Posts tagged ‘business’


Nostalgic thoughts: what sparked my interest in fashion magazines, and Nike’s 10 rules for business

01.03.2023


 
I have told this story many times: I became interested in fashion magazines with a 1989 issue of Studio Collections. In fact, it was its fifth anniversary issue. I really liked the typesetting, photography and print quality. I was probably one of the few people disappointed when they went to desktop publishing and the typesetting quality deteriorated in the 1990s.

No such problem at Brogue (well, British Vogue) in 1991, which was still put together the old way. Coincidentally, my first issue of this venerable title was also an anniversary one, namely its 75th. Linda, Christy and Cindy were known to everyone, even young straight boys like me (actually, especially young straight boys like me). Here the visuals and the article quality were influential, and I had grown up reading largely British car magazines, such as Car and Autocar (though I began with Temple Press’s Motor in 1978). The British way of writing resonated with me and it was familiar territory.

My journey in this world, therefore, began eight years before I started Lucire, and the ideas had brewed for some time.

Yesterday we uploaded three articles from 1998 and they were quite terrible. I might have known what the benchmark was from the late 1980s and early 1990s, but we sure didn’t hit it in our writing a year after we started. I like to hope that we have since got there.
 
 

 
Someone shared Phil Knight’s 10 steps in business for Nike, when it was a fledgling enterprise back in the 1970s. I had seen this a long time ago, in the late 1980s, and even used to share it with my students in 1999–2000. I hadn’t seen it since.

They are aggressive and macho, which probably ties quite well in with Nike and its early days (John McEnroe was more than a suitable ambassador). They probably lend themselves quite well to sportswear. But a few of these are universal in business.

I like (7): ‘Your job isn’t done until the job is done,’ and the third of the eight ‘Dangers’: ‘Energy takers vs. energy givers’. Bureaucracy, naturally, heads that list of dangers, and rightly so.

You should ‘Assume nothing’ (5).

I don’t know if they still follow these tenets, but some definitely remain relevant.


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The Red Points saga: this might finally be resolved

24.08.2022

Nine days since the first DMCA notice was lobbed against us, the saga has finally reached the powers-that-be at Hearst SL.

And once it did, things began happening quickly. I’ve heard from their head of legal, and what he’s outlined to me seems like a good resolution to the whole saga.

He tells me some changes have been made to Red Points Solution SL’s processes, which I think is a good outcome if it saves others the grief of what I’ve had to deal with—especially while contending with publishing deadlines and the day-to-day running of a company. It was a bigger distraction than I would have liked to admit.

In a gesture of goodwill, I offered to set to private the two stories we published on the Lucire website over the whole affair.

I suggested to him that I update everyone here, since you might have thought that the disappearance of the two articles was down to Red Points!

I shudder to think what would have happened if I didn’t have contact email addresses for senior VPs at Hearst Communications, Inc. or former Lucire team members who wound up working for Hearst. Or how someone without a legal background specializing in IP would have felt. Not everyone would be in this position.

It’s still concerning to me that Google continues to state that results have been removed in site searches for us, and for the topics those articles covered. Basically, they’re saying we’re thieves, and I don’t think that’s fair dinkum. As Google works at a glacial pace, I assume the notices will eventually disappear once they receive Red Points’ withdrawals.

I’ve also received an apology from Red Points’ CMO. The gentlemanly thing to do is to accept it. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for Google to stop saying we stole stuff.


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If corporate America says it, it’s probably untrue

16.07.2022


Le dernier.
 
I see the Le Snak range has now left us, after its US owner PepsiCo cited a lack of demand. I call bullshit, since during 2021 it was becoming increasingly difficult to find them on the shelves. Throttling distribution is not the same as a lack of demand, something you see time and time again with corporate claptrap.

It’s like the myth that New Zealanders all prefer automatic transmissions. No, not supplying manuals will inevitably force people to change. Has the industry done a survey as I have? Last time I conducted one, in the 2010s, we were still running 50–50, with a lot of people saying, ‘I prefer a manual, but I had no choice but to buy an automatic.’

