The Survival of the Muddiest

This weekend Max and I competed in The Survival Race in New Windsor, NY. We raced around a 5 kilometer course that included plenty of obstacles through mud and water, plus some climbing challenges (I bypassed the rope wall; heights still freak me out.) It was a ton of fun, and we finished the race together, holding hands, at 25.42. Not a bad for first-time mud runners. See the last few seconds of the race above.

Social Media and the Beauty Industry

I wrote a piece for the Times about how lots of discontinued products are being reissued because consumers are rally for their reissue via Facebook and Twitter. So many beauty companies have used social media as a way to market their products and create a dialogue and sense of community among customers.  I think the smartest companies out there are looking for new and innovative ways to build stronger relationships with customers, but also listening to what consumers  want and miss.

The second part of the story focused on a different version of the "Long Tail" phenomenon. Just like how Amazon changed the book industry  in the sense that there's virtually no limit to the variety of books they can stock and sell, now companies like Drugstore.com and Beauty.com are challenging mainstream beauty retailers by offering consumers a huge variety of products including some discontinued products they can find few other places, and often only at a premium.

Here's the main point of the piece:

Many women spend a lifetime in search of the perfect shade of lipstick, the ideal moisturizer or the prettiest perfume, only to watch their hard-won favorite go the way of the dodo. Until recently, these consumers had little recourse other than to register complaints with manufacturers’ service centers, but now, thanks to social media sites, as well as company-run Internet chat lines, beauty companies are keeping closer tabs on which products their customers want brought back and responding to that demand with reissues, albeit in limited quantities and through select channels.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/03/fashion/social-media-breathes-new-life-into-discontinued-beauty-products.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&ref=technology

I got a kick out of this photo that was sent to me by a good friend. Hedge Fund Wives somehow made it on to the Best Selling shelf (Now in paperback) at a Barnes & Noble in downtown New York. Nice to see that some book sellers are still promoting it.