Category Archives: Tendências

Saúde, Tendências

Tunacol

Suponho que o reclame  do Tunacol na rádio vos apoquente tanto quanto a mim… Mas a qualidade de um produto não se correlaciona com a da sua campanha publicitária, no entanto… Por um lado acho piada ao produto porque parece saido de um projecto de alunos de DPQ… Já me propuseram fazer nutracêuticos das coisas mais estranhas, atum seria certamente um dos próximos… No fundo é o típico produto “me too”… Mas a estranheza de ser levado até ao lançamento surpreende pelo arrojo… Que as análises de mercado digam que o consumidor quer este tipo de produtos não tenho dúvidas… Que eles o comprem de facto em breve saberemos… Uma coisa me parece certa, ao contrário dos outros ****col dificilmente haverá consumidores a ingerir uma lata por dia como sugere a embalagem…

Tendências

Tendências 2 – O Luxo e a crise

A crise afecta, de forma nem sempre evidente, os padrões de consumo. Já falamos disso aqui no passado. Apesar (e/ou por causa) da crise o consumo de bens de luxo está em franco crescimento. Deixo aqui o artigo da Economist mas no Google aparecem muitos outros…

“Luxury goods

Bling is back

A surprising recovery in luxury goods

Oct 21st 2010

“IN THE dark days of the recession people didn’t want to show the bling,” says Alisa Moussaieff, owner and managing director of Moussaieff, a London jewellery shop. Some of her wealthy customers bought diamonds or other gems as an investment during the financial crisis, since paper assets seemed so dodgy at the time. Rather than flaunting their purchases before recession-pinched passers-by, however, they asked for plain white shopping bags. As the global economy mends, such restraint is wearing off. Yet even the luxury industry’s boosters did not expect such a cork-popping recovery.

On October 14th Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH), the world’s biggest luxury-goods company by sales, reported a 14% increase in sales in the first nine months of the year, after correcting for such factors as currency fluctuation. Burberry, a British clothing firm, also reported double-digit sales growth in the six months to the end of the September. On October 28th, PPR, a French retail and luxury group, is expected to report strong results.

“The strength of the recovery was a surprise,” says Claudia D’Arpizio, a luxury-goods expert in the Milan office of Bain & Company, a consultancy. Big brands such as Louis Vuitton and Hermès are the main winners. With their deep pockets, they were able to continue to open new shops and invest in the business during the crisis.

Luxury has always been a cyclical industry, but in the past decade it has soared and plunged like a well-dressed bungee-jumper. The early 2000s were grim: terrorist attacks in America, a global outbreak of SARS and the war in Iraq all tempered people’s appetites for international travel and frivolous purchases. From 2004 to 2007, however, luxury shoppers worked themselves into a frenzy of indulgence. Then, as the financial crisis bit, they stopped. Last year the global luxury market shrank by 8%. But the luxury recovery that began towards the end of 2009 has now gathered momentum. Bain predicts 10% growth for this year.

Pockets of confidence in America help. Luxury sales there slumped by 18% last year. This year shoppers are feeling less shy about showing off, and department stores are gleefully stocking up with pretty stuff for the holiday season.

The mood in China is even blingier. Luxury sales grew 20% even during the industry’s annus horribilis last year and are forecast to boom by an astounding 30% this year. In five years China, which already accounts for a tenth of global demand for luxury goods, is predicted to be the third-largest market for them.

The boom has caught some firms with their elegant trousers down. Despite nationwide strikes in France, Louis Vuitton, a peddler of posh handbags, does not have sufficient stock to cater to the sudden increase in demand. Anxious to save enough goodies for Christmas, the company is closing its flagship shop on the Champs-Elysées in Paris earlier each day and raising its prices in the euro zone.

Yet the good times for luxury firms will probably not last. Next year Bain predicts that growth will slow to 3-5%. The strength of the euro will hurt the top firms, which are disproportionately Italian or French and often lovingly hand-craft their products within the euro area. Tax increases in Europe will make the rich feel poorer and less inclined to splash out. Consumer confidence is crucial. If people feel glum, they don’t buy baubles.”

