By Sean Lange February is the unsung month for celebrations. What it lacks in national holidays evoking season’s greetings or summer grill-outs, it makes up for with events that honor everything from romance to superstition; from sport, to history, to religion. It packs all of these tributes into the fewest days of any month of the year. The revelry in February regularly calls attention to an industry that had three companies break into Investor Business Daily’s list of the top twenty “Big Cap” companies to invest in during the new year: the beverage sector. Ranked among powerhouse companies like Alphabet, Caterpillar, and Facebook were Monster (NASDAQ: MNST), Constellation Brands (NYSE: STZ), and Brown Forman (NYSE: BFB), suggesting success on tap in 2018 for the makers and distributors of beer, wine, energy drinks, espressos, spirits, and soda. While the second month of the year doesn’t cater to the volume sales and peak quarterly earnings for beverage companies that June, July, or August do, or serve as the prosperous period for product testing like the months of November and December, the February calendar page doubles as extensive offering of opportunities to gain bottled brand loyalty. Especially, the Winter Olympics, running in 2018 from February 8th to the 24th in PyeongChang, South Korea, are quadrennial publicity showcases for adventure lifestyle-fueling beverage brands, like private label Red Bull and public corporation Monster Energy. Coming on the heels of the Winter X-Games each January in Aspen, Colorado, the Olympics are now inclusive of maximum air-coveting events. Competitors endorsed by Monster at the 2018 Games included 17-year-old American snowboarder and Women’s Halfpipe gold medalist Chloe Kim, and American skier David Wise, who took the gold medal in the Men’s Halfpipe. Monster, which markets highly caffeinated, “alternative energy” juices and sodas to extreme athletes, has watched its stock go up 66% year to date; and has seen its fluorescent logo brandished repeatedly to the average 22.3 million viewers of NBC’s Olympics broadcasts each night the past two weeks. Surprisingly, energy drinks aren’t the only beverages that have received significant television time during the PyeongChang Games. Watchers of multiple Olympics airings have no doubt seen the popular commercial run by Team USA sponsor Milk Life, the program formerly known by its tagline “Got Milk?”. The ad features U.S. halfpipe skier Maddie Bowman, and promotes how milk’s nutrients power her elite training. Alternatively, the dairy-industry advocacy may be more valuable for consumption on a different holiday. While not selling milk as a standalone beverage, Hershey [NYSE: HSY] uses it as an integral ingredient in its signature product and in its February sales success. The legendary candy maker prides itself on sourcing all of the dairy for its milk chocolate from farms within 100 miles of its Pennsylvania headquarters; and sales of its famous Bars, Kisses, and Reese’s Cups no doubt contributed to the record $19.6 billion spent by U.S. consumers on candy this Valentine’s Day. Hershey stock trades consistently around $100 and is projected for $3.66 EPS this year. On the other hand, Coca-Cola [NYSE: KO] made the most of February by spending almost $20 million, purchasing two ads across 90 seconds of air time during the Super Bowl LII broadcast. The brand has been a stalwart of Super Bowl commercial breaks for the past 12 years, having run highly anticipated ads that have customarily featured its polar bear mascots. The airtime gives Coca-Cola the chance to promote itself as an American brand, at a time where soda’s popularity is fizzing out. The maker of its namesake cola, Sprite, and Powerade recently cheered beats on quarterly revenues and EPS (at $7.51 billion and $0.39 cents) for the fiscal period ending this past January, in spite of slumping sales. President’s Day, celebrated on February 19th, might have provided another reason to look to the beverage sector -- to honor the nation’s forefathers. In particular, Thomas Jefferson is regarded as “America’s first wine connoisseur” by some U.S. historians, who recount that the fifth president once spent $7,500 in 1785 to meticulously import a cache of Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Rhone directly from France -- an expense that amounts to over $186,000 in 2018 currency. In homage to Jefferson, beverage distributor Constellation Brands saw its revenue grow 12% year-over-year in 2017 on the strength of distributing brands like Ruffino wines from Italy, Corona beer from Mexico, and Svedka vodka from Sweden. Earnings for the company, which are forecasted for 2018 at $8.53 per share on its current share price of $216, are projected to grow an average of 26% for each of the next three years. On the metaphorical end of the things, it may seem like Groundhog’s Day for Snapple: sold to Cadbury-Schweppes in 2000 and spun into its Dr. Pepper-Snapple division in 2008, the maker of tea and juice drinks will be moved again, to under the Keurig-Green Mountain [NASDAQ: GMCR] title, in the largest beverage acquisition in history. The deal, announced on February 1st, will create an $11 billion drink juggernaut, with revenues coming from coffee pod and grinds, and the Dr. Pepper, Snapple, Sunkist, and 7Up brands. Holiday imagery is also