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A national health and wellness brand is expanding in Northern Virginia and has announced its first Loudoun County location.
Health & Fitness
A new fitness center is moving into a vacant bank building in Ashburn’s Belmont Greene neighborhood.
A new fitness studio is headed to Ashburn, one that features boxing as the centerpiece of its exercise regimens.
A fast-growing boxing and fitness studio brand has announced they are bringing a new location to Ashburn.
A new medical facility is a little outside of our usual coverage zone, but when said facility takes over a large building in a...
Loudoun fans of the Korean spa experience known as “jimjibang” are going to have to wait a little longer for a local spa to call...
Everyone has probably seen those ninja obstacle course competitions on television.
The Burn doesn’t normally cover medical practice news, but sometimes something unique comes along that piques our interest.
A new training studio held its grand opening in Ashburn on Friday and it’s bringing something called Electro Muscle Stimulation to the community.


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With equipment specs, pictures and video all available online, why should an in-plant manager bother going to Graph Expo any more? Those who made the trip to Chicago last month have lots of good reasons.
An agreement has been made between Muller Martini and MBO America to work in tandem to engineer multiple capability configurations for the Muller Martini's Presto II Digital saddle stitcher. MBO America will be the primary supplier for roll-fed and digital sheet-fed infeeds to the Presto II Digital.
Touting what he called “the new MBO America,” Lance Martin, director of sales, told a group of industry journalists last month that the company wants to shed its image as a manufacturer of folding machines and focus on its range of products and services. These include web finishing, packaging, mailing and pharmaceutical folding systems, as well as an analysis service in which MBO technical experts will analyze customers’ folding processes and recommend improvements.
Touting what he called "the new MBO America," Lance Martin, director of sales, told a group of industry journalists Wednesday that the company is looking to shed its image as simply a manufacturer of folding machines and focus on its range of products and services.
These products for the in-plant market will be on display at Graph Expo.
Starting Monday, MBO America will celebrate its 30th anniversary with a four-day open house in the Philadelphia area. The company's top executives and engineers—including Chairman Frank Eckert and Frank Bahmer, director of International Sales and president/CEO of MBO America—will be on hand to personally share recent development strategies.
Commercial printing industry supplier company and personnel news from Printing Impressions’ February 2013 edition, featuring Xerox Corp., Appleton Coated, Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., DocuSource, C&W Pressroom Products, Central Ink, Xingraphics, MBO America, Roland DGA, Navitor Inc., Glunz & Jensen, NELA Ternes Register Group, Duplo USA, Eltosch America, DeVries, manroland sheetfed, Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), xpedx, Printing Research Inc., Presstek Inc., Graphic Innovators and Pitney Bowes.

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The way Mr. Avenatti approached Nike reflected seemingly little research, according to people who closely follow the company. Nike has ridden out scandal before, including in the Justice Department’s prosecution of international soccer officials for bribery and corruption in the FIFA case, in which Nike was implicated but not charged.
It is unclear if Mr. Avenatti possessed evidence directly tying Nike to any payments, and prosecutors and Nike both declined to comment.
“Avenatti was an idiot to think that he was going to make a company like Nike buckle,” said John Horan, the longtime publisher of Sporting Goods Intelligence, an industry newsletter.
Mr. Avenatti insisted that he simply wanted to clean up what he called corruption within Nike and conduct an internal inquiry to ensure things improved. “This was a complete hit job by Nike. It was designed to do damage to me and inoculate themselves,” he said by phone from California.


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Submitted by WA Contents
Design Week Lagos 2022 holds across the city of Lagos from October 20 - 23
Nigeria Architecture News - Oct 14, 2022 - 13:24 822 views
Design Week Lagos (DWL), Africa’s leading design event, will take place in various venues across Lagos from October 20th to 23rd, 2022 with the theme "Beyond the Box".
DWL, the most notable design week on the African continent, was conceived to champion and elevate leading forces in Contemporary African Design whilst bringing together a community of local and international artists. The festival, founded in 2019 by African design advocate Titi Ogufere and Essential Media Group, is committed to building a culture of innovation in Nigeria and highlighting the fast-growing industry as an international hub for design.
The exhibition has set “Beyond the Box” as the overarching theme for the 2022 edition. The theme sees DWL calling African Designers to use local raw materials, knowledge of African culture, and the latest technology to make authentic modern & contemporary African products.
This theme presents an opportunity to creatively experiment and explore a range of ideas from creative product designs to new pathways in manufacturing methods. All these facilitate the growing community of contemporary designers to tap into a rich history of craftsmanship and unique material knowledge across the continent.
This year’s showcase will see a line-up of the largest ensemble of exhibitors with a new location in a space that doubles previous editions. Some prominent exhibitors include Charles O Job, Jumoke Adenowo, Eva Sonaike, Jade Folawiyo, Olubunmi Adeyemi, Victor Ekpuk, Tejumola Butler Adenuga, Nifemi Bello, Tosin Oshinowo, Seun Oduwole, Pierre Christophe Gam, Tola Akerele and Osaru Alile.
“DWL 2022 is coming out with heightened bragado about the mission to create a recognizable design culture for African design, one that promotes collaboration and fosters strong economic growth," said Titi Ogufere, Founder, Design Week Lagos.
Design Week Lagos will feature multiple highlights events, contests, and speeches by professionals in several connected sectors.
DWL 2022 Prize
Each year, the DWL Competition takes place. Exhibitors in the 2022 edition are tasked with designing creative and innovative booths in the showcase whilst keeping with the overarching theme “Beyond the Box”. With that comes a lot of focus on originality and risk-taking in design. The goal is to engage individuals and generate interest as well as challenge designers’ understanding of the theme. The best booth will be awarded the awards plaque for the best of show 2022.
Design Kulture is an annual showcase sourcing furniture and design objects in Africa and is curated by Jade Folawuyo.The production is a meeting point for the design and manufacturing industry and a bridge between manufacturers and design practitioners within the region and international buyers, design enthusiasts, and collaborators. This year manufacturers will be showcasing their new collections, and designers will be showcasing new products to the market.
DWL has a unique line up of phenomenal Talks and master class presentations by experts in various related sectors. The DesignTalks programme will be led by Ini Archibong, who will be sitting in conversation with DWL founder, Titi Ogufere and putting up a practical workshop. Other speakers include Dimmah Umeh, Arjun Savalani, Somto Ajuluwchukwu, Malik Afegbua, Pierre-Christophe Gam, Oduwole Seun, Bumni Adeyemi, Francoise Akinosho, Tosin Oshinowo and Moe Dbouk.
The events scheduled for Design Week Lagos 2022 highlight the importance of different design disciplines, seek to raise a platform for designers, showcase exhibitors and their impact on the economic, social, cultural, and development of the design industry.
For more information, visit Design Week Lagos and learn about upcoming events and their dates.
Top image courtesy of Design Week Lagos.
> via Design Week Lagos


