Seeing Jim Autry, my hero in business

Jim Autry, my first boss at Better Homes and Gardens magazine, and a former president of the Magazine Division at parent Meredith Corporation, is my hero in business. Now retired, he is a poet and author of national reknown. Some of his work focuses on the need for humility and humanity in the go-go world of business.

A white paper on early-stage companies and Big Box retailers

My draft white paper is titled “10 Ways to Blow Your Chances at Getting Your Early-Stage Company’s Consumer Tech Product or Service Distributed via Big Box Retailers.” Whew! I need to work on that.

My initial list:

1. Assume that you can find Big Box corporate staffers who will care.

2. Figure that if some do care, they will have the influence to get you “on the shelf”.

3. Expect that buyers (merchants) are motivated to find and buy innovations from young companies.

4. Propose “partnerships” for product and market develop to merchants.

5. Compare your company to a winning early stage company product such as the Slingbox.

6. Load up your product or service with cool features and add a monthly subscription service to give the retailer reoccurring revenue.

7. Plan for enthusiastic response and sales velocity through in-store sales personnel.

8. Assume that because your product is digital and can be bought online from home, you’ll leave Big Boxes in the dust if they don’t distribute your thing.

9. Approach Big Boxes about first launching at their e-commerce Web sites to prove their merit for in-store distribution.

10. Read 1 through 9 and give up.

Leaving Best Buy's venture capital innovation network

This blog's initial experiment: Listing my conversations and topics to perhaps trigger ideas or interest from viewers. Discussions this week:

Just back from Chicago, discussing projects for the summer with:

* Stepheny Lauer, vice-president of marketing, Coldwell Banker, and co-founder, Art.com. Topics: future of real estate marketing.

* Rich Gordon, professor, Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University. Topic: future of journalism education, including a focus on studying audience trends.

* Tom Collinger, associate dean, Medill and professor, school of Integrated Marketing Communications. Topic: future of Integrated Marketing Communications education.

* 30 of Collinger's IMC grad students. Topic: The successes and failures of Best Buy's venture capital innovation network.

* Steven Hanson, CEO, Hanson Inc., Toledo.. Topic: future of Web publishing and marketing for building products industry.

* Senior executives at Scripps Networks Interactive Group. Topic: the future of Web video-on-demand and video search in lifestyle media.

* Senior executive at Meredith Interactive. Topic: the focus on Web 2.0 viewer experiences in lifestyle media.

* John and Melissa Uppgren, principals, TechBarn. Topic: their online advertising lead tracking and fulfillment systems for tracking ad results in consumer lifestyle media, both for media companies and for leading advertisers.

* Dean Ekman, CEO, Online Builder. Topic: launch of SuperBuild, a breakthrough online best practices business management tool for contractors and landscapers, with a consumer service to help consumers manage their building, remodeling and landscaping projects.

Conversations

Wrapping up Best Buy Venture Capital Innovation Network projects, including transitioning some early-stage companies to Advisory Boards that work.

Discussions this week:

* David Friend, CEO on online back-up company Carbonite,Boston, a new client. Topic: setting a new standard in ease-of-use and low cost for online back-up.

* Senior executives at Compass Marketing. Topic: accelerating innovation for big box retailers by doing the upfront work for buyers who want to make decisions when products are nearly ready to ship or launch.