I have enjoyed watching, and re-watching, a great Pixar movie called The Incredibles, with my 5 year old son.
A verbose villain, named Syndrome, is bent on destroying our animated superheroes in a for-profit scheme to eliminate all superheroes...
Syndrome: ...I'll sell my inventions so that *everyone* can have powers. *Everyone* can be super! And when everyone's super--
[chuckles evilly]
--no one will be.
Syndrome's statement is rooted in an ideology known as Communism.
The same force drives comfort out of the hammock market.
An enormous industrial complex fuels the explosion of cheap shammocks flooding the hammock market. Google, with interests in China, holds the floodgates open for a fee.
Communism seeks to destroy individualism (i.e. intellectual property rights), and in doing so, destroy any unique strength or superiority that any individual might claim alone.
The theory is that the greater good will be served by sharing everything, allowing no one to (visibly) rise above his peers. Somehow this is supposed to allow everyone to rise.
At the core of Communism, is this lie, that by making everyone and every thing visibly equal on the surface, everyone can share wealth and comfort equally.
We know this concept is fatally flawed. The result is shared failure on a mass scale, a vast displacement of wealth and comfort, and a hidden realm of lies and deceit where lives and dreams are shattered and fortunes are secretly hoarded.
The same forces applies to hammock manufacturing and related intellectual property.
Thanks to The Comfort Compromise of The HammockSource, there are now thousands of factories in China churning out hammocks, the same as they make any other item, shaving it down by the cost model, to be as cost competitive as possible.
In China factories, hammocks are just another "item" thrown in the mix. The same mega-factory making hammocks also makes toilet plungers, ice scrapers, curtain rods, wrist watches, and literally hundreds of other "items."
There is no specialization, and no optimization of comfort built into that model.
Ten years ago, there were virtually no hammocks coming from China.
Central planners in China spread the word to every factory that can make a hammock - "this type item is very profitable! . . . 70 million baby-boomers are retiring. Hammock is in their future!"
Today, the Hammock Gold Rush is in full-swing and thousands of Chinese factories make hammocks because they top the list of "must have items" that Americans desire.
So what you, the hammock consumer, are now faced with, is a vast sea of choices.
It's ironic - choices are good right? Very capitalistic!
And yet most of these choices are shammocks.
Not surprisingly, a "Communist hammock" a.k.a. "shammock" is not comfortable.
These are Syndrome hammocks (remember our villain?) ...
You won't see a difference because now everyone is super (everyone makes and sells shammocks), and soon no one will be (comfortable).
A true hammock provides the highest level of human comfort.
However, shammocks now prevail, thanks to the Communist version of equality in the hammock market.
All products are treated equally. All products are down-graded as the shaved-down cost model is applied.
No China factory stands to make a profit manufacturing a quality hammock alongside a toilet plunger.
Every factory can make shammocks because they are nothing special.
Every factory moves some product, China moves forward.
Every China factory that can make a shammock, does so by mandate. No single factory holds a great portion of the overall manufacturing business.
The result is that there are thousands of "hammocks" for American retailers to buy direct from China at dirt cheap prices.
And there are now thousands of new retailers buying and selling them online.
Thousands of distinctions without differences:
thousands of distinct shammock models, made from dozens of materials, with dozens of print patterns, fibers, and colors, in hundreds of configurations. Comfort subtracted.
NO DIFFERENCE, no comfort, same shammock!
Think about the consequences of displacing and destroying easy access to comfort.
It's an invisible but insidious shift going on right now.
The integrity of the hammock market is in the hands of a very few people who care about comfort, and the consumers who educate themselves and talk to one another about the facts.
We work without a net so you don't have to. Keep talking, keep rocking.
www.hammocks.org
Wednesday 9 September 2009
Big Brother Googleshammock
Well, well!
My recent discoursing on the subject of rope hammocks has sparked a response from Google.
Google earns tens of thousands of dollars each day from people advertising sham hammocks through the Adwords program.
If you didn't know by now, the ads you see in the right hand side bar, as well as the top 3-5 listings when you search any term on Google, are paid advertising.
Our domain "ropehammocks.com" has held an organic rank (not paid for) at the very top of page one when you search rope hammocks, for the last year an a half.
Suddenly, it's too much negativity for the Googoobots to handle. We're driving more and more traffic to ropehammocks.com , thanks to our blogs and links from our other sites.
