As the new year is underway, there’s reason to be bullish (or, at least, not bearish) about what 2024 may have in store. Holiday retail sales increased 3.1% despite lingering inflation, thanks to robust job growth and strong wage gains, which came as a big relief for retailers. Price-conscious consumers are still spending, suggesting the economy is strong. “What we’re seeing this holiday season is very consistent with how we’re thinking about the economy, which is that it...
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The Atlantic shares how Chinese factories have found a new way around U.S. retailers and into our homes: Chinese apps. SHEIN and other Chinese apps are bypassing Amazon to be a new leader in Chinese goods. In addition to Amazon, Target, Walmart, and indie shops now have a new group of digital competitors embedded in customers’ pockets.
Except from The Atlantic article:
MATERIAL WORLD
IS THIS HOW AMAZON ENDS?
An open embrace of cheap foreign products has helped ...
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I have a friend who recently took a job with a respected women’s clothing retailer after 13 years of retirement. My friend, Leslie, a former school teacher, wanted to be of use and knew that retail was a great opportunity for seniors. She was all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed her first week. She loved that the manager asked her to try on clothes she liked and then suggested outfits that would look good on her. Leslie even purchased a few of those suggestions, couture she never would have ...
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According to a recent RetailDive report, online and mobile purchases for Black Friday sales were the strongest, with smartphone sales leading at 54% of online sales. The article states consumers spent a record $9.8 billion online on Black Friday, according to data from Adobe Analytics. That’s up 7.5% from last year.
Industry experts forecast that consumer spending will be up 2-3% year over year. The National Retail Federation projects 3-4% year over year. Consumers are cautious about ...
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I see this situation all over the city. Amazon shipping companies are “warehousing” our public space. They put up cones and are permanently setup and conducting business. They use public space for private commercial use.
They’re like a pop-up store in a public parking spot. But unlike a physical store that is in a private building and pays commercial storefront taxes, these trucks don’t pay those retailer taxes. (Each year businesses in lower ...
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BERTIL VALLIEN is a gift to glass. The impressive portfolio of this prolific artist is haunting, memorable, and mesmerizing.
His 60-year career, spent advancing the craft of sand-casting, is a study of one man's existential questioning actualized on hypnotic works of art.
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BERTIL VALLIEN IS A 60-YEAR KOSTA BODA ICON, DESIGNING FOR THE BRAND SINCE 1963.
He is one of Sweden's most celebrated glass artists with numerous awards and museums exhibitions around...
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I got to thinking about the generational make-up of today's workforce when I realized all the folks I interviewed in the current issue are well-experienced, older workers with decades of expertise and know-how, who are still creating and innovating with alacrity. (Yours truly included.)
There was a time when you entered the labor force, worked until a certain age, and retired. Now, more and more people are working into their golden years, a trend that's expected to continue fueled by aging ...
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How competitive techniques can help lure clients and grow a network.
September 10, 2023
Andrew Chen shares in 'The Cold Start Problem' that many times, networks are competing in a zero-sum game. One network gets a customer to join their network and thereby not participate in another. For example, when a driver used Lyft instead of Uber, Uber, which Chen helped, lost. And it lost in two regards: Uber lost the revenue from the lost ride, and Lyft gained the revenue. Chen’s team was tasked with getting drivers to use all their time driving for Uber and thereby unraveling Lyft&...
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Herend, a maker of fine tableware and giftware, was mentioned by the Stephanie Carter, the wife of the ex-Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter.
Excerpt:
“She added a few new pieces, including Herend ceramic figurines of a lion and a squirrel. “I called Ash ‘Lion’ and he called me ‘Squirrelly,’” she explained. “All these things make me feel like he’s with me in a great way, not in a preserved-in-amber way.” “
How premium plan tiers help businesses sell more and increase margins.
September 7, 2023
Dating apps are launching higher-priced premium tiers, according to last week’s The Wall St. Journal. Hinge offers a new $50/month plan, and Tinder is launching a $500/month plan. The League already offers a $1,000 plan. These pricey plans take the sting out of Bumble’s $60/month plan.
Why are companies offering such plans? Because even if Tinder only gets 10% of users, that's millions. Plus, the profit and margins are likely higher for customers using these plans. A normal ...
