Livermore Outlet Mall Analysis - Competing with Vacaville and Gilroy Outlets

So a new outlet mall just opened up in Livermore (Paragon Outlets).  I don't know everything about retail shopping and brands, but it seems pretty damn nice.  It's headlined by the Saks, Bloomingdales, and Neiman Marcus department outlets.  There are also outlet stores for premium brands like Prada, Aramani, Burberry, Barneys, Kate Spade, Coach, and others (which to be very honest, I had never heard of the brand Kate Spade and did not know about its popularity until I saw a line of 20 women lined up outside of their store at 10pm).  There are many "middle tier" stores that I shop at like Gap, Banana Republic, Jcrew, Lacoste.

Anyways, I ran upon this article about the affect the new outlet mall would have on Gilroy and their revenues.  There was the following quote:

"“I think they are far enough away that there isn’t a lot of angst here that they will create competition,” said Susan Valenta, Gilroy's Chamber of Commerce CEO.  "

This quote got me thinking, is it really true?  I know that there are people out there that do the following analysis for a living, but I'm going to play business analyst and see what I can come up with.

As far as I can tell, there are two other major outlet malls in the bay area that are at the same level of Livermore's, one in Vacaville and one in Gilroy (although many believe Livermore has more/better stores/brands, but we're going to ignore that).  There's one in Napa, but its much smaller than the others so I'm not going to count it.  (Update: Someone reminded me that the Great Mall in Milpitas is sort of like an outlet mall.  But I'm not going to count that either, it's really a half outlet mall and half normal mall.)

Using Google Maps, the following are travel distance times from a number of Bay Area locales to these outlet malls.  Presently, the new Livermore Outlet Mall is not on Google Maps, so I will use the Target across the highway as my destination point (Livermore's outlet mall is the south exit off the highway, Target is the north exit at the same spot.  I also forced Google Maps to reroute the Target directions to use the same exit instead of a 1 minute faster local road.).

City	To Livermore	To Gilroy	To Vacaville	Closer to Livermore than Gilroy	Closer to Livermore than Vacaville
San Francisco	49 mins	86 mins	66 mins	37 mins	17 mins
San Mateo	43 mins	65 mins	85 mins	22 mins	42 mins
Foster City	40 mins	64 mins	84 mins	24 mins	44 mins
Redwood City	49 mins	60 mins	93 mins	11 mins	44 mins
Palo Alto	51 mins	52 mins	96 mins	1 mins	44 mins
Mountain View	45 mins	46 mins	99 mins	1 mins	49 mins
Cupertino	49 mins	42 mins	103 mins	-7 mins	54 mins
San Jose	42 mins	35 mins	97 mins	-7 mins	55 mins
Milpitas	36 mins	44 mins	90 mins	8 mins	54 mins
Fremont	31 mins	52 mins	82 mins	21 mins	51 mins
Castro Valley	20 mins	68 mins	68 mins	48 mins	48 mins
Oakland	37 mins	80 mins	56 mins	43 mins	24 mins
Walnut Creek	28 mins	82 mins	46 mins	54 mins	18 mins
Concord	34 mins	87 mins	44 mins	53 mins	10 mins
Pittsburg	44 mins	98 mins	51 mins	54 mins	7 mins

So what do I get from this chart?

Not surprisingly, anything in the East Bay is now significantly closer to a major outlet mall.  Many East Bay communities that were closer to the Vacaville outlet than Gilroy's will find themselves closer to Livermore's outlet now, even the Northeast cities like Concord and Pittsburgh will still find themselves closer to Livermore than Vacaville.

As you move South, towards Fremont & Milpitas, the Gilroy Outlet was significantly closer than the Vacaville one, presumably getting all the business from this area.  The Livermore one is now significantly closer for many of these areas and you would expect could take away those shoppers.

If you live in the South Bay closer to the San Jose area, this is where the Gilroy Outlet finally becomes closer than the Livermore one.  However, it's not significant.  For both San Jose and Cupertino, the time travel savings is only 7 minutes.

As you move north on the peninsula, Gilroy gets further away and Livermore gets closer thanks to major highways/bridges (most notably 92).  It's basically a wash once you get up to just the Mountain View and/or Palo Alto area.  Once you get into the Foster City and further North area, Livermore's outlet mall is over 20 minutes closer.

So it appears that for pretty much most of the bay area, Livermore's new outlet mall ranges from a "bit closer" to "much closer" than the Gilroy or Vacaville outlet malls.  Even in the areas where the Gilroy or Vacaville outlets are closer, it's not enough of a time difference to make up for any major brands and/or stores shoppers really want to aim for.

Conclusion? Gilroy & Vacaville should be concerned of increased competition if they are only thinking of distance to location.

Why you invite single guys to baby showers

Not so long ago I mentioned to my colleague's wife that I went to a friend's baby shower (lets call her Samantha).  Somewhat surprised she asked me why I was invited to a baby shower, because traditionally men are not invited.  The conversation went something like this:

Me: "Why wouldn't you invite men, it's like receiving free money."

Samantha: "What?"

Me: "Guys, especially single guys, don't know what they're doing.  They don't know anything about baby stuff.  So point them to the baby registry and they will spend their vast disposable income for you.  In the event that they can't find the baby registry, or don't want to go to the store, they give you a gift card to Target or something.  In other words, free money."

Samantha: "Damn, I need to invite you to my next baby shower.  But I'd feel bad, you probably wouldn't enjoy the party, it's very girly."

Me: "If you invite 1 single woman to the party, your obligation has been met."

