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Hi, everyone, Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Wee Weekend Podcast. Well, yeah, safe to say, pretty big week for investors. We got the Fed decision, the last one of twenty twenty four, the Fed lowering the benchmark interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point as expected, lowering it for a third consecutive time. Members also rating in the number of
cuts they expect in twenty twenty five. That was a surprise to investors and brought about an immediate market reaction, with US Treasury yields shooting up and US stock selling off. The SMP five hundred had its worst FED day since two thousand and one. Vetcha and J. Powell signaled greater caution over how quickly the Federal Reserve can continue to reduce borrowing costs.
But as for additional cuts, we're going to be looking for further progress on inflation as well as continued strength in the labor market. And as long as the economy in the labor market are solid, we can be cautious about as we consider further cuts.
And so this hour we talked to one bank CEO who joined us right after the FED decision to get his read on the strength of the economy and another check on the US economy and the consumer That came thanks to the CEOs of two very different companies who both happen to be cutting prices. One certainly a household name and the other may be, especially if you recently had a baby.
Also on our radar this week sustainable energy solutions and how geopolitics are impacting investments in sustainable energy infrastructure with an investor who has billions invested in the space.
All of that to come, we start with this week's FED decision. The expected hawkish rate cut still cut investors by surprise, sparking a sell off inequities and bonds, US Treasury rates moving up. Bank stock sensitive to monetary policy moves dropped the most in months right after the FED decision.
That included shares of the publicly held New Jersey based connect One Bank Corp. Which is the parent company of Connect One Bank. The bank has nearly ten billion dollars in assets and count small businesses and construction companies among its customers.
Frank Sorrentino is chairman and CEO at the bank, which as a nine hundred and eleven million dollar market cap. He began by telling us what stood out to him following the Fed's decision.
I find it always fascinating that good news brings negative markets, right, So a stronger economy and a place where people are doing well and strong employment and you know all the other things that define a more robust economy, and the
market sells off. So certainly, I don't think there was any surprise that today's ed action interest rates being lowered by twenty five basis points some rhetoric around future cuts not being as much as the market wanted, and I think that's what really drove a lot of the sell offs. So there was a lot of enthusiasm and optimism, certainly in the banking system about much lower interest rates. Well,
that's not really going to happen. On the flip side, I think we're going to start to see potentially a steepening yield curve for banks, and so ultimately, I think it will be a good thing.
One reason we love talking to you. And if people were paying attention to you anytime in the last two years when you've been on our program, then they wouldn't be surprised at how good the economy has been over the last couple of years, because you repeatedly were beating that drum, saying the companies that are lending with us, the companies that are our customers, the small businesses, the
construction companies, they are doing well right now. How are they doing compared to over the last two years?
For you?
I think I've said this before. What we are seeing today, we are still in quite a robust economy. The vast majority of our clients are reporting good news. Is there some normalization going on within the economy today? You know from all the post COVID, the monetary policy, the expansion of the FED balance sheet, liquidity in the system. Sure, is that all beginning to normalize and we're getting to a more consistent with historical norms relative to interest rates
and growth rates and everything else. Yes, that's happening. Is anyone really saying that the economy is weak today? I don't see it. People are still our clients are still saying it is difficult to hire staff today. People are demanding more money, Supplies cost more. There is a little bit of inflation still within the economy, but certain things are beginning to level off. Rents are beginning to level
off a bit. Potentially, Housing prices are reaching a point where they're becoming I don't want to say unaffordable, but they're certainly reaching that the edge of people's affordability spectrum. Interest rates are playing a role there. There's been a lot of desire to see interest rates come down a bit. I don't think it's going to happen. I think we are in a very strong cycle and I think it's
going to continue certainly. If you if you think about everything that we're talking about doing in this next uh uh, you know, next administration, these things all have some inflationary components. So we are going to see a strong economy first so in my opinion as far as I can see.
So, Frank, then why do the Fed cut rates? Which is the kind of the question I think are Mike mckeeask, I feel like this is the five year old to j pout, why so, why so? Why why cut rates? If the economy is robust.
Like you say, I think the data that the FED was looking at, they're looking in longer term, you know, segments of time, and they have a what they want to get to, which is a neutral rate, and I think this is part of their program to get there. I don't serve on the FED, so I don't know
for sure. I don't know exactly what data they're looking at, but clearly they're seeing signs that they can get to a certain point in the interest rate curve on the short end that meets with the program that they believe brings a full employment, low inflation, and gets the economy to continue to move on.
One thing we wanted you to weigh on on is the political environment, which we know that CEOs don't love to do. But this is the world we live in. What does you know another four years of of Donald Trump mean to you? Given what we learned about him twenty seventeen to twenty twenty one, how are you preparing for it.
I try to look at the economy. I try to look at our clients. I try to look at how these things are going to impact them. And the only thing that concerns me is creating a level of uncertainty. And you know, the one thing that business and the economy really wants is certainty. They want to understand where things are headed. How can they make plans, and how can they run go about running their lives, running their businesses.
And whenever there's any level of uncertainty, and you know, talking about the federal budget and whether we're going to fund it or not, and whether people are going to get paid you know, government employees, that creates uncertainty and that's generally just not good.
So how frustrating is that for you? You've got to make decisions? How hesitant are you to do things because you're not quite sure the policy that's going to come from this White House?
You know what, whether it's this administration or any other administration. I look at, you know, what's going on on the ground, and I am very bullish about what I see, certainly in our market area, certainly around what we're doing here as a nation. We are the greatest nation on the planet. We live in one of the greatest parts of the nation.
I'm very bullish about our economy, and so I make those decisions, and you know, we all here connect one make those decisions based on what our clients are telling us and what their needs are, and so we feel pretty good about where things where things have been. As you said, I've been saying the same thing for the last couple of years, and where things are going.
Our Thanks to Frank Sorrentino, Chairman and CEO at connect One Bank Corp.
Another read on the US economy came courtesy of the Swedish home furnishing giant Akia. Last month. You might recall Bloomberg News reporting on how Akia shoppers will continue to see lower prices at its stores in twenty twenty five, but the company warned not to expect anything like this past year.
After slashing prices for retailers by fifteen percent and twenty twenty four, which enabled Ikea stores to cut price to consumers by ten percent and was quote exceptional, more normal levels are in the cards, according to Henrik Elm, chief financial officer of inter Ikea Group, it's the worldwide franchiser for the brand.
With the take on the US consumer and how IKEA's stores are doing in the United States, Bloomberg's Emily Graffeo and I checked in with the US CEO of Akia, Javier Kenyonis, who is also chief sustainability Officer.
Yeah, twenty four, it's been a challenging gr I will say, from of course inflation and interest rates, and we've seen
this in retail, especially in the home fournishing industry. That's why, as you said, a big part of our commitment was to bring back lower prices as we have ever been because due to inflation, we of course had during twenty three especially some increase surprises that we had to do, and by doing that, what we have seen during twenty four is that we have actually managed to sell more pieces than previous year, which is a fantastic achievement in an economy where it's not been on all the time.
On our site, I would say.
So cutting prices actually moved the needle and brought consumers to spend more.
It did.
Indeed, I wouldn't say to spend more, but I would say that this strategy was actually to be closer to many more people. And we like to say Ikia is for the many people, right, and we understand that the many has limited resources or means right. So for us, it's not about probably spending more, but it's actually to make sure that the care products are available and affordable
for many more people. That's why I like to measure more number of customers during twenty four Because of the top language, you reduce prices, you can expect a drop or slightly, right, But what tells you that you're doing the right thing is when more people can afford ikea.
Products successibility right, lowering the prices and really opening it up to more people.
Right, And maybe that receipt is not as big as it would have been a few years ago. What are you seeing in terms of what shoppers are actually buying. Are they still going for those big ticket items or is it more a shopping cart that just has some smaller goods in there.
You know, the homephouris in market goes hand in hand with the house market.
Right.
