Yeah, Naked Wines turned out to be a disaster. Redbubble too. However, the moves Martin has made since reclaiming the CEO role do make sense to me, which is why I'm long. Let's see how he delivers going forward
As always, a good -to the point- article ! I like that you look at this company with the startup goggles. Quite some 'marketplace scale-up companies' listed make the same mistake. It seems like incentives must be pointing toward building opulent boards of directors and selling an infinite growth story of a scale tipping point turning into an absolute moat... This reminds me of Naked Wine ($WINE). If those projects (I prefer this word than "companies") are declining from a startup stand point (market-fit, clear UVP, nice Customer Xp, etc.), they tend to unhook and fall no matter how much top line numbers are moving. When, as a founder, you aren't challenged on fondamental strategy assumptions because your board are groopies and satelites, hard to stay the course.
You are spot on on this risk. Again great write-up !
late to the party but this was a great article. Question - have they managed to increase purchases/customer. I remember back in 2021 it was around 1.1x. Their problem was that unaided brand awareness was terrible. Most people didn't even know that they were buying for redbubble - ie the googled something and then found the item on redbubble but never connected the dots. until this improves they will alwasy be a slave to the 'google' tax.
Bit of a random thought but is there any possibility of them commercialising or getting disrupted by AI generated art? Could potentially greatly scale the content whilst expanding bottom line taking out artist cut or just make the business more commoditized and prone to disruption, sure if they announced it would get a strong ST market reaction. Or is this already impacting artists using AI tools to mass copy/generate content?
Thank you for the kind words, Sacha!
Yeah, Naked Wines turned out to be a disaster. Redbubble too. However, the moves Martin has made since reclaiming the CEO role do make sense to me, which is why I'm long. Let's see how he delivers going forward
As always, a good -to the point- article ! I like that you look at this company with the startup goggles. Quite some 'marketplace scale-up companies' listed make the same mistake. It seems like incentives must be pointing toward building opulent boards of directors and selling an infinite growth story of a scale tipping point turning into an absolute moat... This reminds me of Naked Wine ($WINE). If those projects (I prefer this word than "companies") are declining from a startup stand point (market-fit, clear UVP, nice Customer Xp, etc.), they tend to unhook and fall no matter how much top line numbers are moving. When, as a founder, you aren't challenged on fondamental strategy assumptions because your board are groopies and satelites, hard to stay the course.
You are spot on on this risk. Again great write-up !
late to the party but this was a great article. Question - have they managed to increase purchases/customer. I remember back in 2021 it was around 1.1x. Their problem was that unaided brand awareness was terrible. Most people didn't even know that they were buying for redbubble - ie the googled something and then found the item on redbubble but never connected the dots. until this improves they will alwasy be a slave to the 'google' tax.
Thanks for sharing. Just took a swipe at Hosking's twitter and found immiedate reason not to own the stock -> https://twitter.com/Martin_Hosking/status/1750613319462080661
Cash position $41m in Jan? Is that post payment of (some) payables owing at 30/12/23?
Thanks for the great article
Bit of a random thought but is there any possibility of them commercialising or getting disrupted by AI generated art? Could potentially greatly scale the content whilst expanding bottom line taking out artist cut or just make the business more commoditized and prone to disruption, sure if they announced it would get a strong ST market reaction. Or is this already impacting artists using AI tools to mass copy/generate content?