Latest / What the Flux / Wesfarmers shuts down Catch | $TRUMP's new fortune | Sportsbet's class action
Transcript
- 0:05Speaker 1: This is what the flucks. I'm Brett and I'm Justin
- 0:07Speaker 1: and it's Wednesday, the twenty first of January.
- 0:09Speaker 2: Get this, juzzy boy. The number of Australian businesses that
- 0:12Speaker 2: fell into insolvency hit a record high in the past
- 0:15Speaker 2: six months to nearly seven five hundred businesses. And that's
- 0:19Speaker 2: a forty seven percent increase on the six months friar.
- 0:22Speaker 2: Not a record that we want to be celebrating.
- 0:25Speaker 1: Certainly not Floxam. We all start the new year with
- 0:27Speaker 1: ambitious resolutions, but did you know that the majority of
- 0:30Speaker 1: Ossie's have already given up their resolutions by debuty Now
- 0:33Speaker 1: in the Flucks Academy this month, we've partnered with up
- 0:36Speaker 1: to launch a New Year, New financially Savvy you. It
- 0:38Speaker 1: will help you set financial goals for twenty twenty five
- 0:41Speaker 1: and actually help you hit them as well. So make
- 0:42Speaker 1: sure to download the blucks app and check out the
- 0:44Speaker 1: Academy this month.
- 0:45Speaker 2: Three mesmerizing stories Today, Juzzy boy, let's do it for
- 0:48Speaker 2: our first. West Farmers has announced it will be closing
- 0:51Speaker 2: its e commerce marketplace Catch after struggling with competition from
- 0:55Speaker 2: Timu and Amazon.
- 0:57Speaker 1: Yikes, and only a few years ago. West Farmers are
- 0:59Speaker 1: talking about Catches being the best thing since last Bread,
- 1:01Speaker 1: so tell me more. Well.
- 1:02Speaker 2: Catch launched back in two thousand and six as Catch
- 1:05Speaker 2: of the Day, which was a daily deal site with
- 1:07Speaker 2: one deal every single day.
- 1:09Speaker 1: You want a random one terribied hard drive for seventy
- 1:11Speaker 1: five percent off or about a suitcase eight percent off,
- 1:14Speaker 1: You've only got twenty four hours to buy it, and
- 1:15Speaker 1: Judsey bought.
- 1:16Speaker 2: By twenty ten. Catch grew to become Australia's most visited
- 1:19Speaker 2: online shopping site, and.
- 1:20Speaker 1: In twenty twenty the Catch founders sold the business to
- 1:23Speaker 1: West Farmers the two hundred and thirty million dollars and
- 1:26Speaker 1: it's fair to say this was looking like a pretty
- 1:28Speaker 1: good deal during COVID YEP. Shortly after the acquisition, Catches
- 1:31Speaker 1: sales jump by nearly seventy percent.
- 1:33Speaker 2: But as life returned to normal post COVID, so did choppers,
- 1:36Speaker 2: and Catches sales.
- 1:38Speaker 1: In fact be man In the past year, Catches P
- 1:40Speaker 1: and L statement has got hit harder than a clearance
- 1:42Speaker 1: rack on boxing day cost ninety six million dollars.
- 1:46Speaker 2: So now West Farmers has announced it will close down
- 1:48Speaker 2: Catch to stem the bleeding.
- 1:50Speaker 1: They reckon Catch just can't compete with your t moos,
- 1:52Speaker 1: your sheins, and your Amazon's anymore.
- 1:55Speaker 2: Mainly because Catch has lost its unique value proposition.
- 1:58Speaker 1: So what is the key learning here?
- 2:00Speaker 2: Big value proposition or UVP is critical for any business
- 2:03Speaker 2: to stand out in a crowded market.
- 2:05Speaker 1: It gives customers a reason to choose your business over
- 2:07Speaker 1: competitors and does.
- 2:08Speaker 2: Wait, would you lose your UVP, You risk losing your
- 2:11Speaker 2: spot in the market altogether.
