Every company faces a choice of where to source their management team: from within the company or from outside? The implications of this choice are enormous. Leaders that are groomed internally already know the business and can easily fit within the corporate culture. However, leaders from outside often come with more proven track records.
As the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics draws near, we examine commercial property transaction volumes across Asia Pacific to see which country is on track for the gold medal in 2021. Japan had an unbroken record of 13 consecutive annual number one rankings from 2007, when Real Capital Analytics started comprehensively collecting data across the region. However, Japan comes into the delayed Tokyo Games on the back of a second-place finish, with China standing at the top of the podium in 2020.
Home Improvement received a major boost as Americans sheltering in place focused their time and energy on improving their living space. In contrast, Fitness took what some predicted would be a fatal blow as many Americans discovered cheaper, more time-effective ways to work out at home. Now, it seems that gyms are making a comeback – while home improvement giants continue to hold onto their gains. And the driving force for both seems to be a strong return to ‘normal’ shopping behaviors. We dove into our Q2 Quarterly Index to find out more.
Last year was a public reminder of how important our health is—and a reckoning of how vulnerable our healthcare system can be. And we’re not out of the pandemic yet. Partially due to the presence of the highly contagious delta variant, COVID cases are surging. There has been a 109% increase of cases over the last fourteen days. (Though, hospitalizations and deaths are significantly down from the beginning of the year.) With this reality, public attention is still on our healthcare system, its holes, and what can be done to improve it in the future.
Mobile games making use of ASMR are on the rise! The number of games ranking across iOS and Google Play with the word “ASMR” in title and/or description have been rising for 13 straight quarters. Q2 2021 ended with 405 games, an increase of 72.3% year-over-year. For the uninitiated, ASMR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response. It’s when your body responds to audio stimuli by giving you a tingling sensation and/or pleasant chills. Many people find this sensation to be calming and relaxing. ASMR can be used to relieve stress and anxiety.
Automakers have been struggling to produce cars due to the global shortage of semiconductor chips first occurred in the early months this year. Fiat/Chrysler, General Motors and Ford and other big names in the industry announced they would reduce the pace of production to tackle this challenge. It did not take long and the impact of the idled factories is now reflected on the sales. Using employee counts are often times the right metric produced by our data to analyze industrial companies.
Talk to any Gen Zer and ask them the last commercial they saw. Chances are they don’t even watch cable. We’re living in the golden of video content with endless options of digital entertainment available at our fingertips. We can binge-watch, pause whenever we want, watch from anywhere, and even rent the latest blockbuster films before they hit theatres. Of course, the huge boom of digital streaming options was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. With museums, venues, and other forms of entertainment closed, the number of people streaming entertainment at home skyrocketed.
In this Placer Bytes, we dive into Tractor Supply’s impressive growth, explore Camping World’s strong start to 2021, and look at performance of some of Gap Inc.’s various brands. The Home Improvement sector does not seem to be slowing down, but even within this highly successful sector, Tractor Supply’s growth stands out. Already before the pandemic, the brand’s monthly visits were growing at a much higher rate than competitors
As the global pandemic sent shockwaves throughout the world, lockdown measures ignited a boom in remote work. While many industries struggled to weather the COVID storm, video conferencing and collaboration software vendors, including Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Slack, reaped the rewards. In fact, the use of remote collaboration software surged over 176% in May of 2020. Today, we'll explore how these three brands adapted their respective ad strategies to usher in a new era of business and work culture.
After a yearlong delay, the Tokyo Olympics are almost here. Sports fans are eager to watch Simone Biles, Allyson Felix, and Adam Peaty pretty much defy physics, while sponsors are ready to measure their ROI. The leadup to the Olympics has been complicated. Not only was it delayed an entire year due to the pandemic, but organizers didn’t decide whether or not spectators would be allowed until last week. Though attendees won’t be allowed due to rising cases of COVID in Tokyo, the Olympic Games will still bring in a huge amount of sponsorship revenue.
