Speaker 1: This is what the flucks. I'm Brett and I'm Justin
Speaker 1: and it's Wednesday, the twenty first of January.
Speaker 2: Get this, juzzy boy. The number of Australian businesses that
Speaker 2: fell into insolvency hit a record high in the past
Speaker 2: six months to nearly seven five hundred businesses. And that's
Speaker 2: a forty seven percent increase on the six months friar.
Speaker 2: Not a record that we want to be celebrating.
Speaker 1: Certainly not Floxam. We all start the new year with
Speaker 1: ambitious resolutions, but did you know that the majority of
Speaker 1: Ossie's have already given up their resolutions by debuty Now
Speaker 1: in the Flucks Academy this month, we've partnered with up
Speaker 1: to launch a New Year, New financially Savvy you. It
Speaker 1: will help you set financial goals for twenty twenty five
Speaker 1: and actually help you hit them as well. So make
Speaker 1: sure to download the blucks app and check out the
Speaker 1: Academy this month.
Speaker 2: Three mesmerizing stories Today, Juzzy boy, let's do it for
Speaker 2: our first. West Farmers has announced it will be closing
Speaker 2: its e commerce marketplace Catch after struggling with competition from
Speaker 2: Timu and Amazon.
Speaker 1: Yikes, and only a few years ago. West Farmers are
Speaker 1: talking about Catches being the best thing since last Bread,
Speaker 1: so tell me more. Well.
Speaker 2: Catch launched back in two thousand and six as Catch
Speaker 2: of the Day, which was a daily deal site with
Speaker 2: one deal every single day.
Speaker 1: You want a random one terribied hard drive for seventy
Speaker 1: five percent off or about a suitcase eight percent off,
Speaker 1: You've only got twenty four hours to buy it, and
Speaker 1: Judsey bought.
Speaker 2: By twenty ten. Catch grew to become Australia's most visited
Speaker 2: online shopping site, and.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty the Catch founders sold the business to
Speaker 1: West Farmers the two hundred and thirty million dollars and
Speaker 1: it's fair to say this was looking like a pretty
Speaker 1: good deal during COVID YEP. Shortly after the acquisition, Catches
Speaker 1: sales jump by nearly seventy percent.
Speaker 2: But as life returned to normal post COVID, so did choppers,
Speaker 2: and Catches sales.
Speaker 1: In fact be man In the past year, Catches P
Speaker 1: and L statement has got hit harder than a clearance
Speaker 1: rack on boxing day cost ninety six million dollars.
Speaker 2: So now West Farmers has announced it will close down
Speaker 2: Catch to stem the bleeding.
Speaker 1: They reckon Catch just can't compete with your t moos,
Speaker 1: your sheins, and your Amazon's anymore.
Speaker 2: Mainly because Catch has lost its unique value proposition.
Speaker 1: So what is the key learning here?
Speaker 2: Big value proposition or UVP is critical for any business
Speaker 2: to stand out in a crowded market.
Speaker 1: It gives customers a reason to choose your business over
Speaker 1: competitors and does.
Speaker 2: Wait, would you lose your UVP, You risk losing your
Speaker 2: spot in the market altogether.
Speaker 1: You see b man. Catch thrived by focusing on daily
Speaker 1: deals and big discounts.
Speaker 2: But after its acquisition, West Farmers evolved Catch into a
Speaker 2: broad e commerce retailer, which actually diluted what made Catch unique.
Speaker 1: And be man. Without its differentiator, Catch found itself competing
Speaker 1: on price against ultra low cost retailers like TMU and
Speaker 1: shee in, where Cash just could not win. And on
Speaker 1: the other side, it competed on convenience and shipping speed
Speaker 1: against Amazon, where it also just could not compete. So
Speaker 1: it's no surprise the Catches revenue dropped from three hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty four mil in twenty twenty to just two
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty seven mel in twenty twenty four, and
Speaker 1: now it's all over red Rover For our second story,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump and his wife Milania have both launched crypto
Speaker 1: coins just before his inauguration, and these crypto coins now
Speaker 1: form the majority of their wealth.
Speaker 2: So you're telling me millennia made billions overnight. Just boy,
Speaker 2: smells fishier than a Mari Lago buffet if he OUs me,
Speaker 2: But I want to hear more. Go on.
Speaker 1: So we know that on jan twenty eeth US time,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump was officially sworn in as the forty seventh
Speaker 1: presidente of the US.
Speaker 2: But it wasn't the inauguration that had crypto bro's frothing
Speaker 2: last Friday, Jazzy boy, it was a Trump tweet.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Donald Trump tweeted that he'd released a new crypto
Speaker 1: coin called Trump and it was the only coin that
Speaker 1: was actually endorsed by the preys.
