0:03Welcome to Five Things Friday International Edition with my fabulous co-host Dale. On this week's show, we're going to have UK's Fraser Group bidding for Boss, what's going on? Tesco's and Uber Eats, a partnership made in heaven or hopefully yes. Nike looking at what they're doing in China, then moving on to FairPrice, a Singaporean grocer and their store of the future, and closing off with the fabulous Olympics to come uh in 2028 to Los Angeles. So, staying with me, looking at a Hugo Boss and Fraser's Group. Fraser's Group is a UK uh conglomerate, if you like. They own lots of retail brands including Fraser's, which is a department store, Flannels, which is a upmarket retail um store, and the one that they're the sort of famous for is Sports Direct, which is a value sports clothing. And so, they're
0:54very big in the UK and they've made this bid for, according to Reuters, um for Boss. They own 30% of the shares, so I think it's imminent there will be a takeover. I don't know how hard Hugo Boss is going to um fight this before they before uh they have enough leverage to buy them. But, it's an interesting, you know, I I I think the global brand luxury or premium market is definitely up for a bit of innovation and you know, everyone sees Hugo Boss is in every single airport around the world and it's interesting to see. Staying with me, another UK brand, but this time it's looking at quick commerce, and they've just agreed on a partnership with Uber, but I believe it's Uber plus others to democratize their last-mile delivery, because they're saying it's one of the key areas of growth for them. And they,
1:45you know, club card customers, basically loyalty customers, are now tending to go to quick commerce a lot more than they used to, thanks to the Tesco capability. And what I found it interesting, although this is sort of a our international show, is obviously it's happening in the UK. You know, kudos to Uber Eats, Decathlon, another European brand in Australia has also got to Uber Eats for quick commerce. Now, is this Uber Eats just doing a cracking job and cleaning up the global quick commerce, or is this a sign that retailers are really hungry for quick commerce providers, and so therefore are looking at what that looks like within their regions? But two completely different regions, one's a grocer, one's a sports and lifestyle, both going into quick commerce, which for a long time we used to say it will never work cuz we don't
2:36have the models like in India. — We didn't have the infrastructure, but who does? Uber Eats, DoorDash, all of the, you know, Instacart, they have it. No, I mean, we there are so many beauty manufacturers and retailers, grocer, sports. I how many times is your kids like, I can't find my cleats, so they're in, you know, dad's car and dad's on a business trip. You can Uber Eats. We might need to get rid of the word Eats cuz that feels weird when you're talking about sports equipment, but, you know, you can now Uber yourself some cleats or a ball or whatever you need for practice. So, it makes a lot of sense. It's it's solving last mile delivery for, you know, for retailers. So, — Fantastic. — All right, well, continuing with me. Yeah, so Nike Nike, you know, they've they made a big move a few years ago to really across the world get rid of wholesalers and really just
3:26try a direct play to consumers. There was a a good amount of backlash, sales were strong in direct, but they were not strong enough to kind of outweigh how they were before in wholesale. So, Nike has kind of reversed their decision, has gone back to a lot of wholesale relationships. Now, what they're doing in China is actually removing some of these channels. They are cutting off some of those and really going direct to just a few in China. So, it's going to be, you know, the big ones out there, obviously jd.com, Tmall, Douyin, and that's and then also just Nike, you know, their own store direct as well. So, it's an interesting journey. I mean, what they can do is really control the narrative better, control all sorts of merchandising and drops better, and we'll see how it does in China, but they just made this announcement about a week
4:17or two ago. So, too early to tell. — Also on CNBC, if you want a link, will be in the show notes. Staying with you for FairPrice. — Yeah, so back when I was in Singapore earlier in June, and Alex was there, too, we got the opportunity to tour FairPrice Group's store of tomorrow. — Super cool, right? — Oh, my goodness, it is incredible. So, FairPrice Group is just a Singapore-based grocery store. They are about 5 billion in sales. So, it they're no small player. But, what they've done is they they built out this one store, really as kind of a test store, and they're obviously rolling it out to a lot of others. But, something we said last week in our podcast was talking about kind of the health and wellness about Walmart bringing in some of that to their stores, and you know, with GLPs and things like that. What FairPrice had
