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Apple’s journey into the world of electric vehicles has been like a roller coaster ride, marked by shifts in focus and various internal challenges. This article takes an in-depth look at the current state of Apple’s electric car project, touching on key aspects such as design, self-driving capabilities, partnerships, and more.
Design and self-driving capabilities:
Apple’s initial goal was to create a fully autonomous car that did not require a driver. However, this goal proved too ambitious and the plan was revised. The Apple Car is now expected to have a conventional car design with a driver’s seat, steering wheel and pedals. While it will have limited self-driving capabilities on the highway, manual control will be required in urban environments. LiDAR sensors, radar sensors and cameras will be used to autonomously drive the car.
Apple initially considered a unique design with four seats for passengers facing the interior, which would encourage face-to-face interaction. However, the project then moved to a more standard electric car design with some autonomous driving features. The final design has not yet been approved. Apple plans to finalize the design in 2024 and launch in 2026.
Apple has considered installing a central iPad-like touchscreen in the interior of the car, similar to Tesla. This system would easily integrate with existing Apple devices and services.
The Apple car will use a high-performance chip of its own design, created by the same group responsible for Apple’s famous M1 processors. This chip, made up of neural processors, will do the sophisticated artificial intelligence work required for autonomous driving. The production of this chip is expected to be handled by TSMC, a company known for producing chips for other Apple products.
Safety is a top priority for Apple, which aims to outperform competitors like Tesla and Waymo. Redundant and backup systems are integrated to prevent driving system failures.
Charging and battery:
Apple is considering adopting a combined charging system, a standard supported by many automakers. The company is also developing a radically new battery design that could significantly reduce cost and increase vehicle range. The new “mono-cell” design will maximize the amount of active materials in a compact package.
Apple is working with suppliers to develop smaller and more affordable LiDAR sensors, a key technology for autonomous driving. In selecting sensors, Apple can leverage existing supplier relationships, such as with Wenmao, which already supplies LiDAR sensors for the iPhone.
Since Apple has no experience in car manufacturing, it needs partnerships in the automotive industry. While talks with Hyundai and other companies have taken place, there is no confirmed partner yet. Apple is also exploring contract manufacturers such as Foxconn, which could play a key role in the manufacturing process.
Apple Car development history:
The Apple Car project, known internally as Project Titan, started in 2014 and has undergone many changes and delays since then, including the transition from a fully autonomous car to a semi-autonomous model.
Apple Car executives:
John Giannandrea, Apple’s head of artificial intelligence and machine learning, is leading the project, and Kevin Lynch, known for his work on the Apple Watch, is instrumental in making the transition to an autonomous car realistic in the current decade.
Apple has assembled a team of more than a thousand professionals and engineers to work on the project, which has been testing self-driving cars on California roads since early 2017.
Apple’s car project was originally located in a secret location near its Cupertino headquarters.
Apple plans to launch its autonomous car by 2026, although the ambitious nature of the project leaves room for delays.
Apple’s electric car project has thus undergone significant changes and challenges, but the company remains committed to bringing an innovative vehicle to market. The development of the project highlights the difficulty of entering the automotive industry even for a tech giant like Apple.


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In the week of its launch, Forza Horizon 5 made history by becoming the largest ever release for Xbox Game Studios (XGS) with 4.5 million active players.
Forza Horizon 5 celebrates historic launch
News of the historic feat for XGS was first shared on social media by Xbox Head Phil Spencer, who revealed that the motorsport game’s fifth edition has three times more active players than Forza Horizon 4.
We've invested for years in Xbox so more people can play. With 4.5+ million players so far across PC, cloud & console, Forza Horizon 5 shows that promise coming to life. Largest launch day for XGS game, peak concurrent 3x FH4 high. Thank you players & congrats to @WeArePlayground— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) November 10, 2021
FH5 review: An instant hit for petrolheads
Race gamers with an Xbox machine will absolutely find the fifth instalment of the Forza Horizon series a mind-blowing ‘road trip that never ends.
Expert gamer Sam Byford wrote, in a recent piece for The Verge, that Forza Horizon 5 may well be “one of the best games of the year.”
“The physics feel somewhat grounded in reality, and you’ll notice big differences in how various cars handle, but the driving model is very forgiving, and it’s easy for anyone to pick up and play,” Byford said.
Vijay Pattni from Top Gear also heralded the Microsoft game as the “quintet of open-world Forza games.”
“Exploration is never a chore though, with the game’s multiple competing reward systems constantly tugging at your trouser leg like a litter of boundlessly energetic puppies,” he said.
Justin Towell from Rock Paper Shotgun easily crowned FH5 the best modern open-world driving game.
“It’s an open world racer of humongous scale, dressed up in beautiful, destructible environments that are nothing like the dioramas of old. Foliage flattens under your car, seasons change, and water splashes look the best they’ve ever looked in any racing game,” he wrote.
These are the critics reviews for FH5 since its release this week:
- Metacritic: 92%
- PC Gamer: 90%
- IGN: 10/10

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The CEO of Chinese GPU (graphics processing unit) maker Moore Threads, Zhang Jianzhong, sent an open letter to staff on Monday, stating that the company would begin layoffs within a week, according to a report by local media outlet Icsmart. In the letter, which comes just weeks after the company was added to the US government’s restricted Entity List, Zhang also said “There are no darkest hours for Chinese GPU makers, only boundless possibilities.”
Why it matters: On Oct. 17, the US government implemented a series of new restrictions, limiting the export of more advanced AI chips and semiconductor equipment to China. As one of 13 Chinese companies now added to the Entity List, Moore Threads and its subsidiaries have been substantially impacted by the policy.
Details: In his letter, Zhang directly blamed the impact of US sanctions on Moore Threads’ personnel cuts. The company will now undergo a restructuring, with plans to establish two new divisions: an AI strategy group and a metaverse computing strategy group.
- The exact number of employees facing layoffs at Moore Threads has not been disclosed, and the size of the company’s total workforce before the job cuts remains unknown. However, the company’s LinkedIn page shows a range of 500 to 1,000 employees.
- In the open letter, Zhang claimed that the entire domestic GPU and AI chip industry has been severely impacted by the new limits, but that nothing could deter the company’s determination to move forward. Moore Threads will continue to build high-quality GPUs in China at the juncture between challenges and opportunities, he stated.
- To address the challenges brought by the external environment and policy changes, Zhang announced a three-year plan. The company will focus on four key areas: accelerating independent research and innovation, refining high-quality products, promoting application implementation, and building efficient teams.
- On Oct. 31, the spokesperson for the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, Zhang Xin, stated that the US measures violate market economic principles and international trade rules, exacerbating fragmentation and risks in the global semiconductor supply chain.
Context: Established by Zhang, the former global vice-president of Nvidia and general manager of Nvidia China, in October 2020, Moore Threads is a Chinese technology company specializing in graphics processing unit design. The firm has developed two consumer-grade cards for China’s domestic gaming segment, including the MTT S80 and the MTT S70.
- Chinese retailers are currently offering promotions for the annual 11.11 Singles’ Day shopping festival. Among these deals, the MTT S80 and MTT S70 GPUs are available at their lowest prices ever. The MTT S80 has been reduced from RMB 2,999 ($412) to RMB 1,199 ($165), while the company has cut the original price of the MTT S70 from RMB 2,499 ($343) to RMB 899 ($124).


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Despite the low supply of foreign exchange to the market by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) at yesterday's auction, the value of the naira inched up a bit to sell at 157.30 to the dollar at the interbank market.
The apex bank had sold $120 million at yesterday's auction compared to $180 million which it sold at the Monday's auction.
The value of the naira had headed for the lowest in three weeks amid speculations that the CBN would sell fewer dollars at the auction, selling at 157.38 to the dollar mid-day.
"Demand increased at the interbank market as dealers anticipated small sales volume at the central bank auction," Tunde Ladipo, chief executive officer of Valuechain Investment Ltd., said on phone yesterday. "Oil company sales have also declined, adding to the pressure."
But dealers said the naira could weaken to 157.70 against the dollar by the end of the week unless offshore investors participating in a bond auction inject hard currency into the market.
"We expect the naira to depreciate further in the week because demand for the dollar remains strong and dollar supply is weak," one dealer said. "I think the naira is still expected to depreciate further in view of strong dollar demand," Wusu noted.
The chief executive of the Financial Market Dealers Association (FMDA), Wale Abe, noted that the movement of the naira "is a normal sequence of the market based on demand relative to supply.


