September 2011

Get Out of the Office! It’s Amazing What You Can Learn

Retail

Yesterday, I had occasion to meet up with Jaimeson Keegan, who’s the President/Floor Sweeper (according to his business card) of SUPERHEROES Management. It offers athlete and entertainment talent representation combined with social media strategies and some other stuff that I thought was a very sensible aggregation. Anyway, we’re both up here in the Northwest and just thought […]

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Quik Grows its Sales and Profits; I Thought I Heard a New Attitude

Quiksilver

At the start of the quarterly conference call, Quiksilver founder and CEO Bob McKnight always makes a short speech highlighting the good things that are going on. After Rossignol, and through the balance sheet restructuring, they felt a bit like pep talks. He would highlight in a pretty nonspecific ways some things that were going well, and

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Zumiez’s Quarterly Results; Their Computer Systems are a Competitive Advantage

Zumiez

From a financial statement analysis point of view, this is kind of boring. The balance sheet is solid enough that I’ll pay it the ultimate compliment of not discussing it. No bank debt, and the inventory was more or less constant on a per square foot basis. In the conference call, one of the analysts even wanted

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PacSun’s Quarter. Can the Strategy Work in this Economy?

Pacific Sunwear (PacSun)

PacSun’s 10Q was filed two days ago. I’ve been through it and it offers a few tidbits of interesting information. But mostly, PacSun CEO Gary Schoenfeld said a lot of what needs to be said, at least strategically, in the conference call. Here are his most relevant comments: “The economy is not getting better and competition remains fierce

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Billabong’s Annual Report; The Relationship between Strategy and Operating Environment

Billabong

Billabong’s annual documents (which you can see here and here) provides us with a superlative opportunity to look at the nexus of a company’s strategy and its operating environment. The conference call transcript was also worth reading, but it seems to have disappeared from their web site. I can send anybody who wants it a copy. Of

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