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Seviche doesnt love Groupon anymore
Grouponâs IPO roadshow pitch is revving into high-gear this week. But CEO Andrew Mason and the rest of the crew might want to first convince its own clients of the companyâs benefits. Seviche, the merchant prominently featured in Groupon IncÂs now-trundling IPO roadshow, is no longer keen on jumping on the daily deals bandwagon. Worse, one of its general managers is mildly contesting Masonâs account of the benefits of their promotion run in 2010. Hap Cohan, general manager of the Louisville, Kentucky-based restaurant, said on Tuesday the Groupon was in fact run by previous management (the restaurant brought in new investors over the past year). The new owners do not immediately see the benefits of a Groupon, at least not now. Groupon launched its IPO marketing effort this week and the company posted a presentation by Mason and other executives online . Early in that presentation, Mason introduced Seviche along with a slide entitled ÂWhy Seviche Loves Groupon. He said Groupon ran a daily deal for Seviche in February 2010, offering a $60 voucher for $25 to about 13,000 Groupon subscribers in the Louisville area and about 800 bought it. That deal generated roughly $20 of gross profit per customer, Mason said. And it didnÂt include repeat business from the exposure, he added.  ÂThat repeat business is what led Seviche a year later to add a new expansion to their restaurant that holds an additional 60 customers, Mason said. SevicheÂs Hap begs to differ. He said the restaurantÂs expansion was related to a real-estate change that his business made, including securing a new lease. ÂIt really had nothing to do with the Groupons, Hap told Reuters in an interview. Since Seviche ran its Groupon offer and expanded, new investors have put money into the business and the restaurant completed a renovation and re-opening in June, Hap said. The Groupon deal was set up by people connected to the Âold company, Hap added. ÂWe donÂt do that anymore, Hap said. ÂWeÂre still kind of busy from the new opening and renovation. Hap conceded that the Groupon deal helped Seviche get exposure to people who didnÂt already know about the restaurant. And he wouldnÂt rule out doing another daily deal in the future. But Hap noted that most of SevicheÂs business comes from Âregular customers. The restaurant also got a lot of press from its recent renovation and re-opening, reducing the need for exposure, he added. -
Cain to face tougher scrutiny at Republican debate
Cain will be in the spotlight when candidates face off in a CNN-sponsored debate in Las Vegas at 8 p.m. eastern time (0000 GMT) but his is not the only significant storyline.Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney still has to sell himself to conservative voters who have been looking for an alternative.Many political experts believe Romney will ultimately be the Republican nominee to face Democratic President Barack Obama next year but he has a long way to go yet.Texas Governor Rick Perry, a staunch conservative, has to prove he can hold his own on stage with his main rivals after four shaky debate performances that knocked him out of the front-runner position.Cain, a former Godfather’s Pizza chief executive and motivational speaker, has shot to the top of polls of Republican voters based on the simplicity of his “9-9-9” growth plan that would overhaul the U.S. tax code.Experts have questioned whether his idea to cut personal income and corporate taxes to 9 percent, while creating a 9 percent national sales tax, would in fact raise taxes on lower- and middle-income Americans, hurting the most needy.Cain’s economic plan, plus his absence of foreign policy credentials and no experience governing, may surface as a problem just as he begins to gain the attention of voters who find him a much-needed fresh face in politics with an inspirational style.A longshot candidate, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, hinted on Monday he may raise some questions about Cain’s 9-9-9 plan.”It’s not as clean as he would like to make it out to be,” Santorum told Radio Iowa. “I give him credit for bringing some innovative ideas but just because it’s innovative and bold doesn’t mean it’s good.”“NOT PART OF THE PROCESS”Jennifer Duffy, an expert at the non-partisan Cook Political Report, said Cain is the latest to benefit from conservatives looking for someone other than Romney because they have doubts about the depth of his conservative beliefs.”Part of Cain’s appeal is that he is not part of the process, he’s not a politician,” said Duffy. “He’s a very plain-speaking guy … He’s the only one out there now who actually has a ‘new’ idea.”Conservatives had first been captivated by Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and then Perry before flocking to the Cain camp, an example of the wide-open nature of the race to find a Republican nominee with less than three months to go until voting in primary elections starts.Romney has had steady debate performances throughout and retains solid support in polls but conservatives have doubts.”He needs to show he can continue to fight and be a good, strong conservative,” said Republican strategist Scott Reed.Perry has the task of recapturing the excitement when he first announced his candidacy two months ago. His debates, plus a position favoring college tuition assistance for illegal immigrants, has hurt him among conservatives.”Perry needs to prove he can debate,” said Duffy. “If he scores some points against Romney or Cain then he’s going to have a good night.” -
