DHARMA “STEWART” BUTTERFIELD IS NOT A FRAUD $WORK

WHAT INSPIRED SLACK?

As Butterfield & Co. were dealing with building Glitch (MMOG) they had to solve internal communication problems. Hence they desgined Slack in a very non-self-conscious non-speculative way. Slack was based on actual needs of a team that was deep in tech development and had a big degree of coordination: artists, animators, sound designers, level builders, content pipeline tools.

Glitch was officially shut down on December 9, 2012.
Slack released August 2013.
Slack publicly launched Feb 2014.

per FT:

In the often dog-eat-dog world of Silicon Valley, Mr Butterfield has gained something of a reputation for being less cut-throat than many. Slack was carved out of a failed gaming company, in one of the start-up world’s more famous “pivots”. One investor recounts how the Canadian entrepreneur refused to ditch his first backers when switching horses to the new product.

per fanclub:

Mamoon Hamid, an early investor and Slack board member, credits a deeply humanistic streak for Mr Butterfield’s success as a product designer. That makes him an heir to the late Steve Jobs — another non-engineer with a perfectionist’s eye who was able to look beyond the bits and bytes to mould products that people welcome in their lives.

“He’s the sort of person who, if he’d lived in the Middle Ages, would have produced the perfect leather bag, with just the right stitching — he’s a craftsman,” Mr Hamid says.

“He is your quintessential, product-oriented founder-leader,” says Aaron Levie, chief executive of Box, a cloud storage company. In a nod to an unconventional streak in Mr Butterfield’s personality that separates him from the herd, Mr Levie adds: “He has just the right level of quirkiness.”

MY JOB IS NOT TO PREDICT THE FUTURE, SIMPLY TO NOTICE THE PRESENT FIRST

Accel Ventures Knob:

“What is driving momentum in this product/category/business?”

Dharma Butterfield:

“Proliferation of iphones, android devices, the rise of sms as a mode of communication — probably seems weird to 28 year old and its something that you did since you were a kid — but, its a “new thing” in the world — and its a new thing in the world and a its also new thing for most human beings — so people are more accepting of messaging app being a way to interact with people, so they are ready for a messaging app for work … ”

MESSAGING PFFFT, EMERITUS DONALD KNUTH DOES NOT ACCEPT EMAILS

On a tangential note, Stanford CS Professor Donald Knuth does not “email” —

I have been a happy man ever since January 1, 1990, when I no longer had an email address. I’d used email since about 1975, and it seems to me that 15 years of email is plenty for one lifetime.

Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. I try to learn certain areas of computer science exhaustively; then I try to digest that knowledge into a form that is accessible to people who don’t have time for such study.

On the other hand, I need to communicate with thousands of people all over the world as I write my books. I also want to be responsive to the people who read those books and have questions or comments. My goal is to do this communication efficiently, in batch mode — like, one day every six months. So if you want to write to me about any topic, please use good ol’ snail mail and send a letter to the following address:

Prof. Donald E. Knuth
Computer Science Department
Gates Building 4B
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-9045 USA.
I have a wonderful secretary who looks at the incoming postal mail and separates out anything that she knows I’ve been looking forward to seeing urgently. Everything else goes into a buffer storage area, which I empty periodically.

My secretary also prints out all nonspam email messages addressed to [email protected] or [email protected], so that I can reply with written comments when I have a chance. If I run across such a message that was misaddressed — I mean, if the message asks a question instead of reporting an error — I try not to get angry. I used to just throw all such sheets in the wastebasket. But now I save them for scratch paper, so that I can print test material for The Art of Computer Programming on the blank sides. I DO NOT ANSWER UNSOLICITED EMAILS, nor do I respond to emails that were sent to my colleagues with a bothersome request for them to communicate with me. Email is a no-no EXCEPT for reporting errors in books.

You might also try faxing me at 650-725-4671. But be warned that I look at incoming fax mail last, perhaps only once every twelve months instead of six.

`I don’t even have an e-mail address. I have reached an age where my main purpose is not to receive messages.’ — Umberto Eco, quoted in the New Yorker
Sometimes I do send email, through my secretary, with respect to the project I’m currently working on, when I believe that the recipient won’t be bothered by my request. But I hope you can understand why I am almost always unhappy to receive unsolicited email myself. Thank you for your patience and cooperation as I try to finish The Art of Computer Programming (TAOCP), a work that I began in 1962 and that I will need many years to complete. In return, I promise not to send unwelcome email requests to you.

A note on email versus e-mail
Newly coined nonce words of English are often spelled with a hyphen, but the hyphen disappears when the words become widely used. For example, people used to write “non-zero” and “soft-ware” instead of “nonzero” and “software”; the same trend has occurred for hundreds of other words. Thus it’s high time for everybody to stop using the archaic spelling “e-mail”. Think of how many keystrokes you will save in your lifetime if you stop now! The form “email” has been well established in England for several years, so I am amazed to see Americans being overly conservative in this regard. (Of course, “email” has been a familiar word in France, Germany, and the Netherlands much longer than in England — but for an entirely different reason.)

CODE MONKEYS AND “ENGINEERING” – A USELESS TOPIC

Listen to Dr. Knuth for a history lesson Computer Science. Engineering schools had to compete with other engineering schools, hence CS faculty were hired. Idiots in the hallowed halls: Quit debating the semantics of vocations/titles and learn some shit.

https://purl.stanford.edu/jq248bz8097

Knuth on “Code Monkeys”:

Knuth: [00:30:45] Yes, absolutely. You don’t just say okay, now there are good jobs in computer science, so okay, I’m going to learn it. You have to be a geek. That’s my opinion. It’s borne out by every project I see that has failed; it’s because the people who were in these projects weren’t really geeks. [laughter] It’s a controversial opinion now. Some educators say no, people just aren’t motivated enough. But they’re geeks. I think they [the educators] don’t understand what it means not to be a geek.

On the other side, I know aspects of other sciences that I’ve tried very hard to learn and I’ve failed. I know that I would need a different kind of a brain if I were really going to be good at quantum mechanics, for example. I’ve tried hard, but I just don’t get it.

Anyway, this accounts for why computer science departments went from zero to a hundred in ten years. It was because of this phenomenon that people came together and they knew that it was a discipline where they had their own concepts that were of importance–not as applications to physics and chemistry and other things but also as applications to computer science.

People like me began to know that this kind of knowledge deserves to exist. As I said, in the early 1960s, I didn’t realize I was a geek. I didn’t realize that there was this body of knowledge. But Forsythe did, and I came here. I was probably 110 percent geek, I don’t know, but certainly it was very strong for me, and not exactly the same in any two people.

Computer science was evidently an instant success. Not, however, because of the economic importance of computer science or things like that. It was because of the skill set that people had. They realized that they could
use their skills and develop the ideas further.

The next stage was that every university had computer science. But sometimes it was in the Business School, sometimes it was in the Engineering School, sometimes it was in H&S, as at Stanford. A few places like Purdue and Carnegie had started Schools of Computer Science by the 1970s.

Schofield: Does anyone have that now–Computer Science separated as an entire school?

Knuth: [00:34:12] Yes, yes. Certainly it’s thrived at Carnegie, and Purdue I think later had one. Waterloo in Canada, and others. Some of our faculty have said, why don’t we leave the Engineering School and start a School of Computer Science at Stanford; computer science is starting to become joined to all kinds of other things. I said, boy, how to win friends and influence people is by telling people that we’re really so important that we’re going to start our own school. Yet it has happened at other places.

By the 1980s, the majority of our faculty had been trained at computer science departments that were part of an engineering school. They understood what it was like to be part of an engineering school. I personally didn’t. I’d been in Mathematics and H&S at Stanford. The strongest factor was that at Stanford, Engineering had to compete with the other engineering schools of the world and so it needed to have its computer science department too. Stanford’s School of Engineering was trying to match brownie points or something with every other engineering school. People asked, well what do you do in computers. Stanford had been hiring faculty to be in the Computer Systems Laboratory as part of the Electrical Engineering Department. Students applied to that, got admitted and so on. We had one or two joint faculty. There were a couple of cases where people didn’t get tenure because they had to be approved by both schools.

Schofield: And both departments.

Knuth: [00:36:36] Anyway, by and large, during the 1970s, we said oh, we’ve got two groups of computer scientists at Stanford; let’s use that to our advantage. If we can’t get something through one dean, we’ll get it through the other. We’ll get the job done.

However, it turned out later that we found that we’d be forever competing for resources if we had two groups at Stanford, so we had better decide which way it was going to go. It was much better to go to the Engineering School because the majority of other universities in the world, by that time, had computer science in engineering. Stanford was an oddball, still having it in the same school as mathematics and physics.

RESULTS OF NOT FUCKING AROUND ON EMAIL

The Art of Computer Programming —- The Bible, accoding to some.

Knuth: [00:45:34] Oh, it’s like an oil well. As we speak, somebody’s buying one of those books. How many, I’m not sure. The book that came out in 1968, that made the faculty all smiles, is in its fortieth printing of the third edition and it probably sells ten copies every day.

Comments »

Dear Penii,

Sometimes, there really isn’t much more to say or do. Jungle’s megalomaniacal self wants nothing more than to pound out a missive on this cartoon, but ’tis the holidays, and Jungle is taking the path of least resistance.

Instead, let me share a handful of John Foley’s most inane lines, curated in-house.

Foley, is a fucking fraud my friends. Through and through. A hybrid between Gary Freidman and Joel Osteen, if you will.

“We are weirdly profitable” — NO YOU ARE NOT YOU FULL OF SHIT INDIVIDUAL [see clip above]

MEANWHILE AT BARCLAYS GLOBAL TMT CONFERENCE

Peloton Interactive, Wednesday, December 11, 2019 at 9:30:00pm GMT

Quoting Mr Analyst:

What do you think are your competitive moat in this space?

