The Silicon Valley Geek

Suzuki is well known as a manufacturer of motorcycles. In the rest of the world, it is also known for making small, cute cars.

In the USA, Suzuki started off selling small cars and SUVs like the Samurai and Swift. The latter was particularly unique in that the base engine was a 3-cylinder, rated to get up to 50MPG, better than a hybrid.

Unfortunately, in an era of cheap gas, Suzuki didn’t do too well.

At the end of the day, the Swift was discontinued. Instead, Suzuki decided to follow the big SUV crowd. The smaller, 4-cylinder-equiped Vitara SUVs were replaced by the Grand Vitara XL7, a large SUV that was capable of seating up to 7 people. Suzuki’s range of sedans were unremarkable and were basically rebadged Daewoos

Skip to 2008, a barrel of crude oil costs US$139. Large SUVs and trucks appear to be on their way out as US consumers switch en masse to smaller, fuel-efficient vehicles.

Suddenly, old Suzuki Swifts (and the Geo Metro, a rebadged Swift) became valuable. Look up “geo metro news” on Google and you will find a dozen articles on the newly found value of these previously unloved cars.

Today, Suzuki cars have nothing that allow them to stand out from the crowd.

Imagine what could have happened if Suzuki had built its brand around the idea of fuel efficiency.

Just as Subaru successfully revived its fortunes in the US by focusing on the availability of all-wheel drive, Suzuki could have focused on small, fuel-efficient vehicles.  Today, we know that small, cute vehicles sell. The MINI is a prime example of this. Suzuki could have taken a page from that book. Instead, it comes out with the SX4 and tries to sell it as the “cheapest AWD” car, probably in an attempt to follow on Subaru’s footsteps but competing on price.

Today, we also know that consumers are willing to pay more for fuel efficiency.

So if Suzuki had played it right. It would have been the brand of fuel efficient cars and command a premium. The current generation Suzuki Swift could be flying off the lots.

Instead, the premium fuel efficient brands appear to be Honda (Civic and Fit) and Prius. And the Geo Metro.

I don’t run particularly well. At least not compared to a lot of people. But then neither am I an all-show-no-go runner.

So I am not too ashamed to go out running while being decked out with different brands. See the pictures below.

I am really not brand-conscious. However, I value comfort and safety while running. At my age, I am also concerned about short and long term injuries. As a result, I look for equipment, apparel and consumables that will help me run the distance I want to go while keeping away the effects of heat and other bad stuff.

The question is how would I know if a particular piece of equipment is good for what it claims to do? The answer is: the brand. By wearing a Adidas running cap, for example, I am assured that I will be comfortable and not overheat. It sounds really dumb and I agree that I could have gone out to Target and bought a Champion-branded cap. It will probably work equally well, but Champion is an unknown brand. Do I want to take a risk with my health? I have run up to three hours at a stretch in that Adidas cap, sometimes finishing the run at noon. It gets hot in San Jose at noon!

This is something to bear in mind as Under Armour launches a range of athletic shoes which they term as “trainers”. It is not clear if Under Armour is positioning these shoes as running shoes or cross-trainers. One thing I am certain of is that I will not buy them for running. If you were to look at all the articles and forum postings on the choice of running shoes, you will realize that it is difficult to get the right pair of running shoes: something you can run for miles without shinsplints, ITB and other pains. Furthermore, runners tend to be rather loyal to particular models or brands that have worked well for them.

So Under Armour will have a tough time selling running shoes. It is not that other companies have not succeeded. Pearl Izumi launched their running shoes 4-5 years ago and have made inroads.

We will see.

Tom Krazit wrote a pretty interesting article on CNET about Apple’s missed .MAC opportunity.

I am not going to recap what was in the article. However, I would like to point out that the picture is more complicated than what Tom painted.

For example, he talked about a low cost way to allow users to share photos à la Flickr. This is great. However, the simple ability to upload gigabytes of photo or other content is no longer sufficient in this Web 2.0 world. In the Web 1.0 days, you had a website and that was it.

Today, you have all sorts of accounts in multiple locations: Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube etc. This collection of accounts and all make up your online persona.

One thing I have admired about Flickr is how ubiquitous it has become. For example, I can publish my Flickr happenings on my Facebook profile. I can do the same with any social network that I create with Ning.com.

This means that if I am interested in photo sharing, all I need is to set up one single account with Flickr and I can share photos with the other “aspects” of my online persona.

I can do the same thing with YouTube: share my own videos or my favorite videos.

One of the problems many users encounter today is that they don’t want to or have the time to re-do or recreate their online profiles or content. One recent movement, for example, has been to allow users to share their online profiles across different social networking websites.

Therefore, if Apple really wants to leverage its .MAC property and provide a solid value to the consumer, it has to make it such that the consumer can link his content on his .MAC account to the other aspects of his online persona. Reducing the cost of subscribing to .MAC is not sufficient by itself.