Date: 2025-02-05 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00019310
Media / News
Morning Report
Morning Report ... Monday 3rd August 2020
Peter Burgess
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Date: 2025-02-05 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00019310 | |||||||||
Media / News | |||||||||
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Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess | |||||||||
| Skip to content Using Gmail with screen readers Meet Start a meeting Join a meeting Hangouts 3 of 751,146 The Monster Is Everywhere Inbox x Morning Report morningreport@businessadvantagetv.com via infusionmail.com 9:40 AM (15 minutes ago) to me image Women Entrepreneurs Back Women Entrepreneurs. Businesses Are Breaking Up with Their Banks. Bailing Out Chinese-Owned Companies image REOPENING Is it time for a reset? “The coronavirus is spreading at dangerous levels across much of the United States, and public health experts are demanding a dramatic reset in the national response, one that recognizes that the crisis is intensifying and that current piecemeal strategies aren’t working. This is a new phase of the pandemic, one no longer built around local or regional clusters and hot spots. It comes at an unnerving moment in which the economy suffered its worst collapse since the Great Depression, schools are rapidly canceling plans for in-person instruction and Congress has failed to pass a new emergency relief package.” “‘Unlike many countries in the world, the United States is not currently on course to get control of this epidemic. It’s time to reset,’ declared a report released this week by Johns Hopkins University.” “‘There are fewer and fewer places where anybody can assume the virus is not there,’ Gov. Mike DeWine (R) of Ohio said Wednesday. ‘It’s in our most rural counties. It’s in our smallest communities. And we just have to assume the monster is everywhere. It’s everywhere.’” READ MORE Businesses are giving up hope of getting back to normal any time soon: “Just a few months. Just get through the next few months. That’s how many small-business owners approached the coronavirus pandemic in March, when an abrupt shutdown ground the economy to a halt. With a stern mix of patience and thrift, they cut costs, borrowed money, and postponed bills to scrape through spring and summer. By fall, many believed, the worst would be over. But now, as the virus rages still across the United States, it’s becoming increasingly clear the economy won’t recover for many more months. And some owners are wondering how much stamina they have left, what sleight of hand they haven’t yet tried, to keep their businesses afloat?” “Gabriel Mandujano, chief executive of Wash Cycle Laundry, used his PPP loan to bring back about 40 workers to his [Boston] commercial laundry service. With revenue still off by more than 50 percent, however, he had to let go about 20 workers in mid-June and reduce hours for others.” “Wash Cycle cleans linens for hotels, blankets for airlines, and towels for salons and gyms — all businesses hit hard by the coronavirus.” “Resigned to many more weeks of business being slow, Mandujano is looking at new markets, such as washing work uniforms and introducing a bike delivery service for commercial customers.” READ MORE A third of New York’s small businesses may be gone forever: “In early March, Glady’s, a Caribbean restaurant in Brooklyn, was bringing in about $35,000 a week in revenue. The Bank Street Bookstore, a 50-year-old children’s shop in Manhattan, was preparing for busy spring and summer shopping seasons. And Busy Bodies, a play space for children in Brooklyn, had just wrapped up months of packed classes with long waiting lists. Five months later, those once prosperous businesses have evaporated. Glady’s and Busy Bodies are closed for good and Bank Street, one of the city’s last children’s bookstores, will shut down permanently in August.” “The three are victims of the economic destruction that threatens to derail New York City’s recovery from the financial collapse triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.” “About half the closings have been in Manhattan, where office buildings have been hollowed out, its wealthier residents have left for second homes and tourists have stayed away.” READ MORE RESCUE LOANS U.S. bailout money went to Chinese-owned companies: “Millions of dollars of American taxpayer money have flowed to China from the $660 billion Paycheck Protection Program that was created in March to be a lifeline for struggling small businesses in the United States. But because the economic relief legislation allowed American subsidiaries of foreign firms to receive the loans, a substantial chunk of the money went to America’s biggest economic rival, a new analysis shows. According to a review of publicly available loan data by the strategy consulting firm Horizon Advisory, $192 million to $419 million has gone to more than 125 companies that Chinese entities own or invest in.” READ MORE STARTUPS Sridhar Ramaswamy, who used to run Google’s entire advertising division, is building a search engine with no advertising: “It's called Neeva, and it's a big bet that some subset of Google's billions of users believe search is important enough, and Google increasingly problematic enough, that they'll pay Neeva's (unannounced) monthly price for a search engine. More than that, it's a big bet that reinventing search has less to do with beating PageRank and more to do with fixing the user experience, starting by putting search results back at the top of search results.” “The Neeva founders figured that by inverting the business model from ads to subscriptions, they could incentivize themselves to build a search engine that prioritized privacy, user experience and simplicity instead of scale, scale and scale.” READ MORE BUSINESSADVANTAGE TV This week’s featured video: Jack Stack talks about how SRC set aside a $100 million rainy day fund after the Great Recession, and Michael Kiolbassa talks about why Kiolbassa Smoked Meats had to drop a big customer last year and how it paid off this year. WATCH HERE MARKETING More than 1,000 companies have boycotted Facebook: “The advertiser boycott of Facebook took a toll on the social media giant, but it