Joanne Musgrave

When I open up a newsletter from Peter Alexander with the subject line “Because you can’t wear your pyjamas all day long …”, I expect that you’re going to be advertising some new daywear.

Instead, I see the following:-

“As much as I know you’d like to stay in your Peter Alexander Pyjamas all day, I’ve heard about this amazing offer from Just Jeans!”

Underneath, a Just Jeans ad for $20 off Levi’s Curve ID.

Note to the marketing staff, unless you’d put it on a poster and stick it in the front window of your shops, this third party ad has NO PLACE in your newsletter or in my inbox. I’m guessing I’m not the only person pissed off by this advertising, and I’ll be unsubscribing now. I used to spend at least $200 a year with your company, however, for the past couple of seasons, not a huge fan of the new direction your range has taken.

I’m off to David Jones to grab some JAG basics to wear to bed, and if I want another pair of Levi’s, David Jones has a much better offer this month.

I have just written the following to Peter Alexander.

“Please remove my email address from your mailing list. If I want Just Jeans ads, I’ll sign up for them.

I tried to unsubscribe myself, but your system forces me to login to do this, and when I requested my password be resent, it didn’t come through.

This is a very poor piece of marketing and I am very disappointed. Would you put a Just Jeans ad up in the window of your store? I think not. So why are you sending it to me in a newsletter………

Joanne Musgrave”

Now let’s wait to see if they’re interested in trying to satisfy or convert someone who used to be a loyal customer and big spender.

Our youngest, Jaina, got to play with one of her littermates today. Total co-incidence that we met. We were 20 minutes away from home, Banjo’s parents almost 40 minutes from home and we bumped in to them at Norah Head.

When we just happened to mention Jaina turns 1 on 28th September, they said “So does Banjo”. We then discovered they were from the same litter and we hung around to chat and play for about half an hour.

If you’re brave enough (foolish or stupid enough), there’s an event being run by the Albury Cycling Club where you can ride your bike from Wagga to Albury. I just did my charitable deed for the day and set them up with a free website.

Go check it out in a few days when they start putting information in.

I picked the keys up yesterday for the new Shop Naturally warehouse and when I walked in the front door, I almost fell over. The previous occupants had hired a professional cleaning company to come in and clean up. Downstairs is a tiled floor that was pretty grubby and I shudder to think what they used to clean it. It’s either bleach or ammonia or something, but even after I had someone come in yesterday and used our natural floor cleaner on it and not the toxic junk that I can smell in there.

If I could have a do over, I would have told them to leave the place dirty, grabbed a pile of natural cleaning products and paid someone to come in and do it without killing themselves or me.

Are you fucking kidding me Gerry? Your response to you losing sales in your Bricks & Mortar stores to ‘overseas online shops’ is to rip of Catch Of The Day and flog off remnant shit no-one wants to buy off someone who sells lounges and TV’s? For those of you who haven’t seen it, check out Harvey Norman Big Buys. Today he’s selling $40 mascara for $10. Why the fuck is Harvey Norman selling mascara, soccer balls & raised garden beds?

Yes, there’s a market for cheap remnant shit on the internet. Catch Of The Day (who I have shopped with on more than one occasion) have become Australia’s #1 online retailer from it, and have proven there’s a market for it.

What you fail to realise is this, they are #1. They have an extraordinarily large following and a fucking gigantic mailing list database of people who get their cheap crap in their inbox EVERY BLOODY DAY, myself included. It’s a fan-fucking-tastic website. I’m thoroughly impressed with their business model and I can see why they’re #1.

What I can’t see is this:-
1 – you having a snowballs chance in hell of competing with them
2 – this doing any good for your bricks & mortar proprietors. It’s there purely to line your own pockets. Do you not have enough money?

Admittedly, I’m mildly impressed that you’re not shitting all over your proprietors and competing with them online, but you’re so far off the mark here it’s not funny. Instead of trying to tweak your business model, you’ve left your current one exactly the way it is and dipped your toes in a totally different pond.

I’m just waiting for the interview with Ruslan Kogan where he tries to predict the fail date for your online venture. I’ll give you 18 months ’cause you’ve got some buying power and some room to fail.

Here’s a free tip for you Gerry, you’re not losing your sales to overseas online retailers, you’re losing them to people like the Good Guys and Kogan, because unlike the bulk of staff at most Harvey Norman stores,  they give a crap about customer service, unlike the 60+ year old lard arse who was so dis-interested in selling me a washing machine (and more interested in getting back to his coffee and donut on his desk) that I went and spent my $1,700 at David Jones instead.

Adios Harvey Norman. You belong in a museum. Big businesses are failing, watch out.

In my 41 years of living, I came across my first double yolk egg today. And folks, I eat a LOT of eggs!! I drive 20 minutes up the road to buy the Mulloon Creek Farm organic eggs from Harris Farm, and today I cracked this one open!