Sénior, Tendências

Tendências 1 – Demografia

Esta semana ficamos pela Economist. Nos útimos números apareceram uma série de artigos muito interessantes sobre tendências de consumo, nem todas evidentes. A primeira que vos deixo hoje tem a ver com a relação avós-bébés… Há cada vez mais dos primeiros e cada vez menos dos segundos… De que forma altera isto os padrões de consumo? Nem sempre é óbvio.. Leiam…

“Gymboree

Bain’s baby bet

A baby bust may be the best time to buy firms that sell kids’ stuff

Oct 14th 2010 | New York

 PRIVATE-EQUITY barons don’t usually go shopping for baby blankets and bibs. But on October 11th Bain Capital, a buy-out firm, announced that it would purchase the Gymboree Corporation for $1.8 billion. The deal is the largest buy-out so far this year in the beleaguered retail industry, according to Dealogic, a research firm. Why the interest?

Gymboree sells children’s clothes and operates centres where children can play noisy games on brightly coloured soft mats. It has performed reasonably well despite the recession: annual sales have stayed flat for the past two years, at around $1 billion. Children’s clothes are recession-resistant. Parents hate to see kids do without. Also, rugrats grow annoyingly fast, and often need new shoes.

But there is more to Bain’s bet than this. Peter Francese, a demographer at Ogilvy & Mather, an advertising agency, describes it as “a pure demographic play”. It is a counterintuitive one: the birth rate in America has dipped to its lowest point in at least a century. Young couples are putting off having babies because they doubt they can afford it.

But the chances are that they still want children. Once the economy improves, the people who put off parenthood will get down to it. Mr Francese projects that in 2014 there will be 4.4m births, a record high. “That’s a lot of demand for Gymboree’s products,” he says. What’s more, the women who give birth to these post-recession babies will be better educated than any previous generation of mothers, and slightly older too. Many will earn enough to splurge on pricey accoutrements for their offspring.

And don’t forget the grandparents. America’s overall population is expected to grow by less than 1% a year for the next few years, but the number of people aged 65 to 74 will grow at a rate of 5%. Boomer grandparents will spoil their children’s children as eagerly as they once spoiled themselves.

Gymboree will not be the only retailer to benefit. Firms that sell car seats, nappies, baby food, toys and cradles will all profit from a post-recession baby boomlet, if it occurs. If not, there are always emerging markets, such as Brazil. Gymboree already operates play and music centres in 30 countries outside America, and hopes to use them to raise brand awareness and flog some togs for tots. In April, Bain and TPG, another private-equity firm, bought a stake in Lilliput Kidswear, a children’s apparel company in India. With a booming population there, it’s unlikely they will have to suffer many growing pains.””

Água, Dispositivos, Ética, Tendências

Fios de prata

Mais uma notícia da Economist que tem tudo a ver com o desafio deste ano

“Clean water

Silver threads of life

A water filter that kills bacteria, rather than just removing them

Oct 21st 2010

 MORE than a billion people lack clean water—and in most cases the lack is just of cleanliness, rather than of the water itself. The result is disease, particularly diarrhoea. This kills millions of children a year and stunts the growth of millions more. Better water filters, then, could save many lives and improve many others, and Yi Cui of Stanford University thinks he has come up with one.

Traditional filters work by forcing water through pores to weed out bacteria. That needs power, as well as frequent changes of the filter element as the pores fill up with bugs. Dr Cui’s filter, though, does not screen the bacteria out. It kills them.

The filter element he and his team have designed is a mesh of tiny carbon cylinders, known as nanotubes, and silver wires laid on top of a thin strip of cotton cloth. Silver is well known to kill bacteria, so Dr Cui conjectured that forcing bugs to pass close to the metal without actually trapping them might lead to their destruction. He also suspected that running an electric current through the silver might help the process, because electrical fields have the ability to break down the membranes that surround bacterial cells. Though silver is a good conductor, carbon is cheaper, and the nanotubes provide the extra electrical conductivity needed.

To make their new filter, the team first dipped strips of woven cotton into “ink” containing nanotubes. They then used pipettes to drop the silver wires, which were suspended in methanol, on to the surface of the strips.

Once dried, the new filters were ready to try. To do that Dr Cui connected them to a battery and ran water containing E. coli, a common bacterial contaminant of water, through them. A few drops of the filtered water from each experimental run were then scattered on an incubation plate to see what was left to grow.

As they report in the latest edition of Nano Letters, Dr Cui and his team found that when the filter was operated at -20 volts it killed 89% of the bacteria and that at +20 volts it killed 77%. At zero volts, most of the bacteria survived. In a follow-up experiment, in which contaminated water was run through three of the new filters in sequence, 98% of the bacteria were killed.

Using silver this way might sound expensive, but it is not. The amount involved is minuscule, as is the quantity of electricity needed to keep the filter charged (a small solar panel would be sufficient to supply it). And the filter itself would be expected to last indefinitely.

