Ged Carroll

Category: singapore | 新加坡 | 싱가포르 | シンガポール

Welcome to the Singapore category of this blog. So first up a disclosure, back when I worked in Hong Kong, I did some work for the Singapore government ‘home team’. The work was done for their Central Narcotics Bureau and the Singapore Prison Service. Beyond friends that live there, I have no connections commercial or otherwise with Singapore now.

I have had the opportunity visit the city state and really loved it. Is it better to Hong Kong, politics non withstanding I don’t think a true comparison works that way. It has a more Germanic character than Hong Kong, but both are very similar in terms of the people and the built environment.

This is where I share anything that relates to Singaporean business issues, the Singaporean people or culture. Often posts that appear in this category will appear in other categories as well. So if Singapore Air launched a new ad campaign. And that I thought was particularly interesting or noteworthy, that might appear in branding as well as Singapore la.

So far, I haven’t had too much Singaporean related content here at the moment. That’s just the way things work out sometimes.

I am fascinated by the way Singapore has been deftly playing China to increase its stature as the place to do business. I am only interested in local politics when it intersects with business. An example of this would be legal issues affecting the media sector for instance.

If there are Singaporean related subjects that you think would fit with this blog, feel free to let me know by leaving a comment in the ‘Get in touch’ section of this blog here.

  • Foreign workers + more stuff

    Foreign workers

    Foreign workers in Singapore parlance are people who come from around Southeast Asia and South Asia to do blue collar and pink collar jobs in the city state.

    In a number of Asian countries including Hong Kong and Singapore; Filipino and Indonesian workers came to care for old people at home, look after children and conduct household tasks.

    This group of foreign workers freed up middle class married women in Singapore and other countries to participate more to their economy, capitalising on their education and ability to earn more in fast-growing economies. They had higher levels of workforce participation than their female counterparts in Japan and South Korea.

    foreign worker philipppines

    The Philippines relies almost five-fold more on remittances for its GDP than similar countries like Indonesia.

    What’s less reflected upon is the social upheaval and challenges that these foreign workers face in their new homes. They are in a different culture, away from friends and family as a support network. They have tremendous pressure to remit as much money as possible home.

    They only have each other to rely upon. This skate team is just one of the activities that foreign workers do. From informal gatherings with friends to sophisticated beauty pageants, volleyball and basketball leagues. More Singapore related content can be found here.

    Beauty

    China’s beauty market is a sight for sore eyes | FT – The brand keeps prices of its products, from face powders to creams, closer to those of premium international brands, in line with L’Oréal’s Lancôme and Shiseido’s Nars. The rise of a domestic premium brand points to a significant shift in mainland shoppers’ buying habits as well as highlighting improvements in the quality of domestic products

    Business

    Business execs just said the quiet part out loud on RTO mandates — A quarter admit forcing staff back into the office was meant to make them quit | ITPro

    China

    Impatient for tech breakthroughs, the Communist Party is pushing aside private initiatives | Merics – the government is trying to pick winners and backfill the funding gap left in the VC industry which has declined over 40%.

    China’s long view on quantum tech has the US and EU playing catch-up | Merics – China sees quantum technology as pivotal in global science and technology (S&T) competition and has stepped up government spending on scientific and industrial development to about USD 15 billion.

    Consumer behaviour

    Paper People | Yun Sheng | Granta – virtual dating simulators and virtual love. Japan leads where the aging world is likely to follow

    2024 Year in Review – Pornhub Insights – young people (gen-Z) make the highest traffic.

    Gen Alpha report: Teens see Starbucks as the new Venmo – Fast Company – equivalent to rounds in a bar.

    From like to love: understanding why consumers fall in love with some products | Kearney

    Culture

    Y3K: Futuristic fashion trend sweeps China | Jing Daily – Inspired by AI, VR, and the metaverse, and propelled by K-pop idols and Korean brands, Y3K is rapidly gaining popularity among Gen Z. – very William Gibson ‘Burning Chrome’ era

    Economics

    Diverging demographic destinies: Cars and the middle class | WARC – According to Pew, the American middle class has shrunk significantly in the last few decades. The top 20% of earners now take more than 50% of aggregate income because theirs has grown faster. 88% of Americans have less than $2000 in their checking account and 50% have less than $500 in savings. The average cost of a new car in 1984 was $6000 and the average household income was $27k. Today average household income is $80k [Fed] but averages conceal the widened gap between maxima and minima: the median income per person is around $35k [Census]. The average price of a new car is almost $50k, which is surprising enough that CNN wrote an article about it. They explain that “much of the reason Americans are paying nearly $50k for a car is that automakers decided to go all-in on expensive cars. The more they charge for a car, the more money they make off it.” 

    Whereas forty years ago an average new car cost about a fifth of an average annual salary, a new car is now prohibitively expensive for most. That’s why Americans have a record $1.6 trillion of outstanding car debt and delinquencies are rising.

    What the Bubble Got Right | Paul Graham

    2025 AI & Semiconductor Outlook | Fabricated Knowledge – early indications for an economic downturn?

    Energy

    Is China’s “peak coal” just spouting emissions? | Too Simple, Sometimes Naive

    Hong Kong

    Asia’s Walled City: The Erosion of Transparency in Hong Kong | International Republican Institute – interesting report, particularly some of the knock-on effects for sectors such as public affairs professionals, financial analysts and being able to do due diligence on businesses.

