"The High Cost of Free Shipping"
Tuck
March 9, 2018

“It’s unclear when, exactly, the trend of free shipping began, but a good starting point is probably the 1999 launch of Zappos, an early online shoe seller. 

The company worried that consumers wouldn’t be willing to buy shoes without trying them on, so it offered free shipping and free returns, thus eliminating the risk the shoes didn’t fit. These days, free shipping is among the most popular promotions online retailers deploy, and consumers have come to expect them whenever they shop online. At the same time, the rate of product returns has grown immensely. A study in 2006 found that 5.6 percent of online purchases were returned. By 2013, that number had increased to almost 37 percent. ”

"Backcountry Powder Touring and Skinny Ski Lung Busting in the Green Mountain State"
Mountain Magazine | Deep Winter 2018

“When the snow is piling up, I head for the backcountry skiing zones in Brandon and Braintree created and managed by RASTA, the Rochester/Randolph Area Sports Trails Alliance. For a few years now, RASTA and its many volunteers have worked with the Green Mountain National Forest (in Brandon) and private landowners (in Braintree) to carve fall-line runs out of the woods on high-elevation, north-facing mountains. Each RASTA zone has ample public parking, a kiosk with a map, and clearly marked skin tracks and runs—a notable departure from Vermont’s secret glades and bushwhacking epics.”

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"Major Player"
Vermont Life | Spring 2018

“Judging by statistics, the Champlain Game Studio’s formula — a rigorous, collaboration-based curriculum combined with real-world learning — produces results. Eighty-one percent of the class of 2016 secured a game-related job within six months of graduation, and, Walker says, they are steeled for the task ahead.”

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"The Builder"
Tuck Today: The Alumni Magazine of the Tuck School of Business
January 2018

“Christopher J. Williams T’84 is the founder, chairman, and CEO of the Williams Capital Group and Williams Capital Management, one of the most active co-managers of U.S. investment-grade new issue debt financings. In 2002, Williams was selected by Fortune as one of the 50 most powerful African Americans in Corporate America. Crain’s New York Business, in 2003, listed him as one of the top 100 minority business leaders. Williams has also been the subject of numerous articles on management in both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. What most people don’t know about Williams is that, at heart, he’s a gifted artist and designer who can bring a sense of craftsmanship to a profession known more by its numbers than its creativity.”

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"Big Carts, Big Calories"
Tuck
November 29, 2017

“There’s a certain logic to the stores’ low prices and bulk packaging: you can get more for your money, and make fewer trips to your regular grocery store. And the membership fee of $50 or $100 pays for itself in the money you save versus shopping at a traditional supermarket. The club store industry has been riding that calculation to great success.

Between 1992 and 2013, club stores and supercenters were the fastest growing retail category in the U.S., with sales rising from $40 billion to $420 billion, and the number of club stores exploding to more than 1,600.

There’s just one problem. The whole value proposition basically falls apart in practice. As Kusum Ailawadi, the Charles Jordan 1911 TU’12 Professor of Marketing, finds in a new research paper, people who shop at club stores are spending more on food and making more shopping trips than they would if they didn’t shop there, and they’re eating more too. “We are not saving time, we are not saving money,” Ailawadi says, “and we’re increasing our consumption of non-perishable and impulse foods.””

"Build Your Own Skis with Lars Whitman"
Seven Days | November 15, 2017

“On day two, we layed up the skis with epoxy and fiberglass and set them in a jig that creates the camber, or spring. In the afternoon, we put the skis in vacuum-sealed plastic bags and placed them in the oven — a long, insulated compartment equipped with a space heater on a timer.

By noon on the third day, we had trimmed the excess material from the sides, filed the edges so they lay flat against the bases, and belt-sanded the tips and tails so they were smooth and symmetrical. I headed home around 12:30 p.m. with new skis in my car. They have a lustrous eucalyptus topsheet etched with my initials. I don’t know how all skis are made, but I know how these were.”

"Heating Up"
Vermont Life | Autumn 2017

“For foresters and the working landscape, wood pellets offer an opportunity to recover lost ground. Over the past 20 years, numerous paper mills in New York and New England have closed due to reduced paper use, recycling and the globalization of paper production. The trend eliminated most of the market for pulp wood. When a pulp mill in Berlin, New Hampshire, closed in 2006, it stopped processing more than 1 million tons of wood per year. ”

"The Pasture Prime"
The Ski Journal
December 2009

“Most nights in Woodstock, Vt. are quiet. Route 4, the main east-west corridor in the state, plumbs a line straight through this quaint New England town, past an oval-shaped green and brick courthouse and a colonnaded town hall. The shops are mostly shuttered by 5:30, and you can cross the street without looking both ways. The one bar of any distinction, Bentley’s, attracts a wine-sipping clientele, and the DUI-vigilant police keep things nice and civil. ”

"Are Fat Bikes Killing Old Man Winter"
Mountain Magazine | November 2016

“The winter of 2013 was pretty dismal in New England. The January thaw was warmer than usual. February brought rain. The snows of March never really came. All winter, I pined for nor’easters and sub-zero temperatures, for powder days and four-hour skate ski benders. But mostly I rode my bike in my living room, watching Deadwood.

I also watched something else: people in my region of Vermont and New Hampshire thronging to buy fat bikes. They rode them on snowmobile trails, covered in a veneer of crusty snow. They rode them on dirt roads that turned spongy in the afternoon sun. They even rediscovered some singletrack trails and packed them into rock-studded ribbons of ice. My friends, in other words, were moving on from winter.”

