Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week inside from the reporters and
Speaker 1: editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus
Speaker 1: global business finance and tech news. As it happened, Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week with Carol Messier and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim
Speaker 1: Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Hi, everyone, Welcome to the weekend
Speaker 1: edition of Bloomberg Business Week. Inflation front and center, thanks
Speaker 1: to a CPI print crossing this past week. It was
Speaker 1: a big number, seven and a half percent jump year
Speaker 1: over year. Inflation still running at a forty year high,
Speaker 1: and yet strong runings keep on rolling in. One big
Speaker 1: company that's taking rising costs and stride is Chipotle Mexican grill,
Speaker 1: the fast casual dining giant, reporting a strong fourth quarter
Speaker 1: this past week. We're going to talk expansion plans and
Speaker 1: pricing power with Chipotle CFO Jack hart Tongue. Also, I
Speaker 1: had a prolific loan shark that former President Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: freed from prison, is now back lending money again. His
Speaker 1: tactics are more exploited than ever before. Meantime, as the
Speaker 1: Winner Olympics continue in Beijing, we'll discuss the implications of
Speaker 1: China's continued clampdown on democracy in Hong Kong. Our conversation
Speaker 1: with Mark Clifford, president of the Committee for Freedom in
Speaker 1: Hong Kong, is coming up. All of that to come.
Speaker 1: We begin with this week's domestic cover story. Betting apps
Speaker 1: want you to come for the Super Bowl, the Big Game,
Speaker 1: and stay and gamble forever. Legalized mobile sports betting is
Speaker 1: expanding in the US, including just recently here in New York,
Speaker 1: and right in time for Super Bowl fifty six, the
Speaker 1: National Football League is leading the charge to embrace it
Speaker 1: after years of worrying that gambling could influence the play
Speaker 1: on the field. Well for more on the about face
Speaker 1: from America's biggest sports leagues and team owners, returned to
Speaker 1: the editor of Bloomberg Business Week magazine, Joel Webber. At
Speaker 1: Bloomberg News Projects and Investigations reporter Peter Robison. The light
Speaker 1: bulb moment for me was was reading a report from
Speaker 1: Goldman Sachs which which pointed out that these apps over
Speaker 1: time might each have fifteen million customers, and that's the
Speaker 1: number who watch a usual NFL game. And so when
Speaker 1: you have that many eyeballs and that many people coming
Speaker 1: regularly on your site, it gives you a lot of
Speaker 1: power and in a lot of other countries that the
Speaker 1: gambling sites are are the way people watch these games,
Speaker 1: and it's it's the filter through which the games are watched,
Speaker 1: which which seems like a really big deal for for
Speaker 1: all these sports over time. What I think is interesting
Speaker 1: the MLB was early uh in on on Draft Kings,
Speaker 1: Robert Kraft, Jerry Jones. I mean colleges, they went from
Speaker 1: like not doing anything to all of a sudden they're
Speaker 1: investing in big time and there's meetings kind of I
Speaker 1: feel like was it was a Craft sound who brokered
Speaker 1: kind of a meeting with one of the betting apps.
Speaker 1: Like It's just interesting how entrenched it's become. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: there there was preparation behind the scenes for this moment
Speaker 1: even before the Supreme Court opened the floodgates with its
Speaker 1: ruling legalizing sports betting outside of Nevada. In even before that,
Speaker 1: as we report in the story, Roger Goodell met with
Speaker 1: Jason Robbins from Draft Kings UH in a Boston suburb
Speaker 1: with the craft with with Robert Kraft and his son
Speaker 1: and UH Fantasy as another person we talked to said,
Speaker 1: you know, Fantasy was really the wedge that helped these
Speaker 1: leagues get comfortable. It was almost like a soft launch
Speaker 1: for for gambling, and it also showed the leagues and
Speaker 1: everybody how popular this is. How do they keep it pure?
Speaker 1: It's a really good question, and it sounds like one
Speaker 1: that the league is still working out it itself. We
Speaker 1: we talked to the chief compliance officer for the NFL
Speaker 1: and they have developed an online training course. They have
Speaker 1: stepped up their discussions with league personnel about what information
Speaker 1: can be shared outside the league because with so many
Speaker 1: prop bets, including what color is the gatorade going to be?
Speaker 1: That's dumped on the coach's head. And I guess one
Speaker 1: distinction is that those bets that tend to be on
Speaker 1: offshore books, which are are less regulated. But the point
Speaker 1: remains that there's a lot of potential for UH, for shenanigans,
Speaker 1: and so the league is trying to get ahead of that.
Speaker 1: They've also workshops with players where they bring in what
Speaker 1: they've called bad guys who have been caught before. You
Speaker 1: trying to groom players in six games, and you know
Speaker 1: that the skeptics will say that that you can't you know,
Speaker 1: do that UH with complete success and and really any
Speaker 1: one case, it's gonna it creates a huge perception problem. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and you know you saw that even in the
Speaker 1: Premier League recently where a yellow card given late in
Speaker 1: the match has has you know, caused a fury on
Speaker 1: on Twitter with people claiming that that there's somehow a
Speaker 1: fixed So it just it changes the way people watch
Speaker 1: games when when betting is so entrenched. How much money
Speaker 1: is you know slashing around here for the NFL, Like,
Speaker 1: what's the what's they're they're taking all this It's it's
Speaker 1: already substantial. It's in the hundreds of millions. You know,
Speaker 1: just just one deal that the NFL signed with the
Speaker 1: data provider is reportedly worth a hundred and twenty million
Speaker 1: a year to it. And over time they're they're talking
Speaker 1: a billion and year, which is a lot of money
Speaker 1: for a league that Uh in the pandemic year it
Speaker 1: took in twelve billion. So uh and Goldman's talking, you know,
Speaker 1: thirty billion plus over time just in the US, Hey, Peter.
Speaker 1: One of the promises that or at least the selling
Speaker 1: points that these apps are and services are making to
Speaker 1: the league's is this idea of engagement and the way
Speaker 1: that it drives engagement two levels that the teams want
Speaker 1: to see in the leagues want to see what do
Speaker 1: we know about the relationship between the way that people bet,
Speaker 1: who bets and to what extent they actually pay more
Speaker 1: attention and tune in and see the ads in the games. Well,
Speaker 1: I know, Genius has a statistic that people are more
Speaker 1: likely to watch a game if if they're placing a
Speaker 1: bet on it. You know, certainly if your money is
Speaker 1: at stake, you're you're more likely to watch or at
Speaker 1: least to watch a portion of it. Uh So that's
Speaker 1: one big factor. I mean. The other factor we get
Speaker 1: into in the stories is just the possibility of addiction
Speaker 1: that that you know, as one person pointed out, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Pete, that that you know, people between the
Speaker 1: men between the ages of fourteen to thirty five are
Speaker 1: especially likely to gamble. I think that that increase in
Speaker 1: rates already, that is like such an important point in
Speaker 1: this because it looks like a ton of fun Like
Speaker 1: there's all these funny prop beds. Then it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, you know, eighteen to thirty five, Like,
Speaker 1: can you imagine how many people are going to get
Speaker 1: addicted out of this? Because it seems like nothing, and
Speaker 1: then it's like, oh wow, that just drained my bank account.
Speaker 1: That was Bloomberg Business Week magazine editor Joe Webber and
Speaker 1: Bloomberg News Projects and Investigations reporter Peter Robeson on this
Speaker 1: week's domestic cover story. Peter co wrote the piece with
Speaker 1: Ira Boudway, coming up China's tightening grip in Hong Kong
Speaker 1: as implications that reach well beyond the city. Will explore
Speaker 1: how Beijing is exporting its authoritarian tactics around the world.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. This is Bloomberg. This
Speaker 1: is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Man here and Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Quick Takes Tim Stinovik from Bloomberg Radio. Do you recall
Speaker 1: last week the Bloomberg Business Week cover story detailed Beijing's
Speaker 1: assault on the ones very popular Apple Daily newspaper and
Speaker 1: how the crackdown served as a sharp escalation of efforts
Speaker 1: to dismantle Hong Kong's democracy movement. Our next guest was
Speaker 1: quoted in that story, Mark Clifford, to the president of
Speaker 1: the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong. He's also a
Speaker 1: Council and Foreign Relations member and former editor in chief
Speaker 1: of both English language papers in Hong Kong, The Standard
Speaker 1: and the South China Morning Post. Mark joined us to
Speaker 1: talk about his new book. It's entitled Today, Hong Kong
Speaker 1: Tomorrow the World, which China's crackdown reveals about its plans
Speaker 1: to end freedom everywhere. And Mark also got into where
Speaker 1: we go from here now that a trusted publication has
Speaker 1: been silenced forever? Sure well, thanks, and it was a
Speaker 1: great piece. In anybody who's listening hasn't read it. I
Speaker 1: think it's the definitive account of the destruction of Apple Daily,
Speaker 1: which um, as the article pointed out, was a precursor
Speaker 1: to destruction of civil society in throughout Hong Kong. And uh,
Speaker 1: since then, we've seen unions shut um, a number of
Speaker 1: NGOs shut down, bank accounts frozen, I mean the playbook
Speaker 1: that was who we first saw with Apple Daily. People
Speaker 1: being thrown in jail, bank accounts frozen, companies, NGOs, unions
Speaker 1: thrown out of business. Is you know, all too you know,
Speaker 1: all too common in Hong Kong. I think that for
Speaker 1: the rest of the world. I mean, you take a
Speaker 1: city prospers, peaceful, you know, filled with you know, like
Speaker 1: people like London or New York just doing their own
Speaker 1: thing with lots of kinds of newspapers, and you just
Speaker 1: throw those people in jail. I mean I was a
Speaker 1: director at Next Digital, so I mean, unfortunately I had
Speaker 1: a firsthand view of this. And uh, let me just
Speaker 1: tell you, it's not nice to be on the wrong
Speaker 1: end of the Chinese state when you're trying to destroy something.