What we see right now is the house in market at some of the lowest we've ever seen right when it comes to the month. So we see we see both sites. We see small changes through more on the accessory site that's a big demand. We see some people that are not moving selling or buying new houses that go into rebuilding or refurbishing of the existing ones. So we see a little bit of both. We don't see one taking over on the other. But as I said, I think it's been more on the price sensitivity than
anything else. What we see though, is an increase on the demand for sustainable products, right, products that actually help you to save costs in your bills, like the energy bill right when you move to LED. Or food is an interesting one, right, many people ask what can I start doing well, you know, on the energy changing by
LED's appliances that are efficient. Food is an important one, especially in the US when one third of what we buy those two waste food containers is I would say, one of the best friends to actually help people to save money. Or water dispensers that reduce the flow. So these are some tips and we see more and more also demand on these products, which is fantastic.
Just very quickly, how is the digital business looking for Ikea? Because you guys are known for your in store experience, are you continuing to focus on that or are you seeing more people come to your website?
Yeah, well, we see more people coming to the website. We see more people starting on the website and then where they finish. It's uh, I would say, not even relevant or important.
Right.
The stores the way I see them are the I cannot imagine a most beautiful place in the world to actually get inspired about home furnishings than an AKA store. So there will be a super key in our business and we will keep investing in digital because it's where the growth or most of the growth is happening.
Our thanks to Jabi er Kenyon s c U as CEO by Kia and Chief Sustainability Officer Our. Thanks to Emily Graffeo for co hosting while I was out.
Coming up another CEO cutting prices thanks to a recent strategy move and acquisition. The CEO of the Baby Formula Company, Bobby is next.
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Baby Formula Company Bobby recently announced to sweeping fifteen percent price reduction for its classic organic infant formula. Price reductions are, in the company's own words, an active step on behalf of the mom led company to support families who are experiencing rising costs of living, and as we heard from the FED this week, inflation still a little bit of a problem.
Tim a major factor for this price reduction opening a ninety thousand square foot infant formula manufacturing facility in Ohio to produce this formula. So while many companies raise prices due to inflationary pressures, Bobby's one of those companies that's actually cutting them.
Yeah, they are. Lura Mody is co founder and CEO Bobby, and she kicked off our conversation with why the price cuts and how they got there. She talked with Bloomberg's Emily Grifael In me it was very intentional.
I'll bring you back your I mean, everyone remembers the infant formula shortage.
Of twenty twenty two.
We made very intentional decision to buy manufacturing at the time and to invest in the heartland of the country and really own our own production. I mean, the initial goal was really to own our own quality control, production control. Also to be in a place where we had resilient supply. God forbid, there was another shortage. We were in a position you have sub sky right here in the US market. Correct, The industry wasn't resilient enough America wasn't resilient enough. We
were at a point where America wasn't able to feed babies. Now, through that investment, which has taken an entire two years, a lot of capital and a lot of time, we knew that if we did it right, we could also reduce the costs as well. And I rewind to that moment and being in a position of saying, if we got to that place, we would pass the savings over to our customers.
Heather, how did you.
Reduce the costs? I mean, it's its owned per so you bring it in house, you have your supply chain from a more local perspective, you know, so just not importing product has been reducing imports. And you know, but also we were manufacturing a lot through using comen through now our owned facility and opening up our own manufacturing and making those investments they're starting to pay off, just scale.
And why do that instead of like using that extra money to I don't know, reinvest in the business, especially in an environment where all of your other competitors are still raising prices.
Yeah.
I've had this debate now a few times. And you know, I'll first say, even as a mother of four, I feel the inflation.
Feel it.
I feel it in grocery stores you see a basic pantry products. And I think the election was a big wake up call that people were voting with their pockets.
You saw it.
Inflation is an issue. And I'm not making any product. We're feeding babies. We are making one of the most important products out there, and it should also be if you're able to, while not compromising on quality, also accessible.
Laura, you know, based on what you are doing, and we've talked to various global architectural firms who talk about designing building in Mexico or like closer or even here in the US, like closer to Home, I'm curious. You know that you show that you can kind of do it and it does impact the cost equation. What about labor though, what about like I'm just curious about that argument which has often been against moving things back here in the United States because labor costs are so high.
I mean, look, it takes having to take several steps back. Initially, the costs are high, investment needs are big, but over time you see that returned and we have I mean, yes, our investments have been substantial, but over time, being able to centralize it, keep it close to home, have fewer steps in the process. You should be able to see costs go down.
Is it all automated? Forgive me, because I did talk about the cost of labor, but it's how much of the process is automated.
No.
I mean, we have a lot of fabulous staff at our manufacturing facility, and you know, I will say, nothing makes you feel more patriotic than seeing the manufacturing labor who is making this product one by one. It's incredible.
So this fifteen percent price reduction on your classic organic infant formula. This came recently, but I'm wondering how has business been in response to that move so far.
I'll first start just with the sentiment. It's the most rewarding. You know, we didn't just roll this out for new customers. We have tens and thousands of subscribers who were receiving their product every month. They signed up for a particular price, and when we made the decision, we said, well, we're not just going to do this for new customers. We're going to retroactively change the price for our existing subscribers too,
and it builds loyalty love. We received, you know, ame of emails and responsing they've never seen a company do anything like this.
Tell us about subscribers and subscribtion like that is your model, right, it is a model. So what have you seen in general in that kind of growth prior to the price cuts. I'm just curious since this is relatively new.
Infant formula is it's repeatable, it's predictable. But because of the infant formula shortage, there's been this PTSD in fear over not being able to get totally get that and supply and you're feeding your baby. You want to know that your product is arriving to you when you need it and that there's never going to be a gap.
So one of the things we implemented was guaranteed supply when you sign up for us, So as a subscriber, even if there's ups and downs in supply chain, even if you're not able to find it at Target, as a subscriber, you will always get a guarantee in your supply. We also rolled.
Up right to do that.
How did you do that? Because that means you had to make sure you either had stuff in a warehouse or something.
It's modeling. It's almost okay, And I mean to put very simply, it's making sure that we're not bringing on subscribers at a race that we can for replen it.
So you would have said, maybe note subscription if it meant that you couldn't keep that.
Prom correct And do you know months ago we were finding that you weren't able to sign up because we were trying to catch up with supply. But if you do sign up, we will guarantee that we will.
Have that supply for you for how for how long?
For your entire journey? Yes, And we also implemented inflation proof pricing as well, which threw this rollout of reducing prices. Has been a promise that even if inflation goes up, and hey, we might go in another direction where the cost of or product will go up, but we will never change it on subscribe.
How do you do that though? What if your price is double?
Well, look, our prices may go up.
They may.
But for our existing subscribers who signed up one day and they said I'm signing up for a certain price and I expect it not to go up, we're going to promise them it won't. But for new customers they may see a change.
Okay, interesting, Interesting, Hey, the US election out come. I don't know. You run a business, You've got to be watching very closely. Everyone we talked to is just trying to kind of game this out. What are the issues that are top of mind for you as you look and get ready for a second Trump White House?
You know, I think I think in the infant formula space, we're seeing a lot of talk around making America healthy again, and I do think that there should be a bigger push on this. We've been so focused on the next election and not the next generation. What are they consuming, how we're raising standards, What is the quality of our own supply chain food nutrition? And I am watching this very closely in hopes that we're going to see a bigger shift towards a healthier country.
I'm sorry, go ahead, please, Well, I was gonna say, maybe for people who aren't familiar with Bobby and your product, what makes it different than other baby food formula?
Purposefully sourced? At the end of the day, infant formula needs to match breast milk, so the same carbs, proteins, and fats your baby needs to get the same nutrition. That's really important. But where those ingredients come from, the quality of both how it's produced, and it's the sourcing making sure that everything from how it's extracted to where it's farmed. And we are one of the only USDA organic infant formulas on the market.
Laura, you know one thing I think about with all I feel like Emily, this may come in front of you. I know Tim and I have a lot of conversations about this. But with climate change and how that is impacting certainly farmer's food production around the globe, how has that become more complicated if it has at all, in terms of what you.
