Tag Archives: Eaton Centre

November 24, 2024 · 19:58

Bee, Bee, Bee, the Eye Pee

Yup, I am going off the simulated drive straight to the edge of what I consider wonky space (aka idea town). I have two reasons to do this. In the first there are a few indicators that LVMH is already on route to this and there is nothing more fun than to blow the surprise of the biggest baddest luxury brand on the planet, so that they know they are less ahead of the pack than they think they are. As for the second reason. It is always fun for a blogger to be able to say that I got there two years ahead of the rest and that is done by publishing the idea now and not when they want it to be published. Its al connected towards he said, she said and I merely show the published article to prove my point.

As such we get to the first hurdle. I was walking around in nowhere land and I got to mix what I designed two years ago after seeing malls impacted by COVID issues. At that point I designed a new technology for interacting retails and consumers. It was based on mobiles and glasses to give the people more. As such I had a thought today. To get you on board I need to take you on a mission of mercy (to protect your mind) to something that is 70 years old.

We get to so see two images, one red based (for the left eye) and one green based (for the right eye) these two images do not interfere, but with the glasses you get to see a 3D image of the image. One image for the left eye, the other for the right eye. Almost like a mono coloured view-master. We adapted the technology to use grey scaled glasses and that is how I saw Gravity in 3D in the IMAX theatre. A movie by Alfonso Cuarón with George the Nespresso man Clooney and Sandra Speedster Bullock. Gravity was the most impactful movie in my life and I still think of that movie has had the most impact on me. The technology employed that is, it was a great movie all around. You see, I thought of another ploy. The grey screen with glasses can give us an additional privacy filter. We have a mobile screen where we can filter what people see and only if you are directly facing the screen can you see the information. On an angle you can not. So this already exists, so what the beef? Well, I reckoned that a screen with ‘intelligence’ could interface with the grey glasses.

Now consider that the glasses could be given a setting that gives any wearer of these glasses individual privacy and in the second setting 3D capabilities. And with the interactions you get a new level of 3D interactions (and privacy) to new tablets (and mobiles). 

The main event
Yup, now we get to the main event. You see as I stated, I was there over 2 years ago and I wrote about it in ‘The mind it continues regardless’ on June 6th 2022 (and before that) where I saw a new application to augmented reality. Eaton Centre was the first application where I saw it, but it would be highly regarded in places like the Dubai centre. I also wrote ‘A Promise kept’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2023/04/05/a-promise-kept/) that is more up to date to this story. You see what people fail to see is that malls rely on engagement and these times (the COVID era) are bringing that need to the surface. As such I also I got to an idea that would offer a lot more to jewellers (see A promise kept). You see, there are two phases. The first is a QR code.

This code could be outside any jeweller, but in my view I saw the jewellers in Monaco and the millions of tourists they have to ‘appease’ to. As such I formed the idea that we would add the code to the image of a hand and the image of your hand (your finger) will be placed inside of the image of the ring you wanted and there we have an approximation of Deeper Machine Learning in use with a mobile and the retail industry. I worked out parts of it and I gather that LVMH has even gotten further with this. Well, you gotta admit that they are are being paid to work on it every day and I thought that android systems (iOS too) and by next week Huawei could implement this using HarmonyOS, this could have an interesting setting where everyone could have an image of an unaffordable ring on their finger, without LVHM endangering their stock and this would be an eye catching ability in Monaco to say the least. And this could be pushed even further when we consider the privacy shield with 3D capabilities and glasses. The Deeper Machine Learning options we now have could design an image from the 3D stage and the ring (as a QR code) and create a perfect fitting ring where a $26,500 ring might merely be owned by a few, but in this setting millions could see themselves graced with such a ring and when LVMH does this every quarter you get more than a return population, you create a global wave. And that is what I saw and now with the alternative idea we could see our hand graced (in 3D) with rings we could never image ever holding (I reckon that gets 98.3433% of the female population eager to try it).

Just my sneaky sneaky sense of humour. Because I wanted to state (for some kind of record) that I got there first, well kinda anyway. So all those people making claims, I have 3288 articles in my blog showing for over 10 years a few ideas that others dream of (or so I hope). It was a stage of innovation, which is why I can call Microsoft as the masters of mediocrity. I am ahead of them by miles.

You all have a great day, I am now 4 hours from Monday and perhaps another new idea.

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March 26, 2023 · 05:54

What business plan?

The very first thought when I saw a Nordstrom video less than an hour ago. In light of the closure of Nordstrom someone made a 4K walkthrough of the Nordstrom shop in the Eaton Mall in Toronto, which is their flagship. The shop is about 220,000 square foot and the first thought out of my mind was ‘Are you flipping kidding me?’ And I suddenly understood why Nordstrom never made a profit. I cannot understand why the people there did not see this right off the bat. In the first the shop looks pretty amazing, but overly spacious and not in a good way. The shop has about 70,000 square foot of unused space, that is a third and mall space is expensive. So to be wasting space to the likes of 70,000 square foot. I found one source with a price (not verified) of $1,450 per square foot, implying that Nordstrom was wasting $101,500,000 EVERY YEAR on empty space. So what kind of business plan is that? And the video (at https://youtu.be/6IQMgV_7uqE) clearly shows the waste of space. You could setup the entire shop in half the space and when you reduce the cost of one shop by $51,000,000 it amounts to a large sum of money. I do not care what the vision of these people were, when you optionally have 13 stores in the same setup, you are wasting hundreds of millions a year. Now, we know that the others are smaller, but it still implies that the stores were wasting close to half a billion every year. So what gives?