Speaker 1: So we'd have raids on the newsroom, five hundred armed police.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine five hundred armed police coming into Blue
Speaker 1: Burg and terrorizing the journalists and taking their computers and
Speaker 1: marching the editor in chief and other senior people off
Speaker 1: to jail. I mean, that's what we saw in Hong Kong,
Speaker 1: and uh we saw the I think it's unparalleled in history.
Speaker 1: Even when the Soviets took over Eastern Europe in the
Speaker 1: late forties, it wasn't taking over a peaceful, prosperous city
Speaker 1: the way that the Chinese have taken over Hong Kong.
Speaker 1: So really really a horrible situation. So what happened, Like
Speaker 1: I remember July one, Hong Kong returning to Chinese control
Speaker 1: after a century and a half of British colonial rule.
Speaker 1: It was meant to establish this one country two systems
Speaker 1: relationship withdu China Hong Kong. It was like the beginning
Speaker 1: of my career in business news in a big way.
Speaker 1: And watching this and talking to so many international business
Speaker 1: people who said, you know, continued to look at that
Speaker 1: Chinese market as such big potential, so important to their
Speaker 1: future growth UM, and that provided some confidence that things
Speaker 1: would continue to open up in China despite that handover,
Speaker 1: What did we all miss I don't know that we
Speaker 1: missed anything. We tried engagement, and a couple of years
Speaker 1: after that, in two thousand one, UM, the Chinese were
Speaker 1: joined the World Trade Organization UM. So that was a
Speaker 1: good thing. I mean, this was part of an opening
Speaker 1: up in China that saw somewhere between six eight hundred
Speaker 1: million people pulled out of absolute poverty. That's twice the
Speaker 1: population of the US. I mean, remarkable in many ways.
Speaker 1: And uh, look, I was an advocate for engagement. I worked.
Speaker 1: I've lived in Asia over thirty years, mostly in Hong Kong.
Speaker 1: And of course we knew the Chinese communists were not
Speaker 1: really nice people. They weren't proto democrats or anything. But uh,
Speaker 1: you felt that things would keep opening up as they
Speaker 1: had in Korea and Taiwan as those countries got got richer,
Speaker 1: and I think Shi jin Ping's ascension to the top
Speaker 1: dog position in China a decade ago twelve changed everything. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the trajectory wasn't always you know, as I said,
Speaker 1: towards democracy, but at least there was a sense of openness.
Speaker 1: And um, what we got wrong is we didn't see
Speaker 1: Hijin Pin coming. And I don't think any of the
Speaker 1: Chinese who elected him, the small small group of people
Speaker 1: in the politbero elected him, I don't think they really
Speaker 1: knew what they were getting into either. But we've had
Speaker 1: you know, the most uh you know, the strongest, toughest
Speaker 1: Chinese leader at least since now maybe he's going to
Speaker 1: prove to be more so. Is this so Mark, Is
Speaker 1: this gees China or is this the party's China? Well,
Speaker 1: g does come out of the party, So I don't
Speaker 1: want to just blame it on Ge. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is a this is a country that you know, killed,
Speaker 1: it's it's students, it's young people in and it's a
Speaker 1: party that will do anything to keep control. What is
Speaker 1: the role of business people in all of this and
Speaker 1: their responsibility? Who want to be in that market, but
Speaker 1: have to tread lightly maybe or carefully. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: I think they're holding their nose, closing their eyes and
Speaker 1: helping this sort of goes away and passes, just just
Speaker 1: as they hope the pandemic passes, because they think they
Speaker 1: have to be in China. And I think this is
Speaker 1: the issue that you know, we really need to front
Speaker 1: is how important is China. We started speaking about the
Speaker 1: role that businesses should be taking right now with regard
Speaker 1: to what China is doing. And you you said that
Speaker 1: the businesses around the world have to decide how important
Speaker 1: China is to them. And it does seem like businesses
Speaker 1: have decided and they've decided that China is really important.
Speaker 1: I mean, look at Apple for example. You know, the
Speaker 1: company gets you know, close its revenue uh from the
Speaker 1: Greater China area, and it relies on the Taiwanese company
Speaker 1: Fox Con to build many of its products in China. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, we can say the same thing about Starbucks
Speaker 1: and Nike. The list continues to go on. Disney, Uh,
Speaker 1: the sports leagues like the NBA, for example, we could
Speaker 1: go there. Um, are they making the right moves? Well,
Speaker 1: I think for you know, short term shareholders, yes, I
Speaker 1: think longer term, they have to think really hard in
Speaker 1: their boardroom if they want the kind of legacy that
Speaker 1: many companies, including IBM notably suffered after being very closely
Speaker 1: so of stated with the Nazis. UM and UH, I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's really consonant with E s G
Speaker 1: sorts of environmental social governance principles or ultimately long term
Speaker 1: shareholder value. But you know, you put your finger on
Speaker 1: on the on the issue. I mean, you know, China
Speaker 1: is a big market. It's not like the Soviet Union,
Speaker 1: which we weren't really very you know, entangled with during
Speaker 1: the Cold War. UM. I think it's the financial institutions
Speaker 1: and the financial flows that are perhaps an area that
Speaker 1: we're gonna look at more closely in the shorter run.
Speaker 1: I mean, do we want let's just say, pension funds
Speaker 1: for New York cops going to to fund Chinese you know,
Speaker 1: increasingly um repressive Chinese government that has publicly said its
Speaker 1: goal is to confront and uh ultimately surpass the US.
Speaker 1: And is that the is that really what we want
Speaker 1: to be doing. I mean, this isn't something that we're
Speaker 1: gonna settle tomorrow because the story of the last thirty
Speaker 1: or more years has been increasing engagement. Was trying to start,
Speaker 1: you see, to start disentangling, particularly when it's a market,
Speaker 1: but it's also a supplier to us, So no easy answers.
Speaker 1: That was the President of the Committee for Freedom in
Speaker 1: Hong Kong, Mark Clifford, his new book Today, Hong Kong Tomorrow.
Speaker 1: The world is out now still ahead. On Bloomberg Business Week,
Speaker 1: a former US Olympian takes on her latest challenge, building
Speaker 1: a social fitness platform for the modern athlete. Silver medal
Speaker 1: winning Bob's letter turned to business executive Lauren Gibbs joins us. Next,
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg broadcasting from the financial capital of the world,
Speaker 1: Bloomberg eleven Frio in New York to Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one, O six one does San Francisco,
Speaker 1: Bloomberg nine six to the country Sirius XM Chado one
Speaker 1: nine and around the globe the Bloomberg Business app and
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio dot Com. This is Bloomberg Business Week. The
Speaker 1: Olympics in Beijing. You know they're well underway. Our next
Speaker 1: guest very familiar with the experience, having meddled for Team
Speaker 1: USA in the Games, earning a silver medal in bob sledding,
Speaker 1: and earlier this month, Lauren Gives was named vice president
Speaker 1: of Partnerships at Heroic. It's a public benefit corporation. It's
Speaker 1: a social training platform that challenges the negative aspects of
Speaker 1: social media. Before we get into Lauren's latest business endeavor, Tim,
Speaker 1: you had to go there a self professed Olympic junkie.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've been watching the games NonStop. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: really enjoy the Winter Olympics. I don't know why, but
Speaker 1: probably from my time skiing in Colorado. I love snow.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I've been standing up too late, Carol, watching
Speaker 1: them catching him live. He has been a little tired. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: you asked her about how she likes watching the games
Speaker 1: on TV and being on the other side of the
Speaker 1: world as opposed to being in the spotlight and chasing
Speaker 1: that spot on the podium. I it's watching my friends,
Speaker 1: you know, the last four years of their hard work, um,
Speaker 1: you know, on on TV. And when things go great,
Speaker 1: you know you want to be there to celebrate with them.
Speaker 1: But things don't go exactly as planned, you want to
Speaker 1: be there to support them, and and it's just it's
Speaker 1: so much easier to compete than this to watch hands
Speaker 1: down well. And I always wonder what the process is, right,
Speaker 1: Like if you are an athlete and you came to
Speaker 1: it later than most, I think that's fair to say, Uh,
Speaker 1: you've got an executive NBA, you were you know, in
Speaker 1: the work world, in the corporate space, and then you
Speaker 1: try out for the Bob sled team on a whim?
Speaker 1: What's the whim? What is it? You wake up in
Speaker 1: the morning, you have a great cup of coffee and said,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go out for the Bob sled team.
Speaker 1: How does that work? Yeah? I tried it as a joke. Um,
Speaker 1: a friend of mine suggested that I tried out for
Speaker 1: the Bob sled team, and I thought that was crazy.
