I tend to look around for new stuff that catches my interest and i found this store in Barcelona, its a watch place but you can customize the watches or the wrist band. I like the idea of choosing a wrist band color or having many that you can switch between.

The pic is kinda taken further away because the lady in the store said i should take a photo only from the outside.

I saw this in McDonalds Barcelona, i guess for a faster ordering and reduce queue time. If you see it from McDonalds management point of view, they may have calculated that customer average time to order is 3 minutes and by introducing this terminal it drops queue time by a minute maybe. Then multiple this minute by how many customers they may serve more. Banks do this too, they calculate that queues are a waste of time. It all revolves around more analysis and to reduce cost.

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I used to buy Turkey Breast from Sultan Center “Ashwa 3adat salema” and now after showing the names of companies that are selling rotten food in our country I feel safer to buy from them again because everybody know that Sultan center involved with rotten food so sultan will do the best to go back to the right track to gain customers trust again that’s why in my opinion they wont take the risk and continue selling rotten food bel 3araby “el motaham ra7 eysawy kel el ashya ely etwakher asabe3 el etehaam 3ana” . Now the story is Turkey Breast price increased 22% in one week !! is it because now its fresh and good? ha 3amo sultan??:P hehe well if you buy the same food every month or week you will notice the price and I think 22% is not a small tiny profit . “Yasqo6 Al 7etaan”

About Rotten food I always wonder how come KFC “Sero lazeez” didn’t close yet ?! ma a3aref a7ad ma tesamam mena!! KFC is the meaning of Rotten food/oil/kitchen then why KFC still surviving ?! one of my friends said that KFC profits exceed other fast food chains here In Kuwait such as burger King And McDonald’s!! “this Information from some one work in the same field” he told me they actually making profits from the expat they always make special offers specially in the gulf road branch “sheghel ghada’a 7ata el eshba3 o feraaakh fa eyhasteron” J/K kelesh wala our Egyptian brothers . I’ve got another information but I’m not sure about it that expat get special discount price in unofficial way. Now I wont ask again why KFC didn’t close yet! ser el khal6a 6ela3 bel 3arag ely ey6ee7 3ala el bo6a6 :r

Its time for me to stop talking about business and start one, so i started Digumz.com. An online game rental company where you can rent the latest games (PS3, Xbox360,Wii) for a flat monthly fee. The plans are at 7KD for one game, 13KD for 2 games and 18KD for 3 games, so this means you can have 2 games at a time when you subscribe to the 13KD plan and you can exchange the games on a daily basis. You can even keep a game and keep exchanging another. All the games will be delivered to your home.

I really hope the site is easy, its not live yet but will be by next week. When the site goes live, you log in, put your details and we only accept local Kuwaiti credit cards no debit cards. Then you create a wishlist of games in the “My Queue” section, with the most games you want to the least, and based on availability you get your games delivered to your home. The site will have many technical problems at the first phase so bare with me but will keep on fixing them. Below are some pictures of the store, the store is located in Salmiya, Salem Mubarak St, Omniya mall (Ibis hotel) floor M2, store number 33, underground parking is available.

In the coming days i will blog about my experience in opening the store and what hurdles i faced. The digumz.com ad on the blog will direct you there to register your mobile number and email so we can contact you when digumz goes live.

Why are we so into consumerism and collecting stuff, why? i dont really know why psychologically we are so but when i see Kuwaiti products like the kitco chips (BTW they have put less chips inside the bags now, and the potato wafer is thinner)  and how unhealthy they are, why not others come to think about producing healthy chips. Why are we always thinking of importing them (Kuwait entrepreneurs i mean) . Remember if you import them then you dont have a price edge to compete. I’ll give you an example, firefly juice: its freaking expensive about 1.2KD a piece. 

 You see the guy who imported it was thinking wow this is a nice alternative to soda’s why not import it to Kuwait; 1.2KD for bottled drink is high, screw that idea. Then the next thought should come to mind why not make it in Kuwait, now multiply your thought with most things that you consume daily. These chips like Kitco and other, drinks like firefly etc etc. 

I have tried Vitamian water, and i think its fine. Gives you your daily nutritial needs and water at the same time. But importing it would be costly, how about producing it in Kuwait, how hard is it? 