Ford is a useful example of US companies citing reduced demand but doing things behind the scenes to ensure it. The line that no one was buying big cars saw to the end of the road for the Australian Falcon and the closure of its Broadmeadows plant. Did any of you see any advertising for the Falcon leading up to that? Or see many Falcons on dealer lots? It seems to me that a corporate decision had been made, and steps taken to guarantee an outcome. Throttle the distribution (‘We’re out of stock’) and of course demand falls.

Get your tape measures out, and you’ll find the Falcon was smaller than the Mondeo (which at that point was still selling) on key measures other than overall length and, presumably, boot volume. The two-litre Ecoboost Falcon with its rear-wheel drive was promoted with all the energy of a damp squid, but it had all the ingredients for success as a decent-handling sedan. But Broadmeadows was an inefficient plant, from what I understand (from hearsay), and bringing it up to speed would have cost more than a bunch of Pinto lawsuits. ‘But there’s no demand for what it builds anyway!’ they cry. Then they can justify the closure.

Go back to the 1990s and the same thing happened with Ford’s Contour and Mystique twins in the US. People were buying BMW 3-series in droves, cars the same size as the Contour. But Ford claimed there was no demand, leading to its US cancellation after the 2000 model year. Reality: I say the Dearborn fiefdom didn’t like the fact the Contour was part of a world-car project (which gave us the original Mondeo) led by Ford’s Köln fiefdom. Not-invented-here killed the Contour, and a relative lack of promotion also guaranteed its fate. (Ford would wind up contesting the segment again later in the 2000s with the Fusion and Milan, but put far more effort into promoting them since they were US-led programmes. I actually saw advertising for them in US magazines! I saw a Milan in Manhattan with Mercury encouraging us to try it out!)

If you take the line that anything a big US firm utters is an utter lie, it keeps you in good stead. Use that approach with Facebook, for instance, and you’ll find things make sense more often than not. And of course we all knew what Elon Musk meant when he said he wanted to buy Twitter.


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Send out warmth, get it back

14.06.2022

I’ve had a nice resolution after reaching out to FashioNZ over their Instagram tagline and a claim made on their website. There was a delay in their response due to the site being sold to its fifth owners (I must be out of touch, as I never knew who the second and third were!), but they addressed all my points, saying that they cared about journalistic integrity, and wrote to me in as friendly a way as I did to them. The tagline has already been changed, and I understand that they’ll get on to the rest.

To be extra-careful, I had two colleagues in Auckland who knew the (outgoing) publisher read through my email to make sure I was being as collegial as possible, and they gave me the all-clear.

I contrast this to an email I received last year, from a US designer who shall remain nameless.

They had asked for an article to be removed from Lucire but did not explain why. I said I would if we had written something factually wrong, or misrepresented them.

No, it wasn’t that: after some probing, they revealed that they just didn’t like our photo of the designer’s work appearing so high up in Google Images. Reading between the lines, they wanted to dominate the search results and were irritated that we were messing it up.

I noted that we were contacted by their firm’s PR people (and before I made that claim, I looked back through my email archives from the 2000s to confirm this—it was a PR firm in their own state, and yes, it was an item published that long ago), to which they countered that they had never heard of us prior to this and would not have issued us the press release. Folks, I have the email.

The whole thing was combative from the get-go, and after they suggested I was a liar, they earned their whole company a block on our email system.

What a strange way for their marketing person to try to get something they wanted, to call the person you’re asking a favour of a liar. I submit that they don’t know much about marketing. And in this country, we have such a thing as freedom of the press.

They have one of our editors’ phone numbers so they can talk to her if they wish—though I had suggested their boss talk directly to me since I wasn’t going to deal with rude underlings. The boss never called.

I won’t name these folks since I consider the dialogue confidential, but sometimes it’s tempting to say, ‘**** may be a famous designer, but they have really shit people working for them.’

There’s a right way and a wrong way to correspond, and I’m glad that a misspent youth, reading some of my father’s Pitman guides, put me on a better track.


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Here’s the latest book I worked on: Panos: My Life, My Odyssey out May 26

17.05.2022


 
[Originally posted in Lucire] Toward the end of next week, Panos Papadopoulos’s autobiography, Panos: My Life, My Odyssey, comes out in London, with an event in Stockholm following. This is an intimate memoir about Panos’s rise, from childhood poverty in Greece to the ‘king of swimwear’ in Scandinavia. Not only do I have an advance copy, I collaborated with Panos on it.