Speaker 1: But I had also made a promise to myself to
Speaker 1: fully vet every opportunity that came to me, and so
Speaker 1: I was living in Denver at the time. I found
Speaker 1: that they were tryouts about an hour away at the
Speaker 1: Olympic Training Center. I didn't know there were centers dedicated
Speaker 1: to Olympians, so I thought, how cool would it be
Speaker 1: to just tour center by a T shirt, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe eating the cafeteria so I can eat like an
Speaker 1: Olympian and that would be it. And eight years later, um,
Speaker 1: a Olympic medalissa world champion, you know, have made eight
Speaker 1: national teams and you know, but basically travel the world
Speaker 1: representing Team USA. All right, but wait a minute, you
Speaker 1: don't just like walk up and be like, hey, this
Speaker 1: kind of wanted to I mean, what was it though?
Speaker 1: What was what was involved in the process. Did they
Speaker 1: just immediately say come on on? Yeah? They just looked
Speaker 1: at me there like you, Um, there's a there's an
Speaker 1: initial combine where you do a sprint a shot toss.
Speaker 1: So you take a shot football, keep it forward as
Speaker 1: far as you can, and you do a standing broad jump.
Speaker 1: And so you know, I played volleyball in college. I
Speaker 1: went to Brown University, but also ran track, and so
Speaker 1: I got that um perfect mixture of explosiveness, speed and
Speaker 1: strength that makes a good Bob Swetter. Um. I tried
Speaker 1: out right after, so I was lucky A lot of
Speaker 1: the Olympians that had went to teen and metal that
Speaker 1: so she had retired and so it was a mix
Speaker 1: of timing and not realizing that I was I was
Speaker 1: made for Bob. So people ask me how I chose
Speaker 1: Bob then and I said it, it definitely chose me.
Speaker 1: I don't think I chose it all right, So tell
Speaker 1: us about heroic and what it's all about in your involvement. Yeah,
Speaker 1: heroic is a social act that will launch people nice.
Speaker 1: It's all about personal development and our mission is to
Speaker 1: have helped tek you one percent of the population flourished.
Speaker 1: And we believe when people create people complete ten virtuous
Speaker 1: target today, um, they will be more energized, connected and productive.
Speaker 1: And we're really trying to help people be the most
Speaker 1: heroic version of themselves. So obviously as an athlete, it
Speaker 1: really speaks to who I am as a person. Um,
Speaker 1: I feel like I've been very fortunate and it's had
Speaker 1: a lot of opportunities and to like herolive my opportunity
Speaker 1: to pay it forward to others, to give people the
Speaker 1: tools to see success in the things that they're passionate about.
Speaker 1: What are some examples of those daily heroic activities? You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's different for everybody. So things things from me
Speaker 1: or like going to bed on time, right, getting off
Speaker 1: of my my phone, don't not to be on my
Speaker 1: phone all night and making sure that I have a
Speaker 1: consistent bedtime, drinking more water, making sure I'm prioritizing my nutrition,
Speaker 1: especially now that I'm a retired athlete. You would think that,
Speaker 1: you know, it's easier to do. It's actually more difficult
Speaker 1: because now it's not tied to my athletic performance, but
Speaker 1: it's still tied to my performances human being. And so
Speaker 1: it's the little things that we do on a daily
Speaker 1: basis that move us closer to our goals or post
Speaker 1: further away. And we know that if you complete ten
Speaker 1: virtuous targets a day would be more connected, energized, in productive.
Speaker 1: That was Lauren Gibbs, Vice President Partnerships at Heroic Public
Speaker 1: Benefit Corporation. Also, as you know, a decorated athlete capturing
Speaker 1: a silver medal for Team USA and Bob sledding and
Speaker 1: Pyong Chang at the Games. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 1: Coming up next, we're going to talk about something that
Speaker 1: maybe some Olympic athletes aren't really getting a chance to
Speaker 1: enjoy when they're training getting ready for the Game's burritos. Oh,
Speaker 1: come on, they totally get to indulge in that. Come on,
Speaker 1: It's like car building, isn't it. Carbs? Protein, Yeah, extra
Speaker 1: glok kind of the perfect meal. Chipbotle CFO Jack Hartongue
Speaker 1: stops by to help us stick into the company's latest earnings.
Speaker 1: And even though the company has already raised prices, more
Speaker 1: increases maybe on the way. Definitely firing on all cylinders.
Speaker 1: It feels like because investors definitely took notice, sending the
Speaker 1: stock higher on that earnings. This is Bloomberg. You're listening
Speaker 1: to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick
Speaker 1: Takes Tim Stinovich from Bloomberg Radio. This week a good
Speaker 1: one for Chipotle Mexican grill shares, rallying from the company's
Speaker 1: latest quarterly update. That update showing that fourth quarters sales
Speaker 1: cops sales and adjusted DPS all topping estimates. One potential
Speaker 1: issue for the near term, though, CEO Brian Nichols saying
Speaker 1: that he's not seeing any signs that inflation is slowing
Speaker 1: down on specifically highlighting higher beef costs. Well, it turns
Speaker 1: out the company may have to raise prices yet again
Speaker 1: and hike wages too. Well, we reached out to the
Speaker 1: c suite and got more in the business and outlook
Speaker 1: with the company's CFO, Jack har Tongue, and we began
Speaker 1: by asking him what kind of pricing power the fast
Speaker 1: casual giant has to help combat rising inflation. You know,
Speaker 1: it's one of these kind of mysteries if you will, Tim,
Speaker 1: and that you kind of hope you never find out.
Speaker 1: The reason. The reason is if you find out, it
Speaker 1: means you've raised prices too high and it and it
Speaker 1: means customers are resisting. We've always been very thoughtful whenever
Speaker 1: we've had to raise prices, including in this environment and frankly,
Speaker 1: every other restaurant company, grocers, everyone is raising prices. So
Speaker 1: we still think that we're kind of you know, at
Speaker 1: or maybe a little bit behind the media and what
Speaker 1: companies are doing. And so, um, what we want to
Speaker 1: do is we we while we think that we can
Speaker 1: raise prices for we'll watch and see how the inflation
Speaker 1: environment unfold. We do think we've got additional pricing power
Speaker 1: and if we need to, we'll spend it, but we'll
Speaker 1: look at other things efficiencies and um, you know, are
Speaker 1: there other ways to find some you know, cost saving
Speaker 1: opportunities and if there aren't, and if we have to
Speaker 1: raise prices, will we'll do that, But it won't be
Speaker 1: the first thing we'll do. Where Jack are you seeing
Speaker 1: the costs rise the most and the quickest. Is it
Speaker 1: wages or is it on the commodity side. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know, way wages really increased a lot last year,
Speaker 1: and in our case, we took a big stair step.
Speaker 1: We increased our wages by about fifteen percent for all
Speaker 1: of our restaurant employees UM and that was, you know,
Speaker 1: a big impact. And then we did that in the
Speaker 1: April May timeframe. That's when it became clear to us
Speaker 1: that there was a in balance between the demand that
Speaker 1: we and other companies had for labor as the economy
Speaker 1: was opening up, and then the people coming back into
Speaker 1: the workforce. That helped us significantly. UM. That allowed us
Speaker 1: to retain our existing people, That allowed us to increase
Speaker 1: application flow. You know, we're growing company, so we're constantly
Speaker 1: hiring people um and so that allowed us to stabilize
Speaker 1: the workforce to the point where right now we feel
Speaker 1: like we're in a good labor position. It's not it's
Speaker 1: not like we're completely you know over challenge. It's still
Speaker 1: a challenge, but we're in as good of a labor
Speaker 1: staffing position now as we were even before the pandemic.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, I don't know that every company
Speaker 1: could say that right now. Hey, Jack, do you feel like,
Speaker 1: in terms of the labor shortages and the crunch that
Speaker 1: we're hitting peak and that things will start to get better?
Speaker 1: And same same side, same questions on on the pricing
Speaker 1: side of things. Do you feel like we're getting kind
Speaker 1: of inflation peak? If you will? Yeah, I don't think
Speaker 1: either are over. I think labor is going to continue
Speaker 1: to go up, but I would expect there won't be
Speaker 1: another kind of shock, like like when we we were
Speaker 1: kind of at the leading edge when we raise prices
Speaker 1: in the May or wages in the May June time. Frank,
Speaker 1: most other hospitality and restaurant companies have followed since then.
Speaker 1: I think they're going to be increases, meaningful increases, but
Speaker 1: I don't expect that there will be another fifteen percent jump.
Speaker 1: What we're seeing right now is there are pockets where
Speaker 1: when there are shortages that you're gonna have to maybe
Speaker 1: raise wages at a in a preemptive manner rather than just,
Speaker 1: you know, rather than risking falling behind, you know, the
Speaker 1: the wages in that market. From a commodity standpoint, most
Speaker 1: of our challenge has been in beef that's been throughout
Speaker 1: the year, and in the fourth quarter it hit us again.
Speaker 1: Freight as well, especially we get a lot of our
Speaker 1: packaging in from outside the US, and freight has been
Speaker 1: a real challenge, not only just to get enough supply
Speaker 1: because there's such bottlenecks at the boards, but also the
Speaker 1: cost of freight is going up significantly. Our outlook suggests
Speaker 1: that UM nothing is going to ease in terms of
Speaker 1: material or great an inflation to let the earliest later
Speaker 1: in the year, maybe not even until Wow, So it
Speaker 1: sticks around for a while. Hey, I'm curious about wages too,
Speaker 1: because that's something that we've talked to a lot of economists, Jack,
Speaker 1: that that stays with you, that cost And I'm curious.
Speaker 1: I've spent a lot of time with your previous administration
Speaker 1: that you guys pride yourself and holding onto workers and
Speaker 1: grooming them to move up the chain. So will those
Speaker 1: higher labor costs be problematic maybe down the road. No.