Guys are doing, it has gotten more complicated, But I still think the uncertainty, the unknowns are ahead of us. So we're just watching it closely.
Meaning you could get worse it could you expect it to get worse. Going back to we talked about the Trump administration, Robert F. Kennedy his nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Yes, there's vaccine skepticism by some, but there's also his concerns. As you said that you referenced earlier about our food supply and how
food is made. Your knowledge and experience of going through this process, co founding this company, running this company, what have you learned about how food is produced in the United States, be it infant formula or just in general. What can you share why you know?
And I'm yeah, you did actually, And you know what's interesting about this question. At the end of the day, we have to turn to food and I feel this deeply. In the world of infant formula, creating fear and fear mongering is not a game anyone should be in. I think it's really really important. Availability, affordability, just access is
important to the private sector, like myself. It's our responsibility to raise the bar, but we have to be very careful in how we are growing and improving standards and at the same time not having people walking around fearing everything they're picking up. So I am very hopeful that the awareness of raising the standards is out there. And while we're doing it, let's also give each other a little bit of grace around what we're eating today.
Are the standards too harsh?
Then? On what goes in two baby food formulas or are they too lenient?
Another big debate we could go into for hours, and it depends on what standards you're talking about. I think from a nutrition standpoint, we should be looking a lot harder at what the latest science is. We should be trying to remove regulatory hurdles to get in new and better ingredients, and at the same time we also need to raise the regulatory barrier to make sure the quality
and safety of the product continues to have oversight. You want your product to be high quality and safe at the same time you should be compromising one for the other.
Interesting perspective. Laura, thank you so much. Of course, are you finding all the funding you need? Can you stay private? You know, I hope so for as long as we need good stuff good stuff. Look forward to another update soon down the road. Laura Modi, co founder and CEO of the baby formula company Bobby really active and take on her industry and just fascinating to see what they were able to do in terms of pricing in an environment where it's not to be so easy.
And female founded and a mom led company.
Yeah, love that.
Love that.
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All right, everybody well. Our Bloomberg News team reporting that the House Judiciary Committee said it's found quote substantial evidence of collusion and anti competitive behavior by the financial industry to impose radical ESG goals on US companies. An interim report published by the Republican led committee said, quote a cartel of financial firms and climate activists soft replace X on Mobile board members in twenty twenty one after the company declined to make a series of climate pledges.
Curious what Jonathan Maxwell has to say about this sort of the changing tone of ESG over the last few years. He's founder and chief executive officer of SDCL.
It's short for.
Sustainable Development Capital LLP. SDCL has more than two billion dollars in assets under management. He's also the author of The Edge, How competition for resources is pushing the world and its climate to the brink, and what we can do about it. Jonathan joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio. Welcome, how are you?
Thank you so much for having me on?
Great will you.
Well, we're going to talk about sort of what competition resources is doing because it's super interesting.
But I'm curious about your thoughts on the way that.
ESG has sort of turned into this four letter word over the last few years. You see what's happening in Texas with the Attorney general there.
What do you make of it?
I mean, the trend's been going on since about twenty twenty two. It's actually I'll get a whole chapter in my book about greenwash and the SG and that was I mean, this was off to a very big period of assets baying Gavid in the SG phones like a huge boom sustainability SG, and then the tide turned.
But there is something.
I mean, my company's will Sustainable Development Capitalist DCL. So I'm kind of in the business, but there is something there where if you're in the business of sacrificing returns on the altar of the environment, this is the sort of the financial and sort of intellectual side of the story. Then you know then that is against the fiduciary duty of the fund manager and of the pension scheme manager. And you know, I think there's a lot of noise
running around this sector. But the idea that you should take capital from the capital that needs to be invested for financial return and sacrifice or compromise.
The job of investing, I.
Think is a very challenging area. I don't by the way, I don't think it's necessary. I don't think not only necessary, I don't think it should be done. And I think that investors will get sued and companies will get sued for doing it. And I think it's when I think a simple as that isn't it? It really is an I mean, I think about sustainable. My own company is called sustainable, but it doesn't they giving money away. It says sustainable,
which means for me, commercially sustainable. In fact, if it's not commercial, it's not sustainable.
Didn't we get lost? I keep thinking about this. When ESG came out, I think we all thought about was about doing good and it really was about environmental sustainability and governance issues, right that could financially impact a company. And then you have things like impact investing or something
that's a whole different thing. Right, tell us a little bit about how the world is evolving and how we look at this, because if we you know, investing to do good versus I don't know it help me out here to kind of understand where this space goes.
I think that I'll give you something that's not a bit optimistic because we talked about resources and the rest of it. So you know, I think we're currently in a very hardline environment, right. What do I mean by that? The political headwinds or against it. You've got let's say, a pushback against climate or woke capitalism, You've got regulators, and you've got low.
Mean, mother, the world is kind of burning around us, right.
Yeah, but I'm just giving you the headwork to start with. I'm not going to give you a tael a pretty substantial one. Sorry, Right, But we're also under a serious economic pressure, right, you know, we've got inflation. We were talking just before the shows started about how inflation is partly driven by energy prices. So you know, it's a difficult environment that we're working in. Okay, So what do we do about it?
Right?
Do you look at the problem. And here's the thing, And this is why I think that this is what I focus my investments on. When I look at what's wrong with the energy system. One of the things that stands out to me, it's the same in food and water, is that most of it's wasted I mean, it's very, very, very infrequent people actually talk about this.
Actually we talk about it's a lot about food waste, and here you have people who like have no food, and then the amount of food waste, and then the impact that has in the environment. But forgive me go.
Ahead, no, I mean, it's incredibly important. About half of the world's food is wasted. About a third of the world's water is wasted. So it wouldn't necessarily surprise you. I said that roughly three quarters of the world's energy gets wasted. You break it down extraction ten generation because it most of about half of the world's energy gets lost as heat in the generation process you put gas or uranium into a power.
How come we're not better with that?
Why?
Why?
Because we've built a centralized energy system in America and Europe over the last forty to fifty years, we've vented heat and then we build what's now old transmission and distribution lines and you put it all together, it just doesn't make the sense that it did over the last fifty sixty years. We also now, and this is the exciting part, we also have solutions to this problem. It's astonishing,
but we actually have solutions to this problem. Part of the problem is you generate energy in one place and then you use it in another, and then we talk about quid good guid, transmission lines and the.
Rest of it.
What about you could actually generate the energy close to where you need it, or because.
You don't want to power play next to your house, you don't need put a.
Solar panel though you don't tap the earth.
Right, So you've got solar panels, you've got ground heat, you've got heat capture, you've got underground energy plant. You actually you say you don't want one. You've got one under this building.
You know, so they're gygy of them all.
I'm talking about cogeneration actually, so you know, the first asset that Michael Bloomberg put in your new office when you opened it in London was a cogeneration system because he knows that you combined electrical thermal efficiency standards means you can operate buildings much more efficiently if you generate the energy where you need it. So the short answer is the world's biggest problem is that most of it's wasted.
The World's biggest solution to climate change, to economic performance and competitiveness and the cheapest is by decentralizing the energy network, bringing the energy generation to the point of views. And the other thing that Michael Bloomberg did for Bloomberg was actually change the infrastructure inside the buildings so it doesn't waste. Until about thirty percent of America's buildings leak energy out
of the windows through lighting, heating ventilation. Change the lights, change the heating, ventilation, conditioning, and it transforms the energy system. So to come back to the ESG. Yeah, ESG is well meaning. Impact investment is well meaning. But what if you can start to make investments that are not only more competitive, cheaper, cleaner, more reliable, but actually drive the economy. And that is what we focus on.
Isn't it from a building perspective, isn't it more expensive to do those things?
No?
I give you very very quick example.
The classic one is taking led lights, and it sounds a bit like everybody's done it. They haven't take a sixty What lamp you replace it with a six? What lamp? You can do the math? It's ninety percent less energy to do the same job, even if the light bulb costs you two or three times more money.
