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Brands Doing More With Less Claims GFK
Doing ‘more’ with ‘less’ is the new abnormal for suppliers in Asia Pacific claims GFK as many retailers and their suppliers recover from the impact of COVID 19.
As COVID 19 disrupts retail businesses in Asia Pacific, GFK research claims that only 30% of brands consider themselves as a ‘game changer’ or ‘champion’ organisation in employing data-driven decision making.
The research which sheds light on future-readiness of brands and marketers to drive growth reveal a clear gap between their business goals and the tools they leverage to achieve them, claims GFK.
In a post pandemic environment, it is vital for brands to quickly realign objectives, measure effectiveness and lead through digital transformation.” said Karthik Venkatakrishnan, Regional Leader, Marketing and Consumer Intelligence, GfK.
She claims that Inevitably, COVID-19 has presented marketers with challenges such as reduced budgets, evolving marketing mix, changing priorities, and measuring marketing ROI. Since the pandemic outbreak, 73% have reduced their marketing budgets. Of the 61% indicating a shift in KPIs and how they measure it:
56% said digital transformation is increasingly seen as an important KPI to achieve their goals.
53% agreed there is more focus on driving short term sales.
37% said there is a shift towards maximizing ROI.
In terms of new priorities among those surveyed, 56% said it is maximizing marketing ROI, followed by 1 in 2 saying it is driving sales, and finally, 40% indicating that it is brand positioning
Half of the brands across Asia-Pacific are driving short-term marketing activities to seize opportunities while keeping long-term brand-building campaigns live.
“This is largely because the pandemic has impacted consumer behaviour and their path-to-purchase resulting in a massive shift to e-commerce and altering media consumption habits. With this dynamic situation, brands are trying to deliver next level of omnichannel experience that consumer are demanding.” explains Karthik Venkatakrishnan.
As per the GfK study, 4 in 5 consumers said their decision to purchase a brand in future is largely dependent on how brands position themselves during this difficult period.
Therefore, in order to reach the target audience effectively, 60% of marketers across nearly all industries in Asia-Pacific have allocated their budgets for social media marketing while 58% used their budgets for mobile advertising and paid search.
In a post-pandemic environment, digital is definitely the way forward for brands in the new abnormal.
Measuring marketing ROI: Success mantra of ‘game-changers’
In the digital transformation era, 1 in 2 measure all their marketing activities but are using basic metrics such as last click attribution (58%), media reach and frequency (57%), shares (51%), likes (49%) and comments (47%).
Nearly 4 of 10 surveyed indicated brand positioning as one of their priorities. Interestingly, 72% within this group currently do not track brand performance. Likewise, 28% said the allocation of marketing budgets is a key concern post-pandemic, a whopping 83% do not use any form of data-driven marketing measurement to drive business growth.
Building a winning & agile brand
Based on the survey, nearly half surveyed are optimistic of recovery in the next 6 – 12 months. Brands and Marketers across countries intend to understand and engage their audiences effectively:
61% are looking to gain more knowledge on various consumer engagement channels.
59% are aiming to have better understanding of consumer behaviour changes and preferences.
43% are also planning to explore opportunities to reposition brand values.
The survey findings reveal that brands and marketers need to have an agile mindset and employ data-driven approach to evolve with fast-changing times.


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Passbase is a next generation identity verification provider that helps companies solve their digital identity challenges in a compliant, privacy-oriented and user-centric way. Its developer friendly, highly customisable tools allow companies to incorporate secure KYC, document and age verification, biometric authentication and AML solutions into their products on web and mobile with ease.
Since launching in 2018, Passbase received over $4 million in funding from notable investors including Seedcamp, Cowboy Ventures, Eniac Ventures, and Lakestar. The team currently consists of over 30 people with backgrounds at GoogleX, Stripe, Trulioo, and UnifyID sitting in New York and Berlin.
Passbase got mentioned as one of the breakout startups at Websummit 2019 in Lisbon
Dave McGibbon, co-founder and CEO of Passbase
Frustrated by the lack of a developer first experience in the identity verification space, the three long time friends decided to build one of their own.
(Chief Product Officer)
(Chief Technology Officer)
(Chief Executive Officer)
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Cowboy Ventures is a seed-stage focused fund investing in digital startups based in Palo Alto, CA. They work with founders who are building products that “re-imagine” work and personal life in large and growing markets – an area that they call “Life 2.0″. Led by Aileen Lee and Ted Wang, Cowboy Ventures previously invested in many successful companies including Product Hunt, Dollar Shave Club, Polar, and DocSend.
Eniac Ventures is a seed-stage focused fund investing in early-stage technology companies based in New York, NY. Eniac’s four general partners — Hadley Harris, Nihal Mehta, Vic Singh, and Tim Young — have been making investments together for more than a decade, and they’ve known each other for even longer, having first met at the University of Pennsylvania.
Lakestar is one of Europe’s leading venture capital firms investing in technology companies led by exceptional entrepreneurs. Zurich-based Lakestar, founded in 2013, has notable investments in Revolut, GoEuro and Spotify.
Seedcamp is a European seed-stage venture capital fund, headquartered in London, launched in May 2007 by a group of 30 European investors. The fund's Managing Partners are Reshma Sohoni and Carlos Espinal. As of August 2017, Seedcamp has a portfolio of over 250 companies who have gone on to raise over $1Bn in follow-on funding from leading investors across the globe.
Passbase is an identity verification solution that makes facial recognition, liveness detection, ID verification and KYC and AML compliance accessible through a suite of flexible developer tools. A zero-knowledge architecture ensures that companies using Passbase can securely verify users from over 190 countries without having to store their data. Built for developers, it can be integrated with just a few lines of code on iOS, Android, and Web.

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Cloudian Pins Container Hopes on K8s Operator
Object storage systems like Amazon S3 are currently winning the big data storage battle, thanks to low costs and infinite capacities. But getting object stores to work with containerized applications isn’t always straightforward. Now Cloudian, which provides on-prem object storage, is helping to simplify the integration with a Kubernetes operator.
A Kubernetes (or K8s) operator is a slim piece of software that allows customers to mount their storage system (whether it’s file-, block-, or object-based storage) to applications running in a K8s cluster, thereby enabling those application to use the storage system to store and persist the data.
Block storage arguably is the most popular way to store data from applications running under K8s at the moment. But the inherent limitations of block storage and the SAN devices that typically use it do not match up with emerging cloud application requirements, argues Jon Toor, the chief marketing officer for Cloudian.
“The reality is using Kubernetes just breaks a lot of the rules of how you use traditional SAN and NAS storage,” Toor tells Datanami. “If you’re using a cloud-like operating environment, which Kubernetes clearly is, whether you’re using it in the cloud or on prem, it makes sense to have a cloud-like storage platform.”
With the new K8s operator it unveiled last week, Cloudian is prepped to help its customers take the next step in supporting cloud-like applications. According to Sanjay Jagad, Cloudian’s senior director of products and solutions, the company’s new K8s operator lowers the barrier of entry for companies that want to pair enterprise object storage capabilities with Kubernetes in an easy-to-use manner.
“With our operator, you can now provision [storage] and access your Cloudian infrastructure or Cloudian object storage within the applications,” Jagad says. “So you can get the benefits of the underlying private cloud-like platform, because of the very nature that it’s scalable and it offers a lot of other valued features and functionality that are needed for the modern application.”
Currently, customers don’t have many choices when it comes to connecting object stores with K8s applications, according to Cloudian. Customers with large engineering teams can develop connectors, but they’re largely manual. Others use container storage interfaces (CSIs) that connect K8s with traditional block and file-level storage
“What we see is yes, that [CSI method] is good to get started,” Jagad says. “But when we get our application into production, what we are looking for really is a lot more. We want a storage platform that scales. We want the security. We want the ability to have it be declarative through APIs. And that’s not what they’re getting today.”
If customers are in the cloud, object stores like Amazon Web Services’ S3 provide a native interface for K8s through their own K8s operators. But Cloudian’s customers typically do not want to run in the public cloud, or at least want to maintain some on-premise presence as part of a hybrid setup.
According to Toor, many of Cloudian’s customers aren’t necessarily ready to start using object storage with K8s applications, but they want to be ready when the time comes.
The customers are saying “I need to have a production environment that’s Kubernetes-ready,” Toor says. “We’re not seeing a lot of this on-prem yet…But a lot of our customer are lookig toward this as a future development that’s coming fast, and they want to be ready.”
To get existing applications to run in the modern cloud-like manner, they need to be containerzed using Docker and adapted to be managed under Kubernetes. That’s no small feat, and requires quite a bit of engineering. As Cloudian’s customers start rolling out contaizerd applicaiotns, Toor expects to see demand for the K8s operator increase.
“They have workloads they want to run today, right now, on object storage that don’t rely on Kubernetes,” Toor says. “But they want a system that they know is going to extend into that environment, so we’re essentially paving a path for them.”