Speaker 2: And get this one. The value of Trump's meme coin
Speaker 2: soared higher than his hair on a breezy, breezy evening.
Speaker 1: We're talking his coin jump to a market value of
Speaker 1: more than seventy two billion US dollars in just forty
Speaker 1: eight hours, and that meant that Trump's personal wealth from
Speaker 1: the coin was more than fifty six billion US dollars
Speaker 1: on paper, but then on Sunday night, Trump's wife Milania
Speaker 1: got in on the fund with her own crypto coin
Speaker 1: called Milannia. This all feels a little bit like a
Speaker 1: reality TV show crossed with some meme coin mania. You
Speaker 1: are most certainly not wrong.
Speaker 2: Ahu so what is the key learning here?
Speaker 1: Meme coins are cryptocurrencies that originate from an Internet meme.
Speaker 2: They're often just jokes or cultural references that are built
Speaker 2: to ride the wave off Internet trends.
Speaker 1: And of course often these men coins have no inherent
Speaker 1: value or utility.
Speaker 2: In other words, these coins don't solve problems, that don't
Speaker 2: offer services, and there is no specific technology now. For example,
Speaker 2: the Millennia website makes it very clear that the Millennia
Speaker 2: coin is not an investment. They call the coin digital artwork.
Speaker 1: And be man. Recently, we've seen some men coins saw
Speaker 1: and crashed for a whole heap of people and movements.
Speaker 2: Well, there was the hawk coin for Hawk to a Girl,
Speaker 2: which jumped to twelve and a half million bucks and
Speaker 2: then crashed in a day.
Speaker 1: What about Peppy the Frog, which which has a coin
Speaker 1: called Peppy which is literally just a frog wheth five
Speaker 1: hundred million US dollars.
Speaker 2: But as Millennia's website wisely suggests you should never invest
Speaker 2: more than you can afford to lose, which is.
Speaker 1: Probably what's going to happen. For our third and final story.
Speaker 1: Sports Bet, the online gambling behemoth, is facing a class action.
Speaker 1: Arts or betters have lost millions of dollars on in
Speaker 1: game live bets.
Speaker 2: Not many good things ever start with class action lawsuit.
Speaker 2: Juzzy boys, so go on.
Speaker 1: Says sports Bet, as the name suggests, a sports betting
Speaker 1: company that was actually launched back in Darwin in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety three. Now since then it's grown rapidly through its
Speaker 1: rogue and incessant TV and social media and in fact
Speaker 1: be man. Sports Bet is now in the top three
Speaker 1: betting companies in Australia with Tab Corp and the owners
Speaker 1: of Ladbrokes and Nets.
Speaker 2: But now sports Bet is facing a class action from
Speaker 2: its customers.
Speaker 1: Yeah you see, b man. It's currently illegal to bet
Speaker 1: on sports matches when that match is live.
Speaker 2: Except Jusie boy if the bet is made entirely on
Speaker 2: the telephone. So sports Bet created a kind of loophole
Speaker 2: which enabled bets to be created on the app but
Speaker 2: confirmed via the phone. But now the class action is
Speaker 2: seeking a refund for everyone who lost money on InPlay
Speaker 2: bets over the past six years and.
Speaker 1: Be man, this could really hit sports BET's finances as
Speaker 1: well as their reputation.
Speaker 2: Big coll So what is the key learning here?
Speaker 1: There's always an ongoing cat and mouse game between regulators
Speaker 1: and innovators, especially in fast evolving industries, and in this case,
Speaker 1: sports Bet introduced an in app workaround to make bets
Speaker 1: seem compliant. But the class action claims they were just
Speaker 1: skirting the law and it ain't legal at all, and
Speaker 1: does it? Boy?
Speaker 2: Sports bet isn't the first to roll the dice with
Speaker 2: legal gray zones.
Speaker 1: Uber bent the rules when they disrupted the taxi industry,
Speaker 1: and airbb rewrote the playbook for short term rentals.
Speaker 2: But this ain't sports BET's first running with the law,
Speaker 2: is it.
Speaker 1: It is not at all? I remember back in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two when sports was fine two and a half
Speaker 1: million bucks for spamming its customers with emails as well.
Speaker 2: So if this class action is successful, the jig it
Speaker 2: may be.
Speaker 1: Up fox Am. If you haven't set your year's resolutions,
Speaker 1: in particular your finance resolutions, there is only one place
Speaker 1: to do it. It is directly in the Flex App
Speaker 1: in our Academy. This month, we partnered with after Launch,
Speaker 1: New Year, New Financially Savvy you help you kick off
Speaker 1: the year on a high. To make sure to download
Speaker 1: the Flex App and check out the Flex Academy.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening and we'll see you on Friday