Threat perceived, action taken:
As of September 3, Google search shows a modified snapshot ropehammocks.com.
Now, when you search 'rope hammocks' on Google, a snapshot of the SECOND line of text on our page replaces the first line.
We did not change it!
The first line still says (quite appropriately)
ROPE HAMMOCKS = ZERO COMFORT CREDIBILITY
That was too straightforward and to the point, reflecting poorly on Google advertisers in the ad-bar, who pay to play, perpetuating the rope hammock scam.
* So Google manually revised the content snapshot for ropehammocks.com! *
Effective censorship of organic search results that conflict with paid ads.
This meshes nicely with the fact that Hayneedle, their largest hammock advertiser, has hired Google executives to run their online ad campaigns.
If the largest online "hammock retailer," Hayneedle, can't make money selling shammocks, they can't continue to pay money to Google for advertising them, and Google can't keep raking it off the top of this perpetual shammock scam (which is in end-stage collapse, by the way)
Google offers what appears to be a legitimate advertising service called Adwords.
Adwords is purportedly separate from its organic search content.
Adwords is used by online shammock retailers to such a degree that the value of hammocks being advertised must perpetually decrease as the number of advertisers increases.
Is censorship how Google handles conflicts of interest at the crossroads of organic domain listings and paid advertising?
Naturally.
Google is the willfully blind straight-man in todays shammock scam . . .
Google is not dumb.
It's not profitable for Google to let truth accumulate organically, or allow information to spread freely.
It's not enough for Google to control the advertising on its search engine.
Google will intervene on behalf of Googlebuddies in any lucrative industry to tamper with so-called "organic" search results when the revenues of both parties are at stake.
Googlebuddies should be able to build their empire however they choose, right?
But by this model, "Paid Information" is being consolidated on a cost model, is controlled centrally, and at every level.
"Free information" hinders paid information, and doesn't stand a chance.
In order that this can continue, Search must appear neutral, as a platform for freely distributed information.
This points out a disturbing conflict of interest (otherwise, it would seem to me that Google should be able to do anything it pleases with its search results):
1. "Free Information," is being reined in and filtered out by Google. Whether it be truth, facts, lies or opinions -Google (and Bing, Yahoo, and anyone who provides search) aims to consolidate and manipulate it for their own benefit.
2. The money for online ads funneling to Google must come from somewhere.
The fact is, that the value of the products built for and sold to Americans is in a death spiral and we're paying Google to help us enrich a Chinese Industrial Complex that supports a cheapening of all consumer products.
If the online hammock business is any indication, the products and services offered by most online retailers can hardly be any less. They pull a shoddy foreign product off a shelf in a warehouse, slap a label on it and ship it.
The buy low sell high mantra is more crucial to online sales than anywhere.
The vast preponderance of online retail startups have no allegiance to quality. They REQUIRE inputs to go down as they seek to increase profits, and with that goes quality of everything we buy, whether in stores or online.
Traditional bricks and mortar retailers have to compete with the pressure brought by online retailers. This means they offer cheaper and cheaper goods, of lesser and lesser value.
Add to this, an ever growing competitive pressure for costly on-line ads, and the model naturally drives DOWN the quality of goods available.
The scary part of it is, that as online sales explode, replacing a larger part of traditional shopping, the value of the products we buy is in free-fall.
How long until the empty images we buy online become just that? How long until that little 2" product picture you bought on the internet shows up on your door as a well-wrapped photo in a box?
The folks at Google will increasingly manipulate "organic search" for the sake of profits among paid advertisers, and in so doing, protect their bottom line.
We have come to a place in the story of capitalism where the end result of unregulated competition is a complete reversal of quality once found in the goods Americans buy and sell each other.
This is thanks in large part to a consolidation of "information" at the hands of corporate giants like Google an their alliances.
It is not free.
The Adwords slot machine where competing vendors apparently stand side-by-side with un-paid, "organic" search results, pumping in millions for the virtual attention of online shoppers, throwing adbucks at "clicks" instead of putting mortar between the bricks.
Meanwhile, manufacturers of quality goods close their doors one by one thanks to the influx of junk from abroad. Reputable retailers offering quality goods can't offer shoddy product in real-time and still keep their customers. The internet age of empty images is upon us.
THANKS Google!!
