Amazon & UK Tech Tax Are Winners says 'Incendiary' Scott Galloway

Should Prof G Tone it Down?

L2inc video above published on Nov 1, 2018, on Scott Galloway's Digital Winners & Losers.  Winners: 1. Amazon private label furniture brands Ravenna, Rivet, Stone & Beam; 2. United Kingdom (government) for 2% tax on tech giants' top-line revenue.

55 Percent of Online Shoppers Start their Product Searches on Amazon--Recode.net, Sep 2016.

After attracting comment trolls following an appearance on Fox Business, Scott Galloway worries that he’s crossed the line between provocative and incendiary. Below is the video of Galloway on Fox Business via YouTube--Provocative or Incendiary?

Scott Galloway on Fox Business:

Fox Business video above published Oct 25, 2018: NYU Stern Professor Scott Galloway on concerns over the impact of Facebook and its management team.

Galloway says in the video:

Sheryl Sandberg is "one of the most dangerous, damaging executives in the history of business." 

“You’ve heard the term lipstick on a pig. Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg are lipstick on cancer.”

“If these individuals [Zuckerberg and Sandberg] weren't so likable they would have been out a long time ago and District Attorneys would be talking about bringing charges of criminal negligence. This management team will go down in history as one of the most dangerous and damaging management teams in the United States.”

 Provocative or Incendiary? 

Galloway speaks highly of Facebook and its management in this Oct 2015 video below @4:32:

Oct 19, 2015: Scott Galloway of NYU Stern School of Business talks with Betty Liu about why Yahoo should be sold, the e-commerce strength of Amazon, and the juggernaut that is Facebook. He appeared on "Bloomberg Markets."

Transcript of first video above:
00:00  a loser Furniture brands as Amazon has
00:05  launched a new private label brand its
00:07  third this week Ravenna home the day of
00:10  the announcement e-commerce home goods
00:12  company Wayfair saw its stock shed six
00:15  percent of its value wait there's more
00:17  pain to come Amazon launched two
00:19  furniture brands last year Rivet and
00:21  Stone & Beam all three feature the
00:23  Amazon Prime badge meaning free shipping
00:26  and free returns I'm launching my own
00:29  furniture brand called cialis home
00:31  living the more you use it the older it
00:33  gets the harder it feels okay so it's
00:38  the beginning of the end for Wayfair
00:39  perhaps with more than half of consumer
00:42  searches for products starting on Amazon
00:43  and global online furniture sales expected
00:46  to grow at an average rate of 12
00:48  percent over the next four years this
00:50  might be another great move for Amazon
00:53  who sits on top of every piece of data
00:55  outsources the crappy parts of the
00:58  e-commerce echo system and then moves in
01:00  on the white meat of e-commerce the high
01:02  margin high-volume sector a winner the
01:06  United Kingdom whose government unveiled
01:07  plans this week to introduce a two
01:09  percent tax on top-line revenue
01:11  registered by big tech estimates place
01:14  the potential gains from the tax at four
01:17  hundred million pounds or about five
01:19  hundred and ten million u.s. dollars is
01:21  this enough the average corporate tax
01:23  rate in the United Kingdom is 19% close
01:26  to the recently reduced US federal
01:28  corporate income tax rate of 21%
01:30  however in 2017 amazon reported paying
01:33  two point three percent in tax to the
01:35  british government while in america the
01:37  seattle giant paid effectively zero
01:39  federal tax in 2017 what happens when
01:43  the most successful companies in the
01:46  world pay less than their fair share of
01:48  taxes simple everyone else pays more the
01:51  UK tax is a step in the right direction
01:53  but a small dent compared to their
01:55  impact on the economy and wages over the
01:58  years this is simple complexity or a
02:00  complex tax code favors the wealthy
02:03  favors the organizations with large
02:06  sg&a budgets and the UK has said ok big
02:09  tech your tax lawyers are smarter than
02:11  our tax authorities and begin taxing them
02:13  on the top line. A loser the United
02:16  States -- pipe bombs people being murdered
02:18  in their place of worship it feels that
02:20  we are the Frog that wakes up and
02:22  realizes it's in boiling water what is
02:25  each of our roles and what has become an
02:28  incredibly coarse dialogue in our nation
02:31  I go on CNBC CNN and Bloomberg and all
02:34  the other business television shows and
02:35  now go on Fox as I wanted to get out of
02:38  my bubble
02:38  however most recently I was on with
02:40  Stuart Varney of Varney & Co I think
02:42  Stuart is a fantastic host and in
02:45  general like the people a lot at Fox
02:46  what was disturbing was my segment was
02:50  then posted on YouTube and the people
02:52  here did an analysis of the top comments
02:55  so some of those results and they are
02:57  very very disturbing approximately half
03:00  of the results had some sort of
03:02  misogynistic or anti-semitic tone we
03:05  analyzed these top segments and found
03:07  that some of the comments were
03:08  especially vile concerning Ms. Sandberg
03:11  have I crossed the line from being
03:13  provocative to incendiary is the
03:16  question that I'm asking myself while
03:18  these comments don't seem to happen on
03:20  CNBC or CNN am I going into a room
03:23  knee-deep in gasoline and passing out
03:26  lighters to arsonists or is it just that
03:29  bad actors have decided to weaponize Fox
03:32  or put greater efforts into weaponizing
03:33  Fox versus the other networks I don't
03:36  know but it's an honest question I have
03:38  decided that I am going to tone it down
03:41  that this is the new me and I'm going to
03:44  be a little less incendiary
03:47  [Music]