    Japan

    FirstFT: Nissan and Honda hold talks about a merger


    Biden’s Move to Block US Steel Deal Is No Way to Treat Japan – Bloomberg     – In the executive order preventing the deal on spurious national security grounds, staffers for President Joe Biden appeared to accidentally copy-and-paste the title of a previous presidential order — one ordering a Chinese crypto mining company to vacate property near an Air Force base. The left the Nippon Steel directive entitled: “Regarding the acquisition of certain real property of Cheyenne leads by MineOne Cloud Computing Investment.”

    Luxury

    Interesting research from two sources that don’t quite square with each other. Walpole’s The State of London Luxury 2024 report came out and painted a rosy picture about the ultra high end aspect of the London property market. Meanwhile over at the FT, Why London’s property market is stagnating points at the same end of the market as being moribund in nature.

    United States Luxury Fine Jewelry Market Expected to Reach USD 24,374.3 Million by 2034, Driven by Sustainability and Personalization Trends | Future Market Insights. – The luxury fine jewelry market in the United States is poised for steady growth, with the market size expected to reach USD 17,353.6 million in 2024. The market is projected to continue expanding at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.5%, reaching USD 24,374.3 million by 2034

    Marketing

    Ipsos In Talks To Acquire Kantar Media | Media Post Agency Daily

    Full article: Infusing Affective Computing Models into Advertising Research on Emotions | Journal of Advertising Volume 53, 2024 – Issue 5: Computational Advertising Research Methodology – academic study to look at the kind of research techniques that the likes of System 1, iPSOS and Kantar use in assessing advertising

    Ageism in advertising: AI and layoffs exacerbate the issue | Ad Age – baked in (but largely incorrect) perceptions about ‘not being able to use AI’ and reducing headcount is crippling the existing DEI dumpster fire in the advertising industry.

    Media

    Jellyfish Launches Share of Model™ Platform, First-to-Market Solution to Track How LLMs Perceive Brands, Products & Services – Marketing Communication News – Share of Model™ Platform – a first-of-its-kind solution that enables companies to analyze how different Large Language Models (LLMs) perceive their brands, products and services. Critically, the new platform can identify whether or not brands are optimizing their digital presence enough to prompt coveted recommendations from Gen AI models such as ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Meta’s Llama, when people tap into them for guidance.

    The Media Mix Navigator tool

    Retailing

    Foot Locker hit by slower spending and NIKE ‘softness’ | WARC | The Feed

    How WhatsApp for business changed the world – Rest of World

    Security

    Romania blames Russia for election meddling | FT

    How Chinese Hackers Graduated From Clumsy Corporate Thieves to Military Weapons – WSJ

    How macOS has become more private – The Eclectic Light Company

    Afgantsy Redux: How Russian military intelligence used the Taliban to bleed U.S. forces at the end of America’s longest war

    Technology

    Intel on the Brink of Death – SemiAnalysis & The Death of Intel: When Boards Fail – by Doug O’Laughlin. This interview with former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, back when he was the project manager for the Intel 386 processor. In retrospect, Gelsinger’s return as CEO could be seen as an Intel C-suite cargo cult hoping for 386-like success again.

    Telecoms

    U.S. officials urge Americans to use encrypted apps amid cyberattack | NBC News

    Web-of-no-web

    Top secret lab develops atomic clock using quantum technology – GOV.UK

  • Mooncakes + more things

    Mooncakes

    Mooncakes were a big part of my time in Hong Kong and Shenzhen. This year, mid-September marked mid-autumn festival across Asia or known as Chuseok in Korea. It is similar to harvest festivals that happen elsewhere in the world.

    It is celebrated in Chinese communities with mooncakes. Mooncakes traditionally have been made of fat filled pastry cases and lids filled with red bean or lotus seed paste and a salted dried egg yolk.

    Mooncakes are moulded and have auspicious messages or symbols embossed on the top, like the double happiness ideogram which also appears on new year decorations and at weddings.

    Moon Cake

    In the past mooncakes have been used to make political statements in Hong Kong where they were embossed with messages against the Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Legislation (Amendment) Bill 2019. This mirrored mooncake history, where concealed messages were alleged to have been used to ferment rebellion against Mongolian rule in China centuries ago.

    China saw a halving of mooncakes sold this year, compared to last year. This is a mix of fast-moving events like the state of consumer spending and longer term factors including gifting culture and attitudes to health and fitness.

    The economy

    The consumer economy seems to be doing worse than industrial output. Youth unemployment is still an issue.

    Gifting culture

    China saw a crackdown on premium priced mooncakes as part of a government move against ‘excessive consumption‘ driven by societal excess and ‘money worship’. This overall movement has dampened luxury sales. The Chinese government stopped officials buying mooncakes a decade ago as part of a crackdown on corruption.

    Some consumers just aren’t into them

    They were as divisive as Christmas cake is in Irish and British households. Brands like Haagen-Daz and Starbucks have looked to reinvent mooncakes into something more palatable.

