The Big Fat Marketing Blog

Sometimes, news doesn’t travel as fast as you’d wish. Like today, I heard that Alan Rimm-Kaufman had died of Leukemia on Saturday at the age of 41.

First, a few links:

• Charlottesville Daily Progress


• In Memorium: Alan Rimm-Kaufman


• Alan Rimm-Kaufman (1968 - 2009): a Tribute


more

I heard some great news last night, as a consumer, about Old Navy getting into the licensed merchandise business. According to the news on one of the New York television stations, Old Navy will soon be selling NFL and NCAA licensed apparel.

Here I am thinking Old Navy can fill the void of Steve & Barry’s, especially since the reporter used the word “affordable.” Plus Old Navy would probably be smart enough to not put a load of UConn sweatshirts in a California location, and would use the power of e-commerce to sell a New York Jets t-shirt to a fan in Iowa.

Then I read the news on Bloomberg. more

Headsets.com CEO Mike Faith will be speaking this morning at the MeritDirect co-op about managing your business during hard times. Last night at the cocktail reception, Faith gave me a hint about how his company is getting by.

Its expanding into the business-to-consumer world. Faith said it will officially launch Headphones.com next week. more

DRTV lost Billy Mays yesterday, and I didn’t even know who he was. I knew - and trusted - the face, and I bought the products because I saw them on TV.

But when a bunch of different people came up to me at a party yesterday and asked if I heard about Billy Mays, I thought they were talking about the Say Hey Kid. Or Willie Mays Hayes (American Express - don’t steal home without it!).

Anyway - here’s a link for you to kick off your Monday. It’s one man’s opinion on the Top 10 Billy Mays infomercials of all time. Check them out and tell me what you think.

Nothing really alarming here (except a lot of people may not know that Circuit City was acquired and re-launched as a Web-only venture by Systemax).

The key here is that Circuit City has launched a page on Facebook, and are not censoring the voice of its fans. more

Just a quick post to say Ilana Rabinowitz, vice president of Lion Brand Yarn, hit the nail on the head here at IRCE.

The reason merchants need to stake their social media claim: Because people buy from other people, not from corporations.

It’s worked for Lion Brand, and I’ll write about this later for Multichannel Merchant. Consumers once thought they were a large brand because they sold to big box stores. Now they are a familiar face to the knitting and crocheting community.