I’m fascinated by autobiographies. When I was a teenager, I read Lee Iacocca’s one, written with William Novak. I presume Novak interviewed Iacocca, or he worked with some additional notes, and ghosted for him. Whatever the case, it remains an engaging read, and I replaced my well worn paperback with a hardcover one a few years ago, when I spotted it at a charity fair. More recently I bought Don Black’s autobiography, The Sanest Guy in the Room, and enjoyed that thoroughly.

Panos and I probably had a similar arrangement to Iacocca and Novak, whereby I interviewed and prompted him for some stories, and I wrote from copious notes that he gave me. There’s an entire chapter in there that’s based on his reflections about the time he bought into a football team in Sweden, that he wrote in great detail himself soon after the events took place. Somehow over 10 months of 2021—though the idea has been floating around for many years before—Panos and I created this eminently readable tale, the sort of autobiography I would like to read.

Of course we start in Greece in 1958, and how a young lad, who begins working at age five alongside his mother as she cleaned an office, finds poverty a torment, and vows to get himself out of it. He also cannot tolerate injustice, and attempts to expose pollution, workplace accidents, and corruption—only to find himself and his parents harassed. By his late teens, after taking an interrail journey to northern Europe, he finds an opportunity to study in Sweden.

It’s not “the rest is history”, as Panos works in kitchens, washing dishes and peeling potatoes. He also finds gigs as a prison guard, a parole officer, a rest home carer, and a substitute teacher.

His first taste of fame is for a postgraduate sociology paper, where he examines the importance of clothing in nighttime disco settings, which captures the imagination of major newspapers and TV networks.

Finding dissatisfaction and frustration working in health care for the city of Göteborg, he seized upon an idea one day when spying just how drab the beaches were in Sweden: beautiful bodies covered in monochrome swimwear.

Injecting colour on to the beaches through his Panos Emporio swimwear label wasn’t an overnight success, and Panos elaborates on his story with the sort of passion you would expect from a Greek native, capturing your attention and leaving you wanting more.

He reveals his secrets about how he lifted himself out of poverty, creating a company given a platinum rating in Sweden, an honour reserved only for the top 450, out of half a million limited-liability companies there.

Read about how he managed his first sales despite doubts from the entire industry, how he secured Jannike Björling—then Sweden’s most sought-after woman, photographed constantly by the paparazzi—as Panos Emporio’s model, and how he followed up with securing Victoria Silvstedt, just as she was about to become world-famous posing for Playboy.

By 1996, 10 years into his label’s journey, and with the release of the Paillot (still offered in the Panos Emporio range today), the press dubbed him ‘the king of swimwear’, but he wasn’t done yet.

More high-profile models followed, and there’s even an encounter with Whitney Houston, revealed for the first time in the book. There are royal encounters, with former King Constantine II, and Sweden’s HM King Carl XVI Gustaf and HM Queen Sofia. HSH Princess StĂ©phanie almost makes it into the book.

There are touching moments, too, such as his heartfelt recollection of his friendship with Jean-Louis Dumas, the chairman of HermĂšs, and his wife Rena.

We’ve known each other for over 20 years, and from the start he complimented me on my writing, so I have a feeling he wanted me for this task for some time. We’ve both had to start businesses from scratch, and we did them away from our countries of birth. Additionally, he knew I grew up amongst Greeks so I had more than an average insight into his culture. We’ve talked about it numerous times, maybe as far back as 2016, when Panos Emporio celebrated its 30th anniversary. I’m very grateful for that. There were obviously stories I knew, since I interviewed him about them over the years, but plenty I did not, and they form the bulk of this 320 pp. book, published by LID Publishing of London, and released on May 26. A party in Stockholm follows on May 31.
 
Technically, the process was an easy collaboration as Panos and I shared notes and written manuscripts back and forth, and I had the privilege to lay it out and edit the photos as well. The whole book was typed out on WordPerfect, which gave an almost perfect re-creation of how the copyfitting would go in InDesign, unlike Word—for a while others doubted I could fit the contents into the agreed page length, since they couldn’t see it in the same format that I did. Martin Majoor’s FF Nexus Serif is used for the body text. And, while hardly anyone probably cares about such things, I managed to deliver it so the printer could do the book without wasting paper with the right page impositions. I know what it’s like to have printing bills.

