Dennis Norman Musings

Dennis Norman

Apparently outdoor-apparel manufacturer The North Face doesn’t think so.   I say this because of a recent lawsuit that was filed by North Face against South Butt, a company manufacturing outdoor clothing as a parody of North Face. 

The suit alleges that the South Butt brand is causing confusion amongst consumers with the North Face brand.  While the slogans are somewhat similar they invoke different messages I think: North Face, “Never Stop Exploring^TM“. South Butt, “Never Stop Relaxing^TM”

South Butt was started by 19-year-old University of Missouri student Jimmy Winkelmann in 2007 and I think was a relatively “unknown” company with it’s products only distributed in a couple of St. Louis area drug stores and available on their website at TheSouthButt.com.  That is, until The North Face started trying to curtail their business first with a cease and desist letter back in October, then a couple of months later a lawsuit.  

Thanks to the actions of The North Face, The South Butt suddenly began getting a ton of media attention (ah the power of GOING VIRAL!) which I would assume has brought them significant sales as well as support.  One of the supporters of The South Butt is St. Louis attorney Albert Watkins who has agreed to represent the company in exchange for a “nice bottle of wine”.   Included in the coverage (translation “Free Advertising”) was this video below on Fox News:

Fox News Coverage

OK, now for the good part.  I would think most people have not read an answer to a lawsuit file with a court, or certainly have not done it for entertainment, but you have to read the answer to The North Face lawsuit filed by Albert Watkins on behalf of the defendants, it’s quite unusual and comical.  You can read the entire answering by clicking on the link below but here are a few highlights:

“The South Butt” — evoking the opposite of Plaintiff’s historia nomen–being the soft undercarriage of the non-mountain climbing human anatomy, commonly known and referred to in non-salacious form as, among others, rump, bootie, bottom, buttocks, posterior, rear, saddle thumper and butt.”

“Rather, North Face has voluntarily and as a matter of public record, elected to depict the commercial undertakings of South Butt and its co-Defendants as “piracy”, evoking not intellectual property issues, but high crimes on the high seas, perhaps the South Seas, as contrasted with its oft explored polar opposite.”

There’s much more, it’s worth a read. South Butt Answer to Lawsuit

Dennis Norman

By: Dennis Norman

Wikipedia defines “Guerrilla Marketing” as:

The concept of guerrilla marketing was invented as an unconventional system of promotions that relies on time, energy and imagination rather than a big marketing budget. Typically, guerrilla marketing campaigns are unexpected and unconventional; potentially interactive; and consumers are targeted in unexpected places.The objective of guerrilla marketing is to create a unique, engaging and thought-provoking concept to generate buzz, and consequently turn viral 

Being a life-long entrepreneur and, often the “underdog” in the race, I have had to rely on guerrilla marketing tactics to promote myself and my businesses.  So, “having been there, done that”, I’m always impressed when I see good guerrilla marketing in action. 

Over the weekend I ran across a blog that highlighted, not only a great example of a business that acted upon a situation that was literally the textbook (well, wikipedia) example of a guerrilla marketing opportunity, but the story also contained a great example of another business that blew it and couldn’t have wasted the opportunity more.
I’m referring to a blog called DoctorWifeMom and the post was titled “A Tale of Two Managers”.  This was my first time to the site and while it appears to be a political blog of sorts.  In the header is the following statement;

“Blogging about life as a woman who wears many hats and lives in the red flyover states where we cling to our bibles and our guns and rely on hard work and ingenuity to make it”

However it was at this site I found a great example of guerrilla marketing.

Carolyn, the blogs author, wrote about a political rally she attended in St. Louis, Missouri which brought out a couple of thousand people.  the rally was held on, what sounds like, a busy corner with a shopping center across the street from the rally.  Being the best source of parking it appears many of the rally attendees chose to parking on the shopping center lot although the lot no doubt had signs posted that parking was for patrons of the shopping centers stores only.  Clearly some of the attendees, including Carolyn, did make a purchase from a business  in the center, but many did not. 

In the story there were managers of two businesses located in the shopping center that looked out onto the parking lot, saw all the “illegal parkers” as well as the crowd of people out front and took action.  One person responding was a manager of a major local grocery chain that does over $2 billion of sales in the St. Louis area a year (no doubt many of the rally attendees are customers) and his response was apparently not nice and was more combative than friendly.  The other response was from a manager of another business in the center; one Kyle Gilbertson, manager of Mr. Goodcents Subs and Pastas who took a different approach; he was friendly and nice to the 2,000 unexpected “guests” out front and had employees hand out coupons, food samples and so forth.  No doubt his sales that day were way above normal.  You gotta love it.  Carolyn’s story is much more detailed and complete and I would invite you to check it out by clicking here.