Clicking around under the foundation of a shaky structure just doesn't make sense to me, brothers and sisters.
See this for what it is and do your homework carefully:
The bigger it is, the harder it falls, the worse it gets.
Click! Click! Click! Click! Click! . . . .
Crash!!!!!!
www.hammocks.org
My recent discoursing on the subject of rope hammocks has sparked a response from Google.
Google earns tens of thousands of dollars each day from people advertising sham hammocks through the Adwords program.
If you didn't know by now, the ads you see in the right hand side bar, as well as the top 3-5 listings when you search any term on Google, are paid advertising.
Our domain "ropehammocks.com" has held an organic rank (not paid for) at the very top of page one when you search rope hammocks, for the last year an a half.
Suddenly, it's too much negativity for the Googoobots to handle. We're driving more and more traffic to ropehammocks.com , thanks to our blogs and links from our other sites.
Threat perceived, action taken:
As of September 3, Google search shows a modified snapshot ropehammocks.com.
Now, when you search 'rope hammocks' on Google, a snapshot of the SECOND line of text on our page replaces the first line.
We did not change it!
The first line still says (quite appropriately)
ROPE HAMMOCKS = ZERO COMFORT CREDIBILITY
That was too straightforward and to the point, reflecting poorly on Google advertisers in the ad-bar, who pay to play, perpetuating the rope hammock scam.
* So Google manually revised the content snapshot for ropehammocks.com! *
Effective censorship of organic search results that conflict with paid ads.
This meshes nicely with the fact that Hayneedle, their largest hammock advertiser, has hired Google executives to run their online ad campaigns.
If the largest online "hammock retailer," Hayneedle, can't make money selling shammocks, they can't continue to pay money to Google for advertising them, and Google can't keep raking it off the top of this perpetual shammock scam (which is in end-stage collapse, by the way)
Google offers what appears to be a legitimate advertising service called Adwords.
Adwords is purportedly separate from its organic search content.
Adwords is used by online shammock retailers to such a degree that the value of hammocks being advertised must perpetually decrease as the number of advertisers increases.
Is censorship how Google handles conflicts of interest at the crossroads of organic domain listings and paid advertising?
Naturally.
Google is the willfully blind straight-man in todays shammock scam . . .
Google is not dumb.
It's not profitable for Google to let truth accumulate organically, or allow information to spread freely.
It's not enough for Google to control the advertising on its search engine.
Google will intervene on behalf of Googlebuddies in any lucrative industry to tamper with so-called "organic" search results when the revenues of both parties are at stake.
Googlebuddies should be able to build their empire however they choose, right?
But by this model, "Paid Information" is being consolidated on a cost model, is controlled centrally, and at every level.
"Free information" hinders paid information, and doesn't stand a chance.
In order that this can continue, Search must appear neutral, as a platform for freely distributed information.
This points out a disturbing conflict of interest (otherwise, it would seem to me that Google should be able to do anything it pleases with its search results):
1. "Free Information," is being reined in and filtered out by Google. Whether it be truth, facts, lies or opinions -Google (and Bing, Yahoo, and anyone who provides search) aims to consolidate and manipulate it for their own benefit.
2. The money for online ads funneling to Google must come from somewhere.
The fact is, that the value of the products built for and sold to Americans is in a death spiral and we're paying Google to help us enrich a Chinese Industrial Complex that supports a cheapening of all consumer products.
If the online hammock business is any indication, the products and services offered by most online retailers can hardly be any less. They pull a shoddy foreign product off a shelf in a warehouse, slap a label on it and ship it.
The buy low sell high mantra is more crucial to online sales than anywhere.
The vast preponderance of online retail startups have no allegiance to quality. They REQUIRE inputs to go down as they seek to increase profits, and with that goes quality of everything we buy, whether in stores or online.
Traditional bricks and mortar retailers have to compete with the pressure brought by online retailers. This means they offer cheaper and cheaper goods, of lesser and lesser value.
Add to this, an ever growing competitive pressure for costly on-line ads, and the model naturally drives DOWN the quality of goods available.
The scary part of it is, that as online sales explode, replacing a larger part of traditional shopping, the value of the products we buy is in free-fall.
How long until the empty images we buy online become just that? How long until that little 2" product picture you bought on the internet shows up on your door as a well-wrapped photo in a box?