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Blink and you may miss it. On Wednesday 23 March – the web page permitting – around 100 brand new Ioniq 5 electric SUVs was offered for sale by Hyundai.
They won’t be available for long, and good luck trying to get hold of one. More than 16,000 aspiring EV customers have registered for the first-come first served offering. It’s like trying to buy a ticket to a Rolling Stones concert. And if it’s anything like the first offering last year, the web site will probably crash anyway.
Welcome to the cut-throat world of trying to buy an electric vehicle in Australia.
Tesla now says there is a 9-month wait for its best-selling Model 3, by far the most popular EV in Australia. The long awaited Model Y is still not even available for order in Australia.
Kia has only 500 of its new EV6 electric vehicles – also with vehicle to load – available in Australia, but it says demand is 10 times more than that. Volvo has 1500 orders for its XC40 but can only service one third of those this year. Polestar has thousands interested in its Polestar 2, but is also on rations after making the first of its Australian deliveries last week.
BMW says it is working with HQ in Munich to secure more supply. “At present, local delivery timing from order placement on a new BMW iX3 is approximately six months, while delivery timing for new BMW iX and i4 models is between six to 12 months depending on the variant,” a spokesman told The Driven.
The story with other car makers is equally bleak. Seven of the top 10 selling EVs in Europe in 2021 are simply not available for sale in Australia. That includes the Model Y and the two Volkswagen models, the ID.3 and the ID.4.
The main reason is simple.
When the Australian federal Coalition government went out of its way to demonise and mock EVs in the last election campaign – “they won’t tow your boat” and “they’ll ruin your weekend”, prime minister Scott Morrison told us then – most global car makers decided to make other plans.
They put Australia at the end of the EV queue. They had other reasons to do so, too. Australia is one of the very few countries in the world that has no vehicle emissions standards. The country that leads the world in the uptake of rooftop solar is seemingly determined to be at the tail end of the transition to EVs. What a waste of rooftop solar!
The Coalition intransigence on a coherent EV policy – it had tested the waters on emissions standards once, but was cowered by the “carbon tax on wheels” headlines in the Murdoch media – means that the car makers have no incentive to sell EVs in this country.
They prefer to send them to Europe instead, to balance out the emissions from more polluting SUVs and 4WDs. And it’s the Australian customer who pays, because they are served up with inefficient fossil fuel engines (or mechanical fart boxes as they should be known) that even the government’s own data says adds around $600 to the cost of fuel per car, per year.
It’s insanity, and that figure is ballooning now as petrol and diesel prices soar, thanks to the war in Ukraine, the lingering impacts of Covid-19 on supply chains, political turmoil in Europe, and the spike in commodity markets.
Car makers say that enquiries from customers are jumping significantly, even though the lowest cost EV is in the mid $40,000s, and most are pitched between $60,000 and $80,000.
Most states have tried to make EVs more attractive by offering rebates of $3,000 for EVs priced below 68,750 (or $58,000 in Queensland), but the simple fact is they are hard to find.
Hyundai says dealers are reporting a big increase in EV enquiries, up to 20 per cent in some areas. “At showroom level, there is plenty of interest and much more chat from people who were there to look at ICE vehicles,” a spokesman said.
Indeed, the conversations that The Driven has had with readers suggests that those who were once patiently waiting for their fossil fuel car to die peacefully before lining up for an EV are now looking to fast-track that process. But have few if any options.
Of course, it is not as though this federal government is incapable of acting quickly. It is now considering at least a temporary reduction of the fuel excise tax in an attempt to deflect the political costs of rising fuel prices ahead of the May election.
Late last year, when a shortage loomed for Adblue, an ingredient critical for diesel engines such as delivery trucks and the Ford Everest that energy minister Angus Taylor uses, the government moved into overdrive to secure supplies. And they were happy to promise billions of dollars as a safety net for oil refineries.
Morrison and his ministers have not been photographed sitting or driving in an electric car, but they have been happy to promote hydrogen fuel cell cars. Of course, this is just about kicking the can down the road.
You cannot buy a fuel cell car in Australia. About a dozen or so have been leased out by Toyota on special deals to the likes of hydrogen advocate Alan Finkel, but not to the general public. That’s because there are only a handful of refuelling stations in the country, and each of those cannot cope with more than a handful of refuelling events each day.
What chances are there of this situation changing any time soon? Not great. The surge in fuel prices is making EVs a compelling purchase, particularly for fleets.
And while Labor has a more coherent EV strategy than the Coalition (their climate and energy spokesman Chris Bowen recently got a Tesla), they are also balking at the emissions standards, possibly due to the same fear of Murdoch media as the Coalition.
Australia has already become a dumping ground for dirty cars that would not be allowed on the roads in many countries. And not much is going to change anytime soon.
If anything, the dropping of the fuel excise, even for a short time, will further delay the arrival of EVs. The weekend could be a whole lot cheaper, cleaner and more fun. But not in this country.


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Where corporate honchos battled with knives, spatula and pans Brought to you by Whirlpool of India and Something's Cooking Culinary Arts The... ...http://www.thisweekbangalore.com/team-deloitte-dons-the-kitchen-wars-champions-hat/
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The restaurant business is a tough one in good times. So with the continuing economic malaise, it’s not surprising that some companies are turning to the old cliché “sex sells” to make a buck.
Like New York’s Canz-a-Citi, which has been going, um, chest to chest with the infamous national chain Hooters. Canz has had three restaurants in Long Island and Queens, and today the fight moves to Manhattan, where it's opening an outpost on the East Side, in the Murray Hill neighborhood. The nearest Hooters is two miles away near Times Square.
Canz owner Steven Ferraro said the chain never intended to "make a play like Hooters," and aims to be more "multidimensional." The focus is on sports viewing and the vast range of canned beer the venues sell. Note how the beer is served: That's partly how the venue gets its name. The other part: Womens’ breasts are sometimes referred to as “cans.” (And we all know that replacing the s with a z adds instant class.)
"Canz is literally part of our culture," Ferraro said, "it goes far beyond that traditional notch people give us."
The first restaurant began in 2009 in Westbury, Long Island, by Tim Lorito and Matthew Dill. Based on positive consumer reaction, it expanded to Queens and Patchogue, also on Long Island. Manhattan was the next logical step, Ferraro says, and the brand has plans to develop further regionally before looking into national franchising options. "In a down economy, we're succeeding."
Canz claims to have poached 50 Hooters staff members already, apparently offering better working conditions. Lorito also believes Hooters may have been spying by sending members of the management team cleverly disguised as customers to check out the competition’s digs and steal their menus of burgers, sandwiches, and some finer fare.
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- New York Trend Week may have in-person runway occasions in September.
- Some designers who left New York Trend Week in recent times earlier than the pandemic are returning.
- The runway exhibits will finish with the star-studded Met Gala, which is themed round American trend.
- Visit Insider’s homepage for more stories.
New York Fashion Week is making a comeback this fall, with a number of trend designers pledging to make a homecoming by debuting their collections in New York Metropolis.
The Council of Trend Designers of America, or CFDA, announced in April that New York Trend Week is ready to be held in-person with runway exhibits operating from September 8 by way of September 12.
Trend Week will lead into the Met Gala on September 13, which, after being canceled as a result of pandemic, is themed round American trend. The primary a part of the gala will likely be in September, and the second half will likely be held in Might 2022 — making a splash as the primary two-part Met Gala since it started in 1948.
The semi-annual week of runway exhibits held in New York Metropolis will not be solely the place designers showcase their seems to be for the following season — hoping to inform a narrative and seize the eyes of retail consumers — however previously, it is also been often known as a glamorous season that attracts celebrities and high-profile guests.
As Jessica Testa wrote for The New York Times, in recent times, some designers who have been as soon as family names at New York Trend Week determined to cease displaying their collections in New York, opting as an alternative for Los Angeles or cities in Europe.
Now, in response to the pandemic’s disruption of the style trade and the toll on small-business house owners, artists, creatives — entrepreneurs who make up a big a part of the material of New York Metropolis — many high-end designers are pledging to debut their collections completely at New York Trend Week.
Designer Joseph Altuzarra, who runs his namesake trend label Altuzarra, left New York Trend Week 4 years in the past to indicate his designs at Paris Trend Week within the metropolis the place he was born. He instructed The New York Instances that whereas in New York Metropolis throughout the pandemic.
“I felt a extremely robust kinship with town that I hadn’t felt as deeply in a very long time. I missed the power,” Altuzarra stated.
Designer Tom Ford, who’s additionally a md of the CFDA, stated on Might 10 that he will likely be displaying a set in New York, too.
Ford wrote that the upcoming trend week will likely be an “alternative to reaffirm the resilience and independence of American trend and New York Metropolis as a worldwide trend pressure.”
Altuzarra and Ford are amongst a number of designers who’ve dedicated to displaying their collections on the in-person New York Trend Week runway exhibits, becoming a member of Brandon Maxwell, Moschino, Thom Browne, Pyer Moss, Peter Dundas, Jason Wu, LaQuan Smith, Markarian, Monse, Sergio Hudson, Telfar, Prabal Gurung, and Proenza Schouler, in accordance with The New York Instances.
Many designers nonetheless debuted their collections just about in fall 2020 and this winter with out audiences.
Some designers tried to create pandemic-friendly setups. In September 2020, designer Christian Siriano held a runway show in the backyard of his Connecticut home with friends spaced out across the garden. Likewise, one Chanel trend present in December 2020 had only one spectator: Kristin Stewart, who was seen sitting solo in a video of the occasion.
The onset of the pandemic within the US additionally led quite a few designers to shift their focus from their subsequent collections to as an alternative use excess materials to make face masks and PPE for hospital workers.
Altuzarra instructed The New York Instances that he felt that even with an array of options to the standard runway, there was not a “compelling substitute for a present.”
The CFDA’s CEO Steven Kolb stated in a statement that the close to way forward for trend week will likely be a mixture of in-person and digital occasions.
“With present indicators of progress within the tempo of vaccinations and the strategic, gradual reopening and tangible reawakening of New York Metropolis, we stay up for a robust trend season that celebrates one of the best of American trend in each bodily and digital presentation codecs,” Kolb stated.


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The essential cleaning of large volumes of flour, chocolate and vegetable oils has been made easier in the past year thanks to a new food bay.
After extensive trials, the facility, manufactured by OMZ in Italy, was opened at South Eastern Tanker Services (SETS) in Dagenham and has proven to be a success.
It has enabled tankers to be cleaned efficiently to ensure raw materials are delivered to the food industry swiftly.
SETS has made a significant financial investment into this new facility.
This has helped it reduce the cleaning times of food grade products, in particular chocolate and flour.
The very high-pressure wash heads used will enable a significant reduction in cleaning times and adding to the existing two food bays will help improve vehicle waiting times.
This latest investment now enables SETS to now offer three chemical bays alongside three food grade bays together with lifting and storage of tank containers.
Heating facilities have been expanded to offer 15 steam bays, two hot water bays and five electric bays to customers.


