 |
|
|
|||||
Starbucks will end the year with fewer stores and fewer employees. But the brand maintains that its all part of a greater turnaround still in the mix. Today, the company announced that its North American store locations will be reduced by 1% for fiscal 2025landing the coffee chain at 18,300 stores total. And it will be eliminating 900 jobs outside of its coffee houses (in other words, corporate and other functions). The company claims it will attempt to place affected baristas into new stores, but Starbucks says, “For those we cant immediately place, were focused on partner care including comprehensive severance packages. We also hope to welcome many of these partners back to Starbucks in the future as new coffeehouses open and the number of partners in each location grows. CEO Brian Niccol has been at the helm for a year now, where hes been unable to break a six-quarter streak of same-store sales declines. Hes promised a Back to Starbucks turnaround centered on better store design, operations, and customer experience. But as he faces the scrutiny of an impatient Wall Street, the former Chipotle chief appears to be reallocating spending to drive the companys growth while offsetting overhead. Closures today; growth tomorrow A closer examination of the details around this restructuring spot a somewhat finer narrative than sheer cost-cuttingand Starbucks insists that Niccols aggressive growth plan, in which hell add to store count in 2026 and imagines reaching 100,000 stores globally one day, is still intact. Speaking just last week at the Fast Company Innovation Festival, he promised to add hundreds of thousands of seats back to Starbucks stores. The company will have actually closed hundreds of stores over the course of 2025, but its been opening enough new stores to offset the figure significantly for this final announced tally. In a public letter published to the Starbucks website on Thursday, Niccol argues that its the sort of fine tuning required to improve the brand. Our goal is for every coffeehouse to deliver a warm and welcoming space with a great atmosphere and a seat for every occasion, he wrote. During the review, we identified coffeehouses where were unable to create the physical environment our customers and partners expect, or where we dont see a path to financial performance, and these locations will be closed. When asked if store closures were disproportionately focused on union locations, Starbucks told Fast Company that union represented status was not a factor in the decision. In any case, the larger restructuring does support Niccols greater thesisthat in offering higher touchpoint service, it will continue to raise the bar of expectations from its stores and employees. As Niccol mentioned during Q3 earnings, We plan to complete an evaluation of our North American portfolio by the end of this fiscal year to ensure we have the right coffeehouses in the right locations to drive profitability and deliver the Starbucks experience. So now that this is done . . . can we finally get back to Starbucks?
Category:
E-Commerce
The H&M group is entering the fall season with style. On Wednesday, September 24, the retailer released its third-quarter earnings and reported an operating profit of 4.9 billion Swedish krona ($521 million). The H&M group owns brands including H&M, COS, Monki, and Arket. Its operating profit marked a 40% increase year-over-year (YOY) and beat analysts predicted 3.7 billion Swedish krona ($393 million), according to consensus estimates cited by CNBC. The figures also marked consecutive quarterly successes for the H&M group, which also beat estimated operating profits in quarter-two. However, the H&M group now predicts that 2025s quarter-four will yield less positive results due to the increased impact of tariffs. Stock price rises despite tariff warning Despite the concerning forecast, investors responded positively to H&M groups current earnings. Trading on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, the companys share price (STO:HM-B) jumped 10% through after-hours and into premarket trading Thursday morning. Other factors could have contributed to the boost in share prices. The H&M group reported that sales in local currencies had increased by 2% during the quarter. However, the company notably reduced its store count over the previous nine months. As of August 31, the H&M group had 4,118 stores, compared to 4,298 at the same point last year. The company closed 135, or 4%, of its store locations over the first nine months of the fiscal year, 48 in quarter-three alone. A majority of the closures were H&M and Monki stores in Europe, Asia, Oceania, and Africa. Only five stores shut down throughout North and South America. These closures dont necessarily point to a planned consolidation. The company pointed to a newly opened store, its first in Brazil, as being well received.
