Posted by: moenia on: February 29, 2008
One of the great things I look forward to every year is reading Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Report. Warren provides great insights in how to own and manage a business. He also admits his mistakes. His average annual return is about 21% which is phenomenal considering most of the market averages 10% or less. If you include trading costs, the returns are around 8%. My accountant who does a lot of people’s taxes and many of them are in the financial industry as traders, most have lost money despite what you hear on the television at CNBC or Bloomberg. This report is 78 pages but it is the pages 4-20 is what is worth reading.
As an “investor” not a trader, these pages offer the most valuable insight.
I am grateful to watch him so I can learn how he invests. It is really helpful to my business. My dream is to have a similar business model as Berkshire but on a smaller scale than BRK.A
Posted by: moenia on: February 11, 2008
We provide accessories and accent furniture to the trade and here is some simple things that we encourage our customers, suppliers, and sales reps to do to be green
To our Customers: We love them. They are great! We would suggest to all customers doing business with us or any vendor to follow some simple guidelines
To our Suppliers: It is key for us to have great suppliers where we can support each others efforts to be environmentally conscious and provide products that are green and free of toxins.
To our Sales Representatives: Sales representatives can follow the same guidelines as our customers and help customers migrate from a paper based ordering system to a electronic ordering system. We give a higher priority to email or on-line orders rather than faxes or phone orders. This helps us be responsive to our customers.
Posted by: moenia on: February 9, 2008
There are now many efforts to bring the furnishings industry into the modern age. Being green, sustainable, environmentally conscious is something our company strives for. These efforts are to be applauded. At least, the attempts are being made to move towards products that are more sustainable. For manufacturers and distributors that are smaller there needs be clarity on which organizations seal is appropriate. There are too many organization so it is hard to know which one is appropriate for smaller companies and which ones are just marketing scams. The Sustainable Furniture Council can cost up to several thousand dollars depending on the size of your company. Ours is relatively small but still high price for us. If they helped us with our international suppliers to get them to be sustainable and green, then it will be worth it. The Design Green Alliance does not charge anything to join. We make every effort with our products to be natural, sustainable, and green. The alphabet soup of what looks like marketing organizations that promote sustainability is confusing and also have no real and practical guidelines. Bigger companies can certainly pay whatever fees are required. Programs for smaller business are needed. Let us know what other organizations are out there for the accessories and accent furniture industry. We did join one that is free and Tim is genuinely for promoting companies that are making efforts to be green and sustainable.
The hardest part is trying to convince our international suppliers to be green. Most of our products come from Indonesia and Philippines. We don’t manufacture anything in China, at least not yet. There isn’t a good supplier network that enables us to find verifiable green accessories and accent furniture. Feel free to let us know of any sources.