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This is the latest installment in a series that highlights major executive changes at top fast casual, QSR and casual dining chains over the past week.
A new culinary director could mean new menu items forthcoming at Quiznos and Taco Del Mar while new leadership at CKE Restaurants will help with international expansion of Carl's Jr. and Hardee's.
Check out this week's leadership changes below:
Brinker International: Prashant N. Ranade has been appointed to the company's board of directors, according to a press release. He most recently served as executive co-chairman of the board at Syntel, a technology company. He also served as CEO of Siemans Logistics and Assembly.
"Prashant brings a strong understanding and appreciation of technology, diverse experience across marketing and operations and a strategic, growth-oriented mindset," Brinker International CEO and president Wyman Roberts said in a statement.
REGO Restaurant Group: Chef and Qdoba veteran Mike Gieseman has been named director of culinary innovation for the parent company of Quiznos and Taco Del Mar. In his new role, Gieseman will be responsible for "reinvigorating the menus of Quiznos and Taco Del Mar by developing craveable items that are operationally achievable," according to a company release.
“As the leader of our culinary center of excellence, his consumer insights-driven methodology is a major competitive advantage for our portfolio of turnaround brands as we continue to drive a transformational agenda. Even if the menus at each of our restaurants are drastically different, the notion of fully understanding what the guest craves is a central driver across brands," REGO Chief Brand Officer Mark Lohmann said in a statement.
CKE Restaurants: The parent company of Carl's Jr. and Hardee's brands has tapped longtime leader Mike Woida, who has worked at the company since 1993, to succeed Ned Lyerly as international president. Lyerly was promoted to CEO earlier this month, and Woida will report directly to him.
“With Mike at the helm of our international division, we are confident that both Carl's Jr. and Hardee's will experience a tangible positive impact as we expand in new markets around the world," Lyerly said in a company release.
eatsa: The restaurant technology provider appointed J. Crew and Starbucks vet Adam Brotman to CEO of the company, effective immediately. Former CEO and eatsa co-founder Tim Young has shifted to the role of CTO, where he will spearhead product innovation and technology development.
While serving as co-CEO, president and chief experience officer of J. Crew, Brotman launched the company's first-ever loyalty program, insight eatsa says will be a significant asset as it further hones its ordering and loyalty offerings.


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RT-RK announces LAVA: a tool for generating Android APIs for accessing ADAS functions
NOVI SAD, Serbia, Jan. 4, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — RT-RK, a leading embedded software development house, announces the launch of its latest product – LAVA, a revolutionary software tool for enabling access to ADAS functions from Android Automotive.
Android Automotive is currently the fastest growing IVI platform aiming to dominate the automotive industry in the long term. However, it will not reach its full potential until car-centric applications have been enabled on a larger scale, requiring deeper integration of ADAS and IVI. RT-RK utilizes its excellence in both domains to develop a tool that enables Service-Oriented communication between ADAS and Android utilizing SOME/IP or DDS control protocols and generates all necessary Android APIs and services to access ADAS functions from Android apps. LAVA drastically simplifies the development of complex use cases such as: getting different car settings via voice commands, video calls with DMS camera, rendering autopilot computer vision on Head Unit, driver coaching, recording with external cameras and many more.
“We are excited to announce our ground-breaking work in ADAS and Android integration. By enabling millions of Android developers to easily access ADAS functions, we believe that LAVA will be the key to faster development cycles of advanced automotive features,” said Nikola Teslic, RT-RK CEO.
RT-RK will present its LAVA product at CES in Las Vegas. Should you wish to learn more about LAVA, contact [email protected] and visit us at the Venetian Hotel.
RT-RK is a premium embedded software development house in the Southeast Europe, with a focus on consumer electronics and infotainment systems. The company was founded in 1991, and currently employs 500+ engineers. RT-RK has a background in being a near shore development center of silicon vendor, networking, automotive, and consumer electronics companies. RT-RK operates under the umbrella of TTTech Group. https://www.rt-rk.com/
View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/rt-rk-announces-lava-a-tool-for-generating-android-apis-for-accessing-adas-functions-301710388.html
Disclaimer: The above press release comes to you under an arrangement with PR Newswire. Auto Excelsior takes no editorial responsibility for the same.


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CUPERTINO, Calif. — Apple’s annual shareholder meeting remained a largely peaceful affair, marked by the attendance — if relative quiet — of CEO Steve Jobs, who had been notably absent last year while on a medical leave of absence.
But Jobs still managed to put his imprimatur on the day’s proceedings when shareholders sought answers or changes on a few key Apple policies.
One overarching sentiment from the event: A lot of Apple shareholders want to spend Apple’s money. The company is sitting on $40 billion in cash reserves — a huge amount by any measure. One shareholder noted that it was the equivalent of a year’s revenue.
There were requests for a cash dividend. Bigger acquisitions. More elaborate Apple stores. Investing in education. All were met pretty much with silence or a “thank you” from Jobs.
“Cash gives us the security and flexibility to take risks,” he elaborated at one point. “When you take risks, it’s like jumping up in the air. It’s nice to know the ground will be there when you come down.”
Additionally, he said, a cash dividend or buying back more Apple stock would not move its share price, so he argued it was best to hold on to all that cash.
However, he also may have given Apple rumor-mongers something to mull: whether the cash hoard portends an upcoming acquisition.
“When we want to make a big move, we like to be able to write a check for it and not have to go out and borrow a lot of money and put the company at risk,” he said.
From greenbacks to green tech
Money wasn’t the only “green” issue that seemed to animate Jobs, who held court during the shareholder question session along with Tim Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, and Phil Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide marketing. Together, Apple’s execs and board of directors contended with a number of questions relating to environmental policies and sustainability.
One shareholder pointed to Apple’s leaving the Chamber of Commerce in October over the organization’s criticism of plans to reduce U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions, asking why the company had done so, “when there is no evidence of global warming.”
Jobs responded: “Well, I guess we have a difference of opinion.”
The Apple chief also said that his company had been the first electronics firm to ask its parts suppliers to find ways to eliminate mercury and other toxic chemicals from its products. He also talked about how Apple tries to reduce its packaging as its products have shrunk in size.
“We don’t trumpet it,” Jobs said. “We just do it because it’s the right thing to do and we let people notice it on their own. If you ask people about Apple’s reputation, they know we’re making an effort in sustainability.”
Added Cook, “We don’t do it for a credit or a check box. We do it because it’s the right thing to do.”
Shareholder meetings are usually formalities, but there was a complaint by one Silicon Valley gadfly named Shelton Ehrlich that served to stir up the proceedings.
Ehrlich, who has made appearances at other Valley shareholder meetings, spoke opposing the reappointment of former Vice President Al Gore to the Apple board of directors, calling him a liar and a “laughingstock.”
A group of environmentalists in the crowd — present to deliver their own proposals to the board — spoke out in defense of Gore, the key figure in the global warming documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” and a longtime Apple board member.
In the end, Gore and the rest of the Apple board of directors were all re-elected.
But while Ehrlich was shouted down, two issues supported by environmentalists went down in defeat.
One proposal would have asked Apple to produce a detailed environmental sustainability report on its products and the firm’s operations, while the other called for a board of directors committee focused on sustainability.
Apple’s board recommended against both in the firm’s proxy statement (available hereas a PDF), stating the company had done more than enough to advance green causes and no other tech firm had a record close to what it has.
MacWorld and Google’s Eric Schmidt
Other than that, there was little real contention at the day’s shareholder meeting.
Bruce Sewell, Apple’s senior vice president and general counsel, oversaw the formal portions of the meeting, such as the vote-taking. Most shareholder votes were affirmative, such as various amendments to employee and director stock plans.
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Meanwhile, Jobs, who turned 55 on Wednesday, received numerous birthday wishes and calls to take care of himself — a reminder that the Apple CEO had missed the previous year’s shareholder meeting while out on a six-month medical leave. Jobs had received a liver transplant last year during his leave, capping years of sporadic poor health following a 2004 surgery for pancreatic cancer.
During the day’s events, Jobs also received thanks from shareholders who have held the stock for a decade or more.
He also faced at least one question about whether Apple might return to MacWorld in some capacity. (“No,” Jobs responded quickly.) The company had walked away from the trade show last year, preferring instead to focus on its own launch events.
Shareholders also asked about former board member and Google CEO Eric Schmidt, wanting to know whether he had been privy to secret materials.
Jobs responded that Schmidt, who stepped down from Apple’s boardlast year, “conducted himself appropriately and recused himself when discussing things that might represent a conflict of interest.”
Another shareholder noted the lack of women in Apple’s corporate hierarchy and board of directors, and asked if “Al [Gore] thought of sharing his seat with Tipper,” his wife — to some laughs.
Jobs responded by saying that Apple is constantly on the lookout for more board members and that it promotes from within, both male and female. He did not mention by name Apple’s newest board member, Avon CEO Andrea Jung.
Jobs on Apple product strategy and his biggest worry
Apple’s CEO also broadly discussed product strategy, responding to a question about innovation at Apple that it would not become a maker of a wide variety of different products.
“Apple focuses on very few things and puts all of our wood behind those few things,” Jobs said.
One shareholder asked what might become of Apple’s desktop products, since Cook had made a comment at a recent Goldman Sachs conference that Apple is a “mobile device company.”
Jobs said that he is not declaring the company a mobile device company; instead, customers are “voting for it with their dollars.” MacBooks far outsell the iMac, Mac Mini and Mac Pro tower, for instance.
“They’re telling us what they think is important,” Jobs said.
When another shareholder asked Jobs what he fears the most — what keeps him up at night — he replied, “shareholder meetings.” Once the laughter quieted down, he said stability in the world is his largest concern.
“People won’t be looking to buy a laptop of they are worried about putting food on the table,” he said.


