Weekend Digest: “The Scream” And Business Survival
by July 13, 2012 5:18 pm 116 views
For our weekend business readers:
NEW YORK FINANCIER REVEALED AS BUYER OF “THE SCREAM”
It was a big mystery who paid almost $120 million dollars at a Sotheby's auction for Edvard Munch's masterpiece “The Scream.” Now the Wall St. Journal has revealed who the buyer is.
Billionaire Leon Black is the secretive phone bidder who purchased the iconic pastel work last May. According to a video report posted by the Journal, the $118.9 million Black paid makes it the most expensive work of art ever purchased.
The sale only took 12 minutes and came down to Black and another bidder who made their bids by phone.
To learn why Black, an avid art collector, was so secretive about buying the piece and where it may end up now, click on this link.
BRAZILIAN WOMEN CONTRIBUTING TO A WORKFORCE REVOLUTION
“Clever, hard-working women” are pouring into Brazil's job market that has traditionally been a man's world.
An in-depth piece by The Economist explores how “ambitious” women are changing the face of Brazil's work force and in a lot of cases are tackling jobs normally associated with men.
Big raises in the minimum wage, an increase in formal jobs and entry into fields long dominated by men all mean the gap between the pay of poorly educated women and that of their male peers has started to shrink. At the same time, more Brazilian women are well-qualified than ever before. Girls are staying at school longer than boys, and three-fifths of recent university graduates are women.
With unemployment at record lows and the demand for jobs booming, The Economist chronicles in detail how the rapid shift of women from domestic roles to the work force has evolved.
A tight labour market and a shortage of talent are leading employers to look beyond their prejudices. It helps that a country where women have long been sidelined in politics is now governed by one. Though Dilma Rousseff owes her arrival in the presidency to a man—her predecessor and mentor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva—in office she has shown herself to be her own woman.
Go inside The Economist story to learn which country has the “most ambitious” women. Brazil or the USA?
HOW CAN A SEASONAL BUSINESS SURVIVE THE OFF-SEASON?
That's a question the New York Times explores in a compelling piece of how the owners of a restaurant and specialty store in a small town in Sonoma County California were able to survive an 80% downturn in business during their first off-season.
Yes, the owners had expected a downturn. “We thought maybe we’d lose about 30 to 40 percent of our business,” Mr. Volpatt said. But not 80 perce
nt. “This is my first time at the rodeo, and I’ll tell you, we were freaking out.”
Michael Volpatt is one of the owners of Big Bottom Market in Guerneville, Calif., a resort and vineyard area. After that huge downturn, it was sink or swim.
Sales rose like the biscuit dough in the peak summer weeks and then tapered off in September. Still, the business remained profitable, and with the biscuits getting good buzz, the fledgling owners pondered a spin-off venture, considering wholesaling batches of frozen biscuits beyond the ones they sold from their own freezer cases. Then, in October and November, the bottom fell out for Big Bottom. “At the rate you guys are going,” their accountant warned, “You’re going to have to close your doors.”
Take a look at the Times post to find out the step-by-step measures the owners of Big Bottom Market took to survive the off-season, as well as the strategies of other businesses to keep their doors open when the tourists are gone and the seasons change.
MAKE TWITTER “YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA POWERHOUSE”
In a guest post for Michael Hyatt's Intentional Leadership blog, Leo Widrich points out four ways to turn Twitter.com into your social media mainstream. Widrich is the co-founder of BufferApp, a Twitter app.
There is this one problem I have, that might have occurred to you too as well. Having to log into ten different services on ten different sites every morning to get my social media day started is difficult and tedious.
So recently, I thought, 'What if you could do it all from one place? Not from a dashboard with hundreds of bells and whistles, but from a clean and easy-to-use interface. How about Twitter.com? Yep, the original!'
Go along with Twitter guru Widrich as he maps out suggestions on how to use the social medium phenomenon in a seamless and streamlined process that will increase your productivity and save you time.
DOWNLOAD FREE APP TO FOLLOW TEAM USA AT LONDON OLYMPICS
Web site GIZMODO has a wonderful app you can download and keep up with the medal count and more during the upcoming London Olympics.
Who won the bronze medal for women's pole vaulting? It'll tell you that and full results for all 302 events, in addition to live updates, game schedules, and details about each of the 26 sports.
Click here to download The App of the Day from GIZMODO.