What I Wrote Last Week
Business
From FedEx to airlines, companies are starting to lose their pricing power. It’s the beauty of capitalism. It’s common to see companies maintain prices, even though inflation eased and factors that contributed to price hikes improved. However, there is so much corporate greed that consumers can tolerate. At some point, consumers will find a way to satisfy their needs without paying the greedy retailers which, in turn, have to react to make sure they stay competitive. That’s exactly what we are seeing.
The Entrepreneur Who Bet His Company on a Fight With Apple. An inspiring story of an immigrant of Iranian root. Even more inspiring is his determination to hold Apple accountable, even at a great personal cost.
How IKEA Downsized to Go Downtown. A good article how hard retail is. You have to model your stores to accommodate the local demand and behavior of local consumers. Then, how does that affect the inventory? In the case of IKEA, smaller stores forced them to carry fewer items and significantly fewer big items. As a consequence, what about customers who want to buy those big items? Where does IKEA store and ship them? Additionally, if there is a lot of traffic in small stores, how can IKEA make sure that customers have a great experience? Even with the use of technology (self-checkout), what about shrinkage and theft of small items? Lots and lots of moving parts and questions to be great in retail.
Americans Are Canceling More of Their Streaming Services. Customers make it clear that it’s not sustainable to keep paying $100+ on streaming services a month. They still want entertainment, but at a price that they can afford. Streaming owners want to show profitability. The next phase of the streaming war will see providers strive to move subscribers to ads-supported tiers by bundling, widening the gap between standard plans and ads-supported plans and offering a significant discount on normal plans.
Other Stuff I Find Interesting
Why Every Western Automaker Is Visiting This Remote Part of South Africa. “Manganese Metal Co., based in the sleepy town of Mbombela, is the largest of just a handful of refiners of battery-grade manganese located outside China. Used mostly for making steel, manganese is increasingly replacing more expensive and harder-to-source minerals such as cobalt and nickel in the lithium-ion batteries that power electric cars, smartphones and laptops. MMC’s chief executive, Louis Nel, says his company has been visited by virtually every major Western battery and auto manufacturer over the past two years, as they seek to string together new supply chains that bypass China. Currently, more than half of the manganese metal refined at MMC is exported to Japan, where some of it is used by Panasonic—which supplies batteries for Tesla cars—and other battery-component makers. About a third goes to the U.S. and around 10% to Europe, according to the company.“
The American South Is Booming. Why Is Mississippi Left Behind? The state of Mississippi has a lot to do to prevent the brain drain that sees young and highly skilled workers leave for other cities. To make these talents stay, there must be enough good paying jobs. Incentives for corporates to invest in infrastructure and hiring are vital. In addition, the home state of Elvis needs to significantly improve the in-state education systems. It’d be much easier for corporate offices in Mississippi to hire local talents than to attract out-of-state workers. “This October, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, Mississippi’s civilian labor force had shrunk 1.4% from what it was a decade earlier, even as the South’s workforce overall has grown exponentially. For example, neighboring Tennessee’s labor force increased almost 11% for the same period.“
Cash-on-delivery fraud is a nightmare for gig workers in Vietnam. Vietnam is a cash-heavy country. E-commerce orders are often cash-on-delivery. Gig workers have to pay for such orders in advance and hope that end consumers behave and don’t disappear. Sadly, such fraud happens too often. To make the matters worse for gig workers, Grab is now the dominant player in the country and has no incentive in helping them. Why would they? Lowering the reimbursement threshold and funding orders in advance would hurt Grab’s bottom line. And they know that workers have nowhere to find work, other than on their platforms.
‘There’s No Other Job’: The Colonial Roots of Philippine Poverty. “In most of the Philippines, factory jobs are few, leaving landless people at the mercy of the wealthy families that control the plantations. The shortage of manufacturing and the lopsided distribution of land are part of the reason that a country with some of the most fertile soils on earth is plagued by hunger. It helps explain why roughly one-fifth of this nation of 117 million people is officially poor, and why nearly two million Filipinos work overseas, from construction sites in the Persian Gulf to ships and hospitals worldwide, sending home critical infusions of cash.
Stats
Almost out of four children in the US lives in a single-parent home
Total merchandise returns amounted to $743 billion
Minh Quang Duong 
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