UnicoMarketing

Sunday, 2 February 2014

This de facto African country is printing beasts on its currency to gain global recognition

Not bits, but beasts.
Brian Dell/Creative Commons

As cyber-currency magnates promote bitcoins festooned with hypnotic barcodes, spare a thought for the officially non-existent nation of Somaliland.

Its 3.8 million inhabitants insisted that something more inspirational adorn their country’s equally tenuous global tender and bankroll its quest for global recognition. So they went with goats, sheep and the often petulant dromedary camel.

The trade in barnyard critters is the cutting-edge business in Somaliland, whose leaders regularly refer to livestock as the barrels of oil that drive the economy of a nation that’s been seeking sovereignty since the overthrow of Somali President Siad Barre in 1991.

Although Somaliland president Ahmed Mahamoud Silanyo says the United Nations continues to defer the country’s 22-year-old dream to become a member of the international community apart from Somalia, tax revenue from exported animals underwrites half of all government expenditures. And when local chefs mix goat meat with garlic, cloves and cumin, it all makes for a mighty tasty stew.

The current market price for a goat is around $70. A sheep also runs about $70, except during the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, when demand for the sacrificial animal can skyrocket to $80. The pricetag on a used camel is $1,000, close to 1.2 bitcoins. Thoroughbred racing camels—which can exceed speeds of 45 miles per hour—cost over 1,000 bitcoins. Professional wrestling camels are apparently a bargain at about 20 bitcoins.

(You can see the current value of a bitcoin here.)

This de facto African country is printing beasts on its currency to gain global recognition

How even the stodgiest retailer can win over millennials

This is not your father's Radio Shack.

Today’s millennials—nearly 80 million individuals in the United States alone—represent a staggering force in today’s marketplace, spending roughly $600 billion each year. And their impact is only expected to grow through 2020, with estimates their total spending in the US will top out at nearly $1.4 trillion annually. Despite this, most retailers today are millennial-challenged, largely due to their traditional focus and reliance on the spending power of Baby Boomers. They must perform the ultimate balancing act to appeal to their core shoppers—as well as those of their future.

Take Radio Shack. Reeling from the largely unsuccessful rebranding to “The Shack,” the company is now actively looking to upgrade its in-store experience and image (which most recently came in the form of provocative ads to garner millennials’ attention).

But this store and others make clear that the difference between “winning” and “losing” in today’s retail environment is really a matter of knowing how this demographic thinks, acts, shops. A key lesson:

Know your value and they will come

Millennials’ mobile- and tech-savvy behaviors have significant impacts on their shopping decisions long before they even enter a store. Unlike previous generations that struggled to price and comparison shop, millennials have it down to a science, using sites like Hukkster.com to find unique products and discounted rates at the click of a button.

To be clear, this reality is not borne from economic challenges alone. It’s this coupled with the fact that millennials—more than any generation before them—grew up surrounded by virtually endless choices and information at their fingertips. In order to succeed in today’s retail environment, businesses need to understand how their brands and products fit into the broader fabric of Millennials’ lives and then address those needs clearly and in a differentiated manner. What follows are three “rules” for retailers to do so—and successfully undergo a millennial makeover.

Beware of showrooming

For millennials, looking at products on the retail floor and then turning to the internet to make their actual purchase at the lowest price is a way of life. But retailers can’t afford to simply turn their stores into showrooms.

To survive, they must change their in-store experience—and fast. Far more than their predecessors, millennials value fun, engaging, and shared experiences with friends and colleagues. Some brands, including Kate Spade, Samsung/Galaxy and Adidas, have capitalized on these values by offering a “pop-up” retail experience, which features smaller formats and location changes to keep consumers guessing and involved.

Imagine if other “traditional” retailers, such as Men’s Warehouse—which is currently attempting to modify its image to appeal to younger consumers—considered this approach. By pulling back on the traditional store format and favoring the pop-up retail approach during, say, interview or graduation dates on campus, Men’s Warehouse could instantly create a whole new impression amongst millennials.

The sale doesn’t end at the register

For years and years, when we conjectured on brand marketing, the conversation invariably circled around delivery against functional and emotional needs. It was the right conversation for the time. But times are changing, and millennials are demanding an entirely new delivery lens, that of the engaging experiential. Specifically, these shoppers are:

Looking for opportunities to connect with retailers and vendors of choice

Seeking occasions to share those experiences and tips with their social circle, and even be the leading influencer among these circles

More open to loyalty cards, with nearly 80% participating in such programs and being more likely to purchase from a brand with loyalty/rewards programs than those without

Finally, millennials tend to be more socially and environmentally conscious and are seeking retailers who take that larger perspective with them. Urban Outfitters, for example, one of the pioneers of addressing the needs and wants of millennials, offers an engaging blog with music, contests, videos and other assorted fun, even sharing suggestions on how to decorate your first apartment.

