Hello and welcome to a bonus Tuesday send! Kansas courts’ electronic systems have been down for over a month due to a cyberattack, leaving state lawyers to file paperwork using old-school methods — or, marshaling the fax. Today we explore:
Ay, caroomba
If you're not the biggest fan of housework, you might have come across the Roomba range of robot vacuums, which offer hands-free cleaning by identifying obstacles and avoiding hazards — a skill that Amazon dealmakers may have benefitted from when they agreed to buy the vacuum cleaner’s parent co. last year.
Amazon announced a deal in August 2022 to buy iRobot for $61 per share (a total of ~$1.7 billion), but the acquisition has looked unlikely almost ever since. Regulatory concerns dogged the deal from day one, and in July, Amazon lowered its offer to $51.75 per share after the robot maker took out $200m in loans to keep the company ticking over in the limbo period.
Indeed, iRobot’s share price has slumped even further this week, dropping ~18% yesterday following news that EU regulators objected to the deal, citing concerns that Amazon’s acquisition could “restrict competition” in the robot vacuum cleaner market. British regulators have also investigated the offer, clearing it in June, while the FTC has requested more information, but is yet to make any official challenge.
The Roomba maker’s shares are now trading at a ~34% discount to what Amazon is theoretically going to buy them for — suggesting investors aren’t convinced the deal will ever be done and dusted.
Giving Tuesday
If you’re feeling charitable, it might be a good time to part with some of your hard-earned cash for a worthy cause. Today is Giving Tuesday, an event devoted to transforming the world through generosity and “the power of people and organizations”, following indulgence over the Thanksgiving weekend.
Despite being one of the most charitable countries in the world, donations in America have actually been waning recently. Indeed, last year, Americans gave the lowest proportion of their personal disposable income to charity since 1995, at just 1.7%. That equated to a total donations slump of some 11%, dropping total charitable giving to $499bn — the first inflation-adjusted decline since the Great Recession.
Nonprofit margins
The downturn is in part explained by the cash crunch the average American has endured in the face of inflation: generally, the majority of giving derives from individual donations, making up anywhere from 60-75% of overall giving in the US since 2000.
Even so, the Charities Aid Foundation reported that the US was the world’s most generous country over the 10 years to 2019... although it has slipped to 5th place as of 2022.
Shein bright
Fast-fashion giant Shein has filed confidential paperwork for a potential public listing in early 2024, seeking a valuation of up to $90 billion (per Bloomberg), which would make the 15-year-old company more valuable than Lululemon and H&M combined.
Established in China in 2008 as ZZKKO, Shein puts the fast in fast fashion: dropping as many as 10,000 new items on its website every day, producing items in small batches (50-100), and only ramping supply reactively for any products getting a lot of demand. Its wallet-friendly offerings — like earrings for less than 50¢ — have won over young consumers across the world, with its US customer base helping to catapult the company’s sales up 45% year-over-year, to $23 billion in 2022.
Shein hauls
Shein’s success has spawned a wave of aggressive e-commerce rivals, with many, such as Temu, following the company’s strategy of shipping directly to individual consumers — avoiding the need to hold a lot of inventory and dodging millions in import fees.
Once the brash upstart turning fashion on its head, Shein is now an industry giant, securing a staggering 50% share of all US fast-fashion sales as of November 2022 and surpassing titans like H&M and Zara. However, its industry dominance has put the company under the microscope: reports of 75-hour weeks, unsafe chemicals in its production, various environmental concerns, and accusations that it uses forced labor have all marred Shein for years.
• Sunday was the busiest day for US airports in history, with the TSA screening over 2.9 million passengers as the Thanksgiving weekend wrapped up.
• Dolly Parton just had the best record sales week in her 50+ year career, with her new album Rockstar shifting over 118,000 copies to sit atop Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart.
• TikTok’s parent company ByteDance has announced it will be leaving the gaming industry and laying off hundreds of staff, having failed to make a hit videogame after 2 years.
• So real: Merriam Webster’s word of 2023 is “authentic".
• Moving House: charting the busiest month for congressional retirements in over 10 years.
• A great visual deep dive into how we could be running out of space to grow more food.
Off the charts: Despite being the group's eponymous and best-selling brand, which car maker is undergoing staff cuts as it's "no longer competitive"? [Answer below].