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It certainly generated a lot of buzz this year, but did Amazon Prime Day traffic meet the volume expected? Amazon.com registered 81.6 million visits from U.S. mobile and desktop browsers on July 12th—the second annual Amazon Prime Day—according to Hitwise, a division of Connexity. While impressive, the number of visits to the website fell about six percent below what Hitwise reported the retail giant received on the first Amazon Prime Day (July 15, 2015) when there were an estimated 86.4 million visits. The decline in traffic to Amazon.com may not translate to a decline in transactions, however, and could also be a sign that customers are increasingly supplementing their browser sessions with Amazon’s mobile app. What’s important to note, however, is that during the 12 months, only Cyber Monday, Black Friday and Prime Day 2015 had more visits making this manufactured holiday nearly as big as the biggest shopping days of the year.
Compared to the same day last week, online visits to Amazon.com were up 57% on Prime Day this year. But Amazon wasn’t the only retailer celebrating. In fact, 12 of the top 20 sites in the Hitwise Retail 500 saw visits increase week-over-week on Prime Day. That includes Walmart, which began offering free 30 day memberships to its competing ShippingPass service in the lead up to this year’s Prime Day. Walmart.com saw visits on Tuesday July 12th increase a relative 21% over the same day the week prior, though Prime Day at Walmart came nowhere near the number of visits the site received during last year’s holiday “peak week,” which includes Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
The most searched for goods on Amazon.com during Prime Day were “tv,” “laptop,” “Fitbit,” “PS4” and “Kindle,” according to an exclusive custom analysis of internal site search conducted by Hitwise analysts immediately after Prime Day came to a close in the United States. While those goods are commonly among the most popular, several products garnered noticeably greater interest on Prime Day compared to the previous Tuesday. For instance, Amazon’s own products—featured heavily in Prime deals—including the “Kindle Paperwhite,” the “Fire tablet” and “Amazon Echo” were among the fastest movers between Tuesday July 5th versus Tuesday July 12th. Audio speakers and headphones (wireless ones in particular) were disproportionately more popular on Prime Day with “Bose,” “speaker,” “sound bar,” and “Bluetooth speaker” all moving quickly up the ranks. Electronic accessories, such as “micro SD,” “portable charger” and “flash drive” were also considerably more likely to be the object of desire by Amazon.com shoppers on Prime Day.
With Prime Day intended on driving subscriptions to Amazon’s Prime service, it was also clear that new members on a 30-day free trial were busy trying to determine if some of their other favorite products were offered through Prime. Products such as “Pampers,” “diapers” in general and “coffee” were among the 100 most searched for products on Amazon.com’s internal search on Prime Day. The previous Tuesday, none had occupied a spot among the top 200 searches.
Learn how Hitwise can provide your organization with insight into online consumer trends, including those specific to your competitors, like internal site search, sub-domains and conversion points.


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Two weeks ago we reported that the 70 metre superyacht Numptia had left her building shed in Viareggio and was transported on a barge to Genoa to be launched into the water. The latest news has just come in from Viareggio and the superyacht is back in the port having being launched in Genoa and towed back to Viareggio.
The superyacht has been designed by Design Studio Spadolini with an interior by Rome based Studio Salvagni. Onboard the luxury motor yacht can accommodate 12 guests and 19 crew members.
The Lloyds classed Numptia (hull number FR020) is powered by twin 3,424hp Caterpillar 3516B DITA-SCAC diesel engines and she cruises at 15 knots with a top speed of 16 knots.


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NEW YORK — Lane Bryant provided an additional plus for its parent, Charming Shoppes, in the quarter.
For the three months ended Aug. 3, income for Charming Shoppes, based in Bensalem, Pa., skyrocketed 72 percent to $25.5 million, or 20 cents a diluted share, 2 cents ahead of consensus estimates and 72 percent above the $14.9 million, or 14 cents, posted in the year-ago quarter. Sales were up 59 percent to $638.3 million from $402.7 million. Results include sales from Lane Bryant, which was acquired on Aug. 16 last year. Comparable-store sales inched up 1 percent.
Hermès is launching a Laundromat pop-up shop in NYC - dubbed Hermèsmatic - where customers can bring their old scarves to be dip-dyed by an expert. Get all the details on WWD.com. #wwdnews (📷: @donstahl)


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The complex patterns of bright colours adorning gowns made of traditional kente cloth have long been the de riguer tribal statement in Ghana. Now there are fears they are facing extinction due to a British invasion in West African fashion, as they are replaced by the “Obroni Wawu” – the dress of the dead white man.
Fashion cast-offs from UK charity shops are said to be killing traditional garment manufacture in Ghana. The £50m-a-year second-hand clothing trade in the West African nation, much of which is dependent on unsold garments from British charity outlets, has led to the country becoming a “dumping ground”, according to Ghanaian cultural experts and clothing industry bosses.
The impact of the Obroni Wawu has even led some companies to introduce “thank Ghana it’s Friday” days, when employees are asked to wear African dress to work.
The extent of the cultural problems caused by British clothes swamping the market is revealed in a BBC Two documentary to be shown on Monday night.
The Secret Life of Your Clothes found fashion castoffs from British brands such as Superdry, Next, Dorothy Perkins, Primark and Ben Sherman being bartered for a few pence in remote villages in rural Ghana.
Wholesalers distribute vast quantities of clothing bundles – imported from Britain after being collected from a wide range of charity outlets including the Salvation Army, the RSPCA and Mind.
“The [charity] bundles from the UK were seen like gold dust,” said the BBC2 documentary’s presenter Ade Adepitan. “These clothes are often made by the poorest people in the world for big British companies. We wear them for a month or so and give them to charity shops who sell them back to these poor people, who are funding the charities in the UK.”
Eric Forson, an Obroni Wawu wholesaler based in Ghana’s capital Accra, tells the programme: “We used to get [clothing] from Manchester, sometime we go to Leeds, sometimes we go to Coventry... In terms of second-hand clothing, the UK stuff is best.”
Holding up a Ben Sherman shirt sold on by a British charity shop, Accra trader Asiedu Aboaden explained that UK clothes are preferred to those from the US because of “the smaller sizes”.
In Kumasi, capital of the inland Ashanti region, bales of British charity clothing swap hands for £40. The least-wanted garments are carried by small traders to rural villages, such as those close to Lake Volta, where they are sold for a few pence but are still in great demand.
Osei-Bonsu Safo-Kantanka, a historian, said the trade in Obroni Wawu was having a negative impact on demand for clothes made from the traditional Ghanaian kente cloth, which is crafted by hand on looms. “One has to undergo training, a year or more, to learn how to weave the very simple kente,” he said. “Economics come to play... Second-hand clothing brought in from Europe and America is cheaper, far cheaper.
“We were trained, even when I was young, to believe that everything West is civilisation. Our belief and respect for our own things has faded to a degree that if we are not very careful sometime, somewhere, someday… we would not see some of our own things anymore.”
Steve Dutton, an ex-pat Mancunian who runs Akosombo Textiles, one of Ghana’s last remaining cloth factories, said that the industry was already under grave pressure from fake African prints produced in the Far East. Some even come with fraudulent Akosombo labels. “It’s difficult for me to overemphasise just how close we are to closing down. I’m very, very worried that this copying is going to destroy us.”
But Adepitan said he did not feel British charities were at fault for their role in the Obroni Wawu trade. “You cannot blame the charities – they are getting clothes in such vast quantities they cannot sell them all.”
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On Saturday, Gillette Stadium held the Boston Got Sole sneaker convention, also acknowledged as “New England’s Best Sneaker Convention”. The event began in 2013 and because then has grow to be a premier opportunity for sneaker and street-put on enthusiasts to purchase, trade, and promote sneakers, garments, and an array of goods.
This 12 months, above three thousand people today of all ages were in attendance, participating in sneaker exchanges. The occasion also experienced a Fortnite gaming station, a sneaker cleaning station, and a raffle for a personalized Supreme motor bicycle.
Take a glance at pics from the exclusive occasion:


text: Aqua Expeditions, one of the world’s leading luxury river cruise companies, has added two new departures on the Aria Amazon in Peru for the upcoming winter season due to popular demand. Aqua Expeditions will now be offering departure dates on November 27 and December 1, 2017. Guests can experience the “high-water” season on Aqua Expeditions’ luxurious 147-foot-long cruise ship with only 16 spacious staterooms on board. As always, guests will have the opportunity to enjoy active wildlife excursions with jungle hikes across suspended bridges, as well as fishing, kayaking, canoeing and biking. In addition, guests can also experience drinks at sunset, live on-board entertainment, movie nights, stargazing by telescope, spa treatments, and 5-star cuisine by Chef Pedro Miguel Schiaffino.


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Ram’s performance in Brazil in recent years has been impressive, with consecutive records in sales, which boosted the brand to first place in the rankings of the premium market, representing the pickup truck segment. Ram has shown unparalleled strength, capacity, luxury, and technology with its offerings. In 2019, the Ram brand sold 652 units; last year, it closed with 5,052 units, an increase of 675%.
Recently, the truck brand has begun to reveal details about a new business model for the Brazilian market.
To support all of its growth within the country, Ram is expanding its dealership network with an investment, by the partner groups of approximately R$ 150 million (or about $30 million) to expand to more than 100 stores by the end of the year. More than double to the 46 dealers the brand had in December 2019.
To support all this growth of Ram in the country, a movement to expand the dealership network is being implemented, with the investment, by the partner groups of approximately R$ 150 million (or about $30 million).
“In parallel with the launch of our future national pickup and the results we have achieved in recent years in Brazil, we are more than doubling the number of dealerships in the country, aiming to strengthen Ram’s presence, offering our customers more points of sale with a premium service that is recognized for excellence and exclusivity,” says Breno Kamei, Vice President of Ram for South America.
“With this movement, we are seeking to strengthen Ram’s presence in strategic areas further, as well as bring customers closer in new cities to the brand, following one of Ram’s most important moments in the country with the sales success of our models and the launch of a new exclusive national pickup,” reinforces Everton Kurdejak, Vice President of Commercial Operations of Ram for Brazil.