    Health and fitness

    Health and fitness has been steadily growing as a trend in China. A number of reasons have been at play including changing beauty standards. Chinese women are still going to favour slimness over muscle, but home workouts and running have been increasing in popularity. The fitness industry has been growing and the Chinese government has also tried to foster interest in winter sports. So there would be a good reason to avoid ruining all the hard work that you put in by eating mooncakes.

    Business

    Nike CEO John Donahoe to Step Down | BoF

    Economics

    Why Do Workers Dislike Inflation? Wage Erosion and Conflict Costs* by Joao Guerreiro, Jonathon Hazell, Chen Lian and Christina Patterson – workers must take costly actions (“conflict”) to have nominal wages catch up with inflation, meaning there are welfare costs even if real wages do not fall as inflation rises. We study a menu-cost style model, where workers choose whether to engage in conflict with employers to secure a wage increase. We show that, following a rise in inflation, wage catchup resulting from more frequent conflict does not raise welfare. Instead, the impact of inflation on worker welfare is determined by what we term “wage erosion”—how inflation would lower real wages if workers’ conflict decisions did not respond to inflation. As a result, measuring welfare using observed wage growth understates the costs of inflation. We conduct a survey showing that workers are willing to sacrifice 1.75% of their wages to avoid conflict. Calibrating the model to the survey data, the aggregate costs of inflation incorporating conflict more than double the costs of inflation via falling real wages alone

    FMCG

    Unilever ends up as a punching bag for Greenpeace and having their purpose blown up. As a campaign idea, the public celebration by the Dove brand team of the 20th anniversary of Dove’s real beauty positioning and creative left themselves open to this. Greenpeace used a skilful reframing in this creative.

    The reason why the developing world seems to be disproportionately affected by plastic waste highlighted is for a number of reasons:

    • A lot of and paper and plastic recycling is shipped abroad. It used to go to China, but they declined to accept waste to recycle from 2018 onwards. So this waste went to other markets.
    • Developing markets have single portion packaging so that FMCG companies can distribute via neighbourhood shops and sell the product for the price a consumer can afford.
    • Plastic is easier to colour, manufacture, package and transport than glass, metal or coated paper. Biodegradable or effective post-use supply chains are well behind where they should be. And even if you were open to recycling, there may be brand issues.

    Innovation

    Chinese scientists claim they can use Starlink satellites to detect stealth aircraft | BGR

    Japan

    AI will help Sony expand Japanese anime’s growing fan base | FT – but would also help competitors out-produce Sony. Expect a Chinese anime avalanche.

    Marketing

    Campbell’s drops the ‘soup’: what the evidence says about adapting brand fundamentals | WARC

    Media

    OpenAI Messed With the Wrong Mega-Popular Parenting Forum | WIRED

    Retail media frenzy muddies negotiations with brands, who agency execs say must spend or ‘suffer the consequences’ – Digiday and Retail media networks put the squeeze on brands | WARC – Spending on RMNs could be seen as part of normal partnership agreements between brands and retailers that have traditionally included marketing commitments. That shades into a grey area if retailers become focused primarily on growing their ad business, but those same retailers can’t expect brands to spend more unless they can demonstrate results. At the same time, brands have their wider media mix to consider.

    In context

    • The pairing of advertisers with consumers close to the point of purchase via rich, first-party data is leading to better ROI relative to other channels for some advertisers and is cited as a key driver of increasing retail media investment.
    • Retail media is growing in double digits every year; it currently accounts for around 14% of global ad spend and is projected to account for 22.7% of online advertising by 2026.
    • Retail media is no longer a ‘medium’ in the conventional sense but is instead evolving into an infrastructure underpinning the entire digital advertising ecosystem. 

    Content Creators in the Adult Industry Want a Say in AI Rules | WIRED

    Security

    JLR’s letter: what Land Rover’s doing to stop your older car getting nicked | CAR Magazine – update on JLR’s security crisis

    Software

    A brief history of QuickTime – The Eclectic Light Company

    Technology

    NTT Data builds a mainframe cloud for Banks • The Register – mainframes are still amazing for large scale batch processing

  • Roots

    I spent a good deal of time thinking about roots and what they mean to me, with a change in my wider family situation. I spent a lot of my time growing up on the family farm owned by an Uncle. I knew the neighbours, knew the dogs and was familiar with many farm chores. The farm has gone up for sale a couple of months ago. My cousin who inherited the farm can’t run it part time and make it work.

    The Island

    As long as my Mum had known it the farm had been called The Island. There was never a reason given for the name, but one can guess from aerial photo below. Apart from a depression where the farm buildings are, the rest of the land slopes down and away from the farm.

    The land never flooded. My great grandfather died as a relatively young man so my grandfather and his mother farmed the land. Before, during and after Ireland’s bid for independence.

    My grandfather married late on life and had four children. My Mum, who wouldn’t inherit the farm because she was a girl. My eldest uncle inherited the farm and eventually left it to one of my cousins as he didn’t have children of his own.

    Given the changing regulations in Ireland, in order for my cousin to operate the farm, they had had to put in logged hours on the farm under supervision of my Uncle in lieu of studying at an agricultural college.

    The Island
    The Island from the air.

