This is what the flucks. I'm Brett and I'm Justin and it's Wednesday, the twenty first of January.
Get this, juzzy boy. The number of Australian businesses that fell into insolvency hit a record high in the past six months to nearly seven five hundred businesses. And that's a forty seven percent increase on the six months friar. Not a record that we want to be celebrating.
Certainly not Floxam. We all start the new year with ambitious resolutions, but did you know that the majority of Ossie's have already given up their resolutions by debuty Now in the Flucks Academy this month, we've partnered with up to launch a New Year, New financially Savvy you. It will help you set financial goals for twenty twenty five and actually help you hit them as well. So make sure to download the blucks app and check out the Academy this month.
Three mesmerizing stories Today, Juzzy boy, let's do it for our first. West Farmers has announced it will be closing its e commerce marketplace Catch after struggling with competition from Timu and Amazon.
Yikes, and only a few years ago. West Farmers are talking about Catches being the best thing since last Bread, so tell me more. Well.
Catch launched back in two thousand and six as Catch of the Day, which was a daily deal site with one deal every single day.
You want a random one terribied hard drive for seventy five percent off or about a suitcase eight percent off, You've only got twenty four hours to buy it, and Judsey bought.
By twenty ten. Catch grew to become Australia's most visited online shopping site, and.
In twenty twenty the Catch founders sold the business to West Farmers the two hundred and thirty million dollars and it's fair to say this was looking like a pretty good deal during COVID YEP. Shortly after the acquisition, Catches sales jump by nearly seventy percent.
But as life returned to normal post COVID, so did choppers, and Catches sales.
In fact be man In the past year, Catches P and L statement has got hit harder than a clearance rack on boxing day cost ninety six million dollars.
So now West Farmers has announced it will close down Catch to stem the bleeding.
They reckon Catch just can't compete with your t moos, your sheins, and your Amazon's anymore.
Mainly because Catch has lost its unique value proposition.
So what is the key learning here?
Big value proposition or UVP is critical for any business to stand out in a crowded market.
It gives customers a reason to choose your business over competitors and does.
Wait, would you lose your UVP, You risk losing your spot in the market altogether.
You see b man. Catch thrived by focusing on daily deals and big discounts.
But after its acquisition, West Farmers evolved Catch into a broad e commerce retailer, which actually diluted what made Catch unique.
And be man. Without its differentiator, Catch found itself competing on price against ultra low cost retailers like TMU and shee in, where Cash just could not win. And on the other side, it competed on convenience and shipping speed
against Amazon, where it also just could not compete. So it's no surprise the Catches revenue dropped from three hundred and sixty four mil in twenty twenty to just two hundred and twenty seven mel in twenty twenty four, and now it's all over red Rover For our second story, Donald Trump and his wife Milania have both launched crypto coins just before his inauguration, and these crypto coins now form the majority of their wealth.
So you're telling me millennia made billions overnight. Just boy, smells fishier than a Mari Lago buffet if he OUs me, But I want to hear more. Go on.
So we know that on jan twenty eeth US time, Donald Trump was officially sworn in as the forty seventh presidente of the US.
But it wasn't the inauguration that had crypto bro's frothing last Friday, Jazzy boy, it was a Trump tweet.
Yeah. Donald Trump tweeted that he'd released a new crypto coin called Trump and it was the only coin that was actually endorsed by the preys.
And get this one. The value of Trump's meme coin soared higher than his hair on a breezy, breezy evening.
We're talking his coin jump to a market value of more than seventy two billion US dollars in just forty eight hours, and that meant that Trump's personal wealth from the coin was more than fifty six billion US dollars on paper, but then on Sunday night, Trump's wife Milania got in on the fund with her own crypto coin called Milannia. This all feels a little bit like a reality TV show crossed with some meme coin mania. You are most certainly not wrong.
Ahu so what is the key learning here?
Meme coins are cryptocurrencies that originate from an Internet meme.
They're often just jokes or cultural references that are built to ride the wave off Internet trends.
And of course often these men coins have no inherent value or utility.
In other words, these coins don't solve problems, that don't offer services, and there is no specific technology now. For example, the Millennia website makes it very clear that the Millennia coin is not an investment. They call the coin digital artwork.
And be man. Recently, we've seen some men coins saw and crashed for a whole heap of people and movements.
Well, there was the hawk coin for Hawk to a Girl, which jumped to twelve and a half million bucks and then crashed in a day.
What about Peppy the Frog, which which has a coin called Peppy which is literally just a frog wheth five hundred million US dollars.
But as Millennia's website wisely suggests you should never invest more than you can afford to lose, which is.
Probably what's going to happen. For our third and final story. Sports Bet, the online gambling behemoth, is facing a class action. Arts or betters have lost millions of dollars on in game live bets.
Not many good things ever start with class action lawsuit. Juzzy boys, so go on.
Says sports Bet, as the name suggests, a sports betting company that was actually launched back in Darwin in nineteen ninety three. Now since then it's grown rapidly through its rogue and incessant TV and social media and in fact be man. Sports Bet is now in the top three betting companies in Australia with Tab Corp and the owners of Ladbrokes and Nets.
But now sports Bet is facing a class action from its customers.
Yeah you see, b man. It's currently illegal to bet on sports matches when that match is live.
Except Jusie boy if the bet is made entirely on the telephone. So sports Bet created a kind of loophole which enabled bets to be created on the app but confirmed via the phone. But now the class action is seeking a refund for everyone who lost money on InPlay bets over the past six years and.
Be man, this could really hit sports BET's finances as well as their reputation.
Big coll So what is the key learning here?
There's always an ongoing cat and mouse game between regulators and innovators, especially in fast evolving industries, and in this case, sports Bet introduced an in app workaround to make bets seem compliant. But the class action claims they were just skirting the law and it ain't legal at all, and does it? Boy?
Sports bet isn't the first to roll the dice with legal gray zones.
Uber bent the rules when they disrupted the taxi industry, and airbb rewrote the playbook for short term rentals.
But this ain't sports BET's first running with the law, is it.
It is not at all? I remember back in twenty twenty two when sports was fine two and a half million bucks for spamming its customers with emails as well.
So if this class action is successful, the jig it may be.
Up fox Am. If you haven't set your year's resolutions, in particular your finance resolutions, there is only one place to do it. It is directly in the Flex App in our Academy. This month, we partnered with after Launch, New Year, New Financially Savvy you help you kick off the year on a high. To make sure to download the Flex App and check out the Flex Academy.
Thanks for listening and we'll see you on Friday