Over the space of 20 years, luxury changed enormously. The Japanese had been a set of new consumers for luxury, but in terms of numbers they hadn’t eclipsed the US as the biggest market for luxury.
China’s ascent into the WTO (World Trade Organisation) made a lot of business people and politicians a lot richer. China challenged the US in terms of luxury market size. On their rise, Chinese consumers changed a lot in their sophistication as they educated themselves on luxury consumption.
These new consumers picked up new traits such as wine drinking. This also meant that luxury goods became new asset classes as Chinese money looked to acquire only the best. Chinese culture in turn impacted luxury design. Chinese new year became more important than Christmas.
Then there was the second generation money. Young rather than old consumers. Consumers who were looking for something less formal, either because they didn’t wear anything but streetwear or they worked in the creative classes rather than the traditional professions and high finance.
The industry had traditionally avoided rap artists and R&B singers, now Jay Z and Beyonce are the face of Tiffanys and Fendi had collaborated with Rihanna.
They no longer wanted to have to wear a jacket and tie to have afternoon tea at the Mandarin. They took an eclectic look more attuned to the Buffalo Collective than Vogue Italia.
You had hybridisation with the street to create a new category of luxe streetwear in a way that also owes a debt to football casual terrace wear and the pain.
Now you have Zegna badge engineering approach shoes from alpine brand La Sportiva and Prada has done a similar thing with adidas’ iconic Stan Smith tennis shoes. Balenciaga with their Speed Sock looks like a mix between Nike’s flyknit football boots and the Nike Footscape sole.
Luxury has traditionally reflected status. Goods of a superior nature that the ‘wrong sort’ of people would never be able to afford. Luxury then became a symbol that you’d made it. In Asian markets, particularly China, luxury became a tool. People gifted luxury products to make relationships work better. It also signified that you are the kind of successful business person that partners could trust. You started to see factory managers with Gucci man bags and premium golfwear to signal their success. Then when the scions of these business people and figures in authority were adults, luxury has become about premium self expression.
Paidy considers listing as ‘buy now, pay later’ catches on in Japan | Financial Times – Japan is a microcosm of what’s happening in terms of buy now, pay later on the web. Japan is notable, because like Germany, historically it has been a heavy cash focused consumer payments market. Mobile payments were mainly used for daily expenses like commuter travel or shopping at the combini. Many consumer e-commerce sites now have Klarna involved. Even Amazon is getting in on the buy now, pay later theme:Amazon Enters the ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ Space Through Affirm – All of this looks like a consumer credit iceberg that might catch bankers et al by surprise. The buy now, pay later model itself isn’t new. Its payment by instalments model was used by catalogue businesses to furniture stores. It is lay away for more impulsive times.
Cantopop star Denise Ho flagged by law enforcement agencies: Sing Tao | The Standard – a few things are interesting which are further evidence of the maximalist interpretation of the Hong Kong National Security Law. Going after Ho is an indication that none of the pro-democracy movement will be tolerated, even as a Potemkin village type construct.
Chinese Official Dismisses Wave of Emigration From Hong Kong — Radio Free Asia – “Neither Beijing nor Hong Kong officials are willing to admit that there is a crisis in Hong Kong,” Cheng said. “Hong Kong residents lack confidence in the future and can’t tolerate the current situation, so a considerable number of people are choosing to emigrate.”
“I think the central government must care about that, because it will affect how its policies in Hong Kong are perceived in the international community,” he said. Cheng, who has himself recently emigrated, said the feelings of the people of Hong Kong are no longer being taken into account by Beijing. – I honestly think the Xi administration doesn’t care
I couldn’t avoid doing a post on Afghanistan given what had been going on this week. The Afghanistan conflict posed a number of interesting questions about:
What privacy and security means for the people left behind in Afghanistan in the digital age
Why strategy is seldom a teacher and several countries have made the same mistake in Afghanistan – (Britain did so twice!)