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White Optics in New Castle planning for a bright future
Consumers won’t see White Optics’ name on products in their local Wal-Mart.
But they will better see products at many of the retail giant’s stores thanks to the technology developed by the New Castle-area startup.
Last year, Wal-Mart announced it would install General Electric-made LED light fixtures at hundreds of its new and existing Superstores as part of an effort to reduce its carbon footprint.
While typical LEDs, or light-emitting diodes, are up to five times more efficient than fluorescent bulbs, the overhead lights Wal-Mart is installing are even brighter and more cost effective because they’re made with a reflective coating developed at White Optics.
“It’s definitely a big deal for us and one of the reasons I’m confident we’re going to double or triple in size in the next few years,” said Eric Teather, the company’s president and co-founder. “But it’s also a little bit of a tiger-by-the-tail situation. GE has a lot of stringent requirements and we have to work really hard and make some big investments to meet those standards.”
Avoiding the pitfalls that have swallowed other fledgling businesses has been a major concern of Teather’s ever since he and his business partner Shaun Zhu left DuPont to launch their own company in early 2009, just as the Great Recession was beginning to topple more established companies.
“I left a really good job when the stock market was at its lowest point, people everywhere were being put out of work and it seemed like the whole world was ending,” Teather said. “And here I was at 39 with a wife and kids, taking my life savings and starting a company. It was super, super scary.”
Teather first developed a taste for high-risk, high-reward ventures during an 18-year career at DuPont that included stints in manufacturing and research, as well as sales and marketing.
He fell in love with the fast-paced world of entrepreneurship after earning a master’s degree in business and spending a few years working on DuPont’s foray into hydrogen fuel-cell technology.
He later championed a different technology within the company that White Optics would later license from his former employer.
“I realized the market was going to be small for a while and I knew if I stayed in DuPont and focused on this, I was going to be a failure,” Teather said. “I started lobbying DuPont, saying this should be done outside of the company and I’d like to do it.”
White Optics now purchases raw material from DuPont to manufacture a line of reflectants – coatings applied behind fluorescent or LED bulbs – and diffusers – the translucent screens located in front of them.
“Basically, what we’re selling is air,” Teather said. “We’re putting voids into plastic and those voids are combined with good, old DuPont Ti02, or titanium dioxide, a white pigment we use to get this highly-diffused reflection.”
That reflective property enhances the output of light fixtures, making them 15 to 30 percent as efficient as models made with pre-painted or powder-coated metals. A higher efficiency means the same output – or lumens – can be achieved with less electricity.
Wal-Mart estimates each store that is completely outfitted with General Electric LED fixtures – all enhanced by White Optics’ products – will cut its energy costs by $34,000 per year.
Those cost savings for consumers have not yet translated into a windfall for White Optics, however.
While the company is currently has $10 million in gross revenue, Teather said it remains on the edge of profitability.
White Optics sells its coatings and diffusers to more than 200 customers, including some of the largest light-fixture manufacturers in the world. But the products made with those materials are still limited to the high-end market.
“Lighting is a commodity business,” he said. “Right now, we’re small, so we’re specialty. We trying to grow in a way that reduces our material costs and gets more of the lower-end fixtures to use us.”
That growth is being powered by large companies like General Electric, as well as foreign markets. White Optics recently formed a joint venture in Mexico and Zhu is leading its China sales office, which now accounts for 15 percent of the company’s total sales.
Yet scaling up production to meet that growing demand comes with its own challenges, particularly in the post-recession economy.
“Let’s say you’ve got a customer that is buying a million dollars’ worth of stuff, but is only paying you every 120 days, but you’ve got to buy $800,000 worth of raw materials and you’re being billed for that every 30 days,” Teather said. “You need a million-dollar loan from the bank. Well, good luck, because the banks aren’t loaning money that freely right now.”
So far, White Optics has managed to overcome those liquidity issues with the help of some timely investments.
The firm received a $1.5 million stimulus grant from the U.S. Department of Energy in 2010 that helped it bring its first products to market. In 2012, the founding partners sold a non-controlling share of the company to Alanod, a German aluminum coating company that granted access to their investor’s metal processing plant in Ohio.
“Everything I envisioned when we started this company has happened,” Teather said. “It’s just taken twice as long and been twice as hard.”
Email Scott Goss at firstname.lastname@example.org or follow him on Twitter @ScottGossDel.


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But IBM, which bought Lotus years ago, is re-introducing Symphony as a free open-source download based on the Eclipse open-source framework. According to CNET News.com, it uses the OpenDocument Format (ODF) derived from OpenOffice, but can also work with Microsoft Office formats and export to Adobe PDFs.
The beta version includes workd processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software and runs on Windows and Linux -- a Mac version is reportedly in the works.
Free is good, but will it be enough to pry small and midsize companies away from Microsoft Office? For power users and rich enterprises, probably not. But for smaller companies -- and users -- who just need to create the odd document or spreadsheet, the savings could be significant.
Still, this isn't the first attempt to usurp Microsoft Office. Web-based Google Docs is also free, and doesn't even require a download. The company added Google Presentations just this week. But most reviewers consider Google Docs too limited to be a real Office replacement -- although they do laud its advanced collaboration features. Other online competitors include Zoho, which my friend Harry McCracken rates far ahead of Google Docs.
But IBM's entry is significant in many ways. Big Blue's very bigness connotes stability, which is critical for companies relying on productivity software. And IBM is offering a number of support options for Symphony, which will also help ease concerns for potential business users.
Of course, Microsoft isn't sitting still. The company plans to release the next version -- code-named Office 14-- in 2009, with test versions coming out next year.
Maybe they ought to hurry? Few companies will ditch their current versions of Microsoft Office for these new alternatives. But there are now plenty of reasons to think twice before upgrading, or before buying Office for new hires.


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This is a California company that diverts a great many pounds of wasted food from landfills and onto farmlands without time-consuming composting strategies.
You don’t need to dumpster dive before you realize that supermarkets divert a constant flow of uneaten nourishment to landfills.
When it gets dumped, the waste accomplishes more than smell terrible. It likewise adds to environmental change by discharging methane, a greenhouse gas, which is about 30 times stronger than carbon-dioxide. Actually, landfills are pegged the third biggest supply of methane emanations in the U.S., as per the Environmental Protection Agency (a major cause the USDA as of late promised a 50% national decrease in food waste by 2030).
However, after another California state law [PDF] became effective this April, substantial supermarkets in the state are obliged to jettison the landfill and recycle or compost all their wasted food.
For large grocery stores to conform to the imminent law they require more locations to keep the waste materials —and a Sacramento-based company gives off an impression of being very much situated to react to this issue. California Safe Soil has built up a procedure that changes truckloads of store food waste into ranch prepared compost it refers to as Harvest to Harvest, or H2H.
“This was something that made perfect sense to me,” CEO Dan Morash says, who established the franchise in 2012, in the wake of resigning a career as an investment broker in the energy industry. “There’s this huge stream of waste from the supermarkets that is no longer safe to eat as it gets to the end of its shelf life, but it still has a lot of nutrients.”
Making use of compost, produced using food waste likewise eliminates the requirement for for synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, he says. This can reduce the amount of nitrate runoff into local rivers and streams, which often lead to dead zones.
The company claims that ever since its launch in year 2012, it has redirected more than 2.2 million pounds of wasted food from landfills, inhibiting the outflows of about 3.2 million pounds of conservatory gases and averting the requirement for more than 1.1 million pounds nitrogen fertilizers.
In what way is Morash’s product different from standard compost? He worked with soil and fertilizer expert Mark LeJeune to build up a technique that quickly advances the fertilizing of the soil process (which is energized by high-impact assimilation, or microbes bolstered by oxygen that decomposes natural matter). The procedure transforms food waste to fluid compost within three hours.
To start with, the waste is ground into a fluid, and then treated with chemicals to separate the protein, carbohydrates and fat into the unsaturated fats, amino acids, and basic sugars. At that point, it becomes pasteurized (i.e., warmed at very high temperatures) to destroy any pathogens still available.
“The average particle size is very small—26 microns,,” says Morash. “This [allows it to] blend effectively with water.”
A different stream for natural and conventional food exists in the company, as California Safe Soil offers for sale an all-natural form. Both are introduced to farm crops through drip irrigation system.
In year 2012, Morash and LeJeune established in Sacramento, a pilot plant to improve the innovation. The product was popularized in 2013 and is managed by the California Department of Food and Agriculture.
“The California Department of Food and Agriculture is concerned about food safety, so we had to prove that [the fertilizer production process] eliminates pathogens,” Morash says. “So we did a research project called a challenge test at the University of California, Davis.”
To show that the product was effective, the company conducted additional experiments with researchers, including one at U.C. Davis and a strawberry expert at U.C. Cooperative Extension.
Morash claims that use of his fertilizer on tomatoes has upped the rate of food production by between 10 to 15 percent.
California Safe Soil’s target market is mainly large farms that grow crops like strawberries, tomatoes, leafy greens, almonds, and wine grapes. Several of the berry growers that he works with supply for Driscoll’s, Morash says.
But orchard crops like fruit and nuts are especially well suited for this liquid fertilizer. Traditionally, orchard-based farmers “need to till the soil to get organic matter in without cutting up the roots,” he says. “So the ability to deliver organic matter to the soil in liquid form is a big positive.”
At the moment, the company processes food waste from 15 stores across five supermarket chains (Grocery Outlet, Nugget, Safeway, SaveMart, and Whole Foods) in Sacramento. Six days a week, the plant processes about 3,750 pounds of food from between seven to eight markets a day (each brings in an average of about 500 pounds daily).
The Sacramento facility is operating at capacity, but he hopes to build others in the coming years. The idea is to locate plants, like the one Sacramento, near grocery distribution centers. This way, after delivering goods to the stores, the centers’ trucks can fill up with food waste for the trip home, Morash says.
There are additional economic and environmental benefits to locating California Safe Soil plants near distribution centers, he adds. Turning food waste into fertilizer not only saves grocery stores the fees associated with sending it to a landfill, but it also prevents the greenhouse gas emissions and extra transportation costs often needed to deliver it there.
“This has a very positive environmental impact across the board,” Morash says. “It’s going to increase the sustainability of agriculture starting right here in California.”
California Safe Soil’s H2H Fertilizers