Inane Quote from Mr Foley 1.0:

Yes. In the same way that for 8 years, it’s been really hard to raise money for Peloton. And even with our IPO reception, some investors are still skeptical or struggling to get their brain around what it is and how it works because it’s so different. And what — when you think about the competitive moat, it’s different because there’s so much to it. We are a hardware company. We’re a software company, hundreds of the best Python engineers in New York City in Chelsea. We are a media company. We’re a retail company. We’re a logistics company. We deliver the majority of our bikes and treads globally. We now are in manufacturing. We have a music platform into a Spotify type of platform. We have an apparel business. It is a very multifaceted thing that they all work in concert to deliver a very bespoke high-end experience.

Inane Quote from Mr Foley 1.1:

If you’ve ever bought a bike from a Peloton store, a Peloton bike, and got it delivered and then get on the platform and it’s our media. It’s our — there is — that’s obviously vertically integrated in a way that not many young businesses are this vertically integrated. And I think that creates a moat.

Inane Quote from Mr Foley 1.2:

But we have massive moats. I mean IT, brand, our community is very powerful. Social — our network effect on our software, we have close to 2 million people on the platform today. And we are making it such that the more people we add, the better experience you get just like Facebook and LinkedIn if you think about consumer Internet. So there’s lots of moats, but none smaller than it’s really, really hard to do what we do.

Inane Quote from Mr Foley 1.3:

Well, one of the things that, as I’ve been scratching my head, is understanding why everyone isn’t pouring all their money — all of their savings into Peloton right now.

Inane Quote from Mr Foley 1.4:

So we are very excited about the secular tailwind that fitness has gotten as broadly, Jill will point out, if you got her S-1, that even in 2008 and 2009, fitness dollars spend in the U.S. went up dramatically.

JUNGLE ANNOTATION: BAHAHAHAHHAHAHA “IF YOU GOT HER S-1”

Inane Quote from Mr Foley 1.5:

Yes. We love the $39 price point. We did no research on it. I picked the number — excuse me, I picked the number, I think, 6 or 7 years ago. I said it costs $30, $35 to go to a boutique fitness class in New York City. I wanted the 1 class, the 3 handle is important to me. So $39 for the consumer to connect the dots. For the price of 1 class, you and your whole household can get unlimited fitness experiences at a better location, on a better bike with better instructors. So $39 has stuck.

I mean, to your question, Sandeep, we believe it is sacrosanct — sorry, Deepak. It is a sacrosanct price point. The $39, we make over time, going to, call it, 70-plus percent margins in the coming years on that $39 a month. And so yes, we are giving you more and more goodness, more content, more software, more class types, more categories, and we’re very excited about that. And it’s all in the name of giving a better experience to our members.

JUNGLE ANNOTATION: What the fuck is a “sacrosanct” price point? And for the love of god — does this not remind you of the time that Kevin Plank, the idiot ex-CEO of Under Amour gave estimates based on the Golden State Warriors statistics?

Quoting the illustrious Kevin Plank, 1Q16 Call:

I want to focus this morning on our transformation, the evolution that is manifesting itself across multiple product categories, channels, and geographies. But first, our scoreboard. We have started off our 20th year in business with impressive results. Our first-quarter revenues grew 30%, with the growth coming from every facet of our business. And to be clear, that 30% number was no accident. When Stephan Curry decided to average 30 points this season to take the scoring title while wearing the number 30, we thought that putting up 30% growth on our end was the best way for us to demonstrate our pride and support of Stephan and the Warriors.

Incidentally, £39 also happens to be what this thing costs in the UK. Go figure. Sacrosanct.

PTON = SUBPRIME LENDER IN DRAG

This is good ol’ consumer finance, in fitness drag. Might be a good acquisition for Conn’s Inc., an American furniture, mattress, electronics and appliance store chain headquartered in The Woodlands, Texas. Financing durable goods at inane rates to those in need of basic items. Fitness is indeed a basic need (ask Michelle Obama). 18%+APR after you miss a payment. You want to bet they are optimizing for the people who miss, but can still keep paying? What else are these fucking their-party fintechers doing on the backend?

Per CFO:

And, incidentally, I don’t know if you were asking as well about the P&L impact of financing. We do solely use third-party providers today for all of our financing underwriting APIs loan qualifiers. So all of that is actually a contra revenue item and essentially then baked into our cost of goods that way for our connected fitness products.

per Gandel of CBS Moneywatch:

The IPO documents show that about half of Peloton’s exercise-equipment sales come through a generous financing arrangement that allows customers to buy its stationary bike for just $58 a month or its treadmill for $179 a month. The purchase requires no money down, and it carries a 0% interest rate for as long as 39 months for the bike and 24 months for the treadmill. There are also no late fees for either piece of equipment.

Nonetheless, Peloton, according to its IPO documents, books these sales as full purchases from the moment the customer gets the equipment. That’s not so unusual. Many companies book revenue before they have been paid. But most of them will record an accounts receivable to identify cash that they are still waiting to collect. Peloton doesn’t seem to be doing much of that: While its sales rose by $480 million in its last fiscal year, its accounts receivable rose by just $9 million.

That’s fine, according to corporate accounting expert Bob Willens, as long as Peloton recognizes the cost upfront of the $58-a-month or $179-a-month installment loans. It could do that by, for example, lowering the amount of revenue it books from each sale to take into account that some customers inevitably won’t end up paying off their bikes or treadmills. The problem is Peloton doesn’t seem to be doing that either, Willens said.

The installment loans are set up by https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/12/affirm-fintech-explosion/, a separate financial services startup in San Francisco, which finds lenders and sends the cash for the installment loan purchase to Peloton. But how much cash Peloton is getting from Affirm, and how much Peloton is compensating Affirm for this service, or sharing the credit risk, is not clear in its financial statements, Willens said.

JUNGLE ANNOTATION: Oddly, another “fintech” company Klarna, deals with therr Europena financing. For more on Klarna — see the article linked.

The firm has become a notable disruptor in the payments sector, marketed as an alternative to credit cards and allowing users to shop now and pay later, either in a lump sum or in instalments and without interest on most items, as long as they pay on time.

Since its launch in 2005, Klarna has gained popularity among cash-strapped millennials and Generation Z – those born from the mid-1990s – who want to shop before payday but either do not have, or would like to avoid, a formal line of credit.

It now has 60 million users worldwide, and with 1 million transactions processed per day online and in store, Klarna says it is on track to make $1bn in annual revenue. The company charges fees to merchants, and customers who fail to pay on time.

For more on the demographics, Per CFO:

” …. total addressable market, we do define it as people over the age of 18 and those that make over $50,000 in household income. And what Eric said is 100% true: our fastest-growing demographic is actually those that make under $75,000 a year in household income, and those that are under 35. And obviously this trend over the last several years has continued to improve as we’ve, I think, done a better job at educating the consumer, not only about our product but clearly the value proposition.”

What JUNGLE is not understanding, is what “trend” is exactly improving. Meh. Whatever.

CFO goes on:

For those of you who know the gym industry, the average gym membership in the US is $58 a month. If you finance a Peloton bike and pay for our subscription associated with that — on a household basis, because we scale within a household, unlike gym memberships — that’s less than $50 a month per person. And that is while you’re paying off your financing period for your bike; and then, thereafter, it’s less than $20 a month.

So John can attest to the fact that he sold bikes to many people that were going broke going to boutique fitness because they liked that type of workout, and the value proposition for Peloton really resonated with them. We think, over time, we are going to continue to see that trend of people recognizing, again, that true value proposition of our product. In fact, in fiscal year 2019, almost 20% of the bikes we sold were to people that make less than $75,000 in household income a year.

THE MAIN POINT:

Jungle has about 1000 more nuggets on this topic.

But this was to be an abbreviated post, with one message:

THIS COMPANY IS NOT PROFITABLE, YET THE CEO SAYS IT IS PUBLICLY.

In conclusion, Foley joins JUNGLE’S ASSHATS OF THE DECADE List, just in the nick of time, along with Friedman and Plank.

Exhausted from thinking about this cesspool of a going concern. Hence, I’ll take your leave for now.

Off to quaff a Russian Imperial Stout for God’s sake.

Cheers,

JG

————-

PS: A LITTLE CHERRY ON TOP

Mark my words. These will be “sold” in the glorious cycling terrain that is ‘the 650’ for a small “removal fee” of about $150 in the near future.

Back to Buck’s for a mid-ride coffee.

————–

RANDOM “FACTS”
10% conversion from digital to connected fitness.
32 instructors.
562,774 subscribers as of 3q19 (calendar) 1q2020 (fiscal) report.
Peloton does not say whether that #includes paused subs. Lol.

Comments »

Dear Penii,

If you find yourself clinging to your stupid dogma, meditate on the following passage:

Go read the goddam book too. Your pathetic justifications, predicated by useless figures from your service provider, are a psychological crutch. Understand that, fuckers.

In other news, Jungle has discovered the finest Gin this side of the Atlantic. Gin Sul of Germany. Germans are precise, whether genocide or gin.

Order both items stat if you want your life to improve.

Toodle Pip,

JG

Comments »

Dear Parents,

So $SOLY to inform you, that your stupid, algebra-challenged moron of a child is probably destined for a job that requires a tattoo. I didn’t mean that. And you’re a small minded fuck for actually believing it. But I’m sure you wonder how your children will get a job if they had tattoos and walked around spray painting public spaces?

Not to worry matey, a gilded future at uber-luxe fashion houses awaits. “The biggest brands in the world are using graffiti artists, who are basically vandals, and that’s amazing,” said Darren Cullen, founder of London-based artist collective Graffiti Kings. Not to worry, not to worry, a tattoo is must in order to get a summer job at the beach shack, gain employment as an off-guard in the NBA, mix cocktails, and is even makings its way into “traditional” realms in the name of “diversity” — do not get jungle started on “diversity” — please.

Of course, much depends on what shade of Pantone your skin is originally speaking, pre tanning salon.

Per Mr Washington, The Paris Review:

If you are white, tattoos lead to the presumption of military service, a culinary background, some nod at self-expression or a “rebellious” phase. If you aren’t white, then you’re immediately, until proven otherwise, trapping or banging or otherwise dubiously affiliated.

