Hey Snackers,
The hot new star of New York Fashion Week: Lowe's. NYFW designers are partnering with the 100-year-old retailer to bring home decor to the runway. Let's hope the potted ferns don't trip in their heels (#faceplant).
The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq rose to all-time highs again — the indexes have hit fresh records for four straight trading days.
The Urban Anthropologie of Free People... That's a mouthful, but apparently a profitable one. Urban Outfitters is the boho-chic retailer that supplies the distressed denim jacket of your high-school dreams. Urban also owns Free People, where a floral tank costs $60, and Anthropologie, where a candle costs more than your car insurance.
Slim fit inventory... Urban's sales were down 17%, but it snagged a profit by keeping its inventory lean. It didn't overspend on clothes/candles/etc, so it didn't lose money when the demand wasn't there. By carefully guarding against overstocking, Urban avoided the discounting death spiral: Once you go 70% off to clear out unsold stuff, you never go back (customers never forget).
Urban is a fashion smoothie with a scoop of techy innovation... Its business is diverse, like a chocolate-banana-kale concoction. In addition to its core clothing biz, Urban sells home decor, food, and skincare products. It also has a clothing rental subscription service called Nuuly. This techy scoop of almond butter makes up just ~1% of Urban's sales — But Nuuly's sales have doubled since last year. It's the kind of innovation you don't see with OG clothing retailers.
Always be closing... The company that powers sales teams around the world just notched killer quarterly sales itself (#meta). Enterprise cloud software-maker Salesforce had a great week. On Monday, we found out Salesforce is joining the Dow (and oily Exxon got booted). The elite-ish index tracks the stocks of 30 of America's largest companies.
WTF is "CRM"... It's Salesforce's stock ticker, and also its bread-and-butter: Customer Relationship Management. CRM apps help salespeople track their interactions with leads and prospects. That way, Tony won't forget to follow up on the Knicks tickets he sent to his hot lead. Cindy can show her manager that she called/emailed/Linkedin'd FP&A Bob 135 times. Reps who take over an account or join a deal cycle can see all the info from past interactions.
It's all about the Total Addressable Market... That's Salesforce's total sales opportunity. If a company a) sells things and/or b) has customers to support, they’re part of Salesforce’s TAM (if they can afford it). Since 2006, Salesforce has acquired dozens of companies to expand its biz and TAM. That broad mix of cloud-based business applications is thriving in the WFH economy.
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Disclosure: Authors of this Snacks own shares of Apple
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