Friday links roundup.
A few bullet points for your end-of-week delectation:
- I like Whole Foods — it was founded here in Austin, I like their overall approach to business, my family shops there fairly regularly — but its CEO, John Mackey, apparently lost all grasp of reason in at least one crucial way: as detailed in any number of places, he posted roughly a bazillion (okay, 1,000) messages to Yahoo! financial discussion boards on Whole Foods. Which — acknowledging here that I’m not a lawyer — would seem to raise some problems with that whole “insiders improperly discussing their companies” thing, not to mention that other “misleading your readers” thing. It will be interesting to see what shakes out of this, especially if Federal inquries into it queer Whole Foods’ planned purchase of Wild Oats Markets.
- It’s probably only a matter of time before Chinese car makers start selling their wares here. It’s already happening in Europe.
- The Big Three video game console makers try to spin their recent performance. Or, not to put too fine a point on it, Microsoft tries to ignore the problems it’s had with the Xbox (like that pesky recall), Sony tries to convince everyone that the PlayStation 3 really will make money some day, and Nintendo beams over the stellar performance of its Wii and DS gaming units.
- It’s been a tough couple of weeks for the fashion house Liz Claiborne. First its remarkable founder slipped off this mortal coil, then the company announced it would divest more than dozen apparel brands as it tries to simplify (and thereby strengthen) its operations.
- Another stalwart of clothing retail is remaking itself: The Limited is getting rid of its namesake chain so it can focus on the brands (especially Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works) of its Intimate Brands unit.
Enjoy your weekend!
Category: Company of the Day, Consumer goods, Deals, Media, Technology, Transportation
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[...] madness at Whole Foods six ways from Sunday. (Quick overview of the situation available here.) Verdicts are mixed, from outraged (with interesting insights on interacting with customers), to [...]
[...] The other day I mentioned this, but now my colleague Alex Biesada has much more detail: Limited Brands is selling . . . The [...]
[...] messages about his company under a pseudonym to online financial discussion boards (more on which here and here), Whole Foods put out the following three press releases [...]