Speaker 1: In fact, we still pride ourselves on our people culture.
Speaker 1: You know. We we promoted nineteen thousand people last year.
Speaker 1: That's that's what you do when you have a thriving,
Speaker 1: growing company. UM We like the idea that when crew
Speaker 1: join us today, that they can join us for a
Speaker 1: job today, but that can turn into a career over time,
Speaker 1: and even that they don't stay with chipotlea their entire career,
Speaker 1: we will teach them skills like how to cook in
Speaker 1: a real restaurant, will teach them how to leave people,
Speaker 1: will teach them how to run a business. And if
Speaker 1: they say with us, that's fantastic. If not, they're still
Speaker 1: going to learn life skills. And so we run all
Speaker 1: of our restaurants where unique in the restaurant industry, where
Speaker 1: we have almost three thousand restaurants, none of them are franchised.
Speaker 1: So we need to have the ability to hire great people,
Speaker 1: to develop great people, and and to give them opportunities
Speaker 1: to move into management roles. And that's that's alive and
Speaker 1: well edge Fully, Hey, I want to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about growth and expansion physical expansion here. In your
Speaker 1: release yesterday, you said based on those successive small town
Speaker 1: locations that are delivering unit economics at or better than
Speaker 1: traditional Chipotle locations, you are now you now believe there
Speaker 1: can be at least seven thousand Chippotle restaurants in North America,
Speaker 1: up from that prior goal of six thousand restaurants. Talk
Speaker 1: to us about the competition for real estate here and
Speaker 1: how difficult it is to actually find compelling real estate
Speaker 1: opportunities and in a market like this, Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it's always been a challenge. There's always growth companies out there.
Speaker 1: But um, we do really well. And the reason we
Speaker 1: do well is that, as I mentioned, we're company owned,
Speaker 1: so we can make quick decisions. We have a dynamite
Speaker 1: real estate development team, and so they're out there. They
Speaker 1: know the brokers, they know the sites, they know how
Speaker 1: to dig great sites. Uh. And when we show up
Speaker 1: and knock on the door of a landlord or developer
Speaker 1: and we're interested in space, they love to have chuquote
Speaker 1: l in their UM in their development. The reason is
Speaker 1: we bring traffic to their development. And so if we're
Speaker 1: in a center where there's five or six or seven
Speaker 1: different tenants there, um, they can count on the fact
Speaker 1: that Chap quote le will bring a lot of people
Speaker 1: to their center. They will recognize some of the other
Speaker 1: tenants as well. UM. So um, you know, so we
Speaker 1: get a lot of attention and we're one of the
Speaker 1: preferred tenants out there. Um. We also have been very
Speaker 1: successful in not just securing the sites, but also getting
Speaker 1: the approval to get a chapot Lang, which that's our
Speaker 1: version of a digital drive through UM. And even if
Speaker 1: we don't have a free standard and it's a it's
Speaker 1: a great convenience for our customers and our landlords and
Speaker 1: developers have been working really well with us to make
Speaker 1: sure we can get the chippot Lane and so that's
Speaker 1: that's because we really bring um you know, something to
Speaker 1: their center that they're really after, and that's that's more
Speaker 1: foot traffic. That's what I wanted to ask you though.
Speaker 1: UM you guys out at your first digital only chippot
Speaker 1: Lane restaurant. I believe it was late last year, Uh,
Speaker 1: in New York State. How's that going in? Is there?
Speaker 1: What are the expansion plans with that? Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: actually really good. We have to now fully digital restaurants.
Speaker 1: What that means is there's no front line, So if
Speaker 1: you walk into a restaurant, you're not going to see
Speaker 1: a front line with a register where you can order
Speaker 1: and then pay. Everything has to be ordered ahead. You
Speaker 1: can order ahead and pick up UM in. In one
Speaker 1: of the two cases we've got chippot Lane, so you
Speaker 1: can order ahead not get out of your car. You
Speaker 1: still can get out of your car and walk into
Speaker 1: the restaurant if you if you like, and our team
Speaker 1: will treat you to great experience, but you have to
Speaker 1: order ahead there. These are early days. These are early experiments.
Speaker 1: We do think there's going to be opportunities for what
Speaker 1: we call a steam location, meaning you could have a
Speaker 1: lot of totally restaurants in a certain trade area, and
Speaker 1: then there's an underserved area kind of in the middle
Speaker 1: that might be a great spot for a smaller restaurant
Speaker 1: that has just chapot lane, um and no frontline ordering.
Speaker 1: So um. It's early days and we'll find where these
Speaker 1: make the most sense. But draw up both thoughts to
Speaker 1: a great start in that same vein digital sales, for one,
Speaker 1: for the full year forty five point six percent of sales,
Speaker 1: Carol mentioned how they shot up during the pandemic. What's
Speaker 1: a way for investors to think about that digital versus
Speaker 1: physical mix When we do get to the other side
Speaker 1: of the pandemic, where does it stabilize? Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: our our guests, and it really is just a guess
Speaker 1: that it probably bounces at about at or in that
Speaker 1: low forty range. When we look at our markets throughout
Speaker 1: the country and others. You know, different markets have have
Speaker 1: had different impacts from COVID UM and it come out
Speaker 1: of COVID faster or slower. When we look at the
Speaker 1: ones that were least impacted UM, they didn't fall below
Speaker 1: a range. And when we look at the fort of
Speaker 1: digital sales today, these are mostly our loyal customers. They
Speaker 1: come very often, they tend to spend more, and they
Speaker 1: really like the digital channel. The convenience of digital once
Speaker 1: you get into our app, once you sign up as
Speaker 1: a loyalty member, is so easy that our customers tend
Speaker 1: to stick with it. So I would see that will
Speaker 1: probably stay in this you know load and mid forty
Speaker 1: percent range UM, and then we'll bounce up from there
Speaker 1: as more and more customers discovered digital. The reality is,
Speaker 1: even though it's almost forty percent of our business, the majority,
Speaker 1: the largest group of our customers have never tried digital.
Speaker 1: So there's still a big opportunity for us. Hey, Jack,
Speaker 1: just got about a minute or so left here. You've
Speaker 1: been at to Potle for what twenty years? You've seen
Speaker 1: a lot at that name alone McDonald's before that. You
Speaker 1: understand this industry, but this is an interesting time coming
Speaker 1: off a pandemic. Uh. We love to hear from the
Speaker 1: c suite. What's top of mind for you right now? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the most important thing to me in our
Speaker 1: entire executive team is people. Um. I mean, we have
Speaker 1: a food ethos. UM. We really take pride in the
Speaker 1: quality of food that we saw, um, the quality food
Speaker 1: that we cook in the restaurants. But all of that
Speaker 1: happens with great people. That means great people on the
Speaker 1: front lines. It means great managers for the two fifty
Speaker 1: restaurants we're going to open up, you know during this year.
Speaker 1: It means great people in our offices as well to
Speaker 1: support our restaurants. The reason we are company owned and
Speaker 1: not franchise is it takes a lot of hard work,
Speaker 1: a lot of care, and a commitment to a purpose
Speaker 1: to actually care about the food, how we source it,
Speaker 1: how we cook and training customers a great experience. And
Speaker 1: so as long as we have a great pipeline of
Speaker 1: people joining Chipotle developing into the management ranks, we'll have
Speaker 1: a bright, bright bright future. That's that's that's something that's
Speaker 1: going to be a high priority really in any environment
Speaker 1: for us. That's Jack Hartongu, chief financial officer Chipotle, been
Speaker 1: at the company a long time, understands this industry has
Speaker 1: seen a lot of different cycles. And you know, there's
Speaker 1: a theme that's definitely come about in this earning season, Tim,
Speaker 1: and that is the ability of some companies to pass
Speaker 1: along higher prices. But not every company has that luxury,
Speaker 1: and if you can't, you get penalized in the equity market. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a really good point because it of course hits margins.
Speaker 1: But if you have a company with like Chipotle, with
Speaker 1: pricing power that can actually raise the prices of those
Speaker 1: items on the menu and consumers will still be attracted
Speaker 1: to it, then you're in a pretty good position right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you're definitely seeing that play out that way. That
Speaker 1: wraps up the first hour of the weekend edition of
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Carol Masser and
Speaker 1: I'm Tim Stanivik. Coming up in our next hour. We
Speaker 1: remember a time when it looked as though retail investors
Speaker 1: were finally staking their claim to a bigger piece of
Speaker 1: the corporate earnings pie, only to see Wall Street triumph
Speaker 1: once again. The true story of the revolution that wasn't
Speaker 1: plaus Valentine's Day, It's Monday, the CEO of farm Girl Flowers,
Speaker 1: explaining why the calendar working against both companies and consumers.
Speaker 1: Up next, our investigation team is back on the case
Speaker 1: of a loan shark that's out of jail now thanks
Speaker 1: to a pardon from foreign President Trump, and he's up
Speaker 1: to his old tricks, using dubious legal tactics to drain
Speaker 1: clients bank accounts. It's a remarkable story, except it's no story,
Speaker 1: it's reality. This is good Barn. Then is Bloomberg Business
Speaker 1: Week Inside from the reporters and editors who bring you
Speaker 1: America's most trusted business magazine, plus global business finance and
Speaker 1: tech news as it happened Sloomberg Business Week with Carol
Speaker 1: Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: Hi'm Carol Masser and I'm Tim Stinovic. Plenty ahead in
Speaker 1: our second hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week,
Speaker 1: including a route awakening for last minute Valentine's Day gift buyers.
