Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - February 11th, 2022

over year. Inflation still running at a forty year high, and yet strong runings keep on rolling in. One big company that's taking rising costs and stride is Chipotle Mexican grill, the fast casual dining giant, reporting a strong fourth quarter this past week. We're going to talk expansion plans and pricing power with Chipotle CFO Jack hart Tongue. Also, I had a prolific loan shark that former President Donald Trump, freed from prison, is now back lending money again. His

tactics are more exploited than ever before. Meantime, as the Winner Olympics continue in Beijing, we'll discuss the implications of China's continued clampdown on democracy in Hong Kong. Our conversation with Mark Clifford, president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong, is coming up. All of that to come. We begin with this week's domestic cover story. Betting apps want you to come for the Super Bowl, the Big Game,

and stay and gamble forever. Legalized mobile sports betting is expanding in the US, including just recently here in New York, and right in time for Super Bowl fifty six, the National Football League is leading the charge to embrace it after years of worrying that gambling could influence the play on the field. Well for more on the about face from America's biggest sports leagues and team owners, returned to the editor of Bloomberg Business Week magazine, Joel Webber. At

Bloomberg News Projects and Investigations reporter Peter Robison. The light bulb moment for me was was reading a report from Goldman Sachs which which pointed out that these apps over time might each have fifteen million customers, and that's the

number who watch a usual NFL game. And so when you have that many eyeballs and that many people coming regularly on your site, it gives you a lot of power and in a lot of other countries that the gambling sites are are the way people watch these games, and it's it's the filter through which the games are watched, which which seems like a really big deal for for all these sports over time. What I think is interesting the MLB was early uh in on on Draft Kings,

Robert Kraft, Jerry Jones. I mean colleges, they went from like not doing anything to all of a sudden they're investing in big time and there's meetings kind of I feel like was it was a Craft sound who brokered kind of a meeting with one of the betting apps. Like It's just interesting how entrenched it's become. Yeah, there there there was preparation behind the scenes for this moment even before the Supreme Court opened the floodgates with its

ruling legalizing sports betting outside of Nevada. In even before that, as we report in the story, Roger Goodell met with Jason Robbins from Draft Kings UH in a Boston suburb with the craft with with Robert Kraft and his son and UH Fantasy as another person we talked to said, you know, Fantasy was really the wedge that helped these leagues get comfortable. It was almost like a soft launch for for gambling, and it also showed the leagues and

everybody how popular this is. How do they keep it pure? It's a really good question, and it sounds like one that the league is still working out it itself. We we talked to the chief compliance officer for the NFL and they have developed an online training course. They have stepped up their discussions with league personnel about what information can be shared outside the league because with so many prop bets, including what color is the gatorade going to be?

That's dumped on the coach's head. And I guess one distinction is that those bets that tend to be on offshore books, which are are less regulated. But the point remains that there's a lot of potential for UH, for shenanigans, and so the league is trying to get ahead of that. They've also workshops with players where they bring in what

they've called bad guys who have been caught before. You trying to groom players in six games, and you know that the skeptics will say that that you can't you know, do that UH with complete success and and really any

one case, it's gonna it creates a huge perception problem. Uh. And and you know you saw that even in the Premier League recently where a yellow card given late in the match has has you know, caused a fury on on Twitter with people claiming that that there's somehow a fixed So it just it changes the way people watch games when when betting is so entrenched. How much money is you know slashing around here for the NFL, Like, what's the what's they're they're taking all this It's it's

already substantial. It's in the hundreds of millions. You know, just just one deal that the NFL signed with the data provider is reportedly worth a hundred and twenty million a year to it. And over time they're they're talking a billion and year, which is a lot of money for a league that Uh in the pandemic year it took in twelve billion. So uh and Goldman's talking, you know, thirty billion plus over time just in the US, Hey, Peter.

One of the promises that or at least the selling points that these apps are and services are making to the league's is this idea of engagement and the way that it drives engagement two levels that the teams want to see in the leagues want to see what do we know about the relationship between the way that people bet, who bets and to what extent they actually pay more

attention and tune in and see the ads in the games. Well, I know, Genius has a statistic that people are more likely to watch a game if if they're placing a bet on it. You know, certainly if your money is at stake, you're you're more likely to watch or at least to watch a portion of it. Uh So that's

one big factor. I mean. The other factor we get into in the stories is just the possibility of addiction that that you know, as one person pointed out, uh, you know, Pete, that that you know, people between the men between the ages of fourteen to thirty five are especially likely to gamble. I think that that increase in rates already, that is like such an important point in this because it looks like a ton of fun Like

there's all these funny prop beds. Then it's like, oh, by the way, you know, eighteen to thirty five, Like, can you imagine how many people are going to get addicted out of this? Because it seems like nothing, and then it's like, oh wow, that just drained my bank account. That was Bloomberg Business Week magazine editor Joe Webber and Bloomberg News Projects and Investigations reporter Peter Robeson on this

week's domestic cover story. Peter co wrote the piece with Ira Boudway, coming up China's tightening grip in Hong Kong as implications that reach well beyond the city. Will explore how Beijing is exporting its authoritarian tactics around the world. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Man here and Bloomberg

Quick Takes Tim Stinovik from Bloomberg Radio. Do you recall last week the Bloomberg Business Week cover story detailed Beijing's assault on the ones very popular Apple Daily newspaper and how the crackdown served as a sharp escalation of efforts to dismantle Hong Kong's democracy movement. Our next guest was quoted in that story, Mark Clifford, to the president of

the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong. He's also a Council and Foreign Relations member and former editor in chief of both English language papers in Hong Kong, The Standard and the South China Morning Post. Mark joined us to talk about his new book. It's entitled Today, Hong Kong Tomorrow the World, which China's crackdown reveals about its plans to end freedom everywhere. And Mark also got into where we go from here now that a trusted publication has

been silenced forever? Sure well, thanks, and it was a great piece. In anybody who's listening hasn't read it. I think it's the definitive account of the destruction of Apple Daily, which um, as the article pointed out, was a precursor to destruction of civil society in throughout Hong Kong. And uh, since then, we've seen unions shut um, a number of NGOs shut down, bank accounts frozen, I mean the playbook

that was who we first saw with Apple Daily. People being thrown in jail, bank accounts frozen, companies, NGOs, unions thrown out of business. Is you know, all too you know, all too common in Hong Kong. I think that for the rest of the world. I mean, you take a city prospers, peaceful, you know, filled with you know, like people like London or New York just doing their own thing with lots of kinds of newspapers, and you just

throw those people in jail. I mean I was a director at Next Digital, so I mean, unfortunately I had a firsthand view of this. And uh, let me just tell you, it's not nice to be on the wrong end of the Chinese state when you're trying to destroy something. So we'd have raids on the newsroom, five hundred armed police.

