Thanksgiving like Christmas is usually the commerce-free holiday in the US, when big stores are mostly closed. But these years, there’s growing number of retailers expanding their selling hours during commerce-free holiday to boost their sales. Radio Shacks probably the most expected one.

Founded 1921 and went public in 1982, RadioShack Corporation is an American franchise of electronics retail stores in the U.S. The company has more than 4,400 company-operated stores in the U.S. and Mexico ,and more than 900 dealer stores in 25 countries.

It’s not surprising that the company is desperate to gain some sales during the holiday season, because there’s speculation that the company will die very soon. With several consecutive quarterly loss, in this June, following the horrible results posted from RadioShack’s 2014 Q1 earnings report on June 11, analyst company B. Riley & Co. lowered its price target on the company from $1 a share to zero, signaling another prediction for the company’s march to grave.

Compare its Q1 2014 and 2013 Q1 which is one year ago, Its revenue dropped $736.7 million from $849 million in the year ago period, which is about 11 percent drop. And Sales fell 14 percent for stores.

The company’s total liquidity decreased year to year, but its Chief Financial Officer John Feray assured investors that the liquidity they hold was enough to fund its turnaround for the next 12 months. (Ironically he already resigned)

First, to decrease expenses, RadioShack plans to reduce rent costs, cut customer compensation expenses, consolidate to fewer freight carriers to reduce rates, buy more store fixtures from Asia, and examine utility bills and rate plans. Like Office Depot, RadioShack plans to do more with less and shutter 200 stores per year over a three-year period.

However, take a look at the expense chart of RadioShack’s: Operating expenses, which were around 40% of revenue at the beginning of 2012, surpassed 50% during the most recent quarter. By comparison, Best Buy only spent 20.4% of its revenue on operating expenses during its second quarter.

Second, the company launched RadioShack Labs with PCH on June 5 to support startups and inventors to boost new product innovation. RadioShack plans to use a “direct-to-store” model for select products by reducing inventory requirements and increasing inventory turn in stores. The “RadioShack labs” is built to mainly stimulate innovation and raise consumer awareness to save its mounting losses in dropped sales. This could be an opportunity to fight against the industry-wide decline in electronics sales and low mobile phone demand due to few new models.

Other moves, such as adding services including in-store mobile device repair service to increase customer volume, are in the planning stages. The company’s Chief Executive Joseph Magnacca has acknowledged the implementation has taxed the company, saying “We were trying to do too much too quickly.” Magnacca, though, is confident that, once implemented, the moves will be a success. He added that the recent quarter report did not showcase their turnaround plan, and he was confident about that the company was able to overcome its challenges.

Till today, looking at RadioShack’s market performance it’s quite not pleasant. No one comes to RadioShack’s for purchasing electronics. One factor is that While consumers are increasingly shopping online, RadioShack has a negligible e-commerce business. Its rival Best Buy, in contrast, has invested in its e-commerce business over the past couple of years. RadioShack can’t compete with Best Buy, and it certainly can’t compete with online-only retailers such as Amazon.com. People aren’t going to RadioShack stores because there’s simply no reason for them to do so. And that’s not a problem that can easily be fixed.

To touraround they need to keep up bring more products, more innovation and establish a strong selling point. But these things need cash. Unfortunately the company don’t have liquidity, as mentioned before. Sales are declining far faster than costs, resulting in quarterly losses growing. The operating loss during the most recent quarter more than doubled of year ago period

The company shows no sign of increasing liquidity. So right now it is desperate for cash.

Recently RadioShack received a lifeline of a $120 million investment from shareholders hedge fund Standard General LP, which also finance American apparel to save the company earlier this year, and Litespeed Management LLC that will allow it to get through the holiday season and restructure its debt.

CNN Money first published the coming financial rounding from hedge fund August, RadioShack shares are up 115% for the week.

On October, it announced that it is planning a rights offering that is expected to complete by March 15, to offer existing shareholders the right to purchase equity at 40 cents per share of common stock.

One of the world’s favourite treat- chocolate, could face a critical shortage in the next 20 years; two leading chocolate makers Mars, Inc. and Barry Callebaut say.

Switzerland-based Barry Callebaut, which describes itself as the world’s leading manufacturer of high-quality chocolate and cocoa products, said it had concerns about future cocoa supply in its annual report published earlier this month. Barry Callebaut was repeating the concerns of Mars in the US, which has been warning for some years that cocoa production could be 1 million tonnes short of demand by 2020.

Simply put from the manufacture perspective, it seems like people are eating too much chocolate therefore leads to this not-so-sweet deficit in the future.

Image Source: thestar.com

Nevertheless, people’s exceeding consumption power is not the only reason for the deficit.

On the other side of the supply-demand chain, the market supply of chocolate has already been affected by the lower cocoa productivity worldwide in recent years.