The folks at Google will increasingly manipulate "organic search" for the sake of profits among paid advertisers, and in so doing, protect their bottom line.
We have come to a place in the story of capitalism where the end result of unregulated competition is a complete reversal of quality once found in the goods Americans buy and sell each other.
This is thanks in large part to a consolidation of "information" at the hands of corporate giants like Google an their alliances.
It is not free.
The Adwords slot machine where competing vendors apparently stand side-by-side with un-paid, "organic" search results, pumping in millions for the virtual attention of online shoppers, throwing adbucks at "clicks" instead of putting mortar between the bricks.
Meanwhile, manufacturers of quality goods close their doors one by one thanks to the influx of junk from abroad. Reputable retailers offering quality goods can't offer shoddy product in real-time and still keep their customers. The internet age of empty images is upon us.
THANKS Google!!
Clicking around under the foundation of a shaky structure just doesn't make sense to me, brothers and sisters.
See this for what it is and do your homework carefully:
The bigger it is, the harder it falls, the worse it gets.
Click! Click! Click! Click! Click! . . . .
Crash!!!!!!
www.hammocks.org
Friday 4 September 2009
Paradigm Shift Part III
In light of the wider economic pressures, the shape of the hammock market continues to morph.
The anti-innovation bubble that fueled the spread of cheap shammocks is now at end-stage collapse.
Once The Hammock Source lost its grip, Big Box retailers and online retailers gained pace.
The shammock gold rush sent throngs of buyers to source the cheapest factories.
These factories made ever-cheaper products to compete and keep these accounts the next year.
Since that is not sustainable, and there is always another lower bid, the quality has gone down, and down and down with the price. With each new factory, there is an impossible learning curve - an absence of knowledge about how to build comfort.
Result - The worst hammocks the world has ever seen dominate the market today.
Shammocks are now so common as to be dime-a-dozen commodity. The supply now far exceeds demand. Shammock prices will continue to plummet.
Now that almost everyone sells shammocks, and everyone sells them so cheap, and everyone playing that game knows the score, how long can it last?
Online competition for PPC hammock ads is sucking the air out of the game rapidly now.
One-by-one these shammock re-sellers throw in the towel.
Who is picking up the pieces and growing like never before?
The company that innovates and never compromises the comfort standard:
Green Eggs & Hammocks
The anti-innovation bubble that fueled the spread of cheap shammocks is now at end-stage collapse.
Once The Hammock Source lost its grip, Big Box retailers and online retailers gained pace.
The shammock gold rush sent throngs of buyers to source the cheapest factories.
These factories made ever-cheaper products to compete and keep these accounts the next year.
Since that is not sustainable, and there is always another lower bid, the quality has gone down, and down and down with the price. With each new factory, there is an impossible learning curve - an absence of knowledge about how to build comfort.
Result - The worst hammocks the world has ever seen dominate the market today.
Shammocks are now so common as to be dime-a-dozen commodity. The supply now far exceeds demand. Shammock prices will continue to plummet.
Now that almost everyone sells shammocks, and everyone sells them so cheap, and everyone playing that game knows the score, how long can it last?
Online competition for PPC hammock ads is sucking the air out of the game rapidly now.
One-by-one these shammock re-sellers throw in the towel.
Who is picking up the pieces and growing like never before?
The company that innovates and never compromises the comfort standard:
Green Eggs & Hammocks
Paradigm Shift Part II
Beginning in 2000, with the aid of an independent engineering firm, Global Hammocks Incorporated developed and refined solutions to fill the innovation gap left by the Hammock Source.
We developed perfect stands for hanging hammocks and hammock chairs efficiently, safely, aesthetically, and compactly.
These leisure innovations were designed to enrich future generations.
Unlike steel-by-the-pound seasonal items destined for the landfill, our designs are engineered with integrity, and built to last.
They are built to the comfort standard, not a shaved down cost model.
I filed for 2 patents in 2002 and received both patents in 2005.
Hanging Chair Stand - Patent 7040995
Universal Hammock Support - Patent 7010819
My patents encapsulated and expanded the hammock market at once. They rendered dozens of stands obsolete, in fact, all of them.
These patents mark the state-of-the-art. There are no other patents in the arena of hammock supports with an iota of value measured against ours.
Did that stem the tidal wave of obsolete shammocks flooding our markets from China and into the backyards of Americans? Of course not.
