Weekend Hits
Things you might find interesting, but I haven’t had the time or inclination to blog about:
- I’ve got to draw your attention to yesterday’s article in the New York Times about direct marketing in China. Direct marketing was illegal there until 2006, but – wow! – has it taken off now. Mary Kay Cosmetics has about 200,000 sales agents in China. Avon has one million agents, recruiting up to 50,000 each month! Avon ladies were crossing the Berlin Wall the night it went down, but this is astounding.
- Here’s a present for statistics junkies! Go explore Worldometers, a site that gives you swiftly-changing real-time numbers on almost everything. They even did a report on the number of daily worldwide toilet flushes!
- Even better (and more creative) is GapMinder – long a feature of my links list to the right. Han Rosling takes statistics and brings them alive so that you see what is happening dynamically. Super cool!
- The U.S. International Trade Commission wants to hear from U.S. exporters about whatever obstacles your company faces in exporting. They are trying to figure out what more (or less) the U.S. Government should do to help American exporters. There will be public hearings in Washington, DC, St. Louis and Portland in February and March 2010, and the ITC is looking for written testimony as well. It will all go into preparing recommendations to the President later in 2010. Here’s all the info on how to get your views across.