And the bobs don't get hot, the.
Bubbles don't get hot, and therefore you don't need the cooling to cool the room down.
Again.
The payback periods two or three years. So the cost is what am I paying for what period of Jonathan?
Why does it not happen.
Quicker? So I write a lot about this subject. I wrote a book about it. I'd write a substacke.
Of course, the establishment doesn't want it to go fast.
It's my answer to the question is it's actually the perfect problem. What I mean by that, and the energy system is a fill of brilliant companies. Everybody in the supply chain is brilliant at what they do. You have an extraction firm, they do a great job. They vent gas and flare it. It gets complained about, but it's economically they figure it's the best thing that they can do. You build a power plant, a newcore, a gas power plant.
They're operating as economically efficiently as they could and should do.
Right.
But you have a transmission distribution line. It's economically it's perfected to it's particularly distribution line.
People don't want it to go away.
But you put it all together as a system, and it doesn't make any sense at all, so each component of the supply chain for value chain for energy is This is why I call it the perfect problem, perfected for its shareholders. But you knit it together and it doesn't make any system sense. And that's why decentralizing energy, bringing it to the point of view is a fundamental different approach to making energy.
As we've learned here in the US with the problems that the Texas power grid faced a couple of years ago. We're on an aging infrastructure here and it's sort of this patchwork where things are different in each state and when you cross state lines things change. How do you make it work in a place like the US.
So I have We've invested well over a billion dollars here in the US. I'm excited. Donald Trump says, if you invest in more than a billion dollars in the US, so you can have all sorts of good things. And I'm looking forward to that. We till January twenty that but you know, to our billion dollars has gone into exactly this, right, So we built, we own a very large energy system in upstate New York in Rochester. When it gets very cold, and it will over the next
couple of months, the grid struggles to provide energy. We don't because we generate the energy on site for our customers. So you know, state by state we build resilient on site energy generation solutions. We own it through a public company that we manage. In London, we have other systems here that do rooftop solar nationwide. We own a company called Onyx which does nationwide solar and storage. Again, resilient on site clean power that's cheaper than the grid.
So I mean again big step of how we get there Because I always talk about the establishment and the old systems that are in place. It's really hard to break them up. And there's also a lot of money involved that people will lose if those are broken up. So how do we get there? Is a government policy that incents people once again, are companies or like, how do we get there? Does it just evolve?
Think?
I think this is an evolution rather than a revolution. It sounds a bit trite, but it's because the systems that we build, for example, that are on site are of benefit to the utility. I'll give you a great example something we were talking about earlier as well. Yeah, take data centers. Data centers are a tremendous user of energy all day, all night and all year, hundreds of metal arts of power demand.
Where do you get it from?
You normally get it from the grid, but the grid struggles to provide the power that you need for new data centers. So we have a business which focuses on building power for data centers, but it's also providing services to the grid. So you know, we have that we're providing a solution to both the local grid so that we can provide firm grid capacity and picking up the juice requirements from the data.
How's that power being generated for you?
So we generate power twenty four to seven using natural gas cogeneration, but we into great renewables and storage to make sure that we can get the lowest carbon footprint, the highest level of reliability in the lowest cost.
You know, I do wonder in terms of oil and renewables. We just got twenty seconds renewables. I mean, do we continue to move towards renewables?
Yeah? You know, but again why build them in the middle of nowhere when you can build them on site? Do both at least, you know, and I think this is the point I make. Let's be efficient at the same.
Time, like near shoring and unshoring for everything, like in our backyard.
Right, you have the Department of Government Efficiency of the US. If it looked at how much energy is wasted? Do you know how much the cost of energy is in the America? Four and a half trillion dollars. Two thirds of that's wasted. You could save two trillion dollars a year.
Our thanks to Jonathan Maxwell, founder and CEO of Sustainable Development Capital and the author of the book The Edge, How competition for resources is pushing the world and its climate to the brink.
That wraps up the first hour of the weekend edition of Bloomber Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Ahead on our next hour, from what Not to Wear to building a seventy two million dollar a year beauty empire, we check in with entrepreneur Trinny Woodall.
Plus she tapped her pride and influence of Harlem to become the first African American woman to launch a commercially distributed beer. The CEO of Harlem Brewing on how she did it.
And Christmas and Hanukkah are this week, And if you are still mulling over gifts for friends and loved ones. Our Pursuits team has the ultimate guide everything from the simple to the sublime.
And from the not so cheap to the somewhat affordable. Okay, we're talking ten dollars pump Street chocolate to a one hundred and sixty four thousand dollars eternal calendar.
We're talking about a watch.
Prices go up from there also lots of gifts in between.
Yes, indeed, it's a fun list. This is Bloomberg Business Week.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five pm. Easter Listen on Apple car Play and the Brout Auto with a Bloomberg Business act or waters Live on YouTube.
Plenty ahead in our second hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, including the founder of Harlem Brewing on becoming the first African American woman to own a brewery in the United States.
Plus, if you're still looking for a last minute gift this holiday season, our Bloomberg Pursuits team has you covered, from an eighty six thousand dollars Bulgari necklace to fifteen dollars worth of chocolate Martini olive almonds that are not meant to be shaken nor stirred, or a time piece that will last a lifetime. You know when I say timepiece, are you talking about a watch that just is expensive?
Right?
We know it's pursuits or really several lifetimes.
I should say exactly exactly. First up this hour though an entrepreneur and business owner, columnist and author, and before all of that, a co host of the BBC TV show very popular BBC TV show What Not to Wear, helping women all over the world discover their individual style and become more confident at the same time. Full disclosure, I've been a huge fan of Trinnywood all today.
Triny is founder and CEO of the digital first beauty brand at Triny London. Since founding the business back in twenty seventeen, the business has scaled into a global brand, shipping things like skincare and makeup to customers in more than one hundred and seventy countries, as well as operating retail stores across the UK, Ireland, Australia and the US.
Yeah, and she was actually in town here in New York City to work on that expansion in the United States. Trinny joined us to talk about the growth of her direct to consumer platform and the challenges of being a woman in the VC world. We started our conversation going back a few years to Triny's beginning writing a newspaper column, followed by hosting the BBC TV hit show What.
Not to Wear.
I think we came along into time in the nineties when we just gave some rules. We did a show which was you know, titles that TV mate, but it was based on a column call want Not to Wear, and it was just about the first time perhaps saying everyone is different. Everyone has different body shape, it doesn't matter your size, everyone has different skin care and eye and so it resonated because that language perhaps hadn't been spoken before. And interestingly, we've done a book before which
sold thirteen thousand copies. We did a TV show I.
Think I have the book.
I'm going to be very crazed with you that first book. Nobody has maybe the second.
I want to do a book deal. But then after we did that show, we sold a million copies of the first because there was and it was very basic rules. It was if you have small boobs, do this, if you have big views, and you know, don't wear au pone of neck. If you have it just people come up and say, I never do that again because of you, and so that was very interesting then, all right, But the way the story was told on TV was shock TV. You know, it was just before times of a show
like The Swan, which was that extreme makeover. It was the beginning of very different TV. And when we then had done that for ten years and we stopped doing it in the UK because other people came up what I loved most. It was challenging at the time because we were suddenly not wanted. But we went to Mipcom, which is a TV conference, and can and about twelve countries brought the format, from Israel to Poland, to India,
to Australia to Scandinavia. So I went from just understanding British women and America to then understanding it doesn't matter your religion, your age, the color of your skin. These emotional stages that we go through as women have a relevance on our confidence levels, on how we want to project ourselves. And that was fantastic research. Everything I've done, probably since I was six and a half, is research for where I am now.
I just want to talk a little bit about the changing media landscape over that time, because a lot has happened in the last twenty five thirty years since that show, And I'm wondering when you look around the landscape today, whether you see something on streaming, whether you see what's going on on TikTok, on Instagram reels where you kind of see the influence of what you were doing on the BBC, the.