My Life, My Odyssey was the working title, but it seems LID liked it enough to retain it for the final product. I wanted to retitle it Panos: Who Designs Wins, but the experts in charge of sales preferred the working title. ‘Who designs wins’ appears on the back cover, so it’s still getting out there!

Caroline Li, LID’s designer, did the cover, and I followed her lead with the headline typeface choice; and Martin Liu, who I’ve known from Stefan Engeseth’s many books, published and coordinated. I’m grateful to the watchful eye and coordination of Aiyana Curtis, who oversaw the production stage and did the first edit; she also engaged the copy editor and proofreader, who turned my stubborn Hart’s Rules-compliant text into LID’s house style.

I see from her rĂ©sumĂ© that Aiyana had done some work here in Aotearoa, and Caroline and Martin, like me, have Hong Kong roots, so we all probably had some things in common that made the process easier. It was particularly easy to understand Caroline’s design approach, and as someone who had done mock covers while we were trying out potential photos, I will say hers is infinitely superior to mine. Similarly, I understood Martin’s business approach from day one.

The final manuscript was done in October 2021 and we’ve spent the last few months doing production, shooting the cover, and preparing for the launch, where LID’s Teya Ucherdzhieva has ably been working on a marketing plan. Panos himself, never one to do things by halves, has thrown himself into doing the launch, and it promises to be an excellent event.
 
For those who’d like to get their hands on a copy, Amazon UK and Barnes & Noble are retailing Panos: My Life, My Odyssey, and a US launch is slated for October (Amazon and other retailers will have it in their catalogues).


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Stefan Engeseth gives away his book, One, in the interests of peace

13.04.2022

I always thought One: a Consumer Revolution for Business was one of Stefan Engeseth’s best books, if not the best.

He recently posted on Linkedin: ‘readers have told me that the book can lead to a better understanding of people and society (which can end wars).’ In the interests of peace, he thought he’d give away his book for free, as a PDF, subtly retitled One: a Consumer Revolution for Peace.

‘I originally wrote the book to start a consumer revolution,’ he says. ‘And today it is consumers, through social media, who are demanding nations to end wars. I have thought about updating the book, but now I realize that the content could be the DNA for change and to build a better future on.’

Here’s his original Linkedin post, and you can grab your copy of this excellent book here.


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Instagram scammers are next-level lazy (and greedy)

22.12.2021

This was somewhat disappointing.
   This chap contacts me, seemingly wanting permission to repost our Instagram images. His personal info has been removed.

Hello there,

We have reviewed your page and we truly loved your work!
   We’d like to repost your pictures on our profile. Our account is [redacted] and we have over 200.000 followers. If our followers see your work a large number of them are extremely likely to follow you.
   I hope this sounds great to you since we are convinced you are going to receive a lot of new fans from this.
   Would you like to be published on our page?

All the best,

   I realize this was a form email but I thought: how courteous that they ask permission first. So many just steal your work. I felt they should be complimented on doing the right thing.

Dear [redacted]:

Thank you for reaching out but we must decline your offer. Our work is licensed for our use only, and we cannot permit it to be reposted. We truly appreciate your asking us first and for doing the right thing.

Kind regards,

Jack Yan
Publisher, Lucire

   Seems their email system is set up assuming that all replies are positive, because I next get this:

I appreciate you getting back to us!
   We have delivered many sponsored shoutouts and the results were always terrific. When we saw your Instagram profile we were confident you would get the same results. You can choose the photos for the promotion yourself or we can help you out with that.
   We guarantee at least 500 new followers with just one picture. With 3 published photos you will get at least 1500 new followers, and with 7 – more than 3500 new followers! If we don’t deliver these results, we will issue a full refund.

Packages:
1 shoutout – $39
3 shoutouts – $79
7 shoutouts – $159

And it goes on.
   This doesn’t deserve much more than:

Dear [redacted]:

I don’t know if you read my reply at 11.31 a.m. UTC—it seems like you haven’t. It’s a no.