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iPhone Generation: Lonely & Depressed Losers? (video)

iPhone Generation: Lonely & Depressed

Video above published Aug 10, 2017 by L2inc.com--NYU Stern Professor Scott Galloway on digital winners and losers--

Loser: Unsustainable internet companies. Pureplays like Wayfair (domain: wayfair.com) and Blue Apron (domain: blueapron.com) are getting Amazon-like valuations without a critical component: a business that works.

Loser: The brand-industrial complex. Startup Brandless (domain: brandless.com) sells generic household items for $3 each, pointing to a larger shift in consumer behavior.

Loser: The smartphone generation. Three-quarters of American teens own iPhones (domain: apple.com/iphone), and the devices are making them more lonely -- but also less likely to do drugs.

Select slides:

Sources:
(0:13) “Meal-Kit Maker Blue Apron Goes Public, Demand Underwhelms As Amazon Looms,” Reuters, June 2017. http://reut.rs/2toDqYV
(0:13) “Pioneering Beauty Startup Birchbox Turns Profit After Tough 2016,” Forbes, April 2017. http://bit.ly/2fvh96f
(0:13) Google Finance, August 8, 2017.
(0:25) “New Amazon Data From Wall Street Should Terrify All Retail Stores In The US,” Business Insider, September 2016. http://read.bi/2bX6tG6
(0:30) “How Many Americans Are Amazon Prime Members?” The Motley Fool, April 2017. http://bit.ly/2fuXqmU
(0:30) “Share Of Internet Users In The United States Who Live In A Household With An Amazon Prime Subscription As Of November 2016,” Statista, November 2016. http://bit.ly/2vn3eob
(0:30) “Sixty-Four Percent Of U.S. Households Have Amazon Prime,” Forbes, June 2017. http://bit.ly/2usxrU8
(0:38) Value Investors Club, April 2016.
(0:43) L2 Analysis Of SEMRush Data, June 2017.
(0:47) “AMZN Cash Reserves,” Quandl, June 2017. http://bit.ly/2vIetIY
(0:53) “Burning Cash And Losing Customers, Wayfair Is Running Out Of Options,” Seeking Alpha, May 2017. http://bit.ly/2rqZ5dJ
(1:00) L2 Analysis of iSpotTV Data.
(1:12) L2 Analysis Of SEMRush Data, June 2017.
(1:31) “Blue Apron Significantly Lowers Its Valuation With Slashed IPO Pricing,” techcrunch, June 2017. http://tcrn.ch/2t1AIG0
(1:37) “Blue Apron Is Spending More Than $400 For Every New Customer — And That's Creating A Major Problem For The Company,” Business Insider, August 2017. http://read.bi/2vIHeVL
(1:45) “Form S-1,” Blue Apron Holdings, Inc., June 2017. http://bit.ly/2qGf2No
(1:50) “Blue Apron Vs. HelloFresh: A Look At Multiples And Valuation History,” CB Insights, June 2017. http://bit.ly/2uK03Dl
(1:50) “Blue Apron: 5 Things To Know About The Meal-Kit Delivery Company,” Market Watch, July 2017. http://on.mktw.net/2rtG3VH
(2:51) Cadent Consulting Group, 2016.
(3:42) “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” The Atlantic, September 2017. http://theatln.tc/2u3JDX6
(3:42) “Millennials Surpass Gen Xers as the Largest Generation in U.S. Labor Force,” Pew Research Center, May 2015. http://pewrsr.ch/1KAFrQ0
(3:54) “2016 Overview Key Findings on Adolescent Drug Use,” Monitoring The Future, January 2017. http://bit.ly/1WumBiz

