FutonLife.com On Fire

Records are meant to be broken and so it goes with our web site. We almost topped 30,000 unique visits with 111,247 page views. That breaks down to 3.74 pages per visit. With the national average at about one minute per page view that puts each visitor at the site for almost four minutes. In other internet related news, almost 75 percent of the US population is online and e-commerce accounts for almost 2 percent of all retail sales nationwide. That translates into about $16 billion for Q2 in 2004. (Web stats ClickZ Internet Statistics) Here are our stats for the past four months:

We are also proud to say that we come up number one or two on all four major search engines (Google #1, MSN #1, Yahoo #2, AOL #1). Unlike many other sites vying for these highly desired listings, futonlife.com is ranked based upon the value of our content and its value to web surfers searching for all things futon. Hey, it’s a niche.

Mayor Laffey Running Against UNION Puppet

Mayor Steve Laffey has been challenged by another Republican in a primary. Garry Reilly, a heretofore unknown, is challenging Laffey on behalf of his wife’s union. You guessed it, she is a Cranston Crossing Guard. The Crossing Guards in Cranston work one hour per day, get $45 per hour, full family health insurance, with no co-pay or deductible, and generous payouts for uniforms. They collect unemployment during the summer, get paid for holidays and have a “no layoff” clause in their contracts too. Laffey eliminated the whole Crossing Guards program (which costs the city about $950,000) and was ready to hire an outside professional company to take over when a liberal RI judge forced the city to reinstate the guards.

These primary races typically pit a reformer against well-financed and well-manned special interests. In this case, Laffey’s opponent and his handlers have gone as far as getting Democrats to disaffiliate from the Democratic party so they can vote in the Republican primary. How do I know this, you ask? Well, they (the lawyer for the union that represents the Crossing Guards in particular) showed up at the Board of Canvassers with a stack of 270 voter disaffiliation cards. Talk about brazen misuse of the system. But that’s not all. At a recent City Council meeting, the President of the Cranston Firefighters’ Union, Paul Valletta, attacked Mayor Laffey in public (while TV cameras recorded the whole event) and threatened him with bodily harm. “I’ll knock you out,” was the exact quote. People screamed, policemen laughed and the mayor remained calm, called his wife and told her to lock
the doors.

The following day, Reilly went on the radio to defend his man and lied about what had happened at the meeting. The radio host, Dan Yorke, played the audio and challenged Reilly with the facts to no avail. Yorke publicly called Reilly a “moron” and a “certified idiot” and ultimately cancelled a debate between the two men on the show just before the primary. All things being equal, there has never been a clearer or more definitive opportunity for the voting public to see corruption and thuggery vs. honesty and integrity, nor a better opportunity to slam the door on corruption forever. All the people have to do is come out and vote. If they do, and our opponent has insured a huge turnout with his antics, Laffey will move to the general election in November with a resounding victory for the people. I love this country.

Updates and Sundry Details

In our last issue, we began to cover the China phenomenon with the hope of bringing you an update on the status of China’s presence in the futon trade. This will have to wait until a future issue. Many companies are working feverishly to get their China programs going while others have established their base factories and are looking for additional resources. With all this activity, we believe it may be six months to a year before our contacts (the major futon manufacturers and suppliers to the category) have their programs in place and are confident in their abilities to deliver. As the China story continues to develop, we will cover it and will bring you the big picture as it relates to our category as soon as possible.

We will be bringing you our Annual Futon Retailer Survey results in the Winter 2004-05 issue
coming up in January. Last year, the Futon Association conducted their first-ever survey for the industry. There are currently no plans for a 2004 or 2005 survey.

The SEries-The Bowl

The Red Sox just finished a sweep of the Oakland As and are only two games behind NY for the AL East lead. They are also five games up in the wild card race. The Sox will win the seventh game of the World Series against the Houston Astros in a Clemens vs. Martinez or Schilling duel in October. Also, by the time our next issue hits (mid January ’05), the NE Patriots will have broken the Dolphins’ consecutive game winning streak record and be headed to a Division title and their third Super Bowl in four years. It’s chicken dance time, Rich.

FL