Speaker 1: Don't forget everybody, It's this Monday. Oh gosh, Monday, Valentine's
Speaker 1: Day getting new worse. Plus how the retail trading revolution
Speaker 1: that played out during the pandemic actually ended up hurting
Speaker 1: the little guy. Spencer Jacob of The Wall Street Journal
Speaker 1: breaks it all down in his new book, The Revolution
Speaker 1: That Wasn't Game Stop Read It and the Fleecing of
Speaker 1: Small Investors. First up this hour, a loan shark pardoned
Speaker 1: by President Trump is back in business and his tactics
Speaker 1: for seizing borrowers money are more predatory than ever. It's
Speaker 1: a story written by Bloomberg's Zeke Fox, and one that
Speaker 1: both Zeke and Zach Mieder have been following and reporting
Speaker 1: on for years. Zack might joins us. Now, Zach, you
Speaker 1: first started reporting on Jonathan Broun a few years ago,
Speaker 1: back in ten m remind us who he is and
Speaker 1: why he did a stint in jail. Yeah. So, John
Speaker 1: braun Is is one of the most notorious loan sharks
Speaker 1: in this kind of part of the business called merchant
Speaker 1: cash advance, which is lending money to small businesses at
Speaker 1: super high interest rates if you think on an annual basis,
Speaker 1: maybe like five or a thousand percent and so um.
Speaker 1: And he was kind of known even within this this
Speaker 1: corner of the business. He was known as like um,
Speaker 1: he would he would have these obscene tirades with with customers,
Speaker 1: and he was kind of notorious for ripping off customers
Speaker 1: by taking money he wasn't entitled to, or or giving
Speaker 1: them less than promised. And after we wrote our story,
Speaker 1: it kind of looked like some of his uh, his
Speaker 1: actions were catching up with him because his company blew up.
Speaker 1: He faced lawsuits from the New York Attorney General and
Speaker 1: the Federal Trade Commission, and he was thrown in jail
Speaker 1: for for a ten year sentence because of a previous
Speaker 1: and unconnected uh drug trafficking charge that um you know
Speaker 1: that basically he was that he'd been out on bail
Speaker 1: for eight years and finally the judge decided to put
Speaker 1: him away. So fast forward. Now he's all his problems
Speaker 1: have cleared away, Like he's out on the street. He's
Speaker 1: lending money again and probably probably more than ever um,
Speaker 1: and it looks like he's gonna probably get away with
Speaker 1: with not having to face any consequences from the from
Speaker 1: the from the authorities. What's great about this story? Not great,
Speaker 1: I mean in terms of what this guy is doing,
Speaker 1: but he's out and so it's a story about presidential pardons.
Speaker 1: Particularly President Trump's. But it's also that he's back in
Speaker 1: business again. Let's talk about the pardoning. How did he
Speaker 1: get out? So he was he was doing a ten
Speaker 1: year stint, and he his family reached out to people.
Speaker 1: He claims that he spent millions of dollars to get
Speaker 1: people to advocate for him at the White House. And
Speaker 1: we know that. You know, President Trump did not follow
Speaker 1: the kind of normal procedures that presidents usually do. He
Speaker 1: seemed to just kind of go with whoever his friends
Speaker 1: were telling him, Uh, needed to get out. And Alan Dershowitz,
Speaker 1: who had represented Trump in the past, He's a Harvard
Speaker 1: law professor. He was one of the people who made
Speaker 1: the case. Now Dershwitz says he didn't get paid by Braun,
Speaker 1: but then later he said maybe he did. He can't remember. Um,
Speaker 1: so one way or another. Uh, the message got to
Speaker 1: Trump to let this guy out, and he was part.
Speaker 1: He was. His sentence was commuted on his last day
Speaker 1: in office. So when we think about this from a
Speaker 1: pardon's perspective, you know, presidents get criticized at the end
Speaker 1: of their terms for pardoning for a host of reasons.
Speaker 1: How did President Trump depart from even what's traditionally a
Speaker 1: pretty controversial thing, right, So usually there's, uh, there's kind
Speaker 1: of like a formalized system within the Department of Justice
Speaker 1: where they kind of review, they look for people who
Speaker 1: have you know, long paid for their crimes, who have
Speaker 1: been exemplary citizens, who maybe we're sentenced for something not
Speaker 1: so bad, um. And if you look at, you know,
Speaker 1: Bron's case, it's really hard to see how it lines
Speaker 1: up with any of those because you know that, UM,
Speaker 1: the behavior he's accused of while he was out on
Speaker 1: bail awaiting sentencing, UM is pretty extreme, and it was
Speaker 1: well known. It was easy easy to know. I mean
Speaker 1: you could have just read Bloomberg to find out about it. Well,
Speaker 1: and as you guys are reporting, as as Zeke writes about,
Speaker 1: I mean this presidential pardoning by former President Trump, it
Speaker 1: was unusual. In almost all the cases, it didn't follow
Speaker 1: the normal guidelines. What's interesting too, is um, as Zeke
Speaker 1: writes in his update, he goes, I don't know, does
Speaker 1: he go undercover? I mean, he he finds out he
Speaker 1: wants to prove that this guy John Braun is back
Speaker 1: in business. So talk to us a little bit about that.
Speaker 1: I thought that was yeah, because Broun hasn't had his
Speaker 1: name on paperwork in years. Even before he went to jail, um,
Speaker 1: he his his name wasn't on any of the papers
Speaker 1: connected to these companies he was running. And this time
Speaker 1: he's even more careful. One change is that now he
Speaker 1: doesn't get on the phone and and and scream and
Speaker 1: swear at customers as much as he did before. So
Speaker 1: that's another way it makes it harder to report on
Speaker 1: because typically we would just call up customers and they say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this guy screamed at me for half an hour, um.
Speaker 1: So it was pretty tricky. Zeke was able to develop
Speaker 1: a bunch of sources who could describe exactly where he works,
Speaker 1: where he goes to work every day, who he works with,
Speaker 1: and even you know, provide all kinds of um evidence
Speaker 1: that that he was back in business and Zeke was
Speaker 1: actually able to see him, you know, walking go into
Speaker 1: the office. Hey. Zach talked more about the market for
Speaker 1: loans like these and who who these types of customers are.
Speaker 1: You think about small businesses, so maybe a self employed
Speaker 1: trucker or a pizza parlor or a nail salon something
Speaker 1: like that. So these are typically people who don't they
Speaker 1: don't have a finance department, they don't have a full
Speaker 1: time lawyer accountant. They're making all these decisions themselves, and
Speaker 1: oftentimes they're heard up for money one way or another,
Speaker 1: maybe because business isn't going well, but maybe because they
Speaker 1: need to grow really fast. They need to hire get
Speaker 1: supplies and hire people to do a big job. So
Speaker 1: they turn to this kind of really quick money where
Speaker 1: you borrow money on Monday and your first payments do
Speaker 1: on Tuesday. It's daily payments, and usually it's paid back
Speaker 1: over the course of like a month and a half.
Speaker 1: A big thank you to Bloomberg News reporter Zach Meder
Speaker 1: for his time. Check out Zack Sidebar in this week's issue.
Speaker 1: It explains just how powerful these short term lenders can be.
Speaker 1: Be sure to check that out. We kept saying that
Speaker 1: this was going to be like a Netflix series or
Speaker 1: some kind of streaming series because it's just unbelievable but
Speaker 1: also heartbreaking. All Right, you're listening to Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 1: Coming up, how meme stock Mania on the so called
Speaker 1: retail trading revolution turned out to be an epic fleecing
Speaker 1: of low level investors. That's coming up next. This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Quick Takes Tim Stenovy from Bloomberg Radio. It was just
Speaker 1: about one year ago and many were calling it the
Speaker 1: revolution against Wall Street. It was the rise of the
Speaker 1: reddit investor and meme stock spending against the big guys
Speaker 1: and their short positions. With the benefit of hindsight and
Speaker 1: a new book for our next guest, we can now
Speaker 1: ask whether it was really a revolution after all, and
Speaker 1: how the financial heavyweights ended up on top. In the end,
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal calumnist Spencer Jacob He's the author of
Speaker 1: The Revolution that Wasn't Game Stop? Read It and the
Speaker 1: Fleecing of Small Investors That's the book title. He was
Speaker 1: already aware though, that the chatter on the popular subreddit
Speaker 1: Wall Street Bets could sometimes swing certain stocks, except this
Speaker 1: time it was different. My my oldest boy, who was
Speaker 1: home and I was home too because of COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: uh in January, said hey, Daddy, you can ward about
Speaker 1: Game Stop And I had driven him there for kids.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, I'd driven him there about eight billion times
Speaker 1: his life, and his two younger brothers as well. But
Speaker 1: I had no idea what he was talking about. I
Speaker 1: looked and saw it had gone up a bunch of
Speaker 1: The gist of it was that a friend of his
Speaker 1: had bought it, and I said, listen, it's doubled in
Speaker 1: the last two days. That's great, but he shouldn't stick around.
Speaker 1: I've seen this play out a dozen times. And he said, no,
Speaker 1: he's not going to sell, which is a strange thing
Speaker 1: to say, but that was central to this whole uh
Speaker 1: plan that was hatched online, which was not just to
Speaker 1: buy all by the stock, but then not to sell
Speaker 1: it to to attack short sellers, and and it didn't.