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Listen to this article
Whitbread is to raise some prices throughout its chains of hotels, restaurants and coffee shops in response to the government’s new “ national living wage”, becoming one of the first UK companies to outline how it will cope with the policy.
The owner of Premier Inn and the Costa Coffee brand said it was developing plans to deal with a “substantial cost increase”. Employers will be required to pay £7.20 an hour to workers over the age of 25 from April, rising to £9 an hour by 2020, replacing the £6.50 minimum wage.
“We shall mitigate this substantial cost increase over time with a combination of productivity improvements, boosted by investment in systems and training, efficiency savings and some selective price increases,” the FTSE 100 leisure group said in a statement to the stock market.
Although Whitbread estimated the increased wage bill will cost an additional £15-20m annually, it said there were no plans to cut jobs.
“Our fast-paced growth means we are creating around 3,000 new jobs in the UK every year,” the company said.
Whitbread said it would give more details of the plans with its interim results on October 20. The company employs more than 45,000 people in the UK and its other brands include Brewers Fayre, Beefeater Grill and the Table Table pub restaurants.
Announced with fanfare in George Osborne’s emergency summer budget following the general election, the rise in the minimum wage has faced criticism from employers’ organisations, which say it will cost jobs.
The CBI employers’ organisation has warned that the retail, hospital, social care and outsourcing sectors would be hit the hardest. It said some employers may reduce workers’ hours as a result.
One of the UK’s leading recruitment companies has said employers were already scaling back recruitment plans and job prospects were at their weakest since the final quarter of 2012.
“The national living wage is sending shockwaves through the UK labour market,” said James Hick, managing director of ManpowerGroup Solutions UK, which surveyed 2,100 employers.
The Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that the extra costs could mean up to 60,000 job losses. The Treasury said the OBR expected the national living wage to give a direct boost in wages for 2.7m low-paid workers.
The findings from Manpower came as the head of the UK’s biggest small business organisation warned that measures introduced in the summer Budget risked damaging growth.
“The recent Budget left many small firms with real challenges to overcome in how they operate in future,” said John Allan, who chairs the Federation of Small Businesses.
Trade unions and charities have also attacked the national living wage policy, which they say falls below the real cost of living and unfairly excludes younger workers. According to calculations by the Living Wage Foundation, the rate for areas of the UK outside London should be £7.85 per hour.
Whitbread delivered the warning as it posted a 3.3 per cent increase in like-for-like group sales in the 11 weeks to 13 August, led by particularly strong growth at Premier Inn, the budget hotel chain, of 4.3 per cent during the period.
Greg Johnson, analyst at Shore Capital, said the trading update highlighted a “modest slowdown”.
“The performance was slightly below expectations but first-half trading is consistent with our full-year expectations of 3-4 per cent growth,” he wrote in note to clients, along with a forecast £556m in pre-tax profit for this year.
Whitbread posted a 33.7 per cent rise in pre-tax profit last financial year at £463.8m, on revenues of £2.61bn.
Get alerts on Whitbread PLC when a new story is published


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Stories tagged: Amazon
UPDATED: Wed., Oct. 4, 2017, 8:51 a.m.
Amazon has to pay $295 million in back taxes to Luxembourg, the European Union ordered Wednesday, in its latest attempt to tighten the screws on multinationals it says are avoiding …
UPDATED: Tue., Oct. 3, 2017, 2:49 p.m.
Officials from a recently incorporated city outside Atlanta want to shed some of their new municipality’s land and rename it Amazon, Georgia, in the hopes it will spur the e-commerce …
UPDATED: Fri., Sept. 29, 2017, 4:13 p.m.
Walmart’s Jet.com will launch a higher-end grocery line targeting millennials, just over a year after Walmart spent more than $3 billion for the fast-growing online retailer amid more intense competition …
UPDATED: Fri., Sept. 29, 2017, 10:53 a.m.
Mayors from two small Rhode Island cities – Pawtucket and Central Falls – announced on Thursday that they plan to make a joint pitch to attract Amazon’s new headquarters.
Wed., Sept. 27, 2017, 3:08 p.m.
Amazon will head into the holiday shopping season with a simple wish list: It wants voice-controlled devices featuring its digital assistant Alexa to become as ubiquitous in people’s homes as …
Wed., Sept. 27, 2017, 4 a.m.
Spokane is joining the stampede of cities competing to become Amazon’s second headquarters. The e-commerce giant will announce its selection next year.
Wed., Sept. 20, 2017, 8:38 a.m.
Amazon is attempting to develop glasses that pair with Alexa and would allow users to access the voice-activated assistant outside the home, according to a newspaper report.
Mon., Sept. 18, 2017, 10 a.m.
Amazon has announced plans for a third Oregon fulfillment center.
Mon., Sept. 18, 2017, 7:47 a.m.
Amazon has made it official: It plans to locate one of its fulfillment centers in the southwest Ohio city of Monroe, bringing more than 1,000 jobs.
Sun., Sept. 17, 2017
Spin Control: Study finds possible cases of ballot fraud, but not in the numbers Trump’s looking for
Numbers for fraudulent ballots appear pretty small, the number for “lost” jobs seem a bit large.
Sat., Sept. 16, 2017
For the “elite” cities, sharing the growth would reduce pressure to tear down their beloved neighborhoods to build forests of soulless towers – all in the name of improving affordability.
Mon., Sept. 11, 2017, 8:30 a.m.
Amazon.com is about to test whether expertise delivering packages across a continent translates to skill in getting executives in far-flung cities to play nice together.
Sun., Sept. 10, 2017
When the argument doesn’t fit the facts, some people make the facts fit the argument.
UPDATED: Sat., Sept. 9, 2017, 8:20 p.m.
More than 50 Floridians told the Associated Press that they did not receive flashlights, battery-operated radios, boxed milk, water bottles and first-aid kits after placing orders on Amazon.com and Nestle’s …
Sat., Sept. 9, 2017
Amazon’s Request for Proposal narrows the list significantly in terms of the number of cities realistically able to bid for such a project.
Fri., Sept. 8, 2017, 8:15 a.m.
Amazon has been blamed or praised – depending on your perspective – for Seattle’s historic real estate boom.
Thu., Sept. 7, 2017, 4:28 p.m.
Amazon, bursting out of its Seattle headquarters, is hunting for a second home. Must haves: A prime location, close to transit, with plenty of space to grow.
Thu., Sept. 7, 2017, 7:50 a.m.
Amazon.com has outgrown Seattle. The e-commerce giant, which employs about 40,000 people in the city after a hiring boom and urban build-out with little precedent in modern American history, is …
Wed., Sept. 6, 2017, 8:38 a.m.
Kohl’s said Wednesday that it will open up Amazon shops in 10 of its stores, making it the latest department store operator to make a deal with the e-commerce giant.
Tue., Sept. 5, 2017, 12:19 p.m.
Amazon is launching Brown Sugar, a subscription video-on-demand service that features what it calls the biggest collection of the baddest African-American movies of all time.
UPDATED: Fri., Sept. 1, 2017, 12:33 p.m.
In court papers filed in federal court this week, Thomas Corey Payne and Kayla Harris of Charleston said they began experiencing the symptoms after viewing the total solar eclipse Aug. …
UPDATED: Wed., Aug. 30, 2017, 7:31 p.m.
Shoppers who talked with the Associated Press this week say what they want most of all is lower prices and one-stop shopping.
Wed., Aug. 30, 2017, 6:37 p.m.
Both companies say that later this fall, users will be able to access Alexa using Cortana on Windows 10 computers and on Android and Apple devices. They’ll also be able …
Mon., Aug. 28, 2017, 3:04 p.m.
Amazon plans to hire more than 1,000 full-time employees to work in a new packing and shipping warehouse in Salem, Oregon.
UPDATED: Mon., Aug. 28, 2017, 2:35 p.m.
Amazon.com’s extraordinary growth has turned Seattle into the biggest company town in America.
UPDATED: Mon., Aug. 28, 2017, 1:54 p.m.
Amazon spent its first day as the owner of a brick-and-mortar grocery chain cutting prices at Whole Foods Market.
Fri., Aug. 25, 2017, 2:29 p.m.
A Florida-based evangelical ministry is suing a liberal watchdog organization that called it a hate group because of its stance against LGBT rights.
Fri., Aug. 25, 2017
More needs to be done to bring equity in tax collections for merchants in Washington state and other states where sales tax is collected. If not, many internet merchants continue …
Thu., Aug. 24, 2017, 2:24 p.m.
Starting Monday, Whole Foods will offer lower prices on bananas, eggs, salmon, beef and other products. Looking ahead, the Seattle company hopes to give Amazon Prime members special savings and …
Thu., Aug. 24, 2017, 2:18 p.m.
Voice shopping hasn’t really caught on yet, but if it does, look out – you might never know if it’s offering you the best deal.