Albert Pujols - Terrible year but still better than most

As much of a down season that Albert Pujols had this year (30 home runs, 105 RBIs, .285/.343/.516 split), here are the top wins above replacement (WAR) of first basemen in 2012:

Joey Votto - 5.6
Albert Pujols - 4.6
Edwin Encarnacion - 4.5
Prince Fielder - 4.5
Adam LaRoche - 4.0
Mark Texeira - 3.6
Adrian Gonzalez - 3.3
...
...
Ryan Howard - -1.2

Some of these guys were injured, so I don't want to criticize too much, but Pujol's year doesn't seem to bad by comparison anymore. He did much better than many of his highly compensated counterparts.

AL MVP Miguel Cabrera vs Mike Trout

This year, the AL MVP battle will pit Miguel Cabrera vs Mike Trout.  It's one of the more fascinating MVP battles in recent memory.

On the one hand you have Miguel Cabrera, the triple crown winner.  By any traditional statistical measurement, he should win the MVP award.

On the other hand you have rookie phenom Mike Trout.  He annihilates Cabrera in WAR 10.7 to 6.9.  It's just not even close.  Mike Trout beat his closest opponent in WAR, Robinson Cano, by a healthy 2.5 margin (10.7 to 8.2).  Trout's performance was so good, only 22 other times in MLB history has anyone matched it or done better.

This vote will really pit advanced statistics against traditionalists.  In 2010, when Felix Hernandez won the Cy Young award with a 13-12 record, I thought award voters had finally adopted the use of new statistics in voting.

However, that contest wasn't like this one.  The allure of the triple crown will make it very hard for people to vote against Miguel Cabrera.  I think it'll be fascinating to see how the 1st place votes will be split.

My Favorite Advanced Baseball Statistic

My favorite advanced statistic in baseball is WAR.  It stands for "wins above replacement".  It's gotten a lot of coverage this year due to the MVP race between Miguel Cabrera and Mike Trout.

The calculation of the WAR statistic is relatively complex, but the idea behind the statistic is simple.  How much is a player worth above a replacement quality player?  (A replacement player is generally considered to be a high quality minor league player or perhaps a bench player).

The statistic is normalized around 0.  If a player's WAR value is > 0, the player is performing better than a replacement player.  If the player is performing < 0, a team would be better off replacing that player with a replacement player.

I love this statistic because of what it represents.  So much decision making in our lives comes down to a simple judgement of "Can I do better?".  For example:

• Hiring Employees: "Sally is a good candidate, should we hire her or keep on interviewing more candidates?
• Firing Employees: "Joe is a bad performer, but still accomplishes a lot of stuff.  Should we keep him?"
• Job: "Company A has a ton of problems, should I stay or go?"
• Job offers: "Company X just offered me Y thousand a year.  Should I take this offer?"
• Dating: "Suzy is a great gal, but is she the right one for me?"

Unfortunately, in the normal world, its far more difficult to calculate a statistic for "current value" vs. "replacement value", but it's what we do in our heads all the time.

Gangnam Style Foreign Language Surprise?

So I don't need to write much about Gangnam Style, it's a huge hit




Some folks I know are surprised a song sung mostly in Korean could become such a hit in America.  Other than the occasional, "Hey sexy lady", the song has no discernible lyrics to a native English speaker.

My response to the surprise was, "Why not?  It's not like some other non-English songs were hits."  What were some other hits that came to mind:

The La Bamba cover by Ritchie Valens is 100% in Spanish yet considered one of the most classic American rock songs.


99 Luft Ballons by Nena was in German before it was in English.



The Macarena by Los del Rio was in Spanish before it was English. But even the English version maintained the full chorus in Spanish.


I didn't know about the following until doing some internet searches, but apparently a the song Sukiyaki by Kyu Sakamoto hit #1 in the US in 1963, yet was sung entirely in Japanese.

The Bourne Legacy Disappointment

I was quite disappointed in the movie.  It isn't bad and it sets up what should be a few good movies down the road, but was just disappointing.  Here are some the reasons why:

SPOILER WARNING
SPOILER WARNING
SPOILER WARNING

1) It's all about the drugs

After Aaron Cross nearly gets killed in the beginning of the movie, you think he might want to get revenge on his handlers?  Nope.  What does he want?  Drugs.  I couldn't help but think during the the movie that badass Aaron Cross is just a junkie, "Where are the chems?", "Do you have any chems here?", "How can I get more chems?".

Similar to the "midichlorians" in Star Wars, the drugs also removed some of the allure of the Treadstone/Blackbriar programs.  Rather than brainwashing and training the agents, are they just druggies?

2) Aren't spys supposed to be secretive

During the end chase, the Larx-3 agent punches a bunch of citizens and attacks cops.  He does it multiple times.

I thought these guys were supposed to be spys and hide and be "ghosts" (I think they were referred to this in the first movie).  Now this isn't to say that Jason Bourne didn't get the attention of the police, but he did seem to make a number of attempts to not get engaged.  In the Bourne Ultimatum, the asset kills Simon Ross via sniper rifle.  Larx-3 could have done the same thing too, but he decides he wants to chase them on foot.

3) Where's the super spy fight

Every Bourne movie to date had a cool fight between Treadstone/Blackbriar agents.  No fight in this movie.  In fact, Aaron Cross had a little trouble against the normal agents he fought in the house.  I was just waiting for him to fight Larx-3 at the end of the movie.  Only to find Larx-3 was taken out by wiping out on his bike.