The big point behind both stories: the protectionism that drives the huge taxation making imports so expensive in Brazil as to justify, in some cases, the airfare and hotel expenses.

Huge, sprawling article on Business Insider about Groupon since the early beginnings. It’s telling when an article about the big article is 3 pages long.

Normally we would recommend reading the summary for conciseness – and because the day only has 24h – but the big article is a keeper. It’s even more useful for those running, considering, or investing in start-ups. They got almost all of it right, except for the culture change part. It is more important, and far more disruptive, than they make it seem. That’s the article’s usefulness for the rest of us.

We posted some interesting links – in Portuguese – about Mr. Ruy Mendes Gonçalves at Buysiders.com.BR.

Background: AT Kearney has published the 10th annual edition of its Global Retail Development Index (GRDI), which ranks emerging markets in terms of, roughly, attractiveness to retail expansion investments. Brazil jumped to first place from 5th last year, and numbers 2 and 3 are Uruguay and Chile, respectively. Last years numbers 1-3 were China, Kuwait and India. Pretty interesting moves. So what is this index trying to measure?

From their own website: “Published since 2002, the GRDI helps retailers prioritize their global development strategies by ranking the retail expansion attractiveness of emerging countries based on a set of 25 variables including economic and political risk, retail market attractiveness, retail saturation levels, and modern retailing sales area and sales growth. The GRDI focuses on opportunities for mass merchant and food retailers, which are typically the bellwether for modern retailing concepts in a country.”

So what variables could have changed so drastically in one year especially in a relative basis? The variables listed, while just a sample of the 25 they analyze, don’t seem to warrant so much variation YoY from 2010 to 2011. We’d speculate that recent success/ growth plays a big role, and Latin America (Brazil more specifically) fits the bill.

The exercise in skepticism has its own dangers, but healthy skepticism is almost a required trait in our business. Before a story like “Brazil #1in AT Kearney report” in a financial blog can ever become even a building block in your own research, there are many questions to answer.

Our previous posts on Groupon or group buying include one on group buying in Brazil, another on Facebook starting local deals and the original, Dec. 2010 link-fest on the USA Groupon). Also important is our “Marketing Revolution” post back in November 2010, in which we’ve laid a provocative vision for social media + augmented reality + geolocation + daily deals.

Since we’ve mentioned “doubts” regarding the sustainability of Groupon’s business model, here’s a very interesting take on Groupon’s reported numbers and metrics. The conclusion is perfect when thinking of joining the company’s fortunes in the IPO: “To be clear, I’m incredibly impressed with this company and what it has achieved. But a careful read of the rations is instructive when thinking about persistence and durability of the model.”

That said, one could be trapped into the “Groupon 1.0″ model and ignore that Groupon is trying new ideas that sound particularly interesting (also linked above to an earlier post in Buysiders)… and the fact that competition worries can be partially solved by the IPO itself – because the company plans to use proceeds for acquisitions as well. Again, it doesn’t mean Facebook or Google can’t one day steal its thunder, but one has to keep one’s mind open when analyzing the evolution of business models in these sectors.

For more details the Dealbook coverage is spot-on. However, they have Groupon’s IPO amount at US$ 3 billion instead of the US$ 750 million seen in earlier reports.

Now this is a gem of a post at the Financial Times’ Alphaville blog: “How to write about the Groupon IPO when you don’t really care”. Funny yet raises relevant questions: our kind of story.

Groupon’s CEO wrote a letter to potential investors that brings Google’s founders’ 2004 letter to mind, and yet as we’ve linked above and also here (at the FT’s Business Blog), this deal has its quirks.

The video below (6:54) is interesting: Bloomberg columnist and InfectiousGreed.com writer Paul Kedrosky highlights that Groupon’s growth is not as operationally leveraged as, say, Facebook, since you must hire extensively (increase the sales force) to increase sales, you have to train them, retain them and so on. Groupon agrees and writes in the filing that it has to spend immensely to expand.

Our previous posts on the subject:

New Year’s Eve bonus: Groupon (Dec. 31st, 2010) – Our massive collection of Groupon-related articles and videos. We wanted to gather as much relevant material as possible in the arena.

Facebook and Local Deals (Jan. 28th, 2011) – Facebook can’t be ignored.

Other sources (don’t miss the video!):

Mosaico buys 40% of ClickOn – InvestInBrazil.biz, May 4th – Nice summary and interviews with the CEOs of Mosaico and ClickOn.

Peixe Urbano’s official press release in English – Reuters, May 6th – A bit more color and numbers, but not the relevant ones.

Benchmark Capital acquires stake in Peixe Urbano – TechCrunch, Jan. 12th

Must-see video interview with Julio Vasconcellos, CEO of Peixe Urbano, on TechCrunch on July 29, 2010. (6:49).

Update (Feb. 17th, 14:00 ET): Bloomberg Business Week magazine published a lengthy profile on Bill Ackman in its last issue. Always be wary of stories about controversial people, be it favorable or unfavorable.

In the first section below, there’s a good defense of short-term traders in the stock and financial markets in general. They provide liquidity and different opinions due to many different reasons – but mostly, of course, the long vs. short-term focus arbitrage.

In this next section, Mr. Ackman discusses JC Penney in more detail, especially and most interestingly in comparison to Target and even Eddie Lampert’s Sears. As with the other two, JC Penney is an older retailer which owns a lot of its real estate or has long-term leases with very low rent. While it is a good aspect, he notes that having “free rent” can actually cause less discipline with costs and general operations that leads to inefficiencies. Having seen firsthand many such examples over the years, we agree when he says that “you have to run your business as if the rent is high”. There’s a bonus after some 8:30 where another HBS professor – Clayton Rose – is discussing GSE’s such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (he’s in the Board of Freddie Mac). Mr. Ackman then drills him on where his fiduciary duties lie: shareholders, the government, etc. A very interesting exchange follows. Later on, he attacks rating agencies, with an interesting idea about the role of rating agencies.

Other companies aren’t standing still: one of our readers sent us a video of Google’s relatively new “Hotpot” service, embedded inside. Let’s not forget Groupon, the subject of our New Year’s Eve bonus post.

Google Hotpot video (1:22)

2011: This New York Times article argues that growth in digital music sales is stalling while sales are still at a level that doesn’t compensate for lost CD revenues, and wonders about the music industry’s “salvation” hopes. Unlike other digital media that are perhaps less prone to piracy, digital music just hasn’t found the right business model yet. Note that this doesn’t dismiss the book at all, it just shows that, in reverse of Mark Twain’s famous line, “the news of the music industry’s rescue have been greatly exaggerated…” Is it strictly a “speed of adoption” problem or does it point to a deeper problem – the long tail not being as long as imagined (or not as long as some industries need it to be) – and if so, what other insights could this yield for the “rest” of the media sector and for e-commerce?

Also check out the original (2004) article at Wired and the Long Tail blog (discontinued in 2009, but still interesting).