    The farm changed over that time. Originally the farm house was in the depression where there are now farm buildings. Only a small store room remains from that time. During British rule, houses were put in the most unproductive parts of the land, so the original house was dank and damp. The farmers didn’t own their land but instead paid rent to British landlords. The roots of the independence meeting was much about land ownership and owning one’s own future as it was about the irish identity, culture and language.

    Externally the old farmhouse looked like a chocolate box thatched farm cottage, but the reality it was different. When my Mum was a child the current house was built, some of the furniture including cupboards, dressers and chairs were moved from the old house. Everything has been covered with an annual coat of ‘oil paint’ – a gloss household paint.

    Irish gothic

    I can remember when the farm started to get grants from the EEC (also known as the Common Market), my grandmother decided to get rid of the old wooden chairs and buy new ones with vinyl covered foam seats.

    Around this time, the rural areas of Ireland began to see bungalows and cars proliferate. The main reason was agricultural grants making farming less of a hand-to-mouth existence and the publication of an architectural plan catalogue by Jack Fitzsimmons called Bungalow Bliss. This allowed multi-generational living on the family farm and commuting to work in the town. The homes were modern, light, airy and despised by Ireland’s intelligentsia.

    The Island

    I am just old enough to remember electricity going into the farm house. While Ireland was economically backward; the farm was notably late in having electricity installed. In fact, pylons had gone across the land for years earlier and electricity had first been put in to power the milking parlour. When I was in my teens an extension was built with a hot water tank, radiators, a bathroom and flushing toilets.

    The old house was replaced with a hay shed and a couple of outhouses. An animal crush was built by my Dad who is handy with building and steelwork, including custom-lengthened gates. The crush was to help with treatment of the animals. There’s not much else you can do if you want to vaccinate or give medicine to cattle that weighed as much as a small car (at the time). When we’d go back as a family, gates needed maintaining including remedial repairs and repainting. My Dad and I (ok I was very young and more of a hindrance) built a concrete flowerbed in the front of the house.

    Front of the house
    The front garden and front of the house.

    When I lived there it was expected that I would start contributing labour by the time I was primary school age. Harvesting peas, carrots, parsnips, potatoes and rhubarb from the front garden. Sweeping inside the house, outside the house and fetching turf from the shed where it was stored to keep the solid fuel cooker (range) going.

    Then I moved up helping herd in cattle or sheep, cleaning up after animals. Collecting bales of hay or moving them around for feeding. Feeding the farm dogs and chickens before finally collecting eggs. Helping to put up electric fences or ‘foot turf’ arranging it in a way to help it dry out prior to being stored as fuel. These were things my parents had done as children too. The Island felt atemporal linking past, present and future in the moment, the roots were clear. We never felt poor, there was always food on the table, a warm house in winter that was free from damp.

    Sunset

    We didn’t even get bored. Doing manual labour on a farm tires you out, there was the weekly newspapers to read, and the countryside itself (particularly with a child’s imagination). Up to my teens there was sufficiently little light pollution that I could see the delicate band of the Milky Way and major stars. Because of this, I am comfortable with a good amount of rustic living if needs be.

    If tractors were needed for making the hay or the silage, my Uncle would hire a contractor to take care of it. My cousin was the first person to introduce a tractor on the farm for the everyday chores such as putting out winter feed or cleaning up the yard and spreading manure.

    Land

    The land and the area around it had Maddens living there since at least the 15th century and likely earlier in one form or another. Madden is an anglicised spelling of Ó Madáin, meaning descendant of Madán. Over time, the family name spread around the world due to members of large families having to find their way in the world and economic emigration. Of my generation, we’re in the UK, Canada, Germany, the US and Ireland at the moment. Previously we’d been in China, Hong Kong and across the Middle East. In my family, we were the first generation to get a university education. But all of us have The Island in common.

    Keeping people on the land, has been as much a political endeavour as it is a commercial one now. Yet despite government grants, small holdings like The Island struggle to keep going. Even if they are operated as a part-time farm. The countryside has been depopulated separating families from their roots, at the same time as a housing crisis sweeps the country.

    Roots

    Roots bind and also tie. Pre-internet letters and phone calls bridged the gap with those at home. My Mum and Dad still call home on a special phone tariff. I am connected to one of my cousins by WhatsApp and older family relatives and neighbours via Facebook.

    Trying to go to school with an askew tie or scuffed shoes would bring an admonishment about disgracing the family name. And sure enough gossip did get home as I grew up both in Ireland and in an Irish neighbourhood with people who were schoolmates of my Mum. All of which reinforced the ties. More recently, they have mostly been awakened and reaffirmed going to funerals of family friends and relatives.

    Roots have also been lucrative for Ireland. The country is an expensive tourist destination, yet managed to attract descendants from Australia, New Zealand, mainland Britain and the US to visit home. Often centuries after their ancestors had got on the boat.

    Before decline in Irish immigration to the US, it was a market for made-in-Ireland products including Arklow Pottery, Carrigaline Pottery, Waterford Crystal and the Kilkenny Design Workshop. While the revenue was grateful, there is also largely a sense of otherness that the natives feel to their wider diaspora, which adds an underlying tension to those roots.

    Up until they retired, my Mum would not go to our local GP or dentist, but instead suffer until she went home to Ireland and sought out to the local family doctor and a dentist that she’d gone to school with.