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Scrappy French ISP Iliad may have a lot in common with U.S. carrier underdog T-Mobile, but they certainly don’t see eye to eye when it comes to acquisition negotiations. After seeing two offers rebuffed, Iliad is giving up its bid to acquire a majority stake in T-Mobile US, leaving the country’s No. 4 mobile operator with no remaining suitors.
After the T-Mobile board rejected Iliad’s first offer to buy a 56 percent stake in the company this summer, Iliad said it upped its bid 67 percent of the company. Iliad claims the deal would have valued T-Mobile at $36 per share, but part of that amount came in the form of “value creation” inherent in the merger – math that T-Mobile’s board and majority owner Deutsche Telekom have questioned.
According to an Iliad Group statement, it is putting “an end to its project of acquiring T-Mobile US, following exchanges with Deutsche Telekom and selected board members of T-Mobile US who have refused to entertain its new offer.”
Sprint dropped its pursuit of T-Mobile in August, and though there’s been a lot of speculation that Dish Network might now be interested in the carrier, T-Mobile currently has no public offers on the table.


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Sunrise partners with The RightStuf to release the Gundam Franchise!
HUGE NEWS out of NYCC! The RightStuf has now partnered with Sunrise to become the official distributor of the Gundam Franchise in North America! The company will release the first Mobile Suit Gundam television series and the Turn A Gundam anime series next spring, with ZZ Gundam also confirmed for a future release! Hopefully more details will be released soon, but for now this is very exciting news!


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We wrote yesterday that President Trump hiked existing tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods to 25% from the 10% he imposed last fall. Before the hike, many U.S. retailers and Chinese suppliers simply absorbed higher prices to shield us consumers. But this time…regular shoppers are more likely to feel the impact.
Some of the products that could get pricier?
- $11.3 billion in furniture goods will be affected by the tariff hike.
- Peterson Institute researchers said the tariffs would hit $23 billion worth of computers and computer parts.
- We’ve got bad news for your crush at the climbing gym and good news for the Roadrunner. Outdoor gear, the fabric used in fleece vests, and anvils are subject to the increased tariffs.
Retailers are trying to adjust
Many stores are already preparing for the holiday season, and the announcement meant quickly adjusting purchase orders, staffing, and prices.
- Some retailers, like Macy’s, have been trying to diversify their supply chains since the beginning of Trump’s tussle with China. But it’s tough to find other suppliers. Panjiva estimates that, for nearly $100 billion of the products targeted, China supplies more than half the imports that Americans buy.
- Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, sent a letter to the Trump administration last fall saying a 25% hike would be a “serious burden” for low-income families.
What’s next: Though stocks were down all week, they managed to rebound after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Friday’s talks were “constructive.” But we’ve heard that one before…and Trump signaled Friday that a reconciliation isn’t around the corner.


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ZTE has decided to come out of the shadows and compete head on under its own brand in Australia.
Telstra, Optus, Vodafone. That's the normal market share order for mobile service providers in most Australian capital cities. But Sydney is an exception: Vodafone is in the lead.
Telstra's half-yearly profits have dropped by 14.4% and its revenue has fallen by 3.6%, according to an announcement on Thursday.


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Danone has sought to broaden the appeal of its Greek yoghurt in the US with the launch of Oikos Triple Zero.
The French group said the yoghurt, which does not contain added sugar, artificial sweeteners nor fat, was the “first-of-its-kind” to hit the market.
“The idea … is to appeal to a broader base of American shoppers, who are quite protein focused and historically have not looked to yogurt as a protein snack,” a spokesperson for Dannon, Danone’s US business, told just-food.
The spokesperson said consumers interested in protein snacks had been concerned about whether yoghurt contained too much added sugar and fat.
“This is a concern we’ve noticed among consumers of other protein snacks, which may not have the nutritional profile of Greek yogurt – protein plus calcium plus Vitamin D,” he said. “There aren’t many great choices for low-fat or non-fat protein snacks in the USA that also have these other important nutrients.”
Oikos is the “official yoghurt” of the NFL American football league in the US and Danone has hired Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton to market the new product in a bid to expand its potential customer base from a “predominantly female consumer”, the spokesperson added.
Oikos Triple Zero, sold in 5.3-ounce packs, is available in six flavours.


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Bitso, one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in Latin America, has hit 1 million users prior to its upcoming launch in Brazil.
Santiago Alvarado, director of cross-border payments at Bitso, discussed the latest developments in leveraging crypto for cross-border payments in Latin America during a Unitize panel on July 8. The discussion was joined by Ripple’s director of product Craig DeWitt and Prysm Group’s Reed Cataldo.
Bitso tops Argentinian market after launching in February
During the panel, Alvarado revealed that Bitso reached a major milestone by hitting a one million user market last week. After topping Mexican and Argentinian crypto markets, Bitso is now expecting to enter Brazil, Alvarado said.
Operating since 2014, Bitso is Mexico’s first crypto exchange and is the largest crypto trading platform in the country. After rolling out service in Argentina in February 2020, Bitso has already become the biggest crypto exchange in the country as well, Alvarado noted.
Latin America is one of the most active markets in crypto
According to the executive, Bitso’s success in Argentina is connected with extraordinary crypto activity and an increased demand for cross-border payments in the local market. “Argentina has a very large crypto community and a huge freelance user base,” Alvarado said, noting that a number of local freelancers and engineering contractors use crypto to receive payments from employers in the United States.
Alvarado also suggested that the overall fast pace of crypto adoption in Latin America is a result of the increasing development of distribution infrastructure and a rapid growth of smartphone ownership. “In Latin America, about 50% or 60% of the population have bank accounts, but almost 80% have smartphones,” Alvarado said, outlining mobile phones as major factors enabling a “huge innovation in terms of delivering financial services”.
The news comes amid an apparent surge in cryptocurrency trading in Argentina. During the week ended on July 7, Argentina traded 92 Bitcoin (BTC) on LocalBitcoins — the biggest amount traded on the exchange in Argentina since 2016. According to data from Coin Dance, that equaled over 100 million Argentine pesos — the largest amount of local currency ever traded against BTC.
As reported, Bitso is an early partner of Ripple, firm behind the fourth biggest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, XRP. In October 2019, major U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase and Ripple invested an undisclosed amount in Bitso to help it expand to Argentina and Brazil.


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The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has announced the recall of all Simplicity-brand full-size cribs with tubular metal mattress-support frames, as well as several models of Graco® brand drop-sided cribs.
CPSC has received a report of a one-year-old child who suffocated in April 2008 after becoming entrapped between the crib mattress and the crib frame of a Simplicity-brand crib with tubular metal mattress-support frames. There are reports of 13 additional incidents involving the recalled cribs collapsing due to the metal mattress- support frame bending or detaching.
These cribs pose a risk of serious injury or death due to entrapment, strangulation, suffocation and fall hazards to infants and toddlers. The crib's tubular metal mattress-support frame can bend or detach and cause part of the mattress to collapse, creating a space into which an infant or toddler can roll and become wedged, entrapped or fall out of the crib.
Parents and caregivers are urged to immediately stop using all Simplicity cribs with tubular metal mattress-support frames, regardless of model number.
The cribs were sold at Walmart, Target, Babies R Us and other stores nationwide for between $150 and $300. Consumers should contact the store where the crib was purchased to receive a refund, replacement crib or store credit.
In addition to the Simplicity-brand crib recall, the CPSC has issued a voluntary recall of several models of Graco® brand drop-sided cribs made by LaJobi.
There have been 99 reports of drop side incidents involving Graco® brand drop-sided cribs, including hardware breakage and drop side detachment. There were two incidents in which children became entrapped in the gap created by the detached drop side. Both children were freed by their caregivers. There were six reports of children falling due to drop side failure, including one report of a mild concussion.
This recall involves LaJobi-manufactured Graco® wood cribs. The full size cribs were sold in children’s product stores and other retailers nationwide from February 2007 to March 2010 for between $140 and $200. Consumers should immediately stop using the recalled cribs and contact LaJobi toll-free at (888) 842-2215 anytime, or visit the firm's Web site at www.LaJobi.com
, to receive a free hardware retrofit kit that will immobilize the drop side.


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Twenty years ago Adidas transferred its shoe manufacturing to Asia. Many workers in Germany lost their jobs as cheaper Asian workers provided a profitable alternative to Adidas and enabled them to compete in the cut-throat world of footwear manufacturing and retailing.
In a complete turnaround Adidas are moving their manufacturing back to Germany but this time the manufacturing process will be handled by robots. Even Asian workers have become more expensive and robotics have become cheaper. Adidas say that full automation is not their aim but the transition from European manufacture to cheap Asian labour to robotics is a clear signal that change waits for no man.


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Donald Trump's economic plan would help end America's "terrible job loss to foreign competition," billionaire Wilbur Ross, a senior policy advisor to the Trump campaign, told CNBC on Tuesday.
"Trump's plan ... calls for cutting corporate taxes from 35 percent to 15 [percent]. That's going to help solve one of our big problems, which is our trade deficit, because it means corporations are can cut their pretax margin by 20 percent," Ross said on "Squawk Box." "So they'd be more competitive with overseas, and yet have the same post-tax income."
The chairman and CEO of distressed asset specialist WL Ross & Co. also said the GOP presidential nominee has the right idea on trade, when calling for ripping up bad trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Ross has called TPP "the worst trade deal yet for American manufacturing."
That's in contrast to Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, according to Ross. "Hillary Clinton can't tell a good trade deal from bad one. She was for NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement], which has cost almost a million jobs," he said.
"The one that [Clinton] boasted in her economic speech that she went against was Central American Free Trade Agreement," Ross said, arguing that that free trade deal worked out well for the U.S. in the form of trade surpluses with CAFTA countries.
In CNBC commentary Monday, Ross and fellow Trump advisor Peter Navarro, a business professor at the University of California at Irvine, made a case for why Trump's economic plan is better than Clinton's plan.
"Clinton will raise taxes. Trump will cut taxes. Clinton will increase regulation. Trump will decrease regulation. Clinton has vowed to kill the coal industry. Trump will leverage America's energy resources to create new jobs and growth," they wrote.


