John.

I hope this turns out to be a good holiday season for all retailers.

On a football note, you already know what happened with the Lions, right?  We’re on track for a perfect season of 0-16.  We made it to 0-12 a few years ago, at the very beginning of the Millen regime, and spoiled it by winning two games that year.  I don’t think it’s likely to happen this year.  The Lions may go down in history as the only team to go 0-16.

The Steelers put together another impressive victory.  The offense performed, but not nearly as well as the defense, with four (or was it five?) consecutive New England drives ending in a turnover.  The Steelers got points off of all but one of those turnovers.  Too bad I couldn’t watch the game on TV, but having the live updates on my laptop was still pretty cool.

On a final note, Catholic Nature Cards is now running a Christmas sale.  All cards (not just Christmas) are on sale for $1.50 off their regular price, until December 19.  Happy Holidays!

John.

The Steelers and Cowboys met twice in Super Bowls in the ’70′s, then again in 1995.  The Steelers are 2-1 in Super Bowls agains the Cowboys.  Bill Cowher is the only Steelers coach to ever lose a Super Bowl.

Back to Black Friday.  This is the day that many retailers go into the black.  Some retailers get 80-90% of their revenue in the days between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  They run at a loss, in the red, until Black Friday.  These few weeks make or break the entire year.

Black Sunday was supposed to be a very bad day.  Black Friday is hopefully going to be a great day, and the start of a good holiday retail season.  Deep discounts and sales are everywhere.  This is the time to buy.  To some extent, it’s your patriotic duty!  Save our nation’s economy!  Buy now!

At Catholic Nature Cards, we’re launching a $1.50 off all cards sale for Christmas.  Happy Holidays, and good selling!

John.

John.

Imagine if, as an online retailer, you could double the percentage of people who buy from you.  This is your conversion rate.  Doubling your conversion rate wouldn’t mean doubling your sales, but it would be a huge boost during a critical time. 

This is exactly what Figi’s did.  Their results-a 119% increase in conversion rate, compared to last year.  No, it’s not a typo.  Their conversion rate better than doubled, within days of implementing MyBuys.  Read just one of the articles here:  http://www.crm2day.com/content/t6_librarynews_1.php?news_id=125563

No capital expense to implement, phenomenal results within days of launch. 

John.

At our dinner table was another nominee, in the Non-Profit category.  One of their attendees was also from Pittsburgh.  I tried to out-Steelers him with my story about how I went to the Super Bowl, but he went to the game too! 

I had no choice but to go to my Myron Cope Autographed Terrible Towel story.

I have a Terrible Towel autographed by Myron Cope.  Cope was the radio voice of the Steelers when I was a kid.  We’d watch the games on TV with the sound down, and the radio on.  He was pure Pittsburgh.  Listen here for a few Copeisms. 

Cope was also the inventor of the Terrible Towel. 

The Lions moved onto their new stadium, Ford Field, in 2002.  The very first game in Ford Field was a preseason game against the Steelers.  A friend offered me a ticket-I jumped at it.  Before I left that morning, I casually mentioned to my sister that I should try to get Myron Cope’s autograph on my Terrible Towel.  She thought it was a good idea.

I grabbed my Terrible Towel, and off I went.  I explained my plan to my friend.  He had a beer, so he wasn’t’ overly concerned with me.  First I talked to a security guard.  This was a brand-new stadium, just opened after September 11.  The guard explained that security was tight, and there was no way I would get up to the radio booth.  He should have been right.

I had a Lions jersey and a Steelers hat.  And short pants.  I was pretty clearly not part of the stadium’s architectural crew.  Yet, just before halftime, I walked onto the elevator with them.  We all got off, I smiled at the security guard on the press level, and proceeded down to the visitors’ team radio booth. 

Cope wasn’t there, so I waited outside.  Just in time for the second half kickoff, Cope returned.  He was under a full head of steam, so I let him go.  I went back to my seat, figuring I’d come back up again at the end of the game.  I told my friend Russ.  He shrugged and had another beer.

Towards the end of the game, I headed back up.  Again, no problems with security.  Cope was not in the booth again.  This time, he left early to get down to the locker room for his post-game show.  Well, after all this, I wasn’t going to give up. 

I dragged Russ with me.  We weren’t even sure where the locker rooms were, but we got onto another elevator with one of the radio guys and followed him.  I could see Cope from outside the locker room, and talked the security guy into letting me in once the radio broadcast was over. 