Can you imagine five hundred armed police coming into Blue Burg and terrorizing the journalists and taking their computers and marching the editor in chief and other senior people off to jail. I mean, that's what we saw in Hong Kong, and uh we saw the I think it's unparalleled in history. Even when the Soviets took over Eastern Europe in the late forties, it wasn't taking over a peaceful, prosperous city the way that the Chinese have taken over Hong Kong.

So really really a horrible situation. So what happened, Like I remember July one, Hong Kong returning to Chinese control after a century and a half of British colonial rule. It was meant to establish this one country two systems relationship withdu China Hong Kong. It was like the beginning of my career in business news in a big way.

And watching this and talking to so many international business people who said, you know, continued to look at that Chinese market as such big potential, so important to their future growth UM, and that provided some confidence that things would continue to open up in China despite that handover, What did we all miss I don't know that we missed anything. We tried engagement, and a couple of years after that, in two thousand one, UM, the Chinese were

joined the World Trade Organization UM. So that was a good thing. I mean, this was part of an opening up in China that saw somewhere between six eight hundred million people pulled out of absolute poverty. That's twice the population of the US. I mean, remarkable in many ways. And uh, look, I was an advocate for engagement. I worked. I've lived in Asia over thirty years, mostly in Hong Kong. And of course we knew the Chinese communists were not

really nice people. They weren't proto democrats or anything. But uh, you felt that things would keep opening up as they had in Korea and Taiwan as those countries got got richer, and I think Shi jin Ping's ascension to the top dog position in China a decade ago twelve changed everything. Uh, you know, the trajectory wasn't always you know, as I said, towards democracy, but at least there was a sense of openness. And um, what we got wrong is we didn't see

Hijin Pin coming. And I don't think any of the Chinese who elected him, the small small group of people in the politbero elected him, I don't think they really knew what they were getting into either. But we've had you know, the most uh you know, the strongest, toughest Chinese leader at least since now maybe he's going to prove to be more so. Is this so Mark, Is this gees China or is this the party's China? Well, g does come out of the party, So I don't

want to just blame it on Ge. I mean, this is a this is a country that you know, killed, it's it's students, it's young people in and it's a party that will do anything to keep control. What is the role of business people in all of this and their responsibility? Who want to be in that market, but

have to tread lightly maybe or carefully. Yeah. I think I think they're holding their nose, closing their eyes and helping this sort of goes away and passes, just just as they hope the pandemic passes, because they think they have to be in China. And I think this is the issue that you know, we really need to front is how important is China. We started speaking about the role that businesses should be taking right now with regard

to what China is doing. And you you said that the businesses around the world have to decide how important China is to them. And it does seem like businesses have decided and they've decided that China is really important. I mean, look at Apple for example. You know, the company gets you know, close its revenue uh from the Greater China area, and it relies on the Taiwanese company Fox Con to build many of its products in China. Uh. You know, we can say the same thing about Starbucks

and Nike. The list continues to go on. Disney, Uh, the sports leagues like the NBA, for example, we could go there. Um, are they making the right moves? Well, I think for you know, short term shareholders, yes, I think longer term, they have to think really hard in their boardroom if they want the kind of legacy that many companies, including IBM notably suffered after being very closely

so of stated with the Nazis. UM and UH, I don't know if that's really consonant with E s G sorts of environmental social governance principles or ultimately long term shareholder value. But you know, you put your finger on on the on the issue. I mean, you know, China is a big market. It's not like the Soviet Union, which we weren't really very you know, entangled with during

the Cold War. UM. I think it's the financial institutions and the financial flows that are perhaps an area that we're gonna look at more closely in the shorter run. I mean, do we want let's just say, pension funds for New York cops going to to fund Chinese you know, increasingly um repressive Chinese government that has publicly said its goal is to confront and uh ultimately surpass the US. And is that the is that really what we want

to be doing. I mean, this isn't something that we're gonna settle tomorrow because the story of the last thirty or more years has been increasing engagement. Was trying to start, you see, to start disentangling, particularly when it's a market, but it's also a supplier to us, So no easy answers. That was the President of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong, Mark Clifford, his new book Today, Hong Kong Tomorrow.

The world is out now still ahead. On Bloomberg Business Week, a former US Olympian takes on her latest challenge, building a social fitness platform for the modern athlete. Silver medal

winning Bob's letter turned to business executive Lauren Gibbs joins us. Next, This is Bloomberg broadcasting from the financial capital of the world, Bloomberg eleven Frio in New York to Washington, d C. Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one, O six one does San Francisco, Bloomberg nine six to the country Sirius XM Chado one nine and around the globe the Bloomberg Business app and Bloomberg Radio dot Com. This is Bloomberg Business Week. The

Olympics in Beijing. You know they're well underway. Our next guest very familiar with the experience, having meddled for Team USA in the Games, earning a silver medal in bob sledding, and earlier this month, Lauren Gives was named vice president of Partnerships at Heroic. It's a public benefit corporation. It's a social training platform that challenges the negative aspects of

social media. Before we get into Lauren's latest business endeavor, Tim, you had to go there a self professed Olympic junkie. I mean, you've been watching the games NonStop. Yeah. I really enjoy the Winter Olympics. I don't know why, but probably from my time skiing in Colorado. I love snow. But yeah, I've been standing up too late, Carol, watching

them catching him live. He has been a little tired. Well, anyway, you asked her about how she likes watching the games on TV and being on the other side of the world as opposed to being in the spotlight and chasing that spot on the podium. I it's watching my friends, you know, the last four years of their hard work, um, you know, on on TV. And when things go great, you know you want to be there to celebrate with them.

But things don't go exactly as planned, you want to be there to support them, and and it's just it's so much easier to compete than this to watch hands down well. And I always wonder what the process is, right, Like if you are an athlete and you came to it later than most, I think that's fair to say, Uh, you've got an executive NBA, you were you know, in the work world, in the corporate space, and then you try out for the Bob sled team on a whim?

What's the whim? What is it? You wake up in the morning, you have a great cup of coffee and said, I'm going to go out for the Bob sled team. How does that work? Yeah? I tried it as a joke. Um, a friend of mine suggested that I tried out for the Bob sled team, and I thought that was crazy. But I had also made a promise to myself to fully vet every opportunity that came to me, and so I was living in Denver at the time. I found that they were tryouts about an hour away at the

Olympic Training Center. I didn't know there were centers dedicated to Olympians, so I thought, how cool would it be to just tour center by a T shirt, you know, maybe eating the cafeteria so I can eat like an Olympian and that would be it. And eight years later, um, a Olympic medalissa world champion, you know, have made eight national teams and you know, but basically travel the world

representing Team USA. All right, but wait a minute, you don't just like walk up and be like, hey, this kind of wanted to I mean, what was it though? What was what was involved in the process. Did they just immediately say come on on? Yeah? They just looked at me there like you, Um, there's a there's an initial combine where you do a sprint a shot toss. So you take a shot football, keep it forward as far as you can, and you do a standing broad jump.

