Americano

Today, I felt like a stupid American. Well, I live in Europe, so this should be nothing new.

Background:
As a part of the MBA program, we work with a startup. Be it help them with fund raising, distribution, writing a business plan, or a marketing plan, we do it. There is no fee for the startup. First because we are just a bunch of yahoos trying to figure stuff out, second, they are startups, where the hell on earth are they going to find money to pay us. Most of them are just getting by. The startup I am working with is JMC Guitars. They custom make high end guitars that retail at 8000CHF (around 6,500USD). I met with them this morning. Oh, another piece of important information that might be important, you know how great my french is from my other postings.

So we were talking about positioning and distribution, and comminucation this morning. We talked about possiblly partnering with other luxury goods makers, to display our great guitars. The entrepreneur said: "oh, that is a good idea. You know companies like Vouis Vutton and 'Elmass' funitures. Elmass selects their leather just like we select our wood, and they dry it like we do. You know, there might be something." So, I thought I knew the luxury goods segment pretty well, at least the big names. Never hear of Elmass. But I am going to stay quiet. After all, I really don't know the luxury furniture market at all, and the Swiss have all these ultra expensive luxury goods companies that survive on selling two $200K sofas a year.

Three seat down, Liesal, from Nimbia, asked: 'how do you spell that?" Oh, thank god someone asked. I would love to find out who Elmass is, with a spelling and Google, it wouldn't be all that hard. Christos, the Greek next to him said: "it's h - e - r - m - e - s"

"Ahhhhh." Duh, I thought, and yelled out loud: "Her-mees". The room went silent for about half a second, and man, you should have heard the laughters. Finally the Brazilian next to me picked himself off the floor, and patted me on the shoulders: "you Americans...... Hahahah."