Sunday 5 August 2012

Stop faffing about

I just read a great post on Techcrunch called "First-time tech entrepreneurs - Stop fucking around" that discusses all sorts of procrastination we face when working for ourselves. In writing, I prefer a slightly mellower language, hence the title of this post.

As I'm in the process of starting my own company now, I found the piece intriguing in two ways: First, I recognized myself in some of the ways the author discusses procrastination and at the same time I was happy that I'm immune to some others. Let's take the more memorable ones one by one:

Friday 2 March 2012

Groupon doesn't always take a 50% cut - the economics of suit tailoring

So I picked up my first tailor-made suit today. Normally I wouldn't splash out on something like that, working in technology where I almost never have to actually wear a suit. But I got it last year via Groupon and the temptation of getting one for £495 down from £1200 was too high.

So the shop owner and I got talking about Groupon and he told me that in his case, he didn't have to hand over a 50% cut as usual. For bigger-ticket items, Groupon tends to take a smaller cut. He didn't share how big it actually was. But he said that he made sure to make a small profit on every suit.
That got me thinking about a tailor's profit margins.