Mexicans in Redwood City are gangbangers, employed by Google, dammit. Apparently, GOOGL is on the list of “36 tattoo friendly” companies in the US.

As a sidenote: GOOGL’s revenue contribution from “Other” will be growing at a 23% CAGR from 2019 to 2023 per GS estimates. That is a different topic, however. But lets just say “search is over-monetized” is piffle as a bear-case.

So $SOLY to digress, let us get back to the matter at hand.

Mr Washington continues:

For as long as there have been people breathing up Earth’s air, body art, in its various forms, has found its way onto our skin: the history of African tattooing extends thousands of years. Some of the earliest known tattoo wearers were Egyptian: markings were discovered on the remains of women dated circa 2000 B.C. Samoan societies have worn them for generations, and Polynesian tattoo culture spans two millennia. In Japan, body modification extends as far back as the Jomon period (about 10,500 B.C. to 300 B.C.); while tattooing in China, relegated punitively or to minority populations or with great disdain, has a history extending ages. Native Americans have practiced tattooing, for religious ceremonies and tribal identification, since before the Christian era, but prior to European invasion and desecration these practices went largely undocumented.

Note, that it hasn’t always been about your stupid mid-life crisis. And of course, it had to be about containing sexual predators. Double yawn.

Central India also has a long and barbaric tradition of tattooing. The Dhanuks in Bihar believe tattoos deglamoUrise women — this helps them evade the eyes of influential sex predators. Due to the prevalence of purdah, women from lower castes had to have visible parts of their bodies tattooed to signal their inferior status.

How’s that for regional “diversity” — ! Yawn.

Jungle is sick and tired of having to spoon feed you troglodytes. But, Jungle has a penchant for charity. Leverage it, don’t abuse it. You know who you are, miserly fuckers.

As it turns out 100 million people in the United States population have tattoos, with roughly 20,000 parloUrs across the nation. Of those who have tattoos, 70% have more than one tattoo and 20% have more than five. And 36% of Americans between the age of 18 and 29 have at least one tattoo. Understand, fuckers?

Don’t worry though, your children are protected.

Almost every state have laws addressing some aspect of body art. (Nevada has no laws addressing body art; Maryland has very limited laws). At least 45 states have laws prohibiting minors from getting tattoos. Thirty-eight states have laws that prohibit both body piercing and tattooing on minors without parental permission.

Regulated, local and fragmented, the parloUr business hums along, enticing souls, calcifying identities, or simply utilizing the human-canvas “for fun” — countless rationales, countless rationales. Yawn.

So what is so goddam exciting about tattoos, that jungle would spend this damp morn’ mulling ‘body art’ over a spot of tea? As per usual, the fickle mind of the human, is at the root of Jungle’s titillation.

As you know, from prior rants, jungle does not blab about pre-revenue companies, en generalmente. However, Soliton is worth a looksy.

Obviously, a potential scam, as is every offering affiliated with the Jobs Act which specifically gives exemption from the auditor attestation requirement on the effectiveness of internal controls over financial reporting.

Per s-1:

We are a medical device company developing a novel and proprietary platform technology that uses rapid pulses of designed acoustic shockwaves to dramatically accelerate the removal of unwanted tattoos, reduce the appearance of cellulite and potentially address a number of fibrotic skin disorders. We filed for premarket clearance with the US Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) for accelerating tattoo removal and received notification that our device was cleared by the FDA on May 24, 2019. This initial filing is limited to our device used in conjunction with the 1064 nm Q-switched laser to enable effective multiple pass laser treatments in a single office session to accelerate removal of black tattoos on the arms, legs and torso in Fitzpatrick Skin Type I-III individuals. [racist!] However, based on preclinical testing, we believe our device has the ability to accelerate tattoo removal for additional colors and skin types and in conjunction with other tattoo removal lasers and wavelengths. We are based in Houston, Texas, and we have a staff of eight that are all actively engaged in bringing this device to the market.

While we believe our technology has many potential applications, we have initially focused on the removal of tattoos, where both animal and human studies have shown promising results. The current standard of care for tattoo removal is to use a Q-switched (pulsed) laser to ablate the tattoo ink particles into pieces small enough for the body’s natural processes to remove them. Unfortunately, this current method is highly inefficient, requiring up to 10 or more office visits to achieve acceptable results. A clinical trial has demonstrated that using our Rapid Acoustic Pulse (“RAP”) device in conjunction with a Q-switched laser has the potential to produce similar results in just 2 to 3 office visits. We believe our method can not only dramatically accelerate tattoo removal, but also has the potential to lower removal cost for patients, while increasing profitability to practitioners, and to reduce the potential for unwanted side effects from current laser removal methods.

A proof-of-concept clinical trial appears to have shown the ability of a higher-powered version of our designed acoustic pulses to reduce the appearance of moderate to severe cellulite. Preliminary data suggests that the stand-alone use of our device may be capable of clinically significant reduction of cellulite with a single, non-invasive treatment with minimal-to-no pain, post-treatment discomfort or downtime. Our preclinical testing further suggests these cellulite reduction results may also be long-term and we have now expanded our testing to confirm this potential. Currently, the long-term reduction of moderate to severe cellulite requires the use of invasive and potentially painful procedures (such as the Cellfina® procedure) that result in significant post-treatment discomfort and downtime. We believe there is a significant unmet need for a non-invasive procedure producing clinically significant, long-term reduction of moderate to severe cellulite.

Will the company have to raise in 2020? Yes.

What the hell is this licensing agreement with MD Anderson all about? Do some work.

Is this a cellulite reduction scam, in tattoo removal drag? We do not know. What we do know is that the whims and fancies of humanoids are real.

Comments »

JUNGLE is so fcking tired of ranting and raving. So tired of hand-holding the hoi-polloi, destined for rummaging through Le Grande Outlet Mall of ‘Murka over the 4th. Goddam assholes. Do you even understand what you’re buying? No you don’t, you shit-heads. Instead of studying textiles and fabrics, soles, and rubbers, you just mimic, like lemmings. The plucky CEO of Moncler said it best:

I am convinced 90 per cent of consumers follow trends and they are not able to decide which bag they like best. They buy the bag they think is a trend, so you have to have an image that is very strong and very distinctive. The distinctiveness is fundamental”

And let me tell you morons, there is nothing distinctive about the “explorer” look. The ludicrous CANADA GOOSE, piece of shit that it is, is destined for the trash-heap known as VF CORPORATION and its pathetic brands. In fact, when it was featured in the idiotic tale known as Manchester-By-The-Sea, about a half-witted fireman . . . you catch my drift.

Any self-respecting sea-turtle driving a bright orange M6 with racing stripes would rather buy a $1000 puffa from Moncler. Particularly as inventories and styles are tightly controlled, and even have collectible potential. Vintage Moncler in the year 2030 anyone? Believe you me, it will be a thing. Until then guess who will be circling the purveyor of feathers : LVMH, RICHEMONT, KERING, LABELUX — understand, you god-damned mall-shoppers?

Moncler is for the “thin and beautiful”™ — and en vogue.

Boss Remo Ruffini has turned the once bombed-out French skiwear brand into a stock market darling with a €9.5bn market capitalisation. Its success was built on spotting the demand for more casual wear in the luxury sector. Moncler showed how elegance could coexist with comfort. The use of lightweight fibres allowed it to create a cut that was flattering, not to mention trendy. That keeps customers coming back. Two-fifths of its sales are repeat business. Moncler collaborates with high-profile designers. Its padded full-length evening dresses are the latest eye-catching example. Design savvy — along with skilled execution — has resulted in some of the highest profit margins in its sector. Moreover, there is limited competition in its niche. Other luxury brands dabble in its market. Canada Goose, which recently reported a 50 per cent rise in third-quarter sales, is performing well. But its coats are generally not as pricey. Moncler has moved upmarket; jackets cost 50 per cent more than 10 years ago, says Jefferies. Moncler deserves credit for reviving the popularity of down jackets among the style conscious. The big question is how long the trend will last. A taste for comfort is unlikely to disappear but fashions do fade. A 1980s vogue for puffa jackets did not last. The group has the design skills to lessen its dependence on outerwear. Other products such as knitwear and even swimwear are just a fifth of sales. But they are growing fast. Expect the brand to expand beyond inflated coats at swollen prices.

To that end says Ruffini :

“I don’t know how much longer luxury is going to be important or to be a point of reference as it has been in the past 30 years because the world has truly changed,” he adds. Ruffini muses that it “would be perhaps more modern, instead of opening 30 new shops, to open 30 places in the mountains where you provide luxury services, or ski Moncler where you can dress in Moncler and maybe only for the weekend”. He beams evidently delighted by the idea of a new business opportunity. “This is what the new culture wants.”

Meanwhile, if you’re on a budget please take a look at Orolay, or BOSIDENG will do the goddam job for a fraction of the price, while you prevent your nuts from freezing off.

Of course that rort just got shit-on by a short-report on 6/24 Monday:

Monday was one of the toughest days for Bosideng International and its billionaire chairman Gao Dekang since the China down apparel maker went public in Hong Kong in 2007. Its shares lost about a quarter of their value following an attack by short-seller Bonitas Research, which alleged “fabricated profits” and other irregularities. “We are short Bosideng and think its stock is ultimately worthless at HK$0.00,” Bonitas said.

Bosideng denied it had fabricated profits, and said the short-seller had erroneously compared financial statements that were based on China and international reporting rules. It also denied overpayment for acquisitions to insiders, the disposal of assets without payment, and improper payment of dividends to company insiders. Bonitas’ allegations were “misleading, biased, selective, inaccurate,” as well as “groundless” and “irresponsible,” Bosideng said. It also went on the attack itself, saying it was taking “all necessary actions” in response to the allegations.

Investors have been coming down on Bosideng’s side of the argument. The stock closed up 2.4% today at HK$2.17, its fourth consecutive daily rise and a more than 27% rebound from Monday’s low of HK$1.70. Bosideng has to gain more ground before it reaches Friday’s pre-attack closing price of HK$2.27, but it’s getting closer.