fitting for National Beverage Corporation [NASDAQ: FIZZ], which has grew its revenue 20% to $244 million in past quarter. The maker of LaCroix seltzer flaunts a purple and gold logo, reminiscent of the colors Mardi Gras, the Christianity-based celebrations that concluded with Ash Wednesday last week. Then, Brown Forman, the owner of brands like Jack Daniel’s whiskey and Herradura Tequila, has used its recent success -- its shares are up over 40% year-to-date, and it beat EPS and revenue expectations by 23% and 10%, respectively, in the previous quarter -- to boost many of its projections. The hard liquor-centric company has boosted 2018 earnings guidance from consensus $1.85 per share to a range of $1.90 to $1.98, and projects an average of over $900 million in net sales each quarter. On February 7th, the company also announced a 4:1 stock split in the form of a stock dividend, handing out one Class B share for every four shares of either Class A or Class B owned. Its stockholders are set to receive the additional shares on February 28th; and the timing couldn’t be more appropriate. February, too, carrying out its celebration, sometimes adds an extra day for its four weeks.
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By Paul MulhollandBy Siddharth Kara’s conservative estimate, there are 31.2 million slaves in the world today. In his third and most comprehensive book on slavery, Modern Slavery, Kara describes how and where commerce in human beings is able to survive, and thrive. Kara has interviewed over 5,000 slaves, and many of the slaveholders and middle-men that make the slave trade possible. The book is filled with stories of angry and suspicious managers and recruiters and a number of risky situations the author found himself in. But it also contains the words of the slaves themselves that describe the appalling conditions of enslavement. The most vulnerable of the world are the ones that are targeted for enslavement: the poor, refugees, foreign migrants, racial and caste minorities. The ease of modern transport and social apathy make slaves a relatively low-risk option in some areas, and can bring stupefying profit margins. Bonded labor is the most common form of slavery. Poor people are offered transit to wealthier countries to work for higher wages, often illegally. The cost of transit is borrowed by the worker and is theoretically to be paid off with his labor. They are then paid far less than promised, and work in worse conditions. They have no choice but to work off the debt because it is often enforced with violence against them and their families back home: cartels and mafias kill them, or local shamans curse them and they become outcasts. They have no access to modern capital markets to secure a reasonable loan, or to legal retribution, being outside the law themselves. The United States still has slaves in its agricultural sector. Many illegal immigrants work off debts in perpetuity, and exist outside of the law. Those who come legally are also enslaved, surprisingly. The H-2A visa used by many migrant workers in agriculture only allows them to stay for one year, making them illegal when a debt forces them to stay past that time; and only allows them to work for one employer, meaning they cannot switch when they are being underpaid without risking deportation. The suffering that Kara describes is astonishing. From Thai fishermen being shot and thrown overboard for being injured and unable to work, to girls that are lied to and sold into sex slavery until they die young of STDs, there is no limit to the cruelty that profit-motives will drive humans to, especially towards the vulnerable. Many will find Kara’s work useful, and anyone will find it enlightening and shocking. His work is filled with history, economics, cultural studies and interesting journalistic methods. There are few supply-lines in global commerce that are not tainted by the dehumanizing and unpaid toil of those who have no other option. By Vivian Louie H&M’s green hoodie has added fuel to the fire, the worldwide discussion on the issue of modern racism, regarding how the fashion industry and its consumers have become tone-deaf to cultural and social nuances. This green hoodie, modeled by a black child, bearing the words “coolest monkey in the jungle,” and debuted on H&M’s European website on January 7th, has faced an overwhelmingly negative response from the public. H&M is a global brand that has a huge following. Its products can quickly become the centerpoint of debates and discussions regarding societal issues.