The failure of intelligence in Afghanistan reminded me of the failure of intelligence agencies to realise that the fall of the Berlin Wall would happen. There was also a failure to underhand who the players were and their motivations in Afghanistan
What will Afghanistan mean for Pakistan moving forwards? Once out, the west has the perfect opportunity to shun Pakistan; which will leave the country vulnerable to Chinese predatory practices
The US Is Removing Records of Its War in Afghanistan From the Internet – Lives are on the line here, but helping them may mean destroying—even if temporarily—the memory of the war and all that happened. It’s a horrible problem to face. One potential solution would be for the U.S. and its allies to take as many Afghan refugees as want to flee the country. – it assumes that the Taliban and supporters like the Pakistani ISI intelligence agency haven’t been caching this material themselves over the years. Things got rolled up so fast, they probably have hold of records from Afghanistan government payroll ledgers to intelligence reports
Germany Flew 65,000 Beer Cans Out of Afghanistan, but Just 7 People on an Evacuation Flight – “There was transport capacity for alcohol, but not for the local staff in Afghanistan,” read a piece in Germany’s Bild newspaper, referring to the fact that the German military had earlier flown home 65,000 cans of beer and 340 bottles of wine before it withdrew from its bases in Mazar-e Sharif and Kabul at the end of June. – surely they could have blown up the alcohol and put people on the flights? – this is the kind of thing that fuels future grudges that morph into terrorist attacks. But it also shows the colossal failure in intelligence in a microcosm
SIGAR | Lessons Learned. The Ides of August – a couple of good post-mortem reads on Afghanistan. A few things struck me. Mission creep had been baked in, although much of that was down to the allies partnering with the Northern Alliance and liberal values. The dual nature of Pakistan, which I suspect Pakistan will get punished for in the longer term. The lack of intelligence on the main players involved such as former president of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai
Beauty
Skincare Preferences by Generation | NPD Group – Despite the generational differences in skincare preferences, there are also commonalities. At the end of the day, it seems we’re not so different, after all. Whether they are more like my mother or my cousin, we see from consumers across-the-board that they are open to trying new things, are looking for clean ingredients, and simply want skincare that produces results from a brand they can trust. Regardless of the trends driving the category, the demand for efficacy and transparency is here to stay
Business
Wolfsburg, we have a problem: How Volkswagen stalled in China | Reuters – Last month, though, he said Volkswagen had fixed the problems revealed by the test, that the ructions of the episode had subsided and the carmaker’s Chinese business was recovering. “We have once again clearly one of the safest cars on the market in this segment,” Woellenstein told reporters in July. “We will once again take up the old leadership of the Passat.”But there is quite some ground to regain in the large family car segment. A total of 47,480 Passats were sold in the first six months of this year in China, some way behind the 91,110 Toyota Camrys (7203.T) and 89,157 Honda Accords (7267.T), according to LMC. The figures from the same period of 2019, before the pandemic struck, show how steeply the Volkswagen model has fallen away of late: 91,400 Passats were sold versus 111,968 Accords and 85,396 Camrys. – I am surprised by this, given Volkswagen’s obsession with common platforms
Tata’s rise mirrors the sweep of India’s history | Financial Times – Tata is no longer at India’s entrepreneurial vanguard. The likes of Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries and Gautam Adani’s eponymous group, with their investments in telecoms and renewable energy, hold stronger claim to be the “nation builders” of today. These tycoons represent a different way of doing business, one that has prompted much consternation. They lack Tata’s ambivalence about the state, aligning themselves unabashedly with Narendra Modi, and share few of the conservative Tatas’ qualms about “wealth creation for its own sake”.
Biden is sandbagging on immigration – by Noah Smith – Noahpinion – the new American support for throwing open the country’s gates is more broad than it is deep. There’s a real desire to cleanse the stain of Trump’s human rights abuses and flirtation with white-nationalism — to at least be able to say that America is still the Nation of Immigrants, that we still have compassion for the people of the poor countries of the world. But beyond that idealistic impulse, I’m not so sure that most liberals have a strong, enduring commitment to welcoming in as many refugees, asylum-seekers, and economic migrants as possible.
One reason is that the Democratic party is increasingly the party of the educated, and to most educated Americans, people like refugees and asylum seekers live in a different world. There’s little natural class solidarity or empathy there. And when it comes to skilled immigrants — the people waiting desperately for that backlog of 100,000 green cards to be processed — well, to most educated Americans, that’s the competition. Both for themselves and for their kids in schools.
Beijing’s American Hustle | Foreign Affairs – U.S. institutions, especially in finance and technology, cling to self-destructive habits acquired through decades of “engagement,” an approach to China that led Washington to prioritize economic cooperation and trade above all else.
