Rodrigo A. Sepúlveda Schulz

The Apple Store is down... what's coming up ?

14:46 GMT+1

Indeed, new hardware:

Great christmas present #1

Want this fantastic 'Geisha Balls ' ? :))) Available thursday night at 9pm on http://www.wantuno.com !!! Viva el Sherif !

cashstore.fr launches v3

Lovely Catherine Barba has just (exactly 27 minutes ago) launched a rband new version of her online cashback service, cashstore.fr (at last !!!).

Now, you’ll find 3 fantastic new additions to the site:

– price comparisons (exactly liek kelkoo.fr in the old days) for over 4.2 million products

– customer feedback (like ciao.fr in the good old days)

– coupons (just above the search box!)

and other nice little features: you can now even skype the team at cashstore and have lovely voices on the other side

 

Update: ans she's just back from holidays (and sent me this pix. blogged with permission of course)

 

Congrats to Lukasz on raising cash from Accel Partners

The alarm:clock euro broke the news last night. In this little video I had a chat as back as early may with Spreadshirt's founder & CEO about this deal :) Published here with his permission.

You'll see how he launched this company to compete with the american giants back in 2002, and the impressive numbers today: over 200 employees, 200.000 online shops, a dozen countries.

I had an earlier interview with him here.

update: and congrats on buying La Fraise, THE community T-shirt company in France. I'm just saddened that Patrice would not want to give it a try and keep running the company for a while ?

what I don't like about Apple Inc. ...

…is their logistics! sucks big time. In a world where DELL computers ships a made-to-order computer to you in just a couple of days, Apple takes a cool 2–3 weeks to get stuff your way. I placed an order for some gear exactly 7 days ago. Shipping today it seems. not expected to arrive before 9 days. And in nine days (a Friday), it’s national day here, so holiday. add 3 more days…

Sucks…

ps: last time I ordered my iPod and iMac from Apple, it took a whole 5 weeks (well… just after they announced in last november). I could almost track the stuff coming from China…

Dudes! Get a DELL guy to optimize your online AppleStore !

A chat with Michel de Guilhermier

Download clip

Philippe Rodriguez about to launch Wantuno

Download clip

I caught up with Philippe last night during a funky dinner in a Parisian hotel. Michael got a pix of me during the interview...

You haven't bought on cashstore.fr yet ?

Download clip

Weird stuff happens in offices in Paris...

Anyways, should you want to know why she's angry, check cashstore.fr !

T-shirt blog reaches over 100K of revenues per month: making it a case study ?

We have mentionned LaFraise on this blog before. Patrice, the founder, has just reached the 100KE of revenues / month. Congrats! And including himself, there are only 3 people in his little company. It gave me the urge to modelize his business real quick in the attached Excel file. (not yet: I'll publish it after you get a chance to play with this model)

These are very very  rough numbers just to see the dynamics of his business. Try to figure out how I did it, or where I’m totally wrong in this. I did a 5 year very simple plan. T-shirts are sold through a web site. The store is only for visiting the goods (like the recent Wired store in NYC)

Revenues:

• I assumed he started by selling 10 T-shirts a day, so 200/month.
• I added a growth rate of 20% per month, with a deceleration of 5%/month. He stills grows at about 1%/month at month 60.
• I used French VAT of 19,6%
• price point is 19 euros/T-shirt. He never changes this pricing

Cost of good sold: (all excluding tax)

• I assumed he buys his white T-shirts at 5 euros /piece. If he starts ordering more than 5000/month, he gets a 20% discount
• stickers for logos are 3 euros a piece. no discount here.
• shipping are 2 french stamps of 0,53 euros. beware: no VAT on shipping in this country
• packaging and marketing material of 1 euro per parcel
• bank fees of 2,5% for payment by credit card

Sales:

• I assumed that he needs a sales clerk for every 1000 orders / month.
• Salary per clerck is 1500 euros/month. I forgot to give them a raise in my model.
• Salary overhead at 50%
• I assumed the only other expense are web servers. They cost 300 euros each per month, and he needs onr for every 3000 orders (redundancy, etc.)

General & Administration:

• I assume rent of 1500 euros per month (all included: electriity, internet, etc.). It starts on month 6.
• he gets a 1000 euro bill for decoration when he moves in
• he has a launch party when he moves in, and one every year at Xmas. I assumed month 1 = january.
• monthly expenses (including accounting, etc.) are set at 1500 euros.

CAPEX:

• I assumed he buys a truck for 15.000 euros on month 1. (shipping, delivery, etc.). Amotized over 4 years.
• I assumed he buys a print / hot press (whatever the name) to stick stickers onto the T-shirts for 5000 euros on month 1. Amotized over 5 years.

Cash management:

• I assumed he starts paying VAT only when the balance gets positive. 30 days delay
• Cash in by credit card is 0 day delay
• Cash out for rent, web servers, salaries + expenses, expenses, decoration, parties, shipping and bank fees occur at 0 day delay
• T-shirts, stickers, packaging get 30 days
• capex gets 60 days

It took me about 40 min to compute the whole thing. So my question to you all is what is the required capital this business owner would need to bootstrap his business ? (in other words, the minimum point of sum of free cash flow) ?

I simplified the model: no sales season, no season variation (Patrice confirms this), no discount on volume for some people, not taking into account the price he pays for designers submitting visuals, etc.

I know this post might sound weird to you, but I gave a 1h30 lecture the other day on the HEC Campus to PhD graduates studying entrepreneurship. And this is exactly the case I used on the white board to illustrate the rule #1 for entrepreneurs: CASH IS KING. Then comes market demand (or market PAIN).

Let me know whether this exercise is useful to you.

E-commerce is great

The sky is falling, originally uploaded by rsepulveda.

Our new DELL Computers arrived yesterday at the office. Brand new desktops with enough memory and large flast screens. We placed the order last Tuesday, and they arrived only 6 days later, built to order, about 8 days early of the previsionnal date on the order form.

Isn't it great :) ? the only thing I had to do offline was to negotiate a special price with my account manager at DELL, that I've known for some time now. It always helps to create good relationships with your suppliers, as they can sometimes pull out special deals for you :)

Next step, install the stuff (we have just joined a special program at Microsoft, so we are also BUYING our software), and get back to normal work, with better working conditions !