6 Wacky Business Stories That Define 2024 w/ Marty Beckerman | builders podcast

0:00Dolce & Gabbana released their first scent, their first cologne or perfume for dogs this year called Fifi. Here's the thing. Was it tested on animals? Huh. That's a great question. Because it would be unethical not to test it on animals, really.

0:20Today, I discuss a six-pack of interesting and wacky business stories that define 2024 with Marty Beckerman. Marty is the editor-in-chief of the Bee Newsletter. It comes out twice a week for free. Sign up at business.com. And Marty and I cover the new dumb phone trend, Halloween merchandise selling out in March, the demise of Red Lobster, and other topics. Thanks.

0:49All right, today we're talking about six wacky business stories that really define 2024 with editor-in-chief of the Bee newsletter, Marty Beckerman. Marty, good to see you again. Thanks for coming back on the podcast. Hey, John. Great to be back. So the first story I want to talk about, I actually want to go back in time. I remember the first smartphone. I'm not sure they were called smartphones at this point that I had in the workplace. And it was like a real status symbol. It was called a Trio. I think that's what it was called. And it had a keyboard. And you got your emails. It was pretty big.

1:27It was sort of like an evolved BlackBerry sort of thing. and people at the office were getting these things and their phones were constantly buzzing. And it was like, I've got something more important. I've got this thing on my phone that's giving me email. And something that you covered earlier this year is sort of the opposite of people and bigwigs, if you will, using dumb phones. Talk about this. This is the new Boss Flex, according to the Wall Street Journal, that executives are ditching their iPhones and Androids and going back to like Y2K era dumb phones that don't get emails. They can't be reached all the time.

2:07They're not on Slack. They have some distance and some quiet. You know, it's funny, about a year ago, I was walking through a street fair here in LA and I saw a guy promoting a business called Dumb Wireless, where he just sold a bunch of dumb phones and it was sort of a curiosity. And now a year later, it seems like the tech backlash has continued. There was a number one bestseller this year called The Anxious Generation about what smartphones and social media are doing, young people growing up with it. It seems like people really want to recapture their attention spans. And part of that maybe is going back to Nokia.

2:43This might be, maybe it's going to be the best thing that ever happened to Nokia and Motorola Razr. I had the StarTAC. You remember that one that was a that was a a black flip phone it was it had a little antenna you'd you'd put oh yeah that was a pretty cool one my parents had that one and i my first year of college they gave us the nokia brick as we walked into the dorm oh really yeah that was my first cell phone oh nice i'm curious as to why this is a this is as you call it a boss flex or ceo flex because um i i almost feel like as a ceo you're supposed to be available all the time am i thinking about this wrong?

3:17Why not unwind when you're not working? There was that kind of period where some of the older generation of CEOs thought it was cute to be like, I can't do email. I don't know how to use computers. And then there was that big shift where that attitude went out. It's like the CEOs really have to be high tech. They have to know what's going on. And that older attitude was looked at as really obsolete. And now it's almost like reversed where being a little unavailable and maybe having a little bit of distance is sort of looked at as a desirable thing again. And I think that part of it too, that people are saying is that they're able to think more, they're able to ruminate and come up with better strategies and deeper thinking, the more that they don't get the notifications all the time.

4:03So that's probably part of it too. And according to the Wall Street Journal, some CEOs are even going back to fax machines. I saw that in the article. That's really funny. But the iPhone, in my opinion, has kind of solved this with something called do not disturb. Just turn it on. You don't get any notifications. Can you turn it on 24-7? Yeah, that's true. Let's move on from that. one of the things that you cover all the time is big retail, e-commerce, what consumers are buying. And one of the things that I thought was really interesting was Home Depot celebrating Halloween in March, maybe not even celebrating Halloween, but promoting Halloween, having a spot in the store where you can buy Halloween stuff.

4:50This is before summer even starts. Right, we call it the nightmare before Memorial Day. Oh, really? That's funny. So forever, companies started promoting Christmas like before Thanksgiving, even maybe before Halloween. You'd go to CVS, you'll hear Christmas music. And it's like, have I even bought my Halloween costume yet? And now they're maybe extending that to other holidays, too. It actually worked for Home Depot. They put all their Halloween merchandise, like that 20-foot skeleton, Skelly. They put that on sale in March and they sold out. So the promotion actually worked. It got them a ton of viral media attention.