Know your role in the value chain

As we mentioned previously, to be successful with millennials, companies need to invest significant energy into not only understanding millennials overall, but understanding how their brands and products fit into the broader fabric of their lives.

Consider for example, Nordstrom. Recognizing it may not be the destination retailer for millennials, Nordstrom nonetheless speaks to this generation’s fashion sense by carrying highly relevant millennial brands, including BP, Savvy and Topshop.

The retailer understands these labels are not the singular brands of choice for millennials; rather, they fit into the broader fabric of the look millennials are seeking. Beyond making its clothing options on trend, Nordstrom also engages millennials with Instagram and Tweet outlets and offers “store within a store” options to enhance their shopping experience. Capitalizing on its role in the retail chain, Nordstrom also offers free shipping, free returns and equips salespersons in the store with point of sale systems to allow shoppers to check out faster and salespersons to engage with shoppers more.

Taken together, it’s a clear step forward in Nordstrom’s ability to cater to the broader fabric of millennials’ attire needs by providing the brands—and experiences—that matter most to this generation.

One store no longer fits all

Aligning a retail strategy with millennials requires one to reconsider all elements of the shopping process: pre-store, in-store and post-store. The format must be appropriately engaging and fun, and—absolutely imperative—the relationship with millennials must continue long after they exit the doors. This nurturing retailer-shopper relationship is a fundamental transition from the previously accepted transactional experience.

Retailers like Men’s Warehouse and Radio Shack that are currently transitioning to a millennial-focused strategy should look to companies such as the aforementioned Urban Outfitters. This retailer’s success has been realized in part by its unwavering focus on designing stores as true destination shopping experiences, a place with constantly new, unique and fresh merchandise millennials can’t wait to explore in-store. Augment such an in-store experience with an exceptional online presence, and Urban Outfitters realizes success every time. And it also reaps the rewards for its efforts, realizing earnings that consistently outperform peers.

Millennials’ influence on retail is not a question of if, just when. And like so many things, you have to ask yourself if you want to lead the way—or run to catch up.

We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.

How even the stodgiest retailer can win over millennials

Why I forced my staff to attend Startup Weekend instead of watching the Super Bowl

There are ways beyond corporate retreats to bond your staff and force them to innovate.

DATELINE: 9:32 PM, Education Startup Weekend, New York City

I insisted my staff trade their Super Bowl for a Startup Weekend. I’m pretty sure the only reason they agreed to go is because I’m the boss.

I’ll find out later if they want to kill me, but for now I can report from the thick of things that:

Melissa is working on a project called Vid Code, which is designed to ignite girls’ interest in coding through the artistic expression of video processing. By harnessing young girls’ avid involvement in mobile applications, Vid Code gives them an opportunity to write code.

Al and Orlando are working on Bloop!—a website that aggregates news sources targeted to children. As kids select what stories to read, Bloop! makes intelligent choices on what to feed them next so as to level-up their knowledge and skills. Follow their progress at

Steve is working with a team to build Simplifaid, a product to help current and prospective college students manage their college expenses and financial aid packages. Look for their campaign soon on IndieGoGo.

David and I are working on StaffUp Weekend—a mash-up of Startup Weekend and my approach to hiring that I described in a recent column for Quartz, How to hire good people instead of nice people. It makes sense that we do this because, before I settled on David as my assistant, I took him and my three other best candidates to a SU Weekend to see how they worked together under pressure.

My advice to go beyond thinking of Startup Weekend as a place to launch a project but also a great place to troll for employees and jobs.

And, come to think of it, this is like the ultimate corporate off-site. I’m not renting $600 rooms at a fancy resort and I haven’t paid $20,000 to have a motivational speaker tell us we should be more entrepreneurial.

Instead, we are being more entrepreneurial for only $100 a head (and that price includes seven meals).

Beat that, Tony Robbins.

We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.

Why I forced my staff to attend Startup Weekend instead of watching the Super Bowl

21 startups in Asia that caught our eye

asian startups weekly list

Here’s our newest round-up of the featured startups on our site this week. If you have startup tips or story suggestions, feel free to email us or tell us about your startup on this form. Any juicy tech news tips go here. Enjoy this week’s list!

