Chris Anderson is making a big bang with his new book: "The Long Tail".  It's an important message for online business, and since virtually all business have, or will have, an online presence, it is an important concept for all.

Basically, Anderson's study tackles the adage that 20% of a store's inventory accounts for 80% of that store's sales.  For retail stores, that is essentially true.  But for online stores, hold onto your socks.  For online stores, yes, there are popular items.  But the long tail of marketing goes waaaaaaaay out, capturing a much higher percentage of smaller sales than anyone imagined.  It is truly a "market of multitudes".

And this is where small business can prosper.  Amazon and eBay, and the other big retailers aren't going to go after the argyle sock market.  But you can -- and probably do very well at it.  You might even add in some argyle sweaters and scarves.  You can give your customers greater variety and better quality than any other company on the internet in argyle products. 

That's the long tail, the niche that works.

It doesn't matter who you are, or what little burg you live in.  The internet reaches around the world, putting customers on your desktop day and night.

It's a very important concept to really "get."  It's equally important that your potential banker/investor also "gets" it.  This isn't retail by the old rules.  You are writing a whole new book for a whole new technology, and those who do get it are those who will get ahead.

In conjunction with the notion of the long tail of the internet, I ran across an announcement for The Liberty Wool Room, in Perryopolis. Pennsylvania.  The shop offers new, recycled and hand-dyed wool for rug hooking. It also offers lessons and woolen incidentals for sale. Talk about a business with an international market!  There may not be more than one or two rug hookers in your town, but world wide there are tens of thousands, each one anxious to get top quality materials.

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Michigan, long lacking adequate private equity financing for start ups, will soon get a big boost from not one, but two state programs that will help beef up the state's small, but growing Venture Capital industry.  The long promised Venture Michigan Fund will begin seeking Requests for Proposals from Venture Capital firms on Oct. 27, starting a 60-day clock that will produce up to $90 million in investments in Venture Capital companies that will pump that money into early stage companies.  But a second fund with the same intent, issued a request for RFPs on Sept. 21. The 21st Century Jobs Trust Fund will provide up to $120 million to Michigan companies throughout their business life cycles – capital to hire more employees, build new factories and provide later stage and mezzanine loans. Initial funds could flow as soon as Nov. 20.

It took a Cleveland-based firm to commit $150 million to San Francisco area micro-cap businesses.  But there is a real opportunity at Riverside Co -- they are panning for gold nuggets that they can polish up for the big time.  Investors in the fund include retirement systems and venture capital investment arms of large corporations.

The "garage" is a revered term in Silicon Valley.  It was the home of HP and Apple, among many others.  The University of California campuses are adopting that term to name their incubators.  Right now the San Francisco campus is the only one with a garage, but other campuses are planning one.  It's also called QB3.  Santa Cruz is likely to be the next in line.

Frazier Healthcare Ventures, the Seattle venture capital firm that manages more than $1 billion, has beefed up its staff as it looks to create new biotechnology, medical device and health care companies.

The Qatar Science and Technology Park (QSTP) yesterday announced two venture capital funds totalling $130m to support technology enterprises in Qatar.  The $30m New Enterprise Fund and $100m Technology Venture Fund will respectively invest in early-stage and mid-stage technology enterprises locating in Qatar.

Sanders Morris Harris Group of Houston has raised has raised $25 million for a fund that will focus on information technology investments in the energy industry.

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