lee crane

While cruising facebook today a status update caught my eye. A former Future Snowboarding employee said, ” . . . is in shock. He is a free agent.” It appears that Future Snowboarding has moved forward into the past. In an 11 o’clock meeting today employees were told that Future Snowboarding would be shutting down [...]

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Back in 1998 when Burton Snowboards first hinted about launching a footwear brand, they made a point of letting everyone know that these were absolutely, positively not going to be “skate” shoes. At the time, Dennis Jenson (the guy responsible for the launch of the brand) wanted everyone to believe that Burton was launching an [...]

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In a shockingly silly legal maneuver ESPN has apparently sued Quiksilver in federal court over an “X” the clothing company has used that looks similar to the ESPN X Games logo. Quiksilver uses a stylized “X” emblem on clothing, labels and accessories that is “confusingly similar” to ESPN’s logo for the series of surfing and [...]

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Last week the TimeWarner Annual Report for 2007 arrived in my mailbox (all 174 pages) and aside from including Jeff Bewkes’ first message as president and CEO (“I have no doubt we’ll succeed”), it also featured the following in-depth analysis of the sale of “most” of the Time4 Media magazines. On March 3, 2007, the [...]

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Today, during Apple Inc.’s 2 PM conference call the company reported its best second quarter ever. “We’re delighted to report 43 percent revenue growth and the strongest March quarter revenue and earnings in Apple’s history,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “With over $17 billion in revenue for the first half of our fiscal year, we [...]

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This week, Crain’s New York Business ran a story titled Music Magazines Shaking and Rattling. In the piece writer Matthew Flamm mentions that Jann Wenner’s Rolling Stone saw a 33% drop in advertising in the first quarter coupled with the news that the auto industry in general has cut its magazine spending by 21 percent [...]

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According to a recently released Piper Jaffray report titled Taking Stock With Teens, total fashion spending declined nearly 20 percent year-to-year and is causing what analysts are calling a “disscretionary recession.” “We’re currently in the ‘transition phase’ of the fashion cycle and believe that we have not yet hit bottom,” said Jeff Klinefelter, senior retail [...]

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I see these new Vans x Kiss shoes and all I can think about is that greasy-haired, acne-riddled kid in 8th grade who spent the entire year bic-penning the front of his blue Mead three-ringer with these exact images of Gene, Paul, Ace, and Peter. Come to think of it, l bet he’ll be first [...]

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Looks like 2008 isn’t going to be much better for the print magazines. Not that this is news, really. According to figures released by the Publishers Information Bureau and TNS Media Intelligence magazine ad pages fell 6.4% in the first quarter of 2008. The declines were let by the largest publishers. Here are the rankings [...]

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Yesterday, Shaun White unveiled his new clothing line for Target at the company’s midtown showroom in Manhattan, according to Time Out New York. “I’d rather have kids than moms get stoked about my stuff,” said the Olympic gold medalist this morning in Target’s midtown showroom. . . True to the company’s get-it-while-you-can ethos, the 25 [...]

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