Cocoa is the main ingredient in chocolate, without it there is no tasty chocolate. Last year, the world ate roughly 70,000 metric tons more cocoa than it produced. Bloomberg reports that from 1993 to 2007, the price of cocoa averaged about $1,400 a ton; the past six years had an average of little more than $2,700 – an 87 percent increase. According to Bloomberg, the lack of supply is reportedly due to drought, disease, higher demand of more-productive crops like corn, and last but not least, the rising popularity of dark chocolate – which calls for more cocoa.

Source: Groupe Sucres et Denrées (SUCDEN)

On Sep 21^st, 2014, Joon Young, a member from the K-pop boy band, ZE:A, tweeted that his entertainment company had been squeezing cash out of the team without giving team members a fair salary. He then posted his paycheck on Twitter, which showed that his monthly income was only $300.

Since the year 2012 when Psy’s “Gangnam Style” went viral on YouTube, K-pop has experienced a huge increase in its market share all over the world. However, behind the glamorousness of the K-pop industry, K-pop stars are actually experiencing unfair treatment and limited freedom.

The key players in the industry, big entertainment companies in Korea, take full control over the business from casting to production, and from marketing to distribution. They casted and trained talents, and when the artists finally get debuted, they will be forced to sign a long-term contract with the company. Some of the contract even last for 17 years, which is impossible to imagine here in America.

The contract is extremely harsh to artists and beneficial to the company. Artists have to work 7 days a week with only one-week holiday at the end of the year. Three former members from TVXQ complained that they could only sleep 3 hours a day and were not allowed start their own business unless getting permission from the company. Moreover, although TVXQ brought millions of dollars to the company each year, the members only received 1% of what they’ve earned. As a result of that, the three members ended up filing a lawsuit against the company and formed another band themselves.

This lawsuit, which lasted for 4 years, aroused widely concern over the so-called “slave contract” inside the industry. In 2010, the Fair Trade Commission in Korea finally realized the seriousness of the problem, and asked SM Entertainment, the entertainment company of TVXQ, to revise its unfair contract with the artists. SM Entertainment did that, and held a press conference to address people’s concern. Now, everyone seemed relieved, however, this was not the end of the story.

On May 15th, 2014, Kris, a member from the boy band EXO, filed another lawsuit against his entertainment company, and claimed that the intense working condition caused him adverse health problems. Five month later, another member from EXO, Luhan, followed Kris and asked to end the contract with the company. Several days later, Jessica, a member from one of the most well-known K-pop girl band, Girl’s Generation, claimed through weibo platform that she was kicked out of the team because the company didn’t allow her to start her own fashion business.

All of what happened above remind us that the “slave contract” is still there, and it not only hurt the interest of the artists, but also hurt the feeling of K-pop fans all over the world. In fact, this kind of situation is hard to be changed in a short period of time. As the K-pop industry growing bigger and bigger, the competition among entertainment companies and K-pop artists will only be more, not less. This made people worry if the growing speed of the industry surpasses the capacity it can actually handle, which made the industry vulnerable in its expanding process. However, there were also people arguing that this process is what every industry would experience during its expansion. No matter what the answer is, one thing is for sure: if the K-pop industry didn’t make any changes in the way they manage their artists, it will absolutely affect the future development of the industry.

Thousands and thousands of green glow sticks are waving, the crowd is cheering. Then a blue light gleams in the darkness when a sound of spaceship whooshes up. This reveals the opening of Hatsune Miku live concert in Nokia Theatre, Los Angeles, in October 11, 2014.

On stage, Miku is around 20 feet tall and looks like a young girl with long turquoise bigtails, dressed up in a black skirt and gray thigh-high tights. She is 16 years old according to the data sheet released by Crypton Future Media, Sapporo Japan, while the company launched this program.

The phenomenon may look the same to any concerts you have been to, except for the singer is not real. Hatsune Miku is a virtual character voiced by a singing synthesizer application. But she can move and dance like a real pop star on stage by using projected holograms. [Read more…]

Irvine-based Allergan is the latest company to be bought in a banner year for M & As

Mergers & Acquisitions in 2014 have reached their highest point since the turn of the century — the $1.5 trillion in M & As recorded this year is the most since 2000, according to financial information firm Thomson Reuters.

The theme continued this past Monday, with more than $100 billion in M & As accounted for between Allergan being bought out by Irish pharmaceutical company Actavis  and Halliburton acquiring oil company Baker Hughes.

For Allergan, the bio-tech company based in Irvine, the deal was especially sweet. The firm best known for making Botox was the target of a hostile takeover from hedge fund manager William Ackman and Valeant Pharmaceuticals for several months. Not only did Actavis pay more for Allergan — $66 billion, or $219 per share compared to Ackman/Valeant’s reported ceiling of $209 — but vowed to cut funding for research and development much less than the previous offer. Ackman still made out ok, though, since he had been accumulating shares since they were in $120s earlier this year. His 10 percent stake in Allergan saw $2.3 billion in paper gains this Monday.

Halliburton, on the other hand, was already the second biggest oil services company before buying Baker Hughes — which was the third largest. Despite a mixed reaction from shareholders so far, Halliburton believes the deal will lead to “cost synergies” of $2 billion per year and increase the company’s product line , according to Forbes.

