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TOP STORY: With the Nasdaq 45 percent off peak, tech
companies could commit more money to repurchasing shares.

* Companies balk at buybacks
http://www.redherring.com/investor/2000/1211/inv-buyback121100.html

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A D V E R T I S E M E N T

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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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Tiffany walkers?

Recently, in New York, I visited Scott Galloway, the CEO of
Brand Farm, an incubator specializing in e-commerce. Scott
told me his company was "an incubator before incubators were
cool."

"Incubators were never cool," I said, and he admitted that,
yes, being a retail incubator today is like being a short,
slow basketball player: hard to love. Then he went on to
tell me his business was different. He builds operations
around high-margin categories, doesn't limit sales to
online, and offers what he calls "edited selection."

Scott previously launched Red Envelope, a smallish catalog
and site with, to my eyes, wildly overpriced gifts. You pay
for the selection, the packaging, the brand, and the
marketing. It is essentially the Tiffany model.

At Brand Farm, he's developing Gold Violin, a specialty
catalog of luxury gifts for seniors, clearly targeted at
their newly affluent children and grandchildren. Scott is
also working on Room 12, a high-end travel site.

We may snicker at the too-precious products in these
catalogs, but the concept of offering a small number of
compact, beautifully wrapped gifts via multiple channels
sure beats pushing heavy, low-margin bags of dog food on the
Web.

Incubators are not cool. But margins are.

- Rafe Needleman, rafe-needleman@redherring.com
Editor, http://www.redherring.com


FURTHER READING
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