Speaker 1: It wasn't an air tight trap, as we kind of
Speaker 1: can see now in hindsight. But that was the gist
Speaker 1: of it, and that's why it was so potent, and
Speaker 1: that it it just took on a momentum of its own.
Speaker 1: So it did feel like the little guy beating the
Speaker 1: big guys. But that wasn't necessarily the case, as you
Speaker 1: write and lay out in your book, it wasn't the case.
Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, um, you know what, once
Speaker 1: you you look at what happened just in that period
Speaker 1: of ten or eleven days, the hedge funds that took
Speaker 1: huge It's uh. And there's one that lost almost seven
Speaker 1: billion dollars in a matter of days. And there are
Speaker 1: other big losers you're talking about, right, I'm talking about
Speaker 1: Melvin Capital gap Blonkins. Melvin Capital gave Bloken was one
Speaker 1: of the best paid men in the world the year before.
Speaker 1: He took home eight and forty six million dollars personally
Speaker 1: the year before. You know, he was richly rewarded and
Speaker 1: had had had a great track record until this, and
Speaker 1: this just just blew him off. He lost over half
Speaker 1: of his his investors money. But others lost money to
Speaker 1: um that are are less known. Melvin was the biggest
Speaker 1: loser and the best known loser, but one or two hedgehrons.
Speaker 1: First of all, it is not Wall Street. Wall Street
Speaker 1: is a big place, and most of Wall Street is
Speaker 1: made up of middleman, and the middleman like it when
Speaker 1: the little guys active and thinks that he can can
Speaker 1: be Wall Street and pours a lot of money into
Speaker 1: new accounts and and things like that. So that's that's
Speaker 1: one aspect of this is that they they really had
Speaker 1: a great pay day if you look at from Morgan
Speaker 1: Stanley to Goldman Sachs to Citadel Securities. Although they don't
Speaker 1: release results, we know that they had a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of revenue, and we know that all these other companies
Speaker 1: had had a very good time during the memestock squeeze, before, during,
Speaker 1: and after UM. And furthermore, we know that a lot
Speaker 1: of funds made a bonanza on the meme stock squeeze,
Speaker 1: whether they rode the coattails of it or they just
Speaker 1: were in the right place at the right time. And finally,
Speaker 1: a lot of corporate insiders h made fortunes off of
Speaker 1: this uh just being at the right place at the
Speaker 1: right time, just dumb luck. Does the retail investor, does
Speaker 1: the small investor? Does he or she stand a chance
Speaker 1: in this damage? Or has he or she ever stood
Speaker 1: a chance? There's always a chance. And if you if
Speaker 1: you spend a lot of time in a casino, and
Speaker 1: Wall Street often is compared to casino, then you have
Speaker 1: no chance. The more you're there, the higher your chances
Speaker 1: of losing. Wall Street. You do have a chance because
Speaker 1: you know there's a general upward trend in in in
Speaker 1: share prices. But basically, UM, it's it's like the inverse
Speaker 1: of your level of activity UH dictates your success. And
Speaker 1: so when you you have a lot of especially young
Speaker 1: people getting to the market and getting in through an
Speaker 1: app like robin Hood. Uh that really encourages activity. And
Speaker 1: it's a company that that makes more money when you
Speaker 1: are more active. Uh. They charge zero commissions, but they
Speaker 1: do earn money. Um. When you trade, and especially when
Speaker 1: you when you trade sort of recklessly, then you're kind
Speaker 1: of stacking the odds against yourself because study after study
Speaker 1: shows that performance is inversely correlated with activity and inversely
Speaker 1: correlated with how often you check your account. And and
Speaker 1: that's the way that these young people, primarily young people
Speaker 1: who drove this, got into the market. And that's how
Speaker 1: they weaponize their accounts by these brokers that were very
Speaker 1: intuitive that had you know, allowed them to use options
Speaker 1: and all this stuff. And and you know, and as
Speaker 1: a group, we know that they're not doing well. Okay,
Speaker 1: if it wasn't a big win for retail investors that
Speaker 1: you write about in your book, So is there no
Speaker 1: hope for retail investors? I mean, I thought Financial Innovation
Speaker 1: Spencer was going to be kind of the savior, uh
Speaker 1: for the little guy when it comes to the financial markets.
Speaker 1: Should we all give up all hope or no? O Carol,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's the irony of this story. You know,
Speaker 1: if you you look at one of those those charts
Speaker 1: people show you, you know, if you had just bought
Speaker 1: stocks back in and you know, not sold and whatever
Speaker 1: not that anybody holds on for that long, it's all
Speaker 1: really a myth. Because it was so expensive to to
Speaker 1: invest in the market or even reinvest your dividends, then
Speaker 1: there are no index funds. And today, because of competition
Speaker 1: and because of technology, the same competition and technology that
Speaker 1: made Robin Hood possible where you could trade for zero
Speaker 1: dollars and you could just have a smartphone in your
Speaker 1: hand and this intuitive thing that anybody can understand. You
Speaker 1: could use it to buy an ETF that caused zero
Speaker 1: point zero three percent a year and just set it
Speaker 1: and forget it, or have a rubbo advisor for a
Speaker 1: very modest fee, manage a bunch of index funds for you,
Speaker 1: you know, stuff that just was not possible a generation
Speaker 1: or two ago. And and so it's like anything, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, we have these these cell phones with all
Speaker 1: the world's knowledge in them, and you know, and then
Speaker 1: teenagers today aren't any better informed than teenagers were twenty
Speaker 1: years ago. Or forty years ago, because they're they're using
Speaker 1: it to you know, to get on TikTok and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. They're not using Facebook. We learned that today.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry I didn't write about bok about Facebook to
Speaker 1: be a very time. Yeah. No, So there is a
Speaker 1: bottom line, a long answer to your question. But there
Speaker 1: definitely is hope. And not only is their hope, but
Speaker 1: what this these people were trying to do. Were the
Speaker 1: catoofer right there, trying to stick it to Wall Street
Speaker 1: and make money and that if you don't like Wall
Speaker 1: Street for whatever reason, that's a way to stick it
Speaker 1: to Wall Street. Pay them very little and outperformed most
Speaker 1: investors by by being pretty passive, I mean using the
Speaker 1: same technology basically. That's Wall Street. Journal columnist Spencer Jacob
Speaker 1: his book The Revolution that Wasn't Game Stop. Read it
Speaker 1: in The Fleecing of Small Investors. It's out now still
Speaker 1: to come on Bloomberg Business Week. Valentine's Day. Check your calendar,
Speaker 1: it's Monday. Hopefully you ordered something for that someone special
Speaker 1: in your life, and I hope that you did it early.
Speaker 1: Tim Why are you looking at me like that? But
Speaker 1: the CEO of farm Girl Flowers tells us about her
Speaker 1: biggest worry heading into what she calls her company's super Bowl.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg. Your doesn't like flowers, right, No, she doesn't,
Speaker 1: but she likes chocolate all right. Good to know, everybody.
Speaker 1: Broadcasting from the financial capital of the world, Bloomberg e
Speaker 1: Live in Rio in New York to Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one oh six one does San Francisco,
Speaker 1: Bloomberg nine sixty to the country Sirius XM Chado one
Speaker 1: nineteen and around the globe the Bloomberg Business app and
Speaker 1: b Burg Radio dot Com. This is Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 1: Valentine's Day. It's on Monday, and it turns out that's
Speaker 1: not a very good day of the week for floral companies.
Speaker 1: To find out why, we check in with Christina Stembel,
Speaker 1: the founder and CEO of farm Girl Flowers. She grew
Speaker 1: up on a corn and soybean farm in Indiana and
Speaker 1: went on to start her own business, one that's now
Speaker 1: worth sixty five million dollars to bouquets as out they're gorgeous.
Speaker 1: Christina helps farm Girl will fully recover from the impact
Speaker 1: of the pandemic. Bye for now, though she's just worried
Speaker 1: about this week ahead. We are going into what we
Speaker 1: like to call our super Bowl of the year. It's
Speaker 1: a Valentine's Day, um and Balment Day this year is
Speaker 1: falling on a Monday, which is one of the worst
Speaker 1: days possible for actually the worst day possible for it
Speaker 1: to fall on for delivery UM where we don't have
Speaker 1: many locations that can deliver on Monday. We're not a
Speaker 1: big enough company to get a Sunday pick up for
Speaker 1: Monday deliveries. So it's definitely throwing a wrench into it
Speaker 1: for us. So this means you're shipping on your shipping
Speaker 1: on a Saturday, but it's kind of just the flowers
Speaker 1: are hanging out until Monday. We're shipping from different locations,
Speaker 1: different dates, but we only have one location that we
Speaker 1: can ship two to get there on Monday. The rest
Speaker 1: of them have to come on Friday or Tuesday. UM.
Speaker 1: And you know, like be like getting a Christmas tree
Speaker 1: the day after Christmas, isn't isn't that great? It's tricky.
Speaker 1: I think what I would say, I would rather like
Speaker 1: give me my flowers ahead of time, like Friday or Saturday,
Speaker 1: like just begin to Valentine's Day celebrations early. It's just
Speaker 1: a day, Carol's going to start. Everyone's listening to you weekend, right,
Speaker 1: Like I agree, Like, you know, you kind of do
Speaker 1: a nice lead up. So how do you get flowers
Speaker 1: on Saturday or Friday? And then maybe we have dinner
Speaker 1: on Sunday and on Monday we you know, stay home
Speaker 1: and do laundry because we got to work the next night. Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know how you do it, um supply chains
Speaker 1: though in general, how have you been dealing with it, Christina? Yeah, Oky,
Speaker 1: dealing with it the same way that every industry is.
