Alibaba Backs A World Beyond Meat | What happened and why... In the land of the sleeping dragon, Alibaba (+3.97) reigns supreme when it comes to e-commerce. Like its American look-a-like, Amazon, Alibaba is a marketplace that connects retailers with more than 1 billion shoppers. And... they have a real slice of the grocery game... which brought Beyond Meat (+9.39%) to the table. You thought Amazon Go was the future of grocery shopping...? Think again.🦛 Freshippo... Love the name. And love the game. Alibaba's Freshippo supermarkets are expanding fast with a 'New retail experience'. Combining e-commerce and real stores like never before - more on that here.🇨🇳 Perfect point of entry... Beyond Meat has just entered the Chinese market with some space on the shelves of Freshippo. Alibaba has been piloting and expanding the Freshippo experiment with increasing speed. In fact, this is no longer an experiment. While Amazon Go still feels too early for the western masses, there are more than 200 Freshippos serving China's mass affluent market. So what does it mean for a world beyond the west for Beyond Meat... Speed... Freshippo does not only merge the world of online and in-store like no retailer before it, it merges the world of in-store and warehouses. Delivering goods to homes (ordered in-store) within 30 minutes. I'll be seeing you later... Freshippo also doubles up in some locations as a restaurant. Serving fresh seafood to customers - think Wholefoods but fresher. For the most part, Freshippo is an online game. While retailers in the west try to breach the online and offline divide, Alibaba is decades ahead. And for Beyond Meat, they have overnight access to a 1.6 billion consumer market that is riddled with low trust levels when it comes to domestic meat quality. | The Takeaway Know your customer... Retailers including IKEA, John Lewis, Apple, Amazon, and many more, have tried to seamlessly bridge the divide between the online and offline world. The major barriers have so often been the consumer adoption of a new way of shopping. In China, where consumers so rapidly adopt technology, Freshippo is operating at speed and scale with total consumer buy-in. Uber Moves On From GrubHub Snub | What happened and why... I am so over you... Recall Grubhub being gobbled up by Just Eat Takeaway.com - Who could forget a name like that? Uber (+5.57%) missed a chance there and quickly turned its attention to some small fry that no one really saw coming. Making a $2.6bn offer for the food-delivery company, Postmates. 🗑️ On the rebound... Uber has moved fast to get over its Grubhub snub, and in the process decided a smaller player might be a more manageable portion size right now... Small fry... Postmates control just 8% of the US market.When 4 becomes 3... With only 4 real players in the US delivery market, UberEats (22% of the market share pie) was looking to partner up with GrubHub (23%) to rival DoorDash's domination (45%). With GrubHub off-the-market, that left them with Postmates - the last pick in the playground. 💣 Price wars... are commonplace in fast-growing industries. Companies playing the land-grab game and fighting for market share, will stomach big losses in the process. And nowhere is in a sharper battle than food delivery. Just like in Europe - where Just Eat tied up with Takeaway.com and Amazon snapped up Deliveroo - America has its own battle. And seemingly, the same consequences. Uber is desperate to land more market share in the shape of Postmate but this is a player in demand. Analysts are suggesting that Postmate has offers on the table and an option to IPO... so this deal could be out for delivery for a little while longer. | The Takeaway This is serious... For years many analysts saw Uber's foray into food delivery as a fad but the longer they played, the more serious they got. And in a world where winner-takes-all and second place just about survives, teaming up with Postmates became a necessity after the Grubhub snub. And investors seem to think the rebound is a smart and necessary move if Uber Eats is to compete on price. The stock popped up 5% on the news of an offer, closing that deal, will be the hard part. Lululemon Takes A Good Look In The Mirror | What happened and why... Out the wardrobe and into the living room. In one fell swoop. Lululemon (+5.23%) has been limbering up for its first acquisition for years and now that it's here, investors are liking it. The yogi-giant has paid $500m for the home exercise "start-up", Mirror, that specialises in blending your workout equipment into your decor. Here's what it's all about... You pay... $1.5k upfront and land yourself a vertical mirror/TV that keeps you lean in lockdown.Here's how... For an extra $39/month - if you want more than just a mirror - you'll get access to the live classes with pro trainers. Here's why... Workout from home is so hot right now. You've read about the Peloton gains and the buzzing competitors experiencing crazy growth - well Lulu thinks it is sticking around. 🛍️ Coming to a Store near you... as the queen of experiential retail, Lulu will be demoing and enticing customers with Mirror on-tap in stores. While Mirror might have just been enjoying overnight success, the distribution network just went into over-drive. | The Takeaway Owning work from home... Lululemon has been a major winning in the work from home shift. With new lines to cater for casual workwear and more people rocking athleisure more regularly, Lululemon has enjoyed lockdown. And it has opened its eyes... Launching a loyalty programme that is full of exclusive benefits from faster-delivery, new products and now maybe... a Mirror subscription. Elon Wins A Major Ego Trip | What happened and why... On Thursday, electric aut-giant, Tesla (+24.67%), officially became the No.1 carmaker in investors' eyes. The company's stock is up 172% in six months and is now worth $207 billion. 👩💻 Vorsprung Durch Technik + move fast and break things... Combining the best of tech innovation and very little of existing car manufacturing, Tesla is now worth more than Toyota, Disney and Coke combined. In eclipsing Toyota as the world's most valuable car company, Tesla has a crown that its CEO seems comfortable flaunting. The electric car maker has usurped Toyota - an electric/hybrid innovator in its own right - despite producing only a smidgen of what Toyota churns out... Like-for-like... delivered 368k cars in 2019, while Toyota pumped out nearly 11 million. In case you needed reminding... the world's most valuable carmaker, has still not served up an annual profit (hence why it is still not on the S&P 500). 🔮 But for analysts and investors... it all about potential. With production on the rise and up 50% on 2018, investors are backing Tesla to dominate the future of electric carmaking. And Bloomberg expects e-sales to be way over half the total car sales in 20 years' time... and that is worth the wait. | The Takeaway Given the battles faced by carmakers and a forced cut in prices in the face of the electric boom, Tesla has become a sweet spot for investors. But Tesla has other challenges of its own... the company is cutting prices to fend off competition and that means profit margins are hardly visible with every sale. It doesn't matter how many you make if every car loses you money... and maybe that's why Tesla is still the most shorted (bet-against) stock in the US.
