices of weddings is your Student Loan. Due to the cost it sometimes needs an individual loan or just a business loan of the households involved to provide a correct wedding. Wedding loans may be secured (using resources for collateral) or unsecured (signature loans) to obtain funds for the growing requirement to pay for the escalating wedding costs and all the various services and goods that a thriving matrimonial service will require. The credit standards and the term may vary based on condition of the individuals and the amount. Payday or Cash Advance Loans is a growing market because it normally needs minimum of credit criteria utilized for loan approvals. An individual may have credit for a fast and instant loan. Having proof of income, evidence of a checking account and identity is. Now many have checking accounts without checks you can still get a payday advance by asking their bank to create a 1 time check to give to the loan agency. Payday loan companies and stores can get approval with no faxing of files as they utilize other means for proof of income. Though loans come with high rates of interest that they are the only source of emergency cash loans for those in need. To put it differently a fiscal lien is set against the advantage to secure a loan to buy or refinance the car, ship et al.. These consumer loans might sometimes need a down payment of five to secure usage and pleasure of possession. Since these aren't funds which are currently available as with charge cards they include a "loan duration" from a couple of years depending upon the choices of the consumer, the marketplace and the credit status. The rates of interest can vary from quite low usually provided by producers of cars, motorcycles, RV's (recreational vehicles) and ships to very high if the borrower uses a credit card, a finance company or a "buy here - pay here" lender - or even the auto trader who finances the purchase of the automobile by giving the borrower a term of months and years to pay the remainder of their loan off. Manhattan Capital inc SBA (Small Business Administration) Loans are loans which are given to small businesses that are not able to get qualified for a loan by a financial institution for a variety of reasons from lack of business background, lack of security to "protected" the loan or not having a decent credit history. The SBA isn't a direct creditor but functions as an underwriter on behalf of the bank that funding the loan to the business entity. In the event the borrower defaults on the loan that the SBA will pay the bank a percentage of the remainder for taking the financial risk to loan the capital to your own business. There are numerous sorts of SBA loans that won't be dealt with in this report but a future article will describe in detail. Traditional Business Loans are loans that are either unsecured meaning no asset is utilized to accept the loan or secured and known as "asset based loans" where resources out of inventory, equipment, accounts receivable or real estate are used for underwriting to get loan approval. Conventional business loans are granted to business entities that have good banking relationships, established business credit history using transaction lines with businesses they conduct business with and good standing with credit reporting entities such as Dun & Bradstreet. There are short term loans with interest only payments using the remainder due at the close of the loan generally referred to as a "Balloon Loan". Additionally, there are longer term loans which are fully amortized (main and interest in every payment) paid over one to five decades or longer. Equipment Leasing is a financial instrument which is not a loan. Meaning predicated on tax ramifications and who possesses the equipment - renting is that - renting an asset. Leases are generally from a bank or businesses. The lease term may vary from one and there are tax benefits to the business entity in leasing gear. Equipment Sale Leaseback is a trade to use equipment that is already possessed by the business or municipal entity to secure funds for the present demand for operations. The term may vary from one to five decades and the number of funds may vary based on credit history and a percentage of the average market value of their gear. The business then in turn leases the equipment back. The company or the lessee normally has options on what they need to do with the equipment at the term's conclusion. They can roll up the lease trade into newer more updated equipment or software. They can buy the equipment for one dollar or ten percent of the reasonable market value of their equipment.More and more businesses are renting now rather than paying cash or with charge lines or loans. Merchant Cash Advance is utilized by businesses that can't qualify and need fast cash or don't want to experience the process of growing bank approval for funds that were required. A Merchant Cash Advance is likewise not a loan product but it is the selling of assets or charge card receipts at a discount. To put it differently that the Merchant Cash Advance firm purchases the credit card receipts and attaches a fee usually whenever the business "batches", settles or closes the day's or week's sales till the money advanced are paid off. There's absolutely absolutely no term with retailer cash advances as it isn't a loan so there is no payment amount or interval. The paying off of the funds vary according to debit card transactions of the day or week and a the credit. Factoring Accounts Receivable Invoices permits a business entity that normally has to wait 30 days or longer to be paid by other businesses or governmental issues. Again factoring isn't technically a loan but also a selling of invoices in a discount for cash. With a Factoring Company the company applies in a normal trade and the business looks mostly at the credit of another business or entity that the company is doing business with. Based on that as long as the client of the company is a business or government agency the invoices are purchased and funds are dispensed to the business generally they're currently transacting business with. In other words that the funds are dispersed after there's a credit score check and processing of the firm. The dollar amount that's advanced can differ from fifty % of the invoice into eighty or ninety percent depending on various factors like the size of this invoice to the credit criteria of another company or governmental entity whether it is a city, county, or state or national agency.