The next test, then, is to see if the new device kills the full range of dangerous bacteria found in polluted water. If it does then potable water, one of the necessities of life, may become easier for many people to obtain.”

Economist 23/10/2010

Ambiente, Tendências

Agora sem tubo

Continuando no tema dos papeis tissue chamam-me a atenção para um novo rolo de papel higiénico lançado pela Kimberly-Clark sem tubo o que minimiza os desperdícios… De como uma boa ideia pode ser uma coisa muito simples… Copio a notícia que me enviaram do Correio da Manhã

EUA: Papel higiénico torna-se mais ‘ecológico’

A empresa norte-americana de produtos domésticos Kimberly-Clark vai lançar no mercado dos EUA rolos de papel higiénico que têm a particularidade de não terem o tubo de cartão em que as folhas costumam vir enroladas. Entre os motivos para a experiência que terá início na próxima segunda-feira encontra-se a redução do impacto ambiental.

Segundo cálculos da empresa, os 17 mil milhões de rolos de papel higiénico produzidos a cada ano nos EUA geram lixo que seria suficiente para ligar a Terra à Lua duas vezes. Isto porque a esmagadora maioria dos consumidores não recicla os tubos de cartão.

Os novos rolos, que estarão à venda em duas cadeias de supermercados na Costa Leste dos EUA, continuam a ter um espaço no meio que permite serem pendurados da mesma forma que o papel higiénico tradicional.

Packaging, Tendências

Mais por menos. Renova Olé

Parece que já tem 3 meses mas só hoje dei por ele ao ver um outdoor à entrada da Universidade. Ainda por cima vem mesmo a calhar no seguimento do que temos vindo a discutir como tendências de consumo motivadas por alterações económicas. A capacidade de ler os movimentos sociais e de lhes responder é a chave do sucesso. É isso que faz da Renova uma empresa especial. Este Renova Olé pode ser “Low Cost”, como é orgulhosamente apresentado na publicidade, mas está longe de ser um produto com aquele ar triste dos produtos que enxameiam esta gama. A escolha da marca (uma exclamação de felicidade), a cor, o perfume e a embalagem fazem dele um produto atractivo e que se distancia da concorrência.

A imagem e o título tirei-os do blog da Renova. Deem-lhe uma vista de olhos… Vale a pena..

Ética, Tendências

Portugal solidário

A TSF é a emissora que produz um verdadeiro serviço públido de rádio em Portugal. O programa Portugal Solidário que podem escutar aqui é um excelente exemplo disso. E é uma janela para uma miríade de oportunidades de desenvolvimento de novos produtos e serviços dentro dos parâmetros definidos para o projecto deste ano.

O prémio Manuel António da Mota é outro exemplo. Dêm uma vista de olhos às candidaturas finalistas.

Ética, Tendências

GAIN

GAIN, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, é uma fundação suportada por um conjunto de empresas químicas e alimentares cujas actividades são vocacionadas para a luta contra a subnutrição.

“Malnutrition is a global issue that affects billions. It means undernutrition, or a lack of the necessary energy, protein or micronutrients in developing countries, and overnutrition and obesity, or too much energy, fats or specific micronutrients in developed countries and, increasingly, in developing countries. Malnutrition accounts for 11 percent of the global burden of disease. Each year it kills 3.5 million children under five years old and impairs hundreds of thousands of growing minds. Countries may lose two to three percent of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a result of iron, iodine, and zinc deficiencies. Read the key facts”

Os programas de apoio deles podem também ser um óptimo ponto de partida para a identificação de problemas a resolver.

Ética, Tendências

Clinton e Gates

As Fundações Clinton e Gates apoiam um vasto número de iniciativas que podem ser utilizadas para identificação de necessidades ou oportunidades de resolução de problemas globais, sejam dirigidos a situações de carência ou não. Sugiro que pesquisem aqui para descobrir o que faz a Fundação Clinton e aqui para descobrir mais sobre a Fundação Bill e Melinda Gates.

Cosméticos, Natural, Tendências

Beleza biológica (ou orgânica?)

No Público de 18/10 há um artigo muito interessante sobre uma empresa portuguesa de cosméticos. Chama-se Myeko ( de my + eco). Propõem cosméticos à base de produtos naturais biológicos. Gostei por multipla razões, agarram bem as tendências actuais de consumo, criam produtos atraentes como se pode ver abaixo na imagem, e é um conceito e um tipo de empresa que qualquer um de vocês poderia ter criado pois insere-se completamente no âmbito do que falamos nesta disciplina. Descubram mais sobre ela… Inspirem-se…