Transcript via YouTube.com:
0:00  A loser: unsustainable Internet companies. Wayfair, Blue Apron and Birchbox are the
0:08  latest that have no sustainable strategy. These peer players are getting Amazon
0:12  like valuations without a critical component. That is a business that works,
0:18  or some sort of moat, that makes their companies scalable. For example,
0:22  warehouses within 20 miles of 45% of the population, or an incredibly robust
0:28  loyalty program with 58% of American households- yes, we're talking about
0:32  Prime. Wayfair's on track to double William Sonoma's eCommerce sales by 2019. Selling
0:38  low-priced items, they're competing with Amazon, which bids on 43,000 of the same
0:44  keywords. However, Amazon's cash won't run out. Meanwhile, Wayfair spending is
0:49  unsustainable. The company currently has more liabilities than assets. In exchange
0:54  for that massive spend, it's garnered no customer loyalty, even though the company
0:58  spent 72 million dollars on TV ads in 2016, and is slated to spend 90
1:04  million this year. Just 9 percent of search traffic comes from the master
1:08  brand term, compared to 30 to 50 percent from Williams-Sonoma brands. And they're
1:13  losing 60% of their customer base each year. By the way, the best proxy for brand
1:18  equity: look at the percentage of traffic garnered from key term brand searches.
1:23  Millward Brown and Ipsos: those businesses are going away. Blue Apron has a similar
1:28  story. In Q1 they lost 52 million on revenue of 245 million. The company has
1:34  an enormous acquisition cost; it spent four hundred and sixty dollars for each
1:38  new customer in 2016. Despite all those new users, Blue Apron's
1:43  revenue growth has been flat since Q1 of 2015. Their IPO down round was likely
1:48  the nail in the coffin. What Wall Street doesn't get? Paying high cost of customer
1:53  acquisition and investing insane amounts in fulfillment doesn't work when you
1:58  have 60 percent customer churn. At some point, like we saw with flash sites, there
2:03  will be a major correction in the marketplace. My advice to these companies?
2:07  While the market is drunk and asleep, grab its wallet and buy a real business,
2:13  as it will wake up, and it will be sober and irritable. A continued loser: the
2:19  brand industrial complex. The new startup, Brandless, competes with Amazon by
2:23  borrowing another of the Seattle giant's strategies: Private Label. And more
2:27  accurately: no label. But then again, if Brandless becomes popular, isn't Brandless
2:31  a brand? Mind blown. Brandless sells generic household items
2:36  from toothpaste to olive oil for just three dollars: yet another signal of the
2:40  death of the industrial brand complex, and is indicative of what is happening
2:44  in the larger consumer economy. Normally during a recession private label brands
2:49  take a larger share of CPG sales, as people are trying to save money and
2:53  don't want to pay more for the better known brand. During the recovery, however,
2:57  big CPG brands are able to use the normal levers of traditional advertising
3:02  and caps etc., they convince consumers to pay up for the premium brand. But things
3:08  are different now. There's been a structural shift, and despite a
3:11  recovery in the economy, private label sales continue to grow. We have entered a
3:16  new era; the sun has passed midday on brand building. A loser: the smartphone
3:22  generation. Three in four American teens now owns an iPhone. The impact? It's
3:28  making them more lonely. The data is clear: since the release of the iPhone,
3:32  the world has changed for American teens. Among other things, just 56 percent of
3:37  high school seniors in 2015 went on dates in contrast 85 percent of
3:43  Boomers and Gen Xers. To be fair, it's not all bad news.
3:47  Teens may be replacing drugs with their iPhones. Usage of illicit drugs, other
3:52  than weed, has fallen among eighth, tenth, and twelfth graders, to its lowest point
3:57  in 40 years. So teens are lonely, single, and addicted
4:01  to their smartphones, but not doing drugs. Progress? Maybe. My sons are getting their
4:07  first smartphones, and I told them they could have any ringtone, as long as it
4:12  was the sound of a tree falling in the forest or one hand clapping. In addition,
4:16  my smartphone is broken. Every time I use the home button, I find I'm still with
4:21  people I hate.

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