1 Amazon shadow looms
over retailers (Khaleej Times) As old and new Amazon.com competitors gear up to
report earnings, investors are eager to know how they plan to withstand the
growth of the No.1 online retailer.
So far this quarter,
Amazon has been brought up in some 130 earnings calls from S&P 1500
components according to a Reuters analysis. More than 30 firms reporting
earnings in the following weeks mentioned Amazon during their most recent
earnings call or were directly asked about threats or opportunities regarding
Amazon's growth.
"Any retailer,
whether it's an online retailer or has online presence, or just brick-and-mortar,
that tells you they're not concerned about Amazon, they're either in denial or
lying," said Steven Osinski, marketing lecturer at the Fowler College of
Business at San Diego State University.
Beyond retailers like
Wal-Mart and Target, and following Amazon's planned acquisition of Whole Foods
Market announced mid June, expect Amazon to pop up on earnings calls from food
producers, packagers and retailers.
In a sign of Amazon's
widening clout, industry bellwethers like McDonald's, 3M and Johnson &
Johnson in their latest earnings calls were asked for the first time about
effects of Amazon on their businesses.
2 Darjeeling tea faces
political turmoil (Soutik Biswas on BBC) If you are a tea connoisseur, here's
some bad news: your morning cuppa of steaming Darjeeling tea may soon be
difficult to get.
Famously called the
"champagne of teas", it is grown in 87 gardens in the foothills of
the Himalayas in Darjeeling in West Bengal state. Some of the bushes are as old
as 150 years and were introduced to the region by a Scottish surgeon. The tea
tots up nearly $80m in annual sales.
Darjeeling tea is also
one of the world's more expensive - some of it has fetched prices of up to $850
per kg. The tea is also India's first Protected Geographical Indication (PGI)
product. Since June, Darjeeling has been hit by violent protests and prolonged
strikes in support of a campaign by a local party demanding a separate state
for the area's majority Nepali-speaking Gorkha community.
The upshot: some
100,000 workers - permanent and temporary - working in the gardens have halted
work. Production has been severely hit. Only a third of last year's crop of
8.32 million kg had been harvested when work stopped in June. If the trouble
continues, garden owners say they are staring at losses amounting to nearly
$40m.
3 Niekerk aims to be next Bolt (Johannesburg Times) Wayde
van Niekerk, the athlete identified by Usain Bolt as the next trailblazer for
global athletics, is adamant that he is not afraid to take over the
responsibility of being the face of his sport.
The day after Bolt had lavished him with praise, the
South African Van Niekerk said that he was not intimidated by the expectations
being heaped upon him before the World Athletics Championships.
It is perfectly possible that the 25-year-old could
upstage Bolt in the Jamaican's final championship by pulling off a 200
metres/400 metres double that has not been achieved since Michael Johnson in
Gothenburg in 1995.
Van Niekerk is also being tipped to threaten the
400m world record of 43.03 seconds that he took from Johnson at the Olympic
Games last year. "It's one thing someone saying I can be the next big
thing," Van Niekerk said of Bolt's words of praise. "But it's another
thing working towards that greatness.
"I'm not intimidated (by the responsibility),
you can't be. This is track and field, this is a dream I need to fight for --
and I need to fight for it as hard as I can." Van Niekerk joked that he
was expecting an invoice from Bolt for all the advice and encouragement the
peerless sprinter had given him.
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