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Google Fiber and Why Monopolies SuckSamara Trilling / Oct 12, 2021
Antitrust is having a moment in the United States. Concerns over competition, consolidation and monopoly are making the docket in House and Senate committees, and a slate of new appointments by the Biden administration-- including Lina Khan to chair the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Jonathan Kanter to lead the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, and Tim Wu to the National Economic Council-- promise to address these issues. Tech companies are nervous, and rightly so: for example, Google is still battling an ongoing antitrust lawsuit from 2020 for its power over search, and in September, the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division announced a new lawsuit concerning Google’s dominance in online ads.
Antitrust is often framed as a macroeconomic issue, but the consequences of monopoly are often incredibly personal. I got first-hand experience of how monopoly power warps corporate behavior when I joined Google Fiber, an internet provider, as a software engineer in 2015. I chose Fiber above other teams at Google because I had bright-eyed notions of helping to expand internet access in “digitally divided” communities: often majority-Black and Brown communities where broadband internet access is unavailable or too expensive. By the time I’d left the team, though, Google Fiber - along with its supposedly altruistic ambitions - had been significantly downsized and defunded.
The whole experience taught me that a company often has to be a monopoly in one sector to compete with other monopolies in another. Here, Google's monopoly in search made it able to compete against the big internet service providers. But market power is just a prerequisite to compete - it doesn’t guarantee a win in that new sector. If a company enjoys monopoly profits, it is often insulated from real market forces, which convinces it that it can succeed in new markets it doesn’t fully understand.
When Google Fiber hit roadblocks - local ordinances, disinterested founders, entrenched competitors - Google’s steady ad business allowed it to balk and downsize the Fiber program without endangering the company’s main profit engine. This quick investment-disinvestment cycle can become a hallmark of financialized monopolies, with companies leaving lost jobs and broken promises in their path before moving onto the next new “disruptable” market.
Barriers to entry
In 2015, Google Fiber considered itself an underdog. A few other companies--such as Comcast, Verizon, and Charter-- had largely cornered the home internet market in the U.S., leaving most consumers with only one high speed internet provider option. The high-speed internet market had several conditions that helped support its existing monopolies.
First, the cheapest way to deploy fiber-optic cable is by stringing it up between telephone poles. In many cities, local ordinances grant each utility company 90 days or longer to move their wires to accommodate a new company’s aerial fiber optic cable, creating a high barrier to entry. Google often wanted the uppermost spot on a utility pole, which is considered the best for several operational reasons, and so faced huge delays. While less well-resourced companies just have to wait, Google responded by deploying lobbyists to local governments in favor of One Touch Make Ready laws. These laws would allow Google, or any new purchaser of a spot on the pole, to move all the other wires at once. This is actually not a bad idea, policywise, but Google could never have afforded this lobbying without steady profits coming in from its dominant position in search and ads. It was a large up-front cost that would take many years to recoup, and a smaller or less well-capitalized company could not have managed it.
Second, in 2015, 76% of Americans still watched TV via cable rather than via streaming services like Netflix or Hulu, so Fiber needed to offer cable as an option. (That number has since dropped to 56% this year, according to Pew Research.) Content costs raise a high barrier to entry. Each network, like HBO or Showtime, owns exclusive rights to its own content and so can force carriers to pay a price they name to carry sports and must-see shows. Internally, this was often talked about as one of Fiber’s largest fixed and immovable costs. A smaller company would likely not have been able to afford it.
Burning capital to compete on price
In this environment, even with the high prices they were paying for aerial fiber and TV content, the only way Google could enter markets in major American cities was to charge below-cost prices to consumers. Once Google had a toehold in the market with a stable base of subscribers, it could start charging more to recoup its big expenses.
Ironically, getting competitors to lower their prices and provide faster service was initially the whole point of the Fiber experiment. The faster and cheaper the internet service, the more time people spend online, seeing more ads and making Google more money. This gave the early Google Fiber team a scrappy, underdog vibe that I saw employees and customers respond well to. However, once that goal was achieved - Comcast, Verizon and AT&T did start offering high speed plans at cheaper prices - Google execs, foreseeing slowing growth in mobile ads, realized Fiber had potential as the next stable revenue stream. The new goal was “Make Fiber the #1 ISP in America” - a familiar vision of market dominance.
As anyone who has noticed Uber’s price increases from 2015 to 2021 can appreciate, charging low prices to gain market dominance (which can be a form of predatory pricing) and letting investors pick up the tab is an unsustainable business model in the long run. Sooner or later you have to start raising prices. And that only works if you’ve gained enough market power to shut out competitors, amassing a huge customer base you can now force to pay your higher prices because they have no alternative. Google Fiber was still in the expansion phase, so it needed vast infusions of capital-- akin to Uber’s blank check from Softbank-- to compete with the existing monopolies in the market - and it didn’t yet have that large customer base.
Sure enough, in mid 2016, my team got word to stop working on our projects, and soon after, Fiber dramatically scaled down operations, because it didn’t think it could be profitable with its existing business model. My colleagues and I were lucky - we all found new teams to work on at Google, but many other folks lost their jobs. Fiber still exists, but with much smaller aspirations and a smaller budget.
Internally, Fiber employees recognized that part of the reason Fiber’s funding got cut was that then-CEO of Google Larry Page had lost interest in the idea. Projects get killed on a whim rather often in large corporate environments, and at the biggest corporations that means laying off hundreds of people.
The only firm that could have done what Fiber did with any hope of success - trading on such vast resources to enter a monopolized market as an underdog - was one that already had a monopoly in another field, like search or online ads. Similar to how Amazon subsidizes its retail with profits from AWS, Google funnels money from its search ad monopoly to Fiber and its “Other Bets”, hoping one of them will gain the market power necessary to become successful. Not all of these bets succeed -- for example, Google Plus failed to challenge Facebook’s dominance in social media, revealing just how difficult it is to compete in consolidated industries even if you have the money.
Why Are Monopolies So Bad?
In general, monopolies decrease consumer choice, raise prices, and cut quality. Consolidation makes markets less resilient to shocks (like COVID) and can increase the risk of major disruptions to the supply chain, such as the current shortage of specialized plastic bags required to make vaccines. Driven by lax enforcement of merger and acquisition regulations since the 1980s, markets are becoming more concentrated in a growing number of areas - from pharmaceuticals, athletic shoes and books to airlines, semiconductors and rental cars - and internet services.
Monopolies both blind corporations to and insulate them from the risks of new ventures. Google can afford to spin up and then cancel projects frequently because it has so much extra cash from its search ad business. Google’s all-but-abandonment of Fiber didn’t hurt the company - Alphabet stock dipped briefly and rebounded a month later. On the other hand, repair technicians, fiber installers and construction workers saw their contracts cancelled or got laid off. Would-be customers were angry after being bombarded with promotional advertising about Fiber and then getting dropped. Fiber’s Community Impact team had promised free Fiber in digitally divided neighborhoods and training and jobs for new Fiber installers at the Fiber Academy in majority-Black Atlanta. The Fiber Academy is no longer mentioned on the website.
Finally, monopolies interfere with democracy. If we have huge corporations that can spend money to get certain regulations reversed and elect pro-monopoly politicians, we lose any meaningful way to rein in monopolies. This becomes a self perpetuating cycle, and we’re just now starting to see the massive effort required on legislative, judicial, executive and public opinion fronts to begin to break that cycle.
What to do
The good news is that the rich history of antitrust activism in the U.S. means there’s a playbook for how to rein in monopolies, and Congress and the FTC are beginning to dust it off. Newly-appointed FTC Chair Lina Khan is well-versed in that playbook, having written one of the latest chapters herself. Zephyr Teachout makes the compelling case that we have to both break up big corporations and regulate them. If we only break up monopolies with few other restrictions, they can re-form (this is known as the Starfish problem). Furthermore, we’d be missing the need to regulate harmful monopolistic behavior, not just size. On the other hand, if we only regulate these corporations, their huge size and power, combined with their current ability to donate unrestrictedly to political campaigns, are such that their lobbyists will get the regulations removed within a decade.
Congress is currently considering a package of five antitrust bills that together would address some of the most pressing problems with American consolidation and monopoly. They don’t make it easier for new wires to get added to telephone poles and they don’t cut TV show costs - they do something far more important, which is to start to limit the mechanisms (like mergers) that let corporations get big enough to squash their competitors in the first place. Tech companies are already lining up lobbyists to argue against them, which is how you can tell the bills are cutting to the heart of the problem.
Despite substantial insulation from competitive market pressures, monopolies like Google aren’t necessarily great places to work, either. Shortly after I joined the Fiber team, Apple and Google settled an anti-poaching class action lawsuit alleging the two companies had conspired not to hire each other’s employees, a behavior that was driving down workers’ wages. And this year, six years after I left the company, I got a settlement notice in the mail, saying I was entitled to $575 because Google had systematically underpaid female engineers by undisclosed amounts. I’m still waiting for my check.


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After unveiling the Iconia B1-A71 tablet at CES this year, Acer has announced a new iPad rival in the form of Iconia Tab A1-810 in European markets. The tablet is being sold at $259 in Europe, according to a French website named MiniMachines.net.
As per the website, Acer Iconia A1-810 features 7.9-inch IPS panel based display with 1024×768 pixel resolution. The company has included 1.2 GHz quad-core Mediatek MT8125 mobile processor, 1 GB RAM and 16 GB on-board storage in the tablet. There is Android v4.2 Jelly Bean OS provided in the tablet. It also has a 5 megapixel camera at the back, 0.3 megapixel camera in the front and microSD card slot for memory expansion up to immense 32GB.
For connectivity, the tablet comes with WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0 and GPS. Additionally it also features micro HDMI to connect the tablet to an HD display and micro USB port for charging. The tablet has been powered by a 3250 mAh battery.
There is no word regarding the launch of the tablet in other markets apart from Europe.


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Trimble announced today that it has reached a deal to aquire Google’s SketchUp, a world-renowned 3D modeling tool, in an effort to enhance its office-to-field platform. Terms of the financial agreement were not released.
Millions of users in a vast array of industries rely heavily on SketchUp to express their design concepts with relative ease and efficiently. The 3D modeling platform provides a variety of customers added benefit with its extensive third-party developer community that provides industry-specific solutions.
“In Trimble, we found a parnter that will grow SketchUp in a way that best supports the SketchUp team and our users.” said Google’s vice president of engineering Brian McClendon.
Trimble, a company that applies technology to drive production in the workplace, will also be further developing SketchUp’s 3D Warehouse, an online repository for almost two million users to find, share, store and collaborate on 3D models, by partnering with Google.
“SketchUp and the corresponding 3D Warehouse provide an important element of our long-term strategy by enhancing the integration of our field presence with the wider enterprise.” said Trimble vice president Bryn Fosburgh.
As a part of Trimble, SketchUp will continue to support all of its current users through its website https://www.sketchup.com/.
For more information, visit https://construction.trimble.com/.


