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Jaffer Ali Profile picture
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4 Jan, 6 tweets, 1 min read
When we started our online e-commerce company in 1998. MANY advantages pushed us online. 1) Customer service was done ONLINE AND OVER PHONE 2) No sales tax was charged, lowering costs for consumers 3) Transactional costs were lower than "old school" direct marketing or retail
4) Shipping/postage was low enough to charge $4.99/order and cover most, if not all, costs. 5) Marginal costs were lowered in our favor and we could thrive with lower gross margins, further benefits for consumers. 6) Convenience and novelty attracted consumers.
In 2021, many advantages to retailers are actually SHIFTING BACK to brick & mortar. Transactional costs for online from fulfillment to postage/shipping is no longer favorable. Niche brick & mortar stores can have 60%+ gross margins. Sales tax is no longer an online advantage.
Masks & More outlet stores will service its 10,000th customer within 2 weeks. We discovered that having over 140 cloth mask designs, all sorts of PPE plus assorted As Seen On TV products have LOWER transactional costs than online now. Our stores only need 15 customers a day
to break even. That includes rent, utilities and labor. Think of that! Each store has between $15,000-$20,000 in inventory and economics flip to very beneficial once you get past 30 customers a day.
We also discovered that people come back to purchase often. They enjoy the "experience" of discovering new "stuff". They can discover new stuff, but we noticed that nearly EVERYONE touches EVERYTHING. Not ideal in a pandemic, but tactile shopping is real.

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More from @Jaffer22915438

Jaffer Ali Profile picture
5 Jan
1/ Targeting your customers digitally was an antidote for collapsing CPMs not an antidote for collapsing marketers' sales. Marginal costs for delivering ad impressions is so close to zero, let's call it ZERO. So to maintain CPMs, black box algos were created to charge marketers
2/ more money. And media owners want to charge you a premium for targeting your own customers. Then media owners conjure another trick: "Look alike audiences". They try to get marketers to target people "that look like your customers" because even media owners know that if you
3/ exclusively target your own customers, you are on a road to ruin as the universe shrinks thru death and other reasons for attrition. Every move media owners make is designed to dig deeper into your pocket. Agencies skilled in the dark art of the day propagate this snake oil.
Read 6 tweets
Jaffer Ali Profile picture
2 Jan
1/ I have been pondering the calculus of decision making of different societal layers. It is quite clear that there is a different calculus used by Henry Kissinger or Bezos and Musk. The rationale used for public disclosure of actions is not what drives the bus.
2/ Oligarchs use descriptions of events accessible to the plebes. What they are great at is creating a pseudo-environment where discussion/debate takes place but the real rationale remains hidden.
3/ Deconstructing the calculus using methods and *rules* everyday people use to make decisions fails...and is meant to fail. This is a feature of Oligarchic thinking and articulation, not a bug.
Read 4 tweets
Jaffer Ali Profile picture
31 Dec 20
1/ Covid is certainly bad on its own, but there are either intended or unintended consequences of this crisis. Whether these are just "emerging" or "planned", is not really the point. But we see a growing response to the crisis that many are not looking at the consequences.
2/ For us conspiracy minded folks, we see a technocracy as a planned response. But even if technocracy is *just emerging* as a response to the pandemic, we have human agency. The AI/Transhumanist/Globalist crowd are making hay and getting many people to embrace policies that
3/ would not have acceptable w/o the pain of the pandemic. Will the pandemic give rise to a global ID? Will vaccine passports be part of this? If entrepreneurs like me figured out how to "benefit" financially from the pandemic, you better believe Oligarchs are better positioned
Read 5 tweets
Jaffer Ali Profile picture
28 Dec 20
1/ Online retail is getting huuuge press on its response to the pandemic. But a dirty secret is that few online retailers are actually making profits. Those flush with VC/PEG money have *invested* in growth and not profits.
2/ We have been online retailers for 20 years and have known hundreds of online retailers. Few actually understand their real costs. And those subsidized with other people's money mistakenly believe they can just turn a knob to become profitable once they achieve "scale"
3/ Simply wrong in 99% of the cases. Scale has emergent costs not originally input into their spreadsheet driven models. When the subsidies run out, they usually go on life support... and one after the other have gone bust.
Read 10 tweets
Jaffer Ali Profile picture
23 Dec 20
1/ Crony Capitalists and Oligarchs play by a different set of rules than the rest of society. Rules for *the rest of us* that are taught in school & regs have multiple purposes. One is to protect the *top* and the other is maintain a level of order (which helps the *top* as well)
2/ Every rule or regulation carries within them ways to overcome them. But one first needs to have a spirit that sets the boundaries wide. Stay out of jail, but if one is surrounded by people elevating RULES to revelation, get rid of those people.
3/ In the real world, the action is at the asymptote or tail. If you want to play by the standard rules created by self-serving groups, you really should not become an entrepreneur. Go work for the post office. There are few books that teach you how to break rules or push them to
Read 6 tweets
Jaffer Ali Profile picture
19 Dec 20
1/ Those of us who did not just study media but owned and bought it understood the importance of trust in communication. Persuasion and propaganda can only be effective with a certain amount of trust in the equation.
2/ Building trust is difficult, RESTORING TRUST once it has been lost is much more difficult. The difference today than 25 years ago is that social media exposes official narrative lies. Elites counter by heaping disinformation that increase distrust.
3/ Elites are in "zugswang". Adding to informational chaos, they destroy their own credibility as a by-product. When GW Bush paid Armstrong Williams $250K to promote his policies and Pentagon/NY Times whore Judith Miller became a stenographer instead of journo, trust eroded.
Read 4 tweets

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