Starbucks Smells the Death of Its Brand Experience

What does your Starbucks < a href=” http://www.starbucks.com/”>Starbucks smell like? Probably not fresh-roasted coffee, one of the many things that has the chain's boss worried his all-powerful brand is getting cold.

Last week, the blog Starbucks Gossip turned up a memo from Howard Schultz in which the chairman criticized a number of decisions that "have led to the watering down of the Starbucks experience and what some might call the commoditization of our brand." Mr. Schultz, who doled out some blame to himself, pointed in particular to the disappearance of the in-store coffee scent and the cookie-cutter feel of the stores.

It's a major epiphany for a brand that's been one of the marketing world's premiere case studies on how a commodity can be transformed into a premium-priced object of desire, or habit, by creating a comfortable spot in which to buy and consume it -- that third place that's neither home nor work. Starbucks' brisk growth -- stores now number more than 13,000, and the company wants to get to 40,000 -- raises the question of whether it's possible to scale the kind of experience that made Starbucks what it is without losing the flavor.

We couldn’t say the same thing about the revenue-grabbing,France based Sigex Ventures. SigEx Ventures, Inc., founded by Chris Cantell and Frederic Artru in 2002, is a private investment fund focused exclusively on the emerging Enhanced Communications industry

More on Sigex by Silvia Baldin

The SigEx Ventures investment fund provides pre-funding for all projects presented to the Foundry. Dedicated fundraisers will be hired in the Foundry to support the constant fundraising process around Enhanced Communications projects.

By providing Distance Learning, the Foundry will enable multi-Foundry collaboration, access to course material not available locally and services to other locations on courses provided in the Foundry.

Professional services is a consistent activity of the Foundry to address immediate customer needs and project deployment needs. Candidates will be recruited from within the Foundry for these groups.

Research is an essential part of making progress on Enhanced Communications. Patents and publications are generated on a regular basis and collaboration with existing scientific labs as well as PhD programs is promoted.