Many celebrities have spoken out against H&M for the green hoodie, with some of them going as far as cutting ties with H&M. Popular musical act The Weeknd (AKA Romelu Lukaku) disavowed H&M in a Twitter post made on January 8th, stating that he was “deeply offended” by the hoodie. The singer had collaborated with H&M early in 2017 on its Spring Icons campaign, followed by a fall collection in September. Another musician, rapper G-Eazy, spoke out in a statement on Instagram, sharing that he had decided to end his partnership with H&M. G-Eazy and H&M had collaborated on a menswear collection that would have hit stores on March 1st. More seriously, numerous H&M stores in South Africa were ransacked on January 13th by followers of the Economic Freedom Fighters, a revolutionary socialist political party also known as the EFF, who were angered by the racist insinuation of the garment. Videos of the angry protesters trashing the outlets in the capital cities of Capetown and Johannesburg were quickly circulated on major European news networks. H&M stores in the city of Durban were temporarily closed down following the incident. After the initial backlash, but still four days before the protests in South African stores, H&M issued an apology on its website, stating. “Our position is simple and unequivocal - we have got this wrong and we are deeply sorry.” But while spokespeople for the apparel company have conceded the criticisms, H&M officials have not yet lived up to the corporate social responsibility of promoting discussion and awareness of insensitivities related to culture and race. To this point, H&M’s only actions have been to take down the product on its European site and note that it will have the removed garments recycled. So how severe will the fallout ultimately be for the Swedish brand, and how long could it last? Time will tell, but with a massive oversight on a topic that is being discussed around the world, H&M’s negligence of racist content has only hurt its brand image. An ongoing list of celebrities and top customers have already condemned H&M; and it is only a matter of time without the company taking more constructive steps that its general consumer base will start backing away. In terms of recent profits, H&M had a rough past year with reported third quarter earnings in 2017 having fallen 20%. Now with this blunder, it might be harder for H&M to expect high earnings for the first quarter of 2018 as well. By Jared Kofsky Wawas planning new locations across the state, a North Jersey town is banning Airbnb, and a smoothie shop chain is expanding to Essex County. As the new year begins, two companies are hoping to attract more customers across New Jersey, and new developments are continuing to be proposed that could increase the population of some of the state’s cities and suburbs. Meanwhile, one community is planning to halt the sudden increase of new visitors within its borders. Here are some of the Garden State’s recent business headlines, as initially featured on JerseyDigs.com.
If you are a fan of one of the region’s most popular convenience store chains, you soon may not have to travel far to shop or eat at one of its locations. It was revealed recently that Delaware County, Pennsylvania-based Wawa is planning six new stores across Northern and Central New Jersey, all of which will include gas stations. The company is seeking to expand its presence in Morris, Union, Sussex, Middlesex, and Monmouth counties. One of the proposed locations is at the site of the former Pathmark supermarket in the Lake Hopatcong section of Jefferson Township while another is just 14 miles north along Route 15 at the site of the Chatterbox Drive-In in Frankford Township. Further south, new Wawas are planned for the site of several buildings along Morris Turnpike in Springfield and at the corner of Routes 1/9 and Park Avenue in Linden. Red Bank is also slated to gain a second Wawa since the company is seeking to open a location at the former Auto Exotica site at the corner of Route 35 and Newman Springs Road. Finally, just a few blocks away from Rutgers University's Livingston Campus, a Wawa is planned for the corner of Brunswick and Plainfield Avenues in Edison Township. There are no hotels in West New York, but in recent years, plenty of visitors to the region have found a way to stay overnight in this densely populated Hudson County community just across the Hudson River from the Upper West Side of Manhattan. However, those days are about to end. The West New York Board of Commissioners voted on January 17th to adopt an ordinance that will ban vacation rentals on platforms such as Airbnb and Homeaway of any dwelling unit or piece of furniture for 30 consecutive days or less. The ordinance states that these rentals "may jeopardize the community’s welfare and degrade the quality of life within the town" and that “the presence of such visitors within the town’s residential neighborhoods can sometimes disrupt the residential character of the neighborhoods and adversely impact the community.” Those who violate the ordinance can face at least $500 in fines and would have to reimburse the tenant for the cost of renting the space and the Town for investigating the infraction. At least 100 people will soon be living across the street from one of New Jersey’s oldest and largest correctional facilities. Pennrose Properties of Philadelphia will construct the Cedar Meadows Supportive Housing Apartments at 1426-1468 Rahway Avenue in Woodbridge Township's Avenel section. The 16-acre property is just across the street from the East Jersey State Prison and previously contained the New Jersey State Reformatory Staff Housing Complex for prison employees such as the warden. The new development is expected to include 100 rentals, community rooms, a library, a courtyard, and supportive services. The project is receiving $4.2 million in financing from the Superstorm Sandy Special Needs Housing Fund, and 25 of the units will be reserved for residents who are elderly or have a disability. Finally, while residents of Mercer County may regularly visit Tropical Smoothie Cafe since it operates locations in Hamilton and West Windsor, there are currently no locations in northern New Jersey. Now, a franchise will open at the corner of Route 10 and Eisenhower Parkway in Livingston in mid-March. The new store will be within a recently completed plaza called The Corner at Livingston Circle that also contains locations of Shake Shack and The Container Store. Tropical Smoothie Cafe is based in Atlanta and serves 33 flavors of smoothies, in addition to making lunch bowls and sandwiches. By Kaelyn DiGiamarino “So we should just give Putin & Assad & Trump a can of Pepsi & everything will be fine?” This Tweet serves as just one example of a fearless consumer who was unafraid to express his sarcastic discontent with a brand. Consumers understand when a brand’s image does not match the values set forth and as a result, are left confused and disappointed in the company. Crises in corporations largely affect consumers’ trust in the organization, and thus their loyalty to the brand itself. In early April, PepsiCo released a two-minute commercial spot featuring Kendall Jenner. It sparked immediate controversy because it appeared that the company was belittling the United States’ political differences. Pepsi pulled its commercial from YouTube within 24 hours of being published. The commercial begins with snapshots of a violinist, a photographer, and a crowd of protesters. Each character is frustrated, and ultimately joins together in the protest. The camera then reveals Kendall in the midst of a photo shoot, intently modeling and unfazed by the protesters passing by. It is not until the violinist walks by and nods his head to her that she decides to dismiss the photoshoot to join the march. The commercial shifts to a celebratory mood as Kendall immerses herself into the crowd and hands a Pepsi to a police officer, thus resolving the unspecified conflict. Criticism of the Pepsi commercial was wide-reaching, with an overall consumer opinion that it was tone-deaf, belittling, and ignorant. The commercial brought to the screen complex issues such as police brutality, LGBTQ+ rights, and ethnic, religious, and foreign community coexistence with an air of simplicity. Similar to how one can extend an olive branch as a symbol of peace, the Pepsi can passed from the hands of Kendall Jenner to the police officer initiated reconciliation between the parties. In that way, it appeared that Pepsi was offering its product as a quick fix to American differences. The Pepsi beverage has few distinguishable attributes from its cola competitors. Thus, its consumers’ purchasing behaviors are highly dependent on them choosing to identify with the Pepsi brand more than they identify with the competitor’s brand. As a brand, Pepsi tends to follow culture rather than lead it. Rather than curate content that becomes the reason people begin buzzing about a topic, Pepsi synthesizes preexisting pop culture icons into its content. Pepsi cast Kendall Jenner as the celebrity protagonist for its commercial. However, it is not the appearance of Kendall Jenner that brought criticism, but rather the appearance of a celebrity figure. The commercial addresses current political topics relevant to average American citizens. To convey a message that appeals to the average citizen, there needs to be an average person cast as the protagonist. Pepsi’s commercial portrays an image of a misrepresented population looking for their voices to be heard through protest. Adding a celebrity to the cast created a disconnect because Kendall Jenner is not underprivileged, and the resulting dissonance left consumers confused about the PepsiCo brand and decreased, rather than increased, brand identity and trust. This sense of tunnel vision resulted in the creation of content that produced intense backlash. Marketing Week conducted a poll of marketing professionals and found that 42% of marketers feel that their company brands fail to reflect a contemporary, racially-diverse, society in their marketing and advertising. This inability to produce culturally sensitive content could be a result of the disconnect between desired brand identity, and actual brand reputation. Pepsi missed the mark because it failed in seeing how its consumers actually perceived its brand. By Sean Lange Have the United States’ most powerful e-commerce site and the world’s most profitable physical retailer strayed from the sales strategies that they symbolize?
In July 2017, Amazon announced that it would be purchasing Whole Foods Market, the 431-store supermarket chain with the widest offering of organic groceries in the nation, for $13.7 billion. Previously, the company’s most popular services are delivered digitally, to much acclaim. In addition to its eponymous, all-encompassing “e-tail” site, Amazon streams original entertainment content via Amazon Studios, licenses data collection, analysis, and Cloud storage software through Amazon Web Services, and home-delivers groceries and meal kits to AmazonFresh subscribers. In the fall of 2016, Walmart spent $3.3 billion to purchase the Hoboken, NJ-based Jet.com, a phenom website for selling consumer goods and food supplies. Walmart, with over 11,500 brick-and-mortar locations worldwide, is the largest retailer and employer in the world, and topped the Fortune 500 rankings in 2016 with $486 billion in revenue. It also held 25% of the U.S. grocery market during that year. At the end of 2017, Amazon and Walmart are now suddenly the two most rapidly growing, disruptive companies in the United States, and have achieved that status by recognizing the supply chain benefits conferred by both physical and online destinations. With their respective expansions in retailing kitchen staples serving as a parable, Amazon and Walmart are sustaining their core competencies -- Amazon’s leading $138 billion in online revenue, and Walmart’s unmatched 11,000 global stores -- while pursuing a hybrid “clicks-and-mortar” strategy. The opportunity for the two dimensions of retail to complement each other was laid out on Black Friday 2017. On the most celebrated day of the year for physical retailers, the overall single-day U.S. sales record was shattered at over $3.05 billion. Amazon accounted for 50% of the $1.2 billion of that goal grossed in mobile transactions; while Walmart reported only a 1.6% decline in in-store foot traffic year-over-year, hardly cataclysmic in the context of the boom in online deals now offered on the same day. Such multi-dimensional consumerism is an important aspect of how both Amazon and Walmart have embraced their counterintuitive delves into brick-and-mortar sales and e-commerce sales, respectively. In November 2017, Amazon reported that all Whole Foods locations had been equipped with kiosks for the Amazon Echo and Echo Dot, home speakers which recommend Amazon-exclusive goods for 17% of all merchandise inquiries. For Amazon, Whole Foods is now a quintessential part of its supply chain, allowing customers to more frequently order and be delivered Amazon products. For Walmart, the e-commerce venture initiated by Jet.com enabled the epitome of its strategy towards differentiation. While traditionally known to serve low-income buyers in physical stores, Walmart announced in October 2017 that it would be partnering with Lord & Taylor, to exclusively sell the high-end apparel on its e-commerce website. Amazon and Walmart both have a clear mission in mind. Either retailer today defines success as becoming the global leader in overall sales, or being the automatic destination that every consumer will go to, any time, to buy any product. For Walmart, accomplishing this status means preserving its “everyday low prices” and family friendly image in its physical stores, while quickly and carefully developing its online platforms. For Amazon, world domination entails continuing its pattern of skyrocketing digital growth -- with sales expected to increase around 30% each year -- while transforming tactical brick-and-mortar outlets into influential components of its data-driven supply chain. This click-and-mortar formula has high potential for catalyzing growth in Walmart and Amazon -- and has prompted steps upward for the two iconic retailers, not to the side. By Kim Tang In early October, Dove released a three-second body wash ad showing a black woman changing her brown-colored shirt and “transforming” into a beige-shirted white woman. Although the next frame showed the white woman changing into an Asian woman, the company was slammed for the racial insensitivity in the first transition. Previously, Pepsi’s ad featuring Kendall Jenner was also a hot-button topic this past April. People were upset and frustrated at Pepsi’s shortsightedness with respect to the complex issues of police brutality and injustice. Dove is known to be a progressive brand that has succeeded in the past with socially diverse and empowering advertisements; so the fact that the company can widely “miss the mark” on what appears an obvious infraction is startling at the very least. However, while it is meaningful to highlight diversity in all forms of marketing, diversity in marketing shouldn’t just be celebrated for diversity’s sake. Rather, companies should first be promoting the inclusion of race, gender, and ethnicity within their own corporate cultures and employee constitutions. Striving to have a more inclusive workforce can help companies promote the ideals they set out to achieve, recognize obvious offenses in their advertising content, and consistently create genuine messages. With this in mind, it may be worthwhile to examine the corporate makeup of PepsiCo and Unilever (Dove’s parent company), using their 2016 annual reports. PepsiCo’s diversity statistics, per their 2016 annual report, were:
Comparatively, Unilever’s diversity statistics as of 2016 were:
Beyond statistics, the differences among the language used in each report underscore each company’s degree of emphasis. A quick keyword search in PepsiCo’s report shows that “diversity” appears three times; the same search in Unilever’s report yields twelve results, four times PepsiCo’s mark. Furthermore, Unilever’s discussion of diversity goes beyond just stating that they strive for it, and provides in-depth explanations and information about the steps the company is taking to be more diverse. It also includes a hyperlink to their Board Diversity policy. Significant stakeholder diversity is a reason why Dove may have succeeded with its past campaigns, which have focused on body positivity, diversity, and inspiring confidence in women. Comparatively, PepsiCo, while not entirely lacking diversity, does not seem to have the related initiative as a core component of its culture. Therefore, the oversight with the Kendall Jenner commercial appears less of an outlier. It is possible to create content without having a diverse staff, but the chances of these advertisements overlooking obvious infractions could be significantly higher. Proactive companies may have the more diverse opinions and viewpoints needed to be able to properly execute their advertisements. The process by which advertisements are created, critiqued, and released to the public is unclear, since in retrospect many of them feature underlying, and often blatant, racist and sexist content. Most likely, these oversights are a combination of lack of social awareness within the company, and a review panel for ads commissioned from outside agencies that lacks in race, gender, and political diversity. In any scenario, time could also be an issue. One thing that is important to remember is that companies can, and do, make mistakes. In today’s age where it is easy to get swept up in a mob mentality and echo chambers of social media, taking a step back is important. For instance, the Dove advertisement did have a third and final woman involved; and did not just depict a black woman being “cleansed” and becoming white-skinned. Yet, a common reaction was that there were only the first two women in the ad. Perspective and fact-checking is critical, especially in a time where information can be easily manipulated and spread, even if it is false. A week later, the actress in Dove’s ad even came out and stated that she felt that she is “not a victim” in this controversy. Did Dove fall below the equality standard it strives to achieve? Most likely, yes. This ad was not intentionally malicious, but nonetheless, the anger and disappointment from people are justified. But does this advertisement negate the other positive impact or diverse initiatives the company has been known for? The answer will vary depending on whom you ask; but ultimately, when deciding whether or not a brand is still worth loyalty and purchasing, it is important to consider not just one advertisement a company releases, but its entire corporate culture and brand history. Digging a little deeper before coming to a decision provides a clearer consumer perspective, and beyond that, provides for a more informed customer and citizen. By Sean Lange When Major League Baseball, its journalists, and hotel operations converge on a night in late January, it’s the culmination of a spring, summer, and fall worth of action — travel carousels, airline schedules, and lodge bookings — that never makes it to the ballpark, to the press box, or beyond the revolving doors of the Marriotts, Sheratons, and Hiltons in Miami, San Francisco, or Houston. It’s also the inaugural ceremony for a class bound for permanent enshrinement in a bucolic town, rather than a few-night stay in a buzzing city. The Baseball Writers’ Association of America, which awards the MLB’s major accolades for every season and votes on the new Hall of Fame classes, has held a black-tie banquet each January since 1923 to honor the chosen Cy Youngs, MVPs, Rookies of the Year, Managers of the Year, and to be the first celebration of the incoming members of Cooperstown. Ken Swarthout is the hospitality professional that serves as the director for the dinner, which has been held in the ballroom of Manhattan’s Midtown Hilton since the 1990s. At the onset, his job fittingly resembles stadium operations: assembling a roster of available players, contacting agents, publishing programs, running box office sales, and employing security. His next duties more closely mimic the gala disposition, and include ordering tuxedos and limousines, deciding guest seating, and approving the menu and assortments of beverages, and commissioning trophies and plaques. Throughout, Swarthout has the unique responsibility of tailoring the dinner experience to the profile and preferences of each MLB award winner, as well as of the past All-Stars that the BBWAA invites to the event to present the awards. Invitees from the past three years include names like Clayton Kershaw, Miguel Cabrera, Mike Trout, Tony LaRussa, Hank Aaron, and Willie Mays. Dinner guests have been able to mingle with New York greats like Jacob deGrom and Ron Darling, Don Mattingly and Mariano Rivera. Swarthout’s standing gives him insight into the private interests of these baseball legends, and this facet of his job is enviable: die-hard fans covet any opportunity to feel closer to their favorite players — a pursuit that precipitates human relations challenges. A crowd of enterprising sports collectors from the general public patrols the Hilton lobby for before and after the dinner, awaiting the appearance of baseball personalities with black pens, pristine baseballs, and hotel stationery. As the dinner’s promoter and the MLB’s ambassador, the director must keep both the public and the players equally satisfied. However, there have been recent public relations circumstances that were completely out of the dinner director’s control. The 2017 dinner fell on the day after President Trump’s inauguration; and the ensuing Women’s March in Manhattan on that Saturday afternoon poured 400,000 demonstrators down 42nd Street, which the NYPD had blocked off from vehicle access. The protest passed in proximity to the Hilton, with the rerouted traffic holding guests up, Swarthout had to delay the dinner for nearly three hours. Ironically, this scenario inspired some déjà vu: it was the second straight year where attendees on the day of the dinner could have walked flush in the middle of Midtown’s avenues, without care of being hit by a car or taxi cab. In 2016, a record-setting, 27-inch blizzard prevented guests staying even blocks away from the Hilton, like Hall of Fame-inducted catcher Mike Piazza, from trudging the snow-entombed sidewalks, and made hosting the dinner both a practical and political impossibility. “Basically, the Mayor of New York made the decision for us because he literally closed the city down,” explained Swarthout. “So neither the security, the waiters, nor anyone else could make it in.” By noon, ticket holders in-transit and guests aground at the Midtown were notified that the 2016 BBWAA Dinner had been cancelled. Nonetheless, a salvage effort came together when MLB Network discovered that one of their camera crewmen had made it on-site. “It was just a fluke that we decided to put it on in a smaller version to be televised,” Swarthout admitted. But more significantly, the substitute ceremony inspired an innovation for the dinner. “It really looked fine when they televised it, so we did that again this year, and we had like a mini version for [MLB Network] to provide an hourly broadcast show.” Baseball fans nationwide were offered a glimpse of the dinner proceedings, and the production received popular reviews. Undoubtedly, the BBWAA Awards Dinner has a propensity for socializing people from all realms of baseball. Swarthout, however, did acknowledge that this quality has evolved perceptibly over the decades. “In years gone-by with the Bob Feller’s, the Robin Roberts’s, and the Duke Snider’s, and the Pee Wee Reese’s, and the Stan Musial’s, you got to know them, you talked to them. It was a little different.” He noted that the award recipients today balance their workout schedules, interfacing with their agents, and paying more attention to their phones and social media accounts when they attend the dinner. More than ever, this leaves it up to Swarthout and the journalists to furnish the event with the reverent tone and historical minutiae that’s beloved in baseball. Among the most iconic of the dinner’s annual treasures is the Scorebook. Serving as both the evening’s program and the de facto yearbook for New York City baseball, the Scorebook features interviews with current players and executives, special articles from baseball columnists, promotions for NYC sports bars and youth athletic charities, stats of past award winners, and eulogies for recently passed-on legends. Each edition of the souvenir is emblazoned with a signature cover from Gotham Baseball magazine illustrator John Pennisi, whose 2016 design memorialized Yogi Berra and 2017 caricature celebrated the Cubs’ World Series championship. Many fans cherish baseball for this retrospection; but in reality, such romanticism is only part of what makes the National Pastime great. In 2017, the MLB flaunts a bevy of immensely talented players younger than 25 years old, a list that includes MVP shoo-ins like Jose Altuve, Mookie Betts, and Kris Bryant, without exiting the top of the alphabet. This winter, Altuve will be honored as the American League MVP from the World Series champion Houston Astros, returning to the Hilton for the dinner on January 27th, 2018. New York sports fan should mark down the date. The ceremony will be the first MLB-sanctioned event that unites Yankees’ Rookie of the Year Aaron Judge and National League MVP Giancarlo Stanton, whom the Yankees acquired in December from the Miami Marlins. Swarthout and the dinner staff will be prepared: at this point, it will be just another year with a storm coming to New York. By Jared Kofsky A new six-story apartment building will come to Jersey City and Newark could get a new 240-room hotel, while a South American country is donating an island it owns in south Jersey to the state government. Newark and Jersey City are continuing to see new businesses opening and new buildings being constructed, while an island in Camden County that is owned by a foreign government’s oil company will soon be open regularly to the public. Here are those stories and more in The Bull Bear & Lion’s latest roundup of business news in the Garden State, as initially reported on JerseyDigs.com. --- We now know more about what a Manhattan developer is planning to bring to the site of a Northern New Jersey baseball stadium. Lotus Equity Group purchased the former Bears and Eagles Riverfront Stadium property in Downtown Newark for $23.5 million last year from the Essex County Improvement Authority with the goal of developing a new neighborhood on the property. Legal notices that were released at the end of November reveal that Lotus is planning for the upcoming project to include 2,526 residential units, 48 live/work units, a hotel with 240 rooms, retail space covering 102,144 square feet, a performance space, office and commercial space spanning 2,216,820 square feet, and 2,923 parking spaces to accompany the existing Essex County Improvement Authority parking garage. The development would be constructed in partnership with the Practice for Architecture and Urbanism, Michael Green