Business
Adidas Withdraws Opposition to Black Lives Matter Trademark
Two days after Adidas objected to a trademark software by the advocacy group Black Lives Matter for a emblem that includes three parallel stripes, the German sportswear firm stated that it might withdraw its opposition.
Adidas challenged the trademark software in a submitting with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Workplace on Monday. On Wednesday, the corporate stated in an emailed assertion that it might withdraw its opposition “as quickly as doable.”
Within the submitting on Monday, Adidas stated that it opposed the Black Lives Matter software as a result of it confirmed a trademark that “incorporates three stripes in a way that’s confusingly related” to the corporate’s acquainted three-stripe emblem “in look and total business impression.”
The Black Lives Matter International Community Basis filed the trademark software for a yellow three-stripe emblem design in November 2020. The group is one among a number of organizations related to the broader Black Lives Matter motion, which emerged in 2013 after George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager.
The inspiration didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark. In its assertion, Adidas didn’t say why it was reversing its opposition to the trademark software.
In September 2022, the window opened for people and teams to file their opposition to the muse’s trademark software. Adidas repeatedly sought to increase the window earlier than submitting its discover of opposition on Monday, in keeping with the submitting.
Adidas stated that it had been utilizing a three-stripe mark on footwear since at the least 1952 and that the design had been utilized in its partnerships with skilled athletes, together with Lionel Messi, James Harden and Patrick Mahomes. The corporate stated the three-stripe emblem had additionally been utilized in its collaborations with and sponsorships of celebrities, together with Beyoncé, Selena Gomez and Unhealthy Bunny.
Within the submitting, the corporate stated that the general public understood that the three-stripe mark “distinguishes and identifies Adidas’s merchandise.”
This short-lived trademark battle comes after a failed try by Adidas to problem the style designer Thom Browne, who the corporate stated used stripes in his designs in a means that was too much like the Adidas stripes. In January, a federal jury in Manhattan dominated in opposition to Adidas.
In 2020, when world Black Lives Matter protests happened after George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer, Adidas made a number of commitments to its Black staff. The corporate stated on the time that 30 % of latest hires could be Black or Latino, and it pledged to spend money on packages that benefited the Black neighborhood. Some staff stated then that Adidas’s guarantees lacked an express acknowledgment of how the corporate had handled Black staff.
A 12 months earlier, a New York Occasions investigation discovered that the comparatively few Black staff on the firm’s North American headquarters in Portland, Ore., typically felt marginalized and generally discriminated in opposition to. The investigation discovered that in 2018 solely 4.5 % of the 1,700 staff on the firm’s Portland campus recognized as Black and that solely about 1 % of the greater than 300 worldwide vice presidents have been Black.
Extra not too long ago, Adidas has been coping with the aftermath of its messy break up from Kanye West in October, after he made a collection of antisemitic remarks and embraced white supremacist tropes. Adidas was criticized for not being fast sufficient to chop ties with Mr. West, who’s now often called Ye.
The corporate stated in a press release that Ye’s “latest feedback and actions have been unacceptable, hateful and harmful, and so they violate the corporate’s values of range and inclusion, mutual respect and equity.”
In March, Bjorn Gulden, who took over as chief government of Adidas in January, declared that 2023 could be a “transition 12 months” for the corporate. Adidas has been dropping its market share to rivals, resembling Nike, and in February it issued its fourth revenue warning in six months, saying it anticipated massive losses this 12 months.
Business
Fast food chains launch 'value menu' war after cost complaints. Will it last?
Millions of American families are hitting the road to start summer vacation, and ordering food on the run tends to be par for the course. It couldn’t come at a better time. Fast food joints are in the midst of a budget-meal war, offering promotions to lure customers back to their restaurants despite inflation woes and a minimum-wage increase in California and other states.
Starting June 25, McDonald’s will offer a month-long deal featuring a combo meal —either a McChicken, a McDouble or four-piece chicken nuggets, small fries and a small drink — for $5.
After McDonald’s announcement last month, other fast food restaurants followed suit. Wendy’s announced its $3 limited-time breakfast combo meal and Burger King trumpeted that it planned to bring back its $5 Your Way Meal.
In addition, fast food mobile apps continue to offer deep discounts.
App relief
Earlier this week, a Big Mac with medium fries and medium drink cost $11.79 before tax at a McDonald’s in Santa Ana. That same meal ordered via a mobile app for pickup at the same location cost $6.50 before tax, a savings of $5.29.
But the prices and deals tend to vary depending on the user.
