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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2025-04-03  25
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 colorful 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 sign of self-confidence
B、a symbol of status
C、part of fashion
D、a kind of device
答案 B
解析 观点态度题。第7段第2句His key insight表明这是Alden的观点，与题目Alden see headphones as相对应，其中insight对应see sth．as，fashion accessory对应part of fashion，即可判断B正确。在该段第2句中，Alden认为耳机不是小物件(gadgets)，可见A“一种小设备“错误。虽然该段最后一句提到耳机在这一相关产业中举足轻重而且非常引人注目，但Alden说这句话主要为了表明他认为耳机是一种时尚，而非社会地位，不选C。D“自信的标志”没有原文依据。
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