The Starbucks share price has risen by almost 50% in 2019 with annual revenue growing 8% year on year to $6.82 billion. CNN Business recently observed that “every Starbucks growth strategy is working." The core global café business has grown 6%. Starbucks now has 30,600 stores in China and by partnering with Uber Eats and... Continue Reading →
In the UK today, there are c60 million people now using subscription services and last week Apple unveiled further choices. Subscription models offer a number of attractions for business owners. These include sustained and more predictable revenue, increased customer engagement and a more confident calculation of lifetime customer value. In 2016 Unilever paid $1 billion for Dollar... Continue Reading →
Coca-Cola’s surprise purchase of Costa Coffee, the world's no.2 coffee chain, is an intriguing move for a business that has no track record as a retailer. The price of £3.9 billion (16 times Costa's annual earnings) suggests Coca-Cola see a big opportunity. So should Starbucks, the leading global coffee chain, be scared? Room for two... Continue Reading →
Volvo is a brand and business doing well in a challenging industry. Increasingly recognised as a premium brand, Volvo has enjoyed a fifth consecutive year of record sales and has won its first European Car of the Year award in 2018. Purchased by Geely Holdings in 2010 Volvo sold 90,417 vehicles in China last year —... Continue Reading →
One of the things I help clients to do is see future scenarios. Given this I couldn’t resist considering where Amazon’s $1 billion PillPack acquisition may take them next. The purchase of prescription delivering PillPack is widely seen as a start of a consumer-centric push by Amazon into healthcare. Given Amazon's assets, scale and data could... Continue Reading →
Since the announcement of the proposed merger between Sainsbury & Asda attention has rightly focused on the aim to "lower prices by c.10 per cent on many of the products customers buy regularly." What also caught my attention was the significant role Argos seems to play in the strategic fit for both Sainsbury and Walmart. ... Continue Reading →
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