If U.S. policymakers and legislators find the will, however, there is a way to pull Wall Street and Silicon Valley back onside, convert the United States’ vulnerabilities into strengths, and mitigate the harmful effects of Beijing’s political warfare. That must begin with bolder steps to stem the flow of U.S. capital into China’s so-called military-civil fusion enterprises and to frustrate Beijing’s aspiration for leadership in, and even monopoly control of, high-tech industries—starting with semiconductor manufacturing
How Chinese pressure on covid origins probe shocked WHO — and led Tedros to push back – The Washington Post – When a WHO scientist on a coronavirus origins probe announced in February that the idea that the virus leaked from a lab was “extremely unlikely” and unworthy of further investigation, senior WHO staff in Geneva were shocked. “We fell off our chairs,” one member told the authors. The team in Wuhan appeared to have given in to Chinese pressure to dismiss the idea without a real investigation. Later, when the WHO-China team released a report that again dismissed that scenario, Tedros pushed back, saying that the research was not “extensive enough” and that there had not been “timely and comprehensive data-sharing.” Since then, relations between the WHO and China have nosedived. Chinese officials said in July that they would not accept any further investigation into the origin of the coronavirus in China and accused the United States of pressuring scientists. The WHO last week released a statement that resisted the idea that “the origins study has been politicized, or that WHO has acted due to political pressure.”
China, the WHO and the power grab that fuelled a pandemic | News | The Sunday Times – In 2017 Chan crowned her final year in office by welcoming Xi to Geneva. While he was there, she signed an agreement that committed the WHO to working alongside China on health as part of the country’s Belt and Road initiative. It was the first time any UN agency had signed up to the initiative, which seeks to extend Chinese influence and trade in more than 70 developing countries by financing infrastructure projects. The initiative is highly controversial because its critics argue that China uses it to shackle countries, particularly in Africa, to “unsustainable debt” as a way of gaining access to the continent’s raw materials and buying political favours. “I think health is too special to get into the really seedy politics that Belt and Road is part of, and I wouldn’t want the WHO to be associated with it,” Gostin argues. “The cost in terms of human rights and debt, and other adverse events for Africa, was a bridge too far.”
Hong Kong’s Leader Killed Her City – The Atlantic – Regina Ip, a pro-Beijing lawmaker and member of Lam’s cabinet, told me that simply having the laws on the books would provide a “deterrent effect” to protesters, and that the fears of journalists and activists over the curtailing of freedoms were not “completely misguided.”
How the daigou can help new brands | Vogue Business – The classic image of the daigou is of an entrepreneurial and well-connected individual who buys global luxury brands on behalf of Chinese clients abroad, where prices are lower and hard-to-find products are more accessible. But the new model daigou is also working closer to home, and mixing emerging Chinese designers with foreign brands. The motivation for the evolution of the daigou’s role comes from a wave of young Gen Z Chinese consumers who are seeking more interesting and affordable fashion and don’t care as much about the name on the label. This is good news for new brands in China – and elsewhere. In a fiercely competitive market, any well-designed brand has the potential to catch consumers’ eyes. What’s needed in the early days of a new brand’s development is an effective sales channel. – Building a similar relationship with daigou, that brands currently have with fashion stylists
[Report] Bad News, By Joseph Bernstein | Harper’s Magazine – In the beginning, there were ABC, NBC, and CBS, and they were good. Midcentury American man could come home after eight hours of work and turn on his television and know where he stood in relation to his wife, and his children, and his neighbors, and his town, and his country, and his world. And that was good. Or he could open the local paper in the morning in the ritual fashion, taking his civic communion with his coffee, and know that identical scenes were unfolding in households across the country. Over frequencies our American never tuned in to, red-baiting, ultra-right-wing radio preachers hyperventilated to millions. In magazines and books he didn’t read, elites fretted at great length about the dislocating effects of television. And for people who didn’t look like him, the media had hardly anything to say at all – give this a read
COVID slows Apple and Google production shift away from China – Nikkei Asia – AirPods — both entry-level and high-end models — were among the earliest products that Apple began making in significant amounts in Vietnam, having moved production there around two years ago during the height of U.S.-China trade tensions. Apple’s plan to bring some MacBook and iPad production to Vietnam has also been put on hold due to a lack of engineering resources, an incomplete notebook computer supply chain and the dynamic COVID situation, one of the people said. Production of smart doorbells, security cameras and smart speakers for Amazon, which recently moved to Vietnam, has also faced delays since May as assembly lines in the northern part of the country coped with a surge in local cases and tougher COVID prevention measures
