Date: 2024-04-29 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00018240
Media News
21 Hats Morning Report
21 Hats Morning Report for January 31, 2020
Peter Burgess
|
Date: 2024-04-29 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00018240 | |||||||||
Media News | |||||||||
|
Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess | |||||||||
| The Founder of a New Unicorn is Pregnant Inbox x 21 Hats Morning Report morningreport@21hats.com via bounce.s7.exacttarget.com 9:39 AM (39 minutes ago) to me Amazon is Clicking. The Founder of a New Unicorn is Pregnant. And Should You Be on TikTok? THE ECONOMY Everything is clicking for Amazon, which reported a very big quarter: “Amazon ads for Amazon products delivered in Amazon trucks to Amazon households, where Amazon cameras alert residents that their new toys have already arrived. This is the Amazon flywheel, and the earnings report said it was working well.” “Amazon said more customers joined Prime in the fourth quarter than ever before, pushing worldwide membership to 150 million households.” “AWS, the high-margin cloud computing division that has been a big source of Amazon’s profits in recent years, also increased its revenue in the quarter, by 34 percent to $9.95 billion.” “Amazon also continued its hiring spree during the quarter, signing up 48,000 new employees for a total of 798,000.” READ MORE Still, the economy is growing at its slowest rate since 2016: “Gross domestic product, which measures the value of goods and services produced inside the United States, grew at a 2.1 percent annual rate between October and December, the same as the previous three months, according to preliminary data released by the Commerce Department. As for 2019 as a whole, the report shows that the economy turned in a weaker annual showing than it did in 2017 and 2018. In previous decades, growth that consistently fell below three percent would have been seen as distressing. Now most economists—at least those outside the administration—see normal growth circling the two percent mark.” READ MORE INTERNATIONAL Brexit has been made official by the EU: “The vote—something of a relieved whimper rather than a bang, as its result was expected—is one of the last steps in bringing to an end three and a half years of confusion, political division and missed deadlines. The vote passed by 621 to 49, with 13 abstentions. But for the European Union, the loss of Britain is a significant defeat. It represents a loss of size, reach, momentum and permanence, comparable to Texas deciding to break away from the United States.” READ MORE MANAGEMENT Jenn Hyman, co-founder and CEO of Rent the Runway, is the first female founder to reach unicorn status while nine months pregnant: “Since co-founding Rent the Runway in 2009 after attending Harvard Business School, Hyman has gone on to raise over $500 million in funding, growing the business to over 11 million members and revolutionizing the $2.4 trillion fashion industry along the way.” “I'm here to assure you that you can have it all. You can have the life that you've always dreamed of having. And I think that it's crazy that I used to think that that was impossible.” “‘My whole life has changed. I'm married, I have kids, I have a much more balanced life than I had in the early days of Rent the Runway,’ she says. ‘But that doesn't mean that I work fewer hours now; I still work with the same level of intensity. But I think that it's extremely important to have other things in your life that you are as obsessed with or more obsessed with than work.’” READ MORE MARKETING Should you be advertising on TikTok? “If you’re confident that your target audience is using TikTok and your brand is capable of creating engaging content on this kind of platform, then it might be time to start using the network. TikTok advertising is still in the experimental stage, though, and this is all brands can really hope to achieve with it: experiment. With an average CPC of $10, you’ll be putting a hefty budget on the line for the sake of experimentation—especially when things are likely to change so much in the coming years. At this stage, TikTok is an exciting network for brands in certain niches, targeting a certain kind of audience. But most of the excitement revolves around organic content opportunities while the network is yet to prove itself as an advertising channel worth recommending. One to keep an eye on, though.” “This is a platform designed for the world of influencer marketing, content creators and seven-year-old millionaires. Your Instagram campaigns are not going to cut it on TikTok.” “In the space of four years, TikTok has secured more than one billion users worldwide, leapfrogging the likes of Twitter and Snapchat without even breaking a sweat.” READ MORE STARTUPS Messaging platform Attentive is a text messaging service tailored for businesses to engage customers: “[CEO Brian] Long attributed the success Attentive has had thus far to the growing importance of text messages as a channel for businesses to reach consumers, particularly as those consumers are less inclined to open marketing emails or download retailers’ mobile apps. And in contrast to broader messaging platforms, Long said Attentive is ‘focused on just doing this channel right.’ … He said the platform is designed to solve the main problems faced by retailers trying to build a mobile messaging strategy—first, by helping them create a text subscriber list in a way that complies with regulations, then by offering ‘the ability to send messages that frankly aren’t going to piss people off.’” READ MORE Lordstown Motors plans to start production of its electric pickup by the end of the year: “The startup's timeframe is ambitious. According to Burns, the company will show the pickup in Detroit this June, begin crash testing it in July and then start hiring workers to build the vehicles in September. Production will start in November or December of this year. Should it all come to life, the Lordstown Motors Endurance could edge out numerous rival electric pickup on the horizon. The Rivian R1T is the closest to production from a startup, while the Tesla Cybertruck remains a couple years out. General Motors and Ford also have electric trucks in the pipeline, with the former poised to reintroduce the Hummer nameplate for its EV pickup.” READ MORE HUMAN RESOURCES Delta Air Lines will no longer use uniforms flight attendants have complained to cause health problems: “More than 500 employees, most of them flight attendants, filed a federal lawsuit against Lands End on Dec. 31 alleging health problems they believe were caused by the uniforms, including vocal cord dysfunction, breathing difficulties, skin blisters and rashes, blurred vision, nosebleeds, ringing ears, migraine headaches and fatigue. Delta said that it conducted testing and found the uniforms to be safe. But the lawsuit challenges the result of that study and said the employees' own test found the presence of ‘chemicals and heavy metals far in excess of industry accepted safe levels for garments.’” READ MORE Construction firms can’t hire enough workers to meet demand: “About a third of the survey’s respondents, who work at more than 1,000 firms from 48 states, expect their segment of the construction economy to grow this year, as opposed to 11-21 percent of respondents who don’t. The segments with the highest positive growth numbers include water and sewer, bridge and highways, schools and hospitals. … It’s an issue I hear from just about all of my clients—finding and keeping good people in this environment of very low unemployment.” “Unfortunately, like industries that rely on lower paid workers, it hits the construction sector hard. 81 percent of respondents to the survey said they were having a difficult time finding workers and worker quality and shortages are affecting three-quarters of the businesses asked.” “Many of them are investing in training programs, increasing pay and bonuses and funding technology like drones, robots, 3D printers. They’re putting money behind project management and fleet tracking software to increase productivity and cut down on labor costs…” READ MORE If you were forwarded this newsletter, click here for a free subscription. CANNABIS Alaska issues its first permits for on-site marijuana use at retail shops: “Cannabis Corner aims to open the consumption area sometime next month. She said the vibe will be comfy and cozy, with couches, a fireplace and bar table and stools—a mix of living-room and coffee-bar style. ‘We don’t want people to feel like they’re going into a dive at all,’ [co-owner Ayme] Zantua said.” “Zantua ... expects a slow rollout by her business at first, including possibly having locals who want to use the on-site area be dropped off and have a ride home. The business is on a bus route, she said. ‘We’re being very strict at first until we get a good feel for everything because all eyes are on us. We want to protect the community as well as have this cool opportunity for people,’ she said.” “Rules governing on-site consumption took effect last year, after years of discussion. They call for consumption areas to be separated from the rest of the property, either by a secure door and having a separate ventilation system or by being outdoors. They are to have smoke-free areas for employees to monitor consumption, and people cannot bring in product not purchased at the site.” READ MORE OBITUARY Leila Janah was a social entrepreneur who believed poor people were an untapped resource: “She went on to start Samasource in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2008—sama means equal in Sanskrit—with the aim of employing poor people, for a living wage, in digital jobs like photo tagging and image annotation at what she called delivery centers in Kenya, Uganda and India. The workers generate data that is used for projects as diverse as self-driving cars, video game technology and software that helps park rangers in sub-Saharan Africa prevent elephant poaching. At least half the people hired by Samasource are women, the company says.” “Samasource’s employees have worked under contracts with companies including Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Walmart, Getty Images, Glassdoor and Vulcan Capital, a holding company formed by Paul G. Allen, a founder of Microsoft.” “Another venture developed by Ms. Janah is LXMI, a luxury cosmetics line that has the same mission as Samasource: to hire marginalized people and give them a decent wage. ... ‘I said, ‘Let’s build an export industry but only for poor women,’ she told Fast Company magazine in 2016. ‘We can solve poverty while also making our skin better.’” READ MORE -- Loren Feldman and Matt Gillick Please send comments and suggestions to mgillick@21hats.com and lfeldman@21hats.com. | |||||||||