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South Korea will start a pilot for a central bank digital currency (CBDC) involving 100,000 citizens in the fourth quarter of next year.
The pilot program will be operated jointly by the Bank of Korea (BOK) and financial regulators the Financial Services Commission (FSC) and Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), according to a press release on Thursday.
The project will see 100,000 people – roughly 0.2% of the country’s population – be able to purchase goods with tokens issued by commercial banks in the form of a CBDC. Use will be restricted to purchasing goods, with other applications, such as remittances, not permitted.
The BOK sees a CBDC as a potential answer to problems with existing government-issued grant systems, such as childcare vouchers or payments during the COVID-19 pandemic. The issues with existing systems include high transaction fees, slow settlement and fraud concerns, the BOK said.
The central banks of the majority of developed economies have been exploring the development of CBDCs in recent years as a means of addressing the decline in the use of cash and the increasing preference by consumers to use digital methods of payment.
UPDATE (Nov. 23, 15:13 UTC): Replaces references to Korea Times’ report with a reference to a BOK press release
CORRECTION (Nov. 23, 15:20 UTC): Corrects that the pilot will commence in Q4 , not Q1 as the article previously said
Read More: South Korea to Pilot CBDC With 100K Citizens in 2024
Disclaimer:The information provided on this website does not constitute investment advice, financial advice, trading advice, or any other sort of advice and you should not treat any of the website’s content as such. NewsOfBitcoin.com does not recommend that any cryptocurrency should be bought, sold, or held by you. Do conduct your own due diligence and consult your financial advisor before making any investment decisions.


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With gas prices down, that means green car sales are likely to decline as well. TrueCar's TrueSavings report has the evidence to support that idea, with one electric car and two hybrids among the top five in January for the biggest transaction price savings compared to MSRP.
BMW has reclaimed the luxury-sales crown from Mercedes by a margin of 9,347 cars. Mercedes ruled 2013, but last year BMW sold 339,738 units – a 9.8-percent increase year-on-year – while Mercedes saw its sales go up by 5.7 percent to 330,391 units.
Ford is adding two more recalls to its yearly tally, making it onto the 2014 ledger just under the wire. One involves moving the 2015 Lincoln MKC's push-button ignition start switch to a new location because people are pressing it by mistake. The other concerns the 2015 MKC and 2014 Ford Escape for a faulty fuel pump that could cause the crossovers to stall.
Lincoln and Matthew McConaughey are back together with a pair of new commercials, this time working on behalf of the MKZ and MKZ Hybrid. The spots, "Balance" and "Diner," are new, but the formula is the same - cinematic, contemplative, channeling more than a bit of True Detective.
Neil Young may be better known as a singer-songwriter and rock n' roll icon than he is for his involvement with cars, but the Canadian-born musician is not without his automotive credentials. His latest book, after all, is titled "Special Deluxe: A Memoir of Life & Cars," and one of his most famous songs, "Long May You Run," was written about his old station wagon. But does that mean he's got an inside line on new cars coming out?
We're getting our first quality look at the next-generation Lincoln MKX in production guise thanks to these fresh spy shots, and they suggest styling that hews very closely to the concept from earlier this year.


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It was rumoured he was struggling with his finances, but judging by Tyga's latest purchase, he's most certainly not struggling in the cash department.
The rapper, 26, has forked out a whopping $200,000 on a brand new car for on-off girlfriend Kylie Jenner.
Unsurprisingly very proud of her new gift, the reality star - who turns 19 on Wednesday - shared a string of Snapchat videos of the pricey Mercedes-Benz Maybach with her followers.
"Happy early birthday to me. Yay! I love you T," she wrote next to a picture of the shiny black car adorned with a huge red ribbon.
She also took a video of the inside of the luxury ride, writing: "Almost too boss for me."
It's not the first set of wheels the reality beauty has received in the last week.
She also treated herself to a Land Rover SVAutobiography last weekend and made sure she shared snaps of the new gift with her loyal fans.
No stranger to showering his lady with pricey presents, last year Tyga bought Kylie a brand new Ferrari which is thought to have set him back a whopping $320,000.
And as well as the Maybach, Ferrari and Land Rover, the star also owns a Rolls-Royce Ghost and a Mercedes-Benz G-Wagon.
It's alright for some, eh?


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Apple Computer Inc. said yesterday that it would offer $575 million in convertible debt, in what analysts called a positive step by the troubled company to raise cash.
Apple's offering was announced as Treasury prices recovered from an early slide to end slightly higher for the first time in three sessions.
Treasury prices fell in early trading after a report showed that excluding transportation goods, factory orders jumped 1.9 percent in April, raising fears about robust economic growth fueling inflation.
While prices managed to bounce back, the gains came on light trading, with many market participants on the sidelines awaiting the release of May employment data on Friday.
The Treasury market has been bearish in recent weeks, held down by concerns that further signs of an economic pickup will prompt the Federal Reserve to raise short-term interest rates sometime this year to curb inflation.Continue reading the main story
Still, the market has seen its expectations upset several times this year, increasing the anxiety surrounding the next jobs report.
"While there was not a lot going on in terms of trading today, there was a lot going on in terms of planning," said Waldo T. Best, senior economist at BZW Securities Inc.
The price of the 30-year Treasury bond rose 3/32 of a percentage point, to 87 19/32. The bond's yield, which moves in the opposite direction from its price, slipped to 7 percent from 7.01 percent on Monday.
Apple's notes, due in 2001, pay 6 percent -- 62 basis points, or hundredths of a percentage point, less than a five-year Treasury note. The notes can be converted into shares of Apple stock at $29.205 a share, 20 percent higher than Apple's closing price of $24.1875 yesterday. The notes are rated B-, which is junk-bond status.
Analysts said that while the terms of the offering were somewhat onerous to Apple, the deal had to be generous to attract investors.
Nonetheless, they said getting the company's balance sheet in order was a positive step, and one that reflected well on Gilbert F. Amelio's efforts as Apple's new chairman and chief executive.
"This deal was designed to sell quickly and without controversy," said Daniel Kunstler, an analyst with J. P. Morgan Securities in San Francisco. "The terms are definitely good for investors, and from Apple's perspective, it removes the specter of any kind of liquidity crisis in the near term. The alternative to raising money at these rates was not to raise money."
The debt offering, which was underwritten by Goldman, Sachs & Company, will allow Apple to retire about $352 million in short-term borrowings, which have maturity dates ranging from June 28 to Sept. 30 of this year.
The notes will also help cushion Apple from its recent losses. Apple reported a loss of $740 million for its second quarter, ended March 29, which it attributed primarily to inventory write-downs of $388 million after tax for unsold products and restructuring charges of $130 million after tax.
Apple had just $500 million in cash at the end of the second quarter, down from $1.38 billion in the corresponding period a year earlier.
Apple's senior debt was recently downgraded two notches to B1 from Ba2 by Moody's Investors Service Inc., which said it expected the company's sales to decline during the next 12 to 18 months. B1 is four notches below investment grade, or in the junk-bond category.
Last week, Mr. Amelio announced a management reorganization, naming a chief operating officer and executives to lead four product groups.Continue reading the main story


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Two-thirds of chief economists at the World Economic Forum have predicted a global recession in 2023 with continued geopolitical tensions, and further monetary tightening in the US and Europe.
The conclusion came in key findings of the Chief Economists Outlook, launched on Monday on the first day of the forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
Of the majority predicting a recession, 18 percent said it was extremely likely, against a third of respondents who thought the opposite.
The outlook in September 2022 was slightly less gloomy, when 64 percent of respondents stated that a global recession was “somewhat likely” in 2023.
Saadia Zahidi, managing director at the WEF, said: “With two-thirds of chief economists expecting a worldwide recession in 2023, the global economy is in a precarious position.
“The current high inflation, low growth, high debt, and high fragmentation environment reduces incentives for the investments needed to get back to growth and raise living standards for the world’s most vulnerable.
“Leaders must look beyond today’s crises to invest in food and energy innovation, education and skills development, and in job-creating, high-potential markets of tomorrow. There is no time to lose,” she added.
When surveyed about China, half of the respondents said they expected strong growth while the remainder predicted the opposite. Recent efforts to loosen the country’s zero-COVID
policy were aimed at yielding a boost to growth, but it remained to be seen how disruptive the policy shift would be, namely in relation to health impacts.
Inflation was expected to vary significantly across regions, with 5 percent of the chief economists predicting high inflation in China, while 57 percent believed the surge would happen in Europe.
After a year of sharp and coordinated central bank tightening, the chief economists said the monetary policy stance would likely remain constant in most of the world this year.
A majority, however, expected further monetary tightening in Europe and the US – 59 percent and 55 percent, respectively. They highlighted that 2023 was likely to involve a difficult balancing act for policymakers between tightening too much or too little.
Business activity was also forecast to receive numerous blows in 2023. Nine out of 10 respondents expected both weak demand and high borrowing costs to weigh on firms, with more than 60 percent also pointing to higher input costs.
The chief economists expected the challenges to lead multinational businesses to cut costs, with 86 percent predicting that firms would reduce operational expenses, 78 percent expecting layoffs, and 77 percent seeing optimized supply chains this year.
The chief economists expected the global landscape to remain challenging for businesses – 100 percent of respondents said global geopolitical trends would continue redrawing the map of world economic activity along new geopolitical fissures and fault lines.
Such a wider economic shift would likely reverberate through trade, investment, labor, and technology flows, creating innumerable challenges as well as opportunities for business.
One positive signal was that supply chain disruptions were not expected to cause a significant drag on business activity in 2023.
While the forum’s Global Risks Report 2023 recently found the cost-of-living crisis to be among the world’s most urgent risks, the chief economists saw the crisis potentially nearing its peak, with 68 percent expecting it to have become less severe by the end of 2023.
A similar trend was evident in relation to the energy crisis, with 64 percent of respondents expecting some improvement by the year's end.
In addition, survey respondents highlighted several potential sources of optimism at the start of 2023, including the strength of household finances, growing signs of easing inflationary pressures, and continued labor-market resilience.


