Kris Kringle, the CEO of xmas.hup, has today gone on record as stating that rumors of widespread outages in his so-called “physical gift” distribution network (aka “SleighR”) are completely unfounded, and that this Thursday’s midnight launch event will go off without a hitch.
Over the last several weeks, Kringle’s detractors in the press have been hounding the “Jolly Old Elf” for details on how he plans to turn a profit by manufacturing and giving away over $30 billion in merchandise this December, a prospect which is only made more difficult by the sheer logistical nightmare of having to service over 7000 homes per second in order to meet delivery targets.
The xmas.hup East Palo Alto Distribution Center
The bullish Kringle remained cautiously optimistic however, his eyes twinkling merrily as he explained how his proprietary behavioral-targeting software would prioritize requests from “good” users, and why “crowd-sourcing” much of his work to parents and other charitable organizations was an innovative solution to a thorny distribution problem.
“In a lot of ways, we’re simply evolving from a free to ‘freemium’ business model,” said Kringle, during an impromptu meeting with bloggers on Monday. “And as long as people continue to find some kind of value in the xmas.hup brand, then we expect to see more and more users becoming active participants and content creators within our community.”
In response to cash flow questions, Kringle pointed out that his organization provides a variety of lucrative consulting services to Fortune 500 businesses, as well as being the beneficiary of undisclosed millions in licensing fees from these same companies.
While leading guests through one of his dozens of global distribution warehouses, the red-suited CEO stopped to point out how the QR codes printed on each shipping container would be scanned by powerful light-emitting diodes implanted in the noses of his reindeer.
“It’s this attention to optimizing our process that allows us to accomplish in just one night what might take other organizations a week or more!” he said (in a not-so-subtle dig at one of his main competitors, hannu.ca).
In any case, Kringle and his investors appear to be very well-situated regardless of the outcome of this week’s launch, as several tech heavyweights are said to have been in talks with the group recently about a possible acquisition.
“From a business standpoint, it makes perfect sense,” claims holiday analyst Charlie Dickens. “Kringle and his team have done an amazing job finding an audience in the important 3-13 demographic, but they’ve had a hell of a time holding on to older users! The right partnership could allow them to engage those customers in a lifelong series of irrational beliefs and purchases.”
In a related story, the results of the EU’s action against xmas.hup over Kringle’s requirement of “cookies” are still not expected to be known until Q3 2010.