Point of reference where we get our influence has changed. And love, I love evolution. I love the fact that there was a very small, controlled set of people who gave you your influence and now it's all up for grabs because I think that's an egalitarian state, and you choose. You don't have to get a subscription to Vogue magazine. You know, you can choose who you follow and what you like, so you have far more individual It's like you're choosing your meal from an Ala catte menu.
It's not a set menu, right.
So the benefit of that evolution has been that you can go and be influenced by somebody who is far more like you individually as a person, or somebody who aspire to be as opposed to a brand setting the tone like a magazine or a newspaper title that we've all followed for years.
Well, let's get to what you're doing now, Triny London, right.
You know it's funny.
I brought up your name in our makeup room this morning, and I have a beloved makeup artist. She's worked with Charlotte Tillbury. She's worked with I think prescriptors, maybe Bobby Brown, like a lot of brands. She's like, oh my god, she's doing you know, she talked about your brand. It's a crowded space though you launched in twenty seventeen. When you thought about it and your journey, you talk about
what you've learned. How did you think about entering the space, what you wanted to do differently because it is so competitive.
I knew exactly what I wanted to do. The challenge was convincing investors it was the right choice. So I knew the biggest white space was a thirty five plus woman. I knew that she'd been talked to with companies that
were represented by a twenty year old model. I knew she felt excluded from the conversation, but she was being sold something that might be relevant for her, but wasn't in a language for her, because every advertiser is going after a younger audience, even though the older audience maybe has the money. So there was this sort of dichotomy. And I felt that I had already organically understood this woman,
and I knew what products she wanted. I knew her frustrations, I knew when she went up to the beauty counter, the challenges she had about thinking, is the person serving me here going to be, you know, plastering me a makeup or going to be thinking I'm younger or older? Is she going to understand me? And so I really felt that you could develop online with personalization, which I'd love since ninety nine when I started my first tech company called Ready Too, before even eComm But I loved
personalization and I love data. So I thought, if I can build an algorithm where I can figure this woman out and I can say, tell me this about you, and we will tell you what suits you. And I pitched that this woman thirty five forty forty five would do that. And every investor for the first six months I saw two hundred fifty people got one investor.
Sear two hundred and fifty investors.
I pitched two hundred and fifty investors and I got one investment at that beginning and then people followed. But was very much loved the idea, but those old ladies will never buy it. So do it for a GenX and a Jena Jena. It wasn't even around eight years ago. Gen X okay, And I was like, but you don't get it. This woman will come online if she feels she's got something she can trust, right, and it will deliver.
Have any of those investors come knocking sense?
Yes?
How did those conversations go? I mean they passed. In an earlier round, they would have gotten a better deal.
I think that. I think a nice You know, there moments in your life you celebrate, and one moment was going to a tech conference where I used to get this tech conference every year, which will remain nameless, but I would always feel, you know, an outsider. I'd feel
I haven't got investment yet. You know when you're really in that pitch mode and you're trying to get people interested and you bump into somebody who said no to you, and you sort of like put on the brave face and you'll still committed and you still know it's going to work. You just got to find that right person right And three years later we just had an article in Forbes and it was a very good article. It gave a value to business which we haven't given them.
But and then I went to this conference again and there were like four people there who had to turn me down and they were like, we must talk, and I'm one of them.
I just couldn't.
And I went, oh, we're not looking for investment right now because we're a bit Dell positive. But it was just that. And I think there's moments, there's a tiny moment where you think, but truly.
We talk about this a lot about women entrepreneurs, even from women venture capitalists have even a hard time getting funding, and you are a known entity, and I just why do you think that still is?
I think it's a mix. I have to learn, really how to pitch. I had to learn to speak a language I wasn't used to because I am the type of woman who wants to go in and bring you into the world of what I see train New London will do and get you to know that woman. And it's so I'm not going to say it's overwhelming for a classic investor, but sometimes somebody wants to say this is A, and then from A, I'll get to B. And then once I got B, I'll get to C. And so I then realized I had to tell the
journey differently. I had to I knew what they needed to know first. And you know, I was asked a lot how will you protect your downside? Not how will you optimize your upside? And I did feel if I was a man in the room, would that have been the first question or would it be man to man how you're.
Going to find Do you think it would not have been?
I don't know. I'm not going to judge. I think it's the tightest person, but I would you know, I did have to learn that because I'm not a you know, I've learned to be a CEO. There's two hundred fifty people in trin Eat London now, but that's been a journey. And I even got a CEO coach because I wanted to be the best CEO I could be and understand the importance of how I delegate where I'm in the weeds, you know, meeting people who say do what only you
can do. You know, otherwise you will never grow because you'll always be doing too much in the weed. So that journey is a challenging journey for a founder to be a CEO and a business that's doing over fifty or one hundred million or you know, as you grow you need to have that team that is going to execute really well and you are looking at the strategic vision of where the business is going and doing less of the every day. So for me, the switch from that to this is a big challenge.
No, it's a learning process, especially as you get bigger, right otherwise you get cut. Yeah, tell us about Triny London. You know how big you've gotten. Touches a back growth, we're Bloomberg. We do love numbers. Tell us what you can do or last can I tell you?
I think I'll tell you what. When I started, it was the time of real growth. It was a time of you know, it didn't matter about retention. It was only about new customer numbers. And I remember we had a sort of fifty to fifty and they were saying you need to be thirty percent existing, seventy percent you And I was like, I don't agree. I want retention. I want a long term cohort. I want the customer who will buy four times a year and be with me in ten years. That's the customer I want. And
that was challenging. So even all my second round, the valuation I was looking for I didn't get because they were like, you should be seventy thirty and I was like, I'm happy with fifty to fifty.
Yeah.
And then during into COVID, we had a ton of people who were waiting for us to come to a store and because they though I'm at home for a while, they then went and bought and then they became customers. And those are longtime cohorts. So the you know reference now in the world we live in in d t C is it is about retention. It's really about retention.
But it's also about retail. Like you haven't shunned away. Yes you are direct consumer, but you also embraced retail.
And I think retail has a part to play. Retail for a real DC brand, like earlier DC brands would literally be just brand building. But retail needs to be profitable and brand building. It can't just be brand building because I think then you don't get to have a good ebitdart So how do you you know?
We did?
It's expensive and we did a flagship in the UK and we spent money on that flagship, but in three and a half months of paid for itself. So that's great. And it's you know, in the other store in London, which is a big store, weel number one in beauty. But here in Prince Street I saw it in I thought, we have to put an inroad where in sacts, we have to an inroad of our propers of what we represent, this personalization in a space so you can walk in the world of us because that visual and this is
where online and offline is really interesting. If somebody's going to buy online, they need these five points of reference, their friend and Instagram they follow, maybe still a magazine, maybe listening to Bloomberg Radio, but also seeing the brand physically in their country in some form in the real world is really important. So the conversion we have online since we've got Prince Street, which I fitted out in Ikea with mirror on the top, because I thought the
investment here has got to be in the buzz. It's not going to be dump paying three hundred thousand dollars in a six month pop up. It's going to be four thousand dollars at Ikea with very nice mirrors on the tech because our products are great.
So you know, did that work? Did the IQ?
It're so busy this weekend.
It was.
It's so exciting because we did a morning show and we had and also this is interesting because you don't know how well TV works. And the next day there were people who'd watched this show coming in to the store. Right. I thought, that's interesting how media works now.
So when you talk about strategy, we've talked retail, we've talked digital. What about social media and actually using the platforms to sell. Increasingly we're seeing TikTok Instagram becoming sort of centers of e commerce.
TikTok shop has been interesting because in different territories it's had different premiumness. We are a premium brand, so TikTok us has a slightly different inventory of things and TikTok uk so I think they're finding their feet. I would say the US has probably more maturity, so there's more
bigger brands going on there. So maybe a child at till we might be on TikTok shop now Instagram in you know they did TikTok they did a version of their shopping before do you remember, But they're bringing back now this sort of live stream shopping which Facebook had worked with a few years ago, and it is something that I find fascinating.