Bosideng’s shares and business have improved in the past year on a successful upgrade in the company’s brand and product line. The key to that success was to recreate Bosideng’s products and business channels, Gao said in an interview with Forbes China last year. He turned for help to outside designers for product ideas and styles to better able to compete with the likes of Moncler and Canada Goose. A new flagship store in Shanghai was created by French designer Thomas Clement. “We used to sell to older people but now we sell to younger people,” Gao said.

Gao’s resilience spans decades. He set up his first apparel business with a team of 11 villagers in eastern China’s Jiangsu Province when Chairman Mao was still alive, back in 1975, after learning how to sew from his father. The company’s long history is highlighted in a museum on Shanghai’s swank Nanjing Road which includes photos of early sewing machines and bicycles the billionaire rode to the office in poorer days.

As business grew, the group’s factory — called the Kangbo Arts and Crafts Fashion Factory — was formally set up as a collective in 1991. In 1994, the business was restructured into Bosideng Corp. with Gao as the driving force. A big early success: getting space to sell his jackets into department store industry that was dominated by state-owned companies. “At the start of China’s reforms, everyone didn’t have experience, and you had to figure out how to do the business,” he said. “To survive, you had to create the product and create a brand,” he recalls. “I went step by step.”

Meanwhile all of these assholes are doing all kinds of bullshit to unsuspecting animals.

Liars, and goddamned lies.

Highlight:

CLAIM: “For Canada Goose, functionality is paramount and our use of fur is strictly for functional purpose. Our jackets are built to be used in the coldest places on earth where skin around the face can freeze in an instant….we have learned from the native people of Canada’s North and from a major research study conducted at the University of Michigan that there are three types of fur that truly protect people from frostbite.”

Regarding the University of Michigan “fur study” they cite, we could not find any such study. We even contacted the University of Michigan, who has no such study in their records. Unfortunately, Canada Goose refuses to provide a reference for this claim.

Anyways, enough is enough. There is plenty space in the market for these idiots at the moment. But, longevity is another topic. On that matter, JUNGLE’S unequivocal LUXE VOTE goes to Italy’s finest.

As a side-note: do you know how salty it is making JUNGLE to think about down feathers on a hot day?

No, you don’t. FUCKERS!!!

With Pure Hatred,

JUNGLE

Comments »

Nothing annoys Jungle more than people discussing “how hard” life is at the top of the wealth pyramid. You have got to be kidding me with your bullshit. I am not even sure I want to go on a rant here. So let me leave you with the following quote from Vanessa K. Selbst wo works for Bridgewater Associates investment management firm and is a successful poker player.

According to Selbst, poker stars often do not realise how privileged they are, and have been tricked into thinking that they are winning through innate ability alone. “I had the safety net of my family. If I lost my money playing poker, there wasn’t an actual risk because I know I would have something to fall back on,” she says. “But [the reason] you’re not afraid to take risks comes from the fact your parents brought you up in a world where you didn’t have to be afraid. You probably were from a white upper middle-class background where you weren’t getting harassed by the police. There weren’t gangs or whatever, where one wrong step was going to land you somewhere you shouldn’t have been.

“In poker, the cards are the same for everyone, and anyone can sit down in a game, so people extend that to think it’s all meritocracy.”

So shut the fuck up, and quit acting like your life is so hard, if you are so lucky to sit around and speculate.

You sicken me.

Comments »

Dear Penii,

It is has literally been 10 years to the day since JUNGLE has been part of this distinguished community. Mind you its been 10 years since Le FLy launched the esteemed PPT, with all its trimmings. To these milestones, which many of you FUCKERS may think of as inconsequential, I propose a toast.

And do you know with what beverage I will be toasting, my dear penii?

No you do not.

Your pea-brains have already knee jerked to some shitty 30 year old Suntory product, quaffed by oligarchs globally as they delight in Orchids of Asia. No offense to prostitutes.

Chin chin, lads.

I implore you to quit gawking at that gauche LOUIS XIII juice on the top shelf, and get your dumb ass a dram of knowledge before succumbing to the industry sponsored accolades, so prevalent in all facets of commercial life. And for you mall-shoppers, shut up with your pedestrian Lagavulin 16 and your trendy Japanse swill. Did your dumb ass know that Laphroaig was a Suntory product? No, you didn’t.

JUNGLE commands all of you to fill your stupid Glencairn cup with the uneqivocally delecatable Compass Box Three Year Old Deluxe.

You heard me right FUCKERS. THREE YEAR OLD.

Now why would JUNGLE nee VICUNA OF THE JUNGLE, wrongly characteriszed as a snob in the hallowed halls, choose such a “young” scotch?

It is very simple, dear penii: TRANSPARENCY — a novel concept in this age of rorts and scammers. A virtue that Le Fly abides by with grace, integrity and panache in the hallowed halls, I might add. Frankly, the trait that distinguishes the hallowed halls, from noise and chicanery prevalent in the esteemed field of low grade gambling, also known as investing.

But before we raise our cups, let me educate you plebes about the operation that is COMPASS BOX and its proprietor John Glaser, a man of considerable honor amongst an unscrupulous cabal of hawkers.

Let us consider the Scotch Whisky Regulations Act, which set rules for labelling, packaging and advertising of Scotch Whisky, oradined the following categories: Blended, single malt, single grain, blended grain, blended malt and blended Scotch.

per Glaser:

“The problem is that many people just see the word ‘blend’ and assume ‘oh, it’s that cheap stuff I don’t buy, I only buy something that has “single” in front of it’.

furthermore, since 1989 the SWA’s rules have stated:

Regulation 12.3 of the Spirit Drinks Regulation No 110/2008 contains the rule which provides that a maturation period or age “may only be specified in the description, presentation or labelling of a spirit drink where it refers to the youngest alcoholic component”. “Presentation” is defined in Annex 1 point (15) of the Regulation as “the terms used on the labelling and on the packaging, including in advertising and sales promotion, in images or such like, as well as on the container, including the bottle and the closure” (emphasis added).

Article 12.3 is a repetition of the rule in the previous Spirit Drinks Regulation (No 1576/89). It applies to all aged spirits in the EU. The UK has no power to derogate from this rule, and it is therefore repeated in the Scotch Whisky Regulations and in the Technical File for Scotch Whisky.”

Likely well intentioned, the antiquated law prevented the likes of Glaser from diclosing the specific contents of his juice, which he has been in the business of peddling since 2000, mind you.

per Glaser:

“If we go back to why we believe this law is in place in the first place, going back 25 years ago when it was put into E.U. law, back then, we do know there were some spirits producers, some Cognac producers and at least one Scotch whisky producer, that was known for marketing and sales promotion material, telling consumers that there was whisky in this blend as old as X. Very old whisky, a very big number.”

He goes on to say that the company in question essentially added a dropper’s worth of whisky, say 60 years old, to a final blend and would then promote that it was a 60 year old whisky. “But in fact, it was an insignificant, minuscule proportion of the blend,” says Glaser. “So misleading consumers was what that was all about, and that’s why we believe the law was originally put into place.”

The situation came to a head in late 2015, marking Compass Box’s 15th Anniversary.

The original news releases and trade fact sheets for the final two releases of its anniversary year gave complete details on the ages of the malt whiskies used in each blend.

‘This Is Not A Luxury Whisky’ was blended from 19-year-old Glen Ord distillery, two 40-year-old grain whiskies distilled at Girvan and Strathclyde, and 30 year-old Caol Ila.

‘Flaming Heart’ used two different Caol Ila whiskies 14 and 30 years old, 20-year-old Clynelish, and what Compass Box described as a 7-year-old Highland Malt using Clynelish, Teaninich, and Dailuane malts finished for at least two years in a hybrid French Oak cask.

How bold and daring, to tell cusomters EXACTLY what they are getting.

For his efforts, Glaser was ratted on, likely by a jealous competitor selling swill for outragous prices.

per SWA legal affairs chief Magnus Cormack:

“We did not tell Compass Box to remove the detailed recipes. Following a complaint from a brand owner, we contacted Compass Box to point out that the advertising did not comply with the law. As we raised the matter before the product was launched, we observed that “There is therefore still time to correct the labelling and advertising in order to comply with the law.” The action Compass Box took was up to them. We did however point out that compliance with the specifications for Scotch Whisky is now verified by HMRC. Compass Box have evidently decided that the risks involved in ignoring the longstanding law on this matter were too great.

On February 18, 2016, CB launched an online petition drive aimed at persuading the European Union to change the current regulations to allow whisky producers THE OPTION to provide full disclosure on the component whiskies used in a specific product. Read: for producers to have the right not the obligation to disclose contents. Over 3,000 people signed within 24 hours.

SWA’s reponse was general fuck you, but Glaser did gain some ground on behalf of consumers. The specifics are available to you IF YOU ASK, per SWAs deliberations on the matter, and you can thank the innovative Mr. Glaser for that. A marketing maven of the highest order, no huckster.

In a genius reponse Glaser blended a dram with 40bps of 3 year old whiskey, for you illierates that is 0.4% — yes 0.4% of three year old juice! The rest of the concotion hails from Brora and the Isle of Skye, and its probably older than you.

per Glaser:

“In the past, when consumers asked the question [about what was in a blend], the industry response was: “We can’t tell you, it’s a secret,” which was always marketing bullshit. If they are now going to say: “We can’t tell you because it’s against the law,” how ridiculous is that? It will make consumers sceptical. It will hurt over time, so we need to look at it as an industry.”

The point here to all of you FUCKERS, is to do what you say and say what you do. It is what keeps our community real and informative.

One that note, I must admit, I am raising a glass of FLAMING HEART today, for the production numbers of THREE YEAR OLD DELUXE read much like those of JUNGLE’S whip : in the 3000s. Rare.

I hearby propose a toast : hearty congratulations to Fly for hosting and all the members over the years that have made this place a trader’s shangri-la: SALUD FUCKERS!

Respectfully,

JUNGLE

PS: THE GREAT KING — Helluva dram at 30USD.

