Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Once again I found myself in trouble at the Los Angeles International Airport, and once again it was (arguably) my own damn fault. Last Thursday I flew Southwest to Providence, Rhode Island to testify in court on behalf of my dad, who was in the midst of a textbook “frivolous lawsuit”. I detest being late in general, and even more so when it comes to flying. I am the guy that gets to the airport at least two hours in advance. My adventure began almost as soon as I got out of my friend’s car.
It is not even remotely illegal to wear sunglasses in an airport.
I was told by the Southwest skycaps at the curbside check-in that my flight was canceled. “What?! Why?!” I exclaimed. I was told by the first skycap that it was because of inclement weather in Rhode Island. He directed me to his superior, who told me that it was because of a mechanical problem with the plane. (Much later in the day I would be told that the flight was canceled because there simply weren’t enough people wanting to fly from LA to Providence that day to justify sending an entire plane on the route.) She took my luggage and got me on the next flight, due to leave for Phoenix in three hours.
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Wednesday, June 8, 2005
Oakley has started advertising Thump — “Digital Music Eyeware”. If these had a BlueTooth iPod dongle I would go buy a pair right now — before lunch even. They don’t, though. They have a 256mb or 512mb memory gizmo and you need a USB cable to update your tunes (and what looks like a c. 1995 cell phone battery pack to charge them). It’s tragic. So close to being perfect. Think about how much lighter and slimmer (and cooler) they could be if they weren’t doing the processing! Boneheads. I love Oakley, too. They are a great company. Slick marketing, killer sunglasses. It bites that they missed the target on this.
Wednesday, November 28, 2001
The day before the world changed I mentioned a little battle waging between Oakley and Sunglass Hut. It seems that Oakley feels that they are getting the short end of the distribution stick by the super-sunglass-store. I thought that the tirade on their site was kind of a tough tactic, but that’s not all they’re doing. I just saw an ad in Maxim magazine for these killer shades and noticed a skull and crossbones emblem at the bottom with the tag line, “Not Available at Sunglass Hut”.
Yikes! Talk about guerilla marketing …
Monday, September 10, 2001
It seems that Oakley is now at war with the Sunglass Hut. On their web site they’ve posted an impassioned plea asking consumers to not purchase shades at the retail chain. I really like Oakley, but I have to ask: Why the heck don’t they sell their product on-line? I would think that their target market is full of websurfers. Why would a company choose to strictly do business off-line?