Dennis Norman

By: Dennis Norman

Investors, get those check books ready, maybe it’s time to buy again?  Adding to the list of recent positive reports on the housing market and home prices is the Housing Market Report that was issued this morning by Radarlogic.  According to the report home prices increased in June from the previous month in 23 out of the 25 metropolitan areas tracked by their company.

Overall the composite for all 25 metros showed a 3% gain in price from May to June representing one of the largest monthly gains reported by RadarLogic since June 2000. There has been a trend of price increases reported for the 25 metro areas for the past few months. In fact, the increase in the Radar Logic Composite from February to June outpaced the house price gains over the same period during the previous threes years, and the increase in house prices from April to June was the largest since the beginning of Radar Logic’s date in 2000.

Read more…

Dennis Norman

By: Dennis Norman

Today the National Association of REALTORS(R) published their Commercial Leading Indicator for Brokerage Activity for the second quarter of 2009 showing a decline of 1.3 percent to an index of 101.5, down from an index of 102.8 in the first quarter. At 101.5 the index for the second quarter of 2009 is 13.7 percent below the 2nd quarter of 2008 when the index was at 117.6. The index is currently at the lowest level since the first quarter of 1994.

In reviewing NAR’s report, it doesn’t appear any of the sectors have been able to avoid a slowdown, below is a recap by sector: Read more…

By: Dennis Norman

There just seems to be no end in site for the sickening numbers of foreclosures we are seeing take place in the housing market.  While, from an investors standpoint, it seems like a “positive” in that foreclosures often present a good opportunity for an investor to purchase property at below-market prices however it’s really a double-edged sword though as foreclosures drag down property values, which hurts an investor. Read more…

Dennis Norman

By: Dennis Norman

I personally have only done a couple of 1031 exchanges and it has been several years since the last one, but I will admit I did not do any due diligence when selecting the qualified intermediary.    Like many people, I went with the company that was recommended to me by the title company I was doing business with.

I was in a rush to get the paper work all completed before the sale of my investment property closed so everything was handled via email and fax.  I never met the person I was dealing with at the firm nor did I do any due diligence on him or his company.  It wasn’t until after the sale closed and the (my) proceeds were given to the intermediary that it finally hit me that I was giving this company a lot of cash to “hold for me” until I found another Read more…

By: James R. MacCrate, MAI, CRE, ASA

In the current unstable real estate market, we hear reports from the National Association of Realtors and many economists that the real estate residential housing market is stabilizing.  This is based on several factors including recent price increases in several metropolitan markets, an increase in pending contracts of sale, and increase in overall residential market activity.  This may very well be a temporary illusion that has been caused by an increase in incentives, concessions, and the federal tax credit.  The Wall Street Journal reported that Toll Brothers, Hovnanian Enterprises and Lennar Corporation have provided below market financing and other incentives to increase the number of sales.  If adjustments are made to the transaction prices for these incentives, concessions and federal tax credit, one would clearly see that the market value as defined by the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice has not really increased at all.

The typical definition of market value as defined in appraisal reports for federally regulated institutions is summarized as follows: Read more…

Dennis Norman

By: Dennis Norman

The good news about the real estate market keeps coming! Don’t get too excited yet, I don’t know that the worst of it is over yet, not sure if the “fat lady has sang” yet or not, but at least the reports lately on the market have been encouraging.

According to the latest report released today from the National Association of REALTORS(R), existing-home sales in the second quarter showed healthy gains from the first quarter in the vast majority of states.

Existing home sales (including single-family homes and condos) by state rose 3.8 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.76 million units in the second quarter from a rate of 4.58 million units in the first quarter. While an improvement over first quarter, the second quarter numbers are still 2.9 percent below the 4.90 million-unit pace from the second quarter of last year.

In all, thirty-nine states showed sales increases in the second quarter from first quarter and nine states had higher sales numbers for the quarter than a year ago. Read more…

Dennis Norman

By: Dennis Norman

Presently SmartZip, which just launched its public Beta site in June, 2009, rates over 15 million properties, including listings, foreclosures as well as non-listed homes, across California and Florida only.  However, these two states represent some of the most opportunity-rich markets for real estate investment.  SmartZip plans to roll out its ratings to all 50 states over the next year which will then give them the ability to highlight the best investment cities across the nation. Read more…