This yummy exrta rich egg was whisked up and used as the second step in me crumbing some chicken pieces with fresh breadcrumbs and home baked potato scallops.

In other food related madness, we had Anthony from Loyal IT come over today to install a network printer for us and he pointed out that he has a recipe published in one of my favourite cookbooks, Julie Goodwin’s ‘Our Family Table’.

Julie and her lovely husband Mick own the IT company we use for all our computer stuff (they’re very good if you need someone – www.loyalit.com.au) and one of his recipe’s made it in to Julie’s first book.

Grab the book off your shelf (c’mon, everyone has one, I think it was THE best selling Australian author book last year) and see page 189 for Anthony’s sauteed tomatoes on the barbecue. If you don’t own the book, I think I described it well today with my blunt ’no-nonsense’ approach to life when I said something like “I really like it because it’s not full of wanky food.”

I will eventually cook my way through the majority of the book, no doubt skipping the section on Christmas cake and pudding, because not only do I hate dried fruit, but I loathe Christmas!

As Myer launch an online shop to try and take a piece of the international online retail market, they can kiss my patronage goodbye. Rather than trying to be a part of the solution, they’ve just joined the side that they called a part of the problem.

As an Australian online retailer with www.shopnaturally.com.au and www.eatdrinkstainless.com.au and many web design clients who also run Australian online retail stores, this attitude really pisses me off.

What I find most amusing is that they’ve done a really shit job of it, very little product availability and the prices aren’t that much different than buying from an Australian company that collects GST. Why bother ………

Yet another large retailer showing they have no f***ing idea how online retail works and the leaders in online retail are still people who specialise in it and don’t have bricks & mortar stores. Very few have made the successful leap, although JB Hi-Fi seem to be doing ok.

www.myfind.com us a complete waste of time. Support Australian businesses instead. Myer just jumped the shark for me.

I bought a new toy on the weekend, the new 4th Generation iPod touch. My main use for this nifty little device is to dock it with my Sony Dream Machine to play music as I go to bed each night. There’s one giant problem though, while it physically docks, it’s not recognised and won’t play through the Dream Machine.

There is a solution though, and I’ve posted this blog in case people have the same issue, Google and find this page. It’s as simple as going to the Sony website and downloading the Firmware upgrade for the Sony Dream Machine. I did it earlier and it worked like a charm. You just need a PC, and a formatted SD card and about 10 minutes. It’s really simple to do.

Download Firmware Update for Sony Dream Machine ICFCL75IP from Sony Website

Yesterday, we stepped in to the 21st Century and bought our very first Apple computer (if you don’t count the dodgy second hand giant round contraption with the big old screen in it). I was going to buy an iPad for browser testing, but ended up with a MacBook Air for the same price. A very tiny, lightweight solid state hard drive laptop that’s just perfect for what I need.

I think I might have just unwittingly joined a cult

I’ll admit it, I’m not big on reality TV. I did get hooked on Masterchef as I found it an inspirational and educational show. I decided this year to take a swing at The Biggest Loser, thinking I might find the same thing. Boy was I wrong.

Initially, I just wanted to see the trainers have to eat crap for a week and see how it made them feel, purely so I could show my husband that even fit and healthy people can feel like crap from eating the wrong thing (my digestive system is kinda useless), but after this, I decided to plod along and continue to watch.

What was I expecting? I’m not sure really. I was hoping that the show would be helpful to the ‘lazy lard arses’ sitting at home on the lounge wondering if they can make a positive change in their life and lose weight too. I was hoping they’d get to see information on making smart food choices, how to exercise at home ….. stuff like that.

Instead? The physical and emotional torture of some of the most unstable people I’ve seen on television in a long time.  To have that much weight and that little self esteem must be hard enough, but to be pushed to breaking point constantly would be too much for most people to cope with.

The show makes it look like you have to scream and sweat and exercise to the point of painful exhaustion to get anywhere. Pull a train carriage or two, run up 100 flights of stairs. Hell, my husband, who’s a fit bastard would have struggled with some of these things.

From a personal perspective, these contestants for the most part also make me angry. The fact that they can treat their bodies like total and utter crap, yet still manage to get through all these exercises drives me insane as I pace myself on my daily 600 metre walks (anything longer and it takes me too long to recover).

So, I say, shame on you The Biggest Loser. The only time I’ve seen you feature the contestants eating food is when they’re eating garbage or being forced to eat Chinese food for breakfast lunch & dinner. 

There was a distint difference in the mentality of Masterchef and Junior Masterchef. The kids were treated delicately. These contestants on The Biggest Loser should be treated a little nicer than they are and should be allowed to stay in the house for considerably longer before they start flinging them out the door to fatten back up at home.