text:
Tom Hunt and his two co-founders shared a vision of a future where men don't need to be restricted by fashion norms. Thus Stitch Leggings was born: a fashion brand that sells leggings for men.
However, when they went on Dragon's Den, a reality show where entrepreneurs pitch their business ideas to a panel of investors, they were laughed at.
That didn't stop them though.
On this episode of Shopify Masters, you'll hear from Tom Hunt about how Stitch Leggings is promoting their mission to spread "meggings"—male leggings—and why their ideal customers weren't who they thought they would be.
We'll discuss:
- What kind of questions you should ask your customers to learn more about your market.
- How to develop your customer avatar.
- How to encourage and reward influencers to drive more sales
Listen to Shopify Masters below…
Like this podcast? Leave a review on iTunes!
Show notes:
- Store: Stitch Leggings
- Social Profiles: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
- Recommended: The Mum Test, Seth Godin's Purple Cow (book)
Felix: Today I'm joined by Tom Hunt from stitchleggings.com, that's S-T-I-T-C-H-L-E-G-G-I-N-G-S.COM. Stitch Leggings enables the male gender to both look great and feel comfortable in leggings and was started in 2012 based out of London, England. Welcome Tom.
Tom: Hi. I'm very excited to be talking about leggings on Shopify today.
Felix: Cool, yeah excited to have you on. That's it, you're selling leggings. Tell us a little more about your store and the idea behind this product. How did you come up with, or how did you and your team come up with this idea to sell leggings to men?
Tom: Yes, so what happened with … I'm not sure if I should really share this story online but we used to live next to a really trendy market in London, me and my two best friends. We always used to go to this market and there was loads of pretty girls walking around, but we never, we'd be too scared to talk to them. We thought if we had a market stall on the market, then we'd be able to talk to pretty girls. At the same time, we also saw a guy at a party wearing leggings, looking really cool. We decided to combine or to tackle this and started the company selling male leggings with a market stall on this trendy market by our house.
We ended up purchasing 18 pairs of female leggings from eBay, drawing on our male logo to make them branded male, and then trying to sell them on the market stall. Sold none in eight hours of trading, but then still had a great time. Still, I don't think we spoke to any girls either, but we had a great time and we decided to start an e-commerce store to continue the business even though we didn't sell any. To actually get real male leggings designed and brought over from Shanghai, and then start selling them online. About three months later, we sold our first pair to somebody that we didn't know. That was an amazing feeling. Then it sort of spiraled from there.
Felix: Cool. I think that's a perfectly fine reason to start a business, being motivated by something maybe not even related to the product itself exactly. You said that you guys had purchased 18 pairs of female leggings and tried to sell them in person. Was this something you were doing on the side of a day job for all you guys? Or what?
Tom: All three of us were working in the city of London in either consulting or recruitment jobs.
Felix: Mm-hmm (affirmative), was this something you did on the weekends? How did you guys find the time to try this out?
Tom: Yeah, it was something we did on the weekend, we were all living together, so in the evenings we managed to get stuff done as well.
Felix: Okay, cool. You guys took the approach of selling these in person first, you guys did not try to start an e-commerce business right off the bat?
Tom: Correct. Why was that? I think we wanted to test the idea, as well as we wanted to go on the market stall. Then we sort of realized that we lost money by going on the market, because there were fixed costs associated with having the market stall, and also the time we had to invest. E-commerce was still big back then, but it was a bit less big than it is now, and we were just amazed by the lack of fixed costs that were associated with setting up an online store. We thought there really is nothing to lose if you're just paying 20 pounds a month for … It wasn't actually Shopify then, it was a company called Moon Fruit, we've migrated to Shopify since then obviously. The fixed cost was so low, it really was very little risk in starting something up financially.
Felix: Yeah, definitely. One of the key reasons that you wanted to start selling in person at first was to evaluate, to see if there was any actual demand for this kind of product, but you ended up selling nothing. What kept you guys going, even though the "experiment" didn't work out numbers-wise, you didn't sell anything? What made you decide let's keep on pursuing this further?
Tom: I think it's because we had fun, we really enjoyed the process of trying to sell, and setting everything up. Yeah, I think that was it, it was because we enjoyed it.
Felix: Okay, yeah I think that definitely is an experience that a lot of entrepreneurs have, which is that … Selling online is at least if you don't have the experience of selling offline first, it's kind of impersonal, you don't get to see the customer face-to-face, you don't actually go through the selling process. You put up ads, and you drag to the landing page, and the product description, do some of the selling and everything, but there's no kind of all at once, let's try to sell this thing. What was your experience like? Did you guys have any experience in sales at all, prior to setting up this table in the market?
Tom: No, zero. Actually one of my friends was a recruiter, and obviously he has to sell roles to candidates, apart from that, no, no one had any sales experience, that's probably why we didn't sell anything, I guess.
Felix: Does this make you guys nervous then? Opening up a store, never had any sales experience, one guy kind of had sales experience, but not selling in this industry of course. Where you as nervous about how do we even approach somebody? How do we pitch our product?
Tom: No, I really wasn't. I'm not sure why, I think it was because for us it was a massive joke. It was like, yes we're trying to start a business, but it was also fun as well. There was no pressure.
Felix: No pressure, yeah that makes sense. I think when you take that approach, like you're saying, and just try to have fun, and not have these super-high goals, especially at first, it really helps you not run into a situation where you're demotivated because you're not hitting all of these crazy goals that you set for yourself. Any tips for someone that never has sold before, a similar situation that you guys were in at first, and you didn't want to maybe start selling in person? What are maybe some tips that you can offer to make that first experience a little bit more manageable, or a little more successful?
Tom: Yeah, I think what I've learned about in person selling since that time, is to, before you try and sell anything, understand the problem that the person is trying to solve. Then if your product does solve that problem, that's awesome, you're more likely to make the sale after you've made that understanding, and they know you understand. If your product doesn't provide the solution, then also you should recommend someone, or some other product, even if it's not yours, that does. Then obviously you build a trust in that person, and they may come back.
Felix: I like that, starting with the problem makes sense. There's a kind of predicament that some businesses run into where they will create a solution, or create a product, and then go hunt for a problem. You're saying go the other way, first understand what is the problem that people already have. Then hopefully you have a fit for it, if not then you might have to reevaluate the product, or definitely offer something of value back to the customer, potential customers, by referring them somewhere else. Always keep in mind what is the problem that the customer has. Knowing that, how did you guys understand the problem that the person, the potential customer has? What approaches have you taken to understand the market, or the customer's problems?
Tom: Yeah, so over the four years or so we've been running the store, we've obviously been exposed to our customers. We have this customer avatar that we focus everything around. The first thing I'll say is that to understand this problem is very important to meet your customers face-to-face. We actually hosted an in-person, live night for Stitch Leggings, where anybody who came wearing their leggings would get in for free. We had deejays playing, and we had a number of our customers turn up. Yes, we made a bit of money from that night, and we had fun, but it also enabled us to get in front of the customers, and actually understand what they were like. What their greatest fears and desires are.
My first tip is to try and, if you can't get them on Skype, meet them in person so you can actually really experience these people. Then once you do get in front of them, it's really, really important to not ask closed questions, and just have a really open conversation. You should find that these little gems, or these little things that you can tie into your marketing will just pop up. I'll give a real example from the leggings company. We realized that the people we're selling to, they had a certain mindset that is always against convention. They were almost trying to sort of stand out, and be individual, and sort of hated the high street. If you go to our … Once we learnt this, almost every marketing message we now send out in emails, in tweets, or on our site, it's all tied into this liberate the man from modern conventional fashion.
If you go to our home page, StitchLeggings.com, you'll see that all of the content on there is tailored towards this inner sort of desire that our perfect avatar has. We actually know that when that type of person lands on our site, it converts. That's what I'd say, is get face-to-face with a person, and then ask open questions so that you can uncover the deep fears or desires.
Felix: This is interesting because I feel like male leggings was never a, not necessarily a problem, but was never something people actively talked about wanting. Did you find that people wanted leggings, or I guess they're called meggings? Or did you just find that people wanted to wear things that went against the male fashion conventions?
Tom: Yeah, I think it's a bit of both. We actually started out trying to redefine male fashion. Then we realised that more of our customers were actually wearing them for practical reasons like cycling or yoga. I think it's a mix, I think people will get referred to the site, and then that mission will sort of really resonate with their personality, and then they would buy. Or they just like wearing leggings for yoga of cycling, then they'll come and buy. It's a bit of both.
Felix: I want to go back to your questioning technique, you said don't ask closed questions, ask open questions. Can you describe to me the difference between a closed question, and an open question? Or maybe do you have an example of one or the other?
Tom: Yeah, sure. A close question would sort of … You'd give a binary answer like yes or no. You'd say, "Do you like leggings? Do you want to wear leggings? Do you want to wear male leggings?" Someone would say yes or no. Instead you would ask, "What do you like to wear when you're at home on a Friday evening?" Then you would keep going. That would be one line of questioning where you're trying to understand what garments they like to wear. Then I would actually start out even broader than that, and start talking about you behave like you do. If I was face-to-face with one of our customers, I would start talking about what their goals are. What they're trying to achieve in life.
Then try and understand why they're trying to achieve that thing. Then if they mentioned a specific behavior, or specific goal, I'd try and understand why they think it is that they want to hit their goal? This is actually how we uncovered that desire to not be the same as everybody else from one of those conversations. I think start really, really broad, as in what people are trying to do with their lives. Then you can get a bit more niche down on your product area to uncover more information.
Felix: It sounds like the line of questioning starts very broad, trying to understand their lifestyle, their goals in life. Then you try to whittle that down to the point where you find out what's preventing them from achieving those goals. What are the problems in their way from achieving those goals. In your case, you discover a multitude of reasons, but one of them was that people wanted to break away from some of these male fashion conventions. You wouldn't be able to understand that, I feel, unless you ask, as you said, these open ended questions. If you talk more. I think one of the problems of closed questions is that you don't really get people to … They're just focused on answering your questions, rather than talking about the way they're feeling, the things that they're thinking. I think that's a great point about asking open-ended questions, rather than closed questions.
I think one of the other potential traps that you can run into when you're doing this kind of surveying, whether it be in person, or through some kind of online forum, is that we tend to kind of lead the customers towards your own solution. You're almost kind of … I have this automatic bias, which is sometimes really hard to break. Where you want them to, maybe not consciously, but because your product is your baby, and your product is so important to you, you start to ask questions that validate, or confirm your own hypothesis. Do you do anything to avoid this, or how do you make sure you're trying to get as much of the unbiased environment as possible when asking these questions?
Tom: There are two things I would do. The first is read a book called The Mom Test. Which is like a classic book in the startup world where basically they say that if you ask your mum if she wants an iPad app, she'll just say yes because you're asking here. That's the first thing I would do. The second thing is really you just get better, you just get more skilled with it over time. The more conversations you have, the more likely you are to spot yourself giving information away. Actually the third thing I'd also is just basically if the person does not know what you sell, make sure you do not mention what you sell until right at the end of the conversation.
Felix: You think that that would influence you, or influence them?
Tom: It would influence them. As soon as someone hears what you're doing, then they immediately would tailor their opinions to you, because you're right there, face-to-face. It's like human nature to make people warmer, and like you more, in my theory anyway.
Felix: I agree with that, I think people just want to be polite in general. If they know that you're working on a particular product, that they're going to try to be supportive. That's like 99 percent of the time, they're going to try to be supportive by giving you answers that, like you're saying, make you happy. They'll give you answer that they think you want to hear, rather than what they truly believe themselves. I think that's a great point that you want to try to stay as anonymous as possible about your intentions, and about your product when you're poling, and talking to people. You mentioned earlier about customer avatars, can you tell us a bit more about it? Maybe for the audience that doesn't know what this is, what is a customer avatar?
Tom: A customer avatar is a person that does not exist that encompasses all the specific qualities that you are going to go market to. It is just a profile of a very, very specific profile of the person that would buy from you. The reason why it's very, very specific, and does not really exist, is because if you can concentrate your marketing efforts on this very specific person, then anybody with a fraction of those characteristics would potentially buy.
The reason I would, and any sort of online marketing professional would urge you to make it as specific as possible, is because of the nature of the internet these days with people getting bombarded with I don't know how many thousands of marketing messages per day. As soon as they see one that really calls out their deepest fears or desires. As soon as they see the ad, or that tweet that really calls out their deepest fears or desires, then it sort of hooks people in. That only occurs due to the specificity of your messaging, and of your avatar.
Felix: I like that you mentioned that you want to be as specific as possible, because I think an immediate reaction is a I want to be a generalist, and I want to appeal to as many people as possible, because I want as large a market as possible. You're saying get very, very specific about this person, even if they themselves don't exist, they don't hit all of these particular factors. I think what you're getting at is a lot of people, even they apportion themselves like this avatar, they're going to aspire, or relate to the rest of it. Even if they're not exactly that avatar.
I think that's very important that you don't want to make it as general as possible. You don't want to be a product for everybody. You want to try to be specific to one type of person that has a specific type of problem as much as possible. You mentioned that to build this, you talk to people in person through that event, and probably subsequent events since then, in person, or on Skype. Are there any other ways that you found that's been helpful for you guys to develop a customer avatar?
Tom: The key really is to interact as much as possible. If you're setting up a store, you send the support email to yourself, not your virtual assistant to start with. You try and get your first customers on Skype. You set up your in-person event. That's really the key, is having as many conversations as possible with those open questions. Obviously when you don't have any customers it's hard to do this, and if you do have … That's when you really have to take a stab in the dark, and you have to, from your previous knowledge of this type of person, try and build this avatar. Obviously with the product that you have to sell in mind.
I mean sometimes you can take the avatar first, and say here's the type of person I'm going to have, and therefore I need to make this product. Or, if you have a specific product you want to sell, then you have this specific product and then you work the other way, and decide the person who I think would want this product. First you have to take a stab in the dark, and then that image of the person is converging upon the ultimate perfect avatar, with every conversation that you have. It's an educated guess, and then it's multiple conversations to perfect.
Felix: I mean because it's an evolving description of a customer, and it's something that you … Like you were saying, you put as a hypothesis, as [inaudible 00:19:51] first, and then based on conversation it more molds based on these interactions with the customers. How do you, or do you document this information about your customer, of the customer avatar?
Tom: We just have one Google document that we've had really for the past few years that contains all of the information about this person, and is continually updated whenever we want to tweak, or edit who this person is. We try to record all the specific email chains, or Skype conversations, or text message conversations with the avatar. We try and keep that all in a folder on Google Drive as well. There's this one specific document that has the Bible.
Felix: Cool. Do you ever see a potential split? Like let's say over time you start seeing trends in two different directions, it sounds like there might have been a split where there's some customers that just wanted to defy the male fashion conventions. There's the other split where it's more of a functional, not split, but another type of customer that's buying for functional reasons for yoga or cycling. Do you see these kind of things happen? What do you do when you start seeing a trend of potentially maybe more than one avatar?
Tom: Yeah, so then what we … We haven't actually done this yet, we kind of have merged them all into one avatar, this person who attempts to defy convention, also does yoga. We're actually bringing out some cycling leggings next week. Therefore I think we're actually going to split out the avatars, we're going to have three. We're going to have the person who is not into sport, doesn't wear leggings for sport, wears leggings for fashion, is one. Then we're going to have a yoga and a cycling avatar as well. I mean there really is no limit to how many avatars you can have, if you want to … Each avatar will have a separate marketing campaign. It depends how you want to dilute your marketing efforts.
I wouldn't say, unless you were a massive company, selling thousands of units a day, you wouldn't need more than three to five avatars. We are going to have three, and therefore every marketing campaign we do will probably be targeted at those three different people.
Felix: Yeah, that makes sense. When you do have, like you were saying, one of the ways that you use this customer avatar is to effect, and to build specific marketing angles, marketing campaigns. Each avatar needs to be marketed towards differently. How do you manage all this? Is there technology that you use, or apps that you use to make sure that you are able to track specific, potential customers? Or actual customers, based on which avatar they fall into?
Tom: Yeah, sure. We just use the very basic Google Analytics, or Google UTM tracking links. Every tweet, or every Facebook ad will have a tracking link made with … We can link to Google Chrome tracking link creator, link generator, [inaudible 00:22:52] I'm sure. We add the avatar name, and the source of the traffic in that link. Then we're tracking just the basic e-commerce conversions in the Google analytics, so we can see if every conversion on the site, which link, and therefore which avatar, which channel, which traffic source it came from. Nothing too high-tech, like those Google Analytics links are so easy to create, and then setting up e-commerce tracking in GA is really not hard either. That's everything we're currently doing.
Felix: Okay, makes sense, yeah definitely makes it much more scalable than just trying to keep track of it manually. One last question about this avatar thing is, you've built your avatar, let's say you had a hypothesis for one. You've spoken to 50 customers, and it's evolved over time. You kind of now feel comfortable that you have an avatar that you can go to market with. How do you guys use your avatar on a daily basis? Maybe not even daily, but how often are you looking at the avatar, and how does it influence the kind of work you guys do on a day to day basis?
Tom: Out of the three of us, I'm the guy responsible for growth. It's really whenever I am creating anything that would interact with the outside world, I wouldn't review that Google document, but I would envisage that person in my mind. Whenever I'm writing an email, I would put it, "Dear David." David is the name of my avatar, so I always write, "Dear David." Or [inaudible 00:24:20] that I want to send an email, but I always envisage myself talking directly to David, and I think about what David would be doing at that time of day. What David had for breakfast today, what David is doing tonight. Formally we would update that document whenever we gather more information, but in reality, he is being reviewed whenever I'm creating any marketing materials.
Felix: You're saying you're speaking to them, to David, to your avatar directly, you're not just creating this avatar and then still, when you write the email, you're trying to talk to ten thousand people, or however large the email list is. You're just trying to write an email as personal as possible, directly at the avatar?
Tom: Yeah, exactly. I think if you don't you're going to get ignored. I get email newsletters all the time, and it feels to me like they have no idea who I am, or how they can help me. Whereas, I hope that when David receives my email he'll be like, "Ah, this guy Tom, or this company Stitch Leggings really, really understand me."
Felix: Yeah, definitely. Speaking of one of the avatars which you guys created, which was the kind of customer that wants to defy these male fashion conventions. Was this always something that was easy towards, or did you have to spend a lot of time educating people when your … It's not just selling a product that is … I wouldn't say, I mean obviously you have a market for it, but I think at the time, at least very early on, it wasn't a typically, obviously not a product that wasn't predominantly targeted at men, that was predominantly targeted at women. Did you have to overcome any obstacles, like marketing obstacles, or PR obstacles, while selling a product like this?
Tom: I actually think no obstacles were placed in our way, we were given more boosts, like inorganic boosts, because of the remark-ability of the product. I'm a big fan of Seth Godin's work, where his classic book Purple Cow, where he talked about the more people remarked about your product, the less money you'll have to spend on marketing, because people will make remarks upon it, about it, in front of other people. What actually happened when we started, we managed to gain massive press exposure on some of the biggest news sites in the UK, and on the biggest television channel in the UK, purely because of the story we were telling about the product, and the remark-ability of the product itself.