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September 22, 2015 at 10:35 AM
At Forrester Research’s Groundswell for Excellence in Social Media Awards ceremony held in April this year, winners were recognised for their innovative use of social media to drive awareness of their brands, delight customers with quality content, and reach more people than could ever have been possible in a world without tweets and shares. I’ve been somewhat puzzled by talk of social media, as a marketing platform at least, being on its last legs. The way I see it is that social is only shifting into higher gear and looking at how this year’s Forrester Research winners leveraged the medium to up their relationship marketing game, social media is still very much alive and kicking. You can read more about this year’s winners and submissions here.
Social media relationships are the currency of digital marketing
As a category at the Forrester awards, Social Relationship Marketing highlighted the efforts of companies who turned to social platforms to engage existing customers and boost brand awareness, manage relationships, and engage customers to help them get the most out of their products. Autodesk, which won in the B2B relationship category, engages in proactive customer support with their “Total Community” strategy which involves leveraging social and online communities to “…foster peer-to-peer support, drive greater brand affinity, and solidify relationships with its customers. [Our strategy] has evolved to focus on collaborating with and anticipating the needs of customers.” With nearly 200 000 Twitter followers and a bustling brand community, Autodesk updates, guides, informs, delights and interacts with customers and cultivates invaluable brand affinity in the process. This level of exposure has helped Autodesk build on existing relationships and use those in-roads to attract new customers in the process.
From social butterflies to community organisers
Brand communities are communities of people who share an affinity to a brand and have become the portals of choice for customers seeking to filter their personal news stories to focus on their interactions and experiences with brands, their products and their services. These communities can almost be considered a natural next step in the social media evolution with customer-centrism fuelling the need for more sophisticated engagement strategies. Branded communities complement social platforms in the sense that they allow businesses to offer tangible after-sales value and spur customers on to spread the word. This Forrester blog explains quite succinctly how branded communities are helping companies expand their reach and foster awareness in a saturated social landscape. For further reading, also check out how food and beverage giant, Knorr, has managed to garner 10.7 million Facebook likes and a huge following of their “What’s for Dinner” campaign by building both social and branded communities into their relationship marketing strategies.
There is no such thing as digital strategy, only strategy in the digital age
One of the great effects of the internet is that it has brought people together in ways unimaginable say, twenty five years ago. This has challenged traditional norms and also democratised the customer/business dynamic to the extent that mindful and measured engagement is no longer reserved for the VIP customer, but has become the birth-right of every consumer of your product. Social media, in its current and future iterations, will continue to offer new opportunities for customer relationship marketing, and companies that welcome them will reap the rewards of their current and future social engagement strategies.
Image credit: http://blog.printpapa.com/


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Adapt or die. It’s something most business say they practice but rarely do. An exception is Tracy Wong, the founder of Wongdoody, a 25-year-old creative agency whose acquisition by Indian IT and consulting giant Infosys was announced in April. On this episode, he discusses changing models, being irrelevant, democratic cultures and more. This episode of Making Marketing was originally published on June 7.
The business has evolved.
Nothing in our business is clear and simple anymore. The business has changed around what advertising agencies are asked to do with the emergence of technology, especially in the past five years. The problems that clients are dealing with have changed. Marketing used to be just demand generation.
The role of the CMO has changed too.
Today, a CMO is not dealing with just marketing and advertising. They’re also dealing with issues of digital transformation, the changing media business and transparency. Everything for CMOs is nasty, tangled and complicated. The CMOs are responsible for customer experience and engagement. They’re all connected to technology in some way. Every client is struggling with developing technology to enhance or build customer experience, like apps or tech platforms. That was never on their job description a few years back.
The creative is a function for all departments.
Our first ever creative internal was with account people. The creative department is on the hook for coming up with ideas but everyone is contributing. You can’t do that if you have ego in people. A lot of people in other agencies don’t like this.
Working with Infosys.
How many companies that are agency holding companies are still [agency holding companies]? They’re straight-up consultancies or global tech. The entities that are buying agencies have completely changed. For decades, they were agency holding companies. The board eats your culture, you do it for the money. That wasn’t attractive to us. Infosys has offshore digital creation. They’ve gotten into digital strategy and consulting. This is the world of Deloitte and Accenture. Right next to digital strategy, you have customer and brand experience, which is our territory. We’re the only creative agency in their global portfolio. A really big focus was their model and that we would be the only agency in their portfolio. They said our culture was important, and we didn’t hear that from anywhere else.
Ad agencies are dying.
How many headlines do you see that say ad agency businesses are dying or are dead? We’re living what you’re seeing. It’s legit. [We wanted] to find a strategic partner who will future-proof us, retain our culture and we can help each other in a symbiotic relationship. As we evolve within the Infosys model, we talk to their digital strategists and their vertical leaders. The conversations are different, but the training and democracy is a writer’s room for comedy.
In bid to become an always-on advertiser, Shell turns to dynamic creative tech
Shell has been testing a way to automate the creation of online ads. Do this well, went the thinking, and it gets a lot easier (and affordable) for Shell’s ads to run consistently throughout the year.
‘Frozen slices of Americana’: Pabst Blue Ribbon goes experiential with branded motel rooms
With this experiential effort, PBR is looking to tap into what people think of when they think of the brand -- that it's "classic, traditional, Americana."
Why DTC brand Sugarwish is dialing down its social media advertising strategy
As social media advertising becomes increasingly expensive and harder to track, personalized gift company Sugarwish is rethinking its social strategy and reducing efforts there.
SponsoredHow brands are activating Gen Z and millennial TikTok audiences
Roland Hamilton, senior vice president of global licensing, Trusted Media Brands Although TikTok is widely considered a Gen Z platform, the video-sharing app also boasts a high number of millennial users. With more than 100 million active users in the U.S. alone, 32% of TikTok’s global audience is between the ages of 25–34. This large […]
Gaming and esports influencers and executives dish on their most dreaded video game bosses
As shown by the success of Elden Ring this year, challenging, narrative-based titles are still the ideal for many core gamers. Digiday reached out to 15 prominent executives and influencers in the gaming and esports industry to ask about their most dreaded video game boss — and why.
The demand for cookieless targeting is fueling ‘SPO 2.0’
Havas Media Group and PubMatic ink partnership, as buyers eye reduced ad tech taxes.


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Social Media in the Business World in 2011
As the year comes to a close and business owners around the country consider options for their 2011 Web Marketing budgets, focus turns to the Social Media trends for the year to come.
With increases in commerce at the base of the goals for most companies, trends within the Social Media Marketing, SMM, landscape are recognizing the need to not only utilize SMM as a brand building tool for businesses, but how to turn that brand building into ROI and real dollars.
Growth in Social Commerce
Keeping this focus on the bottom line within a Social Media Marketing plan means that other than just monitoring traffic, brand awareness and the overall conversation, social shopping sites and functions within Social Media platforms like Facebook Connect are growing in use and availability. According Facebook, Facebook Connect allows that when you connect with a website, it can access information you’ve added through Facebook to allow you to interact with your friends in new and interesting ways.
The interaction of websites and Facebook opens web shopping to a whole other plain of opportunity. Using the interactive tools from Facebook, business owners now have the ability to interact with their site visitors to have a direct effect on conversion rates and sales.
An increase in the social shopping trend is a natural catalyst for new options in retail advertising and ads on Social Media sites. Keep an eye out for creative and innovative options when you log on to chat with your friends next year. Ads will help to drive local commerce with offers for “friends” and followers when they go to the actual retail location.
“Location is a key factor in the future of search, social, commerce, and media, among a lot of other things,” Federated Media founder John Battelle has said. “Local is the most important signal to emerge in the database of intentions since the link.”
Larger Market for Goods and Currency in the Virtual World
Growing from the increasingly popular social gaming world, virtual goods and currency have launched a new and financially explosive market for site users interested in stocking their gaming pantry. According to reports by The Inside Network, expected revenues from the virtual goods market is expected to grow half a billion dollars from $1.6 billion in 2010 to $2.1 billion in 2011. With this potential market increase, the market for engagement ads for virtual gaming is expected to follow suit.
Virtual goods and services have also found a home in retail stores like Target, Wal Mart and Best Buy. They all carry Facebook credit cards that can be used to purchase any Facebook based goods and services.
Social Media Usage and Availability Continues to Increase
As Social Media becomes omnipresent across all digital channels and programs, large brand partnership and increases in SMM budgets will continue this trend. With this potential, the need for keyword oriented posts and page content as well as engaging other users with likes and comments gives anyone regularly involved with Social Media an advantage in the search potential.
In other words, the quality of your “conversation” has become even more important.
2011 is going to be a year where Social Media continues to alter the web marketing realm. To take advantage of these powerful tools for your business, talk to a web marketing partner like Paradigm Productions about the potential that Social Media Marketing offers your business.