Opinion | We built a system like Apple’s to flag child sexual abuse material — and concluded the tech was dangerous – The Washington Post – Our research project began two years ago, as an experimental system to identify CSAM in end-to-end-encrypted online services. As security researchers, we know the value of end-to-end encryption, which protects data from third-party access. But we’re also horrified that CSAM is proliferating on encrypted platforms. And we worry online services are reluctant to use encryption without additional tools to combat CSAM. We sought to explore a possible middle ground, where online services could identify harmful content while otherwise preserving end-to-end encryption. The concept was straightforward: If someone shared material that matched a database of known harmful content, the service would be alerted. If a person shared innocent content, the service would learn nothing. People couldn’t read the database or learn whether content matched, since that information could reveal law enforcement methods and help criminals evade detection. Knowledgeable observers argued a system like ours was far from feasible. After many false starts, we built a working prototype. But we encountered a glaring problem.
Our system could be easily repurposed for surveillance and censorship. The design wasn’t restricted to a specific category of content; a service could simply swap in any content-matching database, and the person using that service would be none the wiser. A foreign government could, for example, compel a service to out people sharing disfavored political speech. That’s no hypothetical: WeChat, the popular Chinese messaging app, already uses content matching to identify dissident material. India enacted rules this year that could require pre-screening content critical of government policy. Russia recently fined Google, Facebook and Twitter for not removing pro-democracy protest materials. We spotted other shortcomings. The content-matching process could have false positives, and malicious users could game the system to subject innocent users to scrutiny. – Emphasis in bold is mine
Technology
Laptops Shortage Is Easing as Pandemic Demand Wanes – Bloomberg – The waning demand for PCs will likely last for at least several more quarters. Memory prices are dropping precipitously on fears the chip cycle is over. But it’s good news for anyone looking to buy a laptop, printer, webcam or router. Expect them to be much easier to find in stores this fall. – I am hoping that the price of SSDs will fall again
Intel with an old take on big.little for Alder Lake | EE News Europe – Intel’s next-generation desktop chip, code-named Alder Lake, is the company’s first hybrid architecture to integrate two core types – the Performance-core and Efficient-core. This is similar to ARM’s big.little approach which used a small core optimised for low power consumption with lower performance alongside a larger, higher performance core. Both cores could run the same code depending on the context, avoiding the problems of having a scheduler to allocate tasks to multiple cores. This has traditionally been a limiting factor for the system-level performance of multicore chip designs
Epic’s Fortnite lawsuit has become a nightmare for Google – Protocol – Google ‘estimated in 2019 that it risked losing as much as $6 billion per year if app makers and app store operators banded together with Epic and began creating alternative distribution channels. So instead of offering a superior product, the company muscled its way to a market position now being viewed by U.S. regulators as potentially anticompetitive’ – this might feed into a wider FTC case later on given the focus on revenue. More related content here.
Audi launched its latest concept car the Audi Skysphere. It’s electrically powered as you’d expect. Massive screens for displays and sustainable materials used in the interior. It has autonomous driving when its in a ‘grand touring’ mode. It allows for the owner to drive in a ‘sports car’ mode. All pretty normal stuff so far.
But sports car mode means that the vehicle length shrinks. That’s right the Audi Skysphere changes shape rather than just changing functions up via electronics.
In terms of styling, Audi calls calls jazz age Horsh tourers the influence for the Audi Skysphere. Audi is descended from Auto Union AG. Auto Union AG was formed in 1932, with the merger of Horch, DKW, Wanderer and the original Audi Automobilwerke. That’s why the Audi logo has four circles and why Horsh is the influence.
Its long, wide and low bonnet brings to mind the Dodge Viper. The sides reminded me of Ford’s ‘Edge’ design language, if it was done by Zaha Hadid Architects. Lots of the details such as the lights use a mass of small triangles, reminding me of Hadid’s Zaragoza Bridge Pavilion. It also serves a reminder that computerised shapes are usually made up of lots of small polygons. Triangles must be a thing in car design at the moment, not only does the Audi Skysphere feature them, but so does the new Hyundai Santa Cruz throughout its design.