may have caused more damage to the company’s reputation than to its bottom line. The boycott, called #StopHateForProfit by the civil rights groups that organized it, urged companies to stop paying for ads on Facebook in July to protest the platform’s handling of hate speech and misinformation. More than 1,000 advertisers publicly joined, out of a total pool of more than 9 million, while others quietly scaled back their spending.” READ MORE FINANCE A group of Chicago women is starting a commercial bank to focus on lending to women entrepreneurs: “First Women’s Bank, which received conditional approval this month from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., would be the first financial institution startup in the Chicago area in more than a decade. Organizers are raising the necessary funds and aim to launch early next year. The idea for the bank grew from a discussion among the three co-founders — Lisa Kornick, Melissa Widen and Amy Fahey — on how female entrepreneurs still trail their male counterparts in accessing loans even as more women start their own businesses.” “‘During my time as a restaurant owner, I needed to select a new bank because our existing bank could no longer meet our needs,’ said Kornick, co-owner of DMK Restaurants, which operates Ada Street and DMK Burger Bar in Chicago. ‘I was shocked to find there were no banks focused on women.'” “‘As an entrepreneur, I immediately saw an opportunity,’ said Kornick.” READ MORE Here’s why businesses are breaking up with their banks: “In Pavia Rosati’s hour of financial need, her bank ghosted her. It was April, and the coronavirus pandemic was taking a toll on Ms. Rosati’s New York-based travel-writing website and consulting firm, Fathom Unlimited Inc. She went to Capital One Financial Corp., Fathom’s bank for nearly 10 years, for a Paycheck Protection Program loan. But Capital One wasn’t ready to accept applications for the government-loan program when it launched, and no one there could tell her when it would, she said. A branch banker took days to respond to emails, she said, and referred her to Capital One’s customer-service hotline. Ms. Rosati decided to switch banks. ‘Why would I work with a bank that was so unhelpful to me at the moment I needed it?’ she said.” “Most of the time, the pain of transferring balances and syncing incoming and outgoing payments to new account numbers dissuades business owners from switching banks. But many were willing to endure the hassle as a thank-you for PPP help.” “Stan Doida, managing attorney at Doida Law Group in Greenwood Village, Colo., moved hundreds of thousands of dollars of business and personal deposits from Wells Fargo to Denver-based InBankshares Corp. after the smaller lender secured his law firm a roughly $90,000 PPP loan.” READ MORE Because of the coin shortage, laundromats are having a liquidity crisis: “Every morning, Charles Boukas drives to six Chase banks in the San Diego area in search of quarters. The most he ever drove to was eight, but one branch was closed that day, and two others didn’t have change. Boukas, the 55-year-old owner of the Coin Hut Laundromat, is in a bind: He’s running low on quarters because residents of apartment complexes are making change and not using his machines. The whole trip takes about two hours, and the total amount of quarters he can get is worth $120 because his banks limit how many coins they give out.” “On top of a slowdown in foot traffic, laundromat owners such as Boukas are struggling because the coronavirus seems to have stopped up the flow of coins through the economy.” “People made fewer store trips and many businesses stayed closed with old change sitting in their tills. Even big retailers have felt the pinch, with many putting up signs at registers encouraging customers to use exact exchange or pay with plastic.” READ MORE OBITUARY The founder of Jamba Juice, who helped ignite the smoothie fad, died in June: “Kirk Perron was working at a Safeway supermarket when he came up with his business plan. In 1990, he opened the Juice Club shop in San Luis Obispo, Calif. It was the start of a chain later called Jamba Juice and helped create a fad for smoothies promoted as healthful and featuring ingredients such as bee pollen and Ginkgo biloba. On the menu were Berry Lime Sublime, Peach Pleasure and Hawaiian Lust. Some early outlets were so popular that investors hoped Mr. Perron could do for smoothies what Starbucks was doing for coffee. Howard Schultz, who ran Starbucks Corp. at the time, was an early investor and board member at Jamba.” “Dogged by falling sales and red ink in recent years, Jamba was sold to Focus Brands Inc. for $200 million in 2018.” “Mr. Perron, who had left the company more than a decade earlier, spent much of his time traveling and visited nearly 100 countries. He built a spectacular modernist home alongside a 25-meter lap pool in Palm Springs, Calif.” “His husband, Humberto Rossini Perron, said Mr. Perron suffered from manic depression in recent years, recently broke a hip and died at home of cardiac arrest on June 20. He was 56.” READ MORE THE BUSINESS ADVANTAGE TV PODCAST Episode 27: My Jay Goltz Face: Paul Downs, Jay Goltz, and Dana White talk about how they would know if it were time to close their business, how long it takes to really grow up as a manager, what they’ve learned about managing—and occasionally firing—employees. “I think my staff hears me but eventually does what they want to do,” says Dana. “And that can be very draining because you wonder, ‘Well, why? I pay you. We’ve had training on it and talked about it.’” And Paul tells us that while he’s normally a pretty nice guy, he does have to put on his “Jay Goltz face” occasionally. “So what does that mean exactly?” asks Jay. “I’d like to understand.” You can subscribe to the podcast wherever you get podcasts. You can also LISTEN HERE THE MORNING REPORT AUDIO Subscribe and listen to the audio edition of the BusinessAdvantage TV Morning Report on Apple, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get podcasts. image Follow on Twitter Friend on Facebook Forward to Friend Click Here To Manage Your Email Preferences Unsubscribe Magnetic Marketing, LLC 18 Broad Street Suite 300 Charleston, South Carolina 29401 United States (800) 871-0147 | |||||||||