Peter Fisk

Tencent is a Chinese multinational conglomerate that has grown to become one of the largest and most influential technology companies in the world. Here is an overview of Tencent’s history, development, key businesses, innovations, and strategy:

It was founded in November 1998 by Ma Huateng, also known as Pony Ma, in Shenzhen.

Initially, Tencent focused on providing online services like instant messaging and online gaming. Its first product, Tencent QQ (also known as QQ), was an instant messaging platform that gained significant popularity.

Tencent expanded its reach through strategic acquisitions, such as acquiring a majority stake in Riot Games in 2011 and Supercell in 2016. Tencent also invested in various international and domestic companies across different industries.

WeChat, known as Weixin in China, is a multi-purpose messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. Launched in January 2011, WeChat has grown into one of the most popular and widely used mobile apps globally, and serves as a central part of daily life for many users. Here are the key features:

• Messaging and Voice/Video Calls:
  • WeChat started as a messaging app and supports text, voice, and video messages. Users can make free voice and video calls to other WeChat users.
• Moments:
  • Similar to a social media timeline, Moments allows users to share photos, updates, and posts with their contacts. It’s a platform for sharing moments with friends and family.
• Official Accounts:
  • WeChat allows businesses, celebrities, and organizations to create official accounts. Users can subscribe to these accounts to receive updates, news, and promotions.
• Mini Programs:
  • Mini Programs are lightweight, in-app applications that run within the WeChat ecosystem. They offer various services, including games, utilities, and e-commerce, without the need for separate installations.
• WeChat Pay:
  • WeChat Pay is a mobile payment feature integrated into the app. Users can link their bank accounts or credit cards to make payments, transfer money, and perform various financial transactions.
• QR Code Scanning:
  • WeChat popularized the use of QR codes for various functions, including adding friends, making payments, and accessing services.
• Sticker Gallery:
  • WeChat provides a wide range of stickers and animated emojis for users to express themselves in conversations.
• City Services:
  • WeChat integrates with city services, allowing users to access information about public transportation, pay utility bills, and access other local services.
• WeChat Work:
  • WeChat Work is an enterprise communication and office collaboration platform, providing businesses with tools for team communication, project management, and file sharing.
• WeChat Pay:
  • WeChat monetizes through its payment platform, WeChat Pay, which facilitates online and offline transactions, including mobile payments, in-app purchases, and more.
• Advertising:
  • WeChat generates revenue through digital advertising on Moments and official accounts, allowing businesses to reach their target audiences.

More generally for Tencent, key businesses include:

• Social Media and Communication:
  • WeChat (Weixin): Tencent’s flagship social media platform, WeChat, is a multi-purpose messaging, social media, and mobile payment app with over a billion monthly active users.
  • QQ: QQ, Tencent’s instant messaging platform, is still widely used in China.
• Online Gaming:
  • Tencent is a major player in the global gaming industry. It owns Riot Games (League of Legends), Supercell (Clash of Clans), and has a significant stake in companies like Epic Games (Fortnite) and Activision Blizzard.
• Payment Services:
  • WeChat Pay: Tencent’s mobile payment platform, integrated with WeChat, is one of the leading digital payment services in China.
• Digital Advertising:
  • Tencent generates significant revenue from digital advertising on its various platforms, leveraging its massive user base.
• Cloud Computing:
  • Tencent Cloud offers a range of cloud computing services, competing with giants like Alibaba Cloud and AWS.
• Fintech:
  • Tencent has ventured into financial technology, offering services like online banking, wealth management, and microloans.

Innovation has been key to its leadership and enduring progress, most significantly in the digital structures to connect its businesses and consumers:

• WeChat Ecosystem:
  • WeChat is known for its super-app model, integrating various services such as messaging, social networking, payments, and more.
• Online Gaming Dominance:
  • Tencent dominates the online gaming market, both in China and globally, with investments in popular gaming companies and franchises.
• Mobile Payments:
  • WeChat Pay and QQ Wallet have played a pivotal role in the widespread adoption of mobile payments in China.

The biggest problem with buying clothes online is … will they fit? Online retailers like Amazon or ASOS try to overcome this by allowing people to buy several sizes to try on at home and return items free of charge—at huge cost to them.

Enter the body-measurement suit from Start Today, a Japanese firm that runs the “Zozotown” platform in Japan on which clothing companies from around the world sell their wares, as well as its own private label, Zozo.

In the past three months Start Today has distributed to just over 1m Japanese customers, free of charge, its “Zozosuit”, a skin-tight, full-body suit covered in around 350 fiducial markers, small objects that can be used as a point of reference for measurements. Shoppers slip on the suit and slowly rotate as their smartphone takes photos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32rbuLFbVWk

Zozo uses the images to create a 3D scan of their body, which it can use to offer a range of customised services. Among these are made-to-measure business suits for men from its Zozo brand, which are selling strongly, and jeans and T-shirts that fit most snugly from tens of thousands of pre-cut patterns, also from Zozo. At the most basic level, when customers choose an item from one of the 6,400 brands listed on Zozotown—the core of Start Today’s business—the platform uses the Zozosuit data to recommend the right size.