Comments »

Listen here ol’ chums. The Junglee does not blab about pre-revenue stocks. That is not her game. However, there are times in life when the voices in your head say: this here is the future. When the crystal ball says: fuck style-drift. When you simply violate the core tenets of your investment philosophy, not giving a cunt’s hair about your “reputation” or “disciplined investment method” — do you understand what I am saying? Do not mistake this abberation for shambolic investment advice. Enjoy the linkfest.

On offer are shares of Editas (CUSIP 28106W103), the “800-pound gorilla” in the field of gene-editing. So far the company has done jack shit for business, aside from drum up a deal with Juno Therapeutics which gave them $25 million shekels for the boffins to run around and figure some shit out. Cell therapies for cancer is the word on the street.

per S-1:

Under the collaboration, we received an upfront payment of $25.0 million and are eligible to receive research support of up to $22.0 million over the next five years across three programs and approximately $700 million in aggregate in potential research, regulatory, and commercial sales milestone payments for each of the first products developed in each of the three research programs”

In my opinion, funds better allocated here than to the Cancer Industrial Complex, underwriting Susan G Komen’s flaneuristic lifestyle and keeping the ball-gowns selling on 5th avenue.

If you wear a pink ribbon, consider yourself mentally ill. If you donate to cancer charities —— FUCK. THAT. SHIT.

Take a wager on EDIT in its stead, for the love of THE STOCK GODS.

THE BIG IDEA:

CRISPR’s unprecedented ability to edit genetic code will make possible a new generation of medical treatments, so “they” say. While gene-editing technology has existed for more than 10 years, older methods were expensive and slow. Crispr is low cost and easy to use.

It acts like a pair of molecular scissors, allowing scientists to precisely cut out faulty sections of DNA that can lead to serious illnesses and replace them with healthy ones. In a two-part process, an RNA “guide” molecule first locates the targeted part of the genome, then a Cas9 protein attaches to the DNA to make the cut. In some cases, researchers just want to remove a bad section; in other cases, they can replace it with a new, good strand of DNA.

Per the culture vultures at the New Yorker:

With CRISPR, scientists can change, delete, and replace genes in any animal, including us. Working mostly with mice, researchers have already deployed the tool to correct the genetic errors responsible for sickle-cell anemia, muscular dystrophy, and the fundamental defect associated with cystic fibrosis. One group has replaced a mutation that causes cataracts; another has destroyed receptors that H.I.V. uses to infiltrate our immune system.

Specter continues . . .

Until CRISPR came along, biologists lacked the tools to force specific genetic changes across an entire population. But the system, which is essentially a molecular scalpel, makes it possible to alter or delete any sequence in a genome of billions of nucleotides. By placing it in an organism’s DNA, scientists can insure that the new gene will copy itself in every successive generation. A mutation that blocked the parasite responsible for malaria, for instance, could be engineered into a mosquito and passed down every time the mosquito reproduced. Each future generation would have more offspring with the trait until, at some point, the entire species would have it.

. . . and solicits opinions from the establishment, obviously:

“CRISPR is the Model T of genetics,” Hank Greely told me when I visited him recently, at Stanford Law School, where he is a professor and the director of the Center for Law and the Biosciences. “The Model T wasn’t the first car, but it changed the way we drive, work, and live. CRISPR has made a difficult process cheap and reliable. It’s incredibly precise. But an important part of the history of molecular biology is the history of editing genes.”

And … Per S-1:

Of the estimated 6,000 diseases that are known to be caused by genetic mutations, we believe fewer than 5% are served by approved therapies. Our mission is to translate the promise of our science into a broad class of transformative genomic medicines to benefit the greatest number of patients.

UC Davis chimes in :

“The old technology was clunky and it literally might take us a year to get to a point that Crispr could do in a month — the difference is an order of magnitude,” said Paul Knoepfler, an associate professor of cell biology at the University of California at Davis. “I’ve never really seen something spread that fast and become so ubiquitous in science.” Whatever the pace of innovation, UC Davis’s Knoepfler is convinced that gene editing’s widespread use is inevitable.

“We’re in the beginning of an new era where genetic modification becomes much more mainstream,” he said. “Things are moving much faster now and you have to be ready for a lot of headlines. I’d encourage people to learn more about it — don’t necessarily freak out, but some big things are coming.”

========================================

A GLOSSARY OF TERMS + INTRODUCTION TO THE CABAL

CRISPR: clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats

GENE-DRIVE TECHNOLOGY: quoting the labrats —

Gene drive achieves rapid changes in a sexually reproducing population because it relies on genes that are capable of preferential spread through generations. Without this, introduced traits meet the statistical obstacle of Mendelian inheritance and take hold in a population much more slowly. Altering wild animal populations using gene drive aims to rapidly disrupt a particular trait, such as the ability of Anopheles mosquitoes to transmit malaria.

Quoting Specter:

Gene drives … work by overriding the traditional rules of genetic inheritance. Normally, the progeny of any organism that reproduces sexually receives half its genome from each parent. Some genetic elements are “selfish,” however: evolution has bestowed on them a better-than-fifty-per-cent chance of being inherited. But, until scientists began to work with CRISPR, which permits DNA to be edited with uncanny ease, they lacked the tools to insure that specific genes have a similar advantage.

That has all changed. Now, by attaching a gene drive to a desired DNA sequence with CRISPR, you could permanently alter the genetic destiny of a species. That’s because, with CRISPR, a change made on one chromosome would copy itself in every successive generation, so that nearly all descendants would inherit the change, dispensing with the random selection involved in sexual reproduction.

CRISPR PATENT BATTLE
Began in 2014, put front and center the debate over how patents can impact scientific progress. Scientists don’t always enforce patents for their work, and some never file for patents at all. But in other cases, patents impede research by making new technologies either unavailable or prohibitively expensive.

UC Berkeley argued that seminal 2012 work by biochemist Jennifer Doudna paved the way for using CRISPR to genetically engineer animal DNA, by revealing that bacterial immune systems employed a system (dubbed CRISPR) that can be repurposed to easily and precisely edit genes. The Broad Institute countered that Feng Zhang’s 2013 breakthrough—adapting CRISPR to engineer plant, animal and human cells—occurred independently. The battle, in other words, was over who came up with the original recipe that led to using CRISPR-Cas9 to edit mammalian DNA. The patent appeal board found that Doudna and Zhang’s recipes were not really for the same thing—Zhang’s work was not the “obvious” extension of Doudna’s, as Berkeley argued, but a separate (and therefore patentable) discovery.

PATENT DECISION
In a brief, one-sentence decision last Wednesday, the US patent office handed the patent for the gene editing technology CRISPR-Cas9 to the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, finding that UC Berkeley had not laid the groundwork for one of the most important scientific breakthroughs of this century.

Last week, the US Patent and Trademarks Office ruled on the most-watched patent proceeding of the 21st century: the fight for Crispr-Cas9. The decision was supposed to declare ownership of the rights to the revolutionary gene editing technique. But instead, the patent judge granted sorta-victories to each of the rival parties—a team from UC Berkeley and another with members from both MIT and Harvard University’s Broad Institute. That’s great for those groups (and their spin-off, for-profit gene editing companies with exclusive licenses). But it leaves things a bit murkier for anyone else who wants to turn a buck with gene editing.

The Crispr discoverers now have some authority over who gets to use Crispr, and for what. And while exclusive licenses aren’t rare in biotech, the scope of these do stand out: They cover all the 20,000-plus genes in the human genome. So this week, legal experts are sending a formal request to the Department of Health and Human Services. They want the federal government to step in and bring Crispr back to the people.

Long shot, as the title suggests.

BAYH-DOYLE ACT
Passed in 1980s – the law gives permission for universities to patent—and license—anything their researchers invented with public funds, making it easier to put those inventions back in the hands of citizens.

SURROGATE COMPANIES

The right to use CRISPR techniques has been divided into three broad “fields of use”: (i) basic, noncommercial research; (ii) development and sale of tools (kits, reagents, and equipment) that aid CRISPR-based gene editing; and (iii) development, sale, and use of therapeutics and treatments using CRISPR techniques. This last field broadly covers the most commercially significant applications and includes gene editing to develop agricultural products, veterinary medicine, and human diagnostics and therapeutics.

Precisely demarcating these fields of use—especially for a flexible, broadly applicable technology like CRISPR—and awarding appropriate license grants can be challenging. Nonetheless, the institutions have largely granted nonexclusive licenses with respect to noncommercial research and tools development. This means that licensees, including academic researchers, are permitted to engage in these activities, but do not have the right to market and sell products derived from their research. It also means that the CRISPR patent holders are free to grant licenses for their respective technologies to other research institutions. However, in the case of therapeutics and treatments, with few exceptions, exclusive licenses to surrogate companies (Editas, Caribou, or CRISPR Therapeutics) prevent the institution from granting similar licenses to other companies without the surrogate’s permission. Caribou’s exclusive license covers all fields of use, and it has in turn granted an exclusive license in the field of human therapeutics to Intellia Therapeutics.

Source

THE PLAYERS

Jennifer Doudna & Emmanuelle Charpentier:
Latter is a medical microbiologist who studies pathogens at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Germany. Former, does some related shit at Berkeley. These womyn are widely viewed as CRISPR’s pioneers within the scientific community. They won a gaggle of prizes that add up to the annucal cost of Steven Schwarzman’s stone-crab habit. In 2012, the duo demonstrated, for the first time, that CRISPR could edit purified DNA. Doudna is a founder of Caribou Biosciences (also a “surrogate” company).

Feng Zhang:
Founding member of Editas. Precocious little fuck. Propeller-head. Googled his way into this business of gene-editing. Everything related to this man going forward will be referred to as Zhang-Banging.

Zhang’s obsession with science began in middle school, when his mother prodded him to attend a Saturday-morning class in molecular biology.

Hellllo, Tiger Mom.

In 1997, when Zhang was fifteen, he was offered an internship in a biosafety facility at the Des Moines Human Gene Therapy Research Institute—but he was told that federal law prohibited him from working in a secure lab until he was sixteen.