The pandemic created unique challenges for local, state, and regional economies. Downtown retail districts emptied out, businesses shuttered, and tourism ground to a halt as shelter-in-place orders spread across the country. Now, with restrictions gradually lifting, a radically different reality is emerging. While certain sectors are returning to their pre-pandemic vitality, some areas of commercial life are forever transformed.
Torrid ($CURV)- the popular plus-size women’s clothing brand joined the New York Stock Exchange on July 1st, with an opening market valuation of $2.3B dollars. Earnest compared Torrid shoppers with those of major competitors like Lane Bryant and ELOQUII for a comprehensive view of the brand. According to Torrid CEO, Liz Munoz, part of Torrid’s success (and its secret sauce), lies in its omnichannel approach. Torrid currently has around 600 physical stores, but attributes 70% of its sales to online purchases.
Meghan Markle, the former _Suits_ actress and Duchess of Sussex, is a favorite feature for tabloids in both the US and UK. Her fashion choices are especially of interest, and items she is seen wearing often sell out on the retailers’ websites soon after she is photographed wearing them. But how much of a sales boost are these shops really getting? And does a sighting produce more interest in the US or UK? In today’s Insight Flash, we look at whether US or UK shoppers are more likely to be influenced by Royal fashion trends, and which demographics in the US respond the most.
When the coronavirus pandemic struck, cities all around the world went into lockdown. Roads were deserted as businesses closed and sent employees home to work. In the United States, we saw major congestion hotspots transform to free flow traffic as people stopped commuting downtown to work. Now, over a year later, businesses are opening and the roads are returning to their pre-COVID state. Using the INRIX Trip Analytics tool we looked at how much downtown trips decreased throughout the course of COVID in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington DC, as well as Berlin, and London.
Our Macro survey series, which continues to build upon our COVID-19 impact series, saw participation from 950 IT Decision makers. The full results are now available with topics that include: IT spend growth, tech sector priorities, remote vs. hybrid vs. in-office projections, and hiring trends. While we can't give away all the great data findings from our macro survey series, in the full report you will find key takeaways like these on overall IT budget growth and Sector Spending Priorities.
In this Placer Bytes, we break down the effectiveness of Kohl’s June ‘Wow deals’ push, the continued rise of AMC and Massage Envy’s surprising recovery. For Kohl’s, June marked another significant step in the recovery of offline locations with visits down just 6.4% compared to June 2019. This was the best mark in 2021 and showed a near 2% decline in the visit gap when comparing to 2019. But success of the department leader’s June push becomes all the more significant when analyzing visits at the weekly level.
Prime Day is touted by Amazon as one of the largest online shopping events of the year. This year, Walmart and Target expanded their concurrent online shopping events to compete with Amazon’s Prime Day. Earnest analyzed the impact of the retail battle royale in late June on the performance of Amazon, Walmart, and Target. Prime Day gains in 2021 were more muted than past years with Amazon online sales increasing by 20% WoW. The lift was less than half of what the retailer experienced in both 2018 and 2019 and slightly lower than in 2020.
Prime Day is akin to Christmas in June for many Amazon fans. But how much benefit does the company really get from its promotion? In today’s Insight Flash, we look at whether Prime Day sales have a bigger impact on overall AMZN spend in the UK or the US, how much of those sales go to third-party sellers in each country, and whether the exclusivity for Prime members actually encourages sign-ups. Both the UK and the US saw an acceleration in AMZN spend growth the week of Prime Day versus the prior week.
The period around the July 4th holiday is typically regarded as one of the biggest summer sales times for retailers, both in terms of traditional Independence Day celebration supplies and other summer products going on sale, and even the early signs of back-to-school spending. This year’s July 4th promised particularly high sales, both because of the holiday’s weekend timing and pent-up demand as the country reopens.
Among the many supply chain challenges of the pandemic, one such commodity experiencing a shortage is boba—the tapioca pearls that are the main ingredient in bubble tea. A closer look at consumer transaction data for large national chain Kung Fu Tea reflects that demand for bubble tea has been rising during the pandemic, but so far does not indicate that the boba shortage is affecting the company’s sales or customer counts, likely due to the company having warehouses on both the East Coast and West Coast.
