Hello to all you winter-bound northerners... We were in partly sunny Pensacola Florida on Tuesday (72 but windy). Big Navy presence down here, and lots of pelicans too. Local public art combines the two, with interesting effect: We spoke to businesses from both ends of the age spectrum here. One was a fish market, a local institution started by the current proprietor's father back in the 1930's. Frank Patti, now in his eighties, runs Joe Patti's, and still begins his days with 4 am phone calls to Spain to place orders for fresh fish to be flown in, and ends them by cleaning the … [Read more...]
Day 1 in Dothan complete
We just pulled into our motel for the night in Pensacola, Florida after a 2.5 hour drive from Dothan, Alabama. We had some fantastic visits in Dothan, including a company that manufactures fire hoses and one that recycles the precious metal from the catalytic converters of junked automobiles (see photos below).We had great plant tours at both of these locations, but what was really exciting was the interesting economics at play in both of these businesses and how they linked to successful business strategy. We learned that making fire hose requires substantial sunk investments, which … [Read more...]
Prepping for the Trip
For all of our trips, we start out by setting out a route. We try to pick four cities/towns, each in a different state, that are reasonable driving distances from each other. The longest drive we ever took between days was on a cold and snowy January day from Pueblo, Colorado to Garden City, Kansas (more than 4 hours!), but typically we do around two hours or do between stops. I'm excited about the upcoming trip, because it is in the part of the country where I have not spent much time - Alabama, the Florida Panhandle, and Mississippi. Once we get the locations picked, the next step is … [Read more...]
Hitting the Road
Hi all, and welcome to our very first post on the Roadside MBA blog! We are in the process of preparing our sixth Roadside MBA tour. We've gotten a little better at our trips each time, and I think our big innovation on this one will be weather. You see, the last time we took in a trip in January we traveled from Denver to Oklahoma City, visiting smaller cities in Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma along the way. Average high temps were in the single digits, which was difficult on Paul, him being a Californian and all. So, this time we are headed south! The three of us (myself, Mike … [Read more...]