5:24And it does seem like retailers are trying to extend these holidays earlier and earlier to suck up every dollar they can from early planners. Yeah, the sellout thing kind of surprised me because I don't think they were discounted items. No. Someone wanted to get ahead, I guess, ahead of the Joneses or whatever with the 20-foot or 10-foot skeleton. I just hope they don't stop discounting Halloween candy the day after Halloween because that's the best day to score if you're looking for cavities. It seems like retailers in general are trying to extend holidays. There used to be just one Prime Day.

6:04Now there are a bunch of different Prime Days. Now there are two Prime Days. Quarterly? Yeah, yeah. Prime Weeks, Prime Days. 20 years ago or 15 years ago, Black Friday extended into Cyber Monday, which became Cyber Week. Now Black Friday deals are starting in October. It seems that retailers are trying to stretch our dollars and get us shopping or get us in the stores or get us someplace all the time. So that definitely seems to be something that's happening. So Marty, tell me about what's going on with Pumpkin Spice. Sure. Well, the pumpkin spice obsession just keeps conquering planet Earth year after year.

6:39You walk through the grocery store and it's like every product you can imagine now has a pumpkin spice version. I saw pumpkin spice Cheerios and we actually here at the office, we have pumpkin spice protein smoothies. There's something there. They're actually good until October 11th, 2025. So you can save it until next Halloween season. Pumpkin spice is actually a five hundred eleven million dollar a year industry now. So it started, pumpkin spice has been around for a century, but the obsession really kicked off in the early aughts with Starbucks when they invented the pumpkin spice latte. There was one executive there who was in charge of the latte division, and he was trying to come up with new seasonal flavors.

7:23They had all their Christmas flavors that everybody loved, but he's like, we should do something for fall. So they actually had a lab where they were testing out different levels of pumpkin. But the original Starbucks pumpkin spice latte, interestingly, had no real pumpkin in it. It was all synthetic. And then once that came out, it was a huge scandal and they had to put real pumpkin in it. Good for the pumpkin growers, I guess. You know, in my day, when I was growing up, the seasonal thing to look forward to was McDonald's Shamrock shakes. Do you remember those? Oh, yeah. Green, delicious. So Marty, what do you think all of this means or portends for returned office hybrid working at home over the next quarter and year?

8:05Yeah, well, the nuclear bomb that went off this year on this topic was Amazon requiring all employees to come back to the office five days a week next year, saying that there won't be any more hybrid that you've got to be in Monday to Friday. And the CEO said he wants it to be like it was before COVID because there was better teamwork. And so right after that, everybody started wondering, is every company going to make employees come back Monday to Friday? But what Microsoft did, interestingly, is they said, no, we're going to stay with our current hybrid schedule, come in a few days a week. And they're trying to actually poach Amazon talent by saying, you know, you get your Mondays and Fridays to stay at home and do your laundry.

8:45So come work here at Microsoft instead. It's a different way to compete. I mean, 20 years ago, Google was competing on the basis of having amazing free lunches for everybody. And now Microsoft's competing by saying you can have your lunch at home. Well, we get amazing pumpkin spice protein powder. I know or I suspect you're being a little bit facetious, but our drink game at the offices are pretty strong. We've got a kombucha tap. Yeah. We've got like two Nespresso machines. I'm here for the free protein. John, you know how much money I go through on protein a year? Is this why our numbers are down, Marty?

9:23You're cutting into our profits. All right. So we're going to talk about pets. We're going to talk about dogs. So we have a little joke in our family that when we are reincarnated, we want to come back as my brother's dog. Shout out, Rosie, because she has an amazing life. and you covered a couple of new things specifically to make dogs' lives better. Let's talk about how Dolce & Gabbana got involved with dogs. Right. Dolce & Gabbana released their first scent, their first cologne or perfume for dogs this year called Fifi. It was a limited item run. I believe it was$120 for 3.4 ounces, which is probably more than the cologne I wear.

