“Mind The Gap!” – The life and times of a man on the move Episode 98

In this weekly series, I look back on what stood out, what was bemusing, amusing and interesting during my weekly travels, interesting findings within the FX industry and interaction with an ever-shrinking big wide world. This is purely observational and for your enjoyment

Hairstylists and Deliveroo drivers

Whether we like them or resent them, Will Shu and Jeff Bezos knew what was coming when they established their businesses.

Jeff Bezos may well be an absolutely contemptible skid mark, but a bad businessman he certainly is not.

I can remember when he established Amazon as a book warehouse, which appeared to be an odd decision just as large printing companies such as REXAM and BOWATER were scaling down, leaving large areas of dereliction and employment in the lithographic heartlands of South West England and central Germany, previously the home of uneducated trade unionists who milked the overtime systems at business form printing factories, often making over 70,000 GBP per annum in the late 1980s from packing boxes in between sleeping on the night shifts.

The new fangled and efficient internet had killed the idle and the stubborn, and Jeff Bezos knew that book warehouses had a limited future once the online world of e-commerce would begin to offer downloadable books, so not only did he abolish his original model and move toward a means of transferring the centralized logistics business to include absolutely every item in every aspect of consumerdom to rival all businesses with physical presence and take it all on to spearhead an online shopping revolution, but also developed his own tablets which would replace reading physical books.

You can buy an Amazon Kindle Fire in any consumer electronics store for less than $80, and then hack it using an APK so that it is open to Google applications, whilst using the Amazon platform for downloading e-books. 12 hour flight ahead? No problem, that’s a few novels without the extra luggage…. oh, hold on a minute…

Will Shu also seemed to know what was coming, with his Deliveroo fast food delivery business which operates in the UK and the Netherlands, and covers absolutely every aspect of food delivery from restaurants across many cities.

The company’s popularity has become so enormous that Deliveroo now operates vast multi-franchise kitchens where its own staff make the food on behalf of restaurants that are having their, er…. fayre… delivered to consumers with absolutely no palate or discernment across the Lowlands and the Queen’s country.

This means that restaurants can simply outsource their recipes and presentation style to Deliveroo, and Deliveroo handles the logistics meaning that the restaurant can just close its doors and leave it all up to their masters.. i mean, suppliers.

It is no surprise that Amazon owns 13% of Deliveroo.

Whether Amazon and Deliveroo knew what political coercion would take place this year or not, they are the businesses of the present, and possibly the immediate future.

Low quality junk food for exorbitant prices delivered to your door in a styrofoam packet with single use ‘cutlery’ and a sachet of Monosodium Gluamate has become the de facto option for most people who are devoid of culinary skills over recent months, and taking delivery of brittle plastic contrivances from Amazon has become the de facto option for people wanting to own the lowest quality products in post-industrial revolution history.

They knew what they were doing alright.

The world locks the doors on the good people, coerces them into their homes, rips their livelihoods from under their feet and subjects them to the unbearable torment of junk TV, junk food and junk consumer durables, or non-durables should I say.

Given that it is highly likely that this dynamic will carry on, as there is no sign of any normal, sensible human being calling off these ridiculous lockdowns in most of the world, human beings are creatures of habit and the past few months have moulded the world’s population toward using services such as these.

I went to look at bicycles yesterday. You can no longer buy from the dealer, you have to buy online, and all bicycles of all brands are sold out until mid August. You simply place your order, it comes from… you’ve guessed it, China unfortunately…. and then it gets delivered to your door in a cardboard crate.

Everything is going this way now.

So, where does that present an opportunity?

It plays directly into the path of people who run businesses on this type of ‘home service’ model. Hairdressers in London are charging over 70 GBP to come to your home and cut your hair for 15 minutes of you are a man, and over 200 if you are a woman. There is no competition, all the salons are closed and many will likely not reopen and will have, like most businesses, gone bankrupt meaning that those who instigated these evil lockdowns worldwide have achieved their aim – to ruin people and make them subservient to the global state.

The mobile hairdressers who have ignored the lockdown, however, are prospering. I know one particular gentleman who does around 5 hair cuts a day at people’s homes, who has just rewarded his efforts with a brand new Range Rover Vogue due to massive profits during this period.

Given these dynamics, whether you like them or not – and I do not – the FX industry could do with shifting its attention when looking for new clients from novices who are bored of their desk job and think they are going to get some kind of financial independence by trading a retail account part time, to the ‘new economy’ of Deliveroo drivers, hairdressers and Amazon operatives.

They are the future, and the middle aged man with a desk job is not. Most no longer have their desk jobs, even.

I saw an Amazon delivery driver outside my apartment the other day in a 2020 Lexus LS600H. That is a top of the range car, and he was using it for doing parcel delivery.

The world’s professional structure has changed. Alan Partridge once famously mocked supermarket operatives in his class divide spoof “Scissored Isle”, saying that people called Carl work in supermarkets rounding up trolleys, at tire fitting centers keeping you mobile and at Greggs, a low-end high street bakery chain in England.

Well, now the boot is on Carl’s foot, and not on the middle managers who have lost their jobs.

These are good potential clients. They are entrepreneurial, not afraid of hard work, and are the immediate future of disposable income.

In addition, they are analytical, time sensitive and know how to work out revenue share percentages and strike a good deal, and are based in first tier regions such as England, North America, and Australia – home to many good quality domestic market FX brokerages with the appropriate licenses.

Wouldn’t you rather work with a client base of go-getters such as these on home soil than affiliate marketing white elephant projects in dodgy third tier places? I would.

I’m not eating any of their food, though..

Wishing you all a super week ahead!