A first, more high-tech version of the suit proved too expensive (it had capacitors holding an electric charge that measured body shape by how much the suit stretched). But its latest version costs the company only ¥1,000 ($9) a piece. Masahiro Ito, a board member who oversees engineering at the firm, says the fashion industry has not yet adapted to meet the needs of a generation accustomed to buying everything online, to their specifications and at their convenience. “We offer exactly that,” he says. Other companies are watching closely. Fast Retailing, a giant which owns the UNIQLO brand, is one firm looking at ways to measure the body using smartphones.

How the suit fares is crucial for Start Today’s future. The Zozotown platform is the undisputed giant of online fashion retail in Japan. It created and dominates the market for online clothing sales; the second biggest platform, Marui Web Channel, makes only a tenth of its sales. It takes lucrative cuts of up to around 35% from brands it hosts; its founder and boss, Yusaku Maezawa, is now Japan’s 18th-richest person.

But analysts reckon it may be reaching saturation point. The company counts 6% of the country’s population as active users (meaning those who have bought something in the past 12 months). Its share price dipped sharply in July after growth slowed slightly. Bespoke services could attract more customers, especially men, who make up only around 30% of active users, reckons Osamu Yamada, an independent retail analyst.

Observers are more circumspect about whether the suit can help Start Today on its other path to growth: expanding abroad. Since July customers in 72 countries have been able to request a body-measurement suit to help them buy clothes from the Zozo label. An attempt a few years ago to take the Zozotown platform into China, Hong Kong and South Korea (before it came up with the body-measurement suit) failed. Mr Ito notes that Zozotown could not compete then with existing companies offering more or less the same products; for now at least, the suit is a unique service. But the company will still have to work harder than it does at home to persuade people to squeeze into it.

By lending as little as $25 on Kiva, anyone can help a borrower start or grow a business, go to school, access clean energy or realize their potential. For some, it’s a matter of survival, for others it’s the fuel for a life-long ambition.

100% of every dollar you lend on Kiva goes to funding loans. Kiva covers costs primarily through optional donations, as well as through support from grants and sponsors.

• 3 million borrowers
• 1.8 million lenders
• $1.2 billion loans funded
• 96.9% repayments
• 81 countries

Kiva started as a pioneer in crowdfunding in 2005, and is constantly innovating to meet people’s diverse lending needs. Whether it’s reinventing microfinance with more flexible terms, supporting community-wide projects or lowering costs to borrowers, we are always testing and learning.

Whether you lend to friends in your community, or people halfway around the world (and for many, it’s both), Kiva creates the opportunity to play a special part in someone else’s story. At Kiva, loans aren’t just about money—they’re a way to create connection and relationships.

When a Kiva loan enables someone to grow a business and create opportunity for themselves, it creates opportunities for others as well. That ripple effect can shape the future for a family or an entire community.

Beijing Infervision is an artificial intelligence high-tech company committed to applying deep learning technology to assist medical image diagnosis as efficient and accurate solutions.

Infervision effectively uses various types of medical data to create clinically valued products and promotes precision analysis in the medical field especially in assisted image diagnosis. Based on years of research preparation,

Infervision launched the world first “Infervision – artificial intelligence precise healthcare platform”​, and is the first to release intelligent X-ray assisted diagnosis products and intelligent CT assisted diagnosis products. These products are already in trials at Shanghai Changzheng Hospital, Tongji Medical College of HUST in Wuhan, and Dalian Zhongshan Hospital.

The company is also engaged in academic research and has established a deep cooperative relationship with top institutions in Chinese Radiology, combining both medical science and medical technology while laying a solid foundation for artificial intelligence breakthroughs in the medical field.

Infervision has established cooperative business partnerships with close to 20 Tertiary Grade A hospitals including Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Shanghai Changzheng Hospital, Tongji Medical College of HUST in Wuhan and Dalian Zhongshan Hospital, and has successfully broken the barriers between medical data, technology, and application scenarios, creating a unique system of an artificial intelligence computing platform and precise healthcare intelligence system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2urdvNw_U9Q&t=2s

In an article for Forbes, Bernard Marr said “Infervision is working on ground-breaking work to diagnose and treat strokes with the help of machine learning algorithms. The AI medical image specialists has already completed successful pilots of its Head CT Augmented Screening platform. It is hoped that the technology will soon go into widespread use and save lives, by allowing doctors to more quickly and accurately diagnose strokes and assess the damage they have caused.”

It is the second medical technology based around machine learning which Infervision have reported success with – I previously wrote about their platform which detects early signs of lung cancer in X-ray and CT scans.

Over 100,000 annotated medical image scans were used to train the algorithms, which given more live data will become increasingly efficient at diagnosing the two main types of stroke, hemorrhagic and ischemic.

Infervision founder and CEO Chen Kuan told me “X-ray is a very old type of medical check-up – in China, for example, no one had mentioned chest X-ray in academic conferences for more than 15 years. Until very recently with the arrival of AI. AI has helped radiologists discover problems they previously weren’t able to see. So we are very proud to see radiologists starting to discuss some very interesting and fantastic cases involving AI.”

It’s certainly a fantastic example of the ways new technology can unlock value from data which has been around for a long time.

One of the major problems it solves is how to measure the volume of blood lost in hemorrhagic (bleeding) strokes. When every second is critical following a stroke, doctors generally use a simple mathematical formula to “guesstimate” as best as possible how much blood is lost.