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NEW YORK — Third-quarter profits at Alberto-Culver Co. slid by 17.8 percent to $25.1 million, or 25 cents a diluted share, from $30.5 million, or 33 cents a diluted share, in the year-ago period.
The dip in profits for the quarter ended June 30 was due in large part to the firm's discontinued operations — the year-ago quarter included earnings from Alberto-Culver's beauty supply distribution business, which was spun off in November into Sally Beauty Holdings Inc.
While earnings from discontinued operations fell to $930,000, or 1 cent a diluted share, from $10.1 million, or 11 cents a diluted share, earnings from continuing operations rose by 18.2 percent to $24.2 million, or 24 cents a diluted share, from $20.4 million, or 22 cents a diluted share.
Revenues increased by 9.2 percent to $385.5 million from $353.2 million in the third quarter last year, driven by the performance of Alberto-Culver's TRESemmé and Nexxus hair care brands.
"Overall, we're extremely pleased with our results," V. James Marino, Alberto-Culver's president and chief executive officer, said during a conference call with analysts on Monday. He noted, "TRESemmé sales exceeded $100 million for the second consecutive quarter, and TRESemmé is now the number-two styling brand in the U.S. and the number-five brand overall."
On the Nexxus front, it is "our aspiration to [expand] this brand outside the U.S. [and] we continue to look at [doing so]," said Marino. While he did not put a time frame on an international launch of Nexxus — "Nothing short-term," he said — Marino asserted: "We'll do it in the right way."
As sales of the TRESemmé and Nexxus brands increased, Alberto-Culver's St. Ives skin care brand "has struggled," Marino noted. "It has not been the most solid part of our portfolio," he added, citing a highly competitive environment that includes brands like Jergens and Nivea.
"There's a ton of options for this consumer. We haven't unlocked the marketing mix on this one [and] trying to break through it is a difficult thing — but we're not going to give up on it," said Marino. "I think we're going to turn the St. Ives thing around. We'll continue to increase our investment [behind it]."Alberto-Culver noted in a statement that advertising and other marketing expenditures grew by 5.5 percent during the quarter to $73.7 million, from $69.9 million in the same period a year ago.
Earnings for the first nine months of the fiscal year were down to $41.8 million, or 43 cents a diluted share, from $139.5 million, or $1.50 a diluted share, in the same period a year ago. The company reported a loss of $4.2 million, or 4 cents a diluted share, from discontinued operations for the nine-month period, versus earnings of $89.9 million, or 97 cents a diluted share, in the same nine-month period a year ago.
Advertising and marketing expenditures rose 1.8 percent to $207.1 million, from $203.4 million last year.
And, while the firm's "first priority" for its $330 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments is to pursue an acquisition strategy, executives did not cite specific buyout targets.
@chanel and @pharrell dropped what’s being dubbed as the world’s most exclusive sneakers yesterday. The Adidas Originals NMD Hu, which Williams designed in collaboration with Chanel and @adidasoriginals, has a waiting list of over 120K people who pre-registered online at chanelatcolette.fr –– and only 500 pairs are on sale. The singer predicted the resale value of the shoes could reach $40K. Read the full interview on WWD.com. Link in bio. #wwdfashion (📷: Dominique Maître)
@imanshumpert is diving deeper into his creative endeavors and relaunching his clothing line, Post 90s, and is helping to raise money for the hurricane victims in St. Maarten with a jersey he’s designed with his brother. The Cleveland Cavaliers player talked to WWD about kneeling during the national anthem, working with fashion brands and how he wants to be more than an @nba player. Read the interview on WWD.com #wwdfashion (📷: George Chinese)
Not only does #TheProfit return to CNBC tonight, but @marcuslemonis has launched @shopmarcus, a new shopping and lifestyle retail experience in Aspen and Chicago, with more locations to come. The retail stores offer in-store stylists and a variety of contemporary womenswear selections.
“It’s life, I’m going to face it,” @mingxi11 sighed. “I fell, but you know, I think the most important thing is that I get back up. I had the love, the help from my sister — the girl next to me Gizele [Oliveira] — she’s so nice. When I went backstage everybody was trying to comfort me like ‘Oh Ming, it’s OK.’ I’m really, really touched. I think it’s them who gave me the courage to go back on stage for the finale,” Xi told WWD of her fall at the @victoriassecret fashion show. (📷: David Fisher) #wwdfashion #vsfashionshow #victoriassecret
@louisvuitton tapped @therealpeterlindbergh for its latest city-centric photo book, which is part of a series called Fashion Eye. The primarily black and white book captures the spirit of Berlin in 57 images shot between 1989 and 2019. “Berlin is an inspiration for me, more than a city. I mean @millajovovich is simply Berlin!” said Lindbergh. #wwdfashion
“You know, I think audiences expect a certain performance so I have to deliver to them what they’re expecting to a certain degree. But I’m also a different actor and a different person, I have my own spin on the character,” says @noahegalvin of his takeover of the leading role in “Dear Evan Hansen” following the departure of @bensplatt, who originated the role. Read WWD’s interview with the 23-year-old actor on WWD.com #wwdeye (📷: @jilliansollazzo)
For pre-fall 2018, @etro created richly-colored wonderland, using tapestries, textiles and wallpapers from the Eastern world at large. The line featured floral and graphic prints and jacquard motifs, like this two-piece look featured here. #wwdfashion (📷: Giovanna Pavesi)
@kith is moving into children’s. The men’s and women’s streetwear brand has launched Kidset, a Kith kids line located in New York at 64 Bleecker Street. The line includes mini versions of staple Kith pieces like the Astor bomber jacket and the Kith box logo sweatshirts, along with a wall that can display up to 120 pairs of shoes from @adidas, @newbalance, @timberland and more. #wwdfashion
“I just wanted to create this fully rounded character, but I do think what excited me most was just the opportunity to give a group of people representation that I feel needs it. I like to do characters in projects that stand for something and Karolina definitely does, so that was really exciting to me,” @ginnygardner says of her new role in @hulu’s “The Runaways.” Gardner plays Karolina Dean, a queer superhero, which is a rarity for @marvel. Read more about Gardner’s character on WWD.com #wwdeye (📷: @dandoperalski)


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Apple accused over 'secure' iMessage encryption
Infosec wallah questions security of fruity chat service
A security researcher has suggested that Apple's claim that its iMessage app is spook-proof and secure does not stand up to scrutiny.
Cyril Cattiaux, who works at the research firm QuarksLab, made his claims during a speech to the Hack in the Box conference, which were quoted by PC World – the tech news site, rather than the British retailer.
In a detailed blog post, Cattiaux said that the public key cryptography used by Apple in its iMessages made them vulnerable to snooping.
He said: "The weakness is in the key infrastructure, as it is controlled by Apple. They can change a key any time they want, thus read the content of our iMessages."
However, there is no suggestion that Apple wilfully misled its customers and it has not been accused of actually reading fanbois' iMessages.
In June, Apple released the following statement which discussed the security of iMessage:
Conversations which take place over iMessage and FaceTime are protected by end-to-end encryption so no one but the sender and receiver can see or read them. Apple cannot decrypt that data.
Apple's iMessage is a text-messaging service which allows fanbois to send free messages over Wi-Fi. ®


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The view that women are being left out of the industry’s green rush – and not shaping the future of legal cannabis – is slowly changing
Botanically speaking, cannabis – the smokable form – is a female plant. The male cannabis plant doesn’t flower in a way that will get you high. It doesn’t produce any buds and it looks more like a rather pathetic imitation of cannabis.
If you want to grow cannabis, then, you need to “feminize your seeds,” which is to say, you pick out the male seeds and discard them. In the cannabis universe, you quite literally elevate the female.
The message is one that the industry at large could stand to think about, since less than five per cent of board positions of Canadian cannabis companies are filled by women.
But the view that women are being left out of the industry’s so-called green rush – and not shaping the future of legal cannabis – is slowly changing.
While women are underrepresented in the upper echelons of the cannabis industry, a different picture is starting to emerge.
From former grey market business owners to the CEO of a soon-to-be-public Licensed Producer (LP), women are increasingly finding their place in the growing cannabis market, as well as acting as strong advocates for a more equitable industry.
Historically, the cannabis community has always had close ties to social justice and advocacy, and as a result there are no shortage of women who have carved out a space for their voice.
“When we were an illegal movement, when this was civilly disobedient and there was so much risk, the movement was much more female-dominated,” says Hilary Black, now the director of patient education and advocacy with Canopy after making her name founding the British Columbia Compassion Club Society. “In my compassion club world, we dealt with very female-driven organizations. Friends used to call it the estrogen oligarchy.”
Kelly Coulter, founder of Slo Farms, a micro grower on Vancouver Island, says the industry has “a very rich culture of women, female medicine-makers… that will be part of the third wave of cannabis legalization.”
It was predictable that a shift to a more male-dominated industry would come as marijuana moved into the regulated, legal space. The privatization of the medical cannabis system, under the transition to the medical marijuana access regulations, was structured in such a way that participation was predicated, first and foremost, on capital.
As a consequence, the same barriers that have historically disadvantaged women in the boardroom were refashioned in the cannabis industry.
In the early days of the private cannabis industry in Canada, says Alison Gordon, the CEO of the Ontario-based LP 48 North, “it was really cowboy,” which meant that people with experience in “risk-taking, experience in the public markets, experience with raising money” were the ones willing and able to make the leap into cannabis.
Unsurprisingly that meant the industry recreated the same kind of gender disparities that exist in finance and law. “Women don’t always have the freedom to take those types of risks in their career,” says Gordon, who notes that when 48 North goes public in the next couple months, she will be the first female CEO of a public cannabis company in Canada.
But despite the fact the cannabis industry has imported a so-called “bro” culture, Myrna Gillis, CEO of Aqualitas, a Halifax-based LP, says the dearth of women on Bay Street, where many cannabis executives worked previously, is the problem, not the cannabis industry itself.
It’s still a problem though. There’s nobody denying that. In some respects, this has become an uncomfortable acknowledgement, even among the men who have benefitted from it. Yes, the system has statistically excluded women at the top level, but even many of the women involved in the industry I spoke with were reticent to say that this is a problem unique to the cannabis industry. It seems more accurate to say that the problem of a lack of women in leadership roles is an utterly normal one – that is, it exists in every other industry.
But why, then, hasn’t cannabis been a leader in gender equality? Cannabis has a long tradition, after all, of social conscience, and in an age when gender diversity in business is becoming openly talked about, why hasn’t that translated statistically?
Many men would welcome change. Black and other staff at Canopy openly acknowledge, for instance, that the lack of women on Canopy’s board of directors – there are none – is a major problem, but one that there is keen interest among executives in tackling.
Stephanie Ostrander, a recruiter with the cannabis industry recruiting firm Cannabis at Work, says that the bulk of men she works with at an executive level “are great guys who are executives at LPs and we hear them loud and clear,” she says.
Still, “It’s really tough when your pool of talent doesn’t include a lot of women,” she says. “I’m really happy when I’m hiring at the executive level and I see a great resumé from a diverse candidate.”
If any of this suggests that sexism doesn’t exist in the cannabis industry, think again.
“That is a thing that’s out there in the world,” says Black. But, she adds, “that’s not just about the cannabis industry, that’s about men just generally.”
And even though there are plenty of women “kicking ass and taking names,” as Black puts it, there are disconnects between that and tangible signs that women are becoming leaders in the same way men are.
“Women in the space are working so fucking hard, and they’re not always rewarded the same as their male counterparts,” says Lisa Campbell, former co-founder of Green Market and a NOW contributor.
But, as Ottawa-based lawyer Trina Fraser notes, a lot of the entrepreneurial activity in the industry that is seeing advances for women is in derivative products: edibles, beverages, topicals and so on.
None of these products are legal, necessarily, but they will soon become valuable for LPs, when the feds get around to regulating that side of the industry over the next year. That could open up opportunities for women, who are well represented in the underground cannabis product market.
As the feds figure out the regulatory regime and how exactly to work in the wide variety of cannabis-infused products that are out there, “We’ve got to really encourage and support female entrepreneurs,” Fraser says.
Most of the women I spoke with are optimistic about that. Gordon, for instance, says being a woman helps her because she stands out in meetings. Black also says she has felt supported and listened to when she speaks out about including the voices of more women.
“My direct manager is a woman,” says Black. Most of the people she works closely with are women as well.
That, it’s fair to say, should not be underestimated.
firstname.lastname@example.org | @nowtoronto