Speaker 1: We're you know, trying to think outside the box. That
Speaker 1: how we can you know not you know, we can
Speaker 1: absorb some of the extra costs without passing it all
Speaker 1: onto the customers. But you know it's kind of a
Speaker 1: a toggle. You know, we have to Our prices are
Speaker 1: higher this year. They have to be because you know,
Speaker 1: everything costable right now. Cardboard prices are up. You know,
Speaker 1: flower costs are are about double right now for Valentine
Speaker 1: and stay of what they usually are. UM. So you
Speaker 1: know that that comes with the cost that we have
Speaker 1: passed on to our consumers. And are they are they
Speaker 1: are they dealing with it? Well, are are you seeing
Speaker 1: maybe an impact on demand because of the cost. We
Speaker 1: definitely are seen to impact on demand, especially when we're competing,
Speaker 1: you know with grocery stores and things like that that
Speaker 1: we didn't used to compete with at that level because
Speaker 1: people are still working from home where they can pick
Speaker 1: them up on their own. Um. So it's it's definitely
Speaker 1: hurting us. Um And I know it's hurting every industry
Speaker 1: and we're no different. There's a ripple effect that I
Speaker 1: wouldn't even thought of if I didn't know flowers, you know,
Speaker 1: with container prices that bring your tubers and bulbs and seeds,
Speaker 1: you know, and all of that that filtered down to
Speaker 1: the end consumer. Unfortunately, what about supply chain when it
Speaker 1: comes to planes, because I know that's a really important
Speaker 1: part of the fresh flower industry because some of the
Speaker 1: stuff is being flown from South America right absolutely. Um,
Speaker 1: And list space is really hard around holidays. Everybody needs
Speaker 1: it on the exact same day. Um. And everybody's shipping
Speaker 1: so many things now more than just flowers and UM.
Speaker 1: You know I always joke about like I wish I
Speaker 1: were you know, we were selling sweaters instead that they
Speaker 1: could be you know, sit on somebody's sports for three
Speaker 1: days or being a storting facility late. Um. But we
Speaker 1: really really heavily at on time deliveries. And we're also
Speaker 1: fighting mother Nature with weather right now, so it feels
Speaker 1: like kind of you know, a snowball effected, so many
Speaker 1: outside commissions playing against us. So we're you know, and
Speaker 1: relying on luck a lot, like relying and hopefully that
Speaker 1: there's not going to be more snowstorms like last week
Speaker 1: this week, um, and that the lift space holds out
Speaker 1: and we actually get what we've been told from our
Speaker 1: shipping partners. So you know, during the holiday shopping season,
Speaker 1: right we always talking about Black Friday because that's traditionally
Speaker 1: the reason it's called Black Friday's when retailers would go
Speaker 1: from being in the red to the black. Valentine's Day financially,
Speaker 1: How pivotal is that for you guys, it's one of
Speaker 1: the big two. Um. We really rely heavily on Valentine's
Speaker 1: Day and Mother's Day to help get us through the
Speaker 1: period which is the summer months June through September. You know,
Speaker 1: everybody's spending you know, usually spending their money on family
Speaker 1: vacations and things like that. I'm not sure what it
Speaker 1: will be this year with covid UM, but you know
Speaker 1: it definitely those two holidays in the first and second
Speaker 1: quarter help us through the third quarter, So you know,
Speaker 1: we rely on it a lot financially to carry us
Speaker 1: through the lumpiness of the business. I want to go
Speaker 1: from supply chain to corporate office and wages and get
Speaker 1: an understanding from you about how you've had to make
Speaker 1: changes during the pandemic and now how difficult it is
Speaker 1: to attract and retain talent. Have you had to raise
Speaker 1: wages significantly? Yeah, we've raised wages, you know, significantly every year.
Speaker 1: So I don't think covid has really impacted that as
Speaker 1: much as a lot of other other things. But you know,
Speaker 1: we were operating in the most expensive area, you know,
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, which was probably not the smartest room
Speaker 1: for me to make UM. And we no longer working
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, so that's helps us a lot. If
Speaker 1: we were still in Fanrancisco, I think we would see
Speaker 1: a lot more of that UM. But reach hating good
Speaker 1: talent is definitely something that that's hard to do. We
Speaker 1: we really rely on our you know, we have a
Speaker 1: great culture at farm Girl and that's helping us a
Speaker 1: lot that we have, you know, a team that just works,
Speaker 1: works their heart out basically, and that's helped us um
Speaker 1: a lot that people really care about the company and
Speaker 1: and believe in the mission as well. That's Christina Stembel,
Speaker 1: the founder and CEO of farm Girl Flowers. You're listening
Speaker 1: to Bloomberg Business Week. Coming up, vintage watches, fine whiskey,
Speaker 1: and the finest pillows four dollars can buy. They're a
Speaker 1: little unusual, they are. They kind of remind me of
Speaker 1: the mad Men era. They totally do. We're gonna take
Speaker 1: a job through the world of luxury with our Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Pursuits team. This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business
Speaker 1: Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick takes Tim Stenovik
Speaker 1: from Bloomberg Radio Time Now for a weekly dive into
Speaker 1: the highly anticipated Bloomberg Pursuit section. It's always one of
Speaker 1: our favorites, and speaking of time, the opening piece in
Speaker 1: the section this week, it's about watches and in particular,
Speaker 1: the multibillion dollars secondary market for these accessories. It's massive,
Speaker 1: it is massive. And it's set to get even bigger.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Pursuits editor Chris Rouser joins us Now to help
Speaker 1: guide us through this week's edition. Business Week contribute to
Speaker 1: Mark Bernardo details the many options for sourcing vintage time pieces. Chris,
Speaker 1: we know you're a watch lover. You're an Apple watch guys.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you're an old school watch guys. Sometimes the word
Speaker 1: on the street is you're actually in the market for
Speaker 1: one of these nice watches that's featured in Bloomberg Pursuits.
Speaker 1: Give us the playbook for actually pricing out and buying
Speaker 1: a pre owned watch, so they're there. The market for
Speaker 1: pre owned watches has never been as hot. Don't call
Speaker 1: it used. You can call it as far as I'm
Speaker 1: concerned as you can call it used. Pre loved is
Speaker 1: what a lot of people like to say that vintage
Speaker 1: or classic. Um So, the market has never been hotter.
Speaker 1: And in it was nineteen billion, and it's predicted to
Speaker 1: be thirty And part of the reason it's so hot
Speaker 1: is because new watches are also very hot, and there's
Speaker 1: big waiting lists for watches from Rolex and Protect Philip
Speaker 1: that you know, they come out in limited numbers, so
Speaker 1: people can't really to wait for years to get one,
Speaker 1: and so immediately when you you buy one, you can
Speaker 1: flip it on the secondary market for three times the
Speaker 1: cost um. And so as a result, there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of entrepreneurs getting into the pre owned space starting startups.
Speaker 1: There have been some businesses around um since eBay started,
Speaker 1: but now there's more than a dozen, like legit serious,
Speaker 1: very big online watch marketplaces. And so we went through
Speaker 1: and we tried to figure out which ones were the
Speaker 1: best for what kind of watch and what you're looking for.
Speaker 1: Can I just say, all right, I'm still waiting for
Speaker 1: my Rolex, but can I just ask you anybody out
Speaker 1: there hello? But what's interesting is I guess the result
Speaker 1: when people get a nice watch, like they hold on
Speaker 1: to it forever, but they don't. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: movement in the market, right Well, I think for a
Speaker 1: long time people did hold onto it because there wasn't
Speaker 1: you know, until about eight years ago, there wasn't a
Speaker 1: huge resale market except for among like really serious collectors.
Speaker 1: So quite frankly, a lot of people have these watches
Speaker 1: kicking around. So the volume is huge in the in
Speaker 1: the secondary market. Christoper, someone like me who doesn't know
Speaker 1: anything about this market, I would feel and I do
Speaker 1: feel intimidated trying to get into it, and I would
Speaker 1: wonder if what I'm buying from one of these resellers
Speaker 1: is actually legit. Yes. Well, first of all, you should
Speaker 1: read Bloomberg Pursuits to learn more about vintage watches. And second,
Speaker 1: one of the great things about all of the emporiums
Speaker 1: that we feature this week is that they all include
Speaker 1: a certain uh steps to prove authenticity. So whether that's
Speaker 1: you know, experts in house that look at the watches,
Speaker 1: whether that's UH they actually work with with actual like
Speaker 1: say a Rolex retailer to get these things updated and
Speaker 1: checked out. Um. You know, all these places like even
Speaker 1: eBay now have pretty good authentic city checks, which they
Speaker 1: didn't have, Right, was that some of their problems beforehand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So eBay is the huge player in this space, and
Speaker 1: it is partially because it was their first UM and
Speaker 1: people have been selling watches on eBay for you know,
Speaker 1: twenty thirty years, and that they had a uh sort
Speaker 1: of like a sixty percent approval rating rating in terms
Speaker 1: of customer satisfaction and they decided we got to get
Speaker 1: that up because it used to be a free for
Speaker 1: all you could sell, You could sell anything anyone that
Speaker 1: you're buying from the seller. And so now for watches
Speaker 1: over two thousand dollars, they have an authenticity check where
Speaker 1: after you buy the watch, they send it to someone
Speaker 1: who checks it out and before it even gets to you,
Speaker 1: they make sure everything's okay. Okay, we're talking big numbers
Speaker 1: here for eBay right in twenty nineteen, is you point
Speaker 1: out in Bloomberg Pursuits, this week eBay sold more than
Speaker 1: two million watches and on average about one and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand live listings for luxury watches can be found on
Speaker 1: the site on any given day. We're talking massive here.