Bike sharing has burst across the world from its original success in dense Asian cities. Whilst companies like Spin, Ofo and Mobile have had mixed success, Lime (previously known as LimeBike) is taking a different route to launch and growth. Not least because it sees electric scooters as the future.

Lime was launched by Toby Sun and Brad Bao in San Mateo, USA in 2017.

Lime is revolutionizing mobility in cities and campuses by empowering residents with a greener, more efficient, and affordable transportation option that also improves urban sustainability. By partnering with local key stakeholders and systematically deploying a fleet of smart-bikes (regular bikes, electric-assist bikes, and electric-scooters) that are enabled with GPS, wireless technology, and anti-theft locks,

Lime is improving urban mobility by making the first and last mile faster, cheaper, and healthier for riders. Since launching in June 2017, the company has logged over 1.5 million trips, expanded internationally to Europe, and deployed electric scooters, electric-assist bikes, and multiple models of their standard pedal bike. Funded by Silicon Valley’s leading VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, Lime is based in San Francisco, CA.

Lime is now in around 50 cities, plus 10 European cities including Paris and Madrid since its international launch in 2018.

Here’s an extract from a Forbes interview with the founders in early 2018:

LimeBike jumped onto the private bikeshare scene quite fast. Is it really just under a year old?

Sun: This is officially our 11-month anniversary. We founded the company in January of this year, but really started to look at the urban mobility and transportation factor several years back. I have a consumer product background, and a venture capital investment background. So I have experience looking into exciting products like autonomous vehicles, Uber/Lyft, and dock-based bikesharing. I got to look into docklessbikesharing in Q2 of last year. So we founded this company this past January, but we’ve been studying this industry for over a year and a half. We raised our series A in March. We launched our first market in Greensboro, North Carolina in June. We launched our first major market in Seattle in July. And after that we’ve launched in one or more markets every week. In a roughly 3-to-4-month timeline, we’ve gone live in 25 markets, which includes 16 cities and 9 college campuses. This includes big metropolitan areas like Seattle, Dallas, DC and Los Angeles; and schools like Notre Dame, UNC-Greensboro, Arkansas State, etc. We’ve so far seen over ¾ million total rides in only 4 months, and we’ve got over 300,000 registered users.

Contee: What we’re trying to do now is build that system out to our goal of 30+ markets by the end of the year.

What is it that caused LimeBike to grow so fast? Some of your U.S. competitors have been around for several years, but you’ve become one of the industry leaders.

Sun: Having a team together to activate a dockless program from day one was super important. That might take another company half a year or even longer to make that pivot. The reason is that when they first started, the technology was not quite ready. But we’re starting from a new angle.

Contee: Part of the perfect storm for us has come from the business model. Bikesharing 1.0 was the dock-based system. But a dock-based system costs millions of dollars to deploy in cities. As a result, they were limited to large metros that could afford to fund them, or find anchor sponsors for them. But for our new economic model, we don’t have to pay for docks, we don’t have to pay for the kiosks or the fobs, so we can deploy far more bikes for no cost to the city. So we’ve created a system that takes away all of the economic barriers. And this actually opens up the market, meaning it’s not just the large metros we can serve.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOMYOBBRtM8

How do you decide which cities to open in?

Sun: It’s a combination of things. So when we first got started, the reason we chose UNC-Greensboro–which is not the typical first-launch market for a lot of technology companies–was, Number 1, that they had a present need. They’d been thinking about a bike share system for a long time, but had found the dock-based program kind of limited. Yet the city is committed to building more bike lanes and improving the bike infrastructure. Number 2, they really embraced new technology, which impressed us a lot. Number 3, the UNC-G campus has more than 20,000 staff and students, and the city has 287,000 residents. So they had the population and the density to meet our criteria.

All these things put together, and it’s turned out to be a great first market for us. And that goes for the medium-sized cities with similar combinations, like South Bend. So we started with the small, passionate markets, that will work closely with us and that we also learn from, before we get to the bigger markets.

But even with smaller markets, do you find that there must be a certain minimal population density?

Sun: It varies. Sometimes a super-small market with only 10,000 people can support a program. Key Biscayne, FL, where we launched, only has 10,000 residents; but there are over 1 million travelers going to that market every year. But ideally, we like a 1-to-100 bike-to-person ratio. So that requires a certain level of density over the coverage area for our bikes.

What are the specific challenges of working your way into bigger markets?

Sun: You need a bigger team to manage it. So it turned out that starting in a smaller city was a good thing for us. That way when we come into the big cities, we have a playbook, we have a solid team that has experience dealing with the issues we have seen in smaller markets, and is able to manage a more complex environment.

Which city have you found to be the best market so far, and do you think that answer will change as you expand?

Sun: Seattle has been the best so far, because we have the most bikes there. Dallas is surprisingly good too; in some areas the ridership is even higher than Seattle. Ten years from now, we see it being New York City, San Francisco, DC, Chicago. All these very high-density areas that are suffering from traffic congestion and pollution will be the biggest market for sure.

Have you had any regulatory battles so far, and do you anticipate that heating up as you expand?

Sun: I wouldn’t say it’s a “battle”. I’d say it’s an “ongoing discussion”. Cities love bikes, and cities love bikeshare. But it does take some time to educate them on how this will bring unique advantages to the city.

