The fancy supermarket being robbed by its customers
The Olympics are here and Ted Baker is in trouble
Bonjour,
Each time the Olympics show up it’s hard not to have a strong sense of the passing of time, like getting a new passport or realising you’ve owned the same piece of clothing for well over a decade. Another four years goes by in the blink of an eye, inner and outer worlds completely different places.
Juxtaposed with this is the timelessness of people running around fields and throwing stuff. The modern Olympics has only been going since 1896 but Aristotle reckoned the first ever Olympic games was in 776 BC. An Olympic truce was put in place back then so athletes could travel to the games in safety. Even today it seems like sport is one of the few areas where there is genuine international cooperation, ironically in order to try and beat each other at stuff.
Beneath all the flag waving and slightly weird geopolitical competitiveness there’s something really inspiring about all these individuals dedicating so much to their sport. One person who maybe took it a bit far is Matt Dawson of the Australian hockey team, who suffered an injury to his finger a few weeks ago and had it amputated as surgery would have ruled him out of the games. Good commitment that.
You are gold,
Hugo
Chief of Olympic Stuff
The Business of Stuff
The Stuff
John Lewis has been given the green light to build first homes 🏠 - Bromley Council have given them planning permission to build a block of 353 rental flats above their Waitrose flat. This is part of their plan to diversify as retail becomes increasingly challenging thanks to the likes of Amazon. There is a great documentary about the stalwart of the British highstreet by the Financial Times.
OpenAI announces new search functionality 🔎 - it will be released to a small group of users to begin with and then folded into ChatGPT. The AI company is losing money hand over fist and needs to rapidly start to eat into the business models of existing players to become more sustainable (financially, environmentally is a long way off at this point).
Alphabet is earning more from interest payments than most of S&P 500 💰 - the tech company made just over $1 billion in the past year just investing the cash they hold, primarily in US treasuries and corporate bonds This more than 397 companies in the S&P 500 made in net income and more than the bottom 30 combined.
People keep turning pallets they don’t own into stuff 🔨 - I myself am guilty of turning a couple of unloved pallets into a makeshift tiki bar without quite knowing where they came from. It turns out a company called Brambles, who is the worlds leading pallet provider, is losing millions every month as people don’t quite realise they are loaned and not given with the delivery that sits on them. They are now attaching trackers and employing pallet detectives to try and combat this challenge.
Wiz rejects $23bn offer by Google 🚫 - you’ve got to have cahones of steel to turn down this sort of money but the cyber security company is convinced that it can become the biggest in the world so is going to plough its own furough. They are the fastest growing cyber security company in history and there is huge appeal to cloud providers who are facing ever increasing challenges.
Food innovation is falling, I’m not sure that’s really a problem 🥕 - there are some areas where we just shouldn’t be innovating. Conversation, relationships, the things that make us human to name a few, and food is one of them. The fact that only a quarter of food products being introduced in the first four months of the year are ‘genuinely new’ really shouldn’t bother us. We don’t need more ways to consume sugar.
The Hugo Awards has been suffering from voter fraud 🤖 - the science fiction and fantasy prize givers have said that in their most recent poll 377 votes will still be counted despite the fact they were paid for as the writer wasn’t aware. This was orchestrated by a member of the committee and it’s not super clear what their motive may have been.
People who shop in Planet Organic like to steal stuff 🥷 - the seller of healthy stuff has said they lose £900,000 a year from people stealing stuff and much of that is the standard clientele who can afford to shop in a place where an aubergine costs five pounds. I can see the warped knowledge of being robbed blind by the shop so feeling like it’s ok to sneak a packet of quinoa into your designer rucksack to be honest.
People are hiring content creators for their weddings 🤳 - most people have now probably been to a wedding where there is a policy laid out about posting on social media but no doubt this will be enforced even more ferociously if you’re paying someone to capture the big day. To be clear, this is on top of the thousands one has to pay for a photographer as creating a good reel is a whole different skill set apparently.
Ted Baker facing closure of all UK shops within weeks 🛍️ - the purveyor of clothes that are bought by men above a certain age trying to buy their way into being cool is struggling. They entered administration in March but still have 46 stores open and closing would mean 975 people losing their jobs, but fear not: you’ll still be able to buy a jacket with a quirky lining once you’ve finished gasping at the price of a Le Creuset pot in John Lewis.
Quote of the week
This ability to conquer oneself is no doubt the most precious of all things sports bestows. - Olga Korbut