- 2:13Speaker 1: You see b man. Catch thrived by focusing on daily
- 2:15Speaker 1: deals and big discounts.
- 2:17Speaker 2: But after its acquisition, West Farmers evolved Catch into a
- 2:20Speaker 2: broad e commerce retailer, which actually diluted what made Catch unique.
- 2:24Speaker 1: And be man. Without its differentiator, Catch found itself competing
- 2:27Speaker 1: on price against ultra low cost retailers like TMU and
- 2:31Speaker 1: shee in, where Cash just could not win. And on
- 2:33Speaker 1: the other side, it competed on convenience and shipping speed
- 2:35Speaker 1: against Amazon, where it also just could not compete. So
- 2:38Speaker 1: it's no surprise the Catches revenue dropped from three hundred
- 2:41Speaker 1: and sixty four mil in twenty twenty to just two
- 2:43Speaker 1: hundred and twenty seven mel in twenty twenty four, and
- 2:45Speaker 1: now it's all over red Rover For our second story,
- 2:48Speaker 1: Donald Trump and his wife Milania have both launched crypto
- 2:52Speaker 1: coins just before his inauguration, and these crypto coins now
- 2:55Speaker 1: form the majority of their wealth.
- 2:57Speaker 2: So you're telling me millennia made billions overnight. Just boy,
- 3:00Speaker 2: smells fishier than a Mari Lago buffet if he OUs me,
- 3:03Speaker 2: But I want to hear more. Go on.
- 3:04Speaker 1: So we know that on jan twenty eeth US time,
- 3:06Speaker 1: Donald Trump was officially sworn in as the forty seventh
- 3:09Speaker 1: presidente of the US.
- 3:10Speaker 2: But it wasn't the inauguration that had crypto bro's frothing
- 3:13Speaker 2: last Friday, Jazzy boy, it was a Trump tweet.
- 3:16Speaker 1: Yeah. Donald Trump tweeted that he'd released a new crypto
- 3:18Speaker 1: coin called Trump and it was the only coin that
- 3:21Speaker 1: was actually endorsed by the preys.
- 3:23Speaker 2: And get this one. The value of Trump's meme coin
- 3:26Speaker 2: soared higher than his hair on a breezy, breezy evening.
- 3:29Speaker 1: We're talking his coin jump to a market value of
- 3:32Speaker 1: more than seventy two billion US dollars in just forty
- 3:34Speaker 1: eight hours, and that meant that Trump's personal wealth from
- 3:37Speaker 1: the coin was more than fifty six billion US dollars
- 3:40Speaker 1: on paper, but then on Sunday night, Trump's wife Milania
- 3:43Speaker 1: got in on the fund with her own crypto coin
- 3:45Speaker 1: called Milannia. This all feels a little bit like a
- 3:48Speaker 1: reality TV show crossed with some meme coin mania. You
- 3:50Speaker 1: are most certainly not wrong.
- 3:52Speaker 2: Ahu so what is the key learning here?
- 3:54Speaker 1: Meme coins are cryptocurrencies that originate from an Internet meme.
- 3:57Speaker 2: They're often just jokes or cultural references that are built
- 4:00Speaker 2: to ride the wave off Internet trends.
- 4:02Speaker 1: And of course often these men coins have no inherent
- 4:05Speaker 1: value or utility.
- 4:06Speaker 2: In other words, these coins don't solve problems, that don't
- 4:08Speaker 2: offer services, and there is no specific technology now. For example,
- 4:12Speaker 2: the Millennia website makes it very clear that the Millennia
- 4:15Speaker 2: coin is not an investment. They call the coin digital artwork.
- 4:19Speaker 1: And be man. Recently, we've seen some men coins saw
- 4:21Speaker 1: and crashed for a whole heap of people and movements.
- 4:24Speaker 2: Well, there was the hawk coin for Hawk to a Girl,
- 4:27Speaker 2: which jumped to twelve and a half million bucks and
- 4:30Speaker 2: then crashed in a day.