And so you know, I played volleyball in college. I went to Brown University, but also ran track, and so I got that um perfect mixture of explosiveness, speed and strength that makes a good Bob Swetter. Um. I tried out right after, so I was lucky A lot of the Olympians that had went to teen and metal that so she had retired and so it was a mix of timing and not realizing that I was I was made for Bob. So people ask me how I chose Bob then and I said it, it definitely chose me.

I don't think I chose it all right, So tell us about heroic and what it's all about in your involvement. Yeah, heroic is a social act that will launch people nice. It's all about personal development and our mission is to have helped tek you one percent of the population flourished. And we believe when people create people complete ten virtuous target today, um, they will be more energized, connected and productive. And we're really trying to help people be the most

heroic version of themselves. So obviously as an athlete, it really speaks to who I am as a person. Um, I feel like I've been very fortunate and it's had a lot of opportunities and to like herolive my opportunity to pay it forward to others, to give people the tools to see success in the things that they're passionate about. What are some examples of those daily heroic activities? You know,

it's it's different for everybody. So things things from me or like going to bed on time, right, getting off of my my phone, don't not to be on my phone all night and making sure that I have a consistent bedtime, drinking more water, making sure I'm prioritizing my nutrition, especially now that I'm a retired athlete. You would think that, you know, it's easier to do. It's actually more difficult because now it's not tied to my athletic performance, but

it's still tied to my performances human being. And so it's the little things that we do on a daily basis that move us closer to our goals or post further away. And we know that if you complete ten virtuous targets a day would be more connected, energized, in productive. That was Lauren Gibbs, Vice President Partnerships at Heroic Public Benefit Corporation. Also, as you know, a decorated athlete capturing a silver medal for Team USA and Bob sledding and

Pyong Chang at the Games. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Coming up next, we're going to talk about something that maybe some Olympic athletes aren't really getting a chance to enjoy when they're training getting ready for the Game's burritos. Oh, come on, they totally get to indulge in that. Come on, It's like car building, isn't it. Carbs? Protein, Yeah, extra glok kind of the perfect meal. Chipbotle CFO Jack Hartongue stops by to help us stick into the company's latest earnings.

And even though the company has already raised prices, more increases maybe on the way. Definitely firing on all cylinders. It feels like because investors definitely took notice, sending the stock higher on that earnings. This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovich from Bloomberg Radio. This week a good one for Chipotle Mexican grill shares, rallying from the company's

latest quarterly update. That update showing that fourth quarters sales cops sales and adjusted DPS all topping estimates. One potential issue for the near term, though, CEO Brian Nichols saying that he's not seeing any signs that inflation is slowing down on specifically highlighting higher beef costs. Well, it turns out the company may have to raise prices yet again

and hike wages too. Well, we reached out to the c suite and got more in the business and outlook with the company's CFO, Jack har Tongue, and we began by asking him what kind of pricing power the fast casual giant has to help combat rising inflation. You know, it's one of these kind of mysteries if you will, Tim, and that you kind of hope you never find out. The reason. The reason is if you find out, it means you've raised prices too high and it and it

means customers are resisting. We've always been very thoughtful whenever we've had to raise prices, including in this environment and frankly, every other restaurant company, grocers, everyone is raising prices. So we still think that we're kind of you know, at or maybe a little bit behind the media and what companies are doing. And so, um, what we want to do is we we while we think that we can raise prices for we'll watch and see how the inflation

environment unfold. We do think we've got additional pricing power and if we need to, we'll spend it, but we'll look at other things efficiencies and um, you know, are there other ways to find some you know, cost saving opportunities and if there aren't, and if we have to raise prices, will we'll do that, But it won't be the first thing we'll do. Where Jack are you seeing the costs rise the most and the quickest. Is it

wages or is it on the commodity side. Yeah, well, you know, way wages really increased a lot last year, and in our case, we took a big stair step. We increased our wages by about fifteen percent for all of our restaurant employees UM and that was, you know, a big impact. And then we did that in the

April May timeframe. That's when it became clear to us that there was a in balance between the demand that we and other companies had for labor as the economy was opening up, and then the people coming back into the workforce. That helped us significantly. UM. That allowed us to retain our existing people, That allowed us to increase

application flow. You know, we're growing company, so we're constantly hiring people um and so that allowed us to stabilize the workforce to the point where right now we feel like we're in a good labor position. It's not it's not like we're completely you know over challenge. It's still a challenge, but we're in as good of a labor staffing position now as we were even before the pandemic. And uh, you know, I don't know that every company

could say that right now. Hey, Jack, do you feel like, in terms of the labor shortages and the crunch that we're hitting peak and that things will start to get better? And same same side, same questions on on the pricing side of things. Do you feel like we're getting kind of inflation peak? If you will? Yeah, I don't think

either are over. I think labor is going to continue to go up, but I would expect there won't be another kind of shock, like like when we we were kind of at the leading edge when we raise prices in the May or wages in the May June time. Frank, most other hospitality and restaurant companies have followed since then. I think they're going to be increases, meaningful increases, but I don't expect that there will be another fifteen percent jump.

What we're seeing right now is there are pockets where when there are shortages that you're gonna have to maybe raise wages at a in a preemptive manner rather than just, you know, rather than risking falling behind, you know, the the wages in that market. From a commodity standpoint, most of our challenge has been in beef that's been throughout the year, and in the fourth quarter it hit us again.

Freight as well, especially we get a lot of our packaging in from outside the US, and freight has been a real challenge, not only just to get enough supply because there's such bottlenecks at the boards, but also the cost of freight is going up significantly. Our outlook suggests that UM nothing is going to ease in terms of material or great an inflation to let the earliest later in the year, maybe not even until Wow, So it

sticks around for a while. Hey, I'm curious about wages too, because that's something that we've talked to a lot of economists, Jack, that that stays with you, that cost And I'm curious. I've spent a lot of time with your previous administration that you guys pride yourself and holding onto workers and grooming them to move up the chain. So will those higher labor costs be problematic maybe down the road. No. In fact, we still pride ourselves on our people culture.

