Stories of Success? and Filibustering
By Steve Smith -- TWICE, 7/22/2002
Mid-year is always a great time to look back and look ahead. I think this issue is a good illustration of the practice, with our coverage of products and strategic plans for Thomson and Sharp, and our special report on top selling products, Success Stories.
A word about Success Stories, if I may. The idea came out of an annual report that we've been doing for the last couple of years, called New Technologies. That report was designed to highlight the new digital products that were being brought to retail stores.
When it came around to planning that report for this year, some of us thought that enough products featuring new digital technology had reached retail to find out which products in specific categories were best sellers and why.
First we needed to know which SKUs were leaders in their respective categories. Enter NPD Techworld and its industry expert Tom Edwards, who graciously provided lists of top unit sales leaders for categories that were selected by the TWICE staff and consulted with us. (As you can see throughout the issue, NPD Techworld provided top ten unit sales lists for the May 2001 to April 2002 period.)
One proviso about NPD's numbers: they do not include sales from Wal-Mart or a warehouse club or two. That said, NPD is considered by many as the definitive source of this type of information, so while certain rankings in certain categories might be slightly different, we think the overall trends are right on the money.
But this report isn't about top ten lists. That's why stories in each section don't just profile the number one in each product category. Rankings are always fun. But we think what is more interesting and ultimately more important is the views of why a product was successful from a manufacturer's perspective and from the retailers'. The way vendor and dealer opinions of the same product agree and disagree should hopefully provide some food for thought as future generations of digital products are introduced.
FCC Chairman Powell Slams CE Vendors On Digital
I was on vacation the week of July 8, far away from newspapers, cable TV networks and the web, so it came with some surprise when I heard how FCC chairman Michael Powell hammered the CE industry. Powell complimented broadcasters, cable TV and satellite providers, Hollywood and everyone else except the consumer electronics industry for its failure to endorse his April plan to push ahead the transition to digital TV. (See story on p. 1.)
Let me get this straight: Powell pats on the back broadcasters, the cable and satellite providers and the entertainment business, industries that have so far successfully filibustered against full implementation of digital TV.
What's wrong with this picture? The consumer electronics industry has followed the rules and invested more money in this federally-approved technology than anyone. It also has far more to lose, along with those consumers that have bought sets, than the broadcasting/cable/satellite/entertainment conglomerate cabal that is still trying to negotiate a better deal for themselves.
Chairman Powell, please get real. Instead of taking the politically easy route and hammering the CE business, why not put the feet of broadcasting/cable/satellite/entertainment companies to the fire and tell them to exceed the service requirements for DTV service and programming that were already agreed upon. As the 2006 deadline looms, the longer the country goes without DTV service the losers will be CE manufacturers, consumers who already have DTVs ? and CE retailers.
No related content found.
Featured Company
-
Webcollage
WebCollage, the world's leading provider of rich product information to retailer web sites (and their mobile visitors) perfected a new form of channel-marketing by helping manufacturers instantly publish content that increases sales, reduces return rates and improve conversions b..more
VIEW ALL GALLERIES