Rishi Taparia - Issue #89
This week we explore Amazon’s move to one day shipping, JCPenny breaking up with Apple Pay, government intervention in the growth of the fossil fuel industry, the rising gender gap in managerial roles and more. Enjoy!
Commerce
Amazon 'morphing' free Prime two-day shipping to one day
Amazon is not one to quit while they are ahead, nor are they willing to rest on their laurels. When they announced Amazon Prime and free, two day shipping in 2005 they completely transformed the retail landscape, changing consumer expectations forever. This week they announced they’re going to cut delivery time in half with the goal of getting orders to customers in a day or less. Investing $800m to do it, the promise of next day shipping should attract more customers to Prime and apply even more pressure on competitors.
How America almost banned chain grocery stores
A fascinating long read on A&P, the first chain grocer, and how the concept of a grocery chain almost never was. Thanks to business model innovation, cost cutting, and intense lobbying the ‘monopoly’ of the chain store wasn’t broken up. As the author puts it, “the story of how the chain survived isn’t just entertaining in its own right. It also provides the model for how today’s titans of retail—from Walmart and Amazon to Google and Apple—work to preserve their own monopolies, ultimately convincing us that we’re better off without the competition.”
After Outrage, Sweetgreen Will Accept Cash Again
It looks like it isn’t that easy to go cashless after all. An early proponent of electronic payments, the fast-casual chain Sweetgreen has rethought its policy and is now accepting cash. Again. Time for new signage.
Their copywriter needs to get back to work...
FinTech
JCPenney explains why it dropped Apple Pay
JCPenney quietly ditched Apple Pay this month, tweeting out the news in response to a customer question. JCPenney had first rolled out Apple Pay into testing in 2015, then expanded to all its U.S. stores the following year, and later to its mobile app. Now it’s gone from all of them. JCP followed up later noting that due to the EMV mandate requirement that all terminals be upgraded to be compliant with the contactless chip certification, they had to turn it off. Sure, that’s why you took it out of the mobile app…Ultimately this is about data, and when customers use Apple Pay, retailers don’t get as much. Worth watching to see if anyone else drops Apple Pay in the coming weeks.
SoFi Is in Talks With Qatar for $500 Million Funding Round
SoFi is back on the fundraising trail, in talks to raise $500m from the Qatar Investment Authority and others. With the valuation staying put, it looks like the company is trying to shore up its coffers in anticipation of the pending but no one really knows when but it’s coming for sure right recession. Originally prepping to go public this year, it looks like the business is taking a bit longer to get there. Better safe than sorry.
Climate and Energy
The federal government subsidized the carbon economy. Now it should subsidize a greener one.
The Green New Deal and subsequent clean energy policy efforts have been decried as socialist, government interference in what is an otherwise capitalist and ‘free market’ energy economy. This op-ed nicely summarizes how government incentives, subsidies and regulations supported the rise the rise of the fossil fuel industry as we know it today.
The nation’s energy sector has never functioned as a capitalist “free market.” In fact, the pervasive use of fossil fuels today is the product of corporate-friendly policies through which the government has subsidized the industry and performed the spadework for its expansion. For more than two centuries, the state has worked on behalf of fossil-fuel interests not just to mend market failures or level the playing field, but also to create markets for energy firms and build infrastructure that ensure their profitability.
Electric Vehicle Battery Shrinks and So Does the Total Cost
Electric vehicles have become more affordable in the last 10 years thanks in no small part to the decreasing cost of the battery itself. Soon choosing an electric car over its combustion-engine equivalent will soon be just a matter of taste, not a matter of cost. With the battery having gone from 50%+ of the cost of the car in 2015 to just north of 30% today, and projected to go down to under 25% by 2022, the crossover point — when electric vehicles become cheaper than their combustion-engine equivalents — will happen sooner than many originally thought.
Walmart, HSBC reward supplier emission cuts with better loan terms
Private companies have stepped up their efforts to combat climate change in recent years. More corporates than ever before are working directly with energy developers to build renewable plants, collaborating on buying clean energy and driving their supply chains to go green. Walmart, in partnership with HSBC, has announced this week that suppliers can get better financing terms from the bank with the hope of driving sustainability improvements further up the chain. Sometimes it pays to be green.
Random Tidbits
Women Did Everything Right. Then Work Got ‘Greedy.’
A data-driven, thought and conversation provoking read exploring the rising gender gap amongst those in “greedy professions”, senior managerial or financial services jobs.
This is not about educated women opting out of work (they are the least likely to stop working after having children, even if they move to less demanding jobs). It’s about how the nature of work has changed in ways that push couples who have equal career potential to take on unequal roles.
How living on the wrong side of a time zone can be hazardous to your health
According to a new study your long term health can vary depending on where you live in relation to the next time zone, Research now shows how social schedules and biological rhythms come into conflict along time zone borders, with those living in areas where the sun sets at a later time “more likely to be sleep deprived, more likely to sleep less than 6 hours, and less likely to sleep at least 8 hours. The effects are larger among individuals with early working schedules and among individuals with children of school age.”
This Question Will Change Your (Reading) Life
With so much great content out there, carving out time to read books gets harder. Add to that the eternal question of “What should I read next?”, and making that time gets even more challenging. The hack: Whatever books shaped the people you most admire and respect.
Quote I’m thinking about: “We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it.” ― Lyndon B. Johnson