Speaker 1: What about some other marketplaces that you feature. So the
Speaker 1: other big player in this space is called Chrono twenty
Speaker 1: four and they been around since two thousand three, um,
Speaker 1: and they work with a bunch of dealers and individual sellers,
Speaker 1: so all their stuff is authentic and um, you know,
Speaker 1: you really rely on it, and a lot of when
Speaker 1: you google watches, like oh what is the google is
Speaker 1: kind of watch, Carnal twenty four is often what comes up.
Speaker 1: Because they're a really good authority and resource. So we
Speaker 1: recommend them for people who know what they're looking for,
Speaker 1: because they probably have it. There's a new startup called Watchbox. Um.
Speaker 1: The CEO, Justin Reaess, has come on Bloomberg Radio a
Speaker 1: few times. Uh they've um they're on track to earn
Speaker 1: three hundred million in revenue, and they have offices all
Speaker 1: around the world, so they're a good place for people
Speaker 1: who have a lot of money to spend. They have
Speaker 1: some of the more expensive pieces. Hey Chris, how much
Speaker 1: is it? How how much are we talking here? Right?
Speaker 1: To get actually into the market for something vintage, something classic,
Speaker 1: an average there's is an average in this world. So
Speaker 1: if you want to get a Rolex Submarine or or
Speaker 1: GMT Master, Uh, that new will cost you between nine
Speaker 1: and twelve thousand dollars and up to buy that old,
Speaker 1: you're looking at two dollars to thirty thousand dollars. So
Speaker 1: you know, really to get the piece of the people
Speaker 1: are looking for, you're actually you're looking at fifteen tho
Speaker 1: dollars enough. And then when I say up, I mean
Speaker 1: like way up, all right. I just love kind of
Speaker 1: Tim's face. It's like, oh yeah, yeah, do you look
Speaker 1: like you were like com account for college saving or
Speaker 1: you know, compound that ten thousand dollars over eighteen years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you want to your college or do you want
Speaker 1: to watch? Do you work at Bloomberg? Alright, so we
Speaker 1: know you're a watch lover. We talked about that. Um,
Speaker 1: you love Scotch too. Yeah, I'm I'm okay on Scotch. Um,
Speaker 1: but I am not an expert. And we have this
Speaker 1: contributor Brad jaff Jaffee, who um is a complete expert.
Speaker 1: And we do have a story this week about how
Speaker 1: you know, the sort of conventional wisdom amount in whiskey
Speaker 1: is that older is better, and certainly older is more expensive,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't matter how good it is if you
Speaker 1: can never get it. So if a boy crattle of
Speaker 1: whiskey is a hundred thousand dollars um, like this eighty
Speaker 1: year old single mark from Glen Glen Levitt that we mentioned,
Speaker 1: you're not going to you can't afford it, You're not
Speaker 1: going to get it. There's only like a hundred bottles
Speaker 1: of it, So what else can you drink? And Brad
Speaker 1: has tasted all of these incredible old ones and then
Speaker 1: he knows the market well enough to be like, hey,
Speaker 1: if you want something that tastes like this, you can
Speaker 1: try that. So, for example, if you can't get the
Speaker 1: Glen Drone Aged fifty years, which is about dollars a bottle,
Speaker 1: you can buy the Glen Drony Master Vintage Vintage, which
Speaker 1: is about seven hundred dollars, which is uh, you know,
Speaker 1: still expensive, but not nearly as expensive as the priceervers. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what about some other whiskies on here? And I
Speaker 1: keep going down because you get to bourbon and that's
Speaker 1: kind of what I'm into, and I see Mixtor's on here. Um,
Speaker 1: what about bourbon when it comes to the relationship between
Speaker 1: age and quality. Yeah, so you know you probab rebab
Speaker 1: we are an expert on this, but bourbon Um. You
Speaker 1: don't tend to see really long age dates on bourbon
Speaker 1: bottles because it's aged in oak, and so that can
Speaker 1: just be that can really like overpower the flavor eventually
Speaker 1: and make it just very saccharin. It has to be
Speaker 1: aged and charred oak barrels. Um. So you know, there's
Speaker 1: only a few bottles that are actually like, uh sort
Speaker 1: of worth going for the aged um the age statement,
Speaker 1: and Mictur's twenty year is one of them. I'm into it.
Speaker 1: I love. I'm more of a I'm more of a
Speaker 1: bourbon person. Carol me too. I have to say I
Speaker 1: grow my dad would make whiskey sours for us even
Speaker 1: as kids like they would be really deluded. Lots of
Speaker 1: oranges and cherries, but a lot of fun exactly. Um. Hey,
Speaker 1: So last week let's switch gears a little bit. Um.
Speaker 1: James Charmy had a great piece about America's a lade
Speaker 1: homes fifty million and up. This week he's focused on
Speaker 1: a particular room inside the house. It's the kitchen, which
Speaker 1: we all kind of rediscovered during the pandemic. And if
Speaker 1: if you've been following u sort of media trends on design,
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of talk about invisible kitchens, which
Speaker 1: our kitchens where everything is hidden away. There's no hardware
Speaker 1: on the cabinets, you don't know where you don't know
Speaker 1: where the fridge is, you don't know where the trash is,
Speaker 1: you don't know where the just wasasher is, which is
Speaker 1: not my style. And increasingly buyers of real estate are saying,
Speaker 1: you know, I actually have to use this kitchen, and
Speaker 1: it looks amazing if it's hidden away, But then I
Speaker 1: had to take out the toaster, and then there's the
Speaker 1: toaster and it's like ruins the um. And so you know,
Speaker 1: we looked at some kitchens that are more open, where
Speaker 1: you have glass pained cabinets and you can see where
Speaker 1: the fridge is, and they've got beautiful colors, and some
Speaker 1: brokers and the Hampton's and in other places you're saying,
Speaker 1: you know, these are so unusual that they actually stick
Speaker 1: out and they're seen as an asset. Okay, it's all
Speaker 1: fun and games. You buy that fifty million dollar home,
Speaker 1: you want to remodel the kitchen, and then you see
Speaker 1: that you cannot get what you want because of supply
Speaker 1: chain issues still an issue in the kitchen, absolutely, which
Speaker 1: is why maybe you don't get that same white marble
Speaker 1: that everybody has um and that caesar Stone. You get
Speaker 1: something a little more colorful and weird. Seed. I thought
Speaker 1: you were going to say, all right, you get the
Speaker 1: fifty million dollar home, you get the watch, you get
Speaker 1: the Scotch, and you go, I'm just gonna say the
Speaker 1: open kitchen, and then you get the orbs. What are
Speaker 1: the orbs? Okay, So this week, for the one we're
Speaker 1: making Chris do it. He didn't want to do it
Speaker 1: is uh, you know, you look at a couch in
Speaker 1: a house, often they'll have a little accent pillow. Usually
Speaker 1: those pillows are square, sometimes rectangular. You know, it's very
Speaker 1: satisfying to do that karate chop on the top to
Speaker 1: make them all poofy. But Jim does it all the
Speaker 1: time to his catchy talks about all the time. But
Speaker 1: Rlow climbs over it. Yeah, no, not at all. This
Speaker 1: week we uh, we focus on circular couch pillows, so
Speaker 1: there is uh there these orb pillows from this it's
Speaker 1: a collaboration between these two Mexican brands, Waraches and Casa Aurita,
Speaker 1: And they're these really fuzzy multicolored balls that really jump
Speaker 1: out and they make a couch look a lot more
Speaker 1: fun and in testing, uh, they were very popular among
Speaker 1: toddlers and puppies. I was just going to say, I
Speaker 1: have a puppy, and I know my puppy would love it.
Speaker 1: All right, Chris, we made you do it. Thank you
Speaker 1: for doing. Thank you going and doing the orbs of course.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Pursuits editor Chris Rouser joining us check out more
Speaker 1: great stuff from the Pursuit section in this week's issue.
Speaker 1: All right. That wraps up the weekend edition of Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Thanks for joining us. I'm
Speaker 1: Carol Masser. Be sure to tune into Bloomberg Business Week
Speaker 1: Monday through Friday. It starts at two pm Wall Street
Speaker 1: Time on Bloomberg Radio. You can also watch our daily
Speaker 1: broadcast on YouTube. Just search Bloomberg Global News and check
Speaker 1: out our Bloomberg Business Week podcast. You can find it
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot com, Apple, or wherever you get your podcast.
Speaker 1: Blomberg Business Week is available on newstands now at Bloomberg
Speaker 1: dot com and on the Bloomberg Terminal, and you can
Speaker 1: also see me on Bloomberg Quicktake available at Bloomberg dot com,
Speaker 1: slash qt, and streaming platforms like Roku, Apple TV, Samsung
Speaker 1: TV and more. Have a great weekend. Alright, So you
Speaker 1: got the fifty million dollar house, you got the expensive watch,
Speaker 1: You've got the whiskey, the kitchen. Yeah, and then the
Speaker 1: or pillow. I think I'll start with the orb pillows.
Speaker 1: They're kind of like more in my ice. Strange. It
Speaker 1: seemed like an all right, I'm there to have a
Speaker 1: good weekend everyone. This is Boomberg m