You know. We we promoted nineteen thousand people last year. That's that's what you do when you have a thriving, growing company. UM We like the idea that when crew join us today, that they can join us for a job today, but that can turn into a career over time, and even that they don't stay with chipotlea their entire career, we will teach them skills like how to cook in a real restaurant, will teach them how to leave people, will teach them how to run a business. And if

they say with us, that's fantastic. If not, they're still going to learn life skills. And so we run all of our restaurants where unique in the restaurant industry, where we have almost three thousand restaurants, none of them are franchised. So we need to have the ability to hire great people, to develop great people, and and to give them opportunities to move into management roles. And that's that's alive and well edge Fully, Hey, I want to talk a little

bit about growth and expansion physical expansion here. In your release yesterday, you said based on those successive small town locations that are delivering unit economics at or better than traditional Chipotle locations, you are now you now believe there can be at least seven thousand Chippotle restaurants in North America,

up from that prior goal of six thousand restaurants. Talk to us about the competition for real estate here and how difficult it is to actually find compelling real estate opportunities and in a market like this, Yeah, you know, it's always been a challenge. There's always growth companies out there. But um, we do really well. And the reason we do well is that, as I mentioned, we're company owned, so we can make quick decisions. We have a dynamite

real estate development team, and so they're out there. They know the brokers, they know the sites, they know how to dig great sites. Uh. And when we show up and knock on the door of a landlord or developer and we're interested in space, they love to have chuquote l in their UM in their development. The reason is

we bring traffic to their development. And so if we're in a center where there's five or six or seven different tenants there, um, they can count on the fact that Chap quote le will bring a lot of people to their center. They will recognize some of the other tenants as well. UM. So um, you know, so we get a lot of attention and we're one of the

preferred tenants out there. Um. We also have been very successful in not just securing the sites, but also getting the approval to get a chapot Lang, which that's our

version of a digital drive through UM. And even if we don't have a free standard and it's a it's a great convenience for our customers and our landlords and developers have been working really well with us to make sure we can get the chippot Lane and so that's that's because we really bring um you know, something to their center that they're really after, and that's that's more foot traffic. That's what I wanted to ask you though. UM you guys out at your first digital only chippot

Lane restaurant. I believe it was late last year, Uh, in New York State. How's that going in? Is there? What are the expansion plans with that? Yeah, it's it's actually really good. We have to now fully digital restaurants. What that means is there's no front line, So if you walk into a restaurant, you're not going to see a front line with a register where you can order and then pay. Everything has to be ordered ahead. You

can order ahead and pick up UM in. In one of the two cases we've got chippot Lane, so you can order ahead not get out of your car. You still can get out of your car and walk into the restaurant if you if you like, and our team will treat you to great experience, but you have to order ahead there. These are early days. These are early experiments.

We do think there's going to be opportunities for what we call a steam location, meaning you could have a lot of totally restaurants in a certain trade area, and then there's an underserved area kind of in the middle that might be a great spot for a smaller restaurant that has just chapot lane, um and no frontline ordering. So um. It's early days and we'll find where these

make the most sense. But draw up both thoughts to a great start in that same vein digital sales, for one, for the full year forty five point six percent of sales, Carol mentioned how they shot up during the pandemic. What's a way for investors to think about that digital versus physical mix When we do get to the other side of the pandemic, where does it stabilize? Yeah, you know, our our guests, and it really is just a guess that it probably bounces at about at or in that

low forty range. When we look at our markets throughout the country and others. You know, different markets have have had different impacts from COVID UM and it come out of COVID faster or slower. When we look at the ones that were least impacted UM, they didn't fall below a range. And when we look at the fort of digital sales today, these are mostly our loyal customers. They come very often, they tend to spend more, and they

really like the digital channel. The convenience of digital once you get into our app, once you sign up as a loyalty member, is so easy that our customers tend to stick with it. So I would see that will probably stay in this you know load and mid forty percent range UM, and then we'll bounce up from there as more and more customers discovered digital. The reality is, even though it's almost forty percent of our business, the majority, the largest group of our customers have never tried digital.

So there's still a big opportunity for us. Hey, Jack, just got about a minute or so left here. You've been at to Potle for what twenty years? You've seen a lot at that name alone McDonald's before that. You understand this industry, but this is an interesting time coming off a pandemic. Uh. We love to hear from the c suite. What's top of mind for you right now? Yeah, I mean the most important thing to me in our entire executive team is people. Um. I mean, we have

a food ethos. UM. We really take pride in the quality of food that we saw, um, the quality food that we cook in the restaurants. But all of that happens with great people. That means great people on the front lines. It means great managers for the two fifty restaurants we're going to open up, you know during this year. It means great people in our offices as well to

support our restaurants. The reason we are company owned and not franchise is it takes a lot of hard work, a lot of care, and a commitment to a purpose to actually care about the food, how we source it, how we cook and training customers a great experience. And so as long as we have a great pipeline of people joining Chipotle developing into the management ranks, we'll have a bright, bright bright future. That's that's that's something that's going to be a high priority really in any environment

for us. That's Jack Hartongu, chief financial officer Chipotle, been at the company a long time, understands this industry has seen a lot of different cycles. And you know, there's a theme that's definitely come about in this earning season, Tim, and that is the ability of some companies to pass along higher prices. But not every company has that luxury, and if you can't, you get penalized in the equity market. Yeah, that's a really good point because it of course hits margins.

But if you have a company with like Chipotle, with pricing power that can actually raise the prices of those items on the menu and consumers will still be attracted to it, then you're in a pretty good position right now. Yeah, and you're definitely seeing that play out that way. That wraps up the first hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Carol Masser and

I'm Tim Stanivik. Coming up in our next hour. We remember a time when it looked as though retail investors were finally staking their claim to a bigger piece of the corporate earnings pie, only to see Wall Street triumph once again. The true story of the revolution that wasn't plaus Valentine's Day, It's Monday, the CEO of farm Girl Flowers, explaining why the calendar working against both companies and consumers.

Up next, our investigation team is back on the case of a loan shark that's out of jail now thanks to a pardon from foreign President Trump, and he's up to his old tricks, using dubious legal tactics to drain clients bank accounts. It's a remarkable story, except it's no story,

it's reality. This is good Barn. Then is Bloomberg Business Week Inside from the reporters and editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus global business finance and tech news as it happened Sloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio.