Diners have taken to complaining on Reddit about the McDonald’s mobile app. Some say the deals decrease with use. Others say their friends or partners were getting a better deal on the app than they were getting. A few mentioned that they could find better deals by just walking in and ordering at their local McDonald’s.
The plethora of promotional deals come after diners blasted fast food companies on social media earlier this year for rising prices.
In response, Joe Erlinger, president of McDonald’s USA, said in an open letter last month that the average price of McDonald’s menu items is up an estimated 40% since 2019.
“Recently, we have seen viral social posts and poorly sourced reports that McDonald’s has raised prices significantly beyond inflationary rates. This is inaccurate,” Erlinger wrote.
“The average price of a Big Mac in the U.S. was $4.39 in 2019,” he said. “Despite a global pandemic and historic rises in supply chain costs, wages and other inflationary pressures in the years that followed, the average cost is now $5.29. That’s an increase of 21% (not 100%),” as unsubstantiated claims allege on social media.
Quick-service restaurants said the increases were in response to rising inflation and labor costs — partly due to hikes in minimum wage not just in California but throughout the country.
It’s true that quick-service restaurants such as McDonalds have had to contend with increased costs, but they are by no means hurting, said Shubhranshu Singh, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University who specializes in quick-service marketing.
“They are not struggling,” Singh said. “Inflation is going up. Wage rates are going up. But profit for McDonald’s is also going up.”
Global comparable sales for McDonald’s grew nearly 2% in the first quarter of the year, according to the latest statistics made available by the company. The fast-food giant described this profit increase as having “benefited from average check growth driven by strategic menu price increases.”
Price-weary diners have taken notice and become fed up with the price hikes, choosing to eat less fast food and protesting on social media that their go-to budget meals were no longer wallet-friendly, Singh said.
Several diners took aim at McDonald’s, griping on TikTok about the company charging more for food that’s supposed to be affordable.
“This is $3 worth of food,” said a customer who held up a hash brown. “Something doesn’t seem right here.”
“McDonald’s has gotten too cocky,” said another customer. “Y’all not supposed to be expensive.”
One diner called it “absurd” that she’d paid $4.59 for a medium order of french fries.
And then there was the uproar over a McDonald’s location in Connecticut charging $18 for a Big Mac combo meal. The photo sparked a nationwide debate on soaring fast-food prices.
Making choices
Most McDonald’s in the United States are independently franchised, so prices vary depending on where one visits.
Increased fast food prices ultimately led to slower-than-expected sales at various quick-service restaurants, such as McDonald’s, Starbucks and Pizza Hut.
“Consumers are always making choices,” said restaurant analyst Sara Senatore at Bank of America. “When the value proposition starts to diminish, consumers will make other choices.”
Up until fairly recently, consumers were willing to pay more for quick-service food. When fast food prices started to soar in 2022, consumers just went along because prices everywhere had surged due to inflation, Senatore said.
But now inflation has lessened. Grocery prices have fallen and budget-conscious consumers may no longer see fast food as the clear-cut affordable choice, she said.
Enter the value meals.
Budget meals aren’t new. In the 1980s, McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Burger King engaged in a series of advertising campaigns known as the Burger Wars competing for customers in the then-flourishing fast food market.
“The hope is that the consumer will go there and maybe buy something additional to the value meal and then want to return even when there is no deal,” Singh said.
But the promotions, analysts warned, can’t last forever.
“It’s not sustainable,” Singh said. “I don’t expect any of these deals to stay.”
Business
Dominic Ng: Philanthropist banker, inclusion practitioner
The year 2023 was especially cruel to regional banks in California. Repeated interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve exposed the poor bets and hubris of regional highfliers like Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic. Those banks capsized, which sparked bank runs, which wiped shareholders out.
One regional bank, however, smoothly sailed on: East West Bank, helmed for more than 30 years by Dominic Ng, who champions the durable power of steady growth. “We’re prudent and cautious, but very entrepreneurial,” he said from his office at East West headquarters in Pasadena. “The way you win in banking is not through shortcuts. It’s a long game.”
‘His leadership has transformed the bank, transformed philanthropy and what business leadership looks like in L.A.’
— Elise Buik, United Way of Greater Los Angeles’ chief executive
The result has been accolades: No. 1 best-performing bank in its size category last year from S&P Global Market Intelligence and No. 1 performing bank in 2023 by trade publication Bank Director. The diversity of its board of directors — Latino, Asian, Black, female and LGBTQ+ all represented — has also won acclaim.