Felix: This exposure on TV, was this the Dragon's Den appearance that you guys were on?
Tom: Correct, yeah.
Felix: Okay, let's talk about this a little bit more. You guys went in, and correct me if any of these stats are wrong, but you went in looking for 20 thousand pounds for 20 percent equity in the company. I don't think … At least it didn't turn out monetarily successful, you guys weren't able to get a deal, but obviously a ton of exposure through this channel.
Tom: Yeah.
Felix: Tell us a little bit more about that experience. How early on in the business was this appearance?
Tom: We went in in the middle of 2014, and the episode was posted at the start of 2015. We actually applied at the end of 2013, so a year into the business. It was very sort of ad hoc thing. I saw the advert, and I just tried to apply, eventually got in. We were told that they had no idea how the dragons were going to react. The dragons, I'm sure you can link to the episode below, but they actually thought it was a big joke. Which is fine, it was funny, and the episode was funny. It got on TV of course, meant that we didn't get the investment that we required, but the exposure was pretty good for the brand financially.
Felix: Yeah, and for the audience that might not know about Dragon's Den, it's basically Shark Tank for any American audience. Entrepreneurs go on pitching a product of theirs. Did you guys, this is maybe not exactly relatable for all audience members, because they might not be on a show like this, I think preparing to pitch to investors is always a valuable asset, a valuable skill to have. How did you guys prepare for that? How did you guys make sure that you had everything in order for a pitch like this in front of very serious investors?
Tom: To be honest, we were really not that well prepared, which may be the reason we didn't get the money, it might not have been the fact that we were wearing male leggings. Since that pitch I've obviously got a lot better at that. To be honest, we were not well-prepared. I actually think that we wouldn't have really, at that time, have known what to do with the money if we did get it. The reason we really wanted to go on was because of a) the exposure, and b) because it was fun. Now I want to quickly jump back to our avatar again, we seem to be talking about that a lot, but I think it's very important. If you think about three guys running a business, going on and getting ridiculed on TV, maybe that's not a good message, you wouldn't want to share that content, or you wouldn't even want to do that if you had any type of business.
If you think about the avatar that we have, someone who does not like convention, seeing their heroes go up against convention, effectively successful business people from the UK, who are, let's say, mainstream. Then us being martyrs and losing a fight to these people on live TV. For me, and I've actually had feedback from my customers of course, that was a very powerful thing to do, and has given us this amazing piece of content. That now of course is sitting on our homepage. When we think about who our avatar is, and what content would make them have a greater affinity to the brand, maybe it was actually a good idea to go on, and get ridiculed. As opposed to it looking bad for us from a business perspective. That was really the rationale, it wasn't so much to get the investment, because I'm not sure we would have known what to do anyway.
Felix: Yeah, that makes sense. I think that that's, like you're saying, a lot of it ties back to the avatar. I feel like either result, whether you got the investment or not, you could have marketed, or presented the result of your Dragon's Den appearance differently, and still been as effective. Again, it goes back to the avatar, it goes back to what kind of values that they have. If it's successful you can present it as a win story in this kind of fight against male fashion.
Or, because you didn't win, you can present like this is a "enemy" that you guys are going up against, as you're trying to defy these kind of conventions. I think just knowing the avatar is going to be vital for you, because you can essentially take anything that happens, any story, and put the kind of proper angle, and I don't want to say spin, but put a proper flavor on it that will resonate with the avatar. You mentioned earlier that out of the three co-founders, you're responsible for growth. Was this your role from the very beginning?
Tom: No, because no one really had any experience in online business when we started, we were all sort of jumping in and doing whatever. Then in the background to the legging story I've sort of left the corporate world, and then learnt online marketing, and started various other online businesses as well. Learning online marketing was crucial for all of them, and so I think it's actually something that's become somewhat of a passion of mine. I've taken on that role organically with the leggings company as I've got better at it, and started to enjoy it more.
Felix: When you did take on this role early on, or just early on in the business in general, what did you guys kind of focus on for that very early growth? Especially for any listeners out there that are in this phase, where they have a product, maybe they're still working on their avatar, and they're just trying to get some sales through the door. Get at least some cash flow on a monthly basis through the door. What did you focus on early on in terms of growing the business?
Tom: Yeah, so because we had no money, I guess the strategy was create content ourselves, and then distribute that to where we knew our avatar existed online. Whether that's just tweeting out, and then using specific hashtags, or creating Instagram images, and then using specific hashtags, that's like the small-scale way. That started to bring in the first few sales. Then to scale that up, still without spending any money, it's finding the people online, who had the audience of your avatar, sending them leggings, and then alongside a discount code. Then agreeing with them that they would wear the leggings, and say put five pictures on Instagram with that specific discount code. Those were the two things, they are the two things that I would urge anyone to do, who's just starting up their store. Start doing that right now, and I'd be consistent with it over a number of months, and obviously track everything. To get those first sales through the door, to get you some revenue, that you can then spend on ads, or to pay content creators to write stuff for your blog. That's what I would recommend.
Felix: I like that you're using a free method to kind of kick-start some cash flow so that you can then reinvest that into your business. To place a label on this approach that you've taken, you're doing influence marketing, you're trying to find influencers out there, that, like you're saying, has an audience that matches your avatar. How do you begin that search process? How do you identify that this particular influencer has an audience that belongs to the avatar that you guys have created?
Tom: Yeah, so I'll focus on Instagram, because that's been the most effective channel. It really is just a case of spending a lot of time on the application. Obviously your avatar is already formed, you know exactly who they are, and what they're like. You then start searching hashtags, you then start going through, and finding people with significant audiences that you think your avatar would follow. What's really handy about Instagram actually is that when you find someone that's perfect, you follow them, you click follow, it immediately matches you with three people similar to them, that you also could potentially follow. That's for like once you get one good one, or a couple of good ones, Instagram is automatically finding you people similar to them. That's what I really like about Instagram, but it really is a manual process.
Once you find them, of course you need to track them, spreadsheet, track number of followers, get all their personal information … Not personal information, get all the information, track in a spreadsheet, that's really important so you can follow your journey with them. Make sure that obviously you're following up with them to make sure they post.
Felix: Yeah, it's definitely important to track this, especially as you work with more and more influencers. Speaking of that, is this a numbers game where you try to reach as many influencers as possible, especially early on? Or do you try to be hyper-targeted in your approach?
Tom: I think it depends how much you want to spend. Obviously there's the cost of the item that you're sending people. For us, it was definitely a numbers game, we sent out hundreds of pairs of leggings. Some won't even get to your person, some people won't post even though you send it to them. Some people will be amazing, and because you're sending specific discount codes, you're only going to lose say seven pounds, that's approximately the cost of the leggings. You can very quickly understand who is a good influencer for you, and who isn't, based on how many sales you get. If you get a ten to one return on that ROI, return on investment, then you're just going to send them more. You're going to send them more pairs, and you're going to give them better discount codes. You can control it, you can mitigate the risk by only sending one item, and making sure you're tracking the results for each influencer.
Felix: Okay, so you are taking this kind of shotgun … Not shotgun approach necessarily, but you're trying to find every single influencer out there that you think has an audience of your customer avatars. You are reaching out to them, asking them … What are you asking them exactly? You're just saying, "I want to send you free products." Or how do you kind of pitch this?
Tom: Yeah, it's just a DM on Instagram to say we're opening up our ambassador program, would you be interested in contributing? We'd be happy to send you one pair if you agree to promote us on your profile with five images, with a specific discount code. Again, that's a numbers game. A number of people won't respond to that, a number of people will. It's just a case of capturing their information, sending them a basic contract to sign, I recommend doing that, just to increase the conversion to sending a pair and people posting. Yeah, again, numbers game. Basic outreach on Instagram DMs, and then tracking, making sure that the people that have agreed actually do it.
Felix: Okay, so you … I guess there's two different approaches that I've seen with influencer marketing. There's the approach where you have an ambassador program, and I'm assuming … Are they getting compensated through a referral bonus, or how does that work?
Tom: Yes, up until now, no they haven't, because we haven't invested in the affiliate software. However, only recently I learnt about a technique to actually track affiliates for free. All you need to do is ensure that the link you give to your influencer is one of those Google Analytics UTN tracking links, and you can actually give your influencer read-only access to your Google Analytic count, if you wish. Then they can actually track all of the conversion, all the e-commerce conversion with their link. Therefore they trust you, and they trust the fact that they can actually see all the conversions that they make. Then you could pay out manually. That's a very cheap way to give affiliate commissions without paying for any expensive software. We're actually going to start doing that soon. Up until now we've just been incentivizing with the product itself.
Felix: Okay, cool. I think that that's a great way to get started, incentivizing with just the product itself. Just by offering that discount code, I think one key thing to keep in mind is that influencers, they have their audience, and they want to make their audience happy. There's no influencer out there that hates their audience, that doesn't want to make them happy. By giving them kind of value to give back to their audience, through a discount code, you're giving them a tool to make their audience happy. It's really important to keep that in mind too, that you're not just coming to them as, "Hey advertise this for me." You're also offering their audience a discount code, and by having them use that discount code, when they're broadcasting to their audience, they're giving something back to their audience.
Definitely keep that in mind when you are pitching an influencer. You mentioned that when you're tracking this you are able to identify which influencers are amazing, that are driving a lot of conversions for you guys. What do you do when you work with them more? Just send them more products, and you said that you were giving them a steeper discount code to give to their audience?
Tom: Yes. We'll send them better, limited edition products, and even we'll double the amount of discount we'll give, just because we only give five percent discount now for first time influencers. Then we mitigate our potential loses, but then we're happy to offer more if someone can bring higher volume.
Felix: Is this something that you mentioned right off the bat? Or do you say, "Surprise, because you've been doing so well, here's some better deals." Or do you tell them that up front that if they hit this particular threshold, this particular goal, this is what's available for you?
Tom: Yeah, so we say if it goes well … Usually after we've agreed, we say if this goes well then we'd be more than happy to continue our relationship on more favorable terms.
Felix: Okay. You mentioned that you have a contract, I'm assuming this part that you just talked about is included in the contract, or at least included in the conversations? I haven't heard of anyone that has asked the influencer to sign a contract, do you find people get turned off by this when you start talking about legality, this aspect of it all?
Tom: It really isn't a watertight legal contract it's something that we drew up. We say that it's not watertight, but just so we can understand each other's commitments in this relationship. Yeah, we do get a lower conversion rate, but then maybe the people that do not sign the contract are the people that also would potentially not promote the product. We kind of see it as a good filter.
Felix: Yeah, I think that that's a good point, that you are … By adding more hurdles, you might decrease your conversion rate, but the ones that do make it through are the ones that are more serious. Sometimes you do want less people to work with, less people to deal with, essentially, and look for high impact influencers anyway. I think it's a good idea to have these kind of hurdles. Maybe not early on when you can't find anybody to work with you at all, you might want to give a little bit more leeway, but once you start working at these much bigger numbers of influencers you're reaching out to, it makes sense to at least protect or de-risk your side of things. What kind of stipulations, or what kind of requirements or commitments do you usually ask of an influencer when you do work with them?
Tom: The standard for us is just five posts featuring the product on Instagram, without a link obviously, but with … Without a clickable link, and the discount code in the description, and tagging our brand on Instagram as well.
Felix: Okay, cool. What happens when you … I know that you said the contract is not something airtight, and you probably wouldn't pursue it anyway. When you do send out the product, how long do you wait, or how long before follow-ups? I think that's another maybe potentially awkward situation that a lot of entrepreneurs are put in where they don't have a lot of funds, so they send out these products. Then they're just not getting kind of scammed, but they're just not getting as much commitment from the other side as they would like. How do you deal with this kind of situation?
Tom: Yeah, so we definitely drive for the commitment beforehand, of course, and we get people to agree with the contract, and we send out the product. We just have a virtual assistant who's charged with following up. Then if we follow-up, we probably wouldn't follow-up more than three times, we admit the loss if someone doesn't reply three times, because the investment is pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things. We don't go crazy about it.
Felix: Just give the audience an idea of how long you setting up a program like this takes. Do you remember how long it took you guys from deciding that you were going to be focused on reaching out to influencers, to actually maybe getting the first sales from the influencers that you worked with?
Tom: [inaudible 00:44:12] with about ten people, it took a few hours on Instagram to find those ten people. Sent them out the next day, started getting pitches coming through after about ten days. Then started getting … We didn't actually make that many sales from those first ten, because we didn't have the influence to nail it down, but we definitely had affiliate or influencer sales coming in around two to three weeks after we decided to do the program. In terms of investment, total investment, it's pretty minimal, especially if you're starting up. In terms of effectiveness, yeah, it's not as fast as putting up Facebook ads, but it can bring sales within two to three weeks.
Felix: Yeah, definitely. Probably a lot cheaper than running Facebook ads, or at least better return on your investment. Yeah, so influencer marketing sounds like what you guys did early on, and it sounds like what's been successful for you guys, even today. Give us an idea of how successful the business is, based on all these marketing techniques that you've employed.
Tom: Yeah, so I'll give you a volume of leggings sold yearly. To start of we sold 150 pairs in the first year. This is us investing two hours a week, we're all working full-time, so 150. Then 450 in the second year, 850 in the third year, and this year we're going to be selling somewhere between 1200 and 1500. Not a massive business, like we rarely take … I think we've only taken money out of the business once, the money has been reinvested back in. We haven't actually … I've yet to nail paid acquisition. Pretty much all of that has been from these organic, or influencer, social media content, and SEO marketing. Of course, experimenting with Facebook on a weekly basis to try and get that positive ROI.
Yeah, I mean in terms of marketing ROI it's been very good, but we have yet to scale. We have this little foundation of sales coming in from SEO content, social and influencer, but it's really when ie. now the positive ROI on paid ads, predominantly through Facebook, that we're going to see some significant growth. Again, we're still … None of us are full-time, we still have full-time other projects. I probably invest a few hours week growing this, I think that if I do hit the positive ROI Facebook paid marketing then we would potentially consider us all focusing on this full-time, but until then, we wouldn't.
Felix: Yeah, I think that scale is the key to the success, I think paid ad positions is definitely there, because once you figure that out and get a positive return, it's just a matter of putting in more money, and essentially printing money, at the end of the day.
Tom: Exactly.
Felix: Once you figured it out, that's the kind of key, the goal everyone is trying to reach when they're trying to gather business. What can you use from your learnings of the free channels? From the influencer marketing, from content marketing, that has helped you on this road towards figuring out the paid acquisition piece?
Tom: I think going back to the avatar again, about having very specific knowledge of what this person is trying to achieve with their life. Then finding out where they exist on the internet, then putting content in front of them. That's the three steps. Who are targeting? Where do they live on the internet? Then how can you put your content in front of them for as low economic cost to you as possible? For me, that's using social media manually, first you get it working yourself, and then you give it to a VA. Then finding influencers manually. First you get it working for yourself, and then you give it to a VA. Yeah, that's the three-step process. Once it's working to a positive ROI then you hand over to a virtual assistant.
I mean it's largely exactly the same process that we're going to use when we get the Facebook advertising working right. First decide exactly who you're targeting, like the same avatar, and then find out where they are. Okay, they're on Facebook. Then put the content in front of them at a low economic cost, it's getting the targeting right, and then monitoring the campaign. Exactly the same thing, but instead of paying Facebook to put the content in front of a few people, you're giving influencers, or you're being sneaky on Twitter or Instagram.
Felix: Definitely. Now that we're kind of in the holiday shopping season, definitely by the time this episode goes live, we're going to be in it. Any plans, or what are you guys focused on to take advantage of this season?
Tom: Yeah, so we usually have specific discount codes that we give strategically through specific influencers, and to a specific group of people that come to our site. We usually also put together, so we package together products. Like the perfect gift for him will be a number of specific combination of leggings, maybe with some special items, that we haven't [inaudible 00:49:20] yet. Just bundle them together in this special package that we can add an extra little margin on, because it's like this special Christmas present. That's really everything that we have done in the past, and probably will do in the future.
Felix: Yeah, I think those kind of gift guides are so, so vital for … Especially if you can make it on other gift guides, from other brands, for other content sites. I think make it on them is basically getting free customers, because they don't have the time, or just are overwhelmed by shopping. They're just like tell me what to buy. If you can be in front of them when they're in that stage, I think it's a very cheap way to acquire customers. What are some future plans for the brand, outside of holiday seasons, maybe within the next year or so? Where do you want to see the brand go?
Tom: Yeah, so as I mentioned, we've developed this other avatar, and we're bringing out specific cycling male leggings out. Once we have them, we'll have a total of 19 different products. Then it's really just ensuring that I invest enough time in paid ad position. Once we have paid positive ROI campaigns running for those three different avatars, then we're going to be at a scale, and then we're going to have massive freedom on what we actually do with the brand going forward. We did actually try to branch out to a different product, it wasn't really successful. It was a single handed watch.
Our theory was that the same person who sort of wants to defy male convention, would also be interested in a watch that only has a minute hand. We got them developed, they weren't the highest quality of watches, to be honest. We only sold about five, and discontinued the line. Further product lines would need a lot of thinking, and more importantly, a lot of conversations with the person, that we didn't have. I think we only had two conversations with customers about what other products they would like to see from our brand. That was probably the reason why the watch failed.
Felix: Once you have a customer base already they can easily access from all the thousands of pairs that you sold, do you take the approach differently now where you do the surveying, do these questions? Asking questions even before you have product in mind, or do you still go back to the approach where you come up with a product first, and then … Not sort of back into it, but you try to validate your hypothesis about an existing product?
Tom: Yeah, so it's quite interesting, when we released the latest few designs, we had our brainstorming session, drew up four images of what they would look like, and then sent out a survey to the complete list asking people to vote on the designs. Then only produced the top three. I think that was an extremely powerful campaign actually because when you did come to launch the designs, the email you would write would be like, "You helped us choose these designs, here's a specific discount code. Thank you very much for helping us develop these designs. We only have 50 of them, here's a specific discount code." That email converted really, really well.
I'm a massive fan of enabling your existing customer base to feel like they collaborate with you, and to actually collaborate with your future products. It kind of gives you an excuse to market to them, when you launch the product, and I think will increase the conversion rate because they feel like they're … Well they are involved in the process.
Felix: Yeah, definitely. I think when they are, like you're saying, involved, they are much more likely to support the end product if they had an influence in it from the beginning. Okay cool, so thanks so much again Tom. StitchLeggings.com is the website, S-T-I-T-C-H-L-E-G-G-I-N-G-S.COM. Anywhere else you recommend the listeners check out if they want to follow along with what you guys are up to?
Tom: Yeah, you can just go to the site, I'd love you to check out our funnel, and our lead magnets, that would be awesome. If you have any questions about Shopify, or how we built the brand, or PR actually, we've been very effective with that, you can tweet me at TomHuntIO, I am more than happy to answer any questions you may have.
Felix: Awesome, thanks again so much for your time Tom.
Thanks for listening to Shopify Masters, the e-commerce marketing podcast for ambitious entrepreneurs. To start your store today, visit Shopify.com/Masters to claim your extended 30 day free trial.


