Bill Virgin
Virgin on Business: What Constitutes a Tech Company, Anyway?
Who knows? Your business may qualify.
Its impossible to pinpoint the moment at which the phrase tech company ceased to have meaning. Its easy to detect that, wherever and whenever that point was, were well beyond it now. As evidence, we cite a recent response from a San Francisco-based company, Postmates, to a state Labor & Industries query into its workers…
Virgin on Business: The (Uncertain) Future of Retail
The implications of chain-store closings and shopping-mall failures will be far reaching.
The big story in American retailing in 2017 is not Amazon, although Amazon figures in the tale. This year, the lead headline is the demise of the American chain store. Heres a quick scan of companies that recently announced theyre closing stores, going out of business, filing bankruptcy petitions or all of the above: Sears….
Virgin on Business: Were Only Human
Data capture and data analysis can only be as reliable as the people doing the capturing and the analyzing.
Data is king. (Or is it data are king? Darn those Latin-derived plural nouns.) Data will cure disease, make us safer, win elections, run businesses and government more efficiently and effectively, and simultaneously allow us to sell more stuff to more people who are making smarter, more informed decisions about what theyre buying. Data has…
Virgin on Business: Selling a Legacy
Will new ownership change McLendon Hardware?
It wasnt another episode of were losing all the old stuff that made this place different and special that prompted public consternation when Renton-based, family-owned retailer McLendon Hardware agreed to be acquired. McLendon Hardware has a 90-year legacy in the region, but its also very much a story of the moment. The company survived and…
Virgin on Business: Pondering the Manufacturing Question
Who has the right answer? Well, maybe both sides do.
Theres a fight going on. Then again, when isnt there one at the intersection of business and politics over the past woes, present condition and future prospects for American manufacturing? On one street corner are those who contend theres nothing wrong with American manufacturing that wouldnt be cured by vigorous assertion of pro-U.S. policy against…
Virgin on Business: Studies in Confusion
Determining the actual impact of a rising minimum wage isnt that easy.
If you printed out all the studies purporting to show higher minimum wages as a job destroyer or the opposite, youd have the raw materials for a duplicate Great Wall of China, if youre in the market for a knock-off tourist attraction. What you likely wouldnt have is a conclusion, either to the studies or…
Virgin on Business: The (Un)real Estate Boom
Its coming, because this time is always the same as last time. Right?
The term see-through building described not an architectural design style but the leasing status of downtown Seattle office buildings in the early 1990s, the result of a surge of speculative construction spurred by all the demand for space that was expected to arrive and didnt. Its been a while since anyone used that figure of…
Virgin on Business: R.I.P., Drugstore.com
An Icon of the dot-com boom proves loss leaders cant last forever.
Eighteen years isnt much of a business lifespan, especially in a region that has companies from the Klondike gold rush still operating. But the dot-com boom and bust might as well date from the Paleozoic Era for all the notice and influence those events command today. In the internet sector alone, too much history in…
Virgin on Business: The Water Retention Issue
Battles over industrial development revive the familiar agent provocateur of the West: H2O.
A new toxic material is threatening the Northwest. Its safe enough for human, animal and fish consumption in its natural state, but it can be seriously hazardous to economic development projects and political careers. Its chemical name can be written as dihydrogen monoxide, or in shorthand as H2O. You know it as water. Water who…
Virgin on Business: Citizens, Beware!
Old and new taxing bodies are getting more creative and ever more opportunistic.
For decades, elements of Washingtons political class have longed for nay, lusted after an income tax, this state being among the seven currently without one. Washington voters have not shared the ardor for adding yet another tax, voting down proposals seven times, most recently in 2010. But obsession is not easily deterred, and the pro-income-tax…
Virgin on Business: Too Big to Derail?
Banking has certainly changed, but it has managed to avoid the disruption that upended other industries.
Lets do a quick review of the list of service businesses that have been disrupted by the internet. Retailing? Thoroughly. Communications? No doubt. Media? We could tell you stories. Travel and tourism? They could tell you stories as well about how customers get information and book their own travel arrangements these days. Banking? Hmm, theres…
Virgin on Business: Testing, Testing
Companies that don't try out all those crazy ideas are, well, crazy.
Somewhere in the acres of South Lake Union real estate that Amazon now occupies is the secret lab where the company comes up with its next big idea. Maybe it looks like a movie-cliche mad-scientist lab, with bubbling beakers and electrical apparatus throwing off sparks. Maybe its a room decorated in tech-sector-employee lounge motif, with…