What do optometry and Guernsey have in common?
Old programming languages, cuddly toys and Crazy Titch inside.
Hello,
This week saw the 40th anniversary of Specsavers launching in Guernsey. As someone with less-than-average peepers, I’ve been involved in optometry for a long time. 25 years of wearing glasses and all those weird machines are still a bit of a mystery.
It was the Italians who first started wearing corrective spectacles in the 1200s, to read the pasta recipes of their foremothers and fathers (probably). Guilds were established and by the 14th century, they were being sent all over Europe. It was about this time that they started varying the thickness for different levels of myopia and, like today, they became fashionable because if you wore them it probably meant you were clever.
Today (in America at least) over 60% of people need glasses. It’s no wonder really as we’re meant to be scouring the undergrowth for edible shrubs and keeping an eye out for bears. Not looking at screens to enjoy short videos of people falling over in unfortunate circumstances.
The Europeans are still in charge with a third of industry revenues being generated by EssilorLuxotica, a conglomerate formed when the French Essilor and Italian Luxottica merged in 2018. The eye test might be free but the frames that Ben Sherman has popped his name on are £130.
Look into my eyes,
Hugo
Seer of all things
The Business of Stuff
The Stuff
The rollercoaster ride of Metrobank 🏦 - I remember the heady days of 2010 when Metro Bank arrived with its marble and 7-day-a-week service to conquer the shabby banks of old. Well, they’re struggling now as it turns out you can do all of your banking online and a nightmarish accounting mistake sent its stock price plummeting in 2019.
OpenAI launches its text-to-video model Sora 🎞️ -the fourth most valuable company in the world is unleashing the ability to create videos from prompts and it looks pretty impressive from their demos. Can’t wait to pop The Stuff in each week.
Typo in Lyft’s numbers caused a 60% surge in their share price 🚕 - some poor analyst at the taxi company entered some numbers wrong suggesting they had grown by 500 basis points rather than 50 in Q4 which sent their share price soaring. David Risher, the CEO was quick to take it on the chin.
There’s an oversupply of warehouse space in the market 📦 - the heady days of 2020 made it seem like the uptick in e-commerce was here to stay so everyone made sure they had enough big rooms to put stuff in. Retailers are realigning their supply chains with demand, sub-leasing space and closing warehouses.
Showmax is winning the streaming war in Africa 📽️ - getting people to watch your stuff is a global battle and Netflix isn’t winning it everywhere. Showmax has 2.1 million subscribers in 2023 against 1.8 million Netflix subscribers. Prime Video meanwhile is downsizing its operations in the region and stopping the production of original content.
Big pharma spends way more on executive pay and dividends than R&D 💊 - pharmaceutical companies often claim the reason they charge extortionate amounts for their drugs is because of the risky business of developing new ones. Bernie Sanders has discovered this argument doesn’t quite hold up.
Most of the banking infrastructure runs on a 65-year-old programming language 💾 - we all rely on banks to cough up money when they’re meant to and so they are quite rightly a bit nervous about fiddling with their ageing infrastructure. COBOL was first used in 1959 and there is a shrinking pool of developers who know how it works.
Squishmallow and Build-a-Bear are having a barney 🐻 - the former is claiming that the latter is copying its egg-shaped toys and has launched an intellectual property lawsuit in California. Not a very cuddly move.
Elliot Advisers is attempting to fiddle with beloved UK retailer Currys 🔦 - the American activist fund has offered £700m for the seller of electric stuff but they were told they’d “significantly undervalued” the business.
Airbus boss says one pilot can fly a plane ✈️ - a pretty ballsy statement given Boeing’s recent safety record but it is seen as a natural next step by many. Until the 1980s it was normal to have on-board engineers and planes used to have 3-4 engines whereas now they generally have two. Goes to show how our perception of what’s ‘normal’ changes over time.
Quote of the week
“I can see you, you can see me, I can see you're not a T.H.U.G” - Crazy Titch