1. Wongnai | Thailand

Founded in 2010, Thailand-based restaurant review startup Wongnai has revealed this week to have grown to one million registered users. The Yelp-like site received series A financing from Japan’s Recruit Strategic Partners (RSP) back in May 2013.

2. Foody | Vietnam

Similar to Singapore’s Hungry Go Where, Foody mainly focuses on providing good restaurant recommendations for its users, and at the same time allowing them to comment and rate the quality of those restaurants. This week, the startup announced it has reached over one million monthly unique visits since its founding in August 2013.

The company also received investment from CyberAgent Ventures back in November last year.

3. TinyBox | Philippines

Developed by Philippines-based startup Scrambled Eggs, Tinybox is a fun and simple iOS app to send a surprise photo gift to anybody via SMS. Users can pick from the designed digital gift boxes, and upload personal photos to put inside. This can be matched with personalized voice messages for the receiver.

4. Baolau.vn | Vietnam

Vietnma’s Baolau.vn is a “multimodal travel search engine”, which allows travelers to search for multiple routes and methods to get to their destination. Currently, the company covers domestic flights, trains, and ferries in Vietnam.

5. Clickdrive | Singapore

Singapore-based startup Clickdrive recently launched a crowdfunding campaign to for its first product, a computer that can be plugged into your car’s dashboard to give it a second brain.

The device aims to extend the functionality of your car and change the way you interact with it, like what Apple did to mobile phones. It already has several apps in the pipeline, including customizable dashboards, a fuel saver, performance monitoring, and a blackbox data recorder.

6. OurHealthMate | Singapore and India

OurHealthMate is a Singapore and India-based startup with an electronic health record (EMR) system for doctors and an online marketplace for medical checkups. The platform also enables people to search, book, and pay for health checkups on behalf of their families through the website. They can also receive feedback directly from the health practitioner.

The company has come a long way since it was an incubatee called MyFitnessWallet at startup accelerator JFDI last year, and has gain sufficient traction to secure a seed round led by Bimal Shah, along with participation from Benjamin Tsai, Ben Ball, and other angel investors.

7. Yton.vn | Vietnam

Yton.vn is a appointment booking platform for patients and doctors allowing patients to log on and book an appointment with their favorite doctors.

Sources near Yton.vn have stated that the unnamed financial backers of the startup are a medical company, and they may also be opening up a healthcare startup accelerator in the near future.

8. Lancers | Japan

Founded in 2008, Lancers claims to be Japan’s largest freelancing site, producing over $200 million worth of accumulated freelancing gigs to date. The startup revealed that it is now profitable every year despite having no external financing until recently.

It was only in May 2013 when the founder accepted an investment from GMO Ventures Partners and Globis Capital

9. SnapTee | Hong Kong

SnapTee is a fashion e-commerce startup from Hong Kong, which has an iPhone app where users can customize and create their own T-shirts – then get the finished garment delivered to their door anywhere in the world. The startup has neighboring Asian countries very much on the team’s radar, and has just updated its app with the Thai and Indonesian languages, plus support for the Simplified Chinese text used in mainland China.

Back in February 2013, the startup had a seed funding to help it grow.

10. Terra Motors | Japan

Japan’s Terra Motors released this week, its Kiwami electric bikes in India. With a $28,730 price tag, Terra Motors wants to attract affluent youths in India looking for an eco-friendly solution for their day-to-day transportation.

11. 2C2P | Singapore

Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Singapore, 2C2P is an online payment processing company that aims to solve online payment problems in Southeast Asia, a tough market for e-commerce since many consumers don’t own credit cards.

The company is revealed to have concluded a $2 million Series B financing round, led by an undisclosed investor and Japan-based GMO Payment Gateway six months ago.

12. Smatoos | South Korea

Korean educational startup Smatoos, known for its BeNative apps, has just launched an iOS app called Formula for English Conversation (our translation) for people in Japan and Korea, which focuses on improving English speaking skills. It’s free, and the Android version will be released within the first quarter of this year.

This app is available only in Japan and Korea now, but Smatoos is planning China and Taiwan releases by the end of February.

13. Abraresto | Indonesia and Singapore

Abraresto is a food discovery and review site that lets users browse food based on the kinds of venue, cuisine, and location by mall and neighborhood. It was built by the same team behind Singapore-based restaurant booking site Abratable. This week, the company announced it has closed an investment from Indonesian investors made up of “Indonesian families associated with some of the largest privately held companies” in the country.