In 1999, while still a high-school student, in Des Moines, Zhang found a structural protein capable of preventing retroviruses like H.I.V. from infecting human cells. The project earned him third place in the Intel Science Talent Search, and he applied the fifty thousand dollars in prize money toward tuition at Harvard, where he studied chemistry and physics.

Eric Lander:
Some says he’s “good for science”, despite being a “jerk, asshole, punk-bitch” — also on the advisory board of Editas, and thought of as a co-founder. He is a founding advisor to cancer genomics company Foundation Medicine and has close ties to venture capital firm Third Rock Ventures, a major investor in the CRISPR company Editas.

Quoting industry wonk :

A conniving little son of a bitch, but the smartest motherfucker in genomics sciences and biomedicine today. He will probably win the Nobel Prize in Biomedicine. Probably the smartest man in science today, other than JPAI. He has a thorough knowledge of biology and a top rate mathematician.

Lander, conveniently penned an “homage to our gurus” piece in Cell while the patent suit was roiling. Feminazis and flunkies alike are making noise that the two womyn responsible for seminal works in this research topics “are being written out of history” (no pussy grabbing), thanks to Lander’s dribble. Some are outraged that Cell, a highly lauded journal wouldn’t disclose that Lander had a conflict of interest in (re)writing the history of CRISPR.

Lander’s abstract:

Three years ago, scientists reported that CRISPR technology can enable precise and efficient genome editing in living eukaryotic cells. Since then, the method has taken the scientific community by storm, with thousands of labs using it for applications from biomedicine to agriculture. Yet, the preceding 20 year journey – the discovery of a strange microbial repeat sequence; its recognition as an adaptive immune system; its biological characterization; and its repurposing for genome engineering remains little known. This Perspective aims to fill in this backstory the history of ideas and the stories of pioneers—and draw lessons about the remarkable ecosystem underlying scientific discovery.

Michael Eisen:
A real corker. Berkeley prof, who is pissed that his “gals” got shafted by Lander. Loathes the “system”, yet plays ball. All in all, feels that academics should work at slave-labor wages, discover shit, and eat beans and rice, while other folks get rich off their shit. For the good of mankind! Feminazis globally, jumping on the train saying that the womyn are being “written out of science”, and Eisen agrees. Why the hell wouldn’t you, as a Berkeleyian. Good for marketing, no?

I believe that neither Berkeley nor MIT should have patents on CRISPR, since it is a disservice to science and the public for academic scientists to ever claim intellectual property in their work.

END OF GLOSSARY OF TERMS + INTRODUCTION TO THE CABAL
==========================================

The boo-birds have this to say:

All of the CRISPR stuff is a gamble. Whatever the outcome, it will be appealed, and in my view could be tied up in litigation for years.

For you ham and eggers who think this is a get rich quick scheme. Think again. Pray that some day you can get that degenerate animal-instinct edited out of your genetic code. Trying to trade this stock is a fool’s game. Buy and sleep. The Junglee will not soft-pedal risks here. Know that this piece of shit could be a widow-maker, or amazonian. No pun intended.

Legit Science yes. Get rich quick scheme, no. Hopium, not quite. Wild ride, yes. Position yourself wisely, duh.

CTRL+C CTRL+V = voila! Can it really be that simple?

Must investigate before going TITS long.

Get your goddam learn on tomorrow at 12PM EST before opening your pie-hole.

Thank you & Good Night.

Your Mutant, Unedited Correspondent,

JG

TICKER: EDIT
TICKER: CRSP
TICKER: NTLA

PS: FUCK SCIENCE, TRADE STOCKS

The way prizes like the Nobel give disproportionate credit to a handful of individuals is an injustice to the way science really works. When accolades are given exclusively to only a few of the people who participated in an important discovery, it by necessity denies credit to countless other people who also deserve it. We should celebrate the long series of discoveries and inventions that brought CRISPR to the forefront of science, and all the people who participated in them, rather than trying to decide which three were the most important.

Says some rando on Eisen’s blog:

The extreme competition in science promoted by the current funding and promotional system gives many scientists little choice but hype or even distort their research and accomplishments, polluting science with unreproducible data and misleading concepts. This situation is particularly distressing when it happens in bio-medical fields affecting the live and well-being of many people, sometimes millions of people as I think is the case with the field of neurodegenerative diseases (see my comment below).

Comments »

Sometimes, one doesn’t need to say much —

per FT:

That makes its choice of share structure striking. Buyers of the public shares are being offered something that stands in relation to proper ownership in roughly the way that indentured servitude stands to full citizenship. The extremes to which Snap has gone to protect itself from accountability set a new standard.

If the offering is successful, the company could be valued at up to $25bn and will have three classes of shares. The C shares will be owned by the company’s two founders, and will have 10 votes apiece, giving the founders full control. The B shares, which go to early investors and employees, will have one vote each. The A shares, the ones offered in the IPO, will have no votes.

Other Silicon Valley start-ups, notably Google and Facebook, have issued shares without votes attached. But those two went public with shares classes with unequal voting rights, not voteless shares. Later on, when they did issue voteless shares — to facilitate acquisitions and let the founders liquidate without diluting control — they had high profits and clear, successful strategies.

Snap has neither of those things. And it is adding another wrinkle: the B shares, if they are sold or otherwise transferred, become A shares. No form of voting share in Snap will be held by an outside shareholder.

Additionally:

Mr Spiegel has a queasy relationship with publicity. After becoming famous at a young age, he was forced to apologise for sexist and sexually graphic emails he sent to his fraternity brothers, saying he was “mortified” when they leaked and they did not reflect his attitude to women.

Above, which I don’t really give a fuck about, but hilarious in the context of :

Evan Spiegel’s Sex Life

Comments »

First take a gander at this shit —

http://ir.restorationhardware.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=79100&p=irol-videos

Dont worry, you’ll have to cut and paste the link, as hyperlinking does not work to the piece of shit site. They mandarins at RH don’t want that shit going viral.

A quarterly earnings release link that is dead.

“Nearly thorugh the most uncertain stages of our transformation.” — says Gary Friedman, the venerable and mentally ill CEO of Restoration Hardware. Time to GET LONNNNNNG? FUCK NO. First and foremost, any person who uses the phrase “you know” roughly 230 — yes, you read that right two hundred and thirty times during a 57 minute call, is mentally ill. I personally, do not need any more data. Also, he has no college degree. Just stating facts here. No elitism.

The Q+A call was so disgusting, so vile, that I will deal with it in two parts, if I feel like it. There is nothing new and/or earth shattering here. Just the same ol’ garden variety BULLSHIT spewed in a mildly dolourous tone. With all the reassurances that ol’ Gary himself is an investor right along with your dumb ass. Unless of course, you’ve been heeding the warnings of the one and only JG.

per the WSJ:

Sales at stores open at least 14 months fell 6% in the quarter ended Oct. 29, and the company lowered its profit and sales targets for the rest of its fiscal year. Profit for the fourth quarter is now expected be at least a third below Wall Street’s target.

Overall for the third quarter, the company reported a profit of $2.5 million, or 6 cents a share, down from $20.7 million, or 49 cents a share. Revenue rose 3.1% to $549.3 million.

For the current quarter, the company expects revenue between $562 million and $592 million with adjusted profit on a per-share basis in the range of 60 cents to 70 cents. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters were expecting $637.6 million in revenue and $1.08 a share in earnings.

For the fiscal year, the company said revenue would be between $2.11 billion and $2.14 billion, which represents a range of no growth to a 1% climb. Previously the company expected revenue to grow between 1% and 3%. The company also sharply cut its adjusted earnings outlook to a range of $1.19 to $1.29 a share, from a previous projection of between $1.60 and $1.80.

Some notes —-

The Membershiip Program = FUCKING JOKE = Let me pay you $100/annum to get discounts. And this fuckers thinks that 200,000 unsuspecting Americans will join his club in 2017? Amounting to $20 million of 100% margin business. I don’t even want to expend any energy on this.

Here’s an anectode:

It’s a rip off. They marked up everything in their store by 25% then offer a 25% discount to those who purchase their membership card. I bought a bookcase from RH Baby and Child in 2014. I wouldn’t have but I couldn’t find anything I liked anywhere else and it was practically perfect though overpriced. It was $749 back in 2014 before there was a Grey Card. It went on sale for $649 so I bought it because that was the best I was ever going to do. I am pregnant with my second and decided I wanted to purchase the same bookcase for my next child. I now see that the exact same bookcase is $999 and $749 for members. In order to get the $749 I’m going to have to pay the $100 membership fee. I feel so ripped off that I’ve decided not to purchase it after all. It was already overpriced and now I’m going to have to pay $200 more for it if you consider the membership fee and no sale. I’m very disappointed since I truly love the bookcase.

These fuckers have no idea what they are doing. No idea how to price their products. And are blatantly asleep at the wheel. They are throwing shit at the walls and seeing what sticks while snorting lines of coke on Mount Tam. And now they are entering the logistics business too!? Interior design services (headcound doubled). And of course we can’t forget hospitality! The shit is so inane that I had to stop listening to the call. I will post my notes below to half of the call, and post the rest later. Annotating this shit was fun at one point, but now its just lame.

If you care here’s a little background on the stupid Waterworks deal. Assuming hte company is not bleeding cash, this is a clear throwback to RH’s roots. The company was founded by some dude in bumfuck Northern California who sold unique fixtures at premium prices. They had cute odds and ends. Screwdrivers, lip balms, leather conditioners, etc. Shit that was useful. Now the showrooms are an abyss of nothingness. As a side note the chat boards are referring to the “feel” of their showrooms with the terms “dirty fog” and “corpse-like” — !

The transaction with Waterworks was valued at approximately $117 million, which is subject to changes in working capital and other adjustments, and funded from RH’s cash balances. Waterworks is expected to be accretive to RH’s fiscal 2016 earnings. Waterworks has long been the definition of the well-appointed bath, and is the only complete bath and kitchen business offering fittings, fixtures, furniture, furnishings, accessories, lighting, hardware and surfaces under one brand in the market. Waterworks is comprised of the Waterworks, Waterworks Kitchen and Waterworks Studio brands, all built on a foundation of impeccable style, design integrity, quality and craftsmanship. Waterworks products are sold through its 15 showrooms in the U.S. and U.K., as well as its boutique retail partners, hospitality division and online. The Company prides itself on its deep relationships in the design community and the technical expertise and tenure of its people.

