Ulta will now carry the Chanel makeup line.

As someone who frequents Ulta for skincare, this match is extremely odd. Chanel is an extremely high end makeup brand–they sell a tube of lipstick for close to $40. Most makeup brands in Ulta are cheap drug store brands like Covergirl, BH cosmetics, and NYX. I find it extremely weird that Chanel could be situated right next to $3 lipstick from Wet N Wild.

This is a win for Ulta. It’ll bring foot traffic into the brick and mortar stores that they maybe wouldn’t ordinarily get, because Chanel is only available in department stores or online. This partnership also gives Ulta a leg up over Sephora. Sephora tends to offer high end brands like Chanel, Marc Jacobs, Giorgiana Armani, and Dior.

However, this might not be ideal for Chanel. Many of the frequent Chanel customers love the idea of Chanel as a luxury brand. They love the experience of walking up to the counter and being treated as a valued customer. If I walk into Ulta, it’s rare that someone even greets me at the door, much less provide an informed opinion about a product I’m looking for. No offense–they just have such a large inventory that it’s almost impossible to know each and every product. In fact, on Pop Fashion, many angry Chanel customers wrote in stating how they were switching brands.

Would it bother you if your favorite luxury brand was sitting next to cheap(er) brands? Or would you just bypass Ulta and stick to your favorite department store?

 

 

 

The aging global population is a trend occupying the minds of many entrepreneurs. This article, though, instead of recognizing ways that entrepreneurs can cater to older generations, talks about the older generations as the entrepreneurs.

The article recognizes that individuals over 60 today are “healthier and more capable than ever.” This resonated with me as I thought of my 90 year-old Grandfather who is still the delinquent tax collector in his small town. However, although older individuals may be capable of working as employees, they may also be the first to be laid off in difficult times and can be the casualties of age discrimination.

Thus, entrepreneurship has become an attractive path for aging employees. The article pointed to a study out of Duke stating that “there are twice as many successful entrepreneurs over age 50 as there are under age 25.” This may run counter to our conception of the entrepreneur as the young, energized, college dropout. Why might older individuals be more successful as entrepreneurs? The article cites to financial strength, personal stability, and increased self-awareness. To me, the key might be whether an older individual can embrace the concepts that we have been learning about throughout the semester. Can an older person recognize when an industry has reached the point of creative destruction? According to this article, the answer is yes.

Hey everyone, You’re invited to a talk on Wednesday, April 18th at 12:30pm in room 3130 with Kevin O’Keefe. Kevin is a serial entrepreneur who sold his legal tech startup to LexisNexis, and he is now the CEO of LexBlog – one of the largest publications for and by attorneys. Kevin will be discussing utilizing the internet to find the career/clients you want to work with. This talk is co-sponsored by the CDO and the IPLS Club, lunch is served!

I’m helping host Kevin, so let me know if you have any questions in advance. I thought our class would have a ton of interest in this event – Kevin encapsulates what it means to be an entrepreneur and an attorney at once!

 

I’m so glad we don’t have a topic this week, because I have no idea where this would go. But Heinz’s newly proposed invention, a mixture of ketchup and mayonnaise that was supposed to take the world by storm, is apparently a massive flop. 

Are we just not an enlightened enough populace? Have we spurned the greatest invention since sliced toast? Is this new “Mayochup” just a way for Heinz to rip off Goya’s “Ketchup-Mayo”?

There are so many questions, but above all, I think this exemplifies how out of touch Heinz is with its end-consumer – me. I don’t want this product, and maybe it’s because it reminds me of a cheapened Thousand Island, maybe I want to mix the two condiments myself, or maybe I just don’t want another bottle taking up valuable fridge door space.

I vote a vehement no, you?

For more research on the subject, see Heinz’s failed green ketchup. Look into EZ Squirts multi-colored flop here. 

 

I stumbled across this article about the Evolve Law Summit, which bills itself as a “a one-of-a-kind conference connecting legal tech startups with investors, including venture capital, private equity, angels, corporate strategics, industry advisors, and mentors.” The conference is May 2nd in Chicago. For anyone that’s interested, you can request tickets at the bottom of the article. I assume they cost money but I bet someone in the law school could fund it. I spoke on a panel recently for CDO and one of the suggestions a fellow panelist had was to attend conferences where you have a concentration of legal employers who aren’t being bombarded with applicants. On that note, this seems like a great place to network with some really good legal tech companies.

Here’s a great article by Monica Zent on how and why lawyers should adopt an innovation mindset. I particularly enjoyed her discussion of Meyers-Briggs personality types and how these inherent traits we have may impact our ability to adopt an innovation mindset.

This article describes the European Community’s proposed approach to regulate crowdfunding service providers. Even though it is not directly related to a possible US regulation, I found that it still might be of interest and that it even might serve as a model for a similar US approach. I especially liked the idea, similar also to the US approach on the regulation of financial institutions, of different layers of regulation and that providers have the option to operate under the new EU regulation or under respective domestic law of the individual member. I believe that this could be an approach for the U.S. as well, since it would allow to give the states the freedom to adopt their own regulation but would also provide a federal regulation that serves as a minimal standard.

Coming this summer: The Fall of Gondolin. This story was Tolkien’s minimum viable product before he perfected it into the Lord of the Rings. Or at least, it’s a sort of similar story from the First Age of Middle Earth. (Ok that was a stretch, but it’s still exciting.)

Learning technological skills and coding is of course very advantageous in our digital economy. But this article pushes back on the tendency to emphasize coding to the detriment of creativity. There will come a point (probably not too far off) when computers can do a lot of the coding we do now. “Creativity will be increasingly be the defining human talent,” so we should educate accordingly. Creativity is the human spark that is responsible for driving progress and change, which, as Schumpeter reminded us, are the heart of capitalism. “Our education system should emphasise the use of human imagination to spark original ideas and create new meaning.”

This article from the WSJ reports that Theranos has reduced its numbers to two dozen or fewer employees. Unsurprisingly, the move was in an effort to preserve cash and fend off bankruptcy. In 2015, Theranos had about 800 employees. In a recent email to investors, CEO Holmes stated that Theranos was still having problems with the reliability of its tests. She is hoping that the layoffs will allow Theranos to maintain cash reserves of $3 million until July.

In class we discussed whether any criminal charges had been made against Holmes. According to the article, Holmes has yet to admit or deny any wrongdoing. Holmes and another Theranos executive, Sunny Balwani, remain under criminal investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s office in San Francisco.