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YOUR MONEY: Save on generic Rx meds through Mark Cuban’s ‘Cost Plus Drugs’
BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - Americans spend around $365 billion a year for prescription drugs.
Now, billionaire investor and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban says he’s trying to help people save money with a new online pharmacy called CostPlusDrugs.com.
The company claims it can offer lower prices for more than 800 generic drugs.
There is new research that could back this claim.
Analysts from two Boston hospitals compared the prices of 89 prescription drugs.
They found that Medicare could save around $3.6 billion on 77 generic medicines if they purchased them through Cuban’s online pharmacy.
Researchers say this shows there can be cost savings to consumers if changes are made to the system.
In a recent interview on CBS Mornings, Mark Cuban said this company opened to address drug shortages and price gouging.
“We all know people who have had to make decisions between their rent and food and medication,” he said. “Or they’ve had to ration their medication and that’s just wrong in the United States of America in 2022. So the ‘why’ was really easy. And the how - I literally had a doctor, Dr. Alex Oshmyansky, who cold emailed me. He was building a pharmacy that was able to make rare drugs more cost effectively. I was like why limit it to rare drugs? Let’s build a company and rather than working within the traditional system let’s work outside of it and just have complete transparency and sell our drugs at a set mark up cost plus 15 percent. So that’s what we do.”
On Twitter, the reviews appear to be mixed. One user tweeted “...I just saved over a thousand dollars on a medication that I need to not have seizures and harm my brain.”
Another user tweeted to the company, ”My doc has sent my prescription over twice. I’ve called asking why it’s not there and was told it is and will be fixed. Still can’t order.”
The billionaire investor said the company is working to add and offer more brand medications.
The ultimate goal is to, “disrupt and turn the whole pharmaceutical industry upside down,” Cuban said during the CBS Mornings interview.
If you check CostPlusDrugs.com and see your medication is cheaper, let me know. Email me at firstname.lastname@example.org and let me know the name of the medicine, what you were paying before and how much you’re saving through Cost Plus Drugs.
Click here to report a typo.
Copyright 2022 WAFB. All rights reserved.


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Three popular Nintendo Wii titles receive price drops
The prices of three popular Nintendo Wii titles have been officially dropped to $29.99.
The first of these titles is the widely regarded Super Mario Galaxy 2. With an astounding score of 97 on Metacritic – which is also the same score as the first Super Mario Galaxy – the second Galaxy has sold 2.7 million copies in the United States alone.
New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Wii Sports Resort, the second and third games to receive the price drop, have collectively sold around 16.4 million copies – of which 9.4 million copies come from New Super Mario Bros. Wii.
Don’t forget the Wii U is backwards compatible with all Wii games.


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Dr. Reddy's Discloses Accusations of Improper Packaging
Indian generics maker Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories is under investigation for allegedly selling prescription drugs without sufficient child-resistant packaging, the company revealed.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission contends that Dr. Reddy’s violated the Consumer Product Safety Act and the Poison Prevention Packaging Act by selling products between 2008 and 2012 that didn’t meet packaging requirements intended to prevent misuse by children, the company said in an Aug. 19 SEC filing.
The commission notified Dr. Reddy’s of the allegation in an April 30 letter and the two parties have been in discussions since, the drugmaker added.
Dr. Reddy’s said it disagrees with the accusations, but that it can’t guarantee a positive outcome from planned civil penalties the commission intends to pursue. The Department of Justice has launched its own parallel investigation in the matter under the Federal False Claims Act, the company added.
Illustrate for your employees six of the most common mistakes that lead to ruined batches, recalls, or worse. Focus on GxPs: A DVD Training Toolkit for Your Most Common and Costly Manufacturing Mistakes.


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Apple (AAPL) is being accused of attempting to stifle employee efforts to unionize at its retail stores, and it could spell trouble for the company’s carefully curated public image.
According to The Washington Post, employees at at least two Apple Stores are filing paperwork to seek recognition by the National Labor Relations Board. But Apple is reportedly fighting back, with managers trying to paint the unionization effort as a negative for employees in the long run.
The move, however, could backfire for Apple and torch the goodwill it has built up over the years as a tech giant that cares about people. That image is part of the reason the company is so beloved by its billions of users.
“One of the questions about a union busting effort, which is apparently already starting, is whether it can tarnish Apple's brand,” says Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations associate professor Rebecca Kolins Givan. “Apple has a lot of rhetoric about caring about people, caring about employees, caring about things like racial justice, and [if] they're union busting, then their brand may be tarnished.”
Apple isn’t the only business facing renewed unionization efforts. Employees at companies ranging from Starbucks (SBUX) and Amazon (AMZN) to Nestle (NSRGY) and Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) are working to organize as a widespread labor shortage in the U.S. gives them more leverage.
Apple’s very success may also give its own workers more leverage to fight for better pay. Its market capitalization is $2.7 trillion. What’s more, the iPhone maker continues to set new quarterly revenue records. In Q1, for example, the company raked in $71.6 billion in iPhone revenue alone.
For their part, Apple store employees want better wages as inflation hampers their spending power. They make between $18 and $21 per hour, according to Glassdoor. This compares to CEO Tim Cook who is set to make $99 million for the company’s performance in 2021.
“[Apple Store workers] see how much executives and people on the corporate side of the company are making, and they're working very hard,” Givan said. “In retail, the jobs have been riskier throughout the pandemic, because they're public facing. They're not able to work from home. And it's not a surprise that these workers want to organize collectively and improve things.”
Growing efforts in Big Tech
Worker organization is relatively new to the tech industry. Just last year a contingent of more than 200 employees at Google parent Alphabet unionized under the Alphabet Workers Union. That number has since grown to more than 800 employees.
Workers at a handful of Amazon warehouses, meanwhile, are seeking to organize, but have faced obstacles including opposition from Amazon. After failing to garner enough votes in their first election, the workers are holding a second vote with the results expected in March.
The Apple union drive may more closely resemble a current effort by Starbucks employees. Workers at the retail giant have organized or are seeking to organize at as many as 60 locations in an effort to secure better wages.
“It's got some things in common with Starbucks, which is that the company likes to portray itself as a very progressive, dynamic company that's socially responsible,” explained Paul Clark, professor of labor and employment relations at Penn State University’s School of Labor and Employment Relations. “I think people are looking at what's going on, and saying things could be better and maybe now's the time for us to try to do something about it.”
Apple, according to The Post, has already started to quash the unionization effort, by pushing well-worn union busting tactics like managers telling employees that a union will take away certain benefits and could force the company to lower wages.
But that kind of reaction could backfire against Apple, and drive employees to join unions instead.
“I'm continually amazed when companies or organizations that you'd think…might not take the position that organizing a union in their workplaces is the end of the world, take the position that they have to jump in and stop this before it gets out of hand. Before Armageddon happens,” Clark said. “And employers just don't seem to learn.”
That kind of approach, he said, has likely resulted in more Starbucks workers seeking to unionize, and could push Apple employees to do the same.
Apple already offers benefits including health and dental insurance and wages that are above your average retailer. But according to Stanford Law School professor William B. Gould, unionizing would give employees the ability to enshrine those benefits.
“The benefits [of joining a union] are that…they’re not dependent upon the benevolence of the employer,” explained Gould, who chaired the National Labor Relations Board from 1994 until 1998. “They have a say in their pay and working conditions. They have the ability to protect themselves from arbitrary treatment by the employer, and particularly, unilateral decisions over dismissals or rearrangement of work and the like.”
For Apple, and other tech giants, this may only be the beginning of a period of continued unionization efforts, as more young workers begin to demand better pay and working conditions.
“They're starting to discover that in our system, the way you do that is by organizing,” Clark said. “And they've proven that they can do it against a very powerful company. So I’m somewhat optimistic.”
More from Dan
Got a tip? Email Daniel Howley at email@example.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DanielHowley.


