It's flood season right now. Snow is melting, the ice is floating downriver... I guess ice fishing season is mostly over. Although I saw someone on the ice yesterday just a few meters off the free flowing river. He was nuts, I say.
The police reports about 200 bicycles has been stolen during January, February and the first two weeks of March. That's a lot, during the coldest months of the year. On the other hand, it shows a lot of people were riding their bikes, otherwise the thieves wouldn't have gotten them!
Which reminds me, go see the lost and found- maybe they've found my bike now that the snow has melted...
A few days ago on "King Consumer" (a tv program giving advice to consumers and testing things etc) one of the topics was convenience stores. The big malls and hypermarkets have taken a huge share of the market, but the small shops are still alive. The hypermarkets have the benefits of economies of scale: buying gazillion packets of toothpicks is cheaper per item than buying two packets. The hypermarkets have increased their share from 50% to 60% during the last ten years. Mid-sized shops lost, while the small shops have maintained the share. (Small shop in this case has less than 400m2 and they have a bit different regulations about opening hours than bigger shops).
The tv-show interviewed some big wig expert, who pointed out that the big shops have also outsourced the 'last-mile delivery'. Instead of having to transport half a dozen packs of toothpicks to dozens of small shops, the big shops get one big delivery. If the customer has to drive 10km for the toothpicks, instead of 2km, that's their problem.
The expert said the costs of shopping trips for an average Finnish family would be about 5000€. That's quite a lot of toothpicks!
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