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Today we’re excited to announce availability of both SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview and the new cloud hybrid search preview for SharePoint Server 2013 and 2016. As we continue to develop SharePoint Server 2016, we’re paying close attention to trends in content management, team collaboration, user experiences across devices, and how the cloud can be blended into existing on-premises scenarios in new and compelling ways.
Earlier this year we announced real-time co-authoring support for Word 2016 as part of the Office 2016 Preview. For the last several months, this feature has been available to preview users co-authoring Word documents stored on SharePoint Online. Today, we are pleased to announce that real-time co-authoring is also available as a first-look for Word documents stored on OneDrive as part of the latest Office 2016 Preview release.
Earlier this year, we announced a preview of the new Outlook.com, featuring a refined inbox, new ways to collaborate, an upgraded calendar and support for partner add-ins, including Uber, PayPal and Boomerang. Today, we’re pleased to announce new partnerships with Evernote, Yelp, IFTTT and Wunderlist to deliver solutions for both consumer and commercial Outlook users. In addition, we’re expanding the rollout of the new Outlook.com to a broader audience.
Over the past months, we’ve delivered a number of experiences on wearables: OneDrive, OneNote, PowerPoint, Skype, Yammer, as well as some from our newly joined Sunrise and Wunderlist teams. Today we are launching a new round of Wearable Productivity apps, as part of our quest to reinvent productivity on all platforms.
Today, we are happy to announce exciting updates coming to the web version of Outlook in Office 365. We are rolling out an improved user interface and new features to help you stay on top of your inbox and manage your calendar. Formerly known as the Outlook Web App (or OWA for short), our browser-based Outlook experience will now simply be referred to as “Outlook on the web.”
The response to last week’s release of Office 2016 for Mac has been amazing—thank you to all our customers! The post was one of the most read and shared Office Blog posts this year, receiving hundreds of great comments and questions. We thought it would be helpful to share answers to the top ones with you.


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SAN DIEGO–The San Diego Bay Wine and Food Festival returns to America’s Finest City November 15 to 22 and is bigger and better than ever.
Ticket sales have officially launched for the 12th annual festival, and co-producer Michelle Metter says that food, wine, and local enthusiasts can expect to see exciting new additions throughout the week as well as the return of festival classics such as the iconic Grand Tasting and signature Taco TKO Fish Taco Competition.
“The city of San Diego is a hub for culinary tourism, and is home to a selection of the nation’s best restaurants, breweries, chefs, sommeliers and beyond,” continued Metter. “Each year, the San Diego Bay Wine & Food Festival showcases our city’s best talent, and allows over 10,000 guests from around the world to indulge in an epicurean experience of a lifetime.”
The festival is an international showcase of the world’s premier wines and spirits, chefs and culinary personalities, and gourmet foods. The weeklong experience celebrates San Diego’s vibrant culinary community with over 100 citywide events, wine and cooking classes, chef dinners, and multiple tasting events throughout the week.
The legendary Grand Tasting, presented by Lexus, transforms San Diego Bay into a food lover’s paradise, featuring over 200 wineries, breweries and sprits from around the world, 70 of San Diego’s best restaurants, and 10,000 wine and food aficionados from across the nation.
Additionally the festival attracts celebrated chefs from across the country, including Rick Bayless, host of the 1970s PBS television series Cooking Mexican; Antonin Careme medal holder, Suzette Gresham; Iron Chef America winner, Katsuya Fukushima; authors of Talk With Your Mouth Full, The Hearty Boys; Anna Bullet, executive chef for Cooking Light, and other notable chefs.
New this year, the San Diego Bay Wine and Food Festival has partnered with SommCon – a four-day educational conference for wine, beer and spirit professionals as well as serious enthusiasts.
The new partnership gives festival attendees access to over 50 new tasting and educational experiences led by the brightest minds in the business. Committed to enhancing the “business of wine,” the educational content featured at SommCon was designed by a team of over 25 of the wine industry’s top professionals who have joined together to form “Team SommCon.”
To preview the schedule of events and featured celebrities, visit the San Diego Bay Wine and Food Festival at www.sandiegowineclassic.com. Events, personalities and participating wineries and restaurants are updated daily.


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ATLANTA, April 19, 2012 – Today, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal named Kia Motors Manufacturing Georgia, Inc. (KMMG) as the state of Georgia’s large manufacturer of the year at the annual Georgia Manufacturing Appreciation Week awards luncheon. The award was presented to Mr. Byung Mo Ahn, group president and CEO of Kia Motors America and KMMG, Inc., on behalf of the plant’s more than 3,000 team members.
Ahn thanked Deal for the prestigious award and noted the importance of the state of Georgia’s role in Kia’s success during his speech to the 1,200 attendees at the Georgia International Convention Center in Atlanta.
“I want to thank you, Governor Deal, and also Quick Start and the Technical College System of Georgia for this great honor,” said Ahn. “We would not be in this position for achievement without the unyielding support of the State of Georgia, the Department of Economic Development, and in particular, Georgia Quick Start, which has been our partner in workforce training from the very beginning.”
Ahn also credited the outstanding team members who “work enthusiastically each and every day to build world-class, high quality vehicles.”
“We have developed the ‘Kia Way’ to define the workplace culture and establish a ‘one system/one team’ approach at our facility,” said Ahn. “The Kia Way is built on trust, mutual respect and open communication among all team members to ensure continuous improvement, and in our view, is a key element of the market success of Kia and KMMG.”
Deal congratulated KMMG for being the 2012 large manufacturer of the year and said the state looks forward to many more years working together as successful partners.
“Kia’s West Point, Ga., plant is a shining example of Georgia’s commitment to supporting new industries in our state and how that continued commitment allows companies like Kia to prosper and grow,” Deal said after the award presentation. “Kia has continued to invest in our state and has delivered a tremendously positive impact in this region. I am so proud to be presenting this outstanding company with the large manufacturer of the year award today.”
Deal was joined by Georgia Department of Economic Development Commissioner Chris Cummiskey and Technical College System of Georgia Commissioner Ron Jackson at the luncheon, which marks the culmination of Manufacturing Appreciation Week. The event was co-hosted by the Technical College System of Georgia and the Georgia Department of Economic Development.
About Kia Motors Manufacturing Georgia
Kia Motors Manufacturing Georgia, Inc. (KMMG) is the first manufacturing site in North America for Kia Motors Corporation based in Seoul, Korea. KMMG is located on 2,200 acres in West Point, Georgia, and began mass production on Nov. 16, 2009. KMMG is home to the 2012 Sorento CUV and the 2012 Optima mid-size sedan, two of the brand’s top selling models in 2011. Beginning in 2012, the plant has the ability to build 360,000 vehicles annually from U.S. and globally-sourced parts.


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The epic saga of Unique Performance and its fall from grace isn't over yet. An auction was held in March to help clear the bankrupt company's back debts, but it only raised $1 million. That wasn't enough to compensate the many ripped-off owners and fleeced employees, not to mention the federal government. Auction firm Rosen Systems has a new, very spare listing on its website for another Unique Performance auction coming up on the 24th of June. The scarce information offered by Rosen Systems onl
Unique Performance Shelby
- Volvo shoots for self-drivers by 2021
- Jeep spends $1 billion on factories
- Find Parts & Accessories for your vehicle!
- Obama rolls out new EV plan
- Infiniti dealers ranked best, Tesla worst
- Compare Volvo XC90 and Lincoln MKX


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Two new restaurants have signed leases for The Avant, Boston Properties’ new high-rise mixed-use building at Reston Town Center.
Coming in 2014: Barcelona Wine Bar and Restaurant and Bartaco.
Barcelona, which has several East Coast locations, including one at Logan Circle in D.C., is known for Spanish food and a long wine list — featuring, of course, lots of Spanish wine.
Bartaco has four Connecticut locations and is known for craft margaritas and interesting twists on upscale Mexican foods (sesame rib eye tacos and a flight of tequila, anyone?)
With the new spots, the retail portion of The Avant is fully leased, said Boston Properties Senior Project Manager Rich Ellis. Earlier this year, CVS and World of Beer both signed leases for The Avant.
“The retail at The Avant will be a great amenity to the Town Center as a whole,” said Ellis.
The Avant has begun pre-leasing and the building is expected to open later in November.


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Fans hailed Rihanna as the winner of Halloween this year after the Barbados-born star dressed up as Gunna on Sunday night (Oct. 31). Taking to Instagram, RiRi shared her Gunna-inspired look, which copied his New York Fashion Week outfit from September.
Gunna caught wind of the Instagram homage and commented on Rihanna’s post: “Nawww U OVERLY WON.” Rihanna also earned praise from Yung Miami, who commented, “Why I’m screaming. I love you omg,” along with several laughing emojis. Lakeyah added, “U won.”
While RiRi spent her Halloween dressing up as Gunna, the ANTI singer is of course a fashion icon in her own right. Shortly after debuting her Halloween costume on Instagram, Rihanna teased her next Savage X Fenty slate by modeling the lingerie for her followers.
As reported by REVOLT, the first Savage X Fenty stores are expected to pop up across the U.S. next year, marking a transition for the currently online-only retailer. Christiane Pendarvis, the company’s chief marketing and design officer, confirmed to Business Insider that physical stores will “absolutely” be opening next year, adding that “fit and comfort are so important” and not all customers “feel comfortable purchasing online.” Pendarvis did not disclose where the stores will be located, but added that the retailer is also eyeing potential cities in Europe.
In September, Rihanna held the third edition of her Savage X Fenty fashion show, which streamed on Amazon Prime. The show featured performances by Nas, Daddy Yankee, BIA, Jazmine Sullivan, Ricky Martin, Normani and Jade Novah; with additional appearances by Adriana Lima, Erykah Badu, Gigi Hadid, Troye Sivan, Vanessa Hudgens and more.
See Rihanna’s Halloween costume below.