Audi talks about the Audi Skysphere in terms of progressive luxury, which seems to be about experience and not making a huge environmental impact. They talk about vegan leather (that could be anything from fungi derived proteins to a PVC style plastic) and microfibre (finely spun and woven (usually) polyester / nylon fibre mix).
The problems are likely to be in the system that the car would go into.
How is insurance handled for an autonomous vehicle?
Who is the insured party? Vehicle manufacturers would like for it to be the owner who might be responsible for any autonomous vehicle decisions. Putting software product liability out of their hands and on the buyer.
Who would be the defendant in the case of someone being run over?
How would vehicle inspection tests like Germany’s TUV or the UK’s MOT handle a collapsable chassis?
I am a bit disappointed to see that Audi isn’t thinking seriously about a post Lithium world sodium ion batteries or hydrogen powered vehicles
Los Angeles Olympics 1984
The Los Angeles Olympics was the last olympic event that made a profit. This was down to the city being able to use existing venues for all the competitions and a less onerous demand on resources than games ran since then.
Los Angeles didn’t have the reputation for design that Munich or the 1964 games in Tokyo had. So this video by the Olympics gave me new insight into the experience. I remembered the logo and the mascot, but since I watched only a small amount of the LA Games. This was because I was working on the family farm at the time. The bits that I did see were on an old black and white TV, so I missed a lot of the design details shared.
Home-made silicon foundry
I’d not heard of Sam Zeloof before. Over the past few years he has managed to fabricate integrated circuits ‘chips’ in his own home. Admittedly when we say home, we are talking about a big American multi-car garage. The results is impressive. One obvious thing to point out is that he is not putting in dust suppression techniques like you would see in a commercial fab.
Solid Logic Technology
IBM came up with an interesting ceramic hybrid technology that powered the Apollo missions and IBM’s System 360 computers. They were engineered for a robustness that even silicon micro-processors couldn’t match.
Report: Apple to announce client-side photo hashing system to detect child abuse images in user’s photos libraries – 9to5Mac – photo hashing its not foolproof. Once the proof of concept exists, Apple won’t be able to withstand the pressure authoritarian government could use it to track other materials. Tencent’s WeChat is already collecting memes that the Chinese government wouldn’t like from foreign WeChat accounts so that it can train its algorithms to locate similar content with domestic users. The risk for Apple’s customers in other markets like Russia, China and the middle east is real. Apple’s development of photo hashing has garnered a lot of coverage
Apple led the market on encryption, but other players like WhatsApp have made it clear that they won’t follow Apple on photo hashing.
I read the information Apple put out yesterday and I'm concerned. I think this is the wrong approach and a setback for people's privacy all over the world.
People have asked if we'll adopt this system for WhatsApp. The answer is no.
Apple has been trying to ignore the voices complaining against its photo hashing initiative. The problem is that those voices are the early adopters and developers who have made Apple what it is today. I think that this could end very badly for Apple in the long term. Particularly when viewed in context of questionable ethical choices despite its progressive positioning on issues in western markets
Apple Discusses “Screeching Voices of the Minority” in Internal Memos – It’s difficult to even write a piece like this, pointing out that a feature ostensibly created for good could have bad implications. Again: What happens when a country like China uses this feature to find people with images critical of the government? Why wouldn’t the industry want to start searching for pirated content on iPhones in a few years?