text:
It looks like Lockheed Martin is the latest victim in what seems to be an endless string of security breaches. This time however, it does not look like a lack of security measures led to the breach. In fact, it seems that Lockheed's implementation of a widely-trusted security tool was the attack vector this time around.
Last month we reported on the apparent compromise of RSA's SecurID product, and while many speculated that this intrusion could lead to subsequent attacks, the firm downplayed the breach. They stated that the stolen data was unlikely to affect their customers, but as usual, the problem appears to be far larger than originally estimated.
The breadth of the intrusion is currently unknown, and with both RSA and Lockheed officials keeping mum, it may be some time before anyone knows how serious it is. When military secrets are in question however, you know it can't be good!

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Here's hoping that this touching article foreshadows a larger movement toward fullfilling Jesus' teachings to us. From the San Francisco Chronicle today.... Helping the homeless: City's unique volunteer program is growing into a genuine civic movement
Kevin Fagan, Chronicle Staff Writer , Monday, March 21, 2005
Amme Hill had never talked to a homeless person before, never helped out at a soup kitchen. She's a busy yoga instructor in San Francisco. Even though her heart went out to desperate people she saw on the street, she never found an opportunity to turn her compassion into action.
So when she responded to a mass mailing and showed up at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in February for a city-sponsored gathering of hundreds of people to help the homeless, she didn't know if she'd feel repulsed, inspired, scared or sad.
That didn't last long. By the end of the day, the mystery was gone -- replaced by a new understanding for those unfortunates she used to stroll past, and by a fiery optimism that their plight can be eased.
"They're just people, like the rest of us," Hill, 31, said several days later, a tone of marvel still in her voice. "What really hit me the most is how such a lot of people were so sad, so alone. And what surprised me the most was how obvious the whole problem was, and how to fix it. Give them a place to live and counseling to get over the drug problem or whatever, and you've got it."
Meet the face of Mayor Gavin Newsom's new citizen army of volunteers -- the only one of its kind in the nation devoted to tackling homelessness.
What began in October as a 200-person corps of virtually all city employees who answered the mayor's request to pitch in on their own time has evolved over six months into the makings of a genuine civic movement, drawing not just on government staff but also nonprofit social services agencies as well as real estate agents, teachers, lawyers, carpenters and other ordinary folk.
The monthly gathering is called Project Homeless Connect, and the idea is to have citizen volunteers gather for a day to help city counselors, welfare and housing specialists sign up homeless people for services that can get them off the street.
The third Connect gathering, held Feb. 17, drew 575 volunteers -- and what excited organizers as much as anything was that one-quarter of them were not city workers, as in the past, but ordinary people who vowed to bring friends with them to the next gathering.
Many say this is the first time they've ever seen the city create a means for them to help in a significant hands-on way. And, like Hill, they say they have long felt a pent-up longing to do something after watching homelessness in San Francisco metastasize into the nation's most visible crisis with street people.
"As I look around the country, I have seen nothing like this anywhere," said Philip Mangano, President Bush's point man on homelessness. Some cities, such as Boston, muster citizens once a year to work on homeless issues, he said -- but enlisting them once every month or so hasn't happened before.
Word of the periodic gatherings is spreading around the country through social worker networks. Dozens of organizations from cities including New York, Denver, Indianapolis, Nashville and Los Angeles have called Newsom's office to see if they can copy the technique.
"Everybody in the country is looking around for what works, and what's going on in San Francisco is very unique and exciting," said Becky Kanis, director of innovations for Common Ground of New York, one of the nation's premier providers of supportive housing for the homeless. "I am going to bring city commissioners and people from other nonprofits with me to come look at the Connect project, see how we can do that here."
The Connect project has been an awakening experience for both the people helping out and for homeless people themselves.
"I'd always just bitched and moaned about walking over the homeless every day when I went out for lunch, but then I heard about this Connect thing," said real estate agent and lifelong San Francisco resident Ali Tejada. "I told myself, 'OK, why not?' "
What she found when she showed up last month at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium -- which had been turned into a giant MASH-like service center for Project Homeless Connect -- was a roomful of eager volunteers and 200 homeless people lined up outside waiting for the doors to open.
"Some (of the homeless) smelled so bad, were in wheelchairs, were really messed up, but I actually got to talk to them for the first time, and I realized, 'Hey, these are real people with real problems,' " said Tejada, 50. "It was a little daunting at first. But they felt so respected by us shaking their hands, calling them by their names, actually remembering their names, that I began to really respect them, too."
She spent six hours escorting homeless men and women to food lines and booths of social workers who signed them up for drug rehab, shelter, housing or counseling for welfare or jobs. By the end, her opinion of the drug addicts, alcoholics, prostitutes, out-of-work carpenters and other hard-luck cases she talked to went from disgust to compassion, she said.
"The minute I got home, I took a shower because I didn't want the homeless smell all over me -- but the next thing I did was go to our closet and clean out absolutely everything we didn't need. The next day I dropped it all off at St. Anthony's, a big Hefty bag full."
That's just the sort of thing Newsom and his organizers hoped would happen.
"There is such a hungry appetite to contribute, but people didn't know how to help," Newsom said at the February gathering. "They wrote checks, or they helped out on a holiday at a church -- which are good things -- but this is face-to-face, totally real and intensified."
Michael Simpson, 41, came to the auditorium that day after shivering all night on Market Street under a thin blanket. He'd heard on the street that something special was going on, and tears rolled down his grubby face as he sat with hands around a coffee cup.
"My wife died in 1998, and I went off the deep end," he said quietly. "I need housing, food, counseling, everything." He looked up as a passing volunteer patted his shoulder.
"I can't believe these people don't treat me like crap," he said. "Maybe those people who walk by me every day aren't such jerks after all."
The sheer size of San Francisco's homeless population -- at least 6,248 in this winter's city-run count -- combined with budget cutbacks make it imperative that the city get as creative as it can, said Newsom's Deputy Chief of Staff Alex Tourk, who runs the Connect program.
So it was only natural to begin enlisting ordinary people to help, he said.
"I think what's really gotten people engaged is that we're not just dictating to them what to do," said Tourk. "We're listening to feedback, strengthening what works and throwing out what doesn't work."
The three Connect operations since October have housed or sheltered 140 people, more than half of them in permanent housing, enrolled 116 in intensive drug rehabilitation or mental health programs, and signed up 282 up for welfare. A total 2,352 homeless people were interviewed by the volunteers, and those who didn't get housing or rehab got sessions with psychiatric counselors, medical doctors or job advisers. Most also got food or clothing.
The next Connect, on March 28, will be a planning session only for volunteers, and the one after that on April 21 will be another rollout of services for the homeless. Tourk intends to continue that formula of alternating planning sessions one month with hands-on help the next, and his goal is to add new services each time.
For instance, organizers plan to have 100 hotel rooms to hand out in the April Connect. They also want to have 100 doctors on hand, about four times the number in February.
The statistics mean less to the volunteers than the thrill of putting their hearts into action.
"It was an incredibly powerful experience," said Brian Hughes, general manager of the stylish Argent Hotel, who went for his first Connect last month. "It confirmed some of my preconceptions about why people were on the streets -- mental illness, drugs, poverty -- but I was amazed at how there was never a moment that I felt hostility or fear."
In his crisp, blue suit and silver cuff links, Hughes looks like the last sort of man who would want to shake hands with junkies who slept in the street so long the grime won't wash off in a day. But he says he liked it so much he's taking his friends with him this month.
"I've heard some people calling this thing a populist movement, and that sure fits for me," he said. "We're all just people trying to help other people."
Even Phil Smith, who runs the Salvation Army's Harbor Light drug rehab center in San Francisco, came away with a new sense of purpose. Like many Connect volunteers who work at nonprofit social agencies, he is well familiar with the problems of poverty but said he'd never felt invited to pitch in by the city before. At least not in a way that wasn't contractual.
"I wanted to get a feel for it first, to see if it was worthwhile," he said. "I found it amazing. I'm going back, and this time I'll take some of my staff -- and some residents (in the Salvation Army's program) too, if they want. Think of what an incredible thing that would be for their self-esteem, helping people with the same kinds of problems they had."
Kendra Stewardson knows about that. An Army door gunner in the Vietnam War, Stewardson became a transgender woman in the early 1970s and eked out a living as a carpenter until quitting to care for her ailing mother for the past decade. Her mother died last year -- and suddenly, with no income, the 54-year-old found herself on the street.
Volunteers found Stewardson sleeping on the sidewalk during December's Connect, and by February she was living in a hotel -- and working as a volunteer on that month's muster.
"I can't believe I'm doing this," she said during the Feb. 17 session at the auditorium as she steered a line of homeless people to the welfare intake table. "For a transgender person like me to get help so fast, instead of just another dead end, really says something."
Some longtime advocates for the homeless remain skeptical, though.
"The question I always hear after one of these Connect things is, 'What is the follow-through for these people who get contacted?' " said Sister Bernie Galvin, head of Religious Witness With Homeless People. "I wonder, because clearly there is not enough housing or services in this city. So how many are really getting helped?"
She also is concerned that shelter beds set aside for Connect mean that other homeless people are left outside at night.
Newsom responds by saying the critics should appreciate that 140 homeless people have been moved inside through the initiative, and give it more time to work. As for the shelter beds, he pointed out that there are about 100 vacancies every night in the city's shelters.
"If anyone has any criticism about what we're doing, I just tell them, 'Come on down to the next Project Homeless Connect,' " Newsom said. "See what we're doing. Give us your advice, right on the spot. Be part of the solution."


