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Esther: Welcome to the BusinessMakers Overtime Show, your weekly entrepreneurial pick me up with your hosts, Esther Steinfeld.
Katie: And Katie Laird.
Esther: This week, our show is as sweet as it's ever been. We're recording live in Houston at Tasti D-Lite, a low-fat frozen desert chain that is blowing up across the country.
Katie: So if it sounds like our mouths are absolutely full of Tasti D-Lite goodness at any point during the show, you probably are absolutely right. [Laughs] I don't know if I can help myself. [Laughs]
Esther: That's right. We have no shame, as you will see from the pictures. This week we'll take a look at ways businesses just like Tasti D-Lite are using the hottest new mobile check in applications to grow their business and connect with customers.
Katie: Then we'll talk to Aaron Webster, managing member of Webster Foods, LLC, and our most gracious and Tasti D-Lite-pushing host today at Tasti D-Lite. [Laughs] But first off, we're gonna kick off our Overtime delight with some news hot from the presses.
Esther: Absolutely, as we always do. And this week, we heard some really sad news coming out of Harley-Davidson.
Katie: That's right. For the first time in, what, 16 years -?
Esther: Yep.
Katie: - Harley-Davidson has posted as loss in their fourth quarter, 2009; very first time.
Esther: That's sad.
Katie: Yeah. That's a tough thing to have break through. Like [Laughs] that was a good streak.
Esther: They're having some layoffs. They're gonna have some restructuring up to 2010. It's sad for this - this is a luxury brand, you know?
Katie: It is. No, it really is. And they're posting that their quarterly revenue tumbled 40 percent to $764.5 million from $1.28 billion just a year prior. Right now, Harley-Davidson's looking at some serious restructuring and, of course, all those restructuring efforts alone are gonna cost $430 million to $460 million.
Esther: Oh, my gosh.
Katie: So it's an intense time for definitely an iconic brand in America.
Esther: Absolutely. Maybe motorcycles just aren't as popular as they used to be.
Katie: I don't know. It seems like with the better fuel economy, like it seems like that would be a hot item, like people would be like, "All right. Maybe we're gonna sell the third car and we're just gonna have this as a little around-town vehicle."
Esther: Yeah.
Katie: But maybe they're looking at Vespa or - I don't know.
Esther: Well, it says here that Harley-Davidson's kind of come under some pressure over the last year as the tight credit markets and the weak economy led consumers to shun purchases of Italian motorcycles. I guess that's what it's all about. It's just like any other luxury purchase, anything else - it's not that it's frivolous, but maybe a lot of people are kinda cutting down to become one-car families or they're just trying to find ways to sell off whatever they can, and Harley's -
Katie: They're feeling it? [Laughs]
Esther: Yeah.
Katie: The hogs are lonely. [Laughs]
Esther: Yep. So some other interesting news that we came across was something that happened at PetSmart.
Katie: So, definitely a little bit less than puppy love, a PetSmart employee, 31-year-old Eric Favetta, was asked to work overnight helping pick up a shift as a favor to his manager, and has a puppy at home. Didn't want to leave the puppy home alone. And long story short, brings in the dog overnight to be in their little doggy daycare section where he could check on the dog, etcetera, etcetera. But, you'd think that would be just A-Okay, but he has been fired for theft of services.
Esther: Wow.
Katie: This poor guy just worried about his little doggy.
Esther: Oh, my gosh.
Katie: So PetSmart basically said that doggy daycare is something profitable during store hours when they're actually open, and by an employee just haphazardly using this area could have cost the company a good bit of money and they figured that was grounds for termination, which just seems like a bad moved especially the reason that Eric was working overnight was because they were getting ready for a visit from Martha Stewart's company who wanted to talk about selling Martha Stewart products at PetSmart. So to have this negatively surrounding what could have been a really amazing partnership is like, "Whoops." [Laughs]
Esther: Yeah. And I also think it's just terrible employee retention. How terrible you have an employee who's willing to work his butt off and come in when it's not even his time to come in. And he puts his dog just kind of in a kennel and he's checking on him and he's - I just think it's completely ridiculous, personally.
Katie: Yeah, it is.
Esther: It speaks poorly of PetSmart.
Katie: It does.
Esther: That they chose to call him a thief. It's one thing to be reprimanded. It's one thing - tell him, "You can't really do this. It's against our store policy." But to fire him and call him a thief," come on. Give me a break.
Katie: Yeah, those are fighting words.
Esther: Seriously. Oh, well.
Katie: So in another kind of awkward story - and this is a news bit from the LA Times - a prominent Silicon Valley executive has been going through kind of a tough week.
Esther: To say the least.
Katie: Which is maybe an understatement for Charles Phillips who's the co-president of Ora Cor, and a member of President Obama's economic recovery advisory board. So this guy is a big deal. So what happened to our poor friend, Esther? [Laughs]
Esther: His mistress, YaVaughnie Wilkins, that's Y-A, uppercase V, A-U-G-H-N-I. YaVaughnie Wilkins, had an eight-and-a-half-year relationship with him. And when he terminated said relationship, she went about buying outdoor media, three billboards, in three major cities and plastered billboards of the two of them - pictures of the two of them all over the city with the words -
Katie: "You are my soul mate forever."
Esther: Lovely.
Katie: And a URL.
Esther: And the Web site - of course, there was a Web.
Katie: Of course, there was. I'm surprised there wasn't a Facebook really.
Esther: Even gangs have Web sites now. It's hilarious.
Katie: Exactly, exactly. And so the Web that - it's no longer up now, but basically it was outlining the history of their relationship. It had photos. It had kind of like a calendar of when they met, and all these milestones in the relationship. But the poor man, not that I'm like, "Yeah. Eight-and-a-half-year extramarital affair," but really, a billboard? Three billboards across the United States?
Esther: Where'd she get that money?
Katie: [Laughs] I don't know.
Esther: I wanna know. It's expensive.
Katie: Exactly. [Laughs]
Esther: Well, apparently his wife filed for divorce back in 2008, and then they recently reconciled.
Katie: Yeah. And I wonder how this additional media exposure's gonna help that. That's tough. And this is coming from a set of corporate heads that really aren't very open about their public lives all. You're not hearing about Silicon Valley extramarital exploits very frequently.
Esther: No, you never are.
Katie: So this is a big one.
Esther: A tight-lipped community.
Katie: It's very tight-lipped. So, Charles, I'm glad she's gone, but oh, man, buddy.
Esther: At least it's funny to us.
Katie: Yeah it is - to us, it's really funny. I'm so sorry. [Laughs]
Esther: Hilarious. Well, that wraps up our Business Week in Review. Stayed tuned for our great interview with Aaron Webster, the managing partner of Webster Foods, and owner of several wonderful Tasti D-Lite franchises all around Houston.
Katie: And pink truck. It's awesome.
Esther: Big pink truck.
Katie: Take our word on it.
Esther: You'll hear all about it in Segment 2. Stay tuned. You're listening to the BusinessMakers Overtime Show heard here and online at theBusinessMakers.com.