    It’s not only Ireland that has this pull. Overseas Chinese flock to their ancestral home despite centuries of living in Singapore and elsewhere. Hong Kong Chinese supported the mainland due to complex family ties, even through the great leap forward and the cultural revolution.

    Self

    American academic Amy Cutler’s study on the sense of connectedness to roots had a number of results. Roots affected sense of self in Americans and an increased likelihood of negative life outcomes was found to correlated with the disconnected. Her work has been based on survey and interview research conducted from writing her doctoral thesis. She since kept up the line of research while holding a teaching position to find out more about these correlations.

    Elias and Brown found some link between the connectedness to roots and mental wellbeing, but they also admit that understanding that linkage is nascent at best. Ambeskovic et al has work that suggests understanding one’s roots might help better understand challenges to mental wellbeing – based on animal experiments. Their work went back four generations.

    Further information

    Looking back to look forward | Irish in Britain

    The “ideal self” stands alone: A phenomenological psychological descriptive analysis of Anglo Saxon American self-concept formation in relation to ancestral connectedness | Amy Cutler and Anglo Saxon American Self-Concept Formation in Relation To Ancestral Connectedness | Ame Cutler

    At Home in the Ancestral Landscape by Solène Prince and Katherine Burlingame

    The role of intergenerational family stories in mental health and wellbeing – Alexa Elias and  Adam D. Brown 

    Ancestral Stress Alters Lifetime Mental Health Trajectories and Cortical Neuromorphology via Epigenetic Regulation by Mirela Ambeskovic, Olena Babenko, Yaroslav Ilnytskyy, Igor Kovalchuk, Bryan Kolb & Gerlinde A. S. Metz

  • Zynternet + more things

    Zynternet is a portmanteau made up of Zyn and internet. If you’re reading this internet is self-explanatory, the Zyn in question is tabacco-free Skoal bandit type nicotine pouches. Zyn comes in a tin and has various flavours.

    Frat boy support!

    According to journalist Max Read, the Zynternet is a kind of 90s to early 2000s sports obsessed ‘lad’ type culture; but in the 2020s. There are shades of ‘white van man’ in there as well.

    a broad community of fratty, horndog, boorishly provocative 20- and sometimes (embarrassingly) 30-somethings–mostly but by no means entirely male–has emerged to form a newly prominent online subculture.

    Hawk Tuah and the Zynternet | Max Read

    Despite Read’s definition defining it as a 20 to 30-something thing, the subculture seems to bleed into 40-something Dads and draws on creators like Barstool Sports. They’re less extreme than the Andrew Tate acolytes. They care more about sports and professional golf than they do about current affairs and politics. But they’ll be voting Republican. They like college sports, sports betting, light beers and Zyn nicotine pouches.

    The culture has grown prominent on the laissez-faire Musk era Twitter.

    Zynternet stretch

    It would be very easy to point to the Zynternet audience and draw parallels to the ‘proles’ of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four. And then go down a dystopian k-hole.

    I’ll leave the last words to David Ogilvy for those despairing about the Zynternet:

    You aren’t advertising to a standing army; you are advertising to a moving parade. Three million consumers get married every year. The advertisement which sold a refrigerator to those who got married last year will probably be just as successful with those who’ll get married next year. An advertisement is just like a radar sweep, constantly hunting new prospects as they come into the market. Get a good radar and keep it sweeping.

    David Ogilvy

    TL;DR if you’re not reaching the zynternet, you’re probably not doing political marketing properly. More related content here.

    Hawk Tuah and the Zynternet | Read Max.

    ‘Hawk Tuah Girl’ has our attention. Next, she would like our money. | BusinessInsider

    How the Right Won the Hawk Tuah Girl | Slate

    ‘Hawk tuah,’ the Zynternet, & the bro-vote; plus, cowboys are having a moment | It’s been a minute on NPR

    Business

    Destructive investing and the siren song of software • Apperceptive and Goldman Sachs on AI: GEN AI: TOO MUCH SPEND, TOO LITTLE BENEFIT? (PDF)

    Consumer behaviour

    Changing Trends Due To Japan’s Ageing Population – Tokyoesque

    28% of Britons say the outcome of general elections has little to no impact on them personally | YouGov

    Culture

    Architect I.M. Pei never wanted a retrospective. How Hong Kong got to host one at last | South China Morning Post – iconic despite not teaching or having a theory, just by doing. What’s fascinating about the Hong Kong exhibition is how it looks to address the ‘Chineseness’ of Pei. The discussion goes somewhat along the lines of ‘Yes he had Chinese ancestors, but did he write or speak Chinese?’. We know that he at least wrote Chinese.

    The Vogue Archive — Google Arts & Culture

    Design

    Longevity by design | Apple – interesting whitepaper on how Apple designs in reliability and physical resilience

    A massive Lego theft ring was busted by the cops | Quartz – any form of value that can be resold will be taken

    Energy

    Generative AI is a climate disaster | Disconnect AI

    Finance

    Li Ka-shing’s CK Infrastructure considering secondary listing overseas | South China Morning Post

    EU ends Apple Pay antitrust probe with binding commitments to open up contactless payments | TechCrunch

    Gadgets

    HP is ditching its bait-and-switch printer DRM — but only for LaserJets – The Verge

    Can Samsung’s new Galaxy Ring smart device help its China comeback? | South China Morning Post

    Health

    David Beckham is ‘strategic investor’ in Hong Kong’s Prenetics to set up IM8 health brand | South China Morning Post – IM8 will focus on “cutting-edge” consumer health products, the Nasdaq-listed Prenetics said, without divulging the financial details of Beckham’s investment

    How to

    Marcus Byrne – Midjourney prompts

    Innovation

    Walmart delivery drones being shot by Americans | Quartz – only in America

    Japan

    Dami Lee on Akira’s Neo Tokyo.

