3 posts tagged “business”
An update to the story I published on Saturday: Derek Powazek has written about what happened at JPG Magazine, from his perspective, and how he and Heather are no longer involved.
In one evening, Paul removed issues 1-6 from the JPG website, removed Heather from the About page, and deleted the "Letter from the Editors" that had lived on the site since day one. Paul informed me that we were inventing a new story about how JPG came to be that was all about 8020. He told me not to speak of that walk in Buena Vista, my wife, or anything that came before 8020.
Here's where the whole "not lying" thing comes in. I just could not agree to this new story.
Powazek is restrained in his writing on this issue and doesn't badmouth anyone. As an outside observer though it appears that Powazek made the mistake of trusting friends when it came to business. Again, this is just my take on it as an outside observer but it seems like Powazek trusted that he and his friend, now JPG editor and publisher, Paul Cloutier would always be able to agree on the really important issues pertaining to both JPG and their publishing company, 8020, so it wasn't any big deal that Cloutier was technically CEO. That trust was the downfall because when the CEO and the venture capitalist funding 8020 decided to rewrite JPG's history (and seriously what is that about? There are lots of us who've been around since the beginning.*) Powazek was unfortunately, from a business perspective, in a position with absolutely no power to veto their decision.
Powazek lists some lessons he's learned from this experience and for anyone in business, particularly entrepreneurs, they are lessons that need to be chiseled into your brain. They include
Make no assumptions when it comes to roles and responsibilities. Like my dad says: "Someone's gotta call quittin' time."
When someone says one thing, but acts in a contradictory way, you have a choice between believing their words or believing their deeds. Believe their deeds.
Never let anyone tell you what you want. When someone says, "You don't want that," what they really mean is, "I don't want you to have that."
That ends the Derek part of this entry.
*At first this rewriting of JPG Magazine's history made absolutely no sense to me. I mean there were so many of us that submitted to the first few issues, ordered the issues from Lulu, participated in the Flickr group, and watched Derek and Heather's baby grow into an amazing magazine that everyone could subscribe to and everyone could participate in to some degree or another. Why would the money people and the new CEO want to get away from that history? It's a freaking great history to have.
A bit more thought about it and I can only come to one conclusion. I could be totally wrong about the theory I'm about to lay out and it's just that, a theory, but it's the only thing that makes sense to me. Those thousands and thousands of us who are really passionate about photography and were really passionate about JPG Magazine from the very beginning are small potatoes compared to the new audience and new participants 8020 and its venture capitalist are looking to as participants in the new JPG. The percentage of the population interested in seeing interesting toy camera images alongside glossy, pretty images and gritty street photography images is probably small compared to the percentage of the population of passionate new shooters with brand new DSLR cameras who want to see the kind of images they are creating in print. We are small in number and influence compared to the new crop of photography hobbyists who can afford great new DSLR cameras and really want to see their images in print more than they care about retaining rights, getting paid, etc. We are small and the audience of subscribers they want is large. More subscribers, more advertisers, more advertising money. To get those many more subscribers JPG is going to have to become more accessible to the general public audience (think more flower/kids/pet images, less esoteric fine art photography, less not-beautiful photography, less abstract work and definitely less nudity/sensual/body images). Rewriting the history is a first step toward that.
A few speculations on future developments at JPG Magazine that may be very, very wrong but wouldn't surprise me if they are right in part or as a whole.
- A large camera company will sponsor a contest for the best flower/kids/pet/something pleasing to a mass audience. The winning photo will be on the cover of JPG Magazine, the winning photographer will be paid $100 and the camera company will own the rights to all submitted photos to use in advertising at their will.
- Photographers who submit to JPG will have the option of their photographs being sold in a microstock capacity. This option will be turned on by default. Users will have to actively opt out if they don't want to sell their work for pennies.
- Photography submitted to JPG will be used in other magazines published by 8020. Pay for these images will be better than microstock wages but still far less than standard magazine photography rates. 8020 magazines will not have staff photographers or use freelance photographers on anything resembling a regular basis. They won't have to.
Update: Ongoing conversations about this topic:
Later, JPG. in the The Unofficial JPG Magazine Group at Flickr
Heather and Derek are suddenly out of JPG Magazine at Metafilter
Title: Pour Your Heart into It: How Starbucks Build a Company One Cup at a Time
Author: Howard Schultz
Genre: Non-Fiction
This book is a fascinating look at the history of Starbucks through the eyes of its chairman, Howard Schultz. Though he didn't found the company he is the architect of the change from a company that roasted and sold coffee beans to the coffee shop behemoth it is now. He comes across as deeply and truly passionate to the company and the ideals he sees the company representing. As someone who really, really enjoys coffee and someone who goes Starbucks1 on a semi-regular basis three anecdotes/statements from the book really stuck with me.
The first was the extreme internal debate over whether to start making espresso based drinks with non-fat milk. Though customers had been asking for it since almost the beginning Starbucks did not want to deliver the inferior drink and therefore inferior experience that they felt non-fat milk gives. They of course caved to customer demand on this point.
The second was the extreme internal debate over selling blended cold drinks. Store managers in the Los Angeles area saw that they were losing business to competitors who sold cold, coffee based blended brinks. Again Starbucks corporate did not want to dilute the Starbucks experience by offering such a thing and again they caved to customer demand and in-house entrepreneurial development. Interestingly enough the name Frappuccino was not a Starbucks invention. As of the time of the book's writing Starbucks had only once (I don't know if they've ever done it since) bought out a competitor. The competitor was a small chain of coffee houses in Boston and Frappuccino was the name of their blended coffee drink offering. Though what we know of now as Frappuccino isn't the same product as the original Boston drink Starbucks liked the name enough to recycle it.
Third is the statement by Schultz that Starbucks made a conscious decision to never sell cooked food in its stores because they didn't want the smell of food to displace the smell of coffee since coffee is what Starbucks is all about. Over and over in the book Schultz talks about how Starbucks isn't a restaurant, it's something different, yet in the last year Starbucks has become more like a restaurant with the introduction of the very gross looking, gross smelling and insanely unhealthy breakfast sandwiches. I was very disappointed when Starbucks introduced these because they really do take something away from the atmosphere at Starbucks. Clearly they've caved on this area which is interesting because I don't think the change was based on customer demand like the other two instances I've referenced. This seems clearly to be motivated by money/growth/strict competition/something else but not because it enhances the Starbucks experience or responds to needs/demands of customers.
All in all a very interesting book, particularly if you're interested in coffee, business, Starbucks, entrepreneurs, or any combination thereof.
1 Once we get settled back in Louisville I will, thankfully,
have many local coffee houses to support so I suspect my visits to
Starbucks will grow less and less.
From Reading List
I can't remember if I said it publicly or not but I'm not going to SXSWi. I wish to goodness I was but I have my reasons for not going and there is nothing I can do about it. Maybe next year is all I can say. However I thought for quite a while that I was going to SXSW and gave a great deal of thought about the panel I was going to be speaking on. So now I have all of those thoughts and ideas in my head and nothing to do with them but they've got to go somewhere so I have a planned series or articles that I'm writing and will be posting to On a path. All have to do with the general topic of being a freelancer/independent business person/entrepreneur and will all be under the heading of "Doing Business."
The first is called Doing Business: How To Not Sell Me a TV.
