3 charts for you today exploring:
Right place, right time...
This week apparel brand Lululemon announced that they had grown revenue more than 60% year-on-year in their latest quarter — leaving the company on track to bring in more than $6bn in total this year.
That growth may not surprise anyone familiar with Lululemon's product range — which has had yoga pants and comfortable "athleisure wear" at its core for many years — as the pandemic was a boon for elasticated waistbands, sweatpants and other comfy items (like Crocs).
... for 16 years
LULU may have gotten a pandemic boost, but even in the 15 years BC (before COVID) the company was growing like crazy, riding the leisurewear trend and combining it with aspirational marketing and a limited supply of some of its most popular items.
Based on the financial data we could find (going back to 2005) we found that Lululemon has averaged revenue growth of 37% a year for 16 years — booking a net profit in every single one of those years except the first. Yoga pants are serious business.
Facebook on your face
This week Facebook unveiled for the first time the $299 "smart glasses" that it has been developing with Ray-Ban, the famed sunglasses brand. The glasses, which have been called Ray-Ban Stories, feature two different cameras and a speaker and mic for taking calls or listening to music.
Cautionary tales
Smart glasses are hardly a new idea. Hollywood has loved the idea of futuristic glasses for a long time, and it's been almost a decade since Google Glass was getting hyped up back in 2012. But for all the hype, Google Glass was a flop, fading to obscurity after its release to the public. Snapchat then entered the market in 2016 with Snapchat Spectacles, which haven't fared much better commercially, even as Snapchat iterated to the Spectacles 2... and 3.
But previous failings and cautionary tales aside, the biggest problem Facebook and Ray-Ban face is probably that of image. Facebook's not-so-stellar reputation on the issue of privacy isn't going to help convince anyone to splurge $299 on glasses that can take photos, videos and record everything you're seeing and hearing.
For much of the last 18 months, Australia and New Zealand have stood strongly behind a policy of "zero-covid". Strict travel restrictions, strict contact tracing protocols and even stricter lockdowns have meant that only 40 Australians in every 1 million have died from coronavirus, compared to ~1,960 deaths per million in both the UK and US. In New Zealand the rate has been even lower, with just 5 deaths per million.
Those numbers put both Australia and New Zealand at the favorable end of the global league tables, and the zero-covid strategy has meant that delays in their vaccination efforts have been less punishing. Unfortunately, the rise of the more transmissible delta variant has turned that strategy on its head.
Delta changes the game
Australia's success with strict contact tracing has been somewhat nullified by delta, which is estimated to be 2 or 3 times as transmissible as the original variant that emerged in early 2020. That means that by the time a single case has been found, tracked and the person put into quarantine, the chain of transmission may already be a few links down the line.
And so Australia has changed course pretty dramatically, with PM Scott Morrison announcing recently that it is time for Australia to "come out of the cave" and learn to live with the virus. After 18 months, Australia is changing tack. New Zealand might soon follow suit.
1) President Biden has announced sweeping new federal vaccine requirements, which could affect as many as 100 million Americans in both the private and public sectors.
2) The world's largest direct-air carbon capture machine is up and running in Iceland. The plant, run by Climeworks, can reportedly take Carbon Dioxide from the air and trap it underground. The technology is cool, but will only capture about 4,000 tons of CO2 per year, equivalent to the output of about 250 US residents.
3) Tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The attacks directly claimed the lives of 2,977 people, with more than 10,000 diagnosed with cancers related to the attack.
4) Walmart just raised $2 billion from a "green bond". That money should be used to invest in environmentally friendly projects, but it's often hard to prove or monitor.
5) 96% of companies surveyed by Flatfile have said they've run into problems with data onboarding. If your business is one of the 96%, try Flatfile's data onboarding platform.**
6) Some Friday nonsense for you: what animals do Brits and Americans think they can beat in a fight? The results are surprising.
**This is a sponsored snack.