text:
The War Was In My Throat
The war was in my throat; the need to shout it out. I thought I'd bust wide open. (1)
In the late 1960s I was asked not to talk about it. It bummed people out. People couldn't look me in the eye when I tried to explain what happened to me at Khe Sanh.
In the 1970s I got told by veterans of previous wars that we (the men and women who served and fought in Vietnam) were the worst Americans who ever went to combat. My first wife informed me that I hadn't undergone anything worse than anyone else had. I shut my mouth.
In the 1980s I worked with people who had no inkling that I had been a Marine, that I had survived the Siege of Khe Sanh. I didn't talk about it, and neither did a lot of my fellow Vietnam vets.
Not that keeping your trap shut is just a phenomenon exclusive to Vietnam Veterans. I think silence about battle is common with all combat vets, no matter what the war.
Regardless, in the 1990s we started to talk about it: our war, our horrors. For me it came out through art. I wrote poems and stories, some fiction, some not; mostly autobiographical at the roots.
I was a witness to what happened at Khe Sanh. Not everything, of course. That would be impossible. Nevertheless, I was a witness and so I have been telling the story of my experience. Story is how humans pass on what we learn about life from one generation to the next. Does that mean that anybody learns from our story? Probably not. If they did, we wouldn't be fighting war after war after war.
Notwithstanding the fact that we don't seem to learn any of the human stuff passed from one generation to the next, it is still incumbent on us to tell the story.
While Betty and I were in Chicago screening BRAVO!, we went to visit the Pritzker Military Museum and Library. Several people familiar with the city had told us it would be worth our time to go there, and since the Pritzker co-sponsored our screening there, we were eager to show up and view the photography, the art, the architecture, the library.
The Pritzker has a steady stream of visitors arriving at their doors all through the day and researchers are in the library researching on the computer terminals, watching DVDs, sorting through stacks of books on library tables.
While at the museum, we met the coordinator of the veteran's oral history project, Mr. Thomas Webb, who convinced me to give an interview, and we scheduled it for the following day. I asked how long it would take, and he said they liked to get a couple of hour's worth of material.
Since I was busy with Chicago, I said I'd give them an hour. I gave them three and one-half hours of war and horror and Marines and life. I could have gone on talking to my interviewer, Mr. Jerrod Howe, but I had things to do. My interview will show up as a podcast on their website later this year.
Mine was interview ninety-six. The previous ninety-five have been veterans of World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the First Gulf War, and the Middle East Wars of this century as well Bosnia, Somalia, and other foreign conflicts.
I am particularly thoughtful about those World War II vets. When I was a young veteran, I got told that all the men who fought in that war, that worst of all wars, didn't need to talk about their war. And of course that was humbug. Guadalcanal Diary, From Here to Eternity, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Thin Red Line, Randall Jarrell's poems about the Eighth Air Force, the photography that was available to all of us, and Ernie Pyle's wonderful books about the troops are just a few of the stories that were told about this war. Those examples were mostly veterans telling their stories. And the ones who didn't talk in 1946 or 1956 and who are still living are giving their histories to the Pritzker's Holt Oral History Program and hundreds of other regional organizations intent on preserving memories of war.
Let's face it, war is horrible and in the long run seems pretty senseless, but it's one of the things that we humans do best, so it is incumbent on us as a species to understand this effort—this social effort—we get involved in quite regularly.
Here in Boise, Idaho, we have several organizations recording oral histories. I'll bet, if you are a veteran, you can contact such an organization either in your area or elsewhere, and tell your story.
As a matter of fact, Thomas Webb at the Pritzker would like to hear from you because they want you to tell them your story. You don't have to be in Chicago to get that done. They have multiple ways of chronicling oral history.
The Pritzker Military Museum and Library's website is at http://www.pritzkermilitary.org/. You can find out more about the Pritzker's Holt Oral History Program at http://www.pritzkermilitary.org/whats_on/holt-oral-history-program/stories-service/.
The mission statement for the Holt Oral History Program states:
"… the Holt Oral History Program is dedicated to conserving the unique Stories of Service of the Citizen Soldier—not just high ranking officers, recognizable faces from history, or soldiers who have had their stories told already—but every man and woman, from all walks of life, who has served and sacrificed for our country."
We are all witnesses to our time. Share what you have seen and learned.
The war was in my mouth, right behind my teeth. It wanted out. (2)
(1) From the short story, "Party," from the collection of short stories, The Gods of Angkor Wat, Ken Rodgers, BK Publications, 2014, p 137
(2) From the short story, "Party," from the collection of short stories, The Gods of Angkor Wat, Ken Rodgers, BK Publications, 2014, p 138
On the screening front, BRAVO! will be screened in Nampa, Idaho on September 25, 2014 at the Elks Club. Doors will open at 6:00 PM with the screening of the film at 6:30. Screening will be followed by a Q & A session. Suggested donation, $10.00 to benefit Wyakin Warrior Foundation.
If you would like to host a screening of BRAVO! in your town this fall or winter, please contact us immediately.
DVDs of BRAVO! are available. For more information go to https://bravotheproject.com/buy-the-dvd/.
BRAVO! has a page on Facebook. Please "like" us and "share" the page at https://www.facebook.com/Bravotheproject/. It's another way you can help spread the word about the film.


