Think of a microprocessor company and you envision a big assembly line piecing together the entrails of computer servers. Now consider Sun Microelectronics, a division of $116.5 billion Sun Microsystems. It custom-orders processors, chips, and circuit boards for Sun’s desktop, server, and storage products. Sun doesn’t actually make any of its microelectronic gear itself. As a “fabless” manufacturer, Sun contracts the work to outside manufacturers, who in turn rely on components from their own subcontracted suppliers.

All totaled, it’s a supply chain with 150 “links” — users in places such as Canada, Japan, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom. Somehow, no hard goods ever sit in Sun’s inventory or touch the hands of any one of Sun’s 29,000 employees.

OVERVIEW
KEY TECHNOLOGY
Supply-chain management software.

ROLE
Self-manage order and fulfillment systems via the Web.

PRIME MARKET APPLICATIONS
Large-scale manufacturing, global retailing.

“The most interesting thing about our supply chain is that we’re not in it,” says Tom Stevens, the director of business process development for Sun Microelectronics.

“But we still own that supply chain, so we have to know its status at all times and make changes based on consumer demand and company forecasts; that requires collaboration.”

And they didn’t like the idea of giving consumers the knowledge to help shave dollars off already slim margins. (Dealer profits on new cars are down to an average of $300 before discount, and new-car sales sometimes are a loss leader for selling financing and servicing.) Some dealers even saw it as a way to use computers to put small-inventory dealers out of business. Just 60 percent of the dealers in GM’s four BuyPower states signed up for the program.

Some analysts feel that GM is kidding itself if it thinks that shoppers will come to GM BuyPower to comparison shop. Says Oleg Khaykin, a manager in the Boston Consulting Group’s Chicago office: “It’s kind of naive.”

GM BuyPower provides the perfect illustration of how the Internet is upending sales channels and frustrating mature industrial corporations in the process. Auto-By-Tel, AutoVantage, CarPont, and other independent auto agents made a lot of friends, because they made it easy for consumers to electronically comparison shop and buy a vehicle — including a GM car. Independents point customers to contracted dealers who typically pay a fee for geographic exclusivity. In the case of Autoweb.com, which has been in operation since 1994, dealers pay $29 for each lead generated by the online service. The new marketmakers were in a position to write their own rules, and they showed the sort of entrepreneurial initiative that one doesn’t associate with the Big Three automakers.

The independents also created a new level of competition. Not only do they represent competing manufacturers and take a slice of the profit for themselves, but they also offer something for which consumers have long clamored. In survey after survey, haggling with salespeople over the cost of a vehicle ranks right above a root canal on the personal enjoyment scale. Now, alternatives are as close at hand as the family PC.

In the opinion of Frank Infelise, associate partner at Andersen Consulting’s strategic services group, “You have to give GM kudos for what they’ve done. But the big question is, what happens next? In addition to enabling customers to buy cars online, they could be using the Internet to reduce costs in back-end processes, such as inventory stocking costs and consumer and dealer incentives to move cars.”

Moreover, the Net had put GM and the other automakers in a humbling, sticky position. Not only must they play catch-up, but their dealers must prove to increasingly sophisticated consumers that they are, well, honest. Why? The Internet had suddenly made it easy for car shoppers to do their homework, to log onto the Kelley Blue Book site, for example, and learn the current dealer invoice for a particular model. They could then stride into a showroom with a printout and start negotiating up from the price the dealer paid for the vehicle, instead of trying to haggle down from the manufacturer’s suggested retail price. And shoppers could, in just minutes, obtain cost comparisons for vehicles from a host of manufacturers, or learn up-to-the-microsecond details about such vaguely known hallmarks of dealer profit structure as manufacturers’ holdbacks.

The Internet was forcing GM to take a revolutionary turn: Give consumers the sort of information they could obtain just as easily somewhere else, even if dealers wound up losing control.

Intentional or not, GM BuyPower is likely to help GM in the industry’s long-standing dream of consolidation. It’s generally recognized that the nation’s nearly 23,000-member network of auto dealerships is bloated and cost-inefficient for their manufacturers. With the U.S. auto market stagnant at 15 million cars a year, there are simply too many dealers chasing too few buyers. Some analysts estimate that when the number gets down in the 9,000- to 12,000-dealer range, manufacturers will be in a position to trim what they spend on distribution, which now represents about 15 percent of all costs.