Amazon tried this years ago.
And tried it years ago, but there is it's huge.
It's huge.
It's huge in China and the whole concept of the success of QVC and what is the modern version of QBC. It is what social media should be.
I mean, it's wild to see the stats of the people in China and how much money.
I mean, that woman was fifteen million in a day or something. You'd say, but that was a ten second in a box. That's just a it's an anomaly. I don't get it. It's something that's so of that culture.
So have you cracked have you cracked the TikTok in the Instagram part?
Yet we do it in a way that a few people do. What we do is we don't say bye bye bye. We tell you a story, and lots of people tell the story. I tell the story. Our friends of Trinny London tell the story, right, and they tell a story. They're not saying bye this it's this much. This is what's in it.
Listen. It's so much a part of your story. You know, I think it was so telling about how many people you had to pitch before somebody was interested in helping to find you. Now are helping others and tell us a little b about a minute and a half left here Elevator, Pitcher series and Instagram because you're helping others thirty seconds they make a pitch to you.
Yeah, So I just felt that challenge when you're younger to get or not younger, but when you're in this much smaller stage. So they all apply and they have to be doing over one hundred and fifty thousand a year in revenue, because that's somebody who then is committed to business. Yeah, used to be less than you have to and because you're giving precious out of time and then they have that pitch and then we highlight their
business and they convert. And then I also was in there's something in the UK of fifty women doing over fifty million pounds revenue a year, so we were thinking, how can we get fifty women to get over ten million pounds a year rev because that's another pick. So we're looking at that now as another concept. But it is so important to lift up other women and I think in the nineties it was challenging for women to lift up other women. It was very different. It was
a really ruthless sense in business. And I think there is a responsibility as a woman, especially when you've been on that journey of entrepreneurship and you know how challenging it is. I went to Butan recently and I now mentor this Boutineese designer because I just thought she really needs help and she's fantastic, And so it's exciting to take these different women and think how can you help them to look at the challenges They have.
Just got a few seconds left here? So what's next or what do you like? I don't know what you're.
Throwers in the US for sure. I mean this year it's about growth in the US.
This is an important market.
This is such an important market. This market ultimately for me, should be double the size of the UK. So I am a UK brand coming to the US. That is in itself a big challenge. If we look at the successful UK brands sort of come here. There are not that Tilbury phenomenal success, Charles Turrets shirt company really good success. Yeah, so it's looking at you know how as a brand you make a us customer feel this is a brand that speaks to me. It doesn't matter the origination of
where that run started. This is a brand emotionally for me. And that's our challenge to show America women we understand you, and this is for you, and our products are for you, and how we think about you as an individual will help you.
Well.
Come back and let us know how it's going. I see you as you settle in even more here, Triny, Thank you so much.
Trinny Widdle.
She is CEO and founder Trinny London, joining us right here in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio. Thank you so much.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on applecar Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business Ad. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
All right, Tim, You know, we love talking to entrepreneurs, those who have built a company over something often they love. Sometimes it all happens though, by accident.
That's what Celes Beatty did. She fused her love for Kraft Beer and her hometown of Harlem to become the founder of the Harlem Brewing Company, created her own cookbook titled Harlem Brusoul, a beer infused soul food cookbook. She's also the first African American woman brewer to launch a commercially distributed beer. She joined me alongside Bloomberg's normal Linda to share how it all started.
I did start as a home brewer in my studio apartment at the time in Harlem, and the home brewing kit was a gift that I didn't use for quite a while, so things didn't turn out that great.
It kind of happens with like these type of gifts, right, it.
Does, it does. But I wasn't deterred and decided to get another kit and keep trying to brew.
And okay, so a lot happened in between a lot that andvoil error. What was it you you weren't even like initially attracted to It wasn't like you know, you you had been drinking beer and saw this homebrew kid and went to buy it and thought you could do it yourself. What was the moment where you realized, Hey, I actually like doing.
This cooking, cooking with beer, cooking with wine. I liked the experiment with things, and infusing beer was something I fell in love with early on wine and even spirits. It just gave a whole nother layer player that I didn't know.
Wait, so the cooking brought you to beer pretty much.
I mean I did try a little bit of beer in college and a few other places. But anyway, but cooking what really gave me a passion. And then learning about the history.
I mean, what were some of your favorite dishes? You know, of course maybe in the amateur stage of playing around with this trial and error beer, what were you cooking soups?
Okay, my initial tool was my mom soup pot, and I was able to basically do soup and add the beer to the soups that I made, vegetable soups, stews. It just added so much flavor to it that I'd never experienced before that I fell in love with. And then a few of my friends said, you know, this isn't bad.
I always thought you were supposed to use not good beer to cook, like the micro bruce you kind of leave for drinking. I know this is true with wine, you sort of use the junkie wine to cook.
Well, I think Uh, what am.
I getting wrong here?
Chunky? Why might mean junkie food? I don't know, but no, no, no, I mean yeah, Well, at the time that I was cooking with beer, it was your Sam Adams, your anchor Steams. I was looking at trying to find something.
This was what the nineteen nineties.
Nineteen nineties, okay, and there wasn't a whole There wasn't a whole craft brewer movement at that point.
There really wasn't exactly. I mean, it wasn't like now, nine thousand, five hundred brewers. I mean, there's so many different amazing beers out there, but at the time, there really weren't that many, and certainly not in a local marketplace.
So how did you really get this off of its feet? I imagine you started out by having your friends try everything, and they were like, we gotta take it and show it to other people. Tell me about that origin story.
Yeah, first, letting them taste it in the food dishes that I love to make, my spaghetti, sauces, my stews, my soups. I would share that. And then when I started actually home brewing, I was able to share those cans and models. Actually, at the time there were no canners with my friends restaurants. Sylvia's Restaurants that I just told the story many times is one of the restaurants I shared my home brews with, and they were also the first restaurant to give us an order. And that
feedback just grew. And the other thing that happened is that the community that became my home, Harlem, the village of Harlem, was going through what some say is a second Renaissance, a lot of entrepreneurship revitalization going on. So a lot of people around me were starting businesses and I began to get feedback from them and was encouraged. After some of them not so great brewis got better, they were like, you know, this isn't bad. I think you're onto something here.
So fast forward a couple of decades.
Here we are a couple of decades twenty twenty four.
You do have a cans of beer.
Now, how do you get to the point where you go from home brewing to actually opening a brewery. The infrastructure involved with that, the investment involved with that, how do you make it into a business.
There's a number of ways that you can get there. As I said, contract brewing, collaboration, brewing. We took the collaboration brewer route because it was difficult to open up a brewery in the middle of a community, especially a historic community like Harlem. You really want to respect it. You want to be mindful of where you are, many
beautiful churches and institutions. So I went the route of home brewing my beer first, and then establishing Harlem Brewing Company, and then going to an amazing brewer in Siaratoga Springs, New York, where we canned our first bottle and then eventually caned or our recipes.
Is that still sorry? Go ahead, I was gonna.
I just wanted to talk a bit more about the challenges as we've been discussing. I mean, of course, when we think about beer, I immediately think of white men. It's a white male dominated space. What is it like being a black woman in the industry.
It's now it's better. At the time, I would go into places and they thought I was coming there to do a promotion. I could tell them about beer, speak about the ingredients, and talk about beer. But it kind of went over many people's heads. They were like, what are you talking about? Aren't you here to do a promotion? But it was tough, not just as a Black woman but as a woman in general. But over time, as more women through the pink Blot society, I can give
them a shout out. More and more women have come into the industry, so we have more peers to talk to. So it's gotten a lot better. But I think women are only represented about seven percent of the of the brewers and probably less than twenty five percent of the teams, parts of the teams and staff of breweries.
Were you surprised to find that you are the first black women to own a brewery in the US? Like when that happened, were you like that makes sense? That doesn't make sense?
I said, no way, I can be the first black women in America to launch a commercially a commercial beer. I usually stated that way. But I think because the complications of our history, there are many other black women that brewed beer. I mean, you can look through the records during enslavement, priors enslavement all over the continent of Africa. There are black women, black and brown women that brew beer.