Steady profits enabled East West to become one of Los Angeles’ top civic benefactors. Ng has been especially active with the United Way of Greater Los Angeles for more than 25 years and is credited with championing a strategic change in direction to more effectively serve the city’s desperately poor, while persuading more of the city’s richest residents to pitch in.
Discover the changemakers who are shaping every cultural corner of Los Angeles. This week we bring you The Money, a collection of bankers, political bundlers, philanthropists and others whose deep pockets give them their juice. Come back each Sunday for another installment.
“His leadership has transformed the bank, transformed philanthropy and what business leadership looks like in L.A.,” said Elise Buik, the United Way chapter’s chief executive.
Born to Chinese parents in Hong Kong in 1959, the youngest of six children, Ng has been chief executive of East West Bank since 1992 and expanded on the bank’s original mission of financing Chinese immigrants who in the 1970s found it difficult to qualify for loans through the usual channels. It’s now the largest publicly traded independent bank based in Southern California, serving an economically and ethnically diverse clientele. On the world stage, Ng serves as co-chair of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Business Advisory Council.
Ng, 65, worries about the future of philanthropy in Los Angeles. He longs for the “good old days” when business chiefs didn’t think twice about pitching in to help the city’s less fortunate.
“Today, the pressure is on for [immediate] return to shareholders,” and people running companies have to respond to shareholders who seem to “care less every year” about civic responsibility.
More young, monied tech and finance hotshots would do well to take some cues from business leaders like Ng.
More from L.A. Influential
Business
Mark Suster: The face of L.A. venture capital
Cancer-fighting robots. AI-powered baby monitors. The future of American shipbuilding.
These are the kinds of startup ideas that get Mark Suster out of bed in the morning, into his Tesla, and down to the Santa Monica offices of Upfront, the venture capital firm he joined 16 years ago.
“There’s that old saying — the future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed,” Suster said. “My job lets me see where the world’s going five years before the general population.”
Discover the changemakers who are shaping every cultural corner of Los Angeles. This week we bring you The Money, a collection of bankers, political bundlers, philanthropists and others whose deep pockets give them their juice. Come back each Sunday for another installment.
But Suster, 56, didn’t become the face of the L.A. venture capital scene thanks to his day-to-day investing. He got there by throwing a party called the Upfront Summit.
Every year, Suster’s splashy tech conference takes over an iconic L.A. location. One year, it’s at the Rose Bowl. Another year, it’s at a retreat center high in the Santa Monica Mountains. There are zip lines, hot air balloons, and, among the talks with tech founders about software and product development, fireside chats with celebrities, politicians and authors (Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Novak Djokovic graced the stage this year).
The razzle-dazzle is part of the draw, and Suster clearly relishes his role as emcee (“I was a theater kid — I still love going to the theater,” he said.)
‘My job lets me see where the world’s going five years before the general population.’
— Mark Suster
But the real appeal comes down to cash. Suster’s strategic move was to invite not just venture capital investors, but the people who invest in venture capital investors. Called limited partners, these are the managers of pensions, sovereign wealth funds and other giant pools of money that want to tap into the tech market. By making sure they’re on the guest list, Suster has made the summit one of the easiest places in America for fellow venture capitalists to raise a new fund.
The summit loses Upfront money. When Suster started it in 2012, it cost around $300,000. In 2022, costs hit $2.3 million, Suster said, with a handful of sponsors chipping in to cut the losses. But throwing the premiere professional party in California comes with intangible benefits, like bringing in deals that would otherwise leave out Upfront and other L.A. funds and founders.
The 2024 party was a little scaled back, now that higher interest rates have throttled the fire hose of money that went into venture capital during the last decade. But Suster says that he welcomes the less frothy environment. “I’m having a lot more fun now,” he said, investing in founders “looking to build real businesses.”
More from L.A. Influential
-
News1 week ago
Would President Biden’s asylum restrictions work? It’s a short-term fix, analysts say
-
Politics1 week ago
Newson, Dem leaders try to negotiate Prop 47 reform off California ballots, as GOP wants to let voters decide
-
World1 week ago
Dozens killed near Sudan’s capital as UN warns of soaring displacement
-
News1 week ago
Read Justice Clarence Thomas’s Financial Disclosures for 2023
-
World1 week ago
‘Bloody policies’: Bodies of 11 refugees and migrants recovered off Libya
-
Politics1 week ago
Gun group vows to 'defend' Trump's concealed carry license after conviction
-
Politics1 week ago
Should Trump have confidence in his lawyers? Legal experts weigh in
-
Politics6 days ago
GOP releases Jan. 6 clip of Pelosi saying 'I take responsibility' as she discussed National Guard absence