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- NFR 27 - Cold Therapy, Gucci Trainspotter & Stolen Focus
NFR 27 - Cold Therapy, Gucci Trainspotter & Stolen Focus
Shopify, Google, Tik Tok, Cold Therapy, Gucci Trainspotters & Stolen Focus
☕️ Morning Inspiration:
“Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today.”
Will Rogers
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🤖 eCommerce News:
“The news is turning heads in China’s cross-border e-commerce community. The first part of the deal will put the JD-Shopify alliance in direct competition with Alibaba. The JD nemesis has a sprawling import business, which counted 35,000 international brands as of late. Last year, more than 6,000 brands entered China via Alibaba.”
“Animoca Brands, an eight-year-old, 600-person Hong Kong-based outfit that has managed to put its stamp on many of the world’s most popular NFT and metaverse brands, has raised roughly $360 million in fresh funding at a valuation of more than $5 billion, the company announced today.”
“With its investment, Twitter hopes to support Aleph's goal of ramping up the digital ecosystem in emerging nations to create economic growth. Aleph wants to build an education tech platform for digital advertising that will train and certify more than 50,000 professionals in 90 countries on five continents.”
“An explosion of data in the last few years makes it difficult for companies to track and understand their own data, according to Secoda, which claims only 12 percent of data companies collect is ever used. Secoda offers an interface that allows users to quickly find data squirreled away in company databases.
We’re building a Google[-like] search for company data”
“After Tesla's Cyberquad for kids sold out, resellers on eBay are betting that people are willing to pay as much as $5,000 for the product, with some completed listings going for as high as $4,000. Tesla launched the quad bike in December and listed it for $1,900 on its website. The product sold out within a week.”
“Online payment processor Stripe has signed a five-year deal with Ford aimed at bolstering the auto giant’s e-commerce strategy.
Ford will also use Stripe to route a customer’s payments to the correct local Ford or Lincoln dealer.
The tie-up marks one of the biggest client wins yet for Stripe, and forms part of Ford’s turnaround plan under CEO Jim Farley.”
“The raise comes as the global pandemic and the rapid acceleration of ecommerce has exerted huge pressure on the global supply chain, leading companies to explore automated alternatives to their existing solutions to ensure they can keep up with customer demand. Ultimately, global retailers are scrambling for solutions that promise to “improve supply chain resilience,” Exotec CEO Romain Moulin told VentureBeat.”
“There have never been more consumer product brands, and competition among them is at an all-time high,” LeBlanc said. “Brands win by having access to the right data, which leads to faster and more confident decision-making. Data demands have never been higher, and we are investing in the data infrastructure to get brands the access to the data they need.”
““Our punch line is essentially that we give fans access to their favorite creators’ camera rolls,” said founder and CEO Erik Zamudio. “The way that it works is fans subscribe to see content from creators that they’re not going to be able to see anywhere else. I think it lets creators be the most authentic and real versions of themselves.”
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📈 Trends Of The Week:
“UPS will handle more than 60 million return packages during its peak shipping season of Nov. 14 through Jan. 22, an all-time high for the company and 10% more than it handled the year before, according to a UPS fact sheet.”
Vertical Parking Is on the Rise
The global smart-parking market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 14% to reach $3.8B by 2023 (Source: Statista)
“A typical urban parking space has annual costs (i.e., land, construction, and operating) of up to $1.5k, which means that many parking spaces are actually worth more than the vehicles that occupy them.
The crisis is compounded by mandatory parking minimums. In the US, commercial buildings need at least 4-6 parking spots per 1k square feet of space. Similar requirements exist in countries like Australia, China, India, and the Philippines.
One solution entering the market, which is still ripe for entrepreneurs to capitalize on, is modular vertical parking towers.”
It’s Hip to Be in a Healthy Relationship
Source: Google Trends
“Soliciting expert relationship advice is taking many forms:
Searches for traditional couples’ therapy on Google are growing
Couple counselors and psychologists are gaining followers on Instagram (e.g., @the.holistic.psychologist — 4.8m followers, @risingwoman — 2.5m, and @nedratawwab — 1.3m)
#RelationshipAdvice and #RelationshipTips each have 4B+ views on TikTok
Pinterest searches for “Couples counseling worksheets” and “Healthy marriage tips” are up 115% and 190%, respectively”
Cold Therapy Is Still Hot
Source: Google Trends
“You can capitalize on the emerging wave of new cryotherapy applications, as the trend is definitely not cooling off. These include:
Cold therapy headache relief hats (like this one, which brings in $1m+/mo. on Amazon, according to Jungle Scout)
Cold therapy ice machines (like this one — $800k/mo.)
Facial ice rollers and globes (like this one — $470k/mo.)
Ice packs (like this one — $450k/mo.)
Cold massage roller balls (like this one — $277k/mo.)”
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🛍 My Marketing Highlight:
“TikTok trainspotter Francis Bourgeois stars in The North Face and Gucci ad
The second chapter of The North Face and Gucci’s partnership has just dropped with an exclusive collaborative video from streetwear site High Snobiety that, to the internet’s delight, features TikTok star and trainspotter Francis Bourgeois.”
Genuinely one of my favourite ever brand deals.
Francis proves to the world that people resonate & fall in love with people who are true to themselves and follow their passion without thinking about what people will say.
His absolute obsession with train-spotting has gained him…
2.1M followers & over 37 million likes so far.
AGAIN showing how the steam train that is Tik Tok is shaping how brands interact with culture.
Plenty more where this collaboration came from.
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❓Quotes that make you think:
“Eyes and ears are poor witnesses to people if they have uncultured souls.” Heraclitus
“Loneliness isn’t the physical absence of other people, he said—it’s the sense that you’re not sharing anything that matters with anyone else. If you have lots of people around you—perhaps even a husband or wife, or a family, or a busy workplace—but you don’t share anything that matters with them, then you’ll still be lonely.” Johann Hari
“The opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety. It’s connection.” Johann Hari
“Your working assumption, when you meet a homophobe, should be that they are gay.” Johann Hari
“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” Nir Eyal
“So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?” Ayn Rand
Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong. Ayn Rand
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⛓ Mental Model Of The Week:
Survivorship Bias:
“Survivorship bias is a cognitive shortcut that occurs when a visible successful subgroup is mistaken as an entire group, due to the failure subgroup not being visible. The bias’ name comes from the error an individual makes when a data set only considers the “surviving” observations, without considering those which didn’t survive.”
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📚 Book I'm Reading:
“A highly original and wide-ranging investigation into the causes of our epidemic of flagging attention. Written with Hari's trademark incisive prose, indefatigable search for scientific evidence vividly presented, and illustrated with telling anecdotes, Stolen Focus is a bracing and necessary wake-up call to us all.”
Gabor Maté M.D.