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MIDiA is a company that spends an awful lot of time monitoring and analyzing the state of the music industry in the digital era. It has just released its Streaming Services Market Shares Report, which, among other things, explains how the streaming marketplace is divided up amongst the players.
While the whole report can be found here, let’s start this interesting chart showing global market for streaming subscriptions.
As you can see, Spotify is the clear world leader followed by Apple, which has Amazon breathing down its neck. Never heard of MelON? Me, neither, so I had to look it up. It’s a South Korean streaming music service. QQ Music is a gigantic Chinese company owned by Tencent and has at least 800 million users. And that’s not the Napster of old; it’s the rebranded Rhapsody.
Here are some random stats from the study:
- At the end of 2016 there were 132.6 million music subscribers, up from 76.8 million in 2015
- In Q4 2016 Spotify’s subscriber market share was 35% and it had $2,766 million in retail revenue
- Apple Music was second with 21 million subscribers at the end of 2016, a 15.6% market share and it had $912 million in retail revenue
- In 2016 Apple was the largest driver of digital music revenue across Apple Music and iTunes
- The US is the largest music subscription market, which Spotify leads with 38% subscriber market share
- The UK is Europe’s largest streaming market, which Spotify also leads
It’s fascinating stuff. Go here to learn more.


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Nanomaterials are used to good effect in a number of cosmetics and sunscreens, and although various studies have questioned their safety, they have always been deemed safe for use.
The Danish NGOs have set up their new database in order to provide further information on nanomaterials and document any potential harmful effects of using nanotechnology.
This way consumers can search the database to see if a certain product contains nanomaterials or is marketed as 'nano'. This way the consumers can choose if they want the nanomaterials or not.
"We are concerned that the flawed legislation means that too many nanomaterials are introduced to the market, before we know the full effects on humans and the environment", says Lone Mikkelsen, chemical expert from the Danish Ecological Council.
Producers of products containing nanomaterials have no obligation to declare their products, which DCC and DEC say is a big problem.
"Most consumers have no idea if there are nanomaterials or not in the goods they're buying. And they have no way of finding out, so that they can avoid the products if they are worried about the potentially harmful effects" says Claus Jørgensen, Senior Advisor at the Danish Consumer Council.
It is the view of the DCC that because of the lack of obligatory labelling, consumers cannot make an informed choice, and can lead to uncertainty; damaging the reputation of nanotechnology.
This has seen further calls for a mandatory nano-label to be introduced. From the summer of 2013 all cosmetic products containing nanomaterials have to be labelled, increasing transparency for consumers.
"Until we know for sure that the use of nanotechnology is safe and the legislation is in place, we need a label that can help consumers make informed choices", says Mikkelsen.
The two organizations hope that the English version of the database will help consumers in other countries. The hope is that consumers will report products that contain 'nano' or claim to be a nano product to the database.


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Israel Digital TV News
Hot submits offer for 100% of Partner Communications.
Jan 29, 2020 – Responding to market speculation, Altice Europe (Euronext: ATC & ATCB) has confirmed that its subsidiary Hot Telecommunication Systems Ltd has submitted an offer for 100% of the share capital of Partner Communications.
News categories: Altice, Partner Communications, Digital TV, IPTV, Israel, MnA
Kantar to continue delivering TV trading currency in Israel
Dec 11, 2019 – The Israel Audience Research Board (IARB) have appointed Kantar to operate Israel’s TV trading currency for the next seven years, with the option of an extension until 2030. The existing TV audience measurement service will also be expanded.
News categories: Kantar, Israel Audience Research Board, Eitan Kassif, Rony Aran, Advertising, Big Data, Digital TV, Israel
Partner Communications selects Broadpeak for server-side ad insertion
Nov 13, 2019 – Broadpeak has announced that Partner Communications (NASDAQ and TASE: PTNR) will deploy its server-side ad insertion (SSAI) solution. With other Broadpeak technologies already deployed, Partner Communications will be able to deliver personalized ads within VOD content.
News categories: Broadpeak, Partner Communications, iFeelSmart, Jacques Le Mancq, Ronen Gutmanovitz, Advertising, Big Data, Digital TV, IPTV, Israel, UX
SFR STBs first in France to integrate Amazon Prime Video
Aug 27, 2019 – Altice Europe is to make Amazon Prime Video available to its SFR customers in France. SFR will be the first of Altice operations and the first operator in France to announce the Prime Video app within its LaBox SFR Fibre, SFR Box Plus and SFR Box 8 set-top boxes.
News categories: Altice, Prime Video, Alain Weill, Jay Marine, Apps, Digital TV, Dominican Republic, France, IPTV, Israel, OTT, Portugal, Set Top Box
Nielsen launches global measurement for YouTube mobile app
Jun 3, 2019 – Nielsen has announced that it has expanded advertising measurement on YouTube’s mobile app to 26 additional markets. Now available in 34 markets, the service provides cross-device measurement of advertising audiences across computer and mobile devices.
News categories: Nielsen, Amanda Tarpey, Advertising, Belgium, Big Data, Brazil, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, OTT, Philippines, Poland, Puerto Rico, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, UAE
Cellcom Israel signs Netflix distribution agreement
May 12, 2019 – Cellcom Israel (NYSE: CEL) (TASE: CEL) has announced an agreement with Netflix for the distribution of Netflix's services in Israel, including through direct access to the Netflix services from the Cellcom tv platform.
News categories: Cellcom, Digital TV, Israel, OTT
Skyworth and SURE Universal collaborate on IoT and voice assistance
Mar 26, 2019 – Skyworth Digital and SURE Universal have announced an R&D collaboration working to develop IoT and voice assistant capabilities. Once a proof of concept has been completed, the technologies will be applied to Skyworth's set-top box products.
News categories: Skyworth, SURE Universal, Steve Long, Dr. Viktor Ariel, China, Digital TV, Israel, Set Top Box, Smart Home, Worldwide
Applicaster secures $20M growth funding
Mar 26, 2019 – Applicaster has announced a $20M growth round of funding. The funding round, led by Viola Growth and backed by further investment from 83 North, Pitango, Saban Ventures, and Planven Investments, will be used to expand the company’s global presence and product set.
News categories: Applicaster, Jonathan Laor, Eran Westman, Apps, Digital TV, Israel, Venture Capital, Worldwide
Bezeq plans migration of 'yes' from satellite to OTT
Mar 14, 2019 – Bezeq (TASE: BEZQ) has announced that it plans to migrate its 'yes' service from satellite transmission to broadcasting over the Internet (OTT) in a gradual process that is expected to be spread over several years.
News categories: Bezeq, Content Distribution, Digital TV, Israel, OTT, Satellite
- Asia Pacific set for 417 million SVOD subscribers
- Comscore sees notable rise in U.S. streaming usage
- Movies Anywhere app comes to LG Smart TVs
- Singtel puts HOOQ into liquidation
- COVID-19 pandemic to reduce global TV brand shipments by 5.8% in 2020
- Six million viewers for Italy's tivùsat
- Wicket Labs adds $1.9m of extra funding
- NENT Group to launch Viaplay in Iceland on April 1st
- TV antenna usage in US broadband households up 25% in 2019
- Coronavirus expected to add 5% to global VOD subscriptions in 2020
- COVID-19 response to bolster cloud gaming revenues
- iQIYI to launch service experience Testing Stations across Asia
- Switch Media's server-side ad insertion integrated with SpringServe's ad platform
- Verimatrix VCAS pre-integrated with Broadcom's Android TV platform
- Sinclair Broadcast adopts Qligent Vision Compliance Monitoring and Analysis
- Comscore reports surge in U.S. in-home data usage
- Limelight adds serverless computing to its edge services platform
- Disney+ rolls out in Europe
- TV panel shipments decreased 3.5% M-o-M in February
- Connected TV landscape is shifting away from paid subscriptions


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Rakuten's online retailer Play.com has lined up a few tech products and gaming gadgets as part of its Mega Monday money off promotion today, but the most interesting of those by far is the inclusion of the iPad Air with 17 per cent discount.
The 16GB Wi-Fi-only model in Space Grey is being offered at £329 in the UK for today only. That's a saving of £70 over the Apple.com price for the same model.
It is being sold through Play by SpencerMann, an "established Play merchant" and delivery is listed as being dispatched within 24 hours. You will also get 329 Play SuperPoints to offset against future purchases on the site. Each SuperPoint is equivalent to 1p off, so that's £3.29.
READ: Apple iPad Air review
Also included in the Mega Monday deals is the Sony PS Vita with Tearaway, Little Big Planet and a 16GB memory card for £139.99 (also 17 per cent off). That would make a perfect accompaniment to that PS4 that will arrive in a couple of weeks' time.


