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Technologies system Higg raises $50M Sequence B to speed up offer chain sustainability

April 29, 2022 Audrey

Technologies system Higg raises M Sequence B to speed up offer chain sustainability

SAN FRANCISCO, April 27, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Higg, the sustainability insights platform for the buyer products field, now announced its $50M Series B funding spherical. The funding is co-led by technological innovation development trader Silversmith Funds Companions and Tom Steyer and Katie Hall’s Provoke Weather Alternatives, alongside with participation by Series A partners Titan Grove and Buckhill Money. With close to 50,000 manufacturer and company buyers in 100+ nations around the world, Higg enables continual improvement of offer chain sustainability—across not only carbon but water, vitality, and labor impacts as properly. This funding will accelerate Higg’s shipping and delivery of revolutionary engineering options and its rapid expansion into new buyer products categories these as outside, automotive, toys, and residence products.

Higg is the sustainability insights platform for consumer goods businesses – delivering software and services for measuring, managing, and sharing supply chain performance data.

From materials to products, from facilities to stores, from emissions to working conditions, Higg unlocks a complete view of a business’s social and environmental impact.

Built on the leading framework for sustainability measurement, Higg is trusted by global brands, retailers, and manufacturers to provide the single source of ESG intelligence they need to accelerate business and industry transformation.

Launched in 2019 as a public-benefit corporation, Higg is the exclusive licensee of the Higg Index, the industry-leading value chain measurement methodology developed by the Sustainable Apparel Coalition. www.higg.com (PRNewsfoto/Higg) — Higg is the sustainability insights platform for client products corporations – providing application and solutions for measuring, taking care of, and sharing source chain effectiveness information. From materials to products, from facilities to shops, from emissions to operating disorders, Higg unlocks a total see of a business’s social and environmental effects. Built on the primary framework for sustainability measurement, Higg is trustworthy by world wide makes, merchants, and suppliers to give the solitary supply of ESG intelligence they need to speed up enterprise and market transformation. Released in 2019 as a general public-benefit company, Higg is the exclusive licensee of the Higg Index, the field-leading value chain measurement methodology produced by the Sustainable Apparel Coalition. www.higg.com (PRNewsfoto/Higg)

Higg’s Sequence B comes as businesses facial area expanding anticipations for ESG (environmental, social, and governance) accountability and disclosure. Rules are now getting produced in the EU and US for source chain owing diligence, in addition to the latest guidelines for solution labeling and sustainability statements. Consumers are also trying to find better product-stage transparency about the goods they invest in.

“In this new era of expectations, extra firms will be required to have credible impression info about their provide chains. “The real truth is that measuring owned operations is simple,” claimed Higg CEO, Jason Kibbey. “For customer products firms, the problem is obtaining exact info on the non-owned factories that make the goods—and on the supplies and products and solutions them selves.”

“That’s why we’re thrilled to have Silversmith and Galvanize supporting us,” Kibbey ongoing. “Silversmith brings practical experience in SaaS innovation which is desired to scale our engineering and Tom Steyer’s effort at Galvanize is the ideal enhance offered their emphasis in local climate answers. We are energized to faucet into their know-how so that Higg results in being a essential resource for ESG information by the price chain and across sectors.”

Trustworthy by big models as perfectly as tens of hundreds of brands across the earth, details on the Higg system is employed to style extra sustainable merchandise, to expand employee very well-remaining, and to discover suppliers with diminished effect throughout emissions, h2o, chemical compounds, and squander. When a lot of sustainability options provide higher-level estimates of a business’ impact, Higg delivers

How government engineering leaders can plan in the course of the supply chain disaster

April 17, 2022 Audrey

From empty shelves at the area grocery retail outlet to an Amazon bundle that never ever appears to get there, the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically slowed the international source chain.

This disruption goes over and above the shopper products that everybody sees. Currently, technologies leaders need to know that these delays have in excess of to the data technological innovation components solutions and updates they count on for meeting their mission.

To steer clear of potential complications afterwards, these types of as finish of provider lifetime technological innovation currently being continue to in use, technological know-how departments will have to program for long run requires even further in advance, anything that may possibly be difficult with the federal government’s present-day IT preparing and procurement structure.

Keeping away from just-in-time acquisitions

The mother nature of company operations makes an environment that hinders acquisition at situations. Several know-how leaders discover them selves only capable to adequately program technological know-how investments for the coming 12 months many thanks to altering budgets, shifting priorities centered on company management, and additional quick needs consuming sources.

This has created a dynamic called just-in-time acquisitions that act akin to plugging holes with a finger to keep a coming flood at bay. Federal know-how leaders have extended recognized the challenges with this dynamic, and several have expressed a need to function with far more planning primarily based on a long-phrase eyesight. With just-in-time acquisitions a long phrase look at over and above the latest fiscal year is demanding to say the the very least. Only the most pressing investments may be created, unaware of the influence to other parts of the environment.

Under suitable circumstances, agencies need to move absent from just-in-time acquisitions. The provide chain disaster has exacerbated this will need. For instance, agencies without the need of a lengthy-time period strategy may come across by themselves searching to exchange damaged IT hardware only to find months-prolonged production delays which may perhaps effect the means to produce on their mission.

The shortage of microchips has presently impacted 169 various organizations, in accordance to Goldman Sachs, with some offer chain specialists believing it could consider several years for provide chains to return to normal. For an company wanting to fill an instant have to have, the availability of solutions could not exist in a effortless time frame.