text:
Overall: Paula Location: 14 Hilltop Court, Lenhartsville, Pa. 19534Date Posted: 03/17/2011 08:21:45 AM
I Simply Love this cookbook, "Comfort Foods" When I get a new cookbook, I go from cover to cover more than once, marking all the recipes I'd like to make. The Cheesy, Creamy Recipes, reminds me of a warm cozy fire, you can snuggle up too!, wanting more. The Gooey, Chocolately Recipes, Well-- we remember all those delicious times when a little Love & Chocolate made all the difference. This cookbook & Gooseberry Patch, with all their cookbooks does that for all of us. They make a difference filled with Love To Share. Thank-You
Overall: Mary Location: Tallmadge, OhioDate Posted: 03/08/2011 01:18:20 PM
Simple, straight-forward recipes with easily obtained, everyday ingredients. This book makes a wonderful gift for the bride-to-be.
Overall: Tammy Location: Danville, VA Date Posted: 03/08/2011 02:08:58 PM
Love this book. Have many of the Gooseberry Patch cookbooks. Love the added inserts. Lots of good ideas.
Overall: Brenda Location: Gonzales, LADate Posted: 11/12/2008 09:38:01 AM
This book has the best recipes. My insurance agent asked if I could recommend a cookbook that had normal ingredients and was relatively easy. I immediately thought of Comfort Foods
Overall: Kara Location: Military overseasDate Posted: 10/20/2008 04:10:31 PM
I love this cookbook. I have 5 cookbooks from Gooseberry Patch and all of them are used frequently. Comfort Foods is the newest and I have already shared so many recipes from it because they are so great!