So I just think, me, maybe that story hasn't been told, and there is a story that we told through a beer we made to celebrate the life of Pat's young who was an enslaved brewer who became free and brewed for free, freely for fourteen years in eastern North Carolina. Whoopy Goldberg actually lended her face to that story and we launched that beer last year. So that's one of those stories I point to because that was eighteen oh six.
So there are women that are unknown. But when you uncover the history and you start talking about those stories, you discover that really pretty much everything except maybe the text stuff, somebody's done it.
So well, I want to dig into back to the food. I'm a foodie, digging back into this book Harlan Brusol, a beer infused soul cookbook, Food Cookbook. What are some of your favorite dishes? Whichould we be looking for in this cookbook?
Well, we celebrated our fiftieth family reunion in North Carolina in July, and there's always a competition who's going to make the best banana putting maci cheese. You know what's the dish? And the dish from my family, particularly on the desert dessert end, is banana pudding. So we make in the book, there's a recipe that honors my aunt Betty which is a brunana pudding. So we infuse our
Harlem Renaissance wheat beer. It's not a hoppy beer. It's very light on the hot as coriander, cumin, grains of paradise, and orange pill So that type of beer in a banana pudding infuses those flavors, gives us a nice subtle flavors of some of the spices of the beer. So that's a brunana pudding. And then we have our beer smack and Cheese, which will be actually serving at a charitable event one hundred and nineteenth Street in Harlem to support the homeless l Refertorio. That dish is a beer
mac and cheese dish infused with a beer sauce. We use one of the beers in the sauce and we layer that into all the layers of the mac and cheese.
I'm hearing about this uh family reunion, and I'm wondering, is it really a competition when it comes to food? Like are there more than just one? Is there more than one person with a cookbook out? Like you have the cookbook out, You've been cooking your whole one. Is there really a competition going on here? You're explaining this food to me, and I'm like, I wouldn't want to go up against this at any family reunion.
Well, I'm not bringing my.
Yeah, it's not an official competition, but when the lineup goes on that long tape, okay, the main courses, the side dishes, and the desserts, it becomes a competition because everybody knows who made what which dish.
I wouldn't want to.
Certainly kind of competitive either.
Does every I will gladly do that. Does every every recipe in here in this book involve beer?
Yeah, everything from beer cocktails to uh beer sorbet.
These are all things I don't realize that you can put beer.
Into absolutely more than what you can use wine for.
Does the alcohol get cooked off?
Most?
Can I give this stuff to my kids?
Oh?
Well, not the beer, I don't know that, Not the beer cocktails, but.
Well maybe the macks.
You could.
I mean, you know, Mike taste beer a little bit growing up, so I think you could. I wouldn't go overboard with it, but there are some kid friendly dishes in there I would say and put through.
Can you talk a little about the recipe for this and also the idea that there are these sort of trends within the beer industry. You know, people I pas were huge for so many years. Then everybody did an I p A and they kind of went out of style, and then farmhouse.
Sayson, like you know, what's what's like? What are people loving right now? Like you know a little bit about beer a little bit?
Yeah, well, I know it's still very popper. I pas are still very popular. This is on the hazy side a New England cell i pa. It has about five different varieties of hops. If you're familiar with hops and mosaic cops.
Get down for me, a non beer drinker, break that down fit.
It's a flower, okay, it has bittering bassets to it. It also has some citrus, some spice. It layers in flavor sounds great in the i pas. It gives it a very deep, sometimes very juicy, citrusy piny flavor and aroma. So there are flavoring hops and they are also bittering hops that give hops sort of the balance of sweetness in the malt. That that's kind of the role that it plays. I love growing hops. They're amazing. They're very so many different uses beyond beer, and they're great to
grow their perennials. But it's a beautiful sort of pine cone shaped flower that grows from April through August. Is a growth period takes place during that time. Harvest takes place during the flaw.
So we have the beer, we have the cookbug. Yes, what is the next chapter? I mean, do you feel like I feel like you've done it all honestly, But as we're going into twenty twenty five, what are you thinking in terms of business expansion?
Definitely thinking about more how do we support our communities. Rocky Mount, North Carolina. We're working on a project there that involves buring education, working with black and brown farmers in eastern North Carolina, the grow grains to getting more engaged in the industry. We have our project in Brixton in the UK that's about, you know, bonds across the bond pond. How do we sort of connect common threads and common cultures around beer and got a couple of projects.
We're working on our project in the Rocky Mount and then working on something at Harlem, sort of full circle from where we started with Bloomberg ten seconds.
Where can people buy the beer and where is it distributed?
The beer can be purchased locally at Craft and Carry, Whole Foods, Melbourne's restaurant Bulevard Bistro, Total winy More distribution distribution primarily in the Northeast, also in the Southeast and in the UK.
So it can be bought many many different plays.
Many places. You can order it through Uber Eats and things of that nature as well.
So let's Betty.
She is the founder of Harlem Brewing Company. The new cookbook Harlem Bruce Sol a beer and fuse soul food cookbook.
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When you're unsure what to get a loved one for gift, your best bet is to return to tried and true treasures, say a beautiful piece of jewelry, a sought after bag, a time piece that will last a lifetime. They're all classics for a reason, guarantee to bring cheer year after year, so writes Bloomberg Pursuits contributor Kristin Shirley.
It's all in the Pursuits team's best gifts of twenty twenty four, currently featured in a BusinessWeek magazine, out on newstands, now, online at Bloomberg dot com and on the Bloomberg terminal A year with more. Is the editor of Bloomberg Pursuits, Chris Rouser, along with the Bloomberg contributing writer and founder of La Patiala, the luxury encyclopedia, Kristin Shirley. Chris, I want to start with you because gift guides always interesting and offer up a variety of gifts and price points.
What's the approach at Bloomberg Pursuits.
So what we do at Bloomberg is not a million different gift guides with lists like fifty seven Gifts for your Boyfriend's Mom. We do gifts that are appealing to everyone and hopefully our inspiration points for people to think about what they should get, maybe discover something they haven't seen before, and go out and have fun shopping. So this year, as we were brainstorming what would be the sort of organizing principle, we thought, let's do the classics.
These are classics for a reason. We'll do bracelets and bags and watches and spirits and home to core stuff, beauty stuff, and we'll just new updated spins on those old time real standbys. And so Chris some went out into the world and just found all these cool new
updates on the classics. And we always have a page that's like offbeat Stuff, which is my favorite too, which is just if you want surprise, if you want something strange, And then we shot it really beautifully by the photographer Joanna McLure.
All Right, so christ and you're given this mission. Tell us how because I'm assuming there's a fair amount of stuff out there, So how do you read through kind of what you want to include?
Well throughout the year, as I take appointments and I see what's going on in the luxury world, I'll earmark certain things. I'll think, ooh, that'd be amazing for the Bloomberg Gift Guide, and then other times I'll see what's
new and fits the theme. So this one was really interesting because we were doing classics with a twist, so we got to feature some things that we wouldn't maybe ordinarily cover because they wouldn't be newsy enough, you know, But we found things that had cool new twists, like Don perennial with a beautiful label with artwork from Buskiat We found new releases from brands, and sometimes it was something as simple as updating a new Potext relief watch
that wasn't I called the Ellipse and that was our twist for that watch.
All right, So maybe we should go through the categories because there's a lot of stuff here, and I do like the offbeat items. There's actually something I kind of adore.
You want the surfboard, No, I want the bag.
I want the whale I want the whale bag.
I really love it.
But let's go back. Let's go back to jewelry, which is a fame I think about when my husband I first got engaged, like jewelry, like like, these are the things that you know, kind of come Chris, walk us through. And I do love that you guys have I think a variety of price poinds here.
I mean, it's jewelry. What do you mean by variety, Carol, Carol needs price upon request?
A variety.
It's a surprise, really expensive.
