TheoDORE Roosevelt’s bull terrier once chased the French ambassador up a tree. Commander, President Joe Biden’s German shepherd, had to be rusticated after repeatedly biting Secret Service officers. Sir Gavin Williamson, a British politician, refused to remove a tarantula he kept in a glass tank from the office. He defended the presence of Cronus by insisting the “clean, ruthless killer” was “part of the team”. More
The convenience store, or konbini, is an institution of modern Japanese life. Open at all hours, it offers customers tasty food and household essentials, as well as the ability to pay bills and send parcels. The industry leader, 7-Eleven, perfected new products, such as takeaway onigiri, or rice balls, and eventually took over the American chain from which it sprang. But if Alimentation Couche-Tard (ACT), a Canadian retailer that operates the Circle K chain of shops, has its way, 7-Eleven will no longer be Japanese. More
Regular attendees at Burning Man, an annual week-long festival in the Nevada desert, normally scramble to buy tickets. This year they are scrambling to sell them. The gathering of hippies and billionaires, which begins on August 25th, has failed to sell out for the first time since 2010. Tickets with a face value of $575 are being flogged on the secondary market at less than half-price. More
When your columnist first started writing Schumpeter in early 2019, he had a romantic idea of travelling the world and sending “postcards” back from faraway places that chronicled trends in business, big and small. In his first few weeks, he reported from China, where a company was using automation to make fancy white shirts; Germany, where forest-dwellers were protesting against a coal mine; and Japan, where a female activist was making a ninja-like assault on corporate governance. All fun, but small-bore stuff. Readers, his editors advised him, turn to this column not for its generous travel budget but for its take on the main business stories of the day. So he pivoted, adopting what he called the Linda Evangelista approach. From then on, he declared, he would not get out of bed for companies worth less than $100bn. More
To become a millionaire, start with a billion dollars and launch an airline. Usually attributed to Richard Branson, a British entrepreneur, the line gets at the truth that the aviation business is capital-hungry and failure-prone. Still, that did not deter Rahul Bhatia, a travel agent, and Rakesh Gangwal, a former airline chief. They started as mere millionaires, and today are among the richest 500 people in the world, with a combined net worth of $13.3bn, according to Forbes, a compiler of lists. More
As he screeches around corners at wildly unsafe speeds, one of the designers of the Jidu Robocar 07 calmly talks your correspondent through how the electric vehicle (EV) works. An alluring feature is its entertainment system—on which he is competing in a race-car game (thankfully, the actual car is stationary). Many of the EV’s features are controlled by voice command and there are almost no buttons or knobs. It has autonomous-driving functions, a sporty design and, its maker claims, can travel 900km on a single charge that takes 12 minutes. When it goes on sale in early September, it is expected to cost just 220,000 yuan ($30,850). “It’s the future of driving,” the designer says, right as he smashes his virtual race car into a railing. More
Big food, it seems, has a sweet tooth. On August 14th Mars, a packaged-food giant best known for its chocolatey fare, announced it would gobble up Kellanova, maker of Pringles and Pop-Tarts, for $36bn. It is not the only company betting big on calorific goodies. Last November Smucker’s, a purveyor of jams and peanut butters, completed its $6bn acquisition of Hostess Brands, maker of Ho Hos and Twinkies. More
Tourism is back, at last. This year the number of trips abroad is expected to overtake levels reached in 2019. Spending by travellers, too, is projected to exceed what was shelled out in 2019, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council (wttc), a trade body. Cruising is afloat again. The return of mass tourism has sparked protests in Western hotspots such as Barcelona and Majorca. Talk to a hotelier or a travel agent, though, and the real action is further east. More
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