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  3. Every business needs two things, says Skullcandy CEO Rick Alden: inspiration

Every business needs two things, says Skullcandy CEO Rick Alden: inspiration

游客2023-11-07  49
问题     Every business needs two things, says Skullcandy CEO Rick Alden: inspiration and desperation. In 2001, Alden had both. He’d sold two snowboarding businesses, and he was desperately bored. But he had an idea; He wanted to make a new kind of headphone.
    " I kept seeing people missing their cell phone calls because they were listening to music," he explains. "Then I’m in a chairlift(索道) , I’ve got my headphones on, and I realize my phone is ringing. As I take my gloves off and reach for my phone, I think, " It can’t be that tough to make headphones with two plugs, one for music and one for your cell phone. " Alden described what he wanted to a designer, perfected a prototype, and outsourced(外包) manufacturing overseas.
    Alden then started designing headphones into helmets, backpacks—anywhere that would make it easy to listen to music while snowboarding. " Selling into board and skate shops wasn’t a big research effort," he explains. "Those were the only guys I knew!"
    Alden didn’t want to be a manufacturer. And by outsourcing, he’d hoped he could get the business off the ground without debt. But he was wrong. So he asked his wife, "Can I put a mortgage(抵押贷款) on the house? She said, ’ What is the worst thing that can happen? We lose the house, we sell our cars, and we start all over again. ’ I definitely married the right woman!"
    For the next two years, Alden juggled mortgage payments and payments to his manufacturers. "Factories won’t ship your product till they get paid," he says. " But it takes four or five months to get a mortgage company so upset that they knock on your door. So we paid the factory first. "
    Gradually, non-snowboarders began to notice the colourful headphones. In 2006, the company started selling them in 1,400 FYE (For Your Entertainment) stores. "We knew that nine out of ten people walking into that store would be learning about Skullcandy for the first time. Why would they look at brands they knew and take home a new brand instead? We had agreed to buy back anything we didn’t sell, but we were dealing with huge numbers. It’d kill us to take back all the products. "
    Alden’s fears faded as Skullcandy became the No. 1 headphone seller in those stores and tripled its revenue to $120 million in one year. His key insight was that headphones weren’t gadgets; they were a fashion accessory. " In the beginning," he says, " that little white wire that said you had an iPod—that was cool. But now wearing the white bud means you’re just like everyone else. Headphones occupy this critical piece of cranial real estate and are highly visible. "
    Today, Skullcandy is America’s second-largest headphone supplier, after Sony. With 79 employees, the company is bigger than Alden ever imagined. [br] Alden sees headphones as______.
选项 A、a kind of device
B、part of fashion
C、a symbol of status
D、a sign of self-confidence
答案 B
解析 推断题。由题干中的Alden sees headphones as定位至倒数第二段第二句“His key insight was that headphones weren’t gadgets；they were a fashion accessory．”由定位句中的“they were a fashion accessory”可推知，[B]符合题意，故为答案。
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