Suck

for 29 October 1996. Updated every TUESDAY.



	Crazy Eddie meets Best Buy... on the web!

	Sometimes you have to almost give your
	product away to make it succeed.
	When prices drop through the floor,
	lossleader.com shows you where to score.

	The story of business is, more often than
	not, the story of failure. And as the
	prospect of failure nurtures strong
	reactions of desperation, careless,
	panic-driven schemes often masquerade as
	modest proposals. The concept of loss
	leaders is one such anomaly, wherein
	companies drive up sales by reducing
	prices below cost, in the name of
	building customer awareness of the brand
	and service and establishing consumer
	patterns. It's a time-worn tactic, and
	one need not search out $49 Southwest
	airfares or 99-cent Whoppers to find
	footprints of this Armani-clad Yeti -
	just look at the web.



	Lossleader.com both recognizes and
	respects the pretzel logic of this market
	proposition while exploiting the
	opportunities it presents for
	value-minded consumers. While a fool and
	his product may easily be parted, those
	who supply the cleaver deserve, at
	minimum, a butcher's wage. By monitoring
	the full grid of consumer industries and
	sorting on the basis of location and user
	profile, lossleader.com will help users
	find bargains while cultivating
	much-needed market entropy. Just as
	self-destructive tendencies in
	individuals often inspire friends to
	stage "interventions," lossleader.com,
	friend of industry, intervenes on behalf
	of shoppers everywhere. Screwball
	business antics were never this much fun!

	While initial implementation costs could
	be low if the breadth of the service is
	kept modest, this enterprise could scale
	to be not just a service, but a way of
	*life for many. Like Consumer Reports,*
	this could function as an ad-free
	service, and even be delivered directly
	to people's desktops via time-sensitive
	email bulletins or a Pointcast-like
	screensaver. Unlike the companies
	monitored by lossleader.com, though,
	we would launch with a firm
	subscription-based revenue model that,
	while modest, would more than cover the
	nominal expenses of inspecting
	traditional value outlets for
	irresponsible offers. Within a year of
	launch, we predict that the same service
	could be repurposed to apply to stock
	trading, providing even more lucrative
	opportunities for buyers - and ourselves.

courtesy of Duke of URL