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Written by Alexa Erickson
What comes to mind when you think of IKEA?
For me, it’s that very affordable nightstand I purchased in college that I never figured out how to put together from the instructions. But the brand has made quite a name for itself, despite people like me having a bit of an intolerance for playing adult Legos, if you will.
Along with providing people major inspiration for their homes, and oh-so-many options to choose from, Ikea remains one of the few global companies to generate a billion dollars or more in annual revenue from products or services that have sustainability or social good at their core. Essentially, they’ve made sustainability profitable, and that’s a win-win for our future.
On the company’s Ikea Foundation’s website, founder Ingvar Kamprad says: “We all share basic needs: a secure home, good health, a regular income, a desire to keep our children safe, to see them get a good education and succeed in life. That’s why the IKEA Foundation has decided to focus our funding on these key necessities.”
The website touches on noteworthy philanthropic work:
Our Good Cause campaigns in IKEA stores gives co-workers and customers an opportunity to engage with our partners’ work directly. Our latest campaign Let’s Play has children’s right to play and develop at its heart. It follows in the footsteps of our first campaign Soft Toys for Education, which ran for 13 years and raised more than €88 million for UNICEF and Save the Children. And between 2014-15, we donated €30.8 million to the United Nations Refugee Agency through our Brighter Lives for Refugees campaign.
Along with its social good through the Ikea Foundation, the furniture giant recently announced its newest endeavour, involving building new production centers in Jordan this summer — part of a plan to generate employment for 200,000 disadvantaged people around the world.
The facilities, the result of a partnership with the Jordan River Foundation, a non-governmental organization founded by Jordan’s Queen Rania, are expected to be open and running by August. The plants will begin by employing 100 people, and will raise that number to 400 over the next two years. Half of the employees will be local workers, and the other have Syrian refugees.
The Syrian refugee crisis has been going on for six years. Half of the population of Syria has fled the country, 4.8 million people now live as refugees in neighbouring countries, more than 6 million have been displaced within the country, and hundreds of thousands have been killed.
Such sobering statistics truly put life into perspective, and it’s companies like Ikea that show you can do more than just be sad about it, or grateful for your own life: You can help. Their new production centers are one of the many projects they’ve initiated to make a difference. They’ve also launched programs to help Indian women and Sweden’s immigrant population, employing an estimated 2,000 people collectively. The furniture giant hopes to eventually employ about 200,000 people around the world via these programs.
To conduct the projects, Ikea has teamed up with local social entrepreneurs that serve as organizations alleviating poverty through business solutions, as opposed to depending just on aid distribution. This focus makes it possible to not only provide jobs for people in need, but also help organizations normally too small for Ikea’s supplier guidelines to gain business by getting their work into stores.
Originally posted @ Collective Evolution


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Thank you very much Fine Books & Collections Magazine for the coverage of Virtual Detroit Bookfest!
Full article is here
And big thank you to our own media manager Louie Meizlish for his ongoing dedication to generating more awareness about Bookfest.
Yes, in addition to our limited in-person event this year on July 18, we will be running our inaugural Virtual Detroit Bookfest on our website from July 16-18.
Simple visit our homepage www.detroitbookfest.com and you will see the Virtual event at the top.
Entry is FREE for attendees to both the in-person and virtual events!
If you are interested in being a virtual vendor, please apply here:
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Detroit - A Walled Lake dispensary is using a unique tactic to lure potential customers this week.
The owner of The Greenhouse of Walled Lake Cannabis Dispensary is giving away hundreds of chicken sandwiches to first-come, first-served customers from 5-7 p.m. Friday.
But they’re not just any chicken sandwiches.
Owner Jerry Millen will have 200 of the limited-time Popeyes chicken sandwiches that have caused long lines across the country.
Millen, who opened the shop in February, intends to stand in the line so his future customers don’t have to. He’s also staging a Willy Wonka-type contest.
“I am selecting five of the 200 chicken sandwiches and placing $100 gold Greenhouse gift certificates in each of them,” Millen said.
This event is going to have the chillest murder ever committed. It might even take a while to realize it happened. Just a bunch of stoner bros hanging out, talking about Bernie, planning their moves to Canada if Trump is re-elected (they won’t actually move though, mom won’t pay their car insurance if they go to Canada), and then someone will get politely stabbed for the last chicken sandwich. It’ll be totally chill though. He will just be hungry. And everyone knows Popeye’s is putting some sort of crack-like substance (commonly known as crack) in these chicken sandwiches that is driving everyone crazy.
Gotta give it up to The Greenhouse Dispensary for this promotion. The owner probably is just using the barter system with the Popeye’s employees too. A dime bag per chicken sandwich is nothing, and the amount of publicity he gets out of it is endless. Plus, how about this dude Jerry Millen comparing himself to Willy Wonka? He’s getting high and putting $100 weed gift cards in 5 of the sandwiches. Someone is going to be high as shit and bite into their sandwich and just starting eating the paper. It’s going to be the most relaxed shit show in modern history. Good luck to everyone involved, what could possibly go wrong?


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After a million leaks and rumors, the Galaxy S21 is about to be officially announced today at Samsung's first Unpacked event of 2021. The annual Galaxy S series affair, which usually takes place in February, has been brought forward a whole month this time around, likely because 2020 felt a lot longer than one single year and people need something to get excited about — or for some boring financial reason. Regardless, Unpacked in happening in less than 90 minutes and we've got the deets on when and how to watch it right here. Read More
It's no secret that Samsung will hold its Unpacked event this Thursday, January 14, and it's all but certain that we'll see the Galaxy S21 lineup — the upcoming flagship series has already leaked substantially. But Samsung still wants to drum up some excitement around the devices. The company has just dropped a trailer for the event, saying that "You don't want to miss this." Read More
The Galaxy S11 (or is it S20?) is fast-approaching, and Samsung always announces its new S-series flagship phones in February or March. Now we know when this year's devices will be revealed: February 11th. Read More
Samsung is preparing to show off a few upcoming products today. Alongside the expected Galaxy S10, S10+ and S10e, we might get another peek at the company's foldable phone. And hey, maybe that Bixby speaker will finally get a release date — I know you're all waiting with bated breath for that one. Read More
Galaxy Unpacked is almost upon us, but if the leaks don't stop, there won't be much left to unpack at the event tomorrow. While renders and hands-on images of the S10 family have been popping up for a few weeks, we now have an official Samsung television commercial that aired a day early in Norway, showing us the Galaxy S10+ in its entirety. Read More
Samsung will host its Unpacked event in San Francisco in a few days, on February 20, to unveil its new flagships. The Korean brand is expected to celebrate the 10th anniversary of its Galaxy S lineup by announcing not one, but several devices. There have been many rumors about these phones since December, and while the wait is almost over, we wanted to give you a summary of what to anticipate next week. Read More
All three upcoming devices in the Galaxy S lineup have stopped by the FCC as we approach the February 20 Unpacked event. Before a device is released in the United States, Samsung needs to obtain certification through the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and typically the reports are made public before the launch of the device. At this point, the certification is a mere formality as we've seen pretty much all there is to discover about the S10 series, including some up close and personal leaks. Nevertheless, some rumored features can be confirmed. Read More
Samsung has been teasing the Galaxy S10 a fair bit over the past few months, including at CES 2019. The company ususally releases new Galaxy S phones around February or March, and sure enough, this year's reveal event is scheduled for February 20th. Read More
Samsung has just sent out the invitation for its Note7 launch event in New York City on August 2nd. The sixth-generation Note device has been leaked extensively at this point, though I wouldn't be surprised if Samsung has managed to keep a piece or two of information from us about the device at this point. If you want to know what the Note7 will look like, we can show you, because Evan Blass leaked it - in excruciatingly high resolution. Read More
If you were busy yesterday morning, or too hung over from Saturday night, you may have missed Samsung's Unpacked presentation from Barcelona, Spain. Sure, you could read about the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge and their upcoming availability in the US, the revised Gear VR, and Samsung Pay... Or you could blow 40-some minutes watching the show in all its glossy grandeur. Did you really have anything better to do at work, today?
Ok, seriously, when you're done watching the show, check out those articles. We really do have a lot of information Samsung didn't cover during the event.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqYsIRU5rQU Read More


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InfoSAWIT, JAKARTA - Ministry of Trade has published the Regulation of Minister of Trade No. 94 / 2018 about the Regulation about Letter of Credit(L/C) to Particular Export Goods. The regulation was announced on 7 September 2018 and would run on 7 October 2018.
"The publication of Regulation of Minister of Trade No. 94 / 2018 is one way to strengthen the exchange reserves when the economic global is not good. There are four sectors to use L/C, they are, mineral, coal, palm oil, and natural gas,” Minister of Trade, Enggartiasto Lukita said in the official statement toInfoSAWIT, Monday (24/9/2018).
The policy about to strengthen the exchange reserves through L/C by publishing Regulation of Minister of Trade No. 94 / 2018 is the mandate of Government’s RegulationNo 29 / 2017, Chapter 4, article (3) about the Payment Method of the Goods and the Handover Method of the Goods in Export and Import. Minister of Trade has its authority to manage payment method of exported particular goods.
The regulation regulated some, they are, the obligation to certain exported goods with L/C, the obligation to use the domestic exchange banks or the export funding institution that the government has made, the obligation to make the L/C payment method in the Pemberitahuan Ekspor Barang (PEB), the obligation to tell the stamped documents, the obligation to make verification from the surveyor, and the obligation to tell the export realization which should be complete with the final price in L/C.
Besides, the regulation is also about to determine the fixed price, that is listed in the L/C,at least, it is the same with the world export price. If it is not, the price used would be determined by the government or the goal export country.
Minister of Trade together with Minister of Finance, Governor of Indonesian Bank, and other related ministries would monitor the payment of L/C and coordinated by Minister of Trade.
The regulation would also regulate the suspension of L/C. “For the contract that has been agreed before the Regulation of Minister of Trade is published, the contract could be suspended within the regulation, the Minister of Trade has agreed it,” Enggartiasto said. (T2)