Category:
E-Commerce
There’s no clearer sign of animes cultural ascendance than the box office haul of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle. The film, which hit U.S. theaters two weeks ago, has pulled in more than $555 million globally, including more than $104 million in North America, making it a bonafide hit for Sony Pictures, which distributed it outside of Japan through its anime streaming arm, Crunchyroll. The movie’s success reflects audiences’ growing interest in anime. A survey from market research firm Dentsu found that, 31% of people worldwide said they consumed anime at least weekly, with a full 50% of Gen Z reporting they watch it. That’s translated into a boom in Crunchyroll subscriptions. The anime streaming service, which is home to more than 2,000 titles (including Demon Slayer), counted 17 million paid subscribers worldwide in May 2025more than triple the number it had in 2021. [Screenshot: courtesy Crunchyroll] Crunchyroll will soon offer those subscribers a way to go even deeper on the source material of some of their favorite shows, with the debut a manga reader app. The company shared a first look exclusively with Fast Company. Set to launch October 9 on mobile and October 15 on web in the United States and Canada, Crunchyroll Manga will debut with hundreds of titles, including the manga behind some of Crunchyrolls top series, including Jujutsu Kaisen, Kaiju No. 8, and Apothecary Diaries. For subscribers to Crunchyrolls $15.99-per-month Ultimate tier, access to Crunchyroll Manga will be free. It will be available as a $3.50 add-on for the $11.99 Mega Fan tier, and a $4 add-on to the $7.99 Fan tier. Its a feature that users have been asking for, says chief content officer Asa Suehira. Crunchyroll has been doing a lot of surveys over the past few years and digital manga has always been the most desired feature on our platform, he says. This is compared to shorter content, video games, music, or even discounts or credits toward merchandise. [Screenshot: courtesy Crunchyroll] Building a bridge between anime and manga From a user perspective, Crunchyroll Manga is designed to function much like the companys flagship streaming app, with important connections between the two. If a title in the manga app has a corresponding anime series on Crunchyroll, users can choose to start watching the show straight from the manga app. Their device will simply switch to the streaming app if its installed. Similarly, if a Crunchyroll anime series has a corresponding manga, viewers will have the option of clicking over to start reading it. Theres data saying that 40% of manga readers discover manga through anime, Suehira says. We want to create a new habit of discovery through manga, and being able to watch the anime as well. Crunchyroll has been clever about how it entices anime fans who might discover the genre through other streaming services. Notably, it will license shows like Jujutsu Kaisen to Netflix, but exclusively stream the latest season on its platform. Crunchyroll Manga offers an opportunity for it to replicate that approach in reverse. The service will include manga volumes for series that exclusively stream elsewhere, including Delicious in Dungeon and The Summer Hikaru Diedtwo anime adaptations that Netflix exclusively distributes. Fans of those series will have sign up for Crunchyroll if they they want to read the manga. The manga and anime apps will also be linked by user profiles. Any updates made to a profiles content restrictions in one will be be mirrored in the other. The main appeal, though, is the amount of manga fans will be able to access. Suehira says that by partnering with Link-u, which has developed digital manga infrastructure in Japan, we were able to work more closely with different publishers. [Screenshot: courtesy Crunchyroll] Making publishers happy Crunchyroll Manga is actually the second time the company has offered manga. A previous offering shut down in 2023. Suehira says part of that platforms downfall was because Crunchyrolls licensing agreement with manga publishers limited how much users could read. It also limited the opportunities for us to work with the publishers, Suehira says. Crunchyroll Manga will launch with a library of titles from publishers like Viz Media, AlphaPolis, and Square Enix. Crunchyroll says additional publishers will be added in the coming months, including Shueisha, which publishes the Demon Slayer manga. Part of what has gotten these companies on board, Suehira says, is Crunchyroll Mangas use of a revenue-sharing model that compensates publishers based on user engagement, similar to how the anime platform pays studios. Crunchyroll Manga also offers a legitimate way for burgeoning anime fans to read source material. Suehira says 15 of the top 20 internet piracy sites include anime and manga, and that manga represents 70% of global publishing pracy. We want [Crunchyroll Manga] to be a solution to the privacy market and really contribute to the ecosystem in Japan, Suehira says, adding that the app includes features the prevent screenshots and screen recording. Part of working with publishers means tracking a titles popularity, which can inform payments, but also potentially predict a future hit adaptation. [Publishers] want to understand how the crowd is reacting to certain manga or an IP, he says. Data on consumption and fan reactions are things we could work together with our partners in Japan to expand the opportunitywhether thats turning into an anime or selling merchandise.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||