Cope was not happy.  He told me I shouldn’t bother him in there.  I went back out and waited.  He came out with a rolling bag full of stuff, and offered his autograph if I helped him wheel the bag up the ramp from the locker room to his bus. 

I did.  I offered him a pen.  He grumbled something to the effect of, “you can’t autograph a Terrible Towel with a pen”.  Then he grabbed a Sharpie from the bag I was wheeling, and signed my Terrible Towel.  I thanked him, put his luggage on the bus, shook his hand, and went back to the locker room.

Russ was still waiting there.  Rather than just walk out, we decided to go on more of a tour.  We ended up walking out on the playing field.  It’s made up of ground-up tires.  All those exploding Firestones they put on the Ford Explorers, no doubt.  It felt like walking on a yard that had ground moles.

Finally, after walking all around on the media level and going in to the locker room, someone noticed that we were not where we were supposed to be.  We got a security escort off the field.  We headed out of the stadium past the locker room the same way I went with Cope.  There he was, leaning against the building smoking a cigarette.

He waved to me as we walked by.  Double Yoi!.

John.

The Steelers did win their game on Sunday.  For the first time in NFL history (12,837 games-thank you MSNBC.com) a game ended with the score of 11-10. An improbable outcome, to be sure.  I wish I picked the Chargers to cover.

John.

After a hard day of hunting, it is not uncommon to relax and unwind with your fellow hunters at one of the two bars in Luther.  Here’s a little story from a past hunting trip:

There are six of us.  Me, my brother, and four friends.  We walk into the Logger’s Lounge (formerly Biggie’s Wolf Den).  There’s a local country band playing along the far wall.  The bar is crowded.  We find a table and sit down. 

The theme is a logging bar.  All of the walls are wood paneled.  The bar is wood.  The tables are wood.  It’s all brown.  Animal heads are mounted on the walls-more brown deer, brown antlers.  The lights are dim.  It’s hard to see, which is probably good.  The place smells like cigarettes and stale beer.  We will too by the time we leave.

In the center of the floor is a white three feet by three feet square.  The square is divided, with painted red lines, into a grid of squares that are roughly 4 inches by 4 inches.  So, 9 rows, 9 columns.  Each small square has a number painted in the middle, also in red.  There is a two feet tall chicken wire fence around the perimeter of the three by three square.

We have no idea what’s going on.  After an hour or so, some guy walks up with a burlap bag.  He dumps the bag out-it’s a chicken!  A live chicken.  Before we got there, tickets were sold.  The chicken relieves itself.  The person with the ticket that matches the number where the chicken relieved itself is the winner. 

That’s right, folks.  Chicken Shit Bingo!  That’s exactly what they called it.

I can’t wait to get back up there.

John.

John.

The next video was about Ford’s development of the Lincoln Continental.  Ford made a Continental for Edsel Ford I, Henry’s son, before WWII.  It was a classic.  The plan was to resurrect the spirit of that car, and propel Ford into the ranks of Rolls Royce.

The man who led this project was William Clay Ford.  That’s right, the same guy who now owns the Lions (now 0-9).  You know where this is going, right?  WCF had a design that he called “Modern Formal” styling.  His design team put a chassis and body shell together.  Then they set out to design the car’s styling.  To gain the advantages of competition, WCF hired four more independent design teams.  Executives then selected the winning design.  You’ll never guess who won.  I’ll give you a hint-his name is on the company.

They designed a new car, launched a new division in Ford, built an entirely new plant.  The car sold for between $10K and $15K IN 1955!  That’s like a $200,000 car today.  A $200,000 Ford!

The car was hand assembled with fine craftsmanship.  Ford lost something like $5,000 per car.  Each!  Hard to believe they’re in the position they’re in today.

We then switched to discussing transmissions.  I learned some stuff when we talked about automatics.  I remember as a kid that my grandfather (Pap) explained how they worked to me.  I had a hard time visualizing the torque converter.  Now I get it.

Our instructor then shared a story about how torque converters generated heat, and how he had to fight engineers to keep exhaust pipes from being routed too close to the transmission.  They carry heat.  Too much heat is bad.  Engineers would counter that they had test results proving that the extra heat would not be a problem.  He intimated that they would game the system-run tests they knew they would pass.

He gave an example-one of the Pontiac (and Chevy) cars had the exhaust pipe too close to the gas tank.  The heat would literally percolate the gas.  If you filled the tank, drove for a while, then opened the fill cap, you’d get splashed with gas. 

Maybe that was part of their smoking cessation program?

My brazing has shown some improvement.  I made four joints.  Two were passable.

John.