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Leading Chinese bitcoin exchange BTC China launched the country’s first bitcoin ATM and rolled out an online app that allows users to buy and sell bitcoins with their cell phones. This allows users to skirt local regulations that have recently become hostile to digital currencies.
Increasing interest by Chinese speculators was attributed to the surge in the bitcoin prices to at least $1000 in some exchanges. However, recent harsh measures by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) such as restricting banks from dealing with the bitcoin saw its prices plummet to under $350 yesterday, according to data compiled by CoinDesk.
Bitcoin prices have also taken a hit from negative reputation caused by recent scandals such as fraud, hacking and theft. Japan’s Mt Gox, which until February was the world’s largest bitcoin exchange, filed for bankruptcy and subsequently liquidation after it claimed hackers stole all its bitcoins.
The ATM, which is housed in a cafe in a mall in the Zhangjiang technology park in Shanghai, will enable users to purchase bitcoin directly from BTC China in yuan. However, users won’t be able to sell bitcoins for cash, reported Reuters.
The new web app will facilitate transactions on a straight peer-to-peer basis, rather than selling bitcoins on an open exchange. It eliminates the need for an online exchange or banking network, with transactions conducted between users. Liquidity will be determined by the amount of cash they hold.
Unlike the regular money, bitcoin and other virtual currencies are developed using computers and are not backed by physical assets, any government or central bank. Most authorities have expressed concerns that bitcoin can be used in money laundering or to facilitate narcotics and illegal arms trade. This has seen some of them move in to control or ban their use in regular commerce. To register for a free 2-week subscription to ForexMinute Premium Plan, visit www.forexminute.com/newsletter.
To contact the reporter of this story; Deepak Tiwari at firstname.lastname@example.org


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Consumer spending figures were released early Monday morning prompting many to speculate on what this means for the economy. Although the average income in households across the United States showed the largest rise across the U.S., consumer spending did not reflect a change in December of 2011.
Every time new economic indicators are released to the public, journalists, analysts and economists alike speculate on their meaning and impact. It can be hard to keep up. We decided to look past the actual figures to identify which numbers you should watch.
It seems like there are new percentages and projections coming out every other day. It can be difficult to sift through the important ones, but luckily there is a list of 7 that will always give the clearest vision of where our country stands.
Real GDP (Real Gross Domestic Product)
This simple calculation is one of the most telling indicators of how our economy is doing. The equation is as follows:
value of all goods and services produced in the U.S. – the value of imported goods and services = GDP
The difference between the real GDP and just the plain ol’ GDP is the real GDP takes a look at inflation adjusted numbers used from a 2005 reference point.
The 2011 real GDP increased by $225 billion dollars, which sounds like a big figure but it is a 1.7 percent increase in actuality. The real GDP figures are reported quarterly with the next on coming out February 29, 2012.
Consumer Price Index (CPI)
This is the best indicator of inflation within the economy, it is normal to see this number increase at around 3 to 4 percent at a controlled pace. It’s basically a guide that takes a look at the price changes on a basket of goods used as a base comparison from month to month. The basket covers 8 categories: food, housing, apparel, transportation, medical care, recreation, education and communication, and other common household expenditures.
The goods are weighted in terms of importance and then an average is found. Year-to-year changes are used to indicate cost-of-living price changes.
The CPI is released around the 15th of every month, and looks at a bundle of about 200 goods and services. Although the last CPI report, released on January 15th and recalculated on January 19th, didn’t show a month to month change, the yearly index increased 3%, which is aligned with the normal pace.
The Producer Price Index (PPI) is similar in theory, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics measures price of goods at the wholesale level in order to analyze inflation statistics.
After the first week of each month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the unemployment rate, which is one of the most easily understandable gauges of the economy.
Even though the figures come out the first Friday of every month, it’s best to wait until they are updated and adjusted before you take a crack at analyzing them yourself.
The most recent figures brought unemployment to 8.5 percent, the lowest figure in nearly 3 years. The Friday announcement also includes the number of new jobs created, the average hours worked per week, and average hourly earnings. These figures are calculated by looking at 300,000 businesses across 600 industries, but unemployment statistics cover a greater range of individuals. The next release, due out February 3, will have the first analysis of 2012 with January figures.
Consumer Confidence and Spending
Some think these two are the most important indicators of economic health. Consumer spending has accounted for over three fourths of the nation’s economy at different points in history – demonstrating its importance. Consumers are not likely to spend with low confidence, so those figures are taken into consideration as well.
Consumer confidence is calculated in survey form by polling 5,000 individuals with a total of 5 questions. Although only around 3,500 respond, this is still enough of a representative sample. The figures are released the last Tuesday of each month, with the latest ones showing showing a retreat this January.
Coming out earlier today, the Consumer Confidence Index showed a decrease of 61.1 from December’s 64.8. After two months of gains, analysts expected the figure to increase to around 68 — proving that these numbers and predictions shouldn’t always be taken so seriously.
The most important thing politicians need to focus on is getting confidence and spending up, because these are the two biggest factors to a speedy economic recovery.
What to watch…
There are so many figures that are used to see where the economy is headed, and most of the time they are released on monthly basis. The problem with tracking each and every press release is that numbers often change as more data comes out.
In order to really get a clearer picture of the economy, it’s better to look at a year-by-year comparison. The economic fundamentals show more of where the economy has been, and not so much where it’s going. It’s similar to weather predictions, New York is expected to experience one of the harshest winters – yet there are bright, sunny days when temperatures reach the upper 50s.


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He called Canada’s legalization more than a year in advance…
And told his readers to get in on the very best Canadian pot stocks, including…
- Future Farm Technologies, which went from $0.17 to peak at $1.40
- Cronos, which jumped from $2 to as much as $22
- And Canopy Growth, which climbed from $9 to peak at $64.
His readers reported making anywhere from $72,000… to $257,000… to $800,000 on his Canadian pot stocks.
But today, he’s making a big new call.
He’s taking the same pot playbook he used to pinpoint huge gains in Canada…
And applying it to the growing U.S. market… which is expected to be 10 times bigger than Canada’s.
As the Financial Post reports, “If 2018 was the year of Canadian cannabis, 2019 will be America’s time in the marijuana spotlight.”
And according to this marijuana stock expert, one American pot stock is poised to be the runaway winner.
Today, it’s just $3.
But the company is on the verge of growing from 19 stores to as many as 136 stores nationwide.
Sales look to grow to $612 million, eight times bigger than Canada’s top pot stock (which trades for $64).
And based on what happened in Canada, the stock could rise to historic levels. (After all, exceptional Canadian pot stock Tilray jumped from $17 to $300.)
This might be your last chance to get in on the ground floor of the fastest-growing industry in America.
Editorial Director, The Oxford Club


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Waistlines of cars now under the spotlight
Are wider cars more practical, creating more space or are we going through a phase of design preference?
According to new research from Direct Line, our cars are facing the same issue as us mere mortals, they are getting wider!
The 20 most popular cars in 2018 (including the likes of Ford Fiesta, Ford Focus and Mini Cooper) had a whopping 17% wider body than the 20 most popular cars in 1998 – This included some classics like the Ford Mondeo, Vauxhall Cavalier and the Rover 214.
Edmund King, president at the AA, said: “There’s no doubt that we have noticed that on narrower roads we are getting more cars that hit the curb, and this is adding to break down claims.
“In the 1970s two Minis would easily fit down a country lane but if you put two modern style Minis down there now, they won’t fit.
“Part of the reason why cars are now made larger is psychological, as people feel safer in a bigger car. As technology has advanced cars are safer, and it is these protective technologies which mean that cars are larger.”
Rob Miles, director of car insurance at Direct Line, added: “This research shows that car shapes have changed dramatically over the past 20 years, though roads remain the same width, so it is becoming harder to manoeuvre modern cars on Britain’s roads.
“With the size of cars increasing, manoeuvres and parking may become more of a challenge. Bumps and scratches happen to even the best drivers, so motorists need to make sure their insurer covers unforeseen accidents. Motorists who do accidentally hit another vehicle should always make sure to leave their contact details.
Read the full story on the Telegraph website


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USB 3.0 is the future and, well, Apple likes to be on the edge of technology so it only makes sense that the company would be at least looking into implementing the new interface sometime real soon. After all HP is already shipping USB 3.0 in its Envy 15 series and that can’t sit right with Apple fanboys. But all we know right now comes from a Digitimes report that basically states that Genesys Logic is denying reports that its providing Apple with controllers. So yeah, we don’t really know anything.
Apple is usually very good about being the first company to implement up and coming standards. Think back to USB, Firewire, Firewire 800, and more recently, DisplayPort. Apple, however, hasn’t announced any new models within the past couple months when USB 3.0 tech was actually available. Chances are that whenever Apple outs the next MBPs or Mac Pros within the coming months, both will come with equipped with the goods.


