Out of Barneys’ rubble: What’s next for luxury fashion’s biggest boutique

Yesterday Barneys New York averted yet another trip to bankruptcy court through a major restructuring deal that converted most of their debt to equity (http://bloom.bg/IUyHir). Unless you work at Istithmar–the PE firm that paid more than $940MM for Barneys in 2007 (oops!)–or owned Barneys debt, this is a big deal (pun intended). Barneys no longer [...]

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Twitter’s birthday: Blow out the candles, step on the gas.

You probably heard that Twitter celebrated its 5th birthday yesterday. The flash-sales model pioneered in the US by GiltGroupe is about 3 1/2 years old. Groupon was founded in November of 2008, not even 2 1/2 years ago. While it remains unclear whether Twitter will go the way of a MySpace or a Facebook, it’s [...]

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Defying the Sea of Sameness

Any business school course on strategy will devote significant time to the importance of competitive differentiation.  We attend marketing conferences where speakers pontificate on the need to have a unique value proposition.  Excellent books like Seth Godin’s Purple Cow preach the benefits of being remarkable to separate yourself from the herd. Yet any visit to [...]

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