Land of The Rising Sun

I leave this morning to head to Tokyo for the week. I’m meeting with some ecommerce companies there.

This is my first trip to Japan and I’m way excited. I might try to post from the road, or if not, until next week: Sayonara!!

Posted by Jeremy at 8:14 AM
Category: Doba, Travel| 1 Comment| Trackback

Health Care

So on August 1, Doba is switching from Blue Cross (who we’ve been with since starting the company in 2002) to IHC. Blue Cross wanted to raise our plan costs up 17%. It’s been about that much each year since we started. By switching to IHC, we get some better covereage in Utah County with hospitals for the majority of our employees, and we only increase our rates from last year 7%.

Do you know of any other part of business where your costs can consistently go up by double-digit rates year over year? It’s actually pretty crazy.

Fresh off of our insurance meeting with IHC and our broker this past Tuesday I came across this article today: U.S. still flunks health care test, report finds

The Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation, created a 100-point scorecard using 37 indicators such as health outcomes, quality, access and efficiency. We scored dead last out of 19 industrialized nations. Dead last. If this were the olympics it’d be like we won no medals. There’d be a national outrage. But it’s only heathcare, something that affects every man/woman/child in this country. So most of us will only hear politicians talking about garbage and doing nothing.

We spend more on health care than any of these countries. 7.5% of our total costs in the health care system are administrative costs. Places like Finland spend 1.9% on administration. Yet they beat us badly on over 37 indicators. Think having a baby in the U.S. is a good idea? We have 7 infant deaths out of 1000 compared to 2.8 in Japan and 3.1 in Sweden. Yet again, we spend more on health care proportionate to our population than all these countries.

Hum, we spend more and are dead last in the rankings. Sounds like to me we ought to put some people in the room with a whiteboard and write down all the ways these countries provide/manage health care (all 18 of them that beat us) and ‘borrow’ some ideas from them. Shoot, just plain lift their systems and make the switch.

This is government and buracrecy AND private enterprise all gone wrong and awry and failing the American public.

We’re dead last and Doba and our employees pay 17% more each year. Ridiculous.

Posted by Jeremy at 1:38 PM
Category: Doba, Politics, Rants| 2 Comments| Trackback

Back from my galavanting

I am back and finally getting to a post about my 2 weeks as an eCommerce Hippie.

Two solid weeks on the road is tough. It was GOOD to get home. But I had a great time while gone, both personally and also for Doba.

Internet Retailer

So we exhibited at Internet Retailer for the first time. Our booth was made out of cardboard boxes all piled on top of a guy laying in the middle, and it was received very well. People loved it. We had a great show while introducing Doba’s mid-market product (more on that in another post). If you’re involved in eCommerce or eTail, Internet Retailer is a must attend event in my opinion. Next year it is in Boston in June.

Bonnaroo

After Internet Retailer was over, I headed back to Midway airport to meet up with Amy so that we could fly down to Nashville and then head to Bonnaroo. Bonnaroo was bad ass. I know some of you may not be comfortable with a swearword to describe it, but anything else wouldn’t do it justice. It was one of the most fun things I’ve done with Amy. The music was just great, and I think it has broadened my appreciation and tastes in music, and my appetite for it as well. I think Amy and I are both in love with music festivals now. You can see so many bands in such a short period of time, and if you only listen to someone for 30 minutes and head to another performance, you don’t even feel bad. We saw almost 30 different bands over the 4 days. Metallica, Pearl Jam, Jack Johnson, Willie Nelson, BB King, Bluegrass Allstars, and Drive-by Truckers were my favorites of the festival. The people there were so nice. Maybe we all ought to spend more time with hippies most of who are partaking of performance enhancing drugs more often, because it was genuinely a very chill, relaxing, and fun time. The prototype definition of a vacation. Good times at Bonnaroo. I will be back to that festival someday. Guaran-damn-teed. Here’s a few more pics (if you click the slideshow, it will open so you can see all the pics):

