Good morning. After this one, there are only 3 Wednesdays left in 2023.
The year of the Swift
Taylor Swift was today crowned as TIME magazine’s Person of the Year for 2023, beating tough competition from fellow nominees King Charles III, Sam Altman, Hollywood strikers, and Barbie.
The award, which was given to Volodymyr Zelensky and the "Spirit of Ukraine" in 2022, caps a staggering era for the 33-year-old songstress, who has grown to become the biggest popstar on Earth, broken a multitude of music and movie records, and even been credited with boosting the US economy.
A tale as old as TIME
TIME’s debut issue was published over a century ago in March 1923, when it became the world’s first weekly news magazine. However, the publication didn’t give out its first Man of the Year award — the accolade’s default title before 1999 — until 4 years later when it recognized the efforts of Charles Lindbergh, the man who made the first nonstop solo transatlantic flight.
According to ex-TIME editor and recent Musk biographer Walter Isaacson, the award goes to the “person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill” in the given year — for much of history, it seems that’s meant men. Indeed, of the 84 awards handed out to individual people — rather than concepts like “The Inheritor” in 1966, or mass groups like “The Whistleblowers” in 2002 — only a fraction have been awarded to women, with Taylor Swift becoming the 8th to pick up the TIME gong.
Flatpack products
Following IKEA’s record-breaking global sales of €47.6 billion ($51.4bn) in its latest fiscal year, the furniture giant is spreading the joy a little, with IKEA employees in the US set to divvy up a bonus pot of $54m.
The bonuses come with the Swedish company in full expansion mode, announcing plans to slash prices, open 8 new stores, and set up 900 new pick-up locations over the next 3 years, as it looks to win over price-conscious American consumers.
Fat-stack profits
Like many retailers, IKEA’s business model works best at scale. Enormous, meticulously styled showrooms, packed with as many products as possible, help entice customers to spend an afternoon filling shopping carts with everything they need for their homes, and — often — many things they don’t. Indeed, if you’ve ever found yourself wandering aimlessly around IKEA, you’re not alone. IKEA’s store planners have mastered what’s known as the Gruen effect — leading you, both mentally and physically, through a dazzling and immersive store to tempt you into making impulse purchases.
That understanding of consumer psychology has worked wonders for IKEA — so much so that just looking at the chart of its sales for the last 22 years, you would be hard-pressed to pick up on the global recession of 2008/09 or the pandemic in 2020/21, as the IKEA juggernaut powered on. The Swedish company has also cracked the digital world, with 23% of its sales, or nearly ~$12bn, coming through online channels.
Homing in
Thinking of buying a house? Chances are, probably not — the double effect of nominal US house prices jumping 40% since 2020 and soaring mortgage rates has left many feeling that now is not the time to buy.
There are, however, buyers out there, they just tend to have already been on the ladder for some time. Indeed, new data from the National Association of Realtors reveals that first-time buyers made up just 32% of the US property market this year, down from the 38% average seen since 1981. The median age of a repeat buyer was also revealed to be 58 — slightly lower than last year’s 59 — but still significantly greater than the early 1980s, when the typical person buying for at least the second time was only 36 years-old.
Boomer room
Several factors are driving this shift. For one, more senior buyers are simply more likely to also be selling a house (often for a much greater price than was initially paid), providing them with larger down payments and making their offers on other homes more attractive than those of first-time buyers, who are likely entering the mortgage market at a time when rates are hovering near 7%.
With a housing inventory shortage looming, and analysis revealing the biggest gap between the cost-to-buy and the cost-to-rent in the US in over 50 years, younger buyers may find themselves waiting even longer to make that first home purchase.
• The new trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI just broke the record for the most YouTube views on a non-music video in a single day, racking up almost 100 million views in 24 hours.
• Apple has become the world’s only $3 trillion company again, after shares climbed 2% to take the company’s market cap. back up to its summer record-breaking threshold.
• McDonald's has revealed plans to open 9,000 new restaurants by 2027.
• Tesla's union troubles in Scandinavia seem to be growing, as employees in Norway move to support their colleagues in Sweden.
• Have a look through the 50 greatest innovations of 2023.
• Explore the virtual halls of the Web Design Museum to see what the TIME Person of the Year’s website looked like in 2002.
Off the charts: Wikipedia has released its list of the most viewed articles of 2023. Can you guess what came out on top? Hint: think tech. [Answer below].