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The wave of events that normally washes over the gaming public every summer has gone out with the tide. GDC, EGX, E3, and many more have been cancelled due to fears over public health and safety.
For many larger companies this is a setback, but one they can weather. Some will create their own mini-events of livestreamed news, some will simply take a pass on this year and bump their announcements for a later date. But how are the smaller teams managing in this climate? What does it mean when those in-person interactions might be the highlight of your year?
Every studio included in this article attended a range of events in 2019, and they had drastically different goals for how many they wanted to attend this year. Costs for travel and airfare to some of the most expensive cities in the world means that there were already plans in place, from the full-court press to the almost invisible. Audrey Leprince is a co-founder of The Game Bakers, a small studio based in France that had to shelve a packed calendar promoting its new game, Haven.
"When you meet someone in person, there's a connection that's extremely hard to forge in any other way"Xalavier Nelson Jr, Strange Scaffold
"We had a significant amount of game shows planned to share the demo with players, content creators and media, and work with our business partners in preparation for the launch," she says. "We were planning to go around the world to attend PAX East, GDC, EGX Rezzed, BitSummit, Twitch Con, Nordic Game Conference, and E3, to mention only the shows that have been cancelled or postponed... On a normal year we would have only attended GDC and Gamescom for our usual business and networking, but on a launch year we need to be more present."
Everyone described the intangible but vitally important quality of human interaction, for both consumer and business relations. Strange Scaffold's Xalavier Nelson Jr meant to exhibit his upcoming game, An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs, at as many shows as possible this year. A freelancer and director for remote teams, Nelson conducts the majority of his business online already.
"When you meet someone in person, there's a connection that's extremely hard to forge in any other way," he says. "I've known some people for years online -- including business partners -- but there was something that still didn't feel confirmed until we saw each other. Opportunities for that confirmation are becoming increasingly rare with the event cancellations going around right now."
Tabby Rose is the president of Axon Interactive, which released the environmental game Quench last year. Her team had planned to visit GDC, where she was scheduled to speak. "I found that it also really helped with team morale to see people playing and enjoying our hard work from time to time," she says. "I've also found it incredibly helpful to meet other people working in games and build friendships and networks with those folks."
"Some developers that are more isolated and less connected might have a very difficult year"Audrey Leprince, The Game Bakers
These events don't need to be seen as the absolute must-visits that they are sometimes touted, but for those who go into them knowing what to expect they can reap real rewards. Victoria Tran, communications director at Kitfox Games, is a seasoned pro at the event circuit, and chose to focus on the many types of connections you make.
"These events are always best at giving you that human connection -- whether it's with fans or press," she says. "Making games can be really isolating, and it's hard to see the pay-off sometimes when you're stuck in front of a screen all day programming or busy handling customer complaints. But at events, you get to see the excitement, talk to new and old fans, and see fellow devs going through similar situations -- it's really motivating. Plus, sometimes you'll spot bugs or discover things about your game that people really connect with, that you might have otherwise missed."
So what does losing all of these chances to connect mean? How bad could this be for indie developers? In addition to the loss of consumer visibility, there is widespread concern about losing the social cohesion of an industry that rarely meets in person, especially those members who often can't afford to fly to the US. Some of our interviewees worry that first-time developers will simply choose to sit this year out rather than debut their games at a time when it is that much harder to get noticed.
However, all agree that, in 2020, small developers will be more beholden than ever to the algorithms that underpin major digital storefronts. Tran says that this might be a year where we are "missing visibility on an entire cohort of games and game developers as they struggle to get eyes on their games, which was already a struggle."
"We found [events] incredibly time consuming and not worth the time, money or effort last year"Mike Rose, No More Robots
Expanding on this idea, Leprince posits that "the worst case scenario is that developers with brilliant games will not have the chance to show them to the public and build their audience, to connect with the right content creator, or to sign a deal with the right publisher. Some opportunities will be missed. Some players will not hear of a game they might have loved... Some developers that are more isolated and less connected might have a very difficult year."
But things are not all doom and gloom. Every studio pointed to efforts to ameliorate the difficult conditions these cancellations might bring, many of which were already underway. As Rob Fahey pointed out in his excellent op-ed for this site, larger events have become less and less relevant as communities have moved online. Every interviewee brought up private Discord servers, fan communities, and industry Slack channels as ways to keep the event spirit alive and make connections.
All of these were already happening before the COVID-19 outbreak, and they will only grow in strength and importance this year. In fact, No More Robots founder Mike Rose decided that these platforms were enough for what his company needed last year.
"At the end of last year, I decided that No More Robots would do no events [in 2020]," he says. "We found them incredibly time consuming and not worth the time, money or effort last year, so I decided we'd just focus on getting games out instead."
Having just published its latest game without doing any events, No More Robots has a pretty clear test case for how well the new system works for them. Yes, Your Grace shot to number one global bestseller the day it was released on Steam, and stayed in the top five global bestsellers for its entire opening weekend, raking in $600,000 during that period.
"In some ways, events create enormous pressure and FOMO, and it's very expensive to travel and set up a booth"Tabby Rose, Axon Interactive
For those that do see value in attending shows, digital events are now filling the gap left by the cancellation of physical gatherings: Vlambeer co-founder Rami Ismail's GameDev.World online conference is an attempt to create a truly global event accessible to a wider range of developers than the prohibitively expensive and immigration-unfriendly GDC; Raw Fury's "Plan B3" event is an effort to replace E3 coverage for a "coalition" of companies; and some press outlets are planning large scale streams of games that would have received coverage at PAX, EGX, and their ilk.
Tran is cautiously optimistic about efforts like these: "I've seen a lot of virtual event ideas pop up, which I think is amazing. I do think they'll help, but as for how much -- it depends. To best mitigate the effects of the cancellations, the virtual events will somehow need to extend their reach beyond, say, the immediate Twitter community/their communities. What physical events do is put people who might never be online, or even check game news very often, in front of us. If we're going to do virtual events, I think they'd benefit from larger partnerships or press coverage that could help reach out to places that could find more gamers."
Others mentioned that, despite a year without events being difficult, practices like remote work have prepared them for it. "In some ways, events create enormous pressure and FOMO, and it's very expensive to travel and set up a booth, especially internationally," Tabby Rose says. "I'm hoping that this is actually positive for me and my studio."
Some pointed to the overall reduction in the industry's carbon footprint as a positive going forwards, and some expressed hope that this time will allow digital events to grow in importance, which would reduce costs for smaller studios going forward. But digital events still hold a degree of risk. Not only do you miss out on the intangible benefits described at the beginning of this piece, but you give up control to the platform holders. Smaller creators are still buffeted by the inexplicable machinations of monolithic storefronts like Steam, and for every Yes, Your Grace that makes it with this model there will be countless others that fall into obscurity.
"The reality is that our game discoverability is in the hands of store algorithms and content creators," says LePrince. "Meeting with media, players and business partners in real life at shows can only influence it that much. We can only rely on what we can influence: designing games that surprise players, that capture everyone's imagination, games never seen before, to the best of our talent, and do everything we can to make them stand out from the crowd and reach their audience."


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During the financial call hosted by the company to discuss this financial report, Brian Farrell, THQ president and CEO, said that Microsoft's Project Natal will be release by the end of 2010.
Take your time and polish it up, Microsoft. Believe it or not, we actually WANT the "future of gaming", regardless of who delivers it. But by now, we gamers are intelligent enough to know the difference between the "future of gaming" and a $50 million advertisement campaign.
N4G is a community of gamers posting and discussing the latest game news. It’s part of NewsBoiler, a network of social news sites covering today’s pop culture.


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This article from “TV by the Numbers” has an interesting breakdown of how Nickelodeon “upped the digital presence” of the Kid’s Choice Awards this year and how they made the experience more interactive for today’s tech-savvy kids (with parental supervision, of course).
The biggest changes in the KCA this year included:
- Fans being able to vote on Nickelodeon’s mobile website and a variety of apps available for Apple products, Facebook, Twitter, and their SMS service.
- Livestreaming across a number of social media websites and the Nickelodeon website
- Orange carpet coverage reminiscent of the Oscars’ pre-show, with multiple cameras showing exclusive backstage content that was streamed live on the mobile apps and Nick.com, interactive polls, and real-time updates and photos.
- The Global Slime Collection, a digital game played through Apple and iOS device apps where kids found slime hidden in photo galleries, news, and videos promoting the awards show.
- A KCA news blog, trivia, quizzes, and two games that were promoted through the Nickelodeon website as well as their virtual worlds and websites (Monkey Quest, Neopets, and Petpet Park).
Rather than stick to traditional marketing by promoting the show on their channels, Nickelodeon advertised on across their multimedia platforms to ensure they reached all their potential viewers and made the promotions more engaging by creating the apps and games.
This was interesting to me because it shows that it’s not only adult audiences who are becoming more and more fragmented. The incredible growth in digital media has spurred a tremendous amount of fragmentation in audiences, meaning it’s not just on TV and in theatres that people are consuming anymore. There are apps and Internet services abound where people can watch their favorite shows, get exclusive content, and engage with other fans through social media. If there are digital options for adult programming, then why not children’s programming as well?
Monkey see, monkey do, after all. Chances are, more and more kids are participating in this audience fragmentation by watching TV and movies with their parents on their digital devices. It stands to reason that parents would engage in online and digital content with their younger children and older children who are allowed computer time (or have their own iPhones) could engage in digital content on their own.
Nickelodeon did an excellent job in offering digital consumption options for the tech-savvy generation watching the KCA’s this year. I think we’ll see more of this in the future, especially as digital devices become more and more dominant in the media landscape.