In some cities that we’ve launched, we have all the officials’ support. We’ll announce the programs with the city councils, the mayors, the DOT directors and the school chancellors in attendance. There are other cities that have been a little slower at adapting to this change. But I wouldn’t say it’s a battle. We are actually seeing the changes way faster than we thought it would be.

You said your goal by the end of 2017 was to expand into 30+ markets. What are your other goals?

Sun: We aim to deploy between 50,000 to 70,000 bikes. We have roughly 10,000 bikes deployed in the U.S. now. In terms of ridership, by the end of the year, hopefully we can get up to 2 million rides.

What about the long-term goal? Do you want to become the Uber of bikeshare?

Sun: We want to be the LimeBike for, uh…mobility options (laughs). If you ask me what the vision will be in the next 3 to 5 years, we want to become the default short-trip, on-demand service for getting people around cities. After that, we hope to transform form a mobility platform to a lifestyle brand, where people can use one bike to make friends, choose another to stay healthy, choose another to get other things done. So we feel super, super excited.

DBS is regarded by many as the world’s most innovative bank, with a particular lead in digital innovation.  It seeks to deliver a new kind of banking that is so simple, seamless and invisible, that customers have more time to spend on the people or things they care about. DBS is also a strong advocate of building a sustainable future. Working with partners, it empowers people to live larger than themselves,  creating new platforms that encourage our customers to live socially-conscious; establish platforms to help social entrepreneurs bring their ideas to life; and provide the next generation with opportunities to develop innovative solutions that address sustainability issues.

DBS is an Asian specialist, with the reach and sophistication to outcompete local lenders, and deep Asian insights that distinguish us from global competitors. It seeks to intermediate trade and investment flows between Asia’s three key axes of growth – Southeast Asia, Greater China and South Asia – as well as participate in Asia’s growing affluence. Key franchises are in Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, India and Indonesia. In Singapore, DBS is a universal bank serving all customer segments, including the mass market through the DBS and POSB brands, also known as the “People’s Bank”. In our other markets, the focus is on Corporate banking, SME banking, and Wealth management.

No conversation with DBS CEO Piyush Gupta goes far without turning to digital innovation or, as he puts it, re-imagining banking, as in: “If we don’t completely reimagine banking we’re going to die.” To Gupta the banking world is full of threats, from Alibaba to Google, and only those banks that get ahead of the trend will thrive, or even survive.

But Gupta also sees the threat as an opportunity. Lots of executives talk about innovation in technology but what is striking about DBS is the depth to which it is ingrained in the bank’s 22,000 staff. John Laurens, for example, an HSBC transaction services veteran who now runs that business at DBS, was struck when he arrived by a level of engagement with innovative thinking he had not seen before.

From Gupta’s point of view, approaching it this way is practical; top-down leadership is one thing, but if you really want to change a whole culture, it also has to come from the bottom and everywhere in between. Of course, DBS is not the only bank trying to achieve this. In its first year as a category, the award for the world’s best digital bank was one of the hardest-fought of all. BBVA, based in Spain but operating a tech-savvy business around the world, has put digital at the heart of its business for more than a decade under its visionary executive chairman, Francisco González.

ING was the first bank in Europe to truly make a success of an online-only bank with its ING Direct platform. It continues to lead on the continent where others follow. Citi made a strong case for this award, notably in the way it uses tech innovation in both its consumer and wholesale businesses. If this award were limited to global universal banks, then Citi would win it.

The numbers around DBS’s digital journey are impressive in their own right. Nearly S$5 billion ($3.7 billion) has already been invested in digital strategies – more than the bank’s entire net profit for 2015. Some 70% of all transactions in Singapore are digital. But it goes much further than pure numbers. Leaders in digital banking talk about the difference between digitizing aspects of a bank and creating a truly digital financial institution. DBS is doing this better than any other bank.

It is demonstrably the case that digital innovation pervades every part of the bank, from consumer to corporate, SMEs to transaction banking and even the bank’s charitable foundation. About half of Singapore’s population transacts online with DBS, and more than a quarter by mobile. The bank is committed to working with fintechs, funding incubators and accelerators and even incorporating hackathons into its internal talent development programmes.

It is outside Singapore that the sense of DBS’s digital vision becomes clear. The Digibank launch in India is a landmark, India’s first mobile-only bank that is paperless, branchless and involves no signatures. This is potentially transformative – a level of automation that supposedly could attract five million customers using less staff than a typical outlet of McDonald’s.

Digibank grasps an opportunity created by the Aadhaar biometric card, which stores the details of a billion Indians, and the financial infrastructure built on top of it. Thanks to this identification, there is no need for branches; accounts can be opened at 500 cafes across India, among other places.

Customers converse with an artificial intelligence-powered assistant created in partnership with Kasisto, a fintech spin-off from the institute that created Siri. It is so low-cost that DBS can offer an introductory interest rate of 7% and still make a profit. It is simple, but no other multinational has done it. Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Infosys and former chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India, calls it “a WhatsApp moment of banking”.

And the DBS vision is to do it again and again, dispensing with the need for cumbersome international acquisitions or organic branch growth. Both China and Indonesia are believed to have similar programmes to Aadhaar underway – albeit in Indonesia’s case through facial recognition technology – providing a similar foundation for digital banking growth.

“This is not just doing an app: we’ve been doing mobile banking for 15 years,” Gupta says. “It’s not about a bank putting out another channel. This is a clean sheet of paper.”