Already, the industry is consolidating through the efforts of such superdealers as H. Wayne Huizenga, the Blockbuster Entertainment founder who in the past 18 months has amassed 300 new-vehicle dealerships in his Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Republic Industries, which is the nation’s largest automotive retailer. The Internet strategy will intensify the consolidation movement. “I don’t know if GM is doing this consciously or not, but the effect will be that marginal dealerships will go out of business,” says Khaykin. “If they’re hanging on by a thread, it cuts the thread.”

If 24 years with the planet’s largest industrial corporation teaches you anything, it teaches you diplomacy. So it’s no surprise that Ann Pattyn, director of General Motors’ Consumer Marketing Initiative, responds gingerly when asked to describe what it’s like to teach an elephant to cha-cha.

“At one point in our history,” she says, “I’d guess it was safe to say we weren’t a nimble company.”

Over the past nine decades, General Motors has made countless innovations to its automobiles — it was even the first to counter Ford Motor’s lead and offer cars in a color other than black — but the process by which vehicles are sold to eager consumers has remained remarkably consistent. From her sunny office in GM’s unmarked outpost in Thousand Oaks, Calif., far from the shadow of its corporate headquarters in Detroit, Pattyn was charged with creating the first major change in an automotive sales methodology that has varied little since the company was hawking the 1903 Curved-Dash Oldsmobile Runabout.

On May 29, 1997, Pattyn received a call from Ron Zarrella, the vice president and group executive in charge of GM’s North American vehicle sales, service, and marketing group. Pattyn, who had been dispatched westward four years earlier to invent ways to boost the automaker’s sagging market share in California — which she did through a complex blend of dealer training, increased ad support, and PR — was given a mandate: Find a way to use the Internet to sell cars. Lots of cars. Oh, and get something ready for dealers within 90 days.

Fear, more than anything else, must have been the impetus for Zarrella’s 90-day deadline. He didn’t have to look far to see the emergence of the Internet as an effective presale marketing tool: J.D. Power and Associates, a marketing information service that specializes in the automotive industry, found that 21 percent of all car buyers in 1997 used the Internet to research their purchases, up from 16 percent the previous year. Many newcomers had already set up shop: Independent online auto agents such as Auto-By-Tel, Microsoft’s CarPoint, AutoVantage, and make it easy for consumers to electronically comparison shop and buy a vehicle — and make them feel they got a good deal. “I’d say most dealers realize their long-term viability is dependent on [the Internet],”.

Pattyn and her team scrambled and, 137 days later, launched GM BuyPower in California, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington (if you are in a different state and try to get into GM BuyPower, it bounces you to www.gm.com, where you have more limited capabilities). On the surface, what GM provides to car shoppers via GM BuyPower doesn’t sound so revolutionary.

Shoppers can configure the car they desire and do an electronic search of dealer inventory to track it down. They also can let their fingers do the talking: Communicate via email with dealers, who are required to provide a single-best price (good for 24 hours) to online shoppers. The service also lets consumers see third-party price comparisons of GM vehicles versus similarly equipped vehicles from other manufacturers — even if those competitive models bear lower price tags. And consumers can apply for financing online.

Put off fantasies of the 15 minutes of fame – or the $15 billion market cap. To the smart but green Internet entrepreneur, the only 15 minutes that matter are those spent on The Pitch – hawking your business plan to a group of investors who can launch or bury your company just as fast. Few understand the critical requirements of a good sell – and the weird alchemy of those dramatic moments – more than the Tony Robbins for entrepreneurs, professional pitch coach Jerry Weissman.

For the past 10 years, the 64-year-old Weissman – the former fiction writer and television producer who founded Santa Clara, Calif.-based Power Presentations, a sort of finishing school for CEOs and entrepreneurs – has been coaching hundreds of tech execs on the art and craft of telling their stories. Weissman says he has coached about 300 companies through IPOs, which have collectively raised about $5 billion in the stock market.

Weissman leads boot-campish coaching sessions in his conference room, his client’s, or at a hotel where he has access to whiteboards, video cameras, and projectors. Sessions take four days. There, clients learn how to craft a jargon-free story about their startup, deftly answer negative questions, and streamline their slide presentations.

Weissman also coaches them on voice and body language, but it isn’t acting school. If a CEO is soft-spoken, the last thing Weissman does is tell him to speak up – he’ll focus instead on cadence or speech rhythm. Clients are also run through a videotape session where they are forced to watch themselves stand and deliver.

Weissman doesn’t come cheap: the fee is approximately $4,000 a day. And from time to time Weissman is given the opportunity to buy friends-of-the-company stock – often about 5,000 shares.