Regards,

Jack

And a block of the schmuck’s domain on our server, plus two reports from us on Instagram for spamming.
   I know you’re thinking: why did you even bother replying in the first place?
   Well, usually when people send me unsolicited emails, they’re not so stupid as to not read the replies. This Instagram scammer, whose followers are probably all fake anyway, had automated everything, and took things to the next level of laziness. And he’s a greedy bugger as well, wanting to use your work and charge you for their using it!
   This is a sure way to ruin your reputation, and if you feel public policy would be served by my revealing their identity, I’m very happy to do so.


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Ingredients of leadership

17.12.2021

My friend Sarah Jane Adams is undertaking research on leadership and asked for what people thought being a good leader meant. Here are 10 that I gave her on her Linkedin. They are in no order and are the first 10 things that popped into my head. Not saying I’ve managed to do all of them consistently, but I try.

Recognize every individual for who they are and what they bring to the table.

Acknowledge your own limitations.

Don’t assign someone something you aren’t prepared to do yourself if you were in their shoes.

Work with people who can think beyond themselves and who can look at the bigger picture.

Communicate clearly and succinctly. Jargon is for losers.

If you have a good team, being transparent with them is a good thing.

Do not put up with anyone who thinks they can hold you to ransom or to hold up your work. Replace the buggers.

Are you instilling love or fear? If it’s the latter, you haven’t led.

Do what you love. It’s easier to lead when you do.

And don’t be a dick.


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That’s the hat-trick: Twitter has locked Lucire’s account

24.10.2021


Pixabay

In the space of less than a month, another US social network has shut Lucire’s account down. This time it’s Twitter.
   When going through the settings to see if Lucire could be verified, Twitter requested that we complete all the information. It specifically states that the date of birth should be entered, even for companies.
   It only seemed logical to put in Lucire’s founding date, October 20, 1997.
   That was enough to have the account locked. As we started the account in the 2000s, it stated we were under age when that happened.
   We’re not sure why an event in the 2000s would have an impact in the 2020s, but more importantly, Twitter should have worded its request far better.
   As a company account, any number of people could be managing it. It so happened that I set up the account, so I provided them with my driver’s licence as proof of my age—but that’s not the age of the company. What if I had assigned a social media manager in their early 20s to do the job? Isn’t it conceivable that they would then inadvertently lock the account if they put in their own date of birth?
   Not even Facebook or Instagram are daft enough to lock an account based on a company’s foundation date. What other date would a reasonable person have put down when the company’s birthday is requested? The date of first operation? The date the idea was conceived? The date of incorporation? All of those would have fallen foul of Twitter’s systems.
   For a company that made US$3·7 milliard in revenue last year, it does seem a rather major error.
   After I noted this on my personal account, spammers and bots began replying—accounts that no doubt have been reported but are permitted to remain.
   We remain in the dark on why Instagram locked us out and deactivated our account less than a month ago.
   It is perhaps best to either lie to these US social media giants (in the case of some, it’s the behaviour their own leadership exhibits), or to not provide them information at all. Or, better yet, to not rely on them at all and to focus on one’s own proprietary web presences. It is no coincidence that with our redesign, we left off all social media links, ironically with the exception of Twitter on our home page.—Jack Yan, Founder and Publisher

Originally published in Lucire.

PS.: The title refers to the fact that all three US Big Tech players have locked us out at some stage. In 2013, Google blacklisted all our sites. In September, Instagram deactivated Lucire’s account. And now, it’s Twitter’s turn.


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Have you driven a Ford 
 lately? Probably not

13.09.2021


Ford’s Brazilian line-up, 2021. Once upon a time, there were locally developed Corcels and Mavericks; even the EcoSport was a Brazilian development. Today, it’s Mustang, a couple of trucks, and a rebadged Chinese crossover.