    Luxury

    Content or couture? Balenciaga’s 30-minute dress becomes the flashpoint of the season | Vogue Business – “It feels a little like a fast fashion iteration of haute couture,” says Victoria Moss, fashion director of The Standard, of the swirling mass of black nylon. “This feels at odds with what fashion at this level should be, which is exquisitely made pieces that somewhat justify their extreme pricing.” She adds that many invest in couture to have garments perfectly fitted to their bodies — and made to last for years.

    “Is it beautiful? That’s debatable. Is it impressive? Not really. Is it brazen? Absolutely. Is it a meditation on the creative process? Maybe. Are we bored of these kinds of gimmicks at Balenciaga? Clearly not, as Demna’s work continues to be both a lightning rod and a conversation starter. “Call it ‘pret-a-polarize’,” says fashion journalist and ‘Newfash’ podcast host Mosha Lundström. “To my eye and understanding, I see this look as content rather than couture.”

    Why Peter Copping Is a Good Choice to Lead Lanvin – Puck

    Materials

    A New Age of Materials Is Dawning, for Everything From Smartphones to Missiles – WSJ

    Marketing

    In Singapore, McDonald’s new metaverse unlocks perks for Grimace NFT holders | Trendwatching – while crypto and NFTs were seen as a flash in the pan by western marketers, they seem to have had a deeper longer-lasting resonance in Singapore.

    Opinion: Why Oracle Advertising Is Really Shutting Down | AdWeek

    Playbrary – by national library board of Singapore. It uses text based games (think Dungeons and Dragons) to introduce Singaporeans to classic books

    With AI-generated videos, Cadbury’s helps Aussies and Kiwis celebrate sporting volunteers – production-wise it is Jib-Jab vs. generative AI

    Media

    Paramount CEOs Say ‘Business As Usual’ After Merger, As Layoffs Loom – Business Insider

    Lonely Planet exits China, sparking nostalgia among netizens | Dao Insights

    Online

    Google considered blocking Safari users from accessing its new AI features, report says – 9to5Mac

    How Influencers and Algorithms Are Creating Bespoke Realities for Everyone | WIRED

    OpenAI Faces More Lawsuits Over Copyrighted Data Used to Train ChatGPT – Business Insider

    U.S. says Russian bot farm used AI to impersonate Americans : NPR and DOJ seizes ‘bot farm’ operated by the Russian government | The Verge

    The trouble with age-gating the internet – POLITICO

    Retailing

    Fast fashion frenzy: 62M Zara items on Vinted reveal the paradox of recommerce | Trendwatching

    Security

    Japan declares victory in effort to end government use of floppy disks | Reuters – yes stories like this are funny because ‘modern’ Japan with its flip phones, fax machines and floppy discs are an anachronism. But there’s a few other things to consider. There might be issues in terms of investment a la the NHS and critical systems that for whatever reason can’t be ported on to modern systems (like the problems had with security based on ActiveX).

    Dumb systems also have security benefits, you can’t steal nearly as much data on even a compressed floppy disk as you can on a USB stick.

    How Apple Intelligence’s Privacy Stacks Up Against Android’s ‘Hybrid AI’ | WIRED

    Defense AI startup Helsing raises $487M Series C, plans Baltic expansion to combat Russian threat | TechCrunch

    Software

    Interesting use cases for generative AI in China which sounds like a plot line from Ghost In The Shell.

    Baidu – World No. 1? – Radio Free Mobile – is Baidu ERNIE really the number one generative AI service? It depends on if the numbers are true. 14 million developers, 950,000 models within the eco-system

    Alphabet Shelves Its Interest in HubSpot (GOOGL, HUBS) – Bloomberg

    Technology

    China plays down importance of lithography tools in semiconductor challenges – Interesting report from Taiwan’s DigiTimes semiconductor trade magazine: China seems to be deliberately playing down the importance of lithography tools as it identifies the challenges for the development of its semiconductor industry in a recently published dossier.

    Telecoms

    Starlink Mini is now available for anyone in the US to roam – The Verge

    Tools

    Cassidy | The AI Workspace for your team

    Wireless

    Germany orders ban on Chinese companies from its 5G network | FT

    Switching from Google Photos to iCloud will soon be a lot less painful – The Verge

  • Omakase and luxury futures

    Omakase and luxury seem made for each other. Think about the core elements of omakase:

    • An expert provides a personalised experience that is about quality, ceremony and theatre.
    • The expert decides what you will have and prepares it for you. You are there from selection to the provision of the item.
    • The ingredients are of fine quality (and often locally sourced).
    Tokyo
    Marc Veraart

    As a trend omakase has expanded geographically with Japanese cuisine. But it has also expanded in terms of categories covered.

