by Marc H. Rudov | February 25, 2015 | Article
RadioShack recently declared bankruptcy, and Sprint took over 1750 of its 4100 stores. Why? You may deem this a counterintuitive move: the Internet was supposed to obliterate bricks-and-mortar retailing. After all, Staples recently combined with Office Depot, because...
by Marc H. Rudov | February 17, 2015 | Article
In 1869, Louis Sullivan, the Boston-born “father of skyscrapers,” asserted that form follows function. Function is purpose. All successful designers follow Sullivan’s axiom. Unsuccessful designers build products based on love of technology, with no...
by Marc H. Rudov | January 28, 2015 | Article
Two execs from Chock Full o’ Nuts, the 89-year-old, Manhattan-based coffee company, now owned by Massimo Zanetti Beverage Group, recently visited Donald Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice. Their mission: Challenge the two teams, Vortex and Infinity, to create...
by Marc H. Rudov | January 23, 2015 | Article
AT&T plans to acquire DirecTV by May 2015, barring any regulatory snags, for $48.5B. This unwieldy combination will create organizational and branding indigestion. Will the DirecTV name survive? Should it? How will AT&T differentiate it from U-verse? At 20M+...
by Marc H. Rudov | January 19, 2015 | Article
A big part of Apple’s brand is ease of use. Successful suppliers like Apple simplify customers’ lives and never ask them to perform heavy lifting. Simplify and ease. What a concept! Long before YouTube and the iPhone, everybody owned a VCR. Comically, most...