You cannot eliminate a global epidemic when one doctor administers the cure to a relative handful of patients, while the rest of the "doctors" are paid to spread the disease.
And, billions of dollars of corporate profits are at stake here. 10 years ago hammocks were somewhat uncommon items on the shelves of the typical Big Box store. And The Hammock Source supplied nearly all of them.
Ten years ago, we began introducing comfortable hammocks to many shoppers who didn't even know what a hammock was. "What do you call that thing you're laying on ?"
Now hammocks are standard seasonal fare. Every major retailer in the world offers hammocks and hammock stands either directly on their shelves, or online, or both.
None of them have a quality control or design requirement that ensures comfort and quality will be part of their offering.
Too many people are stacked in the deal. Shammocks are bought and sold 3 or 4 times before they get to you. Anything that trades hands that many times has to be made as cheaply as possible.
None of these buyers were in the hammock business a decade ago.
Now they are all in the hammock business, buying cheap goods direct from China. There is no one in the chain of command who cares about comfort, no one knows how to build comfort into a shaved down "item."
We were still a relatively small company in 2006 when our ground-breaking patents finally issued.
Rather than focusing on the marketing of our revolutionary products, we spent the last 5 years, and a large share of our resources, battling a large Hong Kong corporation bent on snaking us out of those patents and dashing us on the rocks of the legal system until we expired.
We proved fraud against that company after a grueling series of lawsuits. We have prevailed to continue in our mission of containing and undoing the viral spread of substandard shammocks and shammock stands.
Meanwhile, Mass Retail buyers all woke up to the fact that there was nothing proprietary to buy from The Hammock Source. They all began knocking off The Hammock Source and buying direct from the factory in China at the cheapest price.
Chinese factories compete with a vengeance, so the number of hammock factories in China numbers in the thousands today (and ten years ago there were less than 5).
Our patented products are still unmatched today, and that will continue to be the case because
THERE ARE NO OTHER INNOVATORS IN THIS MARKET. Mass retail has no incentive to build comfort into this model. They make excellent profits selling shammocks and shammock stnads.
Compare our products to the rest. With a critical eye you can see that we are peerless. With your eyes closed, you can feel it.
Rest in The Best™ !
We developed perfect stands for hanging hammocks and hammock chairs efficiently, safely, aesthetically, and compactly.
These leisure innovations were designed to enrich future generations.
Unlike steel-by-the-pound seasonal items destined for the landfill, our designs are engineered with integrity, and built to last.
They are built to the comfort standard, not a shaved down cost model.
I filed for 2 patents in 2002 and received both patents in 2005.
Hanging Chair Stand - Patent 7040995
Universal Hammock Support - Patent 7010819
My patents encapsulated and expanded the hammock market at once. They rendered dozens of stands obsolete, in fact, all of them.
These patents mark the state-of-the-art. There are no other patents in the arena of hammock supports with an iota of value measured against ours.
Did that stem the tidal wave of obsolete shammocks flooding our markets from China and into the backyards of Americans? Of course not.
You cannot eliminate a global epidemic when one doctor administers the cure to a relative handful of patients, while the rest of the "doctors" are paid to spread the disease.
And, billions of dollars of corporate profits are at stake here. 10 years ago hammocks were somewhat uncommon items on the shelves of the typical Big Box store. And The Hammock Source supplied nearly all of them.
Ten years ago, we began introducing comfortable hammocks to many shoppers who didn't even know what a hammock was. "What do you call that thing you're laying on ?"
Now hammocks are standard seasonal fare. Every major retailer in the world offers hammocks and hammock stands either directly on their shelves, or online, or both.
None of them have a quality control or design requirement that ensures comfort and quality will be part of their offering.
Too many people are stacked in the deal. Shammocks are bought and sold 3 or 4 times before they get to you. Anything that trades hands that many times has to be made as cheaply as possible.
None of these buyers were in the hammock business a decade ago.
Now they are all in the hammock business, buying cheap goods direct from China. There is no one in the chain of command who cares about comfort, no one knows how to build comfort into a shaved down "item."
We were still a relatively small company in 2006 when our ground-breaking patents finally issued.
Rather than focusing on the marketing of our revolutionary products, we spent the last 5 years, and a large share of our resources, battling a large Hong Kong corporation bent on snaking us out of those patents and dashing us on the rocks of the legal system until we expired.