Yeah, I mean the first thing on the pages of Mickey Motto lace necklace that has seven strands of a Koya pearls with almost six and a half carrot paara shaped awk marine that is one hundred and forty one thousand dollars. That's a very it's one of a kind.
It's a very very special gift. But you know there's some there's a Van Cleef and our Pel's Sweet Alambra watch which is more approachable in price at eighteen thousand, six hundred dollars, And that's like an inspiration for you to maybe your girlfriend, maybe you have some alambra stuff from Van Cleef, but you didn't think of getting a watch. That's a new way of using that style of jewelry. So we're trying to get you to think about new
ways of using this kind of thing. Kristen, do you have a favorite jewelry item?
Here? For me, it's the Bouche Wrong Question Market Trinity necklace. This design was first invented in eighteen seventy nine and it's just so beautiful and she doesn't have a class that opens and just wraps around your neck in such a beautiful eye. And this particular version has a pear shake staff fire that's twelve care.
And this is the one that's five hundred and nine thousand dollars.
Yeah, okay, do you have expensive too, it's just checking.
It's the question is whether or not you can afford it.
I know.
To answer my question really is how much do you love your stuff? It's so true though, all right, there's some stuff in here that's thirty nine hundred dollars the David Yeerman streamline signet ring.
Yeah, and it's if you go online, there's a bunch more stuff in a wider variety of price points too, which is very helpful. But we love David German and they have a lot of great gifts for men. A lot of men are getting more into jewelry and David German it is like the place to go.
All right, let's suck licker. So Kristen like, how'd you approach liquer? You talked about art on the bottle. We often on a daily basis, weekly basis, monthly basis, have various folks who are offering up new wine, and a lot of times the bottles are just gorgeous.
Yeah, I think that's what we really wanted to focus on. Here you can see there's a bottle by the McAllen. It's called Time Space Mastery and it's actually a fear you could call it a doughnut shaped bottle, which was it's just so striking you almost don't want to drink it because you want that beautiful bottle to be sitting on your shelf with them amber liquid inside of it. And then we have some interesting art collaborations that Glenn Moranji.
They collaborated with the Japanese floral artist to make this actual floral sculpture, photographed it and then put that on the bottle. So people are taking different approaches to making these really stunning bottles that are a little bit of sworks of art.
I do love this hibiki forty years old, the oldest whiskey, yet it's going to set you back there.
Yeah, it's really special. They aged it in Japanese and Spanish oak barrels for forty years. Obviously, it's I think the oldest one that they've ever done, and it's produced in such limited quantities that it is truly a collector's item. I think a lot of these bottles, unfortunately won't get open and enjoyed because people will look at them more of an asset because they cost thirty five thousand dollars.
But it'll be interesting to see how Hibiki continues to progress the ultra high end version of the market.
All right, Chris, where do you want to go?
Well, I just want to say Beyonce's Rye Whiskey is on this list and it's eighty nine dollars and everyone says it's good.
I've not had it, but it's whiskey.
People like it, so that's a great it's good.
Oh, okay, cool, Where do you want to go?
Now?
Our next page is the offbeat page, which is my favorite.
He the whale bag or whatever it is.
Yeah, let's talk about this whale bag all right.
I'm sure you have a better description, Kristen.
Yeah.
So this's from Le Leve, which is a really beautiful Spanish leverhouse, and it's an updated version of the iconic puzzle bag. So it's strips of leather that are pieced together, kind of looking like a puzzle and here it has a painted whale design on it and it's part of a resort collection focused on under the sea and it's just so fun and playful. I'm certainly a little offbeat, but still very elegant at the same time.
What is it cost?
Almost four thousand dollars?
Okay, it's kind of delicious. I just kind of love it.
One of my favorite things from the whole section is actually this spilled spiller Martini glass, which is on the first page of the section, and it's it's literally it's a Martini glasses spilled and it looks it's glass, but it looks like it's a spills espresso martini. And I just immediately thought of five people that I could get it for, and I think that's very funny. And then my other the most surprising thing that Kristin pitched was
this pair of wired Chanelle headphones. I don't know if you guys have noticed that people are wearing wired headphones.
Yeah, and it's like a big TikTok thing for the youngs.
Yes, for the youngs.
Yeah.
Not being a young it took me a while to catch on to it and I was like, no one's going to want this, and christ was like, no, it's a real thing. And so these are like like a very blingy Chanelle chain that you wear around your neck and then connects to your you know, listening.
Fourteen seven hundred dollars for headphones.
And it's a watch. Oh no, there's the necklace has a watch on it and the headphone, so it really does it all.
Wait, so it's a necklace, a watch in headphones.
I mean this is a bargain.
I'm just gonna talk, yeah, right, basically free.
Yeah, Chris.
The surfboards on the on the online version of the gift guide, Porsia. I didn't even know Porscha made surfboards.
Porscha doesn't. But Porsia Design, which is like a sister company to Porscha, makes a lot of different things. They make sunglasses, they make skateboards, they make watches primarily, and they have Yeah, they have this special partnership where they made multiple sizes and multiple colors of surfboards that you can customize with numbers and the colors you want, and they're they're very.
Cool, seven foot ten inch mid length board. So it's still an expensive surfboard at forty five hundred dollars.
Christin, I have to ask you, is their favorite item on the list that you just think is I don't know, just super yummy.
Well, I think all the bags are really beautiful and there are some really special ones in here with you know, beautiful embellishment sequins. We picked metallic scene because you know, everyone likes sparkly things for the holidays, and I just love this spendy peekaboo I see you it has it's the brand signature Celerria stching on the sky, which is all done by hand. And it's been a really beautiful
cold other So that's one of my favorite pieces. The it you see Portuguese or Eternal Calendar is another one of my favorite pieces. It is a moon phase that will be accurate for forty five million years and was by far one of my favorite watches to come out this year.
Yeah, be sure to leave it to the an sensors, you know, like forty five million years is like the watches? Is that favorite for you? We know you love watches or.
I'm so, do you have a favorite piece?
Sorry, they're or eternal calendars, Tomato Tomatrow time pieces. Well actually, when I asked christ And if we could get the IWC watch the Eternal Calendar, and she was like yeah, I was like really, I was super psyched to shoot it. What I love on this page is the range. There's the irmez cut watch, which is a you know, not a very expensive kind of everyday watch that's for people you could wear to work. You could wear swimming. We have this very cool new watch called the papar Aneo,
which is seven hundred and fifty dollars. It's a very innovative GMT, which means attracts two time zones. It just looks very funky and you everyone would ask you about it if you wore it. And then we have some very cool, you know, more flashy watches from Otamar p Gay and basher On, Constantine and Rolex.
All Right, Kristin, we've just got about thirty seconds left here. Too late for people to get stuff. I mean, this is going to be you know, it's the Christmas weekend, the Honokoh weekend. You still like, you know, thinking about what I need to get for people? Is it too late to get some of this stuff?
Order today air shipping or get out this weekend and brave the crowds with them all go shopping right when they open.
Totally love it, Totally love it, guys, Thank you so much. Some really cool stuff there, Tim.
That's Bloomberg Pursuits editor Chris Rouser and Kristin Shirley, Bloomberg's contributing writer and founder of La Patiala.
And that wraps up our weekend edition oft Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Thank you so much for joining us.
Be sure to tune into Bloomberg Business Week Monday through Friday starting to get two pm Wall Street Time on Bloomberg TV, Bloomberg Radio, and on Sirius XM Channel one twenty one. You can also listen to us on Apple Car Play and Android Auto Free in the Apple App Store or on Google Play.
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Plus and more. Find our Bloomberg Business Week podcast at Bloomberg dot com, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. And the latest edition of the magazine is available on newstands now at Bloomberg dot com and always on the Bloomberg Terminal. I'm Tim Stenebeck and I'm Carol Masser.
Have a good and save weekend. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanza, Happy holidays to everybody. Time to go shopping.
This is the Bloomberg Business Week podcast, available on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, the iHeartRadio app tune In, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg terminal