That turned out to be a good deal for Intuit’s Cook, though, who signed up for some tutoring in 1993 as he was planning to take his finance software startup on its road show. “I was a skeptic,” Cook admits, looking back. “As a former consultant I thought I was pretty effective doing presentations. I looked at it as a form of insurance.”

Cook says he returned with more than a little cushioning, and has hired Weissman twice since to coach Intuit through a second IPO in 1994, and to train members of his executive staff. He gushes: “It’s staggering. Anyone going public should hire him. Just his section on handling questions is worth a fortune. Even if you raise your market cap just a fraction of 1 percent you’ve more than paid his fee.”

Weissman’s brand of pitch-coaching isn’t for everyone, of course. At a recent conference held by garage.com, Michael Moritz, general partner at Sequoia Capital, scoffed at graduates of ” Paul Weissman’s charm school” who believe that it’s a golden touch for funding. For most venture capitalists, such as Moritz, a polished presentation is not going to get an entrepreneur funding if his idea is yesterday’s Yahoo!. Weissman prickles at that dig. “The last thing it has to do with is charm,” he says. “I don’t hold someone’s hand. I help them tell their story.”

With the rise of handy listening devices which facilitate music being played for many activities during the day, one is confronted with decisions never before considered practical. Example 1: you are going for a five mile run on a Sunday morning in some pretty municipal park. It takes you 52 minutes on a good day, plus a few minutes for stretching and whatnot. You are no longer relegated to really long cassettes. Now you can get a 99 CD player that is the size of a dime and costs $15 and runs with Microsoft software, and for an extra $1.50 you can get stock prices and world headlines funneled directly into your cortex. Example 2: on a warm August evening you feel like swimming half a mile in your pool in the backyard. So you do. You have a 125 CD player hooked up to play through speakers lining the pool walls and floor. For an extra $2.50 you can get holographic projections of Esther Williams synchronized swimming routines. Example 3: in your private gym with your private trainer, you have a 199 CD player which will cater to your every need. For a quarter you can also get random voice recordings of Beat poets interspersed with Britney Spears clips from her “Diary…” special.

Two themes run through these examples: a need to identify a grouping of CDs which will fulfill a predetermined function; and differing requirements for music which will catalyze different activities. For instance, if you are running for an hour or swimming laps for 45 minutes, you don’t want one minute songs that are dissonant and aggressive. You want long happy songs that absorb your attention. However, if you are about to do some heavy lifting or work on your jabbing, you may want something with an edge, verging on the confrontational. Following, some CD and activity pairings.

Lifting, Crunches, Stretching

Public Enemy, Fear of a Black Planet6ths, Wasp’s NestRoyal Trux, Thank YouMinistry, In Case You Didn’t Feel Like Showing UpRevolting Cocks, Linger Ficken’ Good & Other Barnyard Oddities

Swimming

Lush, SplitTortoise, Millions Now Living Will Never DiePsychedelic Furs, Psychedelic FursCan, Cannibalism 1Edith Frost, Calling Over Time

Running

Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back HomeMary Lou Lord, Mary Lou LordBruce Springsteen, NebraskaBruce Springsteen, Darkness on the Edge of TownJohn Prine, John Prine

Cooking & Drinking

Daftpunk, HomeworkBeastie Boys, Ill CommunicationMC Solaar, Prose CombatSerge Gainsbourg, Comic StripBats, Courage

Organizing Things/Cleaning Things

Lee Scratch Perry & The Upsetters, Eastwood Rides AgainEnnio Morricone, Legendary Italian WesternsMassive Attack, Blue LinesBob Marley & The Wailers, African HerbsmanStan Getz, Bossa Nova-Vol. 53-Verve Jazz

Low self-esteem, unrealistic expectations and self-loathing are all products of the ideal beauty image projected in America. These images have damaged women to the point where they willingly subject themselves to painful treatments, plastic surgery and expensive skincare products and cosmetics.

The skincare and cosmetic product aspect of the beauty industry is a multi-billion dollar a year business providing to women “hope in a jar” or tube. Out of the many large upscale cosmetic companies like Lancome, Este Lauder and Clinique only four cater to African-American women and even less addresses the needs of other women of color. I wonder, in a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic society like ours, how this is possible. I find the biggest offenders to be department stores.

Even though most carry products, foundation particularly, in colors that are appropriate for women of color they only use European models in their commercials and print ads. As a beauty advisor for a major cosmetic company I find many women of color patronizing lines that don’t even find it necessary to include women of color in their counter displays promoting a new product or new colors for the season. These companies gladly take our money but refuse to use women of color in their ad campaigns to let us know that their products are for women of color too and that our patronage is appreciated.