5:08done that made me think we have to talk about this. They've done all sorts of cool things, like smart carts, they've done digital shelf labels for sustainability. When you put an item into your cart, it RFID reads it. If you take it out, it tells you, "Did you want to take it out?" It directs you around the store. If you pull up on your app or on the screen in front of you where you want to go or something you want to make, it'll take you around the store, and it flashes the light by the item. All these really cool things. What they had upstairs, which is something I've never seen in the US, and when I do see them, they charge a lot of money at, you know, high-end med spas, they had a scale where you stood there, and you you just took your shoes off. That's it. You held on and what it it's it's a body really a BMI scale, a body density scale. It tells you muscle mass, bone
5:58mass, all the things. And if there are certain very obvious conditions like weak bone mass, it will tell you in a personalized report. You put your receipt in that you get after you do it. It's free. You put it in it scans it and it tells you you may want to look into calcium supplements if you had very low bone density. Or you may want to look into I don't know, I'm making this up. Appetite suppressant. Now, of course, in the US we have all sorts of laws about recommending different things. So, I don't know if this is ever something that could come over to the US, but it's fascinating and honestly one of those things where you go into a store to have the experience, right? It's actually not too far away from their wine bar. So, [laughter] if you don't like your result, pop on over to the wine bar and drown your sorrows. — Lay your head on my lap. — It's a really, really neat store and if
6:48anyone is ever near Singapore, it is absolutely worth checking out and just seeing all the technological advancements that they've done there. — I love that. Uh staying with you for the uh not World Cup, for the Olympics. — Yeah, so the World Cup is wrapped obviously you know, Viva Viva Espana. And one interesting takeaway is that obviously the 2028 Olympics Summer Olympics are going to be in Los Angeles here. So, a lot of these brands that kind of tested into the World Cup, which is obviously a huge global event, are taking a lot of the learnings into the Olympics and deciding whether to kind of re-up or not. Again, big global event, multi-day event, very complex in terms of where you know, every sport is and how to get around and how to activate in these out of home activations. So, I thought it was quite
7:39interesting, you know, there the brand activations are obviously going to be higher than they ever were looking back at, you know, the Milano Olympics in 26 and winter, but it's it's a pretty it's going to be a pretty interesting playing field. And again, it's it's sport and it's health and it's all the same categories that might have tried to, you know, make it opportunity for themselves for FIFA. So, we'll see, but again, I think we'll be talking about these activations for the next two years. So, — I love it. I absolutely love it. And and to be fair, this is in Adweek. So, it tells you in terms of from an advertising perspective, what are you going to do? And you and I said this way, way back in, I don't know, December, January when we were covering the World Cup. What is your strategy for connections with consumers during mass global sporting events, right?
8:29— it's more than 15 billion in advertising revenue for the World Cup, which is not is is about as long as the Olympics are. So, I'm betting you add two years into that, it's going to be 20 billion, you know? — Yeah, it's going to be incredible. — That's that's the GDP of many countries. I mean, that's a insane amount of money. — Yeah, just for one and when you put it like that, just for one event, yeah, absolutely incredible. — It's amazing. — Listen, we've done it again in record time, Jill. Thank you so much underneath 10 minutes, our five things Friday. Until next time, we're going to have a little bit of a break. You're on holiday, I'm on holiday. We shall see each other the week of the — 17th. August 17th, we'll be back. That week. And in the meantime, we will both go interna- to international locations. — Hey, fantastic. I look forward to I'll be in Japan. If anyone's in Japan wants to say hi, come on over. — I'll be in Portugal. So, you know, if
9:21you're around, see — You'll be here and I'll be there. Anyway, [laughter] until then, have a fantastic holiday, Jill. — Thank you. You too, Alan. Bye.