- 4:31Speaker 1: What about Peppy the Frog, which which has a coin
- 4:33Speaker 1: called Peppy which is literally just a frog wheth five
- 4:35Speaker 1: hundred million US dollars.
- 4:37Speaker 2: But as Millennia's website wisely suggests you should never invest
- 4:41Speaker 2: more than you can afford to lose, which is.
- 4:42Speaker 1: Probably what's going to happen. For our third and final story.
- 4:46Speaker 1: Sports Bet, the online gambling behemoth, is facing a class action.
- 4:50Speaker 1: Arts or betters have lost millions of dollars on in
- 4:52Speaker 1: game live bets.
- 4:54Speaker 2: Not many good things ever start with class action lawsuit.
- 4:56Speaker 2: Juzzy boys, so go on.
- 4:58Speaker 1: Says sports Bet, as the name suggests, a sports betting
- 5:00Speaker 1: company that was actually launched back in Darwin in nineteen
- 5:03Speaker 1: ninety three. Now since then it's grown rapidly through its
- 5:05Speaker 1: rogue and incessant TV and social media and in fact
- 5:09Speaker 1: be man. Sports Bet is now in the top three
- 5:11Speaker 1: betting companies in Australia with Tab Corp and the owners
- 5:13Speaker 1: of Ladbrokes and Nets.
- 5:14Speaker 2: But now sports Bet is facing a class action from
- 5:17Speaker 2: its customers.
- 5:18Speaker 1: Yeah you see, b man. It's currently illegal to bet
- 5:20Speaker 1: on sports matches when that match is live.
- 5:23Speaker 2: Except Jusie boy if the bet is made entirely on
- 5:26Speaker 2: the telephone. So sports Bet created a kind of loophole
- 5:29Speaker 2: which enabled bets to be created on the app but
- 5:31Speaker 2: confirmed via the phone. But now the class action is
- 5:34Speaker 2: seeking a refund for everyone who lost money on InPlay
- 5:37Speaker 2: bets over the past six years and.
- 5:39Speaker 1: Be man, this could really hit sports BET's finances as
- 5:41Speaker 1: well as their reputation.
- 5:42Speaker 2: Big coll So what is the key learning here?
- 5:44Speaker 1: There's always an ongoing cat and mouse game between regulators
- 5:47Speaker 1: and innovators, especially in fast evolving industries, and in this case,
- 5:51Speaker 1: sports Bet introduced an in app workaround to make bets
- 5:55Speaker 1: seem compliant. But the class action claims they were just
- 5:58Speaker 1: skirting the law and it ain't legal at all, and
- 6:01Speaker 1: does it? Boy?
- 6:01Speaker 2: Sports bet isn't the first to roll the dice with
- 6:04Speaker 2: legal gray zones.
- 6:06Speaker 1: Uber bent the rules when they disrupted the taxi industry,
- 6:08Speaker 1: and airbb rewrote the playbook for short term rentals.
- 6:11Speaker 2: But this ain't sports BET's first running with the law,
- 6:13Speaker 2: is it.
- 6:14Speaker 1: It is not at all? I remember back in twenty
- 6:16Speaker 1: twenty two when sports was fine two and a half
- 6:18Speaker 1: million bucks for spamming its customers with emails as well.
- 6:20Speaker 2: So if this class action is successful, the jig it
- 6:23Speaker 2: may be.
- 6:24Speaker 1: Up fox Am. If you haven't set your year's resolutions,
- 6:26Speaker 1: in particular your finance resolutions, there is only one place
- 6:30Speaker 1: to do it. It is directly in the Flex App
- 6:32Speaker 1: in our Academy. This month, we partnered with after Launch,
- 6:34Speaker 1: New Year, New Financially Savvy you help you kick off
- 6:37Speaker 1: the year on a high. To make sure to download
- 6:39Speaker 1: the Flex App and check out the Flex Academy.
- 6:41Speaker 2: Thanks for listening and we'll see you on Friday