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Smartphones, Tablets and EBay Send SkyMall To Chapter 11
alphadogg writes SkyMall, the quirky airline catalog, looks as though it may be grounded before long. Parent company Xhibit has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and seeks to sell its assets. In an SEC filing, Xhibit explains that it has fallen victim to an "intensely competitive" direct marketing retail industry that now includes the likes of eBay and Amazon.com. Smartphones and tablets are largely to blame for SkyMall's downfall, according to the SEC filing. "Historically, the SkyMall catalog was the sole in-flight option for potential purchasers of products to review while traveling. With the increased use of electronic devices on planes, fewer people browsed the SkyMall in-flight catalog."
The boom of internet shopping allowed even the uninformed to discover just what a ripoff most of those items were.
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We put a company in our company, so that we can bankrupt while we bankrupt.
OK, I've always wondered who actually has ever bought anything from Skymall. I mean, we've all looked, but who has actually done the deed?
Anyone? Don't be afraid to admit it... come out of the shadows and confess.
Smartphones, Tablets and EBay had very little to do with the demise of SkyMall. Long before those things ever existed people weren't buying SkyMall's useless, overpriced crap. It's amazing they held on for this long. They must have a parent company with lots of money to waste.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with people shopping on their tablets. It has to do with having something to do, so you don't open the SkyMall catalog. I never ever bought anything out of there anyway because everything was so overpriced, but a lot of people are dumb enough. If they don't even see the catalog, though, their stupidity never generates a sale.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I used to read it regularly when flying. This was primarily because reading skymall was free, while buying a magazine at the airport was expensive (and I inevitably would forget to pick one up some place less expensive before going to the airport). While it wasn't exactly bursting at the seams with good deals, there were some things selling at reasonable prices in there. The more novel feature of it was that it was a pretty random selection of products; one page might be garden supplies while the next might be pool toys then power tools then kitchen accessories.
Now did I ever buy anything from it? No. So I am in part responsible for its demise as well.
I'm more concerned about the possibility of this becoming an excuse for the airlines to raise fares yet again. If skymall paid the airlines even $3 per seat to have their catalog in every seat back, the airlines will tell us that losing that contribution will increase the cost of every ticket by at least $20 (expect this to show up as an a la carte fee along with pillows, blankets, snacks, and seat belts).
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The business model is well established and works. Captive audience, unable to compare prices, boredom and left over holiday money to burn. Exactly the same one that worked so well at airports, until recently. On holiday consumers tend to be in "high spend" mode too, splashing out on stuff they wouldn't buy at home.
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Long before those things ever existed people weren't buying SkyMall's useless, overpriced crap.
Obviously false, since people don't stay in a business for decades just to piss away money.
However, the economy is the worst it's been in 60 years (vis-a-vis age-discounted labor participation rates) and so there's just less of a pool of money to waste.
Skymall took some cream off the top but we're down to whole milk now.
Smartphones might have helped it along, but there are people posting here about reading the catalog for entertainment because they couldn't figure out how to bring a book with them on the airplane. Those people aren't planning ahead on their phones either.
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Why is there airport shopping, despite usually being more expensive than anywhere else except for tax-free? Because you have a trapped audience and once you got them wandering their store and find something they like many people will buy it right there. They won't make a note of it that they should check into buying one of those later. The time in the airport and the airplane seat is already a "sunk cost", spending my time shopping when I'm back on the ground is not. It's not cost efficient, but many have more money than time.
I used to travel a bit on an air plane due to work, the in-flight magazine was usually read cover-to-cover because well, there wasn't much else to do after finishing the newspaper. I don't think I'd read a mail order catalog like this seems to be though, but the "infomercial" travel stories, fashion/art items and such I think hit their target pretty well. I mean, it's not every day I read three pages about what's to see in Stockholm/Düsseldorf/Valencia but I know I have done so on the plane. And I'm not the one for buying overpriced crap, but it got me looking and a few times tempted because it was actually stylish.
These days, I'm on the phone. Went flying twice on Friday for a one-day meeting, didn't even consider looking in the seat pocket. Bring your own entertainment and for longer flights the in-flight entertainment system is actually getting pretty good. At least good enough to fill the dead time, which is exactly what companies like Skymall depended on. Which is why I'd love an autonomous car and don't understand the naysayers, spent 2+ hours today watching traffic. I honestly got better things to do, but since I'm driving I don't have a choice.
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You've got it the wrong way around; he doesn't understand it because he's NOT a moron.
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Bingo. I don't think it's even so much about lack of ability to compare prices, I think it's like how children, while they eat their breakfast, will read the entire text on the packaging of the cereal box because it's the only option.
Before the ubiquity of portable electronic devices that could hold loads of content, there was an upper limit on how much content a person could bring them, and even then, the person had to have the foresight to plan for it. They had to bring paperback books or magazines of their own, and if they didn't, the only entertainment was the Skymall catalog in the seatback pocket. Read something enough and some random thing starts to seem neat, so they buy it out of boredom.
I suppose they are right about Amazon and the like in the sense that before, it was sometimes difficult to find the things in Skymall through other sellers, as most of them are catalog sellers and unless you knew who they were, you simply couldn't find them. Amazon makes it a lot easier to find part numbers and descriptions, and search engines allow one to find the same product through other catalogs, opening up the available options.
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-1 wrong. Skymall was an awesome curated list of wired stuff, and I prolly won't find another place like it.
Delta used to give out newspapers I remember one evening I got one that they hadn't noticed the front page had a story (with photo) of an airplane crash that morning. I turned to the woman next to me and said "This flight is going to be super-safe. After all, the odds of TWO airplanes crashing the same day."
My humor wasn't appreciated by her, or the stewardesses ...
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It's a couple years old now, but there was this interesting article in the Atlantic about the connection between SkyMall and the company that acquired it, Xhibit. It points out some very suspicious details related to their financial situations.
That's got to be a large part of it; they're a waste of space. Imagine a stack of hundreds of those things, turned on their sides. They would occupy a whole seat. With Skymall gone they can compress your knees further into the back of the guy in front of you and cram in an extra row of pig crates.
SkyMaul has more interesting stuff, and only slightly more ridiculous.