Good Morning...

This week, the battery in the remote of our Bose alarm clock died.
It is impossible to shut of the alarm without the remote, so I have been using a travel alarm.

This has ended my streak of over 2 years of waking up to this song:



Any new suggestions?

I'm writing about Coach purses...

In Toronto, I read a great article about Coach (purses, etc.)

Most luxury goods hold up well during a recession because recessions don't impact the highest earners to the same degree as everyone else.

Coach looks to be an exception to that. The article talked about how terrible their sales were this year. (Only Jim may be interested in this) Sales have been impacted to the point where they no longer report separate results for their main stores (expensive) and their discount outlets, they now lump those sales together. (Jim Cramer would say Sell, Sell, Sell).

I think what was missing from this article is what the company's performance says about those who actually buy their products.

If Coach can't hold up during a recession it means their target shopper isn't really the luxury segment, it was those aspiring to be or giving that appearance.

I think this is a great case study of how to ruin a brand by running a public company that has to report to the street.

I'm not into fashion, Coach may have been a luxury brand at one point. Somewhere they started using tricks from Trading Up to broaden their buyers from just affluent to those who are aspirational and willing to trade up beyond levels they could afford in other categories. Now they are impacted by a bad recession and respond by increasing sales at their outlet stores which will only dilute the value of the brand.
They claim to be responding this fall with a premium bag collection that has a lot of "bling" on it.

The only question is which Brand will replace Coach as the next luxury purse to have if you and your friends happen to be on The Hills?

Toronto

First, 2 movies:
Lions for Lambs (A) - A must see movie from Robert Redford about the different angles of the war. Basically a series of conversations between a politician and a CNN reporter, a student and Poly Sci professor etc. It's kind of sad that a movie like this that should be made, probably was only able to be made because Robert Redford has enough pull to do it after making a lot of money for the people who think a new Incredible Hulk movie was long overdue.

Day Zero (B) - I don't know why we are in a war theme at home, but this movie asks what if we brought the draft back now. It follows 3 people who were just drafted and you see how they handle it.

I spent most of the week in Toronto. We were delayed a day which gave us the first opportunity to run around the city. We went to a Blue Jays game:

We did the tour behind Niagra Falls:

We saw a nice rainbow that I had to send to my wife:

On my brother Mike's reco, we ate dinner 800 ft in the air at the revolving restraunt:

(I'm just waiting for Mike to sign off on my $110 dinner)

And learned something sad about the falls:

In the picture you can see the huge cloud of mist that rises out of the falls. The falls used to be clear of most of this mist as it stayed down low. They did a study and found that all of the construction around the falls (hotels and casinos) changed the airflow over the falls. Now instead of blowing out any mist that comes up, the air dives into the falls and causes it to rise higher blocking the view.