Is it ignorance or blatant bigotry? I think it’s a little of both. According to Business Trends Analysts statistics show white baby boomers, the main purchasing demographic for most cosmetic companies are approaching the end of their cosmetic buying years. While African- American women, who are younger than average are still in their cosmetic purchasing prime.

Some of the largest cosmetic lines will indeed feel the pressure as the ethnic makeup of the United States changes. By the year 2020 32% of the US population will be people of color. The fastest growing ethnic groups according to Business Trends Analysts are Asian-Americans, Hispanic Americans and American Indians with Caucasians growing the least. By the year 2050 the US population will have a “minority majority”. States like California, Florida and New York have already experienced the switch.

In the not so distant future mainstream cosmetic companies will have to change their paradigm and create and market products that will meet the varied needs of women of color or else they won’t survive.

I must admit cosmetic companies mostly sold in drug and discount stores like Revlon, Maybelline and Covergirl have risen to the occasion and have incorporated products for women of color and also feature them as spokeswomen. But will higher priced and more prestigious companies occupying the aisles of department stores follow suit? We have yet to see.

Hot Sensuous Teens Want Me?

I’m puzzled. I live a relatively decorous life. I tend to behave in public, although I do apologize to lamp posts and low tree branches when I bump into them. Carelessness is part of my blundering about in the world.

But, I don’t cavort or attend amateur nights at Hooters. I don’t order bawdy books or vegetable shaped marital aids from anywhere. I don’t go to chat rooms. There’s nothing in my AOL profile that mentions pierced body parts, breast enhancement, hot dogs, or thongs.

I don’t even get the Victoria’s Secret catalogue anymore. Much to my husband’s disappointment. Although I’m not sure how I got on their list either.

So, I wonder why it is that I get questionable, unsolicited email entreating me to enjoy cyberbabes frolicking in hot tubs. I don’t want to. I never do. So why am I on a list, blind or otherwise?

Plesure can be yours…

invite yourself…just seconds

away from enjoying Pure Ecstacy!

Well, hell. If they can’t even spell “pleasure” or “Ecstasy” correctly, perhaps these folks might not know much about either. Or my version of both. Girl Scout Thin Mints are involved.

Speaking of cookies….and please understand that I am a Computer Ignoramus…the only thing I can think of is this: I’ve got cookies hidden somewhere on my web record that is telling men who dress in gold chains and have obvious comb-overs about me. But they are wrong.

The cookies might be spreading the word that I am a tattooed, gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, wandering hetero teen-age, middle-age, lonely voyeur who loves “Do Me” shoes, whips, and smut cams, Live! Live! Live!

Why would a cookie do this? I believe I have figured it out. Two years ago, when we moved south, we needed furniture for our new living room. I didn’t know where I was or where to go. So, of course I did a web search to find out where I could get a couple of couches made quickly.

Because I am a careless bumbler and the dog is allowed on the furniture I decided to get leather. I typed in Leather Center, a chain of stores that promises two week delivery.

Get it? LEATHER! It was an innocent word search. I had to go take a cold shower after I found what I was looking for what with all the other kinds of offerings that got triggered by my innocuous quest.

It’s either that, or someone remembers a party I went to in nineteen seventy-five. I swear I didn’t stay long.

Everyone is wondering, how do you get a man like that? If you are too aggressive, you might scare them off. You might never get anywhere if you wait for them to make a move. What should girls do?

Social pheromones are a great way to get a man to open up to you quickly. Social pheromone perfumes will help the both of you become less shy. All you need to do is flirt a little, and the guy will be hooked.

If you are considering using pheromones to get a man, then it’s worth it to learn more about it. Pheromones will give you the desired and amazing results, but you have to get the top grade product and apply it correctly.

Before you try it out on the man you really desire, give it a test run. Put on a small amount and go to a place with people. Look at their reactions. If they fail to be more affable, attentive and flirty, then try applying a bit more until you obtain the desired effects.

Where can you buy pheromones? Make sure you purchase your pheromones from someone you can trust so you know you are getting quality merchandise.

If you want to learn more about the company that guarantees all of their products, You can Buy Pheromone Spray for Men and Women here.

Learn more about pheromones and how they can attract a man. Your guy will be encouraged to be open and more romantic with this social pheromone.

The science of scent uses pheromones to enhance relationships.