text:
Fight, Roman Warriors,
For glory and vict'ry in the game.
Fight for the honor of winning the highest fame for our name.
Willowbrook High School is proud to be cheering you to vict'ry.
So we want to know we'll cheer 'til we reach our goal.
Raise high our banner, with colors of silver, grey and blue.
It stands for spirit – the spirit to win acclaim that's our due.
Gridiron or classroom, we're striving to win an ever-high score.
Hear us say it once more – let's go, Roman Warriors, score!


text:
online courses that I attended ..
- Probabilistic Graphical Models (Daphne Koller)
- Functional Programming Principles in Scala (Martin Odersky)
- Neural Networks in Machine Learning (Geoffrey Hinton)
the best of the papers that I read ..
I usually read lots of papers on my subjects of interest. The total number are too many to list here. But here are a few of them, mostly from the domain of programming languages and type theory. In this regard I must confess that I am not a programming language theory person. But I sincerely believe that you need to know some theory to make sense of its implementation. That's the reason I think programmers (yes. serious programmers using a decent programming language with a static type system) will do better to learn a bit of category theory.
As I mentioned at the beginning, currently my programming language of choice is Scala and I have been exploring how to write better code with Scala's multi-paradigm capabilities. Though I tend to use the functional power of Scala more than its object oriented features, there are quite a few idioms that I use where I find its object oriented capabilities useful. Scala 2.10 will now be released any time and I am even more excited to try out many of the new features that it will offer.
Ok .. here are some of the papers that I enjoyed reading in 2012 ..
- An Introduction to Programming and Proving with Dependent Types in Coq - Adam Chlipala
- Theorems for free! - Philip Wadler
- Totality - Conor McBride
- Proofs are Programs: 19th Century Logic and 21st Century Computing - Philip Wadler
- Data types à la carte - Wouter Swierstra
- Agda-curious?: an exploration of programming with dependent types - Conor McBride
- Ideal Hash Trees - Phil Bagwell
a few good books ..
This is also a different list that what I expected at the beginning of the year. It's mostly due to my focus on machine learning and AI related topics that I took up in course of my journey.
- Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference - Judea Pearl
- Probabilistic Graphical Models: Principles and Techniques - Daphne Koller
- A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Godel and Einstein - Palle Yourgrau
- Neural Networks for Pattern Recognition - Christopher M. Bishop
- Turing (A Novel about Computation) - Christos H. Papadimitriou
- Practical Foundations for Programming Languages - Robert Harper (Read the freely available ebook)
- Haskell: The Craft of Functional Programming (3rd Edition) - Simon Thompson
3 conferences in a year - my best so far ..
This was my second consecutive PhillyETE and I spoke on functional approach to domain modeling. In case you missed it earlier, here's the presentation up on slideshare. I combined my PhillyETE trip with a trip to London to attend ScalaDays 2012. It was a great experience listening to 3 keynotes by Guy Steele, Simon Peyton Jones and Martin Odersky. I also got to meet a number of my friends on Twitter who rock the Scala community .. it was so nice getting to know the faces behind the twitter handles. Later in the year I also spoke at QCon NY on the topic of domain modeling in the functional world.
One of the conferences that I plan to attend in 2013 is The Strange Loop. It has been one of the awesomest conferences so far and I hate to be tracking it only on Twitter every year. Keeping fingers crossed ..
some plans for 2013 (Not Resolutions though!)
In no specific order ..
- Do more Haskell - Haskell is surely in for some big renaissance. I just spent a couple of hours of very productive time watching Edward Kmett explain his new lens library.
- Continue Scala - obviously .. needs no explanation ..
- Explore more of machine learning and work on at least one concrete project. I am now reading 2 solid books on ML theory - as I mentioned above I feel a bit uncomfortable learning implementations without any of the theory that drive them. While both of these books assume a solid background of mathematics and statistics (which I don't have), I am trying to crawl through them, greedily accumulating necessary math background as much as I can. Wish I could take a sabbatical leave for 1 year and finish both of them.
Guess that's all .. See you all on the other side of 2013. Happy holidays and have a gorgeous 2013.