    Koreans have taken omakase and pushed it into other areas:

    • Coffee
    • Dessert tasting
    • Barbecue restaurants which are normally a local neighbourhood staple
    • Wine and champagne-tasting

    So how can omakase and luxury come together in the future?

    In order to understand how omakase and luxury in the future it is worthwhile paying a good deal of attention to the pressures that the luxury industry is currently under.

    Luxury is under pressure

    Undoing the mistakes of the past

    Luxury has expanded to be the size of industry it currently is due to ‘massification’ by most of the maisons. The exceptions to this would be the likes of Hermés.

    Massification

    Massification means lowering quality, using globalisation in the supply chain as well as the retail network to manufacture products cheaper. Massification occurred over a three decade period and was covered extensively by former fashion editor Dana Thomas in her book Deluxe.

    Around about 2014, Gucci led the way for luxury brands to do streetwear, leading to a more accessible luxury product. Louis Vuitton did the archetypical collection with its 2017 Supreme collaboration.

    Contrary to what most people believe luxury is aimed at the middle classes rather than the wealthy. But targeting middle class customers rather than the wealthy poses a number of problems:

    • Increased capital outlay due to the scale required.
    • Scale brings challenges in terms of supply chain management and consistency of customer experience. Greater control can be obtained by vertical integration within the supply chain and owning the retail channels. But all of this requires greater expertise and management oversight.
    • Increased economic sensitivity to shocks such as interest rate and cost of living rises.
    • Increased risk of devalued stock during an economic downturn. Gucci earnings were down 20 percent alone in Q1, 2024.

    Bigger might not always be better over a longer view.

    Secondary markets

    Secondary markets have been both a boon and a bane for the luxury sector. At one time pre-owned was seen as an ‘entry-level’ product. I bought my first nice watch secondhand once it had depreciated. It was often said that the best entry-level Porsche was a secondhand one.

    But gone are the days when you may buy a pre-owned Louis Vuitton purse on a second hand market stall in Paris. Now that will be on Vinted, Vestaire or some other platform.

    Secondary market inflated pricing affected luxury businesses in a number of ways

    • You would be interviewed to go on the waiting list for a Porsche or a Rolex.
    • Authorised dealers became order takers and dealer customer service slipped.
    • Your purchasing history would acquire you the rights to buy a Hermés bag over time.

    Luxury groups extended their businesses into the pre-owned market. LVMH owned part of secondhand watch retailer Hodinkee. Richemont owned Watchfinder and Yoox-Net-a-Porter who sold a mix of new lines and vintage preowned items. Rolex rolled out its ‘CPO’ programme selling inspected pre-owned Rolex watches through its authorised dealer network.

    Things looked really good for the luxury industry, they managed to managed to scale, to a point that LVMH is one of the largest companies in the world:

    • Massification through global manufacturing supply chains.
    • Keeping margins high, while letting quality go low.
    • Address a rising middle class in China, Korea, Japan, the Gulf countries and Russia to counteract the hollowing out of the middle class in the US and western Europe.
    • Maximising margins through controlling costs via vertical integration up and down the supply chain, from raw materials to retail.

    Market change

    A few things underpinned the craziness of COVID:

    • Money was put in consumer pockets, for which they had few outlets.
    • Supply chains were disrupted as factories closed down or pivoted to manufacturing essential products. For instances Perfums Christian Dior made hand sanitiser for hospitals for free.

    A Forrester effect (also known as a bull whip effect) resulted, driving inflation that the world’s economies are coming to terms with now. Secondary effects of this event were the increased interest rates used to reduce demand driven inflation.

    Other secondary effects include increased crime levels. London has gone from a luxury shoppers paradise, to having a global reputation amongst elites of being plagued by violent watch and bag robberies. COVID-19 isn’t the only driver of this crime wave, but is a contributing factor.

    It has also had a catalysing effect on reducing globalisation to increase national resilience.

    Consumers know that a good deal of luxury goods don’t match up with the European artisan heritage story that brands try to sell them. Experts like William Lasry has made public which brands make what kind of products where. Luxury brands often make in places like China due to capability and scale – similar reasons to why Apple products are designed in California and assembled in China. (Seriously, check out William Lasry’s channels, I love some of his visits to high-end Japanese manufacturers).

    China

    China has been a key focus for luxury brand, but it has changed in a number of different ways:

    • Chinese consumers have changed in their confidence of native brands and have a lower opinion of many foreign brands. This is partly down to a change in attitudes called guo chao. Guo chao can be traced back to the increased confidence in the run up to the 2008 olympics in Beijing. This was partly fuelled by a series of essays published in 1996 by the likes of academic Wang Xiaodong called China Can Say Now which advocated a modern robust form of Chinese nationalism, which was in stark contrast to the Deng-era vision of globalisation and biding one’s time. In the April before the olympics Chinese consumers boycotted French supermarket brand Carrefour. Over time the negativity of these boycotts have become more-and-more performative and extra-territorial in nature. The current Xi administration has seen fit to weaponise this nationalist sentiment by directing (wrangling is a more accurate term, like cowboys with a cattle train in the Old West) public opinion to further its own ends. A more positive aspect of it has been a more open market for domestic ateliers and brands than had been seen previously. Since before 2019, there have been Chinese efforts to build a rival luxury groups to LVMH and Kering and this fits in with Xi’s distaste for irrational worship of the west.
    • Xi-era growth. China under Xi Jinping faces multiple challenges around growth. The population is aging and in decline which has implications for declining consumption. Secondly economic growth has slowed compared to the double digit annual economic growth of the Deng, Jiang and Hu administrations. Foreign direct investment in China has declined for a mix of reasons including unattractive Chinese government policies, decline in China’s country brand and long term economic growth forecasts.

