Crazy Prices, Crazy Consumers, Just Plain Craziness

By now you've all heard that Missoni released a "Missoni for Target" line on Tuesday, Sept. 13th.  It caused madness on the Target website, crashing it numerous times throughout the day, as well as madness within and outside the stores (nearing the length of lines outside an Apple store that precede an iPhone release). 

All of this is because this is a high end designer who is "bringing the high end to the masses." They created a 400-piece line exclusively for Target.  So, they're making cheaper versions of the brand and selling the Target version of the $500 shirt for $100. 

Of course all of those consumers were not buying the products for themselves, but rather because they want to make a tidy profit when they turn around and sell it for five times as much as they paid.  By Thursday there were over 40,000 Missoni products available on eBay and a lot more available on Craigslist. 

Is this crazy consumer behavior?  Would you buy the Missoni stuff from ebay and Craigslist at such insanely marked up prices?  Or do you know friends who would do it?

Thoughts please!

Digital books are for real

How many of you thought the Kindle was just a fad?  Electronic books would never take the place of "real" paper books, right?  Maybe hardbacks, but certainly not paperbacks!  It is practically sacrilegious to even consider the thought.

 

As it turns out, in July, 2010 Amazon announced that Kindle's e-books had outsold hardback books 1.4 to 1 (or 143 e-books to 100 hardbacks, to be exact) over the previous three months.

Well, this month, they announced that Kindle's e-books outsold even paperbacks!  115 e-books to every 100 paperbacks.   

Well, I'll be.