On 10 December 1969, Macquarie’s predecessor organisation, Hill Samuel Australia, opened its doors with three staff and an ambition to provide advisory and investment banking services of an international standard to the Australian market.

Now we are a global business operating in over 25 countries and with specialist expertise in areas such as resources, agriculture and commodities, energy and infrastructure, with a particular knowledge of the Asia-Pacific region.

Since its inception, Macquarie has differentiated itself by focusing on new opportunities, both in product and geography, progressively building expertise in these disciplines and expanding into adjacent areas.

Banks in Australia are taking the lead in terms of innovative banking, with Sydney-headquartered Macquarie Bank being the fastest among them. This was best exemplified in September 2017, when Macquarie Bank became the first bank in Australia to launch an open banking platform that leverages application programming interface (API) technology. Through API, the platform can connect securely with fintech start-ups and apps; this in turn allows customers to share their data (should they wish) so they can utilise third-party products and services. According to the bank, its open banking platform brings greater choice to customers. The platform was developed as a result of customers requesting to connect their information with their favourite accounting and budgeting apps and software, among other useful services.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSV7rJqvmKo

Justin Woolverton, the founder of Halo Top ice-cream, has heard the question before. Asked whether Unilever has tried to acquire the low-sugar, high-protein brand that has enjoyed explosive growth in the US, he sighs: “I think we’ve been approached by every major player and every private equity firm in the US, to be honest with you.”

Unilever considered paying $2bn for the five-year-old company, according a New York Post report this month. The reason for all the interest is that Halo Top sales grew 2,500 per cent year-on-year in 2016; it has taken a 5 per cent scoop of the US ice-cream market within two years. That rate of growth is enough to make multinational food producers choke, given annual sales growth was languishing at an average of 2-3 per cent last year.  “I’m not sure a food company has grown faster in recent history,” says Mr Woolverton. “So it’s been a lot of holding on to the bucking mustang or whatever the metaphor is there.”

Halo Top’s big selling point is that a whole tub contains 280-360 calories — roughly a third of an equivalent pint of Ben & Jerry’s or Nestlé’s Häagen-Dazs. The calorie count is displayed in big numbers at the centre of its gold-rimmed, Instagram-friendly packs, which also highlight its protein content.  This means consumers can scoff a whole tub of caramel macchiato or pancakes and waffles ice-cream for the calorific equivalent of a chicken sandwich.

Halo Top cuts out sugar and sweetens with stevia, a sweetener from a leafy shrub used increasingly in everything from “sugar” cubes to fizzy drinks. The ice cream also contains erythritol, a no-calorie sugar alcohol which adds texture. Both ingredients can be called “natural”.  There is milk, cream — and air. That might not be to everyone’s liking but when a science journalist for GQ magazine wrote about eating nothing but Halo Top for 10 days — and lost 10lbs in weight — sales started to rocket.

“We didn’t even know that article was coming, we never would recommend anybody do that,” says Mr Woolverton, who got the idea for the business from concoctions made in his Los Angeles kitchen when he was a bored lawyer. By August, Halo Top’s pint-sized tubs were outselling Ben & Jerry’s and Nestlé’s Häagen-Dazs for the first. In the three months to August 6, it had sales of $86.9m against, respectively, $83m and $79m according to IRI, the market research group.

Last October, Unilever, the world’s biggest ice cream manufacturer with Magnum and Ben & Jerry’s, reported a fall in volumes in its refreshment division. Speaking at the time, Graeme Pitkethly, Unilever’s finance director, highlighted how “very, very quickly” Halo Top had “taken 1.5 share points from us”.

Update: Extract from article in FT, April 2019

In mid-2017, the business partners began to determine how to get Halo Top on sale in as many countries as possible, as fast as possible. This was harder than they expected. Since their ice cream was manufactured in the US, it would have to be shipped internationally and be kept frozen during transit. Figuring out local regulations and securing distribution were also a headache. “I felt like I was banging my head against the wall because we were having to reinvent the wheel for every new market,” says Bouton. I felt we were having to reinvent the wheel for every new market Business partner Douglas Bouton

Then over the summer of 2017, Bouton heard from a stranger offering to help. Matt Fulbrook, a former sales director for Ben & Jerry’s in the UK, sent him an email, asking if Halo Top had thought of expanding to the UK. “We are a team of three ice cream guys with over 50 years collective experience within the UK ice cream sector . . . and know there could be an opportunity here for you,” Fulbook wrote. Within weeks, the two had met and signed a deal under which Fulbrook’s company, Brand of Brothers, would help Halo Top expand to Europe in exchange for a commission on sales.

That connection enabled Halo Top to obtain UK distribution quickly. Tesco was the first to sign up, and by the fourth quarter of 2017, eight other customers, including supermarkets Sainsbury’s. Morrisons and Asda, had also agreed to stock the ice cream. On the branding side, Halo Top knew it had to tailor its advertising and marketing for a British audience or risk not connecting with consumers as it had in the US. “Our brand’s voice has to be authentic and genuine — the antithesis of the big corporation or conglomerate,” says Bouton.

Halo Top hired local staff and ad agencies, and produced an ice cream flavour called Lemon Wedding Cake: a homage to the choice of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry for their wedding cake last year. Halo Top’s efforts appear to be paying off: in its first year on the market, the company recorded UK sales of £20.2m, according to IRi. The group found a contract manufacturer in Germany, which will soon start making the ice cream that is sold in continental Europe, replacing stock currently shipped across the Atlantic. Halo Top has also started selling in the Netherlands and Germany.