Hi'm Carol Masser and I'm Tim Stinovic. Plenty ahead in our second hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, including a route awakening for last minute Valentine's Day gift buyers. Don't forget everybody, It's this Monday. Oh gosh, Monday, Valentine's Day getting new worse. Plus how the retail trading revolution that played out during the pandemic actually ended up hurting

the little guy. Spencer Jacob of The Wall Street Journal breaks it all down in his new book, The Revolution That Wasn't Game Stop Read It and the Fleecing of Small Investors. First up this hour, a loan shark pardoned by President Trump is back in business and his tactics for seizing borrowers money are more predatory than ever. It's a story written by Bloomberg's Zeke Fox, and one that both Zeke and Zach Mieder have been following and reporting

on for years. Zack might joins us. Now, Zach, you first started reporting on Jonathan Broun a few years ago, back in ten m remind us who he is and why he did a stint in jail. Yeah. So, John braun Is is one of the most notorious loan sharks in this kind of part of the business called merchant cash advance, which is lending money to small businesses at super high interest rates if you think on an annual basis, maybe like five or a thousand percent and so um.

And he was kind of known even within this this corner of the business. He was known as like um, he would he would have these obscene tirades with with customers, and he was kind of notorious for ripping off customers by taking money he wasn't entitled to, or or giving them less than promised. And after we wrote our story, it kind of looked like some of his uh, his actions were catching up with him because his company blew up.

He faced lawsuits from the New York Attorney General and the Federal Trade Commission, and he was thrown in jail for for a ten year sentence because of a previous and unconnected uh drug trafficking charge that um you know that basically he was that he'd been out on bail for eight years and finally the judge decided to put him away. So fast forward. Now he's all his problems

have cleared away, Like he's out on the street. He's lending money again and probably probably more than ever um, and it looks like he's gonna probably get away with with not having to face any consequences from the from the from the authorities. What's great about this story? Not great, I mean in terms of what this guy is doing, but he's out and so it's a story about presidential pardons. Particularly President Trump's. But it's also that he's back in

business again. Let's talk about the pardoning. How did he get out? So he was he was doing a ten year stint, and he his family reached out to people. He claims that he spent millions of dollars to get people to advocate for him at the White House. And we know that. You know, President Trump did not follow the kind of normal procedures that presidents usually do. He seemed to just kind of go with whoever his friends

were telling him, Uh, needed to get out. And Alan Dershowitz, who had represented Trump in the past, He's a Harvard law professor. He was one of the people who made the case. Now Dershwitz says he didn't get paid by Braun, but then later he said maybe he did. He can't remember. Um, so one way or another. Uh, the message got to Trump to let this guy out, and he was part. He was. His sentence was commuted on his last day

in office. So when we think about this from a pardon's perspective, you know, presidents get criticized at the end of their terms for pardoning for a host of reasons.

How did President Trump depart from even what's traditionally a pretty controversial thing, right, So usually there's, uh, there's kind of like a formalized system within the Department of Justice where they kind of review, they look for people who have you know, long paid for their crimes, who have been exemplary citizens, who maybe we're sentenced for something not

so bad, um. And if you look at, you know, Bron's case, it's really hard to see how it lines up with any of those because you know that, UM, the behavior he's accused of while he was out on bail awaiting sentencing, UM is pretty extreme, and it was well known. It was easy easy to know. I mean you could have just read Bloomberg to find out about it. Well, and as you guys are reporting, as as Zeke writes about, I mean this presidential pardoning by former President Trump, it

was unusual. In almost all the cases, it didn't follow the normal guidelines. What's interesting too, is um, as Zeke writes in his update, he goes, I don't know, does he go undercover? I mean, he he finds out he wants to prove that this guy John Braun is back in business. So talk to us a little bit about that. I thought that was yeah, because Broun hasn't had his name on paperwork in years. Even before he went to jail, um, he his his name wasn't on any of the papers

connected to these companies he was running. And this time he's even more careful. One change is that now he doesn't get on the phone and and and scream and swear at customers as much as he did before. So that's another way it makes it harder to report on because typically we would just call up customers and they say, oh, yeah, this guy screamed at me for half an hour, um.

So it was pretty tricky. Zeke was able to develop a bunch of sources who could describe exactly where he works, where he goes to work every day, who he works with, and even you know, provide all kinds of um evidence that that he was back in business and Zeke was actually able to see him, you know, walking go into the office. Hey. Zach talked more about the market for loans like these and who who these types of customers are.

You think about small businesses, so maybe a self employed trucker or a pizza parlor or a nail salon something like that. So these are typically people who don't they don't have a finance department, they don't have a full time lawyer accountant. They're making all these decisions themselves, and oftentimes they're heard up for money one way or another, maybe because business isn't going well, but maybe because they need to grow really fast. They need to hire get

supplies and hire people to do a big job. So they turn to this kind of really quick money where you borrow money on Monday and your first payments do on Tuesday. It's daily payments, and usually it's paid back over the course of like a month and a half. A big thank you to Bloomberg News reporter Zach Meder for his time. Check out Zack Sidebar in this week's issue. It explains just how powerful these short term lenders can be.

Be sure to check that out. We kept saying that this was going to be like a Netflix series or some kind of streaming series because it's just unbelievable but also heartbreaking. All Right, you're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Coming up, how meme stock Mania on the so called retail trading revolution turned out to be an epic fleecing of low level investors. That's coming up next. This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg

Quick Takes Tim Stenovy from Bloomberg Radio. It was just about one year ago and many were calling it the revolution against Wall Street. It was the rise of the reddit investor and meme stock spending against the big guys and their short positions. With the benefit of hindsight and a new book for our next guest, we can now ask whether it was really a revolution after all, and

how the financial heavyweights ended up on top. In the end, Wall Street Journal calumnist Spencer Jacob He's the author of The Revolution that Wasn't Game Stop? Read It and the Fleecing of Small Investors That's the book title. He was already aware though, that the chatter on the popular subreddit Wall Street Bets could sometimes swing certain stocks, except this

time it was different. My my oldest boy, who was home and I was home too because of COVID nineteen uh in January, said hey, Daddy, you can ward about Game Stop And I had driven him there for kids. Yeah exactly, I'd driven him there about eight billion times his life, and his two younger brothers as well. But I had no idea what he was talking about. I looked and saw it had gone up a bunch of The gist of it was that a friend of his had bought it, and I said, listen, it's doubled in

the last two days. That's great, but he shouldn't stick around. I've seen this play out a dozen times. And he said, no, he's not going to sell, which is a strange thing to say, but that was central to this whole uh plan that was hatched online, which was not just to buy all by the stock, but then not to sell it to to attack short sellers, and and it didn't. It wasn't an air tight trap, as we kind of

can see now in hindsight. But that was the gist of it, and that's why it was so potent, and that it it just took on a momentum of its own. So it did feel like the little guy beating the big guys. But that wasn't necessarily the case, as you write and lay out in your book, it wasn't the case. I mean, first of all, um, you know what, once you you look at what happened just in that period of ten or eleven days, the hedge funds that took huge It's uh. And there's one that lost almost seven

billion dollars in a matter of days. And there are other big losers you're talking about, right, I'm talking about Melvin Capital gap Blonkins. Melvin Capital gave Bloken was one of the best paid men in the world the year before. He took home eight and forty six million dollars personally the year before. You know, he was richly rewarded and had had had a great track record until this, and this just just blew him off. He lost over half of his his investors money. But others lost money to

um that are are less known. Melvin was the biggest loser and the best known loser, but one or two hedgehrons. First of all, it is not Wall Street. Wall Street is a big place, and most of Wall Street is made up of middleman, and the middleman like it when the little guys active and thinks that he can can be Wall Street and pours a lot of money into new accounts and and things like that. So that's that's one aspect of this is that they they really had a great pay day if you look at from Morgan

