I have been involved in many industries.....
I was in the military for 8 years...
Wore many different hats in the Liquor business for 9 years...
Been in the garment industry for 2 years...
Wrote software for a medical billing system for 2 years...
Have done direct marketing 7 or 8 years...
Was at an adult hosting company for 2 years...
Have done the webmastering thing part time for 2 years....
Within some of sthose industries I dealt with folks in other industries on a daily basis...
Suppliers..
List Vendors...
Computer salesman...
Freight Companies...
Customs brokers..
and Lawyers...
Within all of the above mentioned job experiences I have also been involved in the data processing industry because I am a designer/programmer/analyst...
Been exposed to many different business models within these industries...
From my experience...
The adult internet is no more and no less fragmented/cutthroat/backstabbing/corrupt then any of the others...
There is just less "illusion" within the adult net industry.... Shit within this industry is done openly unstead of behind closed doors...
Think about it.... Who really went after Microsoft ? Consumers...nope. The states, nope, they were followers. The Feds, nope, they were doing what several companies asked them to. AOL, Netscape and several others instigated against Microsoft. Why, because Microsoft was the leader. Gates and Co had made bundles of money and they wanted to take him down in the worst way possible....
AOL took a nine billion write off on it's books because they were cooking the books big time...
Enron went down because they were cooking the books...
These were direct ripoffs of the consumer by the leaders of their respective industries.
There are tons more.
In business, there is no loyalty. It is whoever can get it done the fastest/cheapest... It is whoever takes you out for dinner the most. It is whoever spends the most money on you.... Business is based on the nastiest of realities at all time...
And one of the number one rules is "never let your competition know what you are doing"... Who is the competition ? Everyone else within your industry that is going after the same piece of pie that you are.
So things that we yell about in this industry are status quo to many mainstream businesses....
In the garment industry... You get an order for 500 "medium size" coats... You only have 200 on the rack... So you pull the labels out of 150 large and 150 small, relabel them as medium and send them on out the door. Getting that order out takes precedence... Are you screwing your customer ?
Liquor industry there is lots of "legal" money under the table. Suppliers would often offer "sales incentives" on certain months. So, for example, you might get a $3.00 "legal kickback" per case on Chivas for all your sales in September. So what do you do, you underreport Sales in July and August, so you can overreport your sales in September and take advantage of the $3.00 per case... A reverse shave sort of, but I was at 2 different companies, one a giant in the industry and one a small player, in two differentstates, but they both played the gane the same way.
Foremost/McKesson (Foremost Foods, Mckesson Wine and Liquors, McKesson Drugs, McKesson Chemicals) was the Liquor "Giant" I was with. There was a big to do within the company while I was with them. McKesson Chemical was having record profits. McKesson Drugs was having horrible profits. McKesson hadd a policyt that a sister company was always a preferred vendor. You were always supposed to buy from a preferred vendor when possible. So, McKesson Chemivcal was selling to McKesson Drugs at about twice the going rate thereby inflating the hell out of McKesson Chemical's numbers and killing McKesson Drug's numbers. This WAS business as usual.
The Medical Claims processing software I was writing was to try to save the ass of a company that had been selling vaporware for 2 years before I came to the company. That company sold 200 licenses at $600.00 a pop in one year to people to start their own home business. The software they were licensing was under a court order under another companies name not allowed to be sold. So, they formed a different company to sell it. Turned 1.2 mill before anyone hit them in court. They had to give back approximately half the money eventually. Business as usual.
To think that it is normal for rival businesses to care about one another is Naive at best and from my experience a feeling that is pretty unique to the adult net. There is a lot of symbiosis that occurs within this industry. Program a trades traffic with programs b and c who share additionally with programs d, e and f, who share it back with company a. But these companies all sharing traffic are rivals, don't ever forget that. Company a would gladly swallow company b whole if it had the chance. And company F would gladly assfuck anyone else within the chain to get what it considers it's fair share of the pie.. And every company's view is that the fair share of the pie is the whole fucking thing.
whew... I have to check on my daughter, so I will post this then come back in a bit and see if I made any sense
Last edited by sarettah at Nov 16 2003, 12:40 AM