As for new store openings:

Outlets are a liquidation channel for “nick and dent items” that come back from a returns and exchanges. We did open a number of temporary outlet to get us through the inventory SKU rationalization and get rid of the occupancy, and avoid occupancy, so a lot of the locations, 8 of the 12 that we’re going to open this year are temporary, so anywhere from 12 to 24 months and we’ll be out of those.

Good to know that so much shit comes back that they have to open stores to get rid of it.

As a sidenote I’m thrilled that the popchips founder and CEO is now on the board, in case Gary’s got the munchies.

Some details from the call:

RH – Restoration Hardware Holdings Inc
Q3 2016 Restoration Hardware Holdings Inc Earnings Call
December 08, 2016 / 10:30PM GMT

================================================================================
Presentation
——————————————————————————–
Editor JUNGLEEGIRL
——————————————————————————–
Matthew Fassler of Goldman Goldman Sachs
——————————————————————————–
Good afternoon, evening. My question relates to underlying demand as best you can address it. As you said in video that written sales are not quite up to expectations in the third quarter and certainly that was the case it sounds like in November.
If you could talk about the cadence of demand [JG: THERE IS NO FUCKING DEMAND DIPSHIT] and the impact that some discreet items might have had on it, specifically your discussion of the later mailing of the books, and also just the ad in November and perhaps what you have seen in the brief couple of weeks since then.

——————————————————————————–
Gary Friedman [6] ——————————————————————————–
Sure. Matt, this is Gary. There’s [JG: LEARN SOME GRAMMAR FUCKFACE] really three things we can kind of look at and somewhat quantify today, and that is, you know, there’s a real softness in November. November got off to a very slow start. We think that was, you know, created by some distraction around the election. At least that was our hope early on. [JG WAIT, SO YOUR HOPE EARLY ON WAS WHAT? THAT YOU WOULD GET OFF TO A SLOW START DUE TO THE DISTRACTION OF THE FUCKING ELECTION? — ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING? THE GOBBLEDYGOOK BEGINS]

As we got past the election, you know, our business was building at a slower rate than we had anticipated, and as we dug into look at some of the implications around that, you know, one of the things that stood out was our books were getting in home slower in November specifically than we had planned. [REALLY, YOU DECIDED TO DO A 600 PAGE BOOK AGAIN WHILE YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS IS IMPLODING? RECALL THE ECO-BLING UPROAR IN THE DOWNTOWN PALO ALTO STORE, WHERE YOUR CORE CLIENTELE (IN TERMS OF INCOME) STACKED ALL THOSE PAGES OF DRIVEL IN FRONT OF THE STORE TO BLOCK THE ENTRY? — YOU THINK THIS IS STILL A GOOD FUCKING IDEA? ARE YOU OFF YOUR ROCKER? UMM, YES, YOU FUCKING ARE GARY. YOU FUCKING ARE!] So beginning in November, we lost about a month of books in the delay.

And, you know, so and also impacting the businesses is really just a poor performing holiday collection, and we believe some of that in looking back is from probably being too aggressive and pulling too much of the holiday content out of the store.

Our thesis was we could consolidate holiday, consolidate the inventory in the DC, move more of the sales to direct, offer free shipping, and we could run the business at a more productive level and at a higher margin, and our thesis, it proved to be incorrect. [WRONG AGAIN, BECAUSE YOU ARE TOO BUSY POPPING OXYCONTIN GARY. HAVE YOU SEEN THE PUPILS OF THE CEO AND CFO ON THE INANE “EARNINGS VIDEO? — I HAVE NOT EITHER BECAUSE THEIR EYELIDS ARE HALF CLOSED — IM TELLING YOU THESE ASSHOLES NEED SUBSCRIPTIONS TO ALTA MIRA. COZY, QUAINT, AND JUST DOWN THE ROAD IN SAUSALITO. DON’T WORRY, IT’S A RORT TOO. TAILOR MADE FOR FUCKFACES LIKE FRIEDMAN, AT $30K A MONTH. DON’T WORRY RH HEALTH INSURANCE WILL PROBABLY TAKE CARE OF THE BILL. AIN’T AMERICA ALREADY GREAT? ‘TIS THE ONLY LAND WHERE YOU ARE REWARDED FOR BEING A FUCKUP AND GET A SECOND CHANCE WITH A VIEW OF THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE]

I think we’re just losing too much of the conversion from the store traffic in the store, so one of the things we’re considering is next year, layering back in some of the holiday decor, and gift items. We won’t put the it stocking stuffers back in. We think that’s a legacy business that doesn’t associate with our business, and you know, with our current content. [WOW BIG FUCKING DECISION THERE GARY — NO STOCKING STUFFERS FOR 2017. BITCHES BE BE NAUGHTY, AND GARY HAS A DIRECT LINE TO SANNY KLAUS]

That’s really the key things. [AHH, YES, THE “KEY THINGS” — RIGHT — THE STOCKING STUFFERS AND THE ELECTION — HOLD ON, LET ME DO ANOTHER LINE HERE OFF MY IPHONE 7]

You know, for us right now, I think what’s difficult is, you know, as we sit here today, how do we think the business will build into January, and how do we think the business will build as the books get in, and also as the impact of our kind of gallery conversions and remodels where we put modern and design, you know, how long is that ramp. [JG: SO WHAT IS DIFFICULT IS THAT YOU HAVE NO FUCKING VISIBILITY WHATSOEVER. YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE FUCK THE IMPACT OF THE CATALOG MIGHT BE. YOU KNOW WHY GARY? BECAUSE THE HISTORICAL IMPACT WAS SO FUCKING SHITTY AND LARGELY UNQUANTIFIABLE THAT YOU JUST DECIDED TO GIVE IT A GO AGAIN! AREN’T YOU GLAD WE’RE RICH! SITTING ON YOUR TINY LITTLE ASS IN TIBURON, NOT A CARE IN THE WORLD. FUCK! LET’S DO THIS AGAIN! SERIOUSLY, YOU ARE OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND. PERHAPS THE INTERIOR DESIGNER B!TCHES THAT YOU BEND OVER GIVE YOU POSITIVE FEEDBACK ON THE CATALOG GARY. BUT LET ME TELL YOU, THE REST OF THE WORLD FINDS IT TO BE AN EGREGIOUS WASTE. ONWARD.]

In New York, when we converted that store and modern last year, it took about 6 to 8 weeks to build to the level, you know, where modern built to a level where it was doing consistent run rate, so it took about that long, so we think we’ve got probably, you know, we’ve got a build coming from the investment we made in the stores, we’ve got a build coming from the books in-hoping and a month later versus where we are, and the holiday mist is going to go away, right, so, you know, at the end of the month, the drag of the holiday reduces considerably, you have some holiday mark down sales in the first few weeks that are a little bit of volume, but then it falls completely off. [JG: MORE TO LOOK FORWARD TO FOR 4Q16 — WOO!!!!!]

As we look forward in the next year, and we rebuild our base off of next year, you know, off of where we think this will land, and I think I would characterize it as we’re being conservative, and in Q4 today. Because we just don’t have visibility in the builds, right, you know, it could be a little better, but today, based on where we sit, we thought it was right to take a conservative view based on how we saw the rest of the December and January. [JG: AGAIN NO VISIBILITY, PER GARY. LET ME REPEAT, NO FUCKING VISIBILITY FOR 4Q16]

So but when you build and YOU look forward and you take a look at next year, and you build off the base where we think we’re going to end, and you take a look at the four revenue and earnings drivers next year as you look forward to 17, anniversary of the cost related to our RH Modern, which we have estimated around 20 million. We moved beyond the timing issues related to the launch of RH membership and expect membership revenues and earnings to increase by about 20 million year over year, and that’s on the P&L affected, right, so we’ll pick up about 20 million there. Those fall straight to the bottom line. Those are 100% margin. [JG: YA, IF WELLS FARGO CAN FABRICATE ACCOUNTS, SO CAN MOTHERFUCKING RESTORATION HARDWARE. A CONVENIENT LITTLE OPENING FOR JIGGERY-POKERY GARY. OR WAS IT THE IDIOT CFO’S IDEA? JUST THE RIGHT SHADE OF BLONDE TO RUN SOME PUSSY-MAGIC ON DEPRIVED MANAGERS #IMWITHHER]

JG: SO FOUR REVENUE DRIVERS: 1) ANNIVERSARY RH MODERN LAUNCH (LOL) 2) PRODUCT MARGINS WILL REBOUND (WHAT IS YORU FUCKING RATIONALE HERE GARY?) 3) MEMBERSHIPS (FAKE ACCOUNTS AND/OR LAZY/FORGETFUL RENEWALS) 4) RH MODERN BOOK (ONCE AGIAN, MENTAL ISSUES COME TO THE FORE).

And we’ll begin to cycle the efforts to reduce our inventory and rationalize our SKU could wants and we expect product margins to rebound year over year beginning in the first quarter and the fourth point, which is the one that, you know, we’ll have to watch as we build through the end of this quarter, and into first quarter, but we expect revenues to increase based on the fact that we just mailed the books, and we’ll be up against no source book throughout the first three and a half quarters of next year, right, and then we’ll mail the modern book in the first quarter. So, you know, that should provide substantial revenue lift year over year, and you add to that new stores that are flowing from this year into next year, and you add the new stores that were opening next year. So we feel very good about looking at how we see 17. You know, and what I mentioned in the video, with each passing quarter, we have more certainty as it relates to how we look at 17. We have, you know, a lot of data now about membership. [JG: SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT. YOU HAVE NO VISIBILITY INTO 4Q16, BUT YOU ARE “FEELING GOOD” ABOUT 2017 AND HAVE “MORE CERTAINTY” ON 2017. IS THAT RIGHT? OK, JUST MAKING SURE. ONWARD.]

