Gen Kanai weblog
Excellent piece in BoF re: Abercrombie's attempt to launch in Japan. Marx goes over all the key areas (so many!) where Abercrombie is failing in Japan.
TOKYO, Japan -- After several years of "will they or won't they" speculation, American casual fashion retailer Abercrombie & Fitch finally opened its first retail store in Japan this past December. The 11-story shop in Tokyo's upscale Ginza neighbourhood is just steps away from Uniqlo's flagship store and Swedish fast fashion brand H&M.;
As with every big retail opening in Tokyo, the first day of sales saw long lines of customers and swift business. The rumoured haul: ¥50 million (or about $550,000). Even without the benefit of an opening party or major press event, Abercrombie was able to rely on a small group of Japanese fans who had previously bought the brand's products as souvenirs on trips to Hawaii or the continental United States.
If you're not reading Evan Osnos' "Letter from China" blog in the New Yorker, you should be.
For much of the past two decades, the obstacles facing foreign entrepreneurs have been structural: bureaucratic delays, restrictions on moving foreign currency, and so on. But in my conversations with foreign business people these days, the current malaise centers on a less concrete--and, thus, fixable--sense of obstruction. The concern these days is not about the vagaries of what was once called the Iron Rooster, but about the reality of a canny, powerful, well-equipped, urbane counterpart in the global economy, which is beginning to express its own beliefs about fair trade and free flow of information. That, I'm afraid, is a far more difficult gap to bridge.
Winter of Discontent in Beijing: Letter from China : The New Yorker
Mozilla in Asia
As has been in the news this week and mentioned on many Mozilla blogs, the European Commission is working with Microsoft and other browser manufacturers, including Mozilla of course, to launch the web browser ballot in the EC.
To those critics of the browser ballot who would rather the free market be left completely to Adam Smith’s invisible hand, I would present to you the example of South Korea. In short, South Korea is a sad example of a Microsoft monoculture where the course of history and the lack of anti-monopoly oversight have created a nation where every computer user is a Windows user and banking or ecommerce or any secure transaction on the Internet with South Korean entities must be done with Internet Explorer on a Windows OS.
In the span of a few months, the brand new Mozilla community in the Philippines is active and ambitious. A new Mozilla Philippines Community website, Five Years of Firefox in Manila, and check out the 2010 plans they have for promoting Firefox and Mozilla in the Philippines here: Mozilla Philippines Community 2010 Kick-Off.
And for photos from the 2010 kick-off meeting, be sure to visit Pics from the Mozilla Philippines 2010 Kick-Off Meeting.