10:12Here's the thing. Was it tested on animals? Huh, that's a great question. Because it would be unethical not to test it on animals, really. Yeah, I don't know. It kind of puts them in a weird spot. You have to ask my vegan sister-in-law how she feels about that one. Also, dogs have a new way to fly. Yes, there's the first private airline for dogs. It's called Bark Air. It flies from New York to Los Angeles to London. So this is for dogs of the 1%. A flight one way is$6 ,000. But your dog doesn't have to fly in the crate in the storage container. It gets its own luxury seat. It gets doggy champagne.

10:54They treat it and pamper it like a little king or queen. But this is the dog traveling alone, not with their owner? I think that you can travel in parties of up to eight or so. So if you want to travel with your dog in the seat. Oh, okay. This is a little different than how people put the fake disability dog harnesses on. Have you seen this? Are you referring to therapy animals? People will just buy these things off Amazon that say disability dog. And they're not, the dogs aren't, but they want to take it to the grocery store. They want to take it on the plane or whatever. So this is just maybe the more honest way to do it is to pay$6 ,000.

11:35All right, nice. That'll be your next expose. Jose. Yeah, hard-hitting journalism. In the food world, you covered Red Lobster going bankrupt and maybe some of the reason for that. I used to go to Red Lobster for lunch. Back early in my career, I worked in California and I treated myself to Red Lobster once a week. Why are they going downhill? Well, there's a lot of reasons behind it, but one of the big factors was they went all in on this all-you-can-eat unlimited shrimp promotion. I believe it was$20, all the shrimp that you could eat in one sitting. And the executives kind of underestimated the raw hunger of Americans and wound up shelling out a fortune on shellfish.

12:16It cost them millions and millions and millions of dollars. There was actually a Simpsons episode where Homer takes a restaurant up on their all-you-can-eat food deal and eats them out of business. So really the Red Lobster executives probably should have watched more Simpsons to know how this would go. It wasn't death by a thousand cuts. It was death by millions of crustaceans. You know, it seems like underestimating America's hunger is not a great business decision overall. Maybe this ties in a little bit to more 2024 trends where for a long time when interest rates were cheap, companies were kind of giving away a lot of stuff, subsidizing stuff.

12:54It was called the millennial lifestyle subsidy. The Atlantic called it that, where Uber was running at a loss. So many of these apps were running at a loss. to try to get market share. But now that interest rates are higher, you can't really do that. You actually do need to make more of a profit now. And Red Lobster was maybe going in on the loss leader strategy still, which is not perhaps a winner right now. Somewhat related story. About 15 years ago, I think, I went out to lunch with a McDonald's insider, I guess. And he was saying that McDonald's was considering shrimp on the menu. And when they were analyzing it, they realized that there are not enough shrimp in the world for McDonald's to have it on its menu.

13:41Just talks about the scale of different types of restaurants. Okay. The last story I want to talk about is you cover interesting businesses. And this is a business that sells sunlight. Can you explain? So it's a business called Reflect Orbital. I believe it was founded by an ex SpaceX executive. So you would assume he knows what he's talking about. But the business plan sounds a little, well, pie in the sky, I guess you could say. They want to put mirrors in space that reflect sunlight to any part of the Earth that a subscriber says beam me sunlight. So even at night, they will they will send you a beam of light from space.

14:22It's all theoretical now. They're still raising money. They don't have the mirrors in space. But it seems like this is going to cause a lot of problems for homeowners associations. Do you have any info on how big the beam is? Like, can it beam my entire backyard? Is it a single ray of light? Any information on this? They're actually saying that it's more for charging solar panels than probably like reading a book. I don't think they can send it straight through your window necessarily, but maybe they can send it to the solar panels on your roof. Oh, that's interesting. Okay, so super, super eco.

14:55That's actually, you're turning me around on this business, Marty. I think I like it. Maybe we can get it on the ground floor. All right, right on. Marty, great to see you. Thanks, as always, for covering what you do on the B newsletter. Free at business.com.

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