We proved fraud against that company after a grueling series of lawsuits. We have prevailed to continue in our mission of containing and undoing the viral spread of substandard shammocks and shammock stands.
Meanwhile, Mass Retail buyers all woke up to the fact that there was nothing proprietary to buy from The Hammock Source. They all began knocking off The Hammock Source and buying direct from the factory in China at the cheapest price.
Chinese factories compete with a vengeance, so the number of hammock factories in China numbers in the thousands today (and ten years ago there were less than 5).
Our patented products are still unmatched today, and that will continue to be the case because
THERE ARE NO OTHER INNOVATORS IN THIS MARKET. Mass retail has no incentive to build comfort into this model. They make excellent profits selling shammocks and shammock stnads.
Compare our products to the rest. With a critical eye you can see that we are peerless. With your eyes closed, you can feel it.
Rest in The Best™ !
Thursday 3 September 2009
PARADIGM SHIFT: Part I
Every so often, violent storms of creative destruction occur within markets that appeared stable.
Like earthquakes and volcanoes, these massive events are the result of hidden pressures.
Tectonic plates shifting beneath the Earth gradually build up enough resistance and slip past each other, causing the earth to shake. Magma builds up beneath the Earth, breaking through weak spots in the Earth's crust, spewing forth a volcanic blast of ash and lava.
Bubbles within markets are pressure points with similar dynamics as those in volcanoes and earthquakes. Pressures build, and hidden bubbles burst, as any adult who is living through today's financial crises knows.
Take the hammock market, for instance.
The HammockSource, the former worlds largest hammock company, was the bellwether.
At the core of this company, a bubble of non-innovation, was hiding. They attended every major trade show, advertised in all the trade magazines, and occupied an enviable spot on the shelves of key Big Box retailers.
But their complacency, and the flurry of re-hashed products from year to year left a void. They had nothing proprietary other than their brands.
When they shifted most of their manufacturing to China, their largest accounts realized they could go factory direct without The HammockSource. POP!
Fifteen years ago, two sister companies (now The HammockSource), dominated the entire world market for hammocks. The Hatteras Hammock Company and Pawleys Island Hammock Company supplied hammocks to just about every familiar retailer in the world.
We bought one of their hammocks in 1996. We were utterly disappointed that we paid over $150 for a couple of wood sticks, a tangle of rope, and a fancy metal name plate. The "hammock" wasn't comfortable in the least (Shammock is a better classification).
We took aim and, during the last 12 years, developed a line of comfortable hammocks and innovative hammock stands that would knock this old company off it's undeserved perch.
When we zigged, they zagged.
We met them at trade shows where both Green Eggs & Hammocks and The Hammock Source were exhibiting their wares. When we unveiled our SUPERWEAVE™ line of ultra-comfortable Caribbean Hammocks, they soon released their Megaweave™ imitation to counter our punch (nearly an identical product by the way).
Whereas The Hammock Source offered mainly earth tones and low key colors in their line of rope and fabric hammocks, they suddenly realized that color was a good idea when we exhibited our line of brightly colored Mayan hammocks and hammock chairs. They countered at the next trade show with a line of brightly colored prints on Sunbrella fabric.
It was amazing to see this old established company following our lead and jumping out of their comfort zone to compete in ours.
But they could not follow us into the arena of innovation.
What they couldn't do, and what they haven't done for over 100 years, is innovate.
Essentially, all they did for the last few decades was change their floral patterns, and fiber configurations, and roll out a line of rugs and rockers. As for innovation and development of intellectual property within the hammock or hammock stand arena, they remained completely stagnant.
The HammockSource is now obsolete.
As I predicted back in the year 2000, they are now as relevant to the hammock business as The Yugo is to the car manufacturing business.
I saw the flaw in The Hammock Source from the beginning of my company in 1997. It's precisely why I decided to start a new manufacturing company, Global Hammocks Incorporated.
In 2001, The HammockSource still appeared to be leading the charge.
What I could not see was that their bubble had already burst.
Every design they offered lacked thoughtful engineering, and aesthetic appeal, not to mention comfort. It appeared to me that engineers had never been part of their design process.
Furthermore, there was nothing proprietary about their core product line. No patents, no intellectual property. Nothing that can't be copied.
