Bing's Profile

@Aaron, great point- I definitely agree that Bloomberg has not been able to innovate at the same pace that Facebook has (e.g. Bloomberg Anywhere not very powerful or user friendly). Perhaps it’s because it is more complacent since it was the first player in the market whereas Facebook had to compete with existing players such as MySpace at the time. But I do think that it will be sustainable though because of the customer feedback element that it brings. For me, Bloomberg’s biggest strength is its ability to continuously improve its platform by regularly soliciting the feedback of traders and financial analysts, who have essentially built up the Bloomberg ecosystem as it exists today.

@Rina and @Marco, this goes to both of your points about other competing start-ups. I think it will be very tough for a new entrant to compete with Bloomberg at every level. Perhaps the startup can first compete with Bloomberg Chat, and once it gains a large enough user base / recurring revenue stream, it can invest in other channels (news, terminal, etc) to compete more head on with Bloomberg. But even this piecemeal strategy would take time since the switching costs from Bloomberg entirely to a new service provider is huge. As the startup company scales and becomes larger, it will most likely also run into issues of innovation similar to those of Bloomberg (having to innovate as both the organization and the client base grow).

I’ve been to Krispy Kreme locations before, so can totally resonate with the post! I agree– a lot of it’s stores occupy huge spaces, have under-capacity production, and incur high fixed costs. I wonder if they are able to turn it around by maintaining their smaller retail-only stores and have large production centers dedicated to only servicing the wholesalers. Perhaps this will help them maintain their in-store freshness experience and not lose a significant portion of their operating revenues?

This is a great post! I didn’t know about the way they franchised, especially compared to KFC. I totally agree with you– I think it’s the company’s franchising model that has made them so successful. They are very generous in their franchising terms with their partners, so they were able to attract and pick operators that were committed.

This is a very cool post as I’ve been to a Harry’s shop before in NYC but never realized that it’s the ONLY vertically integrated shaving company. Their operations and integration remind me of Starbucks. But I think Harry’s does a better job with the pricing and still provide a unique customer experience.

This is very interesting– I did not know that its operating margins are so low. I wonder if all that product development will result in additional platforms. It’s also fascinating how they use a pull mechanism by creating a usership base first and using that to make money off the institutional customers.