14. iQon | Japan

Founded in 2010, iQon is a Japanese mobile app that allows users to mix, match, and buy items on their smartphones. More specifically, it’s actually mobile-first fashion social network where users can follow others for ideas on what to wear.

iQon raised a round from Itochu, Globis, and GMO Ventures Partners back in 2011 and is in the process of finalizing its next financing round.

15. 11Beep | Nepal

Nepal’s 11Beep launches into private beta today with an app for Android. It’s a mobile-only social network that doesn’t keep your digital history. The company’s tagline is “Freedom of expression”, so you don’t have to worry about anything you post.

16. Salarium | Philippines

Philippine-based Salarium helps businesses improve efficiency and accuracy by letting its cloud-based software do payroll processing, government form processing and payslip generation.

Following its official launch, Salarium will soon release its mobile optimized site next month. A mobile app is also set to be released in March.

Startup lists

17 – 21. 5 startups from KDDI Mugen Labo’s 5th Demo Day

Saturday, 1 February 2014

Staff picks: TKTK top news stories this week on Tech in Asia

NOTW - Asia tech news this week

Here’s our favorite stories to kick off the year of the horse. Happy Chinese New Year!

Steven’s pick: It looks like there really has been a mass exodus of Sina Weibo users

An in-depth survey analyzed the activity of 1.6 million Sina Weibo users from January 2011 through December 2013. It turns out that China’s top Twitter-esque service is seeing its users becoming much less active. This could be due to messaging app WeChat, which has something like a Facebook Timelines that’s a popular place for Chinese people sharing links and content.

Terence’s pick: China’s Lenovo to buy Motorola phone business from Google, but will regulators approve?

A surprising piece of news. It looks like the purchase has not entirely been a mistake though, as Google did retain the rights to most of the patents and key Motorola employees that are part of Project Ara, the modular phone project.

Josh’s Willis’ pick: Line makes more money than any other non-game app in the world

Willis: As a latecomer in the mobile messaging space, Line has done fantastically well, both in terms of user growth and monetization. With App Annie’s stats, we can safely say that Line is one of the biggest mobile-first platforms in the world.

Josh: Line is a messaging app. The messaging utility is free, and it charges for stickers. It’s the top grossing non-game app in the world. It spends millions of dollars on advertising each year. WhatsApp is also a messaging app. It charges one dollar each year for messaging and nothing else. It’s the ninth top grossing app in the world. It spends zero dollars on advertising each year. One utility, two business models.

Paul’s pick: Baidu uses data to track world’s largest human movement as Chinese New Year begins

Watching such a massive migration from a desk chair is truly a sight to behold. Happy Chinese New Year, everyone! Safe travels.

Gwen’s pick: Now a startup in Nepal has made an app like Snapchat that erases your digital footprint

This piece is important this week for two reasons: to continue highlighting the movements in the digital tech startup space in Nepal (Yes! There are things happening in this country of 27.5 million.) as well to talk about how a startup like 11Beep has combined various proven social media elements into one app. Each aspect isn’t new: social network, time-based self-destructing posts; but this enables one to interact with multiple friends with one timeline with various kinds of posts. It’s like your Facebook timeline that doesn’t keep anything long-term. While it remains to be seen if 11Beep itself will take off, and there is already a plethora of apps offering erasable text and pictures, I think a few combinations of the right elements can still thrive. The cross between “a social network-ed personal timeline that stores everything” and “in the now” might be one of those.

Minghao’s Pick: China’s second biggest e-store files for US IPO, aims to raise up to $1.5 billion

It has been a while since we last heard of a billion dollar IPO of an Asia internet company. This reminds us of how big and fast-growing Asia market is and JD is just the second biggest e-store. What will Alibaba-who is aggressively venturing into so many verticals-valuation be worth if it goes IPO?

Saiyai’s Pick: Baidu uses data to track world’s largest human movement as Chinese New Year begins

Coolest thing ever! This should also be used during Christmas and new year’s also. It’d definitely help logistic and transportation brands, and also governments to plan better to support the large movement of people.

Phoebe’s Pick: Philippines classified ads site Sulit looks forward to better ads and more pre-loved items this year

For a couple of weeks, buyers and sellers have wondered what went wrong with their favorite classified ads platform Sulit. But after the clamor, the founder itself RJ David has finally clarified what these changes are about.

For other ways of reading us, try our tailored RSS feeds, or find us on Flipboard.