How to steer clear of the source chain crunch

To start to crack the cycle of just-in-time acquisitions, businesses will have to have a strategic vision for their IT architecture that appears to be like at the very least a few a long time into the long term. Engineering leaders ought to have insight into what technologies components in their natural environment they will request each and every calendar year, with cash to change as wanted. This is especially real for figuring out opportunity discomfort details before they exist.

To absolutely have an understanding of components and computer software lifecycles inside their ecosystem the strategic approach has to come about

The popular electronics chain that scammed America

March 28, 2022 Audrey

On September 13, 1984, as stocks wavered through a bear market, a regional electronics chain held a hyped initial public offering.

If it seems odd that a purveyor of VCRs and stereos could make investors swoon, remember that this was the 1980s, and people were getting pumped about cellular phones that were roughly the size of microwaves. And know that this electronics company was Crazy Eddie, a brand that, in so many ways, was breaking the usual rules.

The previous fiscal year, Crazy Eddie’s annual revenues were ~$134m, or ~$372m today. More impressively, the 13-store New York City-area chain led the electronics industry in sales per square foot and profit margins.

Crazy Eddie was also a cultural sensation, rising to fame with absurd commercials that Dan Akroyd parodied on Saturday Night Live. In the 1984 movie Splash, Darryl Hannah’s character watched a Crazy Eddie ad when she first discovered TV.

That first day, investors purchased nearly 2m shares of Crazy Eddie for $8 apiece, under the ticker CRZY. By the end of the year, the stock would climb 25%, far outpacing a flat market and boosting Crazy Eddie’s plans for greater expansion.

There was just one major problem.

Crazy Eddie had been lying about its numbers since its inception — and the higher the stock soared the further founder Eddie Antar went to maintain the illusion.

“It was Goodfellas,” one attorney later told the Philadelphia Inquirer, “except they operated with briefcases instead of guns.”

The insaaaaane rise of Crazy Eddie

Eddie Antar was a 22-year-old high school dropout when he opened his first store in 1969, near the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood of Brooklyn.

He was the classic outer-borough tough guy: almost bald with a scraggly goatee, allergic to wearing anything but sweats, crude yet charming at the same time.

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Eddie Antar (AP, via New York Times; 1993)

Antar believed people would flock to stores that sold items like speakers, VCRs, and televisions under the same roof — and he was right.

Industry-wide, sales of electronics jumped from $8.5B in the late 1960s to $35B by the mid-1980s.

By 1979, Antar had 8 stores and shared the success with his family, which was part of a tightknit Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn. His father, Sam M. Antar, uncle Eddy Antar, and brothers Mitchell and Allen Antar all held key positions.

Meanwhile, Eddie Antar made sure everyone in New York City knew his business by flooding TV and radio with catchy ads shaped by advertising director Larry Weiss.

Weiss was well-connected in the radio and music industries and hired radio DJ Jerry Carroll to be Crazy Eddie’s spokesperson. (Other candidates for the job included the Godfather of Soul, James Brown.)

Taking inspiration from the humor of Mad magazine, Weiss developed commercials that played off music trends and the cultural zeitgeist. Most commercials featured Carroll

Inside the supply chain crisis: How it took months to get electronics from China to the U.S.

November 8, 2021 Audrey

Us citizens are getting warned to end their holiday shopping early this 12 months, as the world supply chain proceeds to falter. With a scarcity of containers, ships and electrical power making snags, CBS News determined to monitor a pair of high-performance speakers as they journeyed from the producing metropolis of Guangzhou, China, to the U.S.

On a great working day, staff at a Guangzhou manufacturing unit build and box up 2,000 speakers — as extended as the energy is on. Philip Richardson, an American, operates the manufacturing facility and says random electrical power outages plaguing China are costing him time and income.

“If we’re shut down for more than 15 minutes, then it generates a headache,” Richardson stated. A generator keeps the manufacturing unit managing, he reported, but noted that “Electrical energy from a generator for our application charges me at minimum 4 periods additional for every hour.”

The electricity issues appear as China attempts to reduce carbon emissions — but cuts in coal creation have led to history price ranges. Utility organizations are prohibited from boosting their expenses to match that rise, and considering that they are not able to make dollars, they prevent making electrical energy.

You will find a distinctive issue by the time Richardson’s speakers leave the manufacturing facility and head to a Chinese port: manpower. Dock employees invest 3 months in quarantine for every single two months on the work.

“They can be exposed to the COVID virus coming in by means of the supply chain. So that is what China is fearful about,” mentioned Ker Gibbs, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.

Following a two-7 days journey across the Pacific, most container ships finish up anchored off the coast of Southern California, in which they sit for even for a longer time. When the ships last but not least unload, the containers are stacked as far as the eye can see, waiting a number of times for vans and trains to carry them throughout the U.S.

Months have passed by the time Richardson’s speakers arrive at Alto Audio in Middletown, New York. The new music store’s owner, Jon Haber, claims he is spending virtually five occasions as a lot for shipping and delivery.

“Now, it prices like $25,000 and can take 90 times,” he mentioned. “It’s unbelievable!”

Haber stated he also has to ship capacitors, very small digital factors that are significant for a further a single of his products, to China for the reason that of shortages overseas.

“I’m sending them to China so they can make my products and solutions,” Haber said. “It is really nuts.”

He has experienced to increase some of his prices to prevent losing income and isn’t going to expect costs to arrive again down.

“I have been doing this 30-something yrs, I hardly ever noticed a maker raise the price tag, ‘Oh we are sorry, we really feel lousy, we are likely to deliver them back again down.’ The moment they go