Is Pax Sinica possible? – China will need to start upholding democratic values and norms, and cultivating peaceful relationships with other countries. Pax Americana has survived for so long, because many countries, including China’s neighbours, rely heavily on the US for trade, finance, technology, and security. They will be reluctant to accept Pax Sinica, unless China offers them something better. And that must begin with pax – I suspect that Premier Xi would be thinking more along the lines of mercantilistic trade relationships and vassal statehood, which would be more in keeping with pre-revolutionary China
Consumer behaviour
Everybody needs to get vaccinated, says Tilman Fertitta – Fertitta’s comments about employees admitting that they had fake vaccines cards is pretty disturbing. It isn’t like vaccines are in short supply in the markets that has restaurants in like New York. The counterfeit vaccine cards must be more about avoiding vaccines all together
Historical language records reveal a surge of cognitive distortions in recent decades | PNAS – Individuals with depression are prone to maladaptive patterns of thinking, known as cognitive distortions, whereby they think about themselves, the world, and the future in overly negative and inaccurate ways. These distortions are associated with marked changes in an individual’s mood, behavior, and language. We hypothesize that societies can undergo similar changes in their collective psychology that are reflected in historical records of language use. Here, we investigate the prevalence of textual markers of cognitive distortions in over 14 million books for the past 125 y and observe a surge of their prevalence since the 1980s, to levels exceeding those of the Great Depression and both World Wars. This pattern does not seem to be driven by changes in word meaning, publishing and writing standards, or the Google Books sample. Our results suggest a recent societal shift toward language associated with cognitive distortions and internalizing disorders. – literally society is sick
ongoing by Tim Bray · Apps Getting Worse – Every high-tech company has people called “Product Managers” (PMs) whose job it is to work with customers and management and engineers to define what products should do. No PM in history has ever said “This seems to be working pretty well, let’s leave it the way it is.” Because that’s not bold. That’s not visionary. That doesn’t get you promoted. – This also explains why Skype got designed into irrelevancy
FMCG
Unilever installs a detergent refill machine in Mumbai | Trendwatching – this all feels like things have gone full circle. My Mum and Dad growing up as children in rural Ireland talked about how many dry goods products were sold by weight in the village store. My Granny used to keep spices and flavourings for baking in a bucket sized tin that she’d been gifted decades before by the village store owner. Used packaging was a community asset rather than a liability. The biscuits were sold by the dozen in a paper bag by the shopkeeper. I can just about remember the village store and its long time owner Mrs Paddy Kelly, (Mr Kelly had died decades ago but I have no idea what Mrs Kelly’s name was). By the time I was born, it was more like a modern convenience store, with a farm supplies store attached. Electricity had come to the farm when I was three or four, so we had a fridge and an icebox – ideal for a block of HB vanilla ice cream that came back from the shop wrapped in newsprint to try and keep it cold.
Secondly, by having a vending machine in store; Unilever are still managing to keep control of their brand.
Japan
Japan’s fractured polity exposed by COVID-19 crisis – Nikkei Asia – Whatever the intention, the public sees hypocrisy, inconsistency and incompetence. The vaccination rollout has been a mess. The public was asked to practice “self-restraint” and stay at home for the fourth state of emergency as the country opened its doors to tens of thousands of athletes and officials for the 2020 Olympics.
This dismal state of affairs clashes with the image of competence and professionalism that Japan has enjoyed for decades, and for which it is admired around the world.
Japan looks good in international COVID comparisons, but by its own standards, the situation is perceived as chaotic and a failure of leadership. The public has lost faith. Cynicism has spread as people blame a sclerotic government that does not seem to understand the many recent transformations of Japanese society
Legal
South Africa grants patent to an AI system known as DABUS — Quartz Africa – The patent application listing DABUS as the inventor was filed in patent offices around the world, including the US, Europe, Australia, and South Africa. But only South Africa granted the patent (Australia followed suit a few days later after a court judgment gave the go-ahead). South Africa’s decision has received widespread backlash from intellectual property experts. Some have labelled it a mistake, or an oversight by the patent office. However, as a patent and AI scholar whose PhD aims to address the gaps in patent law created by AI inventorship, I suggest that the decision is supported by the government’s policy environment in recent years. This has aimed to increase innovation, and views technology as a way to achieve this – back when I worked for DSM before I went to college, a lot of of our patented products were developed using software that tested and then gave us optimal formulas – yet the patents went to the doctor who was the nominal head of the lab