Stanley to Goldman Sachs to Citadel Securities. Although they don't release results, we know that they had a tremendous amount of revenue, and we know that all these other companies had had a very good time during the memestock squeeze, before, during, and after UM. And furthermore, we know that a lot of funds made a bonanza on the meme stock squeeze, whether they rode the coattails of it or they just

were in the right place at the right time. And finally, a lot of corporate insiders h made fortunes off of this uh just being at the right place at the right time, just dumb luck. Does the retail investor, does the small investor? Does he or she stand a chance in this damage? Or has he or she ever stood a chance? There's always a chance. And if you if you spend a lot of time in a casino, and Wall Street often is compared to casino, then you have

no chance. The more you're there, the higher your chances of losing. Wall Street. You do have a chance because you know there's a general upward trend in in in share prices. But basically, UM, it's it's like the inverse of your level of activity UH dictates your success. And so when you you have a lot of especially young people getting to the market and getting in through an app like robin Hood. Uh that really encourages activity. And it's a company that that makes more money when you

are more active. Uh. They charge zero commissions, but they do earn money. Um. When you trade, and especially when you when you trade sort of recklessly, then you're kind of stacking the odds against yourself because study after study shows that performance is inversely correlated with activity and inversely correlated with how often you check your account. And and that's the way that these young people, primarily young people

who drove this, got into the market. And that's how they weaponize their accounts by these brokers that were very intuitive that had you know, allowed them to use options and all this stuff. And and you know, and as a group, we know that they're not doing well. Okay, if it wasn't a big win for retail investors that you write about in your book, So is there no

hope for retail investors? I mean, I thought Financial Innovation Spencer was going to be kind of the savior, uh for the little guy when it comes to the financial markets. Should we all give up all hope or no? O Carol, I mean, that's that's the irony of this story. You know, if you you look at one of those those charts people show you, you know, if you had just bought stocks back in and you know, not sold and whatever not that anybody holds on for that long, it's all

really a myth. Because it was so expensive to to invest in the market or even reinvest your dividends, then there are no index funds. And today, because of competition and because of technology, the same competition and technology that made Robin Hood possible where you could trade for zero dollars and you could just have a smartphone in your

hand and this intuitive thing that anybody can understand. You could use it to buy an ETF that caused zero point zero three percent a year and just set it and forget it, or have a rubbo advisor for a very modest fee, manage a bunch of index funds for you, you know, stuff that just was not possible a generation

or two ago. And and so it's like anything, right, I mean, we have these these cell phones with all the world's knowledge in them, and you know, and then teenagers today aren't any better informed than teenagers were twenty years ago. Or forty years ago, because they're they're using it to you know, to get on TikTok and stuff like that. They're not using Facebook. We learned that today. I'm sorry I didn't write about bok about Facebook to be a very time. Yeah. No, So there is a

bottom line, a long answer to your question. But there definitely is hope. And not only is their hope, but what this these people were trying to do. Were the catoofer right there, trying to stick it to Wall Street and make money and that if you don't like Wall Street for whatever reason, that's a way to stick it to Wall Street. Pay them very little and outperformed most investors by by being pretty passive, I mean using the

same technology basically. That's Wall Street. Journal columnist Spencer Jacob his book The Revolution that Wasn't Game Stop. Read it in The Fleecing of Small Investors. It's out now still to come on Bloomberg Business Week. Valentine's Day. Check your calendar, it's Monday. Hopefully you ordered something for that someone special in your life, and I hope that you did it early.

Tim Why are you looking at me like that? But the CEO of farm Girl Flowers tells us about her biggest worry heading into what she calls her company's super Bowl. This is Bloomberg. Your doesn't like flowers, right, No, she doesn't, but she likes chocolate all right. Good to know, everybody.

Broadcasting from the financial capital of the world, Bloomberg e Live in Rio in New York to Washington, d C. Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one oh six one does San Francisco, Bloomberg nine sixty to the country Sirius XM Chado one nineteen and around the globe the Bloomberg Business app and b Burg Radio dot Com. This is Bloomberg Business Week. Valentine's Day. It's on Monday, and it turns out that's not a very good day of the week for floral companies.

To find out why, we check in with Christina Stembel, the founder and CEO of farm Girl Flowers. She grew up on a corn and soybean farm in Indiana and went on to start her own business, one that's now worth sixty five million dollars to bouquets as out they're gorgeous. Christina helps farm Girl will fully recover from the impact of the pandemic. Bye for now, though she's just worried about this week ahead. We are going into what we

like to call our super Bowl of the year. It's a Valentine's Day, um and Balment Day this year is falling on a Monday, which is one of the worst days possible for actually the worst day possible for it to fall on for delivery UM where we don't have many locations that can deliver on Monday. We're not a big enough company to get a Sunday pick up for Monday deliveries. So it's definitely throwing a wrench into it

for us. So this means you're shipping on your shipping on a Saturday, but it's kind of just the flowers are hanging out until Monday. We're shipping from different locations, different dates, but we only have one location that we can ship two to get there on Monday. The rest of them have to come on Friday or Tuesday. UM. And you know, like be like getting a Christmas tree the day after Christmas, isn't isn't that great? It's tricky.