In Michigan, Obama defends auto bailout and touts trade
By Caren BohanORION TOWNSHIP, Mich., Oct 14 (Reuters) - With support from the South Korean president, President Barack Obama sought on Friday to reassure U.S. auto workers that a new trade pact between the two countries would not cost Americans jobs.Visiting a General Motors assembly plant in Michigan, Obama said the trade deal signed this week would support at least 70,000 jobs and bolster the U.S. economy.South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, sporting a Detroit Tigers baseball cap, got a standing ovation from auto workers when he offered a “promise” that the accord that some labor leaders have been wary of would not harm U.S. employment.”Rather, it will create more jobs for you and your families and it is going to protect your jobs. And this is the pledge that I give you today,” he said through a translator.Before addressing the crowd on the factory floor, Obama and Lee toured the plant, which was at risk of closing before the White House’s auto industry bailout.They sat in the front seats of a new red Chevrolet Sonic, a sub-compact car made with some parts shipped to the United States from South Korea, which Obama said showed the benefits of close ties with the Asian economy as well as the U.S. car sector’s comeback from its financial crisis.In an apparent jab at Mitt Romney, a leading contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, Obama credited the industry’s current strength to his own intervention.”There were a lot of politicians who said it wasn’t worth the time and it wasn’t worth the money. In fact, there are some politicians who still say that. Well, they should come and tell that to the workers here,” the Democratic president said.U.S. taxpayers extended $50 billion to GM and more than $12 billion to Chrysler in bailout and bankruptcy financing in 2009.’THE INVESTMENT PAID OFF‘“Today I can stand here and say that the investment paid off. The hundreds of thousands of jobs that have been saved made it worth it. An American auto industry that is more profitable and competitive than it has been in years made it worth it,” Obama said. “The taxpayers are being repaid.”The entire bailout included loans and working capital for manufacturers, suppliers and financing businesses that underwrite consumer auto purchases.The Treasury Department long ago conceded it would likely write off a portion of the bailout. Its latest estimates show the government will recover more than 80 percent of the money.Romney, a former Massachusetts governor who grew up in Detroit, has said that GM and Chrysler could have been saved without the injection of government funds, drawing criticism from the United Auto Workers union and others.His 2008 op-ed in the New York Times titled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” has haunted him on the campaign trail but reflects a sentiment among many Republicans that Obama spent money too readily when he took office, driving up U.S. deficits and swelling the national debt.Michigan is likely to be a closely contested state in the November 2012 presidential election. -
Millions of BlackBerry users cut off for third day
Users in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India suffered patchy email service and no access to browsing and messaging, ratcheting up negative sentiment towards a company already losing market share to Apple and Samsung .RIM, which had said on Tuesday that services had returned to normal, said later the problems had actually spread beyond EMEA and India to Argentina, Brazil and Chile.”The messaging and browsing delays … were caused by a core switch failure within RIM’s infrastructure,” it said. “As a result, a large backlog of data was generated and we are now working to clear that backlog and restore normal service.”The service disruptions are the worst since an outage swept north America two years ago, and come as Apple prepares to put on sale its already sold-out iPhone 4S on Friday.”It’s a blow upon a bruise. It comes at a bad time,” said Richard Windsor, global technology specialist at Nomura.”One possibility could be that it encourages client companies to look more at other options such as allowing users to connect their own devices to the corporate server and save themselves the cost of buying everyone a BlackBerry.”Many companies, no longer seeing the need to pay to be locked into RIM’s secure proprietary email service, have already begun allowing employees to use alternative smartphones, particularly Apple’s iPhone, for corporate mail.RIM has made inroads into the youth market attracted by its free BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service, partially compensating for its losses in the corporate market. But new products like its PlayBook tablet computer have been poorly received.Following a dismal set of quarterly results and a plunge in its share price, some investors are now calling for a break-up, sale or change of management at the company.Increasingly frustrated users tweeted their frustration on Wednesday, while RIM’s own official Twitter feed was last updated on Tuesday night, saying problems were being resolved and it was sorry for the inconvenience.Veteran British entrepreneur Alan Sugar, who founded electronics company Amstrad in 1968, tweeted: “In all my years in IT biz, I have never seen such an outage as experienced by Blackberry. I can’t understand why it’s taking so long to fix.”Some customers used humour to deal with the situation. One joke making the rounds on Twitter said: “What did the one BBM user say to the other? Nothing.”
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