We heard a lot about the demise of Holden as GM retreats from continents at a time, seemingly in a quest to be a Sino-American player rather than a global one. We’ve heard less about Ford shrinking as well, though the phenomenon is similar.
   Ford’s Brazilian range is now the Mustang, Ranger, Territory (which is fundamentally a badge-engineered Yusheng S330 from China with a Fordized interior), and Bronco. It’s beating a retreat from Brazil, at the cost of tens of thousands of jobs (its own, plus associated industries’) in a country that already has 15 per cent unemployment.
   Their reasoning is that electrification and technological change are driving restructuring, which seems plausible, till you realize that in other markets, including Thailand where there’s still a plant making Fords, the company is fielding essentially trucks, the truck-based Everest, and the Mustang.
   Ford warned us that this would be its course of action a few years ago, but now it’s happening, it makes even less sense.
   Say it’s all about (eventual) electrification. You’d want vehicles in your portfolio now that lend themselves to energy efficiency, so that people begin associating your brand with it. Trucks and pony cars don’t fit with this long-term. And I still believe that at some point, even before trucks commonly have electric powertrains, someone is going to say, ‘These tall bodies with massive frontal areas are using up way more of the juice I’m paying for. We don’t need something this big.’
   Let’s say Ford quickly pivots. It sticks a conventional saloon body on the Mustang Mach-E platform (which, let’s be honest, started off as a Focus crossover—the product code, CX727, tells us as much) in record time. Would anyone buy it? Probably not before they see what the Asians, who don’t abandon segments because they can’t be bothered working hard, have in their showrooms. Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Mazda, and countless Chinese marques, have been building their goodwill in the meantime.
   It’s why two decades ago, I warned against DaimlerChrysler killing off its price-leading brand, Plymouth. You never know when recessionary times come and you want an entry-level brand. Before the decade was out, that time came, and Chrysler didn’t have much it could use without diluting its existing brands’ market perceptions to have some price leaders.
   Ford retreating from B- and C-segment family cars, even CD- and E-segment ones, means it’ll find it difficult to get back into those markets later on. A good example would be the French, who don’t find much success in the large saloon market generally, and would find it very hard to re-enter in a lot of places.
   I realize the action isn’t in regular passenger cars these days, but the fact that Fiat, Chevrolet and Volkswagen still manage to field broad lines in Brazil suggests that the market still exists and they can still eke out some money from their sales.
   It’s as though the US car firms are giving up, ceding territory. And on this note, Ford has form.
   In the 1990s, Ford’s US arm under-marketed the Contour and Mystique Stateside, cars based on the original European Mondeo. I saw precious little advertising for them in US motoring press. As far as I can tell, they wanted to bury it because they didn’t like the fact it wasn’t developed by them, but by Ford’s German-based team in Köln. ‘See, told you those Europeans wouldn’t know how to engineer a CD-segment car for the US.’ The fiefdom in Dearborn got its own way and later developed the Mazda-based Fusion, while the Europeans did two more generations of Mondeo.
   In the 2000s, it decided to flush the goodwill of the Taurus name down the toilet, before then-new CEO Alan Mulally saw what was happening and hurriedly renamed the Five Hundred to Taurus.
   It under-marketed the last generation of Falcon—you seldom saw them on forecourts—and that looked like a pretext for closing the Australian plant (‘See, no one wants big cars’) even though by this point the Falcon was smaller than the Mondeo in most measures other than overall length, and plenty of people were buying similarly sized rear-wheel-drive saloons over at BMW and Mercedes-Benz.
   The Mondeo hybrid has been another model that you barely hear of, even though the Fusion Hybrid, the American version of the car, had been on sale years before.
   Think about what they gave up. Here, Ford once owned the taxi market. It doesn’t any more as cabbies ultimately wound up in Priuses and Camrys. Had Ford fielded a big hybrid saloon earlier, Toyota might not have made inroads into the taxi market to the same extent. Ford almost seems apologetic for being in segments where others come to, and when challenging the market leaders, doesn’t put much effort in any more.
   Objectively, I would rather have a Mondeo Hybrid than a Camry, but good luck seeing one in a Ford showroom.
   Maybe Ford’s smart to be putting all its resources into growth areas like trucks and crossovers. Puma and Escape have appeal in the B- and C-segment crossover markets in places like New Zealand. They’re fairly car-like now, too. But to me that’s putting all your eggs into one basket. In countries like Brazil and Thailand, where Ford doesn’t sell well resolved crossovers in these segments, it’s treading a fine line. I look at the market leadership it once had in cars, in so many places, and in 2021 that looks like a thing of the past. More’s the pity.


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