"The Comeback Trail"
Vermont Life
Autumn 2016

“Ascutney’s life as a resort, in the conventional sense, appears to be over. The condominiums remain, of course, as does the Holiday Inn Club Vacation hotel at the base area. But lifts will never deposit skiers at the high point of the old ski area, a few hundred vertical feet below the summit, and people from Boston and New York won’t cram the base lodge at lunchtime on winter Saturdays. Most of the human traffic on the property will be human-powered — people pedaling bicycles or using skins and skis to ascend this craggy monadnock of a mountain. ”

"Where the Streams Have No Names"
The Flyfish Journal
December 2009

“Look with a jaundiced eye at trout fishing in the east, and you’ll see an experience orchestrated to match every angler’s wildest dream. In that dream, every fish is big and stupid, gulping dry flies from the surface with an almost reckless abandon, and then acts surprised when it realizes there’s a hook in its lip. With a natural drama, the fish runs downstream, upstream, does somersaults in the air. And when you’re just about ready to net the beast, it gets tired and moseys over to you like a cow who knows it’s time for milking. You reach down and heft the trout from the water, admire its reds, greens, and yellows, its generous girth, smile for the camera, and do it again.”

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"Rasputitsa Season in the Northeast Kingdom"
Mountain Magazine
April 25, 2016

“After about 40 minutes, the climb pushed me back in the pack and I found myself in a group of six riders 30 seconds behind the lead group of four. We climbed through a notch on the northern shoulder of Burke Mountain, and descended into the remote town of Gallup Mills. Out there, the terrain changed from wooded hills and farms to a lone dirt road through a massive bog. My group traded pulls in a quick pace line and nearly caught the leaders at Victory Road, but then the road tilted up again and it was every man for himself. Soon after, I hit the most famous section of the course, Cyberia, a two-mile Jeep road that’s usually impassable during mud season. This time it was rideable all the way through, albeit with menacing, partially frozen 12-inch-deep ruts on the descent.”

Alumni Profile: Carlos Rodriquez-Pastor T'88
Tuck School of Business | Alumni Stories

“On a sunny day in June of last year, Carlos Rodriguez-Pastor T’88 donned academic regalia and delivered the investiture address to the Tuck class of 2015. Rodriguez-Pastor talked a little about his days on Wall Street back in the early 1990s. It sounded like fun, and it was a formative time for Rodriguez-Pastor, but only in the sense that it made him yearn for something he couldn’t quite define. “It always made me feel empty and hollow,” he recounted, “hoping my career would become something more than just a way to earn money as fast and easily as I could.””

"Pub Crawl Meets Pub Cruise"
Mountain Magazine
December 2015

“Jackson is the rare town where you can ski from bar to bar, with just a bit of walking to connect a trail or two. It’s been that way since the early 1970s, when local business owners hatched a plan to boost winter tourism. Urbanites had traveled to Jackson in the summers since the mid-1800s to take in the clean mountain air, hike, and splash in the rivers. The Jackson Ski Touring Foundation formed in 1972 to grow the cross-country and backcountry (more like bushwhacking) offerings. Now the JSTF maintains 154 kilometers of trails. Many are meticulously groomed for skate and classic skiing, while others are left in their natural state. The network crisscrosses the village, with its covered bridge and town green, but also extends to the wilder highlands north of town and the expansive White Mountain National Forest around Pinkham Notch and the eastern side of Mount Washington. ”

"Could algorithms help create a better venture capitalist?"
Fortune | August 2015

“Ask anyone in venture capital about their business model and they will probably tell you it’s all about the “hits.” In the VC world, a hit is a startup that makes it big, returning many multiples of a venture fund’s initial investment. Hits are great for everyone—investors, entrepreneurs, job seekers—but the problem is they don’t happen very often. William Hambrecht, a legendary venture capitalist who made early investments in Apple, Genentech, and Google, says the odds of a big hit are about one in 10. “A few others will work out, and you’re going to lose in a lot,” he says.”

"The Right Stuff"
Tuck School of Business | June 2015

“Paul Danos arrived at Tuck armed with big ideas about business education and the mandate to make them happen. Twenty years later, the changes he’s made have transformed nearly every aspect of the school and put it on a path for future success. Inside the life and legacy of Tuck’s longest-serving dean.”

"The Strategists"
Tuck School of Business | December 2014

“There are many paths to the top. Tuck’s renowned strategy professors know them all, and are learning new ones every day.

Strategy is an old word but a modern phenomenon. Its etymology is traced back to the Greek strategia, which is best translated as “generalship.” The military connotation is strong and intentional, because for most of history strategy meant the “art of war.” Militaries still have strategies today, of course, but the difference is that everyone else does too. We have career strategies, parenting strategies, weight-loss strategies. The term has been coopted so often that we barely know what it means anymore. But if you peel back the layers of interpretation, you can still find its core. The British military historian Sir Lawrence Freedman calls it the “art of creating power,” and reminds us that strategy needs conflict like fire needs air. Strategy is therefore imbued with drama. It is the story of the leader trying to hold on to the lead, or of the underdog scratching its way to the top. Strategy is about figuring out how to win.”

"Improve urban infrastructure? There's an app for that"
Fortune | August 2014

“Every weekday morning at approximately 6:30, Willem Heydendael, a 35-year-old medical consultant, hops on his bike and rides 15 miles along the Schuylkill River from his home in the Passyunk Square neighborhood of South Philadelphia to his office in Conshohocken, a suburb northwest of the city. Before he takes a pedal stroke, he performs an important ritual: he launches the Strava application on his iPhone and starts recording his ride. When he gets to work, he uploads the commute to Strava’s website, where he can see his route overlaid on a Google map, along with his average speed, distance, elevation gain, and a host of other metrics. “I like it because the rides add up and it’s nice to see the mileage I’ve done,” he says.”