“We’re in 12 countries right now,” says Bouton. “If we wanted to, we could double that quickly, but we want to go slower to make sure we do it right.”

Depop was founded in Milan during 2011 by Simon Beckerman, the co-founder of the culture magazine, PIG, and popular sunglasses brand RetroSuperFuture.

Originally a social network where PIG’s readers could buy items featured in the magazine. After realizing that Depop needed a selling function, Beckerman re-envisioned the app as a global marketplace — a mobile space where you can see what your friends and the people you’re inspired by are liking, buying, and selling.

In turn, your friends and creative influencers all over the world can see the things you like, buy, and sell, and are inspired by you. This ecosystem has supported Depop becoming a global conduit of connection, not only in m-commerce, but culture, design, and creative communities around the world.

“The idea was to attract a whole new generation of young people who could not only use the site to buy and sell in a modern way, but also have fun in discovering what is cool in fashion and design.” Beckerman recently told the FT.

In the short time since it started, Depop’s user-base has climbed to over 10 million, and while it is still widely the realm of teenagers and twentysomethings, an older contingency is also catching on (thanks in part to celebrity participants, including the former basketball star Shaquille O’Neal and the burlesque performer Dita Von Teese — both of whom have Depop stores).

“We have something like 350,000 to 400,000 active users a day,” says Beckerman, “seventy per cent of whom are female, and a majority of whom are aged between 16 and 26.” He says that there are approximately 22,000 sales a day — some made directly online (via PayPal) and some that “allow people to transact by hand”. The company generates its own money by taking a 10 per cent cut of the digital sales, though it does not take a percentage if the seller and buyer agree to meet in person to complete a transaction.

For those unfamiliar with its workings, Depop is a crafty amalgamation of eBay’s entrepreneurial machinations, Craigslist’s lo-fi skeleton and Instagram’s voracious social interconnectivity. The platform is predominantly used through an app, though, like Instagram, it can also be viewed on a desktop. Participation is simple. Vendors post images of whatever it is they’re looking to offload and, when something sells, a tiny yellow “Sold” label appears on the bottom-left corner of the image. Unlike eBay, Depop’s sellers can leave their transacted items on their profiles — creating a curated retail persona that, in time, amasses followers. These followers “like” and comment on products; they can also communicate with vendors independently. Generally, the more followers a seller has, the more lucrative their store will be.

The Depop sales lingo is a millennial art. “Hit me wiv sum offaz [flying money emoji] [money bag emoji] [flying money emoji],” reads the biography on 18-year-old Momos Weighill’s Depop page (@sarweighill). Her profile picture depicts somebody wearing Burberry plaid-trimmed Nike trainers with matching trousers. And her inventory is rife with 1990s and 2000s swag, including a Gucci bikini and sunglasses with coloured lenses — the kind once favoured by Geri Halliwell. Weighill joined the site quite accidentally. “I bought two pairs of yellow and red Versace trousers for £10, but they didn’t fit. I put them up on Depop on the off-chance someone might want them, and they sold for £45 each within three days. I carried on from there.”

For Depop’s users, they boast a consistently hand-curated explore page and are embarking on the brick and mortar retail world with stores in LA and NYC. The business is growing rapidly strengthened community, and continue to add to the brand through a series of collaborations. They’ve worked with major brands like Dickies as well as entrepreneurs like the New York vintage shop owner, Procell, and LA-based textile artist, Uzumaki Cepeda.

In 2018 they launched the IRL to their URL with their version of a brick and mortar on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles which actually appears much more like an experiential marketing activation rather than a traditional retail space because it is not just a place for shopping. Moving product is probably its lowest priority. Inside, app users can attend workshops centered on improving their Depop stores like how to style fashion and lifestyle photos, source vintage, brand building and other skills to help use their account like an entrepreneur. They can also shoot photos of their products there or book time with the in-house team to shoot it for them.

It was here their collaboration with Cepada became an experience in addition to selling her art in-app. Cepeda’s art is rooted in creating her interpretation of safe spaces through utilizing brightly colored faux fur. For the event, she did a set design that attendees were able to shoot photos in. They also celebrated Go Skate Day with the Dickies Girls. “There was a custom skate ramp in the parking lot and Dickies Girl launched their Depop shop with some fun new merchandise which was available for sale throughout the space.”

Update 2018. Extract from Courier interview with Maria Raga, now CEO.

Just inside Depop’s front door, there’s a 1960s-esque counter on the wall; every few seconds the numbers tick over, clocking up yet another sale on the mobile app since midnight. When Courier visits, mid-afternoon, it reads 8,094.

But nobody is paying the ticker any attention. There’s a baby in the office, and she has attracted quite a fan club. A gaggle of software engineers, stylists, accountants and strategists have gathered around her pram for some communal cooing.

Many of Depop’s nine million users are closer in age to this baby than her parents: 80% are under 25. They’ve also mastered a very different way of making money to the proverbial paper round – some entrepreneurial teens are earning thousands of pounds every month hawking their unloved trainers, mums’ vintage jackets and last season’s sweaters. It’s this generation’s Ebay, completely changing the way millions buy and sell things – and it’s cool.