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When mother nature gets it right from the start, she knows better than to continuously improve upon her own design. That is probably why the nautilus has remained virtually unchanged in over 500 million years and is considered to be a living fossil. The artists at Herend know perfection when they see it, so they have decided to simply add some Herend-style flourishes such as dramatic gold fishnet and touches of pearlized paint to further highlight the beautiful details of this animal.
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Bath & Body Works reduced the time it takes to make a bottle of soap from 90 days to 21, shares The Wall Street Journal. It also reduced the number of miles the parts travel from 13,000 miles to a just a handful of miles. Part of the solution: the company trimmed out China and Canada.
BBW was able to move production to the US largely due to robots and computers. In China, 50 people may work on a bottle. In the US, labor is too expensive. The company replaced the 40 people with...
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EMON MAASHO, CEO AND PRESIDENT OF ORREFORS, NORTH AMERICA, is representative of the exciting trajectory in this 125-year operation. The über-exec joined the New Wave Group in 2013, a time when Orrefors and Kosta Boda (OKB) were underperforming assets in the portfolio. "Our crystal brands are national treasures and a part of Swedish history," Maasho affirms. And he wanted a front row seat in their revitalization. Maasho was placed in charge of the new hotel and restaurant division ...
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What Threads can teach us about leveraging our existing network when launching a new service.
July 22, 2023
Threads, a new Twitter-like service from Meta, the owner of Instagram, launched this month and almost immediately attracted 40m active daily users. The service’s growth has since stalled and now has just over 10m daily users, but that is still commendable. The Wall Street Journal shared that this impressive launch was largely possible because Meta used its built-in network of one billion Instagram users. This user base helped it overcome the “cold start” problem of acquiring ...
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How a company's sales and growth can be affected by the message it conveys to customers.
July 18, 2023
Allbirds stock is down 95% since its November 2021 initial public offering. People may say the company launched the wrong products (did you buy one of their puffer jackets?) or tried to grow too quickly. I believe there is a larger reason: you can’t scale a company by leading with an environmental message—which is Allbirds’s pitch. Consumers rank saving the planet as one of their least pressing concerns when making a purchase. The leading factors consumers look for when ...
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How pre-populating information saves clients time and speeds them along a process.
June 30, 2023
Each April, I scramble to send my tax information to my accountant so I can file my taxes before April 15. Since my friends confide that they do the same, there are likely millions of people like us racing to prepare our taxes. What if there was a way to avoid this painful rush—and even the cost of it? The WSJ shares that Japan, New Zealand, and much of Europe get such relief. The countries prepare tax returns for their citizens using existing data, and the citizen just needs to review it,...
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Susan Gravely – alongside her sister, Frances, and mother, Lee – founded VIETRI 40 years ago after a serendipitous vacation where they discovered the charms of Italian ceramics. Gravely’s new book, Italy on a Plate, equal parts travelogue/cookbook/memoir, is a culinary delight celebrating four decades of bringing the best of Italy’s tableware to an adoring fan base.
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You and I go back almost to the start of VIETRI in 1983. [Editor&rsquo...
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How big data, filters, and search engines can help us create a better experience for our members.
May 26, 2023
Apple announced last month that it's launching a new classical music app. What’s novel about the Apple Music Classical app is how it lets music fans more easily search thousands of variations of the same song. For example, let’s say you want to find a Johann Sebastian Bach song. Over the past 300 years, many musicians have done ‘covers’ of his works, and there are variations by conductor, music, year, etc., thereby producing thousands of variations. Existing software ...
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Owning a business is no small feat, but in recent years, women have taken on starting their own businesses, leaving the nine-to-five to become entrepreneurs. In 2022, they were more likely to start a business than men. Last year, women-owned businesses had higher earnings growth (27% increase) than male-owned firms (22%). Still, male-owned businesses received $93,000 in funding, while women-owned businesses received $56,000. There are nearly 13 million women-owned businesses in the U.S., and the...
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What Crocs can teach us about gaining new customers and keeping them happy.
May 15, 2023
About 15 years ago, I bought a pair of Crocs sandals in Myrtle Beach, SC. Not only were they hot pink, but the insole was traffic cone orange. My buddies hated them, but oddly others loved them. The sandals were affordable (maybe $20), comfortable, and a conversation starter.
According to last week’s The New York Times' profile on Crocs, I’m one of tens of millions of happy Crocs owners. This happiness is profitable: