“You are seeing two big companies take very different approaches,” said Stephanie Wissink, a managing director at Jefferies. “Mattel is a manufacturer that needs to fill factories, but they also are cognizant of the momentum of the platform. Hasbro is going the other way in that they are narrowing their licensing portfolio and focusing on fewer, bigger things. It’s more a franchise management model that’s less opportunistic, while Mattel is still very opportunistic [given that it has factories].”
“Mattel and Hasbro Change Their Games,” Licensing international, April 29, 2022
Hong Kong’s exports plunged in March by the most since January 2020 as Covid restrictions in China weighed on the flow of goods. Exports fell 8.9% last month from a year earlier, the Census and Statistics Department said Thursday. Economists had expected an expansion of 2.5%. Imports dropped 6% last month , the most since June 2020, also defying economist expectations of a 4% increase.
Hong Kong Has Surprise Export Drop as China Locks Down,” bloomberg, april 28, 2022
In a laboratory study and a field experiment across five countries (in Europe, the Middle East and South Asia), we show that videoconferencing inhibits the production of creative ideas.
Virtual communication curbs creative idea generationN,” Melanie S. Brucks and Jonathan Lavav, Nature, April 27, 2022
Figures from the Institute for Supply Management on Monday showed it’s taking an average 100 days to receive production materials, the longest in records dating back to 1987 A purchasing manager at a manufacturing firm said the shutdowns in China are causing concern about supplies into the early part of the third quarter.
Storm of Supply-Chain Disorder Worsens for U.S. Manufacturers, Bloomberg, may 3, 2022
Yesterday Maersk announced that schedules for several vessels on transpacific routes will slide by one week, citing a network that “continues to accumulate delays due to terminal congestions and vessel incidents.” RBC Capital Markets strategist Michael Tran sums it up in a new report: “Many market participants mistakenly thought that supply chains would be untangled by now. But global port congestion is worsening and becoming increasingly widespread.”
Storm of Supply-Chain Disorder Worsens for U.S. Manufacturers, Bloomberg, may 3, 2022