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Alain Visser, Thomas Hemmerich.
“We want to be ahead of the game and be simple in our offering so we will only sell cars that are hybrids, plug-in hybrids or pure electrics.”
Lynk & Co chief Alain Visser when asked about the plans the Geely subsidiary has in store for Europe. He also said that Berlin will be the starting point after China.
“The industry could find itself in a situation where electric trucks emerge more quickly than the charging infrastructure that is needed to support them.”
Thomas Hemmerich, Managing Director of MAN Truck and Bus UK is most worried about the strain on the grid, and considers power suppliers a potential “bottleneck.” Opportunity charging may help though.
Thomas Beermann, Lu Qun, Alain Visser.
“In the long term we see the future of carsharing as purely electrically powered, but there needs to be a considerable expansion of the charging station infrastructure in many cities to achieve this.”
Carsharing helps reduce traffic in cities, but parking [at a charger] is still an issue, says Thomas Beermann, head of car2go Europe. car2go’s main competition DriveNow seems to think otherwise, as it is already pushing electrification of its fleet in i.e. Berlin or Copenhagen.
“Tesla has huge symbolic significance because it is the first company to make people believe a business model solely around electric vehicles is possible.”
Lu Qun, chairman of Qiantu Motor, says the Chinese manufacturer is not looking to become the Chinese Tesla, but that he and his company can definitely learn a thing or two from Elon Musk.
“Because of the cost structure we have, we would be able to offer an electric car at the price of a normal combustion-engine car.”
Alain Visser, Lynk & Co senior vice president, says the brand’s first cars for Europe and the U.S. will most likely be plug.in hybrids. Fully electric models are, however, a possibility as well.
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Alain Visser, Brian Johnson, Katsushi Inoue.
“In China we will also sell cars powered by a gasoline engine only. The strategy for Europe and the U.S. is to focus on hybrids and electric models, but ultimately the customers will decide what they really want.”
Senior Vice President of Lynk&Co., Alain Visser, said Berlin was a conscious choice for the launch event of the brand as he sees Germany as one the key markets in the future and wanted to prove Chinese engineering could stand up to German standards.
“Selling a vehicle with the latest and greatest hardware, but an unproven self-driving software package is a risky strategy.”
Barclays analyst Brian Johnson comments on Tesla’s announcement of a supercomputer to steer its Autopilot. It is the latter he is doubtful of.
“We are thinking about it. After the [Volkswagen] emissions scandal, we have to think about it. We are big on hybrid in Japan and the US. We have that technology and we are thinking about it.”
Honda’s chief operating officer Katsushi Inoue muses on an electrified Civic, an exercise his development leader Mitsuru Kariya only recently engaged in as well. Still, Honda considers fuel cells a superior technology in the long run.
Ian Robertson, Alain Visser, John McElroy.
“The legislative framework in the U.S. and Europe, China and Japan is clear, and it’s not going to change. The advent of zero-emission cars is coming, so our strategy remains on that track.”
Ian Robertson, head of sales and marketing at BMW, says that he does expect sales of electric cars to drop in i.e. the U.S., due to falling petrol prices. But Robertson says, it is only a short-term shift and not enough to change a winning strategy.
“I rank Formula E as the most competitive motorsport series of right now. That’s all I can say.”
Alain Visser, Senior Vice President Marketing, Sales and Customer Service of Volvo, says that while racing is generally off the table for Volvo due to the high costs, the Formula E is in comparison to other motorsport series a “much better value for money.”
“In fact electric sales were all up last month, when we saw gasoline prices coming down the most. So, it’s not as if Americans are suddenly getting amnesia and running away from hybrids.”
John McElroy from Detroit-based Autoline.tv explains dropping Prius sales not with falling petrol prices, but the fact that U.S. customers are ready for the new model.


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Made from the corpse of a 1997 BMW 528i salvaged from a junkyard and other recycled parts, this DIY electric car beats the Tesla Model S P100D’s mile range at a tiny fraction of the cost. The Tesla boasts a range of 335 miles per charge, while the ‘Phoenix’ by Eric Lundgren gets 380 miles. Lundgren and his team built the Phoenix in 35 days for just $13,000, and hopes the attention his trash car is getting will encourage carmakers with more cash to do more material recycling.
Founder and CEO of information technology organization ITAP, Lundgren bought the 20-year-old E39 generation BMW 528i and removed most of the interior – including the rear seats, dashboard, center console and trim – in order to save weight (yes, that’s the catch.) He added a 130kWh battery pack that uses cells from EV and laptop batteries to power the car, which takes up most of the space where the backseat would normally be.
To test his creation, Lundgren pitted it against three popular electric vehicles: the Tesla, a Chevy Bolt and a Nissan Leaf. All four competed in a trip across Southern California to see which one would last the longest. The Leaf ran out of juice first after 81 miles, followed by the Model S at 238 miles. The Bolt managed to squeak out 271. The BMW never ran out of range at all – instead, it blew a fuse after 340 miles with 32 percent of its charge left on its battery pack. In a second test, the Phoenix ran directly against the Tesla, getting 382 miles to the 100D’s 315.
Clearly, the fact that so much of its weight has been removed while the Tesla is loaded down with luxury options makes a difference in the result, but so should the fact that Tesla is working with top-quality, brand-new parts. For Lundgren, that’s not really the point.
“Re-use is the purest form of recycling. It creates zero carbon footprint. Re-using parts/components within broken/obsolete electroncis is called ‘hybrid recycling.’ This is a much-needed and often missing part of the recycling ecosystem.”


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Sony first introduced their PVM-2551MD medical–grade OLED monitor in September last year, but at (long, relatively speaking) last it has picked up approval by the FDA in the US, which clearly places it in line to be part of a medical grade monitor Stateside. This is touted to be the world’s first medical-grade monitor, where it comes with a 25″ display, and is tipped to offer significant benefits for a range of surgical procedures where it merges all the advantages that came with Sony’s OLED technology, including true-to-life color reproduction, high resolution, and virtually no motion blur at all.
George Santanello, general manager, Sony Medical Systems Division, said, “Already showing tremendous advantages for surgeons in other parts of the world, the new Sony OLED monitor will now enhance surgical viewing in the U.S., and become the ‘must have’ medical display. A number of Sony’s key technology resellers and integrators have already evaluated the display and noted the significant benefits of OLED versus traditional LCD, so we’re excited about getting the product into operating rooms across the country.”
Next Story: Sony Xperia tipo arrives at the FCC


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Colorado legislators are taking another spin through marijuana delivery regulations.
A new bill aims to establish a marijuana delivery pilot program in the state, allowing for home-delivered medical and recreational cannabis.
The language of House Bill 1092 is similar to some of the marijuana delivery provisions included in legislation proposed last year. They were scrapped after Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper expressed reticence about such a proposal. Marijuana delivery would be a “hazard” and could draw the ire of federal agencies, he said.
This time around, the delivery proposal is a standalone bill with guardrails on the geographic extent of the deliveries, the number of licensed operations and the length of the trial period.
If approved, a state-licensed delivery provider could pick up medical or recreational marijuana products from a licensed dispensary or store and deliver the products to ID-bearing registered medical marijuana card holders or adults 21 years of age or older at a physical address. The delivery license holders would have to adhere to certain security and tracking measures; limits imposed on the amount of product in a vehicle; health and safety standards; as well as training requirements.
“We’re not breaking new ground in Colorado on this,” said Rep. Jonathan Singer, D-Longmont, who co-sponsored the bill with Rep. Jovan Melton, D-Aurora, and Sen. Tim Neville, R-Littleton.
That distinction goes to Oregon, which last February granted delivery permits to more than 100 cannabis retailers across the state.
“Everyone said that they didn’t want Colorado to be the guinea pig on marijuana,” Singer said. “This time we let another state be the guinea pig, and we haven’t seen the negative effects from regulated delivery.”
Following Oregon’s move, licensed marijuana deliveries have occurred in Nevada; and in California, where some licensed medical marijuana deliveries have occurred, municipalities are exploring regulated delivery for recreational marijuana.
Related: California eyed as epicenter for marijuana delivery, e-commerce
“Bottom line is that we haven’t seen an increase in public safety issues where this is rolled out,” Singer said. “Additionally, if there’s concern about federal attention, the federal attention would already be on Oregon where this happens.”
In Oregon, the implementation of marijuana delivery regulations came with very few hiccups and has not resulted in any significant challenges related to aspects such as compliance, safety, theft and unauthorized sale to minors, said Mark Pettinger, spokesman for the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, which oversees marijuana regulations in the state.
Oregon took a slow, calculated and deliberate approach to rolling out delivery regulations, and the state also established a robust set of checks-and-balances and regulations for the first-of-its-kind effort, he said.
For example, a licensed marijuana retailer granted state-authorization for delivery is allowed to deliver products to homes and apartments but not to “transient” dwellings, such as a hotel, dormitory or bed and breakfast. Deliveries are limited to between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. local time, and the delivery person has to verify the identification of the person who placed the order and cannot deliver product to a person who is visibly intoxicated. No more than $3,000 of product can be carried by the delivery person at at any given time in the vehicle, and those products need to be stored in a lock-box with a manifest be created for each delivery. The retailer is also required to keep the information about delivery transactions, including the name of the purchaser, for one year.
As of Jan. 26, Oregon had granted delivery licenses to 235 of Oregon’s 520 licensed retail marijuana operators, according to Oregon Liquor Control Commission data.
Delivery sales represent a tiny portion of Oregon’s monthly marijuana sales. In December, delivery sales were $102,413, or 0.2 percent of the overall $46.01 million in monthly sales, according to OLCC data. So far through January, delivery sales totaled $112,434, or 0.3 percent of the $40.03 million sales overall.
Under the provisions of the Colorado bill, the state licensing authority could enter into up to three memorandums of understanding with municipalities to allow marijuana delivery in those jurisdictions, according to the bill text as introduced Jan. 18. The memorandum of understanding could allow multiple municipalities to comprise a contiguous jurisdiction, according to the bill text.
Separately, the bill proposes limits for the number of licensed delivery operations. The state can issue up to 15 delivery licenses for qualified applicants, under the proposed pilot program.
If passed, the state could start issuing licenses on Sept. 1, 2018. By March 1, 2020, the state licensing authority officials would have to report back to the House of Representatives’ Business Affairs and Labor Committee and Senate Business, Labor and Technology Committee.
“This is hopefully going to decrease the incidence and the likelihood of DUIs, whether they’re related to alcohol or other substances,” Singer said, noting that the state currently allows for the delivery of alcohol and prescriptions.
The bill is scheduled for its first hearing on Feb. 7 in the House Finance committee.
Read the bill text for HB18-1092, “Marijuana Delivery Pilot Project.”