When I wrote ‘The unplanned story’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2023/03/21/the-unplanned-story/) on the 21st of March, I did make mention of “there is a weakness in your business model, but I do not think it was enough”, in this malls tend to be the same and I did not give it the consideration I optionally could have. I never expected that Nordstrom wasted space to the degree they did. There is more, it seems to be some elite store and Canadians aren’t too elite based (well over 40% of the male population loves their hockey jersey). A shop like this fits Los Angeles, optionally Rodeo Drive, but even then this flagship there would become a money pit soon thereafter, especially when you waste 70,000 square foot of space. 

I keep on coming back to the thought, who were these people wasting money to this degree? You see, covid or not, I expect that covid had a massive impact, but the clear waste of space is boggling my mind. Malls are expensive and that keeps on badgering my mind. It also reminded me of a place called Meddens in Rotterdam. A fashion store with exactly the same setup in a place called ‘Lijnbaan’, there is however a difference. The people behind it were brilliant and they bought the entire block. They became an eccentric and exquisite shop, but as they owned the block, their $100K gamble became a multi million euro win and it funded expansion after expansion and after 180 years (in 2010) the 6 shops stopped. I reckon 180 years is a good run. A shop like Nordstrom that stated to CBC last month “Despite our best efforts, we do not see a realistic path to profitability for the Canadian business.” Well, when you waste that kind of space I am not entirely surprised. And it will not take long for places like Holt Renfrew, Hudson’s Bay, and Simons to gobble up the clients. Personally I hope that the staff members will find space in these places as well. They tend to be victims of a business plan, not the instigators of it. It took the parent company less than 10 years to see wisdom and with an earlier quote (I think it was CBC) that they never had a profitable year I actually wonder why it took this long. 

The more I saw of this video the more questions came to me and I have no idea what these board people were thinking (if they were thinking). I might seem happy, but I am not. I do not relish anyone’s downfall (Microsoft being the exception) and this shop was managed floor by floor by people who loved their job and their space. You can see that with EVERY display in that shop and there are many of them and we would want to give them a pass for covid, but the shop was not doing well years before that point and that partially angers me, waste tends to do that. A weird start to Sunday for me, but when I see the evidence I am not really overly surprised on the outcome, merely on some people not seeing this clearly years before me.

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March 21, 2023 · 23:45

The unplanned story

That happens to us all and there are any number of reasons. I thought I was done with the subject for now, that is until CB gave me ‘Nordstrom Canada will launch sales at its closing stores starting Tuesday’ (at https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/nordstrom-canada-liquidating-stores-1.6784540) about 11 hours ago. There was no surprise. I covered this in part in ‘It as one keyword’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2023/03/04/it-was-one-keyword/) and that story links to a few others. I casually captured the folly of Nordstrom but I left a few things out. You see, we can all agree if you have been working from a place of loss from day one, there is a weakness in your business model, but I do not think it was enough. Covid was too unexpected and the world reeled on it, but it was already to late as I saw it and even if my IP was accepted by the right people, for Nordstrom it was already too late, it would have merely given them a little more time, time they could not hand them a better result. Their business model and their prediction model was off by too much.

You see, to see this we need to look at a picture. The picture is below. 

As you see here, we see a mall and this time around it is not the Toronto Eaton Centre, this is the Hyat Mall in Riyadh and it show the same weakness, which is the problem for malls. Yet as I see it, the problem is a lot bigger for western malls (USA, UK, EU) they have the same touch, the tough of non identity. You can scream the name all you like, but these malls are all the same. Go to a mall anywhere in the US and you could not tell where you were from walking there. It was a formula that malls were based on and between 1990-2015 that made sense, but after Covid the world changed and that is where the problems starts for these malls, all 116,000 of them. Yet there is a solution and both Gucci and Tiffany is already tapping into that, but I reckon they are missing part of it and that is where Google, Samsung and Apple come in. I wonder if these two players figure out what I saw over 6 months ago and it is a juicy one. Optionally Elon Musk could use it to give more needs to his Pi Phone but in itself it is still an android solution. The image is based on identity and interaction. You see, that need is not effort, it is engagement. Market Research (at least a few of them) have seen that engagement is the metric that really matters and Augmented reality is the core of that and that is what is missing in malls. Lets be clear, for Nordstrom it is too late, the question becomes will malls change into retail graveyard places over the next 5-10 years or are they given a new lease on life and that matters. How much real estate is in 116,000 malls? When they die the local places will light up and I personally am a firm believer in ‘Support your local hooker’ which was an expression we used in the 70’s. 

So am I right because Gucci and Tiffany are tapping into that idea? No, I believe I am right because the nature of the beast (the consumer) has changed and is still changing. They are catching on that a new prerogative is required and AR gets them there. So when they are done with ageism and other forms of consumer categorisation, they will figure out that their predictive model is wrong on a few levels and that is where we see the larger stage change. I merely wonder if some of them will wake up in time. If not, I watch it all go to hell and when it does I can point to my previous articles and tell them “Told you so” and whatever excuse they have will not hold up, because I wrote it months ago and I wrote it in several stories over a span of about a year (perhaps a little longer). So when they wake up, I wonder if it is to the board directors who are fed up with the colour rd in their books, or the conveyancer trying to measure up the place for new usage. I can’t be to the smell of coffee, because it is too late for that and it will not be to me as Amazon, Apple and Google all decided they never needed me. Fine, whatever.

So when we complete the consideration of “In approving Dacks’ liquidation request, Chief Justice Geoffrey Morawetz agreed, saying Nordstrom is facing a “difficult time, but this process is unfolding in a very co-operative manner.””

At least I kept it out of the hands of Microsoft, not a bad stage to consider. Yet consider two final things. The first is Nordstroms liquidation actual liquidation or euthanasia? The second is, is Nordstrom alone? How many other places are on the brink of really bad times in the next 5 years? 

Have a great day.

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