You know, the only open issue I would say about membership that we don’t know next year, but I think we’re conservatively forecasting it, is how we’re forecasting renewals, right. But we do know from signups today, that a very minimal percentage are opting out saying don’t auto renew me, so, you know, we believe based on, you know, what we have studied in other companies, and what we think renewal rates will be. We think we’re conservative, and we have that forecasted in a conservative rate, so, you know, so we have a lot of data now. We feel very good about how memberships are rolling through. And, you know, as we think about 17, we think we’re going to, you know, bridge into next year, and be very happy with where we land. [JG: READERS, PLEASE GO AN PICK UP A COPY OF SELLING AMERICA SHORT BY RICHARD SAUER. THE ‘FORGETFUL CUSTOMER’ THAT AUTO-RENEWS IS THE OLDEST TRICK IN THE BOOK]

——————————————————————————–
Matthew Fassler of Goldman Sachs [7] ——————————————————————————–
I guess a brief follow up just to get clarity, are you getting any comfort from the build that you’ve seen since business presumably around the election. Is it driving closer to a rate that would be consistent with your launch in growth expectations or is it still subdued given the holiday issues and the mailing of the catalog, the timing of the mail.

——————————————————————————–
Gary Friedman [8] ——————————————————————————–
It’s clearly subdued and we forecasted it to be subdued, you know, from a demand and revenue point of view through the rest of the quarter. My point being is if you take that new base, right, and you build off the base into next year, we feel very good about, you know, what next year looks like, and, you know, the bridge back to, you know, business performance that would be, you know, more in line with, you know, what we’d expect. [SO THINGS WILL GET SO SHITTY IN 4Q16 THAT 2017 WILL BE A SLAM DUNK, PER GARY]

——————————————————————————–
Oliver Jen from Cowen and Company [11] ——————————————————————————–
I had a question regarding the, why did you pursue a little more aggressively than you originally expected and also on the cap X line, do you have flexibility to continue to kind of tweak that number down in the event that your free cash flow doesn’t materialize, you know, how you would like it to, and Gary, I think you articulated this, but if you could have done this over, you know, over the past year, just what would you have highlighted that, you know, some differences you would have made, and I think also we wanted to know about the source book, why was it a little bit later. You had mentioned that it was one month later than — later than planned.

——————————————————————————–
Gary Friedman [12] ——————————————————————————–
Sure. Let me kind of address those from bottom to top. I’m going to take it backwards, but, you know, the books in later than planned. One, we’re one of the few people that mail a book our size and our complexity. Some of our books are mailed in bundles. We mail 600 page book. Our printers don’t really, you know, have other books of that sides besides phone books, so our books don’t go through like a typical catalog goes through a facility, and our book goes through multiple facilities, so there’s always a chance that there’s going to be some delay in the printer, which we had some delays, and like wise, when you go through the US mail postage system with a book of our size, you know, at each of the books that, each of the points that it moves through, whether it’s going to the printer from BMC or an FCS special center facility, and then breaks out to a post office, and then the post office’s ability to handle it and move it, you know, our books can be somewhat imperfect in predicting how they move through all those points and all those steps. So we have some delays as we move throughout printers and we have delays as we move throughout postal network, and those delays were compounded in the postal network, which didn’t anticipate. It’s the first time we mailed and had books going in in November, you know, and in December, so November books is where we missed, and I think we missed because, you know, we went into, you know, a very crowded time, right, so you have all the holiday mailings and the other point is you had, it was very unusual, we had all the postage that was going through based on the election, so if you think about early November, a lot of election postage going through the pipeline, so, you know, that’s the feed back and the insights we have been able to give, so that’s the impact as it relates to the book being later. [JG: BLAMING THE POSTAL SERVICE AND ABSENTEE BALLOTS. AND OTHER HOLIDAY MAIL. MENTAL ILLNESS CONTINUES.]

We lost about a month of in-home, about 30 days of in-home. What would I do over, and clearly we decided to use this year as kind of a transformational and transition year, and take a lot of, you know, make a lot of moves with the business from moving from a promotional model to a membership model which we thought was right for the business long-term. You know, we clearly, you know, in the first quarter, we were still in the early days of the the launch of RH Modern so we had to figure out how to ramp that business. You know, we, you know, we decided to reevaluate our supply chain and the way we were moving against our supply chain and we were ready to put a shovel in the ground to build another DC. We decided not to. One of the ways to avoid that was to reevaluate our inventory, be more aggressive in moving through SKUs that we’re not long-term that we didn’t think hit the performance, you know, hurdles and metrics to be in the assortment so we decided to accelerate that this year, avoid building a distribution center, give ourselves time to reevaluate the network, and you know, design the supply chain network in a way we thought could be more productive and more impactful to capital usage, and terms long-term. [JG: WHY BUILD ANOTHER DC WHEN YOUR PRODUCTS SUCK DICK AND NO ONE WANTS THEM? NOT TO MENTION, YOU HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA WHAT YOUR CUSTOMERS WANT, AND YOU HAVE NO PLAN FOR REPLACING SKUS — BECAUSE YOU DON’T HAVE A CLUE WHAT THE CUSTOMER WANTS! THIS SHIT IS GOING THE WAY OF LEVITZ UNLESS FRIEDMAN GETS THE BOOT.]

You know, and as far as several other initiatives, right. We redesigned the entire source book and to do that, we delayed that, and also we delayed it to give our vendors more time to catch up on modern and we remodeled all of our stores, rolled out that design to liaison and doubled the size of our interior design team. [JG: LOL DOUBLED THE SIZE OF THE INTERIOR DESGIN TEAM] When I look back at many of those things, and there’s some other things we did, too, but those are the big ones and I say to myself, what would I have done different this year, the biggest thing, if I had to make a decision over again, I would not have delayed the source book. [JG: THE BOOK. ITS THE BOOK DAMMIT. IF WE JUST HAD THE BOOK OUT ON TIME.]

I think the vendors in Modern, you know, recovered and caught up. I don’t think that mailing the source book would have the impact, you know, we thought it could have, you know, the risks we thought it could have on the vendor base, and the efforts to redesign the source book, while I think it looks fresh, new, and very impactful, the lost source of mailing it 6 to 8 months later, you know, cost us, you know, significant revenues in earnings, and I think that created the biggest risk on the year, so that’s what I would have done over. [JG: FLAT OUT BLAMING THE FACT THAT A COFFEE TABLE MARKETING BOOK HIT YOUR REVENUE LINE ALL YEAR LONG. LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING GARY. THE BOOK IS FUCKING STUPID. AND NO ONE CARES ABOUT THE FUCKING BOOK. YOU KNOW WHY? BECAUSE NO ONE ACTUALLY LOOK AT THAT SHIT AND THINKS, HEY LET ME ORDER THAT $7000 CHINESE MIRROR ONLINE. NO FUCKFACE. NO. STOP BLAMING THE BOOK. THE ISSUE IS THAT YOUR “CONCEPT” OF A STORE HAS JACKSHIT FOR INVENTORY ON PREMISE AND SO THERE IS NOTHING IN STOCK FOR FOOLS TO BUY OR EVEN PONDER TO BUY — BUT DON’T WORRY THEY CAN GRAB A SANDWICH AT THE CAFE, GO UP AND DOWN THE SWANK ELEVATORS AND “FEEL RICH”. LEAVING YOU WITH THE TAB FOR THE PSYCHOLOGICAL SHORTCOMINGS OF THE 250K MIDDLE CLASSS. GOOD WORK GARY. AND YOU KNOW WHAT IF YOUR FUCKING BOOK WAS 6 TO 8 MONTHS LATE, PLEASE DONT BLAME THE FUCKING POST OFFICE AND THE ELECTION. ITS INSULTING TO THE USPS, WHICH IS ONE OF THE GREATEST INSTITUTIONS EVER KNOWN TO MANKIND. TRY SENDING A PACKAGE TO FUCKING BANGALORE WITH TRACKING AND YOU WILL APPRECIATE MY WORDS]

——————————————————————————–
Oliver Jen from Cowen and Company [14] ——————————————————————————–
Karyn, I was curious for investors that are concerned about free cash flow, it would be right to be briefed on your thoughts around that CapEx. And why were you incrementally more aggressive? Was that an effort to make sure you were clean? Because it looks like you’ve been prudent about aggressively managing inventories as well.

——————————————————————————–
CFO [15] ——————————————————————————–

Our working capital has been something that we’re very interested in. Making sure that those inventories get down as you guys saw. We ended last year with our Q4 miss with much higher inventory than we wanted: so some of that, the ongoing assortment, we managed through lower receipts, but there were the critical evaluation of the SKUs as Gary mentioned to see what we no longer needed in the assortment. So we have been making great progress in that initiative as you can see at the end of Q3, our inventory was at, you know, plus 2, and that includes the Waterworks so really great progress with that, but as we’re heading into Q4, you know, with some of the slow down and what we saw in November, whether it was the election or consumer, whatever the reason, we don’t want to be sitting on some of that inventory, and we want to move through it. We went to, at the beginning of the month or about the 11th, we went to 20% off sales. A lot of stuff on sale is the SKU rat (?) merchandise and deeper mark downs on some of the planning, to continue to do that through the end of the quarter and make sure we’re clean by year end and get through what we wanted to get through. [JG: HAHHAHAA. SO THIS B!TCH IS NOT CONVINCED IT WAS THE ELECTION. HAHAHAHA. “OR THE CONSUMER” — HAHAHAHHAHA] That had a positive impact on the cash flow as we head into next year if we can continue to make improvements with your inventory down. The second piece with the capital took our range down, that’s based on the lower sales. We’re taking a critical look at what projects we have on deck, what’s in flight, where do we need to be more critical in that spend. I still feel really confident in what we have the ability to affect to effect both in the real estate and other projects, what’s nice to have, what need to have, and we’ll continue to be diligent to make sure we reach the free cash flow positive goal in 2017.

Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll get the to rest — its utterly idiotic. It is complete chaos in this joint. There is simply no substance in this entire operation. Vapid.

Gary, check yourself in. Do us all a favor. Just do it.

Comments »