Good morning, please try to answer this question.
Q. Back in 2011, had you invested in real estate, gold or the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which one do you think would have given you the maximum return?
A. None of the above. A Rolex Submariner watch would have beaten all three.
🤯 Indeed, Rolex sales on average show an uptick beginning in 2017, followed by an even sharper spike in 2020. Today, the average Rolex price is more than USD13,000 — nearly 3X of the 2011 average of USD5,000.
🎧 As promised, one reader today gets a cool Rolex Submariner pair of boAt 441 Airdopes. Will it be you? Tomorrow's email will answer that question.
🚴♀️🏃♀️🥝🍎
Brick And Mortar Is Not Enough
Like every new year, 2022 also comes with its own set of changes in the world of retail - brick and mortar, online and the metaverse included.
How Did We Get Here?
In the last 2 years, we witnessed explosive growth in social commerce, influencer marketing, and advancements in virtual reality shopping experiences.
And thanks to the lockdowns, retail giants like Walmart, Tata and Reliance continue to expand their online shopper experience.
From technological advancements in the retail industry to surprising new takes on retail real estate, here are the big changes in 2022.
🛒 Experiential Retail Is In: Though e-commerce still only accounts for about 20% of all retail sales, it remains an omni present threat to brick-and-mortar. That's where experiential retail becomes essential.
So, brands like The Gap, Nike, and now Walmart are introducing fun ways to experience their products in store, special events on social media to create product awareness, and experts to demonstrate how best to use the products.
🛒 From Visual To Tactile: Increasingly, retail giants are switching on curated displays allowing customers to touch, feel, and interact with products which were earlier packaged up, like bedding, large furniture and kitchen displays.
In some areas, gigantic smart screens are showing off reviews and other content related to trending items.
🛒 QR Codes For Self Checkouts: Retailers are also making more strategic use of QR codes. Shoppers scouting for a heavy item like fitness equipment or furniture can simply scan the code, make the purchase, and have the item delivered.
This dramatically reduces the possibility of customers forgetting about the item later or finding it somewhere else before they buy it at the store they're currently in.
🛒 Presence In The Metaverse: Walmart recently bought several metaverse-related trademarks, and its entry into virtual retail provides compelling evidence that the metaverse is more than a fad.
In fact, this just goes to show that even a marquee retailer like Walmart doesn't feel that its massive footprint, low prices, or essential retailer status will be enough for its brick and mortar stores to stay relevant in the future.
Medical AI Gets Free Big Data Booster
If a medical symptom is not definitely tied to an outcome, it doesn’t offer a complete picture and there’s no way to know if an identified symptom actually corresponds to a particular disease.
For example, medical data from thousands of cases globally were used to conclude that a sudden loss of taste and smell is a certain indication of a Covid-19 infection.
Now… Medical Datasets For Everyone
🙋♂️ Say hello to Nightingale Open Science, a new research resource that wants to make diagnosis smarter by making high-quality, outcomes-based datasets widely available for researchers building AI tools for health care.
Nightingale allows anyone conducting non profit research to access 40TB of medical data for free—a resource that could shed light on medical mysteries and promote earlier diagnoses of high-risk conditions.
More hard drive space to them. 💪
Things We Are Watching
📌 It seems we are living in a VUCA world. VUCA is short for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. To make it simple - we have objectives, but we cannot plan their implementation because we are not able to predict what will happen. Here are two predictions though. . .
📌 Research has shown consistently that low income/affordable housing projects are not only more likely to suffer damage in a natural disaster due to their poor locations, but they are also more likely to take much longer – two to three times longer – to recover.
📌 Technologists say the metaverse is the next level of the internet. It’s a virtual reality platform where people can play games, connect with friends, attend meetings, shop, go to virtual concerts, and even buy virtual real estate. Watch this CNBC video about the risks and rewards of investing in metaverse real estate.
3 Big Changes Coming To An Office Near You
The pandemic and the remote work culture it has brought along is a thorny issue for office real estate.
Across the world, demand for new office space has sunk to all time lows, and while recovery mode has been activated, real estate veterans feel 'back to pre-pandemic levels' of leasing are at least a couple of years away.
However, you don't have to wait that long to notice the big changes coming to the good old office.
Here are the top 3:
1️⃣ Flexible Floor Plans Are In: Jump over acquisitions and leases and there's a push for more flexible workspaces within the office. Google is crafting team pods while Amazon is axing rows of desks in their offices to boost employee interaction.
This essentially means death to pre-pandemic open floor plans. With the all-new flexible workspace, companies are telling the world how they want employees to use their time when they return to the office - as a space for collaboration, not just heads-down work.
2️⃣ Health And Hygiene Are Priorities: While the number of desk rows and chai machines vary from firm to firm, one consideration is consistent across every company: the health and safety of the employee.
Vaccine protocols aside, investment in technologies or services that clean the office space are trending big time. Proper ventilation, natural lighting, and rigorous cleaning schedules are top incoming changes to support the health and wellness of occupiers, even beyond this pandemic.
3️⃣ Amenities And Socialising Space Is A Must: To woo employees back to the office building, companies are turning to more amenity-filled spaces. In fact, the most amenity-filled buildings on the market today are up to 54% higher in price than the rest of the market.
Another draw of returning to the office is increased opportunities to socialize. Office spaces that offer socialising options are more sought after than the usual workspace with a dining hall and the famed water cooler.
In One Sip
🔖 Expensive but covers the above? Deal. Companies are willing to foot the bill for such office spaces if it means their workforce is happy and doing its best work.
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Before we wrap up today's business, let us remind you of the immense power of the Himalayan Yogi.
In a case of a "glaring breach" of regulations, Chitra Ramkrishna, the former chief executive of National Stock Exchange (NSE), shared information including the bourse's financial projections, business plans and board agenda with a purported spiritual guru in the Himalayas, per Reuters.
See you tomorrow. Good (V)Day. 💚
☕ The Crew@Ginger Chai