Luxury
LVMH’s Deal With Google Is Groundbreaking. Here’s Why. – develop business solutions based on artificial intelligence (AI), it raised many questions about how brands are embracing the use of digital technologies to reshape the luxury experience. Google said they would join forces to empower LVMH’s individual luxury brands to create new, personalised customer experiences that fostered long-term growth, through functions like demand forecasting, inventory optimisation, as well as develop new business use cases at scale and explore co-innovation opportunities by launching a data and AI Academy in Paris
ongoing by Tim Bray · Apps Getting Worse – Every high-tech company has people called “Product Managers” (PMs) whose job it is to work with customers and management and engineers to define what products should do. No PM in history has ever said “This seems to be working pretty well, let’s leave it the way it is.” Because that’s not bold. That’s not visionary. That doesn’t get you promoted. – this explains why Skype got designed into irrelevancy
Sports
Why Puma cancelled a $2.7 million deal with Nigeria — Quartz Africa – Nigeria’s current sports administrators are delighted. The athletics federation said Nigeria’s sports minister had successfully stopped athletes from receiving Puma bags containing about 40 items each in Tokyo through the Nigerian embassy. To this set of administrators, the 2019 deal was not properly agreed between Puma and previous leaders of Nigeria’s athletics body
Samsung flagships can no longer compete with the Chinese smartphones – The current flagship Galaxy S21 series has never managed to win worldwide love. Judging by the information from South Korean publications, the flagships, which were supposed to destroy competitors, failed miserably in sales. Based on the report of Counterpoint analysts, it can be concluded that the Galaxy S21 series has not been able to repeat the success of any of its predecessors, starting with the Galaxy S5 – this looks like PC sales when ‘white box manufacturers’ disrupted Winter brands such as IBM and Compaq
In the space of a few decades Hyundai Motors have gone from building cars based on western and Japanese car manufacturers to having its own luxury marque: Genesis, that challenges Lexus and Mercedes-Benz.
Genesis advert from the FT magazine
Genesis origins
The Hyundai Grandeur was an executive saloon that they started making in 1986. It was basically a rebadged version of the Mitsubishi Debonair. The Debonair was a competitor to the Nissan Cedric and Toyota Crown. It was noticeable for having the same body style from 1964 to 1986. Hyundai built the a licensed version of the mark II Debonair.
Hyundai needed a domestic luxury car to ferry officials around in for the Seoul olympics in 1988. The focus on the Olympics was because Hyundai Motors had become an official sponsor. The Seoul olympics was put on to showcase how Korea had become a developed nation over the previous four decades.
The early Grandeur was a world away from Hyundai’s previous range topper, a rebadged version of the Ford Granada mark II.
Successive models of the Grandeur were the top of the range vehicles in the Hyundai Motors range until the arrival of the Hyundai Equus and Genesis. When the Genesis brand range was founded the Hyundai Grandeur reduced the number of markets were it was available to South Korea, China, the Middle East, Latin and South America (except Mexico).
Hyundai Genesis -> Genesis G80
The Genesis was originally designed as an interpretation of the modern rear-wheel drive sports saloon. It was evenly balanced and lighter than the BMW 5 series and Mercedes E class. It under performed in the US and Canadian market.
So when the mark II Hyundai Genesis was due to come to market; the company set up a new brand built around the car which became the Genesis G80 launched alongside the related but bigger G90.
Equus -> G90
Hyundai needed a car for its politicians and captains of industry so in 1999 it built its own version of the Mitsubishi Dignity. The Dignity is a lesser known known competitor to the Toyota Century. It was a Japan market only car that was only available for 15 months.
By comparison Hyundai’s Equus was made from 1999 to 2008 and sold in Korea, China and the Middle East. The second generation car took its cues more from Mercedes Benz. It became rear wheel drive, got air suspension and a variety of handling technologies.
The mark III became the G90, a competitor to Mercedes S-class. A high performance limousine with four wheel drive like a fully specced Mercedes limousine.
G70
Hyundai extended the product line downwards with a sporting compact luxury saloon and hatchback. All wheel drive is offered as an option, indicating that Mercedes and Audi buyers are their target market.
GV70 and GV80
Finally they’ve rounded out the range with two SUVs. The GV70 is about the size of the Range Rover Velar and the GV80 is roughly the same size as a Range Rover Sport.
Differentiating a luxury car brand
It was 25 years since a luxury car brand had been successfully launched before Genesis. The comparisons with Lexus are obvious. Genesis has focused on getting a really high JD Power rating like Lexus did decades before.
The kind of high technology Hyundai has used to differentiate in other categories is a hygiene factor in the luxury space. Instead Genesis is focusing on the ownership experience. Its differentiator is that you get a leasing type experience even if you buy a new Genesis.