Tennessee

After Bonnaroo, we spent 3 days in and around Nashville. We didn’t really have a list of must do things, just saw some great stuff. I think our favorite spot was Franklin which is just south of Nashville. We also saw some plantation and civil war sites. And of course to keep with our live music theme, we attended the Grand Old Opry. I actually enjoyed all of the performances even though it’s country music. Especially since Charlie Daniels closed out the night. And we ate at the Waffle House at least 4 times. That place rocks. All in all, Tennessee was really fun. Hopefully I’ll be able to make it back someday.

eBay Live

We then headed back to Chicago for eBay Live. We had basically planned the same booth as Internet Retailer, but a 10X20 instead of 10X10. It was a huge departure from our previous year’s booths. Again, we had TONS of compliments, photos, and generally all-around feedback that this was the best booth that most people had ever seen. Just need to work on the overall message it conveys, and we’ll be set. Although if I had to pick, I’d go with impactful and memorable all day long if I had to pick that over a specific message. Hopefully next time around we nail the message and the impression.

One of the best parts of our booth this year is that it was a disposable booth. Anyone that’s done tradeshows, and had the privilege of engaging with the Trade Show Mafia and paying outrageous fees for things like drayage fees and unionized labor to assemble giant 20 foot tall booths will appreciate how nice it was for us to be able to at both Internet Retailer and eBay Live literally walk away from the booth. (the shipping and drayage to eBay Live in Boston last year cost us more than our entire show this year). We gave the $30 Ikea chairs to some folks and left. Best moment of my life.

All in all it was a great 2 weeks. The shows for Doba went very well, and Amy and I had a great time on our vacation this year without the kids.

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Posted by Jeremy at 9:02 AM
Category: Conferences, Personal| 1 Comment| Trackback

eCommerce Hippie

After this week, I’ll be gone for the next 2 weeks. Being an eCommerce Hippie.

Maybe I should explain. Back in February, I was looking at the schedule of conferences for the next several months, and noticed that Internet Retailer was in Chicago at McCormick Place June 9-11. I attended this conference last year in San Jose and we were in the midst of making plans for Doba to exhibit for the first time since it’s the worlds largest e-retailing show. I then noticed that eBay Live was just over a week later June 19-21, again at McCormick Place in Chicago, and again, we were making plans for Doba to exhibit–for the 5th time at eBay Live.

That very day, I saw a blog post in my RSS reader where the blogger was talking about how he was looking forward to the fact that tickets for the Bonnaroo Music & Art Festival were going on sale in a couple of weeks. Bonnaroo is a four-day, multi-stage camping festival held on a 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tennessee. It’s one of the largest music festivals in the country. I knew about Bonnaroo because of a live recording of Warren Haynes from a previous year. My wife and I were both big fans. The dates for 2008 Bonnaroo were June 12-15. Exactly between the two eCommerce conferences. Nashville, TN is just over an hour flight from Chicago.

2+2=5 in this scenario. It was a perfect opportunity for mine and Amy’s trip without kids this year. Plus, she’ll be able to attend the first day of eBay Live and see me do my presentation on Product Sourcing.

Today, I ship 2 packages together weighing about 75 lbs to Tennessee. It’s all our camping gear for Bonnaroo. You see, Bonnaroo is a camping festival. One could say it’s my chance to be a hippie for 4 days.

Two eCommerce conferences over 6 days. One Hippie musical festival over 4 days. I’m out for the next 2 weeks being an eCommerce Hippie. I’ll be posting more when I get back.

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Posted by Jeremy at 8:05 AM
Category: Conferences, Doba, Personal, Work/Life Balance| 3 Comments| Trackback

Overalls

I’ve posted before about the Discovery Channel show Dirty Jobs and its host Mike Rowe.

I’m a big fan. I watch it while I work out in the mornings. In the course of his quest for Dirty Jobs around the country, Mike has met and worked with hundreds of folks that could teach most of us a thing or two about work ethic.

From Mike on the episode I watched this morning (quoting Thomas Edison):

Opportunity is most often missed because it usually shows up dressed in overalls and looking like work.

Amen.

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Posted by Jeremy at 6:53 AM
Category: Work| Comment| Trackback