An old new sheriff is back in town at Procter & Gamble. Former CEO A.G. Lafley replaced his handpicked successor, Robert McDonald, late yesterday and further changes are in the air.» 0 Comments
If the secret sauce in Snapple's decades-long overnight success story was "quirky marketing and bold flavors," as the Wall Street Journal's Stephen Miller puts it, its saucier was Leonard Marsh, who died Tuesday at 80. Marsh teamed with Hyman Golden, his brother-in-law and partner in an office-cleaning business, and with a childhood friend, Arnold Greenberg, who operated a health food store in the Manhattan's East Village, to form what became Snapple in 1972.» 0 Comments
Surely you've heard the adage that "80% of success is showing up." Apple CEO Tim Cook seemingly proved that point yesterday by testifying before a Senate panel prepared to excoriate Apple for taking advantage of the existing tax code to the hilt.» 3 Comments
Take one from Column A (Seamless) and one from Column B - (GrubHub) and you got a heaping plateful of restaurant home-and- office delivery options once a merger announced yesterday clears regulatory approval and takes effect.» 0 Comments
With Yahoo's $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr -- the formal announcement is widely reported to be the item on the agenda of a "mystery product event" in New York at 5 p.m. today -- Yahoo is attempting to solve one problem by taking on another one that is ever so nettlesome.» 0 Comments
David Oreck has one of those avuncular, made-in-the-USA infomercial voices that exude homespun quality so convincingly it was something of a shock to read a few weeks ago that the company that makes his vacuum cleaners was filing for bankruptcy protection. What's this country coming to, one wondered, if it can't support the likes of Twinkies, Levitz Furniture and a nine-pound vacuum cleaner powerful enough to suck up bowling balls and withstand the force of a 7,000-pound truck rolling over it.» 1 Comments
If indeed "it don't mean a thing/if you ain't got that swing," Google got a lot brassier yesterday with its announcement of an All Access subscription music service on Google Play that not only will compete with innovative but far smaller rivals such as Spotify, Rdio and Pandora, but more tellingly, "has stolen a march on Apple," as Richard Waters and Tim Bradshaw put it in the "Financial Times."» 1 Comments
"The Tesla Model S takes everything you know about cars and stands it on its head," an overview of the sporty vehicle started out in Consumer Reports last week. And that's a good thing, with the car garnering 99 out of a possible 100 points -- CR's top-scoring automobile ever -- "even though it's an electric car. In fact," the report continues, it earns that designation "because it is electric." CR's findings were announced on a "near-perfect day" for the motor company, ABCNews.com's Richard Davies writes, as it also announced its first-ever quarterly profit -- $11.2 million -- after 10 ...» 1 Comments
"Appease nervous customers" is not a phrase any business wants to see in a story about itself but coverage in the New York Times says that what executives at Bloomberg are attempting to do as the crisis over the disclosure of a single reporter's breach of security on the company's financial data terminals widens, deepens and lengthens.» 2 Comments
How do you reinvent your dowdy luxury automobile brand so that it seems "as sexy as Jaguar, as refined as Lexus, sporty enough to convert German loyalists," James R. Healey writes in USA Today? If you're Ford Motor Co., you start by setting up Lincoln Motor Co. as a separate entity, then you produce a car that inspires reviewers to conclude that despite a lot of shared components, the first offering is "not-just-Fords-with-big-grilles."» 0 Comments
