Niche marketing is a beautiful thing.  Just ask Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz.  After a dramatic decline in profitability following his departure in 2ooo, he returned to the helm in 2oo8 and quickly returned the company to its roots as a great coffee maker.  The mission now is to do the same thing with their European… Read More

It was the late 80’s and I scheduled an appointment to show condominiums to a soon to be divorced man.  I met him at an open house and he told me that he probably wouldn’t be buying  for about six months or so.  It was the fall, and some of the agents in the office questioned the wisdom… Read More

My grandmother was very wise, and so too were the aphorisms that she would often share with me.  Somehow they always sounded more elegant in Italian.  Yet in any language they always seemed to ring true, if not at the time that she spoke them, then later on in life.   One that I remember well she often… Read More

There’s a glassware maker in the Northeast that makes stunning glassware, cutlery, handcrafted wooden and ceramic bowls and various other household accents.  I usually buy their products as wedding gifts for friends.  This past summer I purchased a ceramic bowl with my friend and his wife’s name, along with the date of their wedding, painted along the edge. … Read More

To a certain degree we are all salespeople.  As children we sell to our parents and teachers.  As young adults we sell to whomever is interviewing us for that first full-time job and subsequently to our boss.  After that, or perhaps simultaneously, to the object of our desires.  It all comes back full circle after we have… Read More