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Report: For mobile, consumers want better batteries, processors
When it comes to mobile tablets, consumers are looking for specific innovations from manufacturers. Specifically, they want better battery life and faster mobile processors. That according to a recent TechBargains survey.
According to the TechBargains report:
• 87% of shoppers interested in a next-gen iPad & iPad Mini want better battery life
• 76% want USB ports and 71% want better speakers (iPad Mini)
• 80% of iPad buyers want USB ports and 63% want it to be lighter
"Before it was introduced the iPad Mini received lackluster interest in comparison to other Apple products, according to a previous TechBargains' survey," said Yung Trang, President, TechBargains. "Once consumers got their hands on it and saw the value, our recent data shows popularity for the iPad Mini has nearly doubled."
As for how the mobile space is breaking down the Millennia Media 2012 Year in Review SMART report shows that 12 mobile verticals saw greater than 100% YoY growth (within the Millennial Media platform); the Retail and Restaurant vertical spent the most with the Millennial Media space.
The report further shows that 40% of CPG spending included location based targeting and 37% offers app downloads as a call to action.
And looking ahead, comScore has released the 2013 Mobile Future in Focus which predicts that people will consume even more mobile content in 2013 than they did in 2012 - which is earmarked as a 'watershed year' for mobile. The research shows that mobile the half the US population now have a smartphone.
"2012 was a milestone year for the U.S. smartphone market as it finally surpassed 50 percent market penetration and now enters the "late majority" stage of the technology adoption curve. The number of smartphone subscribers has increased 29 percent from a year ago and 99 percent from two years ago. Not only does the market's current ownership profile reflect a smartphone majority, but 72 percent of all newly-acquired devices are now smartphones," was written in the report.
- Forrester: Mobile social users more engaged, share more
- Top 3 tips for SMBs using webinars
- Air passengers demand constant connectivity and fast in-flight Wi-Fi
- Power Users + Loyal Users = App Stickiness
- Shareaholic: Quarter of website traffic driven by Facebook
- B2B firms struggling with content marketing
- Brands piggy-backing on major events not guaranteed success
- Expert: Why SMBs are pushing farther into digital
Featured White Papers
- Why The Smartest Marketers Have External Writing Teams
A successful content strategy includes many moving parts: content planning, content creation, content promotion, measuring your content's performance and optimizing...


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FROM THE DESK OF DEBORAH WEINSWIG
If there is one subject close to our hearts at Fung Global Retail & Technology, it is fashion retailing. Over the last few years, we have established ourselves as a leading global think tank on apparel. Our coverage continues with our On Trend series of thematic fashion reports, which are published on FungGlobalRetailTech.com. In this week’s note, we distill some thoughts on the underlying trends driving changes in fashion retail.
Consumers Demand Newness and Value
The shifts in the US apparel market are about more than just a battle between e-commerce and department stores—even though they often seem to be characterized that way by the media and commentators. Faced with a profusion of choice and information, consumers are more demanding than in the past, and we perceive them wanting more newness but not wanting to compromise on genuine value for money. These two elements are driving various innovations, some of which are at the heart of the mass market and some of which are—for now, at least—more peripheral.
Apparel rental is resonating with millennials who want new looks and premium brands, but who do not want to pay a fortune for them or even necessarily hold on to a particular look for any period of time. This model is a near perfect answer to the demand for short-term fashions at affordable prices, as it does not require that renters compromise on style or brand. Rental company Rent the Runway has attracted 6 million customers in the US, and the rental format is growing in other markets, too, such as the UK and Australia. We discuss the apparel rental trend in our recent report Deep Dive: Millennial Lifestyles Drive Growth in Apparel Rental, which can be found here: bit.ly/ApparelRent
Fashion resale marketplaces have attracted millions of members looking to buy and sell clothing, footwear and accessories, often high-end items. Like rental services, resale marketplaces combine demand for new products and brands with affordability. Major firms in the space include The RealReal and Tradesy, which each say they have 5 million members, and Vestiare Collective, which claims 6 million customers. Our forthcoming report Fashion Re-Commerce Evolution covers this segment in detail.
The option to buy straight from the runway is making up-to-the-minute trends available to shoppers (although it does not meet their demand for value). This model’s immediacy is a big break from the traditional industry model in which designer brands and luxury houses present two seasonal collections per year and the showcased items appear in stores some six months later. The see-now, buy-now trend is being adopted by more and more designer names, from Alexander Wang to Burberry to Tom Ford to Tommy Hilfiger, as we discuss in our recent report From Runway to Checkout: The See-Now, Buy-Now Trend in Fashion, which can be found here: bit.ly/InstantFashion
Meanwhile, in the store-based mass-market segment, the demand for newness and value is driving the growth of fast-fashion retailers and off-price stores. Midmarket rivals are being compelled to adopt fast-fashion techniques in order to bring more newness into their ranges, and major names such as Macy’s are rolling out off-price formats. We cover the American mass-market apparel segment in detail in our forthcoming report Retail Revolution—US Apparel Shifts in 20 Charts.
Several of the segments noted above—such as apparel rental—remain niche oriented and pose little threat to mass-market giants in the near term. Yet they reflect consumers’ demand for getting genuine value without having to trade down to the lowest tier. In fashion, shopper frugality is about more than just getting ultralow prices from discount retailers, and demand for newness is about more than the growth of big fast-fashion names.
US RETAIL EARNINGS
US RETAIL & TECH HEADLINES
The Cost of Convenience: Amazon’s Shipping Losses Top $7 Billion for First Time
(February 9) GeekWire.com
- The amount of money that Amazon lost on shipping—the net cost of landing all those boxes on doorsteps in record time—reached an all-time high of nearly $7.2 billion in 2016, according to an analysis by GeekWire.
- The number reflects the difference between what Amazon charges customers for shipping and what it spends to get those items to customers. Amazon traditionally takes a net loss on shipping, due in part to the flagship Amazon Prime benefit of free two-day shipping. But with the company selling more and more items and promising faster and faster shipping, that net cost is getting bigger and bigger.
Walmart to Tear Down Walls Between Store and Online Buying Operations
(February 14) Reuters.com
- As it looks to consolidate buying operations in order to better fight Amazon, Walmart will combine its own buying for products sold at its stores with purchases it makes for its website. Vendors contacted by Walmart about the change told Reuters the store and online buying teams currently operate independently.
- Walmart has told some vendors it is seeking to make the buying process more efficient for itself and vendors, and to improve coordination between its buying teams. The company also wants to apply its brick-and-mortar expertise in securing the lowest possible prices to its e-commerce business, according to the vendors, who declined to be identified for fear of disrupting business relations with Walmart.
Designers Are Using Instagram Live to Offer an Unfiltered Look at NYFW
(February 14) Glossy.co
- Instagram Live is becoming a breakout star at New York Fashion Week. Fashion designers and brands have been increasingly turning to the platform since it launched in December 2016, using it either as an addendum to platforms such as Facebook Live or as a means to connect with different demographics of social media users.
- Thakoon was among the brands that dabbled with Instagram Live early in the week, sharing several behind-the-scenes moments leading up to its spring 2017 collection debut. It also posted backstage preparation and moments from the runway show itself to its nearly 100,000 followers.
Retail CEOs Head to Washington to Try to Kill US Border Tax
(February 14) Reuters.com
- Chief executives of some of America’s largest retailers, including Target, Best Buy, Gap and AutoZone, headed to Washington this week to make their case that a controversial tax on imports would raise consumer prices and hurt their businesses. The group of eight retail bosses was to meet on Wednesday with Kevin Brady, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and with members of the Senate.
- This is the first time well-known retail CEOs descended on Washington as a group to try to kill the import tax proposal. Their input has more urgency, as US President Donald Trump is finalizing his own tax plan, which he plans to unveil in the coming weeks.
EUROPE RETAIL EARNINGS
EUROPEAN RETAIL HEADLINES
UK Retail Footfall Falls Further in January
(February 13) Retail-Week.com
- Total retail footfall in the UK fell by 1.3% in the four weeks ended January 28, 2017, according to data from the British Retail Consortium and Springboard. The figure was below the three-month average of 0.8% and was the sharpest decline since the 2.8% drop seen in June 2016.
- High-street footfall declined by 0.8% year over year, behind the three-month average of 0.1%. Footfall at retail parks fell for the third consecutive month, by 0.4%, and footfall at shopping centers fell for the 12th consecutive month, by 3.0%.
Visa’s UK Consumer Spending Index Shows Clothing Expenditure at Five-Year Low in January
(February 13) Press release
- Year-over-year UK consumer spending growth slowed from 2.5% in December to a five-month low of 0.4% in January, according to financial services firm Visa. The company added that clothing spending “saw the biggest drop in nearly five years” as it fell by 3.8%.
- Visa noted that consumer spending on experiences rose, however, as spending on dining out grew by 5.7% and spending on recreation and culture grew by 3.1% during the period.
Aldi to Invest an Additional $1.6 Billion to Boost US Expansion
(February 9) FT.com
- German supermarket group Aldi has said that it will invest an additional $1.6 billion in its US operations as the competition among its American rivals intensifies. The group is already in the process of growing its store number to 2,000 by 2018, an expansion worth more than $3 billion.
- Aldi operates more than 1,600 stores in the US. German rival Lidl will enter the US market in 2017 or 2018. Aldi’s extra investment will fund the expansion and refurbishing of about 1,300 stores, the company said.
L’Oréal Considers Sale of The Body Shop Business
(February 9) Company press release
- French beauty company L’Oréal is considering offloading The Body Shop business, as L’Oréal failed to grow the skincare brand as much as it had hoped to. The company’s statement said that it will “explore all strategic options regarding The Body Shop’s ownership.”
- Last week, The Body Shop reported comparable store sales growth of 0.6% and a total sales decline of 4.8% for full-year 2016. L’Oréal bought the brand from environmental activist Anita Roddick over a decade ago.
H&M’s Weekday Banner Chooses Regent Street for UK Debut
(February 8) Retailgazette.co.uk
- Swedish fast-fashion group H&M has chosen London’s Regent Street as the location of the first store under its Weekday label in the UK. The company did not reveal the exact date for the store opening, but said that it will happen this summer.
- Fashion and denim brand Weekday was acquired by H&M in 2008 and currently operates in seven countries.
ASIA TECH HEADLINES
Alibaba’s Ant Financial Is Raising $3 Billion in Debt to Finance a Global M&A Spree
(February 8) TechCrunch.com
- Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial announced a surprise deal to acquire international payment service MoneyGram for $880 million last month, but that looks like just the start of its M&A activities. It is now reportedly close to raising nearly $3 billion in debt financing in order to bankroll further acquisitions.
- Ant Financial’s businesses includes Chinese digital banking service MyBank and Alipay, China’s dominant digital payment service, which has 450 million users. However, the company also has stakes in India’s Paytm and Southeast Asia–based Ascend Money.
Grab Is Buying Indonesian Payment Firm Kudo in Its First Major Acquisition
(February 14) TechCrunch.com
- Singapore-based Grab, Uber’s rival in Southeast Asia, raised $750 million in September and is now making a play for Indonesia, which is Southeast Asia’s largest economy, with a population of more than 250 million. Grab is reportedly in the process of buying Indonesia-based online payment startup Kudo in its first major acquisition.
- Payments are a central focus in Grab’s push as it looks to differentiate itself from Uber and local rival Go-Jek, which raised $550 million last year. Offering payment services can also help Grab win business from millions of unbanked citizens and provide a solution in the market.
Eternal Youth Is the Next Big Bet for Singapore Venture Capitalist
(February 10) Bloomberg.com
- A venture capital firm led by Finian Tan began investing in Chinese search engine Baidu in 2000. Following Baidu’s IPO, Tan’s firm ended up with a stake larger than the 22% held by Baidu cofounder Robin Li. Now Tan is making a similar bet on San Diego–based regenerative medicine company Samumed, which is valued at $12 billion.
- What attracted Tan was Samumed’s approach to treating arthritic knees, hair loss, scarring of the lungs and degenerative disc diseases. The company is pursuing novel therapies for those conditions and cancer with drugs targeting a cell-signaling pathway that offers promise in reversing the biological processes of aging.
China’s Weibo Eclipses Rival Twitter’s Market Capitalization
(February 13) Financial Times
- China’s Weibo is now worth more than US rival Twitter. Following a rally in its share price, Weibo now has a market capitalization of $11.3 billion, versus Twitter’s $11.1 billion. Shares in Weibo, which is part-owned by Alibaba, have been climbing on the back of a rising number of subscribers and its growing ability to wring more cash out of them.
- While Weibo’s usurping of Twitter’s position owes much to the US company’s falling stock, the switchover comes as China’s technology groups are narrowing the gap with their western rivals on various metrics.
LATAM RETAIL HEADLINES
Kirin Ends Brazilian Venture with $700 Million Sale to Heineken
(February 14) Financial Times
- As Japanese brewer Kirin shifts its overseas spending to Southeast Asia, it has has ended its ill-fated venture in Brazil, the world’s third-biggest beer market. On Monday, Kirin announced a deal to sell its struggling Brazil business to Heineken for ¥77 billion (US$700 million).
- The sale will make Heineken the second-largest beer company in Brazil, with a 17% market share, and will allow the Dutch brewer to challenge the dominance of rival Anheuser-Busch InBev in its biggest market.
Walmart Continues Downsizing in Brazil, Closes Five Stores
(February 10) ESMMagazine.com
- According to Brazilian newspaper O Estado de São Paulo, Walmart closed five stores in Brazil in recent weeks. Among the banners affected are Nacional (a local network of supermarkets that was acquired by Walmart in 2005) and Todo Dia (a chain of neighborhood stores).
- The company also dismissed employees in the commercial and administrative areas; the total number of dismissals is expected to reach 300, sources told the paper. The latest cuts came despite the fact that Walmart had reported positive data for Brazil in its latest balance sheet.
Mexican Manufacturing Company Giant Motors Is to Build Electric Cars
(February 8) CleanTechnica.com
- Giant Motors, a Mexican manufacturing company, is partnering with Moldex, a subsidiary of Bimbo (the world’s largest bakery), and the Monterrey Institute of Technology to develop a new electric car to serve as a taxi in order to help combat Mexico City’s chronic smog problem.
- Giant Motors also recently announced a tie-in with Chinese automaker JAC Motors to build the JAC S2 and S3 SUVs. Production is scheduled to begin in the second half of 2017.
Brazil Retail Sales Tumble in December Despite Holiday Sales
(February 14) Reuters.com
- Retail sales in Brazil fell sharply in December as Christmas holiday discounts failed to bolster consumption amid a severe recession. Retail sales volumes excluding cars and building materials fell by 2.1% from November, their steepest drop since January 2016.
- Retail sales fell by 6.2% in 2016, their worst year in since 2001, as Brazil weathered the second year of a recession that has left more than 12 million people unemployed.