Architecture, TEN Arquitectos, and Minno & Wasko Architects and Planners. If approved by the Newark Central Planning Board, Lotus would also seek to develop part of the former Lincoln Hotel property just across the street from the stadium. Another Manhattan company is also preparing to develop in this region of the state. Titanium Realty Group is teaming up with WDesignè, River Drive Companies, and LWDMR Architects in order to construct a six-story all-residential development at 75-81 Jordan Avenue in Jersey City’s McGinley Square neighborhood. According to Titanium's founder and CEO Diego Hodara, 35 different studio, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom units will be available inside the building when it is completed. Fifteen parking spaces will also be included in the development, as will be a rooftop deck. Demolition is underway now to remove the existing three-family residential building and automotive garage that have stood on the premises for decades; according to Hodara, construction on the new building is expected to last 18 months. A few blocks away from Jordan Avenue, two neighborhood residents are in the process of opening a new café and ice cream shop called Crema. Federico Rodriguez and his wife Michele Boas will open the business in the brownstone at 695 Bergen Avenue in the space that had been occupied by Harry Street Coffee until that shop suddenly closed its doors over the summer. According to Rodriguez, seeing Harry Street Coffee close motivated him to bring a venue back to McGinley Square where neighborhood residents can gather and artists could display their work He wanted to focus on ice cream, in addition to coffee, because this part of the city does not have any independent ice cream parlors. That will no longer be the case when Crema opens in January, introducing 20 'high-end' flavors with it. Ninety miles to the southwest, plans are moving forward to convert an island that sits in the middle of the Delaware River between Camden County and Philadelphia into a public park and nature preserve. Petty’s Island in Pennsauken Township is currently owned by the Venezuelan government’s Citgo Petroleum Corporation since it had previously operated an oil terminal on the premises. However, Citgo is in the process of tearing down its remaining oil tanks on the property, and the Crowley Maritime Corporation terminal on the island will be permanently closed, effective January 1, 2018. In 2020, ownership of Petty's Island will officially be transferred to the State of New Jersey, and the New Jersey Natural Lands Trust will open a visitor and cultural center with views of Center City Philadelphia, along with hiking trails and other amenities, to the public. Currently, Citgo has partnered with New Jersey Audubon to offer tours of the island, which are free and open to the public, though advance registration is required. By Vivian Louie Today, technology and fashion have evolved from what they had been in the past decade. The upcoming generation of fashion lovers has a unique voice that demands many more different styles. With the growing dominance of online shopping, people have stopped visiting department stores in malls to buy their denim jeans and cotton sweaters. The hassle of waiting on long lines to ultimately find the item out of stock in-store doesn’t have to be dealt with when searching for the desired product on the retailer’s website and buying it there. As a result, the difference between shopping virtually and in store comes down to one key factor: convenience. With technology and fashion becoming a potent duo, many retailers are seeing that brick-and-mortar storefronts are not as popular as they once were. Many past mall anchors like Macy’s, JCPenney, Sears, and Payless Shoes are closing stores across the country due to lack of business. Some stores like Aeropostale, Delia’s, Wet Seal, and Aerosoles have already filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2016, and have shuttered numerous outlets in hopes of reconstructing their balance sheets for higher future earnings. So who is to be blamed for the “retail apocalypse” that has been occurring around the world and dramatically in the United States, the consumers or the retailers themselves? The answer is both. Customers are the sources of sales for retailers to stay profitable and commercially worthwhile. But a shopper will refuse to even step into the store to browse the clothes if they don’t match their tastes or budget. That trend is what is crushing businesses like JC Penney, Sears, or Kmart, which have failed to appeal to the style of the younger generations. Conversely, businesses like H&M and Forever21 have succeeded in capturing the hearts of this generation through their weekly updated offerings of new fashions. If other apparel retailers cannot design clothes to keep up with the flippant tastes of this market, they will not succeed in maintaining a powerful brand name or increasing their revenue. “As you know, in fashion, one day you’re in, and the next day you’re out,” is the renowned phrase that Heidi Klum repeats on the show Project Runway; and it definitely encapsulates the current “retail apocalypse.” The customer always knows best, which is why retailers have to make strategic changes now in order to avoid closing their doors in this competitive market. |