Monday’s activity highlights how commonplace the practice has become. The Economist cautioned 20 years ago about the potential pitfalls of combining companies, and that was after a “mere” $210 billion had been registered by September, 1994.

The Economist worried M & As were too common — 20 years ago

Critics of large M & As point to several potential issues. First, many workers often lose their jobs when companies merge. This was evident when Sprint fired thousands of employees when they were acquired by Japanese telecommunications firm Softbank last year. The deal hasn’t found a way to make the company more of a threat to AT&T and Verizon yet, with Sprint recently announcing 2,000 more people would be losing their jobs.

And in many cases, there are reservations about M & As creating conglomerates that are too powerful — leading to monopolies and oligopolies. The Halliburton – Baker Hughes connection will certainly draw scrutiny from regulators concerned about antitrust violations. Although the deal will not be formalized until next year, shareholders may already be wary — with the company’s shares falling two percent a week after the deal was announced.

This isn’t unique to Halliburton, though. In general, mergers aren’t well received by the shareholders of the company buying out another firm. However, for investors of the company being bought, the opposite is true, because they are normally being bought at a premium. Allergan was bought for a five percent markup of the current share price on Monday, after they had already skyrocketed since the beginning of the year.

Lastly, the tech industry has been a hotbed for buyouts of late, and the exorbitant prices companies are paying for startups has many thinking this is the second coming of Dot-Com Bubble. What makes these purchases especially tricky is that many times the companies being bought aren’t publicly traded, so deciding on a market value for the business is rather arbitrary. Facebook buying messaging platform WhatsApp for more than $19 billion raised eyebrows for its seemingly over-the-top price. And even though the deals are worth billions of dollars, they can seemingly happen on a whim. Mark Zuckerberg reportedly said he “must have” virtual reality tech company Oculus earlier this year, and closed the $2 billion deal so fast that several high ranking executives at Oculus didn’t even know it was in the works until they showed up for work and found out they had been bought.

NPR outlined some notable tech mergers from the past decade

While there are red flags to consider when companies merge, recent activity suggests it won’t be slowing down anytime soon.

Ten P.M. in Pyongyang, all street lights went out. I shined a torch to penetrate the darkness. Two patrolmen spotted the light source and shouted at my direction. In a jitter, I responded in Chinese. After realizing I’m a foreign visitor, they softened their tone and let me pass by. Pyongyang citizens are not allowed to go outside at night. Another thing prohibited by North Korean government is foreign visitors exchanging for Korean People’s Won.

North Korean 5000 Won

Then how can a foreign traveler make a purchase in Democratic People’s Republic of Korea?

In the past, a separate currency for foreign visitors, also known as foreign exchange certificates, was issued by North Korea’s central bank, including two types — “red won” for visitors from socialist countries and “blue won” for visitors from capitalist countries. Foreign exchange certificates has been abandoned since 2002.

When you travel to North Korea now, in theory, you are not allowed to have North Korean won, but if you want to take something from North Korean back home, you can shop at state-run stores held in hard currency. Goods’ description labels are in English and Chinese, and goods are priced in dollar, Chinese yuan and euro there.

But that is only in theory. In fact, you can trade for Korean People’s won after street lamps going out — in the black market. I have traded Chinese Yuan for Korean People’s Won twice out of three attempts. I first traded 10 yuan ($1.6) for 10 won with two North Korean basketball players. At that time, the official exchange rate of yuan to won was 5:1, and the exchange rate in black market was about 570:1. They knew they made a killing by doing this deal with me — getting around 5,700 won by giving me 10 won.

North Korea did and does tightly control exchange rate. The iconic rate of 2.16 won (Kim Jong-il’s birthday is Feb.16) to U.S. dollar was abandoned in 2001, but the Korean government still extremely overvalues won. That’s why North Korean won in the black market is worth much less than what North Korean government wish it to be.

Then I went to a street shop in the same decoration with other shops distributed sporadically on the street. Bread displayed on the shelves comes from one single place with an identical package. Yellow neon casted dim but warm hue on the shop assistant. The moment I tried to start a conversation, she took a glance over my dangling Nikon D7 and kicked me out.

Last I stepped into a grocery store inside a residential district, which looked very different from prior street shops. A variety of commodities were set at random. I didn’t know whether I was an uninvited guest to this little store or not. But the salesman stood up when he saw me and he seemed to know he could get RMB from me. He was even willing to take the risk of being caught because I obviously offered a good deal. I bought a carton of cigarettes and 5,00 won with 50 yuan ($8.2). 

I made my “official” purchase in North Korea at a state-owned store especially running for foreign visitors — I bought an exact same carton of cigarettes as last time in 100 yuan ($16.3). They make won at least looks valuable by over-highly pricing goods to foreigners.

I’ve heard our North Korean tour guide chiding today’s China as faded socialism for dozens of times. And that was the one and only occasion when I thought “faded” was a positive word.