text:
Humphrey Commey
Founder & CEOThe founder of Consulting WP, he has been the captain of this ship from the beginning and has sailed...Read more -
Thelma Croffie-Commey (Mrs.)
Chief Finance OfficerBeing the CFO in the Financial Industry is a tough task, thankfully he was here to man the helm and lead...Read more -
Kofi Nti Asamoah
VP Sales and MarketingShe is an accomplished business developer. Her skills at creating relationships with clients are legendary;...Read more -
Dennis Norris
Chief Marketing OfficerHe has helped Business WordPress Theme reach new heights and enter new markets. His skills of understanding...Read more -
Gina Kennedy
AdministratorAs we help other companies grow, she helps us grow. She handles all the internal work at WP consulting...Read more -
Fernando Torres
Tax ConsultantTax laws and regulations are some of the most complicated and infuriating parts of the financial industry....Read more -
Chivelet Honsou
Financial AdvisorThe founder of Consulting WP, he has been the captain of this ship from the beginning and has sailed...Read more
We are looking for proactive professionals with extensive business expertise and a high level of personal involvement to join our team. Send your CV now.


text:
GNUstep: A Free Software alternative to OpenStep
Sun, NeXT, and GNU
After leaving Apple, Steve Jobs created a new company, NeXT, with the aim of producing the perfect computer. In 1989, the operating system for this machine, named NeXTStep, was released.
In spite of being available initially only on the $6,500 NeXT Cube, NeXTStep was incredibly influential. The first web browser, WorldWideWeb (later renamed to Nexus) was developed on it. (The author, Tim Berners-Lee, claimed that his browser wouldn't have been possible without NeXTStep's superb development environment.) Other software developed on NeXT machines included Doom.
A few years later, in 1993, NeXT partnered with Sun to produce the OpenStep specification. This was a tidied-up version of the NeXT APIs, intended for cross-platform development. It was divided into two components:
- The Foundation Kit provided low-level libraries, such as strings, associative arrays, and file I/O.
- The Application Kits provided a GUI toolkit and associated services.
Sun briefly supported OpenStep on Solaris, while NeXT released a new version of their OS—confusingly named OPENSTEP—which was made available for a number of architectures, including x86. NeXT also provided an implementation of the specification that ran on Windows.
At the time, there was significant interest from the GNU project in the NeXT system. Even today, many people regard OPENSTEP as the ideal UNIX OS. For awhile, the GNU operating system was intended to be very similar to NeXTStep; the GNU HURD kernel was based on the same Mach underpinnings as NeXTStep, although with a more ambitious design. The GUI layer would have been provided by a GNU implementation of the NeXT APIs. This project gained some more momentum after the OpenStep specification was released, but was gradually overshadowed by KDE and GNOME.
One of the major problems for GNUstep was the fact that very few developers had had exposure to NeXTStep or OPENSTEP. Then came the takeover of Apple by NeXT (a remarkable feat by Steve Jobs, who managed to persuade Apple's management to pay his company to take them over). The barrier to entry suddenly dropped. Where previously NeXT hardware cost upwards of $5,000, and the i486 version of the OS cost $499, the machines were now affordable.
As more developers became accustomed to the elegance of the OpenStep API through Apple's implementation, known as Cocoa, interest in the project was rekindled. At the current time, GNUstep implements more or less all of the original OpenStep specification and several OS X extensions.


text:
There are multiple shipping options available for online merchants to select in China, especially in the eCommerce industry. For instance, Singapore Post/PostNL/DHL eCommerce packet, etc.
When you order something online, the seller will choose the most suitable shipping method they think for your parcel, depending on certain factors, like the destination area, shipping fare, the special item, etc.
Our system can auto-detect the originating and destination country according to the tracking information provided by the carrier.


text:
Olmsted Campus Middle School Youth Group
July 31 at 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
|Recurring Event (See all)
An event every week that begins at 7:00 pm on Wednesday, repeating indefinitely
Join us at Middle School Youth Group!
Every Wednesday from 7:00-8:30pm Middle School Students gather at the Olmsted Falls Campus to deepen their friendships and their understanding of the most important things in life. We always have games, music, and a lesson from the Bible that points towards living the Contagious Abundant Life in Christ.
When you arrive, you'll be greeted by our highly qualified adult advisor team and other Middle School students from the area. You'll find a seat and we'll play games that will almost always make you laugh, sing a few songs together, hear teaching from the Bible, and have a no-pressure opportunity to discuss what you're learning.


text:
Listen to the podcast here.
- Special thanks to Gavia Baker-Whitelaw for helping us assemble the St. Searle's marginalia!
- Listen to our FlameCon X-Tra Bonus Episode!
- The MacDonald Hall books are delightful, and you should read them all immediately.
- If you didn't get Jay's joke about St. Searle's, this is for you.
- The International Association of Master Penmen, Engrossers, and Teachers of Handwriting is the kind of thing you'll like, if you like that kind of thing.
- We talked about Kitty Pryde and asynchronous social development in Giant-Size Special #1!
- D'Spayre last turned up on the podcast in Look Upon My Man-Thing and D'Spayre!


text:
Write a Last-Minute Resume by Sticking to These 3 Rules
Across the professional world, people from every level of life share this struggle. The 16-year-old applying at the local grocery store, the 35-year-old stockbroker who was just laid off, and the 22-year-old college graduate are all procrastinating on writing their resumes.All of a sudden, you need your resume. Fast. There's an upcoming job opportunity, a career fair, or you simply don't want to spend three hours deciding between fonts when the only style you've ruled out is comic sans. Fear not. It's time to quickly rip this band aid off–literally on the count of three. Here are the three golden rules of last-minute resume-writing.
Why Traditional is Impressive (and Easy!)
Why do we procrastinate to the death on our resumes? It's way too much pressure to express your entire professional identity with the style and content of one sheet of paper. How will you look awesome, organized, and intelligent based on a series of indentations and font sizes? Should you create your resume with InDesign? This isn't a piece of "flair" at a Fridays. Stick to proven successful tactics.
5 Full-Proof Resume Fonts
Life advice: Don't mess with racoons, a hungry girlfriend, or resume fonts. Forget what your older brother who just graduated from design school told you. Font is not the place on your last-minute resume to take risks. The five fonts you can always count on are Georgia, Helvetica, Calibri, Garamond, and Cambria. Fonts like Times New Roman, Arial, and Courier are safe and boring options. They won't put you in the no-call-back pile, but why choose a font you've written every high school and college essay in when you can upgrade to an attractive Garamond?
1. Formatting: Less is More
Please take a deep breath. Formatting your resume is the portion of this exercise that puts you most at risk of cussing yourself into delirium. Indenting correctly is so much harder than it looks.
- Use the hide/show button in MS Word to make all alignment and spacing visible. This button allows you to clearly view the precise spacing between each word and title so you can determine if your resume content is mostly aligned, or perfectly aligned–a big difference!
- Make sure you correctly align your titles and dates. Go to the Format menu in MS Word and select the Tabs option. Here, you can clear all tabs, set, and reset your margin adjustments for sections of your resume like the date ranges for your job experience. Here's a great step-by-step for using the MS Word's Tab tool by TechRepublic.
- Keep the stylistic formatting simple and smooth. Again, now is not the time to experiment. You're writing a last-minute resume, and you want easy-to-read categories. Understated and functional will work better than showmanship. Think sparrow, not peacock. Take a very simple resume example, like the one above, and center your name and basic information. Then, neatly categorize your sections below. The key to a last-minute resume is to be simple and error-proof. Pro tip: Accuracy is elegant. Precision will speak for itself no matter the format.
Here's a great example of a resume crafted for the tech industry (see below). The straight-to-the-point formatting and sharp Helvetica font are easy to implement and add a slightly edgy aesthetic. This resume doesn't look like it was done in two hours, but it's a resume that could easily be made in under that.
2. Writing Out Your Accomplishments
This is not your 10-page paper on medieval poetry. Don't write bullet points to fill space on your resume. Even if you've had zero jobs and zero internships, any college research project, club, or association will fit nicely into our resume bullet formula below.
Verb + Concrete Number + Date Range + Proper NounVague accomplishment: Collaborated on group research project for senior Sociology course.
Formulated accomplishment: Researched and wrote 15-page senior-level anthropology project by collaborating with an organized team 5 hours per week for 2 months, earning an A grade in Sociology and the Modern Marketplace.Always specify what you accomplished. Even if you received a B grade in a calculus class, do the math. You may have received a grade 20 percent higher than the class average–which is brag-worthy. Using percentages, daily and weekly deadlines, and proper nouns for anyone you may have reported to in a school organization or classroom is how to effectively communicate your accomplishments to an employer.
3. No Experience? The Rules on Resume LengthIf you're worried about ending up with a resume that's a half-page long because you're new to the job market, don't worry. It's ideal for your resume to be one full page long, formatted to fill up the entire page. But if you're a recent graduate, this expectation is unfair. If you fall short a quarter of a page, that is acceptable. Here are some tips to remember before you throw in the towel on length:
- Adjust the margins, spacing, and font. You don't want this to be like that time you increased the font size of every period so you barely made the page minimum for your history essay. But resumes are made to be skimmable and clear. Bigger font, space between sections, and large margins are completely fine within reason. We emphasize: within reason. If you have to ask yourself, "Does this look funny?" Then, it probably does. If you don't go overboard on size and spacing, the two can help your low level of experience reach a full page, and look super readable for employers hoping to skim your skills.
- Add an Objective. Resume experts have debated far and wide whether an objective or professional summary is even necessary anymore. If you are just graduating or applying for any entry-level internship or associate role, demonstrating your potential and professional goals within a personal headline can set the tone for who you are. Done right, objectives are powerful ways to get to know a candidate–and they coincidentally add length to your resume.
- Your personality: where to put it. Another useful resume detail for any candidate–especially new grads–is adding one line including your hobbies or interests. Companies hire based on character as much as they hire based on qualifications. If you're passionate about guitar, animals, hiking, rock climbing, or writing, add a small line to clue potential employers in on who you are as a creative and motivated individual.
Now, to address the other end of the spectrum. You should never create a resume that is two pages long unless you've held several executive positions. At the age of twenty-two, if you have a two-page resume, it can come off as sloppy. Imagine placing three crackers, four carrots, and a scoop of peanut butter onto two plates and one bowl. That's silly, isn't it? This small snack, a preview of the meal to come, could easily fit on one plate. That's how two-page resumes look for recent graduates. Keep your professional preview to one page. It's cleaner and shows basic attention to formatting.Formatting your resume in just a few hours is not only possible, it's easy! If you only take one message away from this post, please remember to stick to traditional rules for last-minute resume-writing. Resumes are meant to be continuously updated and polished, so you can always go back and add more personal touch. For the first writing round, stick to accurate formatting, clean and attractive fonts, and simple organization. You'd be surprised how much well-crafted and clean-cut bullet points can impress an employer that just spent hours reviewing resumes with typos, formatting errors, and vaguely listed accomplishments. Be that breath of fresh air for whoever is reading your professional history.