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Lyon Group vows bigger battery plan than Elon Musk’s Tesla deal in SA
Tesla founder Elon Musk’s plan for a giant battery for South Australia is billed as the world’s biggest – but if Lyon Group’s David Green has his way Tesla’s system won’t even be the biggest in SA.
The parallel battery plans could turn the state’s energy crisis into a strength by setting South Australia up as the global grid battery hub with three of the world’s most powerful grid storage systems within its borders or nearby.
- 5 ways to shore up the grid without new coal power
- Lyon Group vows bigger battery plan than Elon Musk’s Tesla deal in SA
- Lyon launches world-first utility scale battery storage market services tender
- First formal community information sessions for $1 billion Riverland Solar Storage
- Lyon Group building $1 billion Riverland Solar and Battery Storage this year


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Did you know Lindsay doesn't like to talk about politics? She says, "If you say you're a Democrat, that'll turn off Republicans and that's half your fan base." Did she REALLY say that?
LOS ANGELES, CA - FEBRUARY 23: Actress Lindsay Lohan, escorted by Los Angeles County Sherriff deputies, leaves the Airport Courthouse after a preliminary hearing on February 23, 2011 in Los Angeles, California. Lohan was given two weeks to consider a plea deal and is scheduled to appear in court March 10. Lohan was charged with a felony count of grand theft for allegedly stealing a $2,500 necklace from a jewelry store in Venice, California. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)


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Saw pair of combines sold at auction this week…a fairly rare Make/Model.
Do tend to see many more sold at auction up north of the border in Canada. Today (March 26, 2020) a 2014 model Versatile RT490 showing 289 sep. hours sold with a MacDon 14’ header for $58,399 (U.S). Here’s a picture of it:
Last Saturday (March 21, 2020) on an online auction in Clinton, IL by Martin Auction Service a 2014 model RT490 with 350 sep. hours (no heads) sold for $42,750. Here’s a pic:
Here’s look at (14) Versatile RT490 Combines sold at auction over the past 17 months. Note how many were sold by our friends at Ritchie Bros.
RECENT AUCTION PRICES ON VERSATILE RT490 COMBINES
- Data by www.MachineryPete.com
The highest sale price of the bunch…the 2015 model RT490 with only 51 engine hours sold on a November 6, 2018 consignment auction in Regina, SK, with a MacDon 15’ header, for $103,019 (U.S)…$135,000 CAD. Here’s a picture of it:


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“As a company with technology that powers linear TV ad versioning, Visible World complements [Comcast’s] FreeWheel division, which powers digital video advertising for large companies,” said Morgan. “There is no question that all of the major TV players – from network groups to distribution platforms like Comcast – will gain competitive advantage over time by having their own complete TV/digital video ad technologies.”
Since acquiring video ad server FreeWheel in March 2014, Comcast has built a platform services group to manage advanced advertising initiatives for its own portfolio (NBCUniversal on the national side, Comcast SpotLight for local) as well as technologies for the greater ecosystem.
Comcast’s advanced ad development may be broken down into four parts: linear TV, linear-addressable TV (which provides data-enabled targeting at the household level), set-top box/video on demand and digital, which includes TV Everywhere apps, mobile and browser-based advertising.
Comcast is evaluating ways it can augment insights from set-top box data to power advertising in video on demand and, in turn, improve sequencing of messages across online video, mobile and TV Everywhere apps.
That strategy continues to be a point of contention for Comcast, which has ignited regulatory concerns whether its set-top box data creates an unfair advantage for its networks’ cross-platform sales efforts.
Programmers expressed similar complaints, claiming Comcast asks for digital content licensing rights alongside linear negotiations at equal or higher rates than other video distributors. Comcast’s $45 billion merger with Time Warner Cable crumbled in April, citing regulatory disapproval.
Visible World founder and CEO Seth Haberman noted in a blog post that Visible World would remain an independent entity, similar to Comcast’s acquisition of FreeWheel, upon the transaction’s closure.


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ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. (KMOV.com) -- A local business owner says he is locked out after a dispute with his landlord, leaving customers stuck in the middle.
Casey Ray's STL Dog Trainers is a locally-owned dog training company. Most recently, training staff worked out of two locations in Cottleville and Wildwood. It's the Wildwood location at 16528 Manchester Road that recently became the center of a contention.
After finding the doors to his Wildwood location barricaded by a board and locked, Ray is scrambling to get in touch with his clients.
"Hang tight and we're going to make everything right," he said, speaking with News 4 from his Cottleville location.
Getting in contact with his clients is difficult these days considering their contact information is locked inside the property he's been sub-leasing from the owners of Puppingham Palace, next door.
"We just went through payroll and I had to get temporary checks from the bank because our checkbook is in there. All of our books, all of our computers, all of our files, all of our trade secrets, all of our training equipment," said Ray, listing other items he can't access while locked out.
Ray says business started to slow after at least four other businesses, including Big Bear Grill and Panera, moved out of the shopping complex his facility is in.
"If we do our job right, we don’t have recurring clients. We are always looking for new clients. It makes it hard in a place that’s becoming a ghost town to keep doing what we do," said Ray.
Ray says he tried to be proactive by approaching the owners about their lease agreement when he noticed the dwindling foot-traffic. He admits he eventually fell behind on rent payments.
"I said, 'What can we do? Obviously something needs to change here. We're not going to be able to continue on like this. Can we reconstruct the lease? Can we try to get out of the lease early?'' said Ray.
Ray says e-mails between their attorneys shows they were working toward a resolution. But days later, they found their dock locked.
News 4 reached out to the landlord at Puppingham Palace but they declined an interview. The attorney for Casey Ray's said after News 4 reached out to Puppingham Palace, the landlord's attorney contacted them about making arrangements for Ray to get into the Wildwood store and retrieve their belongings.
In the meantime, Casey Ray's is working out its Cottleville location and a temporary location in Ellisville for the weekly group classes.


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Call us now +1 617-804-5550
76.5 million people have ever tried a smart speaker. There are 61.5 million active users of smart speakers.
Amazon continues to maintain a smart speaker market share lead with 61.9% share. Google has settled in at 24% market share while Apple’s share continues to fall and now sits at 2.1%.


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Web 3.0 Community, Friends of the Metaverse, Launches Private Community Collective & Inaugural Collection of 1,000 NFTs
This Project is the First to Celebrate the Next Generation of Tech Leaders & Entrepreneurs Within the Digital Universe
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA, June 18, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ — Friends of the Metaverse, a community network for the most powerful senior executives from Fortune 500 companies to successful startups, announced today the launch of its exclusive and first-of-its-kind digital collective designed to advance innovation, foster collaboration, make a global impact and safeguard Metaverse worlds. Coinciding with the launch will be the debut of the inaugural collection of 1,000 Friends of the Metaverse Founding Member NFTs.
On a mission to inspire and empower the next generation of tech leaders from diverse backgrounds, industries, and organizations, Friends of the Metaverse brings together talented entrepreneurs, innovative startups, industry professionals, and technology leaders dedicated to advancing the boundaries of technology. The project is intensely focused on innovation and moving forward the future of Web 3.0 by working together, collaborating, networking, and learning from other brilliant minds in the digital world.
As the Friends of the Metaverse collective continues to expand around the world, new experiences will be created that will only be available to members. While the universe expands, the brand will continue to grow as collectors can expect exclusive access to the latest products and events through ownership. Dedicated to supporting the innovation ecosystem, the platform offers two initiatives that are open to all, including co-founder matching in addition to startup/investors matching.
Bringing this entire vision to life, the newly launched Founding Members NFT collection will be used to spark innovation, inspiration, and motivation for the entire collective. The digital art features 41 icons that reflect the passion, grit, and determinization of the entrepreneurial spirit. From diversity, integrity, and determination to teamwork, character, and perseverance, this NFT depicts what it means to be a tech leader.
“With Friends of the Metaverse, our goal is to open the gates to a community of individuals who all share a commitment to shaping and strengthening the social good of the Metaverse by offering their expertise to further advance a positive global culture of technology,” said Friends of the Metaverse Founder Lisa Lum. “In the heart of innovation, the Friends of the Metaverse gather where refreshing blueprints and technology intersect, in good faith and good company. Beyond beige round tables and traditional conference rooms, imagine nurturing seed start-ups in the company of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa Lake, brainstorming the future of product development as you peer through the views of the Eiffel Tower, and shake hands with a warm community of top-performing tech leaders, think tanks, and trailblazers in Web 3.0. With Friends of the Metaverse, all entrepreneurial dreams are possible.”
For more information, visit https://www.friendsofthemetaverse.com.
About Friends of the Metaverse
Founded by Lisa M. Lum, Friends of the Metaverse is an NFT community-based project with a mission to inspire the next generation of tech leaders. Friends of the Metaverse is the first project to celebrate the next generation of technology leaders and entrepreneurs within the digital universe. More details will be revealed in the coming months.
Follow on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Medium
Join their private Discord channel at https://discord.com/invite/UdrcxrmKFe.
View their Collection at Opensea
Friends of the Metaverse
Visit us on social media:


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RMG Ghana has donated items and cash worth GHc65,000 to the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), towards this year’s 37th Farmers’ Day celebration dubbed “Planting for Food and Jobs – Consolidating Food Systems in Ghana”.
RMG Ghana is committed to the Agriculture industry and has supported the Ministry of Food and Agriculture in most of its projects to ensure the sector succeeds.
As part of its contribution to the upcoming 37th National Farmers’ Day, RMG Ghana has donated inputs, crop protection products, seeds, spraying machines to the tune of GHc50,000 and a cash donation of GHc15,000 to support the Ministry appreciate and motivate the hardworking farmers.
The donation was done by a team led by the Group CEO; Yvan Dorier.
Presenting the cheque, the CEO mentioned that RMG Ghana’s support is to contribute to making Ghana a food-sufficient nation.
He said, “we believe the most appropriate way to ensure food security for a growing population like Ghana and to ensure wealth creation for farmers is to improve their productivity, through making available to them, the most advanced technology for irrigation, quality crop protection products, fertilizer and seeds for agriculture production”.
The Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture, Yaw Frimpong Addo who received the items and cheque expressed gratitude to the company for the unwavering support over the years in enhancing the agricultural sector.


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SHCC News You Need Weekend EXTRA!
Late-Breaking news on a late-breaking Event!
The 10th Annual Sweet Salvage Harvest Fair has changed venues to Shadow Hills Country Club! It will be staged next Friday and Saturday on the orchard side of the club. It will feature over 80 vendors and 4 food trucks, offering all sorts of fun crafts, clothing, decorations and more!
This is a ticketed event, but Shadow Hills Members can get FREE TICKETS at the front office or the pro shop.
More information for Day of the Dead Gala- Special Cash and Carry $10&$20 Jewelry Table added!