On Monday, Fortune came out with a long, in-depth piece on the success of Trader Joe’s – the wildly popular small gourmet grocery store. The chain, owned by German grocery conglomerate Aldi, has experienced dynamite growth in the last 15 years, expanding from its base in Southern California to over 200 stores nationwide. Their sales numbers ($8 billion in 2009) are similar to those of semi-competitor Whole Foods, and their sales per square foot are an estimated $1,750, more than double those of Whole Foods.
Fortune spends a lot of ink (or pixels, I suppose) analyzing aspects of Trader Joe’s success. It’s a good article, but what has made TJ’s such a cultural phenomenon isn’t too difficult to discern. I’d separate it into a few key buckets: Read More »




Ah, the sweet smell of redemption on a Thursday morning. Last week, I wrote about whether executives could tag companies as ‘innovative’ if they failed to deliver revenue growth (and implicitly, fail to meet customer needs). BCG’s listing of the
The Sales and Marketing relationship at many B2B companies can be characterized by the term “managed dissatisfaction”. Competing goals and time horizons prevent the functions from seeing eye-to-eye, resulting in Marketing and Sales doing just enough to placate each other while pursuing separate agendas.

Advance warning: this post will likely open more doors than it closes. But they are important doors that need opening, especially if they aren’t already. Haniel Lynn pushed the first one open with his 