It’s an open-air art environment in the heart of an urban community on Detroit’s East Side. Tyree Guyton, founder and artistic director, uses everyday, discarded objects to create a two block area full of color, symbolism, and intrigue. Now in its 29th year, the Heidelberg Project is recognized around the world as a demonstration of the power of creativity to transform lives.
With Asymcar, we’ve extensively discussed the auto industry’s intransigence while considering likely disruption vectors, including modular manufacturing, the information layer and emerging “transportation as a service” plays.
In Detroit recently, I had an opportunity to explore a bit and muse on Packard, once king of the American car business and now just a distant memory. Packard’s East Grand Boulevard factory was designed by Albert Kahn, “the foremost American Industrial architect of his day”.
Packard’s former market position, architecture and stagnation echoes Asymcar themes.
Between 1935 and 1956, the Packard Motor Car Company went from the top of the heap among American automotive brands to just another independent, struggling to survive on the scraps of the Big Three. This week, we take a look at the Packard Clipper, the “bathtub Packards” of the late 1940s, and how the once-great automaker lost its way. We also examine one of the company’s odder experiments, the 1948 Packard Station Sedan.
At the start of the Great Depression, the Packard Motor Car Company was the default choice for American luxury car buyers. There were cars that were more expensive or more exotic, but Packard had an aura of patrician respectability that no other domestic automaker could match. A big Packard was not a sign of material accomplishment so much as a badge of class status, bolstered by graceful but restrained styling, impeccable quality, and exacting engineering.
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1899
The first Packard is built at Packard Electric, founded in Warren, Ohio, by brothers James and William Packard.1902
Detroit investors, led by Henry Joy, buy controlling interest in Packard Motor Car Co.1903
Packard moves into new factory, designed by Albert Kahn, along East Grand Boulevard.1905
Kahn designs Building #10, the first factory ever built of reinforced concrete. He revolutionizes the design of factories nationwide.1918-19
Packard builds Liberty engines at the plant for U.S. military aircraft.Late 1920s
Packard becomes the dominant luxury car in the U.S., outselling Cadillac and other competitors combined.1940-45
Packard builds aircraft and marine engines for the U.S. military and World War II allies. At peak production in 1943, the company has 36,000 employees, almost all at the Detroit plant.1954
The last Packard is built at the East Grand Boulevard plant; Packard buys out Studebaker, a higher-volume carmaker based in South Bend, Ind., and becomes Studebaker-Packard.1956
Last Packard built in Detroit, at a facility on Conner Avenue.
Silverghost: my $.02 tempered with/ adapted from “The rise and Fall of the Packard motor car company” by Ward
1. Packard’s preference to pay stockholder dividends over re-investment in new, more technically advanced product.
2. The failure to merge with other independants as far back as the 20’s or 30’s, when GM (as re-designed by Sloan) and Walter P. Chrysler showed American and the world how to combine strengths and maintain (or gain) market share.
3. Abdicating the Luxury market after the war, being stuck in the middle–largely the effect of the 120 line managers rising to the top.
4. The out-and-out plainess of the 24-26th series cars coupled with their outdated powertrains (see No.1) and the inability of the dealer network to deal on those cars in comparision to their big 3 rivals.
5. (big personal opinion here) is that Packard, as a corporation was “a nice guy” in terms of competition, labor relations, dealership relations, etc. Ford and Chrysler in particular were scrappy individuals when it came to these topics/behaviors, and were not nice guys. It’s always been a cut throat business. Packards were cars built “for gentlemen, by gentlemen” The world stopped supporting that model with their buying habits. I.E. Snoop Dog sells a lot more records than Johnny Mathis these days.
Abandoned America: The Packard Plant
“Largest Abandoned Factory in the World.
While wondering around the Packard Plant, I remembered an earlier visit to Turin’s Lingotto.
Panorama: Lingotto Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli.
If you go, contact Pat or Kim at Show Me Detroit for a great drive around the Motor City.
Detroit, full of history and urban renewal reminds me of Berlin and vice versa.
Postscript: Fernando Palazuelo purchased the plant via a county tax foreclosure auction for a mere $405,000 in late 2013.
IBM:
Millennials—the largest generation since the Baby Boomers—are the new darlings being targeted by marketers. Much has been written about the Millennial consumer: the most educated, most tech-savvy, most connected, thrifty, and socially and environmentally conscious.
These digital natives are the force that’s driving a new era for consumer marketing, one focused on values, transparency, relevancy and engagement.
But what about business-to-business (B2B) marketing? Increasingly, Millennials are assuming positions at work where they influence purchasing decisions. How do their consumer shopping habits impact their attitudes and approach for researching business products and services and engaging with vendors?
To find out, we surveyed 704 individuals who influence or are responsible for B2B purchasing decisions of US$10,000 or more for their company. They come from organizations large and small, across 12 countries and 6 targeted industries. When we compared the responses of Millennial employees (born 1980–1993) with those of Gen X (born 1965–1979) and Baby Boomers (born 1954–1964), we discovered Millennials’ behavior differs somewhat from their older colleagues, and their consumer practices do effect their B2B purchasing expectations (with a few surprising exceptions).