    Regulatory change

    I know what you’re thinking ok, this is very well Ged, but what does it have to do with omakase and luxury futures? Give me a little bit more time and all will be revealed.

    While China is an economic superpower with a desire to export its world view and the United States is a hard and soft power super power; the European Union’s super power is legislative in nature.

    European regulation drove the globalisation of the GSM mobile telephony standards during the 1990s and 2000s. They have also driven increasing internet privacy standards on web services, much to the chagrin of Alphabet, Meta and Twitter.

    Now they are driving environmental standards across a range of areas including:

    • A carbon tax to take into account the use of fossil fuels in extraction of raw materials, transportation, energy as an input to manufacturing and processing materials.
    • Product passports from raw materials to product end-of-life encouraging a circular economy and sustainable manufacturing.

    This means that the luxury sector has new restrictions on how it operates in the future.

    In summary:

    • We’ve likely reached peak massification due to economic and trade changes.
    • Market share in China looks uncertain due to changes in consumer sentiment and tastes, meaning, a more local approach might be required or a strategic withdrawal.
    • Secondary markets show that consumers are open to ownership beyond pristine new products.
    • Product passports and European legislation means re-examining the whole supply chain and the data to better control it through an entire product life.

    Finally, omakase and luxury futures!

    Omakase and luxury look like a happy meeting in the future. Think about the tenets of omakase.

    • An expert provides a personalised experience that is about quality, ceremony and theatre.
    • The expert decides what you will have and prepares it for you. You are there from selection to the provision of the item.
    • The ingredients are of fine quality (and often locally sourced).

    Going back to go forward.

    The future of luxury is about looking back. Tailors who suited generations of families and made alterations to Grandfather’s suit that the son is now wearing. The shirt maker replacing the collars and cuffs. The shoe-maker who refurbishes your shoes and has a set of lasts with your name on, for when he has to make a new set. Getting measured, having your foot cast for a last or getting your watch could be memorable events once again. So there this a precedence for expertise and service levels. But it implies a retail experience that will change dramatically.

    New techniques and questions.

    Previously with the exception of measuring sessions, these processes were largely concealed from the consumer and were difficult to scale. So it’s worthwhile thinking about how luxury’s omakase future could be extended with modern technology? We have some experiments that might give us some ideas. First up, L’Oreal has showcased bespoke make-up manufacture for a while.

    How could high-end perfume makers adapt for products beyond make-up? Improved analysis equipment from the likes of Oxford Nanopore could facilitate individually formulated fragrance products based on skin chemistry.

    Adidas experimented with its Speedfactory concept that blended the retail and shoe assembly together.

    Technologically there is a lot of promising ideas. Adidas have worked with up-cycled plastics retrieved from the debris brought together by an ocean gyre made into 3d printed soles and fibres. (Look for the Parley label, who Adidas partnered with on this.)

    How can additive or automated manufacturing and other processes feel luxe? In what way could they add to the theatre?

    This hybridisation of retail and manufacturing changes the nature of both offline and online retail completely. Would even the largest concession in Selfridges or a shopping mall be big enough, or would fashion houses need a single purpose brand experience?

    Given that there is likely to be a bit more time between manufacture and presentation of the product than there would be in a sashimi restaurant, what else would go into the maison experience? LVMH is already investing in hotels and resorts like Cheval Blanc which gives it a better understanding of more areas in luxury experience and service.

    Localisation would likely to be needed to handle omakase and luxury due to culture and the need for local materials. This might include new materials, such as fungus-derived leather. Of course, this might have negative implications for luxury house supply chains, whether it’s Louis Vuitton’s iconic plastic coated leather, or the Hermés crocodile farm.

    Which means that product line-ups could no longer be global in nature. So luxury companies may revisit that the creative process looks like. Should there be a single global vision anymore? Luxury maisons instincts would be to say yes, but could this be an opportunity to own local ateliers in markets like China or the US?

    • Will there be more local brands instead?
    • What will a maison’s heritage mean in the future? A luxury maison is about what remains the same as much as what changes. What will happen to long-standing motifs?
    • Will there be a greater opportunity for more auteurs who are closer to the customers?
    • How to bridge the tension in terms of choosing for the customer and creativity as well as quality?

    We’re talking a very different profile of creative in terms of thinking, attitudes and skills compared to the present.

    Service, repair and reuse could learn a lot lessons from traditional tailors and the service networks of watchmakers like Rolex or luggage maker Rimowa.

    I could not think of a more exciting or scary time to be setting the brand direction for a luxury maison, let alone the overall direction or the likes of LVMH. But by wrapping local materials, expertise, ritual and a bit of theatre the future could look like a fusion of omakase and luxury.

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