I think what I would say, I would rather like give me my flowers ahead of time, like Friday or Saturday, like just begin to Valentine's Day celebrations early. It's just a day, Carol's going to start. Everyone's listening to you weekend, right, Like I agree, Like, you know, you kind of do a nice lead up. So how do you get flowers on Saturday or Friday? And then maybe we have dinner on Sunday and on Monday we you know, stay home

and do laundry because we got to work the next night. Like, I don't know how you do it, um supply chains though in general, how have you been dealing with it, Christina? Yeah, Oky, dealing with it the same way that every industry is. We're you know, trying to think outside the box. That how we can you know not you know, we can absorb some of the extra costs without passing it all onto the customers. But you know it's kind of a a toggle. You know, we have to Our prices are

higher this year. They have to be because you know, everything costable right now. Cardboard prices are up. You know, flower costs are are about double right now for Valentine and stay of what they usually are. UM. So you know that that comes with the cost that we have passed on to our consumers. And are they are they are they dealing with it? Well, are are you seeing

maybe an impact on demand because of the cost. We definitely are seen to impact on demand, especially when we're competing, you know with grocery stores and things like that that we didn't used to compete with at that level because people are still working from home where they can pick them up on their own. Um. So it's it's definitely hurting us. Um And I know it's hurting every industry

and we're no different. There's a ripple effect that I wouldn't even thought of if I didn't know flowers, you know, with container prices that bring your tubers and bulbs and seeds, you know, and all of that that filtered down to the end consumer. Unfortunately, what about supply chain when it comes to planes, because I know that's a really important part of the fresh flower industry because some of the stuff is being flown from South America right absolutely. Um,

And list space is really hard around holidays. Everybody needs it on the exact same day. Um. And everybody's shipping so many things now more than just flowers and UM. You know I always joke about like I wish I were you know, we were selling sweaters instead that they could be you know, sit on somebody's sports for three days or being a storting facility late. Um. But we

really really heavily at on time deliveries. And we're also fighting mother Nature with weather right now, so it feels like kind of you know, a snowball effected, so many outside commissions playing against us. So we're you know, and relying on luck a lot, like relying and hopefully that there's not going to be more snowstorms like last week this week, um, and that the lift space holds out and we actually get what we've been told from our

shipping partners. So you know, during the holiday shopping season, right we always talking about Black Friday because that's traditionally the reason it's called Black Friday's when retailers would go from being in the red to the black. Valentine's Day financially, How pivotal is that for you guys, it's one of the big two. Um. We really rely heavily on Valentine's Day and Mother's Day to help get us through the

period which is the summer months June through September. You know, everybody's spending you know, usually spending their money on family vacations and things like that. I'm not sure what it will be this year with covid UM, but you know it definitely those two holidays in the first and second quarter help us through the third quarter, So you know, we rely on it a lot financially to carry us

through the lumpiness of the business. I want to go from supply chain to corporate office and wages and get an understanding from you about how you've had to make changes during the pandemic and now how difficult it is to attract and retain talent. Have you had to raise wages significantly? Yeah, we've raised wages, you know, significantly every year. So I don't think covid has really impacted that as

much as a lot of other other things. But you know, we were operating in the most expensive area, you know, in San Francisco, which was probably not the smartest room for me to make UM. And we no longer working in San Francisco, so that's helps us a lot. If we were still in Fanrancisco, I think we would see a lot more of that UM. But reach hating good

talent is definitely something that that's hard to do. We we really rely on our you know, we have a great culture at farm Girl and that's helping us a lot that we have, you know, a team that just works, works their heart out basically, and that's helped us um a lot that people really care about the company and and believe in the mission as well. That's Christina Stembel, the founder and CEO of farm Girl Flowers. You're listening

to Bloomberg Business Week. Coming up, vintage watches, fine whiskey, and the finest pillows four dollars can buy. They're a little unusual, they are. They kind of remind me of the mad Men era. They totally do. We're gonna take a job through the world of luxury with our Bloomberg Pursuits team. This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick takes Tim Stenovik from Bloomberg Radio Time Now for a weekly dive into

the highly anticipated Bloomberg Pursuit section. It's always one of our favorites, and speaking of time, the opening piece in the section this week, it's about watches and in particular, the multibillion dollars secondary market for these accessories. It's massive, it is massive. And it's set to get even bigger. Bloomberg Pursuits editor Chris Rouser joins us Now to help guide us through this week's edition. Business Week contribute to

Mark Bernardo details the many options for sourcing vintage time pieces. Chris, we know you're a watch lover. You're an Apple watch guys. Sometimes you're an old school watch guys. Sometimes the word on the street is you're actually in the market for one of these nice watches that's featured in Bloomberg Pursuits. Give us the playbook for actually pricing out and buying a pre owned watch, so they're there. The market for pre owned watches has never been as hot. Don't call

it used. You can call it as far as I'm concerned as you can call it used. Pre loved is what a lot of people like to say that vintage or classic. Um So, the market has never been hotter.

And in it was nineteen billion, and it's predicted to be thirty And part of the reason it's so hot is because new watches are also very hot, and there's big waiting lists for watches from Rolex and Protect Philip that you know, they come out in limited numbers, so people can't really to wait for years to get one, and so immediately when you you buy one, you can flip it on the secondary market for three times the

cost um. And so as a result, there's a bunch of entrepreneurs getting into the pre owned space starting startups. There have been some businesses around um since eBay started, but now there's more than a dozen, like legit serious, very big online watch marketplaces. And so we went through and we tried to figure out which ones were the best for what kind of watch and what you're looking for. Can I just say, all right, I'm still waiting for my Rolex, but can I just ask you anybody out

there hello? But what's interesting is I guess the result when people get a nice watch, like they hold on to it forever, but they don't. There's a lot of movement in the market, right Well, I think for a long time people did hold onto it because there wasn't you know, until about eight years ago, there wasn't a huge resale market except for among like really serious collectors. So quite frankly, a lot of people have these watches kicking around. So the volume is huge in the in

the secondary market. Christoper, someone like me who doesn't know anything about this market, I would feel and I do feel intimidated trying to get into it, and I would wonder if what I'm buying from one of these resellers is actually legit. Yes. Well, first of all, you should read Bloomberg Pursuits to learn more about vintage watches. And second, one of the great things about all of the emporiums that we feature this week is that they all include

a certain uh steps to prove authenticity. So whether that's you know, experts in house that look at the watches, whether that's UH they actually work with with actual like say a Rolex retailer to get these things updated and checked out. Um. You know, all these places like even eBay now have pretty good authentic city checks, which they

didn't have, Right, was that some of their problems beforehand. Yeah, So eBay is the huge player in this space, and it is partially because it was their first UM and people have been selling watches on eBay for you know, twenty thirty years, and that they had a uh sort of like a sixty percent approval rating rating in terms of customer satisfaction and they decided we got to get that up because it used to be a free for all you could sell, You could sell anything anyone that

you're buying from the seller. And so now for watches over two thousand dollars, they have an authenticity check where after you buy the watch, they send it to someone who checks it out and before it even gets to you,

they make sure everything's okay. Okay, we're talking big numbers here for eBay right in twenty nineteen, is you point out in Bloomberg Pursuits, this week eBay sold more than two million watches and on average about one and fifty thousand live listings for luxury watches can be found on the site on any given day. We're talking massive here.