And these are the sub-standard, comfortless models that have been copied and re-copied, flooding world markets until today. Today, thousands of Chinese factories commissioned by Mass Retailers who don't see anything but the bottom line (profit), are selling the same thoughtless junk.
The HammockSource outlasted their relevance. Failure to innovate cost them the market they once dominated.
What I couldn't predict, was the scale of the eruption and the emergence of a new force, even more difficult to contain. The market was blown wide open and the retailers once served by The HammockSource, backed the Chinese industrial complex, are the new nemeses of comfort, on a scale a thousand times larger.
www.hammocks.org
Like earthquakes and volcanoes, these massive events are the result of hidden pressures.
Tectonic plates shifting beneath the Earth gradually build up enough resistance and slip past each other, causing the earth to shake. Magma builds up beneath the Earth, breaking through weak spots in the Earth's crust, spewing forth a volcanic blast of ash and lava.
Bubbles within markets are pressure points with similar dynamics as those in volcanoes and earthquakes. Pressures build, and hidden bubbles burst, as any adult who is living through today's financial crises knows.
Take the hammock market, for instance.
The HammockSource, the former worlds largest hammock company, was the bellwether.
At the core of this company, a bubble of non-innovation, was hiding. They attended every major trade show, advertised in all the trade magazines, and occupied an enviable spot on the shelves of key Big Box retailers.
But their complacency, and the flurry of re-hashed products from year to year left a void. They had nothing proprietary other than their brands.
When they shifted most of their manufacturing to China, their largest accounts realized they could go factory direct without The HammockSource. POP!
Fifteen years ago, two sister companies (now The HammockSource), dominated the entire world market for hammocks. The Hatteras Hammock Company and Pawleys Island Hammock Company supplied hammocks to just about every familiar retailer in the world.
We bought one of their hammocks in 1996. We were utterly disappointed that we paid over $150 for a couple of wood sticks, a tangle of rope, and a fancy metal name plate. The "hammock" wasn't comfortable in the least (Shammock is a better classification).
We took aim and, during the last 12 years, developed a line of comfortable hammocks and innovative hammock stands that would knock this old company off it's undeserved perch.
When we zigged, they zagged.
We met them at trade shows where both Green Eggs & Hammocks and The Hammock Source were exhibiting their wares. When we unveiled our SUPERWEAVE™ line of ultra-comfortable Caribbean Hammocks, they soon released their Megaweave™ imitation to counter our punch (nearly an identical product by the way).
Whereas The Hammock Source offered mainly earth tones and low key colors in their line of rope and fabric hammocks, they suddenly realized that color was a good idea when we exhibited our line of brightly colored Mayan hammocks and hammock chairs. They countered at the next trade show with a line of brightly colored prints on Sunbrella fabric.
It was amazing to see this old established company following our lead and jumping out of their comfort zone to compete in ours.
But they could not follow us into the arena of innovation.
What they couldn't do, and what they haven't done for over 100 years, is innovate.
Essentially, all they did for the last few decades was change their floral patterns, and fiber configurations, and roll out a line of rugs and rockers. As for innovation and development of intellectual property within the hammock or hammock stand arena, they remained completely stagnant.
The HammockSource is now obsolete.
As I predicted back in the year 2000, they are now as relevant to the hammock business as The Yugo is to the car manufacturing business.
I saw the flaw in The Hammock Source from the beginning of my company in 1997. It's precisely why I decided to start a new manufacturing company, Global Hammocks Incorporated.
In 2001, The HammockSource still appeared to be leading the charge.
What I could not see was that their bubble had already burst.
Every design they offered lacked thoughtful engineering, and aesthetic appeal, not to mention comfort. It appeared to me that engineers had never been part of their design process.
Furthermore, there was nothing proprietary about their core product line. No patents, no intellectual property. Nothing that can't be copied.
And these are the sub-standard, comfortless models that have been copied and re-copied, flooding world markets until today. Today, thousands of Chinese factories commissioned by Mass Retailers who don't see anything but the bottom line (profit), are selling the same thoughtless junk.
The HammockSource outlasted their relevance. Failure to innovate cost them the market they once dominated.
What I couldn't predict, was the scale of the eruption and the emergence of a new force, even more difficult to contain. The market was blown wide open and the retailers once served by The HammockSource, backed the Chinese industrial complex, are the new nemeses of comfort, on a scale a thousand times larger.
www.hammocks.org
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