MEDIA: Hamilton, which opened at New York’s Richard Rodgers Theatre in August 2015, after an off-Broadway run, isn’t just a hit musical. It’s one of those rare cultural phenomena that reaches beyond its genre and infiltrates the broader conversation. Fourth graders love the show as much as 80-year-olds. Hint, hint at number one.
BRAND: Kobe Bryant's retirement ads were as dominant as the NBA star himself on the April 2016 YouTube Ads Leaderboard, presented by Google and Adweek, ranking the most-watched ads of the month on the video site.Bryant spots took the top two spots—one for Nike, and one for Apple. And the latter brand had a great month overall, placing four ads in the top 10.
DATA: The headline here is that cord cutting continues to accelerate, a trend we’ve seen now for several quarters. As a reminder, in order to really gauge this trend, you can’t look at quarterly adds, because those are highly cyclical, and you have to look at the full set of players in the market, and not just largest, and certainly not just one type of player, such as cable or satellite companies.
ECOMMERCE: When a seller processes and ships an order with two units, its overall variable expenses are generally much less than if it had sold just one. Thus, not only did the total net income more than double, the per unit net income also increased. But how, exactly, can an ecommerce seller get more multi-unit sales? Here are four ways.
MEDIA: Pre-roll video ads are coming to your Facebook newsfeed via the social network's Instant Articles platform. It seems like a risky move by the digital giant: According to a study earlier this year by video ad tech company Teads, 52 percent of those surveyed for a report said pre-roll ads are the most intrusive format.
BRAND: The strict Communist regime and 56 years of a U.S. trade embargo have created obstacles for Airbnb, notably that most Cubans don’t have direct Internet access or a way to accept payments from an American company. Never mind that access to running water, food, and transportation can be unreliable.
ECOMMERCE: In the report, which will be officially released online at the Ecommerce Middle East Show in Dubai at the end of the month, the largest growth in market size came in ecommerce, in both dollar and percentage terms. It covered the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar and Jordan.
ECOMMERCE: Amazon in the coming weeks is set to roll out new lines of private-label brands that will include its first broad push into perishable foods, according to people familiar with the matter.
DATA: Retailers commonly relegate plus-size clothing to faraway corners of their stores and stock clothes designed to cover women up, rather than give them the bold, bright, fashion-forward styles they offer elsewhere. Others ditch the business altogether, as Limited parent L Brands did with Eloquii.
ECOMMERCE: Of the 13 retail sub-industries in the S&P 500, eight have reported or are expected to report earnings growth, led by the Internet Retail sub-industry. Five of the retail sub-industries have reported or are expected to report a year-over-year decline in earnings, led by the Department Stores sub-industry.
FEATURED: Startups.co - New Site, New Narrative
The new startups.co is much-needed and it should be a model for younger startups. It shuns the traditional model of independent media by jettisoning ad-based retail for service-based retail. Companies like Mattermark have taken a similar approach. For Wil Schroter and team, supporting content with commerce has always been the longterm vision.
The revamped startups.co aims to become the first click for founder-types across the many disciplines within high-growth tech community. The site's content is the attraction but its services are the main draw: Clarity, Fundable, Zirtual, Zana, and Launchrock are just four of the growing B2B services that the Ohio-based conglomerate provides.
This means editorial-quality content with few, if any, of the ads that you'd see on other sites. Specifically, 7-10 articles per day - each of editorial quality. Schroter has already begun to recruit top talent. And because startups.co makes money by selling things, the editorial presence is sustainable. What a novel idea.
Yesterday, I drove past a dinosaur in economically-struggling Lima, Ohio and it all hit me. Entire communities hinge on the success of anchor stores. This particular retail development is home to nearly 800 jobs (affecting 1,000 more jobs) in a town of 38,500.
Online is cannibalizing the store business, said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at the NPD Group. But we know this, already. What many may not realize is just how fast the fall of brick & mortar retail is happening. Additionally, we are not considering the macroeconomic factors that that are speeding the inevitable.
Commercial real estate is booming in the United States (despite businesses' ability to keep up). Leases continue to trend upward and to the right as eCommerce giants like Amazon (who do not need to pursue traditional commercial leases) are trending in the same direction. Dwindling demand at brick and mortar retailers hinder longterm vision for new investments that could prevent path to a business' bankruptcy.
via Wolf Richter:
There has been a large increase in stalled transportation vehicles including trucks and trains which simply have gone out of business due to a lack of demand in the market. This shows us the effects of the 2008 financial crisis still linger on heavily even today. The lack of demand and surplus of supply in many sectors of the economy including retail is continuously putting the U.S economy in a downward spiral and has kept it on the brinks of another recession.
I am a cheerleader for the proliferation of eCommerce but I also realize that eCommerce growth will contract, as well, if there aren't people to buy the products. With an estimated 400 of 1,200 malls set to shutdown in the next five years, our somewhat thriving economy will begin to teeter into recession for the first time since 2008 unless retail expectations are met by department stores. Struggling stores like Macy's, Kohl's, and J.C. Penney anchor and subsidy the rest of the mall's hundreds of employees. The system doesn't work without their success.
While it seems that eCommerce is to blame for the department store retail recession, it can also be a part of the solution. Tomorrow, in part two of this last word, I will summarize how an omni-channel solution for major retailers coupled with partnerships with startups like Postmates could curb the mall real estate exodus and attempt to play ball in an increasingly Amazon-driven world.
