Phase I of our secret project and my third quarter goals are both going really well, even though I’m spending an inordinate amount of time on the manuscript for my next book, which is a guide to calculating intrinsic value of stocks, bonds, real estate, and other assets.
Everything Merging Under the Kennon & Company Brand
Remember the $31,000 we spent on the paid search advertising pilot program last September? Yeah, part of that involved testing various keywords to determine if we were better off running our retail companies as separate domains or under one, parent brand. I didn’t tell you that at the time because there was no reason to do so.
Following the successful divestment of JustBabyGifts.com and WonderfulWeddingFavors.com, we are bringing in luxury niche-market baby gifts and such to the Kennon & Company store and online boutique.
The results of that test helped us confirm our belief that we can grow even faster by consolidating everything under a single brand name and online store and unleashing all of our advertising dollars, search optimization efforts, and time on that one luxury “superstore”. The search engines and shopping engines, which serve as a major source of new customers, are now sophisticated enough they don’t require individual domains for various product lines.
Thus, as part of the launch of Cherrywood Capital Group, we successfully divested JustBabyGifts.com and the WonderfulWeddingFavors.com, leaving us with a pile of cash to focus our attention on building a retail holding structure that mirrors our sporting goods businesses all under the Kennon & Company brand. (My guess is, those two sites will be shut down later this week and absorbed into the new business that owns them.)
Don’t misunderstand me … we will still be in the baby and wedding gift businesses, but they will be departments within the larger Kennon & Company family, giving us access to far more prestigious product lines that require physical retail locations and economies of scale when it comes to purchasing and banking relationships. (more…)
