We told you about it and, unfortunately,we were right.

m&m has been a bit quite for a while and now we are going to bury this in the summer hole.

Double dip Recession

You can run a search on "double dip" here on m&m using this link. What you will find is that I and we at m&m always believed that we are heading for a double dip recession. It more and more looks like we were, unfortunately, right.

The main reason to believe a double dip recession would be unavoidable is (was) based on the figures and an outlook to the future. I talked about the certainty of a recession in 2007 because it is what happens. After a boom comes a recession - as certain is few things in life.
When we were heading into the recession in late 2007 / 2008 we slowly understood the immense size of the debt build up. Well, we had been warned of the trillions piling up for years - especially in the US and in Britain. And there was the deluded, unchecked spending sprees in places from Ireland to Greece - crash landing a deceived population.

With such large debt everywhere and governments trying to cushion the harsh landing on borrowed money and time - it became clear that we will not recover easily and that this softening the blow was the start for the double dip.

Sure, the double-dip will not be the same everywhere. Some larger countries and economies like Germany and France will be hit less, though, no one is out of the woods on this.

The big Crunch .. or not?

Malls & More has been in beta now for some time and the full release was scheduled for late last year.

We have taken the time over the Christmas and the New Year to consider the future of m&m in detail.

Taking stock of the project we have to realise that the idea of developing a professional network for people in this specific niche of the commercial real estate business has not been successful. Our formula of information and networking did not work out the way we had hoped. There are plenty of real estates sites now offering networking in addition to their publishing activities.

Our advertising budget is also not big enough and enthusiasm does not make up for that.

The recent arrival of the Sat Nav for High Street Shopping that we predicted in the summer reminded me to take another look into the future.

What next?

The recent arrival of the Sat Nav for shoppers that I predicted in the summer reminded me to take another look into the future.

When I started to write it - it turned out to be an article - A retailers dream or not ....

Theo Albrecht died, 88 years old. Wikipedia has no image of him. Apparently the last available image goes back to 1971. He had just been released from a kidnapping. His brother Karl lives and equally private life and so does the rest of the family.

Little is known about the family. There must be a question whether Aldi can continue after both founders will have gone before too long.

The secret of Aldi is so simple that it is hard to discover. It cannot just the the limitation of product lines and simplicity of service. Others are trying to copy it and they are not half as successful. So, the very private family must have something to do with that.