Users love Depop because it’s more than just a way to make extra cash; it’s also a social network. The app looks more like Instagram than Amazon, with feeds filled with photos of fresh-faced teens posing in clothes in their bedrooms.

And it has global appeal. Worldwide sales hit £170m in 2017, and the US is fast closing in on the UK as its biggest market. No surprise then, that when the company announced its latest £14m investment round in February, it promised to head state-side soon.

Tough times

There was a time, though, when things weren’t looking so rosy. When Maria Raga became CEO in early 2016, the company’s founder and creative compass Simon Beckerman had recently left after a disagreement with the board. Staff were also heading off, fast – and there was the small matter of a £6.5m fundraising round to close. ‘It was a bit tricky,’ says Raga, a fast-talking Spaniard who joined Depop in 2014 as chief operating officer, via Insead business school in France, Bain consultancy and Groupon.

When the storm came, the board elected her CEO. Somebody more used to suits than sneakers, Raga suddenly found herself at the helm of a creative company which had, in essence, lost its way.

‘There was a lack of a unified vision for the business, and people started to not believe,’ she says. The business had grown faster than the team behind it, and the stretch marks were starting to show.

It’s been quite the turnaround. How, then, did Raga do it?

Re: vision

Like any experienced strategist, she started by defining the company’s mission – and immediately ran into difficulties. ‘How was I supposed to come up with a vision when I didn’t found the company?’ she says. ‘It’s one of the toughest things [to do] when a business is already up and running, because there’s something that people believe in, but it’s not properly articulated.’

So she took a risk and brought back Beckerman, the founder, as creative director. Before starting Depop in 2011, he launched pop-culture magazine Pig in his native Italy, and Retro Superfuture, a sunglasses brand made famous by the likes of Kanye, Lady Gaga and Beyonce. (‘These ones are actually his brand’s,’ says Raga, pulling off a pair of thick-rimmed, oversized frames.) Raga didn’t need to beg: Beckerman was eager to come back. ‘Now it doesn’t even feel like he left the company,’ she says. The combination of the two of them, one investor says, is Depop’s ‘magic ingredient’.

Two years on, Beckerman remains heavily involved, poking his head around the door mid-interview to ask Raga a quick question. ‘We sit down multiple times a day,’ he says. ‘Maria’s a super pragmatic person. She’s able to download my brain and make it more structured.’

If Depop were a car

With Beckerman back onboard, Raga’s next step toward defining the vision (and pulling the company back together) has become a signature trait of her management style. She asked questions – of her team and her users: ‘We wanted to understand what people thought about us. So, if Depop were a magazine, what kind of magazine would it be? If Depop were a car, what type of car would it be?’ The answers were all over the place – from high fashion titles to Hello! magazine.

A branding agency was enlisted to help pin down Depop’s personality and a defined mission was identified: ‘To empower creative minds.’ A new version of the app was launched shortly after.

Having a clear idea of what the brand is and where it’s going has helped define which users to go after, hone marketing strategies and work out where to focus expansion efforts, says Raga. More than anything, she says, it’s helped her decide what not to do. She’s wary, though, of merely bandying the mission statement around – ‘if you just put the sentence on the wall, that doesn’t work’ – and says for it to have any impact, every decision must be made in relation to it.

Selling state-side

Depop’s biggest move yet was its expansion into the US last month. Over a third of Depop’s users are already based there, but haven’t yet had a physical touchpoint with the brand.

That’s all set to change now that 3531 West Sunset Boulevard, Depop’s first pop-up retail space, has opened in Silverlake, LA. ‘To be creative, people have to connect, to get inspired by others,’ says Raga. Depop’s app is inherently social – users build networks, start conversations, follow and refer one another. The hope is, if users also meet in person, their devotion will be further strengthened.

Calling the LA site – and the New York space that will follow in April – ‘pop-ups’ sells them short; they will double up as offices for local customer support and partnerships teams, while also giving users a space in which to sell products, take photos, host events and workshops.

It’s not an untested idea: in a less formal way, Depop has been meeting its users in person for years. They regularly visit the Shoreditch HQ for everything from photography workshops to lessons in how to spot a fake, and feedback sessions with staff over pizza. The only reason these events haven’t been open to the wider public, Raga hints, is a practical one: Depop is based on the fourth floor of a converted warehouse – and the lifts are highly unpredictable.

Any questions?

Raga, too, likes to meet Depop users, inside and outside the office – and sometimes in unlikely locations. Recently, she was invited to speak at Eton (the schoolboys are apparently big Depop users). She turned up with a handful of merchandise and promised prizes for the best questions asked. The 14-year-olds impressed her: ‘They were asking us when we are going to use blockchain.’ Although she says 2018 won’t be the year Depop moves into blockchain, 38-year-old Raga seems like somebody who’s always up for trying out something new.

When we meet, she’s wearing a second-hand Acne jacket recently bought from Depop – much to Acne-fan and marketing strategist Tainá Vilela’s delight. Speaking of her boss, Vilela says: ‘Even though we are two worlds apart – she comes from a very corporate background, and I come from a creative background – she’s always trying to find points where we can connect and communicate. She’s always interested in understanding things better.’