Millennials, even more than Gen X or Baby Boomers, prize a hassle-free, omni-channel client experience personalized to their specific needs. They want data, speed and trusted advisors who are eager to collaborate.
The most successful tech companies are typically led by their technical, product-oriented founder-CEOs who have very little experience in building a sales organization. Bringing on a sales leader and building a sales organization exercises a completely different muscle for most engineering-heavy startups.
And if you’ve hired right, managing a vice president of sales is meant to be tough work. That’s because the very best sales leaders are extremely demanding. They call out competitive weaknesses, constantly push for more feature velocity, and promise bug fixes or features that get crammed into every release. They stretch everyone to their limit. It will drive you and others in the company bananas.
But if your VP of sales is not periodically at odds with the VPs of product, engineering, operations, finance, etc., then he or she is probably not demanding enough. If done right, this role gives the entire company a reason to work harder as the sales VP reveals and strongly advocates for the customer struggle. That said, the CEO still needs to manage this person tightly. Because once the VP of sales unleashes her or his superpower — being a master negotiator/influencer — inside the company, it can create dysfunction across the team.
It is always a delight to see the Portland Cello Project. Madison’s High Noon Saloon is a pleasant venue.
Two panoramas:
Tap to view a full screen panorama.
Tap to view a full screen panorama.
A few still images.
August, 2010 at the High Noon Saloon.
Next time I'm in Buenos Aires I'm going to stay in this Vg wine lovers' hotel in Palermo @andresrosberg http://t.co/UfABoTDtW8
— Jancis Robinson (@JancisRobinson) February 18, 2015
Indeed. A visit to Buenos Aires is surely incomplete without a stay at the Fierro.
Imagery tells the story rather nicely.
Let’s begin with a rooftop panorama:
And, continue with the Palermo neighborhood.
This post is about how I evaluate early stage venture businesses. Anyone that is interested in getting my help and/or investment must follow a specific format when presenting to me (of course I make exceptions). Not only is it helpful to me in terms of understanding the business proposed, but I have found that it becomes very helpful to those seeking my advice. I make them break down their business into four parts – Opportunity, Strategy, Execution, and Reward. They have to convince me about the merit of each section before proceeding to the next. For instance, if I do not believe in the opportunity, I am not really interested in the strategy. Many entrepreneurs actually have trouble distinguishing between these sections.
Many potential investors in early-stage companies will take a different approach, clearly my approach is not the only one or even the best one. It has served me well and I have the track record to prove it.
JB: Sounds like it’s a big deal, but fast Internet and slow Internet, those can be abstract ideas so lay things out for me clearly: what can people do in Tullahoma that they can’t do in other parts of the state?
AH: In Tullahoma, there’s a small startup software company called Agisent, it actually moved from South Carolina to Tullahoma because Tullahoma’s very fast, it’s a gigabit network, one of the fastest in the world. For a town of 18,000 that’s pretty impressive. And also it’s very reliable and that’s what this company called Agisent needs. What they do is they provide a web document management service to police departments, prisons, courts typically; they are small to medium sized departments that can’t afford their own IT expert to manage their networks so that’s really important to them that they can do that in Tullahoma.
That’s fine for Agisent. But then you go outside of Tullahoma, you just drive like 3, 4, 5 miles outside of Tullahoma into this suburban area where there are some very nice homes, and they don’t have Internet access. They don’t even have AT&T, U-verse or Charter Communications which is another telecom there who provides service in Tullahoma. They don’t serve this area. And ran into a fellow named Matt Johnson, he is an entrepreneur, he started up a company called Road Rage Gauges, which are gauges that you put in your truck or high performance car to measure how it’s performing so you don’t overtax your engine or damage it in some way. What he did was he spent $2,000 rigging up a system so that he could get wireless access, but that’s just way too slow for him. He has clients in China and South Africa and Germany that he has to talk to and when we visited him at his home, this is what he told us about his experience:
Imagine, for instance, a bike-rental system administered by a DAC hosted across hundreds or thousands of different computers in its home city. The DAC would handle the day-to-day management of bikes and payments, following parameters laid down by a group of founders. Those hosting the management programme would be paid in the system’s own cryptocurrency – let’s call it BikeCoin. That currency could be used to rent bikes – in fact, it would be required to, and would derive its value on exchanges such as BitShares from the demand for local bike rentals.
Guided by its management protocols, our bike DAC would use its revenue to pay for repairs and other upkeep. It could use online information to find the right people for various maintenance tasks, and to evaluate their performance. A sufficiently advanced system could choose locations for new stations based on analysis of traffic information, and then make the arrangements to have them built.
One of the most intriguing parts of such a system is that it allows the crowdfunding of large-scale projects without the centralisation and fees of either stock exchanges or platforms such as Kickstarter. The DAC platforms themselves are models – in the year since Bitcoin Miami, Ethereum has raised about $14 million, and BitShares around $6 million, solely through the direct sale of the digital currency that will allow people to run programs or make exchanges on their networks.