text:
Exclusive and Elegant Artistic Balloon Art on a large scale to give the WOW effect to your favorite person!
It's STUNNING! #BalloonBouquet
Great for Birthday Gift, Party Decoration near a sweet table or as a Photo Backdrop for an additional impact.
Order Online, Customized it and Celebrate!
Delivered Right to your Door! with @balloonsforeverything
Material: Latex and foil balloons are 100% biodegradable.
Float time may vary based on temperature, environment and handling. Hi-Float sealant is included and applied to any helium filled latex balloon bouquet order.
If used indoors, we guarantee the following float times the latex balloons with helium have a duration of approx. 8 hours, we guarantee its durability of 48hrs or more. Microfoil or metallic balloons will last more than 7 days, depending on weather conditions and treatment.
Balloons used outdoors are not guaranteed to last any specific amount of time as the sun, heat, wind, rain, etc., affects the lifespan of the balloons.
Our Bouquets must be ordered at least 3 days in advance, if you want from one day to another you must confirm availability. Call (708)573-4830. We do not have a fixed delivery time. You should only choose if you want the morning shift from 8.00am to 12.00pm or late night from 1.00pm to 9.00pm. We cannot indicate an estimated delivery time, it would be at the corresponding time you have chosen. (If you want to indicate relevant information regarding the delivery, please notify us to reach an agreement) for example you are at work until 7.00pm, if the schedule is available the delivery will be made.
Special delivery times can be arranged for an additional fee before placing your order by calling (708)573.4830.
Substitution Policy:
Balloons for Everything strives to use the same balloon designs that are illustrated on the site, but there may be exceptions. Below are the substitution guidelines used:
1) Large mylar shaped balloons — licensed characters.Exceptions: We may substitute with an alternate design of the same licensed character.
2) Mylar balloons of 18in-20in size.
Exceptions: Designs of the same theme may be substituted if (Design may vary) is part of the product description.
3) Licensed Bubble Balloons.
Exceptions: We may substitute with designs of the same message or theme.
4) Personalized 18in balloons.
Exceptions: Personalized name/age 18in mylar balloon designs may vary.
5) Latex Specialty Prints (Animals, Flowers, Agates, Birthday Prints, etc.
Exceptions: Agate patterns will vary, but colors will not be substituted.
In cases where we must deviate from these guidelines we will contact you for approval. If we are unable to reach you we will proceed with the delivery using the best substitution available.
Cancellations and FAQs:
All orders are final and non-refundable.
Delivery time can only be modified based on availability.
FAQs - See More!
Balloons for Everything is the preferred balloon decorating service provider to these impressive companies because we are the most competitively priced and we handle all projects, large and small.
Birthday Club
Join The Party!
Sign up for the latest collections, specials and updates
Follow Us
Decorating the Chicago, IL and surrounding areas since 2009.


text:
Standard recommended retail price without VAT.
Standard recommended retail price without VAT.
Because of our comprehensive Testing Program, we are confident on quality of our products. Such approach empower us to cover all our products with:
Media Type: | Single-Mode Fiber (SMF) |
TX Wavelength: | 1450 nm |
RX Wavelength: | 1270-1610 nm |
Minimum Optical Budget: | 24 dB |
Maximum Distance: | 80km |
Supported Data Rate: | 1.063-1.25Gbps |
Supported Applications: | Gigabit Ethernet (1.25 Gbps), 1G Fiber Channel (1.0625 Gbps) |
DDM/DOM: | Support |
Temperature Range: | Standard 0°-70°C |
Connectors: | Double LC |
Tx Wavelength Bandwidth: | 20nm (1440 – 1460 nm) |
Rx Wavelength Bandwidth: | G.694.2 CWDM Grid (1270-1610nm) |
Minimum Transmitting Power: | 0 dB |
Maximum Transmitting Power: | 5 dB |
Receiver Sensitivity: | -24 dBm |
Receiver Overload: | -3 dBm |
Dispersion: | 1600-1700 ps/nm |
Transmitter Type: | DFB Laser |
Receiver Type: | PIN photodiode |
Power: | +3.3V single power supply |
Chipset: | MAXIM, MINDSPEED, SEMTECH |
Compliance: | CE, Class 1 FDA and IEC60825-1 Laser Safety Compliant, INF-8074i, RoHS, SFP MSA |
Transceiver Type: | SFP |
Ciena Compatible XCVR-080D45 SFP Module is based on our product CWDM-1.25G-SFP-80-45. When You will order it will be encoded to be compatible with Ciena equipment and it will be labeled with part number: CWDM-1.25G-SFP-80-45-CN, where CN means Ciena Compatible. Above You can download datasheet of our CWDM-1.25G-SFP-80-45 product.
Ciena compatible XCVR-080D45 is SFP (Small Form factor Pluggable) Transceiver, operating over Double Fiber CWDM Single-Mode Fiber (SMF) optical cable. It has minimum guaranteed optical budget of 24 dB, with in most cases is enough to reach about 80 km distance. However, distance is just indicative parameter calculated for comfort of identification. Eventually we calculate distance taking in account minimal optical budget and average attenuation of optical cabling in industry. This transceiver use top quality DFB Laser transmitter with operating at nominal wavelength 1450 nm and 1270-1610 nm PIN Photodiode receiver. It support DDM/DOM optical diagnostics, with provide diagnostic information about the present operating conditions. Ciena compatible XCVR-080D45 operates in Standard 0°-70°C temperature range and has Double LC interface. SFP support 1.063-1.25Gbps data rate and such applications as Gigabit Ethernet (1.25 Gbps)|1G Fiber Channel (1.0625 Gbps). SFP Double Fiber CWDM optical transceiver is multi-purpose module used in number of different places of today's networking. Consequently, most popular applications are Internet Service Provider (ISP) Gigabit Ethernet communication links, Enterprice LAN & SAN Networks, Data Center LAN & SAN Networks and other optical links.
Transceiver is CE/RoHS certified and it is Compliant with product safety standards. We perform compatibility tests for Ciena compatible XCVR-080D45 SFP Transceiver with latest platforms of Ciena networking equipment, which allows us to encode transceiver EEPROM memory to be compatible and work seamlessly with Ciena platforms. However, our optical transceivers are compliant to SFP Multi Source Agreement INF-8074i industry standard as well. Because our focus is providing top quality service, we are performing serious quality checks before delivery of our products. As a result, we do optical parameter measurements, connector cleanness tests and SFP transceiver EEPROM memory data validation tests.


text:
Size: 12cm
We truly believe we offer some of the most unique products in the world, and we want to make sure we back that up with a risk-free ironclad 30 calendar day guarantee.
If you don't have a positive experience for ANY reason, we will do WHATEVER it takes to make sure you are 100% satisfied with your purchase.
Buying items online can be a daunting task, so we want you to realize that there is absolutely ZERO risk in buying something and trying it out. If you don't like it, no hard feelings, we'll make it right.
We have a 24/7/365 phone and e-mail support. Please contact us if you need assistance.