Walking around salmiya my self and friends started chatting about Kurdo and how successful he is and how he is growing rapidly, sometimes having two stores on the same street like Salem Mubarak street and Shari3 el ma6a3em (maybe he is following Starbucks strategy:P) . But at the beginning i thought he is like any other restaurateur, a couple of stores here and there and thats the end. But i was surprised to see products under the Kurdo brand in the coops and Geant, to me that is smart. I guess now he wants to go retail and especially he has the resources to do so. He has the raw material (food), logistics (cars) and manpower ( Egyptions) J/k:P

ohhh my sexy fingers are showing:P

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The last couple years people start buying cars from outside the country they say it’s cheaper and last week one of my friends was talking about porsche and how it’s cheaper than here in kuwait so I made quick search about Porsche dealers in the GCC and I made the below table it show the start price of “911 Carrera coupe” in different countries :”Double click to enlarge the picture”

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I took the prices from the official site of Porsche and I used KFH Currency Converter. Our Dealer offer the highest price in GCC market “does it mean he’s doing very well?! I heard that he didn’t reach the target in 2009″ anyway so yes you will save some money if you buy Porsche from UAE Dubai Branch!! imagine !  I got shocked becuase I thought Dubai mean Expensive heheh and then I got shocked  again when I saw Germany dealer price ! 32,760 KD that’s 8,560 KD above our dealer price “which is the highest in the GCC”  but hold on there is two Germany words after the price  ==> “Inkl Mwst” so I used google translate to help me to understand the meaning of “Inkl Mwst” and when I translated the two Germany words to english I said “yeah now I got it”

Inkl Mwst mean Including VAT ;] and that’s why we don’t see 3agad in Germany driving Porsche :r La J/K ;]

Anyways I heard also about Lexus and land cruiser prices and how it’s cheaper in other countries like Saudia Arabia and Qatar but couldn’t find official sites to see the difference.

P.S : Don’t talk about Chevrolet Al Ghanim prices because “marfo3 3ana el qalam” :I

Costa coffee got a new owner, Bahbahani family and it seems like they are refocusing their stores to the main location. I was surprised when they closed the Kuwait Scientific Center branch. I personally think it was an excellent location and am a fan of their bean but maybe the financials where not that great. Maybe because they are opening new locations in Kuwait city too.  No evidence of such claims, just my opinion.

It’s still in it’s infancy stage, they are just conducting their first voting sessions this month.

Will it grow to become a stand alone ‘market watch’ type of non-profit NGO? Not sure…

Will it really provide real un-bias feedback that this market needs? Not sure…

I’m not exactly sure consumers here are at that stage, the opportunity cost of price, value & service comparisons is still unrealized.

It’s an interesting start though… Thought I’d share…

www.servicehero.com

A number of Qaiss’s recent posts have been around the issue of young micro-companies that are established without any pre-thought going into them with regards to scalability and future diversification… I’d like to kick start my posts here on IO81 with this in mind.

What is scalability in business and why is it important for entrepreneurs?

A business’s ability to be scalable is essentially a financial criteria and it means that as the business grows and expands the cost of each incremental KD in revenue must be going down. Another way to say this would be that when you increase your revenue’s your costs would be less than your current revenue’s costs (see figure 1). An example of a scalable business is software: the only real cost in putting out software is the tremendous R&D costs and programming, testing and debugging costs, otherwise, no matter how many copies you sell the incremental cost of producing an additional copy is negligible. Hence, provided there is demand, the more units you sell of the software the more you increase your profit margins.

Another thing to consider is that scalability is not the same as ‘economies of scale’, which means that a companies variable costs decrease as the company gets bigger, additionally, it’s fixed costs can be spread over a higher number of items sold. While economies of scale definitely help earnings, they don’t necessarily ensure the operating profits go up as revenues go up.

Consider this:

A young man, lets call him Ahmed, is excited about entering the marketing services industry. Ahmed is acutely creative and has a natural flair for churning out creative idea after another. He believes in his skills and thinks that he has the potential to produce better creative solutions to clients that the run-of-the-mill agencies. He decides to work alone and set up his business in his home.

What’s wrong with this scenario?

No matter how many clients Ahmed sign’s up he cannot reduce his overhead. Mainly his time, the cost of servicing the first client would be similar to the cost serving his fifth. Therefore, reducing his business to a lifestyle business that is not investable nor is it grow-able in its current mode of operation. Should he choose to expand and hire more people, he would lose the unique selling point that attracted his clients to him in the first place – himself.

Sadly, many young Kuwaiti’s are becoming excited and venturing into business’s that are identical to Ahmed’s, whether it be creative work, cake making, fashion designing, etc. Without considering the future implications and challenges of growth on their adopted business models.

What business’s have you seen lately that have fallen into this start-up pitfall?