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This week, the Georgetown Business Improvement District crowed over the opening of 29 new national and independent businesses in the neighborhood in 2011. Maybe so! But how about those that closed? Georgetown Metropolitan has a more objective handle on the situation, and he found that the city’s “shopping playground” actually lost 21 shops and restaurants overall, with 509 establishments open and 117 vacant spaces.
Of course, there are a lot of factors at play here, most notably the expulsion of shops from the Georgetown Mall in preparation for its redevelopment. Today, the Business Journal squeezed a bit of information out of landlord Vornado, which says it’s aiming to make space for “seven to a dozen stores,” rather than the current “60 or 80.” Could the stores that got booted take up those vacant spots in the rest of the neighborhood? Not likely—-rents in the mall, especially in the last few years, were dramatically cheaper than the space outside. So by the numbers, at least, Georgetown’s retail situation may never look quite as robust as it used to. Obviously, the health of a neighborhood’s economy is a much more complicated thing.
Photo by Darrow Montgomery


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Open Loop Ticketing is the future of mobile ticketing!
Any strategy to rebuild transit passenger numbers will have simple payments as a critical component. It’s a simple change that can make all the difference.
The key to this system is in the name. And the transition to open-loop ticketing is less daunting than many agencies imagine.
With 12bn EMV cards deployed worldwide, and issuance and adoption seeing sustained increases globally, EMV chip provides a trusted foundation that is supporting the ongoing shift away from cash and towards digital payments,” said EMVCo Chair Robin Trickel.
As many as 150 major cities across the globe are considering switching from legacy closed loop payment systems to open loop systems, according to the American Public Transit Association (APTA).
That means moving from agency-operated payment cards to Europay, Mastercard, Visa (EMV) pay platforms that allow transit riders to pay for their transit fare the same way they use their credit or debit card or mobile wallet at coffee shops, convenience stores and supermarkets.
In the postwar years, both Americans and Europeans embraced the automobile. The difference is that European governments continued investing in transit while U.S. cities all but abandoned public transportation. What is the reason for that? The stock answer has always been that American cities suffer from urban sprawl, cheap gas, and a love for the automobile.
Zoomers are a generation that have never known life without the internet and smartphones. They live on social media and when it comes to money and finance – they are charting a new course. 62 percent of Zoomers do not have a bank account and in some emerging markets nearly 50 percent prefer mobile wallets as their choice of payment method. About 25 percent of Zoomers in western markets almost never use cash.