What about some other marketplaces that you feature. So the other big player in this space is called Chrono twenty four and they been around since two thousand three, um, and they work with a bunch of dealers and individual sellers, so all their stuff is authentic and um, you know, you really rely on it, and a lot of when you google watches, like oh what is the google is kind of watch, Carnal twenty four is often what comes up.

Because they're a really good authority and resource. So we recommend them for people who know what they're looking for, because they probably have it. There's a new startup called Watchbox. Um. The CEO, Justin Reaess, has come on Bloomberg Radio a few times. Uh they've um they're on track to earn three hundred million in revenue, and they have offices all around the world, so they're a good place for people who have a lot of money to spend. They have

some of the more expensive pieces. Hey Chris, how much is it? How how much are we talking here? Right? To get actually into the market for something vintage, something classic, an average there's is an average in this world. So if you want to get a Rolex Submarine or or GMT Master, Uh, that new will cost you between nine and twelve thousand dollars and up to buy that old,

you're looking at two dollars to thirty thousand dollars. So you know, really to get the piece of the people are looking for, you're actually you're looking at fifteen tho dollars enough. And then when I say up, I mean like way up, all right. I just love kind of Tim's face. It's like, oh yeah, yeah, do you look like you were like com account for college saving or you know, compound that ten thousand dollars over eighteen years. Yeah, do you want to your college or do you want

to watch? Do you work at Bloomberg? Alright, so we know you're a watch lover. We talked about that. Um, you love Scotch too. Yeah, I'm I'm okay on Scotch. Um, but I am not an expert. And we have this contributor Brad jaff Jaffee, who um is a complete expert. And we do have a story this week about how you know, the sort of conventional wisdom amount in whiskey is that older is better, and certainly older is more expensive, but it doesn't matter how good it is if you

can never get it. So if a boy crattle of whiskey is a hundred thousand dollars um, like this eighty year old single mark from Glen Glen Levitt that we mentioned, you're not going to you can't afford it, You're not going to get it. There's only like a hundred bottles of it, So what else can you drink? And Brad has tasted all of these incredible old ones and then he knows the market well enough to be like, hey, if you want something that tastes like this, you can

try that. So, for example, if you can't get the Glen Drone Aged fifty years, which is about dollars a bottle, you can buy the Glen Drony Master Vintage Vintage, which is about seven hundred dollars, which is uh, you know, still expensive, but not nearly as expensive as the priceervers. Okay, so what about some other whiskies on here? And I keep going down because you get to bourbon and that's

kind of what I'm into, and I see Mixtor's on here. Um, what about bourbon when it comes to the relationship between age and quality. Yeah, so you know you probab rebab we are an expert on this, but bourbon Um. You don't tend to see really long age dates on bourbon bottles because it's aged in oak, and so that can just be that can really like overpower the flavor eventually and make it just very saccharin. It has to be

aged and charred oak barrels. Um. So you know, there's only a few bottles that are actually like, uh sort of worth going for the aged um the age statement, and Mictur's twenty year is one of them. I'm into it. I love. I'm more of a I'm more of a bourbon person. Carol me too. I have to say I grow my dad would make whiskey sours for us even as kids like they would be really deluded. Lots of oranges and cherries, but a lot of fun exactly. Um. Hey,

So last week let's switch gears a little bit. Um. James Charmy had a great piece about America's a lade homes fifty million and up. This week he's focused on a particular room inside the house. It's the kitchen, which we all kind of rediscovered during the pandemic. And if if you've been following u sort of media trends on design, there's been a lot of talk about invisible kitchens, which

our kitchens where everything is hidden away. There's no hardware on the cabinets, you don't know where you don't know where the fridge is, you don't know where the trash is, you don't know where the just wasasher is, which is not my style. And increasingly buyers of real estate are saying, you know, I actually have to use this kitchen, and it looks amazing if it's hidden away, But then I had to take out the toaster, and then there's the

toaster and it's like ruins the um. And so you know, we looked at some kitchens that are more open, where you have glass pained cabinets and you can see where the fridge is, and they've got beautiful colors, and some brokers and the Hampton's and in other places you're saying, you know, these are so unusual that they actually stick out and they're seen as an asset. Okay, it's all

fun and games. You buy that fifty million dollar home, you want to remodel the kitchen, and then you see that you cannot get what you want because of supply chain issues still an issue in the kitchen, absolutely, which is why maybe you don't get that same white marble that everybody has um and that caesar Stone. You get

something a little more colorful and weird. Seed. I thought you were going to say, all right, you get the fifty million dollar home, you get the watch, you get the Scotch, and you go, I'm just gonna say the open kitchen, and then you get the orbs. What are the orbs? Okay, So this week, for the one we're making Chris do it. He didn't want to do it is uh, you know, you look at a couch in a house, often they'll have a little accent pillow. Usually

those pillows are square, sometimes rectangular. You know, it's very satisfying to do that karate chop on the top to make them all poofy. But Jim does it all the time to his catchy talks about all the time. But

Rlow climbs over it. Yeah, no, not at all. This week we uh, we focus on circular couch pillows, so there is uh there these orb pillows from this it's a collaboration between these two Mexican brands, Waraches and Casa Aurita, And they're these really fuzzy multicolored balls that really jump out and they make a couch look a lot more fun and in testing, uh, they were very popular among toddlers and puppies. I was just going to say, I have a puppy, and I know my puppy would love it.

All right, Chris, we made you do it. Thank you for doing. Thank you going and doing the orbs of course. Bloomberg Pursuits editor Chris Rouser joining us check out more great stuff from the Pursuit section in this week's issue. All right. That wraps up the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Thanks for joining us. I'm Carol Masser. Be sure to tune into Bloomberg Business Week Monday through Friday. It starts at two pm Wall Street

Time on Bloomberg Radio. You can also watch our daily broadcast on YouTube. Just search Bloomberg Global News and check out our Bloomberg Business Week podcast. You can find it at Bloomberg dot com, Apple, or wherever you get your podcast. Blomberg Business Week is available on newstands now at Bloomberg dot com and on the Bloomberg Terminal, and you can also see me on Bloomberg Quicktake available at Bloomberg dot com, slash qt, and streaming platforms like Roku, Apple TV, Samsung

TV and more. Have a great weekend. Alright, So you got the fifty million dollar house, you got the expensive watch, You've got the whiskey, the kitchen. Yeah, and then the or pillow. I think I'll start with the orb pillows. They're kind of like more in my ice. Strange. It seemed like an all right, I'm there to have a good weekend everyone. This is Boomberg m