With the company too, Raga’s open to experimenting with what might seem like tech world clichés. Depop’s people team have introduced several initiatives to help staff across departments get to know each other. ‘We have this “buddy-up” thing, which is hilarious,’ Raga says, raising her eyebrows: people who might never usually speak to one another are given a small budget to hang out. Although clearly sceptical of the initiative at first, she says: ‘You may think it’s a waste of time, but it does make a difference.’

This openness has filtered through the company. Vilela, who’s worked with Raga for three and a half years, says: ‘I can go to someone and say, “Why don’t we do something this way?”’ It’s been a very deliberate cultural shift.

Since becoming CEO, Raga’s expanded the leadership teams, and ‘put a lot of emphasis on people’s roles’: she didn’t want the mass exodus the company suffered in early 2016 reoccurring. She regularly sends emails with company updates, quarterly reports or even to explain crises. There are ‘all-hands’ meetings where the whole team gathers, and on Fridays at 5pm, people from all departments start drinking beers and playing video games together. It would’ve been an improbable scene back in early 2016.

‘Maria’s very lovable,’ says Beckerman. ‘The team loves her and she always works with them in the same direction.’

‘She’s grown the trust and the loyalty of the whole of the business,’ echoes Rebecca Hunt, an early stage investor at Octopus Ventures, and the latest member of Depop’s board. Hunt’s known Raga since before she became CEO, and has seen her grow with the role. ‘She took over in difficult circumstances, and she’s shown herself to have a high degree of emotional intelligence.

‘She also has a huge amount of humility – she has no idea how good she is. She calls at the end of the month, says “Sorry we’re half a percent behind our numbers,” and I just want to kiss her.’

1,000% growth

In the boardroom, though, Raga has to play hardball. Some investors have pushed for the app to introduce paid-for features, such as one which would bump paying users’ profiles to the top of a page. Introducing this, though, would tamper with Depop’s ‘drop page’ – a list of what’s trending and profiles Depop’s team have curated. ‘The moment you start allowing people to promote themselves by paying, that’s completely diluted,’ says Raga. ‘One of the things that makes Depop very special is the curation side of things.’ It’s a dilemma currently without an answer.

‘There’s a lot of emphasis on putting a lot of money into marketing and growing the business fast,’ adds Raga. ‘I’ve learned to be comfortable with saying, “You don’t have to go from 100% to 1000% growth”.

‘I don’t think you have to grow fast to be successful, and when you’re building a marketplace that has a lot of emphasis on community, it has to be done in a very credible and authentic way. I’m very happy growing 100% year-on-year, so why push it?’

In Hong Kong there is a great 100 year old business that explains our future potential. For much of the last century Li and Fung was focused on low-cost manufacturing of textiles. That was until salary levels grew, and places like Indonesia were able to achieve much lower cost bases.  The business reinvented itself as a virtual resource network, helping brands to find the right partners for the business, in terms of expertise, quality, and price.

Walk into a Li and Fung office in Sao Paulo or Istanbul, Barcelona or Toronto – or any one of their 300 offices in over 50 countries – and the small team of sourcing experts will help you find the best designers, manufacturers and distributors for your brand. Every pair of Levi jeans you buy are made with the help of Li and Fung, and around 40% of the world’s textiles. If you need finance, they’ll find you an investor, and if you need merchandising, processing or customer service, they can find the right partner for that too. Their business model can be based on fees, on commissions, or an agreed mix.

Actually, all you need is a good idea. Take it to Li and Fung and they can make it happen with you.

Clothing makes up around two-thirds of the business, with furniture and home furnishings, beauty and personal care products, fashion accessories and general merchandising, such as seasonal gifts, constituting the rest. employs about 22,000 people worldwide. It does product design and development, raw materials and factory sourcing and capacity building, vendor compliance and distribution. It has over 250 offices in 40 markets. It works with 15,000 suppliers to service 8,000 customers.

Li & Fung offers services in product design and development, raw materials and factory sourcing and capacity building, vendor compliance and distribution.

Historically, buyers have either purchased fully developed products from domestic importers or overseas traders (Principal Traders) or through their own in-house sourcing teams. Today, buyers source their products via all these channels through the company’s trading network either through agency-based sourcing or product-focused services across a wide range of product categories.

In a typical agency-based sourcing arrangement, a sourcing agent oversees product development, negotiation of price, the locating of factories, procurement of raw materials and components, quality control, factory compliance, order processing and manufacturing control and logistics. In a typical product-focused agreement, a buyer is presented with a collection of product samples for the customer’s target market designed and developed by the Principal Agent. The buyer selects a range of samples and negotiates the price with the Principal Trader. Once the order is finalized, the Principal Trader works with its vendor base to produce and deliver the products.

John Hagel uses Li & Fung as an example of a “pull platform” in the report “Business ecosystems come of age”. He describes such a platform connects participants with the “capabilities of others and make them available to their customers in ways that create significant value for platform participants and customers.” He writes that pull platforms are scalable and instead of becoming “unwieldy with greater numbers of participants, they become only more capable and valuable.” He says pull platforms are important owing to two factors: digitization and globalization. Although companies have seen the benefits in terms of lean manufacturing and inventory management, within well defined supply chains, the real potential of the pull-based approach has yet to be realised.

• Li and Fung’s Three Year Plan: The Speed Playbook
• Li and Fung’s Three Year Plan: The Digitalisation Playbook
• Li and Fung’s Three Year Plan: Supply Chain of the Future