The post Staff picks: TKTK top news stories this week on Tech in Asia appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Staff picks: TKTK top news stories this week on Tech in Asia

Quartz Weekend Brief—Ads evolve, monetizing compulsiveness, central-banker woes, plan your “weedcation”

Good morning, Quartz readers!

The internet passed a small but important milestone this week. Analysts have long wondered whether internet companies that rely on selling ads can still make money off the tiny mobile screens we’re all increasingly using. Facebook answered with a resounding “yes.” It reported that last quarter it made more than half its ad revenue on mobile devices, and quadrupled that increasing total revenue 63% year-on-year, it quadrupled mobile revenue.

That news buoyed not only Facebook’s shares, but also those of Twitter, which likewise relies on ads. Twitter’s earnings next week—the first since its IPO—will attract intense interest. Further good news on mobile ads could mean that this year we see more hype (and ever wilder valuations) for other firms that rely heavily on mobile, like Pinterest and Snapchat.

But it’s worth keeping some perspective. This week, Nielsen’s latest study on global ad spending revealed that the web still commands a mere 4.5% of the spending on display ads (as opposed to “direct-response” ads, like the text ads that pop up in your search results). Magazines have 10% of that market, and newspapers have 19%.

One reason is that an ad for, say, luxury handbags is more memorable in a magazine spread, TV spot or billboard than in a corner of a computer screen. Clever new online ad formats are constantly being invented (we have some on Quartz), but many are hard to adapt for small mobile screens.

So Facebook’s strong showing only underlines how far there is for mobile ads to go—and why there’s still big money to be made for whoever can create really good ones.—Gideon Lichfield

Five things on Quartz we especially liked

This is what 21st-century globalization looks like. It’s when a small African messaging-app company decides to challenge US, Japanese and Chinese competitors for a slice of the market in India. Leo Mirani explains the business strategy of Mxit.

Twitter is making money off your compulsiveness. Every time you stab at the top of your Twitter feed to pull down fresh tweets (a gesture that Twitter itself patented, by the way), the company makes $0.001, writes Zach Seward. Multiply that by 158 billion and… you do the math.

The woes of being an emerging-market central banker. As currencies tumble, central bankers are caught in a terrible bind between propping them up and preserving long-term growth, writes Matt Phillips. And this week’s drastic rate hike from Turkey’s central bank probably did more for the bank than for the currency, says Jason Karaian.

Two new ways to think about venture capital. Tim Fernholz argues that it makes as much sense for a VC to invest in a coffee shop as in a tech startup, and venture capitalist Jalak Jobanputra explains that yes, we’re in a valuation bubble, but it’s not like the ones of the past.

Plan your Colorado “weedcation” like a responsible adult. If you’re past the age of driving across the country with six friends in a beat-up van that you also use as a hotbox, check out Heather Timmons’ guide to enjoying Colorado’s culture, cuisine and cannabis with a bit of style.

Five things elsewhere that made us smarter

Understanding Apple’s long game. When Apple reported that it had sold “only” 51 million iPhones in the latest quarter, pundits began talking of “peak iPhone.” Tech analyst Benedict Evans sketches out the next five years of the mobile ecosystem and argues that its sheer size changes assumptions about what “winning” means for Apple.

Can Abdel Fattah el-Sisi control Egypt? The army chief who ousted president Mohamed Morsi last year has drawn comparisons with the powerful and popular Gamal Abdel Nasser. But he takes over a very different and much more divided country, writes David Kirkpatrick in the New York Times.

Why modern life may not be too fast, but just right. Tom Vanderbilt in Nautilus explores the intriguing argument that, rather than being too much to cope with, the frenetic pace at which modern technology delivers information to us is actually just catching up to our natural speed of thought.

The Amazon paradox. When the online retailer reported healthy profit this week, markets punished it, because they’d gotten used to its strategy of preferring growth to profit. How it even got them to accept that as a legitimate strategy is a fascinating story, which Matthew Yglesias charts in Slate.

What’s really in your olive oil. In a fun graphic slideshow, Nicholas Blechman in the New York Times explains how a mix of corruption and sharp practices mean that large batches of Italian “extra virgin olive oil” are anything but. (The piece inspired howls from the olive oil industry, and had to incorporate several corrections.)

Our best wishes for a relaxing but thought-filled weekend. Please send any news, comments, Apple theories and suspicious olive-oil samples to hi@qz.com. You can follow us on Twitter here for updates throughout the day.

Sign up for the Quartz Daily Brief here, tailored for morning delivery in Asia, Europe & Africa, and the Americas.