Every one is worried that monopolies are getting large. FTC is worried too.
This is not a post on Facebook and Instagram, or another commonly directed invective at the Amazon, YouTube and other platforms that are pervading our lives. After a long lull, FTC has decided that they need to step in and prevent the most pernicious monopoly that has cut many people: Razor Blades. Also, not in the way you think.
I write about things FTC got right, and what they got wrong, in their unanimous decision to sue to block the Edgewell-Harry’s merger.
Senthil's Notes Posts
Sometime back, I talked about grocery retail history, and as Trader Joe’s is in news recently, I think that it is a good time to visit the grocery landscape on this blog. I write about the history of Aldi and TJ’s and what makes TJ’s click: Supply Chain Integration, Product Curation, Staffing and Design Aesthetics.
Leave a CommentI look at Casper Operations from their S1 reports. Casper has a great product but it suffers from the problem of selling a durable good in a competitive market with many vertically differentiated brands. Plus, returns in the DTC channel are a huge problem. That problem is not going away.
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I am dating myself here, Kirk Douglas, a Hollywood figure I admired, passed away at the age of 103. Here is an obituary in the Guardian. I really miss his old-fashioned masculinity. I adored his longevity and gracefulness in gentle aging. Anyway, the heartless metronome of time beats on, and as a sign of aging, the number of heroes I had is dwindling fast.
Here are 6 of my favorite Kirk Douglas movies…
Leave a CommentLast July, I took the high speed train from Shanghai to Beijing. The trains in China were comparable to the Shinkansen in their speed and comfort. In the business class, the seats could apparently recline flat. Petite hostesses hushed by, offering bottles of water, and serving snacks and local juice brands. As the train hurtled forward, I stared outside the glass windows from my lofted perch of elevated rail-line. I saw divided highways and undivided farmlands, with their almost-prairie looks. Towns that zipped by the window, looked like well kempt oversized matchboxes arranged carefully in a quadrilateral.
Leave a CommentNever meet your heroes. So goes the saying.
For they’re sure to disappoint you, some say.
The advice lives on because some men found their heroes to be made of clay. The exalted heroes they had imagined, with the glow of monochrome Clark Gable luminescence were suddenly all drab and bored. Their imagined heroes were no more. When your heroes fade in such a way, I suppose that what transpires is not just a failure of a single hero, but the collapse of an entire model of heroism.
Yet, there are heroes that perfectly demolish the myth above. Giant souls who expand the horizons of our thought: They prove that genius, humility, and compassion can all at once reside in our frail bodies.
Leave a CommentJA Baker’s The Peregrine exemplifies the best in nature writing. Short staccato sentences set the mis-en-scene and longer descriptions zoom in like a telescope into the plumes and colors of birds, with precision and care. The writing teaches us how to write interesting papers, to expose the brilliance of underlying ideas, even when bounded by rote “rules”.
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