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7 Sneaky Foods That Can Have Dead Horses in Them
Diet•7 min read
Milk made with precision fermentation could take up to 33 percent of the dairy industry’s market share.
Words by Björn Ólafsson
Plant-based milk has been in the mainstream for several years now — nowadays it’s hard to find a cafe without at least one dairy alternative. But, slowly and surely, a new animal-free product is breaking out, one that isn’t made from plants at all but uses a technology similar to lab-grown meat: precision-fermented dairy. A new report, conducted by precision-fermentation company Formo and the University of Saskatchewan, shows that animal-free dairy has the potential to nab up to 33 percent of dairy’s current market share.
Animal-free dairy is made with all the same cells as animal-based dairy only created in a bioreactor, not a factory farm. In the U.S., companies like Perfect Day have had cultivated ice cream on the market since 2019. Formo, a leading company about to debut a line of animal-free cheeses in Europe, say their products have massive potential. The cheese “will win hearts and minds rapidly,” says Oscar Zollman Thomas, a researcher with Formo.
Lab-grown dairy is made in a process that’s similar to cultivated meat, although faster and more efficient. Companies will toss yeast, simple sugars and cow’s milk gene sequences into a bioreactor and create whey and casein, two of mammalian milk’s most important proteins. Fat and flavoring may then be added to create the perfect taste and texture.
The result is a product that looks, tastes, smells and feels essentially indistinguishable from cow’s milk. Formo says it has enacted rigorous blind taste testing and had conversations with European chefs to make sure the product will hold up when compared to animal cheese. Now, the new study argues this novel dairy product has the potential for a massive market disruption.
Researchers asked over a thousand UK residents about their hypothetical choices in a cheese aisle of a supermarket: three types of mozzarella, one plant-based option and one precision fermented option. The choices were also presented with different price points, intended to replicate how the product would initially debut with slightly higher prices that would come down over time.
The result was large support for animal-free cheese — nearly 65 percent of study participants said they would be willing to try the product. And only 21 percent of them are people who don’t normally eat cheese, indicating this push is driven by flexitarians and other meat-eaters.
Thomas feels the biggest driver is likely animal welfare. Consumers often have contradictory relationships with farmed animals – for example, nearly 50 percent of people in the U.S. would support a ban on factory farming but 99 percent of meat-eaters consume products from factory farms.
People are looking to replace cruel products with equal alternatives, says Thomas, “this was the most recognised advantage of precision fermentation.”
Another reason is the product itself. Cheese is a processed food, and consumers know it. Meat is often held out as a “natural” food (despite the fact that meat too is often processed), which is why some consumers cast off cultivated meat as ultra-processed and unhealthy. Formo doesn’t have to worry about that.
After seeing the support for precision products, the researchers then used statistical analysis to predict how much of the market share a company like Formo could potentially nab. If animal-free dairy is priced 25 percent above traditional dairy, it can take around 22 percent of the cheese market — but at price parity, it will reach a third.
Milk consumption has been on a decades-long decline in the United States — a drop of nearly 50 percent in the last fifty years, across all age groups, in nearly every way. Part of the decline can be attributed to the rise of plant-based milk: more and more consumers are adding soy milk to their lattes or having an almond milk-based smoothie.
The milk industry is experiencing other setbacks. Surplus milk is being dumped down gutters across the Midwest and thousands of dairy farms are going under. This has led the dairy industry to jumpstart old ad campaigns in an effort to recapture floundering sales, sometimes leading to controversy.
But that doesn’t mean dairy is dead, far from it. While fluid milk is down, cheese and yogurt are going up. Way up. Yogurt has been steadily rising for the last decade and cheese and spreadable dairy products like cream cheese have seen their own bumps as well. And dairy is growing in many places around the world, including lower and middle income countries.
Plant-based alternatives to these products haven’t gripped the mainstream in the way that plant-based milk sales have exploded. This is also why Formo’s executives are hopeful animal-free cheese can do what nut-based cheese couldn’t.
However, cultivated dairy, like all food innovations, still has an uphill battle in marking their way into the mainstream.
The EU, where Formo intends to launch first, doesn’t allow for precision-fermented or plant-based products to use words like “dairy” or “milk” in their packaging thanks to lobbying from the dairy industry. Formo is hopeful that as long as consumers understand the product, the labels won’t be an issue.
The study had this distinctive feature that could be key: a written explanation of what precision fermentation actually is, allowing potential consumers to make an informed decision. This is a far cry from what happens in grocery store aisles, where most people choose based on labeling alone even though misinformation about alternative proteins runs rampant.
Research shows most potential consumers have multiple questions about how animal-free dairy is made and its health effects — the two biggest causes of concern. Companies like Formo will only be able to succeed if they are able to be transparent with consumers as they market the health, taste and safety of their products.
“When consumers understand what precision fermentation is and what if offers, they’re ready to jump on it,” argues CEO and founder Raffael Wohlgensinger. The critical question then is when will companies reach this threshold of consumer trust?
In the U.S., several companies are currently selling lab-grown milk or other dairy products: Perfect Day, Bel Brands, Cowabunga, Betterland Milk and Strive Nutrition among them. There are 28 dairy fermentation companies across the world, according to alternative protein thinktank Good Food Institute, many of which are in research and development phases.
Precision fermentation does possess a number of inherent advantages: it’s a cheaper process than meat cultivation, so companies like Formo are likely to hit price parity faster than cell-cultivated products. According to internal estimates, Wohlgensinger says this could happen as early as 2025.
And, since precision fermentation has been around since the 80s, it can get to market and clear regulatory hurdles a bit faster than completely novel techniques like cell-cultivated meat.
And, since precision fermentation has been around since the 80s, it can get to market and clear regulatory hurdles a bit faster than completely novel techniques like cell-cultivated meat. With these advantages, Formo is “all set” to launch in Europe later this year, eyeing its next steps to win over consumers.
Climate•6 min read


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Added sugar consumption unsweetened by Heart Foundation
Australian teenage boys are eating more than 10kg of free sugar from soft drinks alone, prompting the Heart Foundation to again call on the Australian Government to examine the merits of a health levy on sugary-sweetened beverages, and on Australians to reduce their intake of junk food.
This follows the release of new Australian Bureau of Statistics data revealing that one in two Australians exceed the World Health Organisation’s recommendation that free sugars contribute less than 10 per cent of total energy intake.
In boys aged 14-18 years, more than 30% of their 92 grams per day of free sugar intake came from soft drinks (not including other sugary drinks like energy or sports drinks, cordials or fruit drinks). In girls, this figure is lower but still concerning. Girls aged 14-18 years consume 70.3 grams per day with 17.6% from soft drinks.
Heart Foundation Senior Policy Advisor – Food & Nutrition Beth Thomas said this meant that for boys aged 14-18 years, they were getting about 7 teaspoons of sugar from soft drinks daily, which is 10.5kg of free sugar per year from soft drink alone.
“With figures like this, it’s not surprising to see that the average Australian intake is above the WHO guideline to consume <10% energy from ‘free sugars,” Beth Thomas said.
“But, by simply cutting out soft drinks our teenage boys could almost meet the WHO guidelines bringing average energy from free sugars in boys aged 14-18 from 14.5% to 10.4%. Similarly, across most age groups, the elimination of soft drink intake would bring them below the WHO guideline.”
Heart Foundation Chief Medical Advisor Prof Garry Jennings said it was alarming to see that free sugar intake was being driven by Australia’s appetite for discretionary or ‘junk’ foods.
“Discretionary foods accounted for the majority (81%) of free sugars and just over half (52%) of all free sugars consumed were from beverages,” Prof Jennings said.
“The best action many people can do for their heart health is to cut down on discretionary style foods such as sugary drinks, confectionary and cakes.
“With beverages the source of more than half the free sugars for the average Australian, we need to do more to educate on the health consequences and reduce sugary drink intake.”
Prof Jennings said the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages was associated with increased energy intake and in turn, weight gain and obesity.
“It is well established that obesity is a leading risk factor for diabetes, cardiovascular disease and some cancers. Keep sometimes foods to sometimes,” Prof Jennings said.
“The simple message from this new ABS data is to choose water over sugary drinks.
“Further, this adds weight to the growing call for the Australian Government to examine the merits of a health levy on sugar-sweetened beverages relative to healthier options, to change purchasing habits and achieve healthier diets.”
Beth Thomas added that as a whole, discretionary foods contributed substantial amounts of energy, saturated and trans fat, added sugar and refined carbohydrates, and salt to our diets.
“Eating these foods take up space in our diets where core foods should be. A heart healthy diet is one that is a balanced diet with including vegetables, fruit and whole grains, choose good quality lean meat, reduced fat milk, cheese and yoghurt or alternatives and include healthy fats like those found
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CNN International Commercial (CNNIC) has announced two new appointments for the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, welcoming Delilah Chan as sales director for Southeast Asia (SEA), and Zab Ali as digital director for North Asia.
With 18 years’ experience working and leading teams across SEA, Chan will oversee CNN’s advertising sales team based in Singapore.
In this role, she will develop strategic partnerships and manage relationships with key clients and agencies to drive CNNIC’s business goals through multi-platform strategies.
Prior to joining CNNIC, Chan was the head of sales in APAC for kids-focused digital media platform SuperAwesome. Before that, she held positions such as head of business for Twitter in SEA, and led the BBC advertising sales team in Singapore.
Meanwhile, bringing his digital expertise to the CNNIC team, Ali will be based in Hong Kong, and his primary role will be to engage with a greater number of brands on digital campaigns and enable brand integration through innovative adverting solutions. These include building and strengthening partnerships with advertising technologies, while promoting CNN’s data strategy and business development.
Ali worked in both the UK and Hong Kong before joining CNNIC, having most recently been with Havas Media. Prior to that, he worked at agencies such as MRM//McCann, iProspect and Carat.
Commenting on the team expansions, Sunita Rajan, senior vice president of advertising sales for the APAC region at CNNIC, said: “These appointments are a crucial addition to the sales leadership team, which is focused on delivering best in class multi-platform solutions powered by data, content, insights and creativity which enable CNN’s growth in key markets such as Southeast Asia.
“I am pleased to have Delilah on our team, as she has a proven track record of driving growth in media, content and technology sectors in the fast-paced and evolving SEA region. She brings a wealth of experience with her and I am certain that her contribution will further enable us to achieve CNNIC’s goals.”
Rob Bradley, vice president of digital commercial strategy and revenue at CNNIC, added: ”In a world where a marketer’s role has never been more complex, CNN is offering a host of smart and truly cross-platform solutions that allow brands to reach local, regional and global audiences with impact from a single point.
“We are thrilled to welcome Zab, whose deep experience on the client as well as agency side and passion for digital will no doubt continue to forge these innovative solutions that enable brands to meet their marketing and business goals.”
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Indago Digital has announced four new client wins, as the independent agency continues its growth trajectory. Indago’s new clients are P&N Bank, Oneflare, salary packaging company Smartgroup, and charity Kids Giving Back. The agency will handle a combination of SEO and paid search for each client. Indago’s digital managing director, Gary Nissim (pictured above), said: “The […]
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The Australian is celebrating a decade since it became the first general newspaper in Australia to launch its digital subscription model, marking the beginning of a new economic model for Australian newspapers. Since launching, digital subscriptions have grown to represent a majority of The Australian’s total reach, paid audience and consumer revenue. In 10 years […]
PodSpot Studios, the first network of purpose-built studios founded by content creator and former breakfast radio host Dave Matthews, has launched in two new locations as it gears up for further national expansion amid Australia’s podcasting boom. PodSpot Studios is a collaboration between Matthews’ podcast production company PodSpot and the ASX-listed WOTSO Property, which owns and […]