Welcome to summer, the time of year where when you wake up as a kid, you get this PTSD feeling of having to do something and then realize school’s finished. The worst trick my mind used to play on me in the summer was having dreams that it was winter outside and then waking up and being so confused.

Also, remember when you were a kid and your parents told you to stop playing video games and gO oUtSiDe And GeT fReSh AiR? THEY WERE WRONG.

That is, if they wanted you to become a high performing, problem solving, communication driven employee in the workplace.  It turns out all those skills you can click off in your Linkedin profile are highly correlated with playing video games. 

You need to be able to solve problems to pass games ✅ 

You need to be able to communicate to teammates to win games ✅ 

You need to be quick and efficient in order to get through difficult levels ✅ 

The same skills from gaming all apply in the workplace.

According to Dr. Daniel Wheatley from the Department of Management at the University of Birmingham in the UK, the skills we acquire during leisure activities, such as gaming, can be leveraged in the professional setting.  When you think about it, it makes sense -  if you’re a douchebag during your leisure time, you’re probably going to be one in the office as well.  But if you’re well liked in leisure settings, you’ll probably have your pick of the litter of who you eat lunch with in the cafeteria. 

An even more interesting stat is that 39% of women who play video games believe gaming enhances their workplace skills.  And 60% off women in the UK who take annual leave to play video games believe gaming makes them more productive when they come back to work. 

Now go tell your parents they were wrong all these years.  And then challenge them to a fight in Street Fighter 6.

This week's issue is a 5 minute read:

👟 Swooshin’ up losses

👜 Luxury bags at dollar store prices

🎤 Konbini confessions

What’s going on at Nike?

Last week Nike’s stock plummeted 20% to a 4 year low as the athletic brand is expected to report year over year declines in revenue and profit in its fiscal year ending in May 2025. 

Now that we’ve gotten the Forbes stats out of the way, wtf is really going on at Nike to cause these declines?  Well firstly everyone is now wearing On shoes or those padded Hoka clunkers.  

Secondly Nike isn’t innovating the way they used to.  Yes they keep releasing “new” forms of shoes to improve performance but it’s the same typical song and dance.  A new version of an Air Max shoe with the Air Max DN, a new use case for their Air Zoom unit in the recent Pegasus 41’s, or rumours of re-releases of coveted grails all over the internet, all look and feel like the same old, (expensive nowadays) Nike.  

Lastly, Nike still remains culturally relevant but this relevance is waning - case in point, Drake’s Nocta line being found in Nike factory outlets.  At this point, Nike has been heavily relying on the Travis Scott collaboration as its main ongoing collab, which although still has one of the highly sought after catalog of shoes, there’s no way this multi-billion dollar company can rely on collaborations alone to continue to grow and stay relevant.  

I’m still Nike for life - don’t let me catch you wearing Nike shoes with Adidas track pants!  But I have to admit that I have a hard time seeing things in store or online that get me excited these days.  Sure, when I feel like I need a new pair of Air Max 1’s, then that’s easy to solve but not since Nike did their collab with Virgil Abloh and Off White did I feel like the brand was exploding all over.  These days I see more Hokas in the gym than anything else and I just want to puke...and it’s not because of my workout.  

Cheap labour & luxury bags: quel surprise

I don’t know if it’s a myth or some sort of unwritten thing but whenever the topic of where luxury goods are made comes up, it always turns into a conversation about how they’re mainly made in Asia and then the tags are put on in <insert 1st world country here>.  Well, turns out I was wrong, kind of.

This past week Italian police obtained figures from an ongoing investigation into factories and make shift workspaces that the likes of Dior and Armani used to produce their handbags.  In these spaces, workers were getting paid as little as $2/hour while living and sleeping where they worked.  Handbags that Dior sold for around $2780 USD were being made for $57 USD while Armani was paying around $270 USD per bag and selling the same bag for just under $2000 USD.  I mean, we all knew these bags did not cost that much to make but these numbers are insane.

So how did they pull off having such cheap labour in Italy? 

It turns out the brand would have their own in house manufacturing team that would outsource to another company.  That company would then hire a sub-contractor who would then hire an un-authorized Chinese sub-contractor which would then employ these Chinese labourers in Italy for pennies on the dollar.  Basically the brand would hire someone, who would hire someone else, who would then hire illegal immigrants to do the work.

Now the brands can say their bags are in fact fully manufactured in Italy, making it seem like it’s some expensive laborious process, justifying the high prices of their bags.  When in reality it’s just cheap labour behind the scenes living on site. 

Now that this all makes way more sense, I’d be curious to see what it looks like for the rest of the luxury brands out there.  Something tells me it’s probably not that different of a scenario.

Japanese Tom Green is back!

The Japanese drunken street interviews are back!  Aside from MrBeast’s channel at times, there’s no other YouTube channel I wait for videos to drop more than Konbini Confessions.  If you enjoy Japanese culture then you will enjoy this channel.  If you enjoy funny street interviews, you will enjoy this channel.  If you want to get a glimpse of what night life is really like in Tokyo, you will enjoy this channel.  

Japan as a country has this image of being super neat and tidy. I mean, when you get off the airplane and walk through the terminal, it’s probably the cleanest, most orderly experience you’ll ever have in an airport.  But then we all know about the crazy anime, manga, and just general Japanese cultural things that make you go WTF?  Like the manga/anime about the boy who dies but merges with his chainsaw dog to be reborn again as Chainsaw Man! Where do these ideas come from and what kind of people are living amongst the QUIETEST subway rides you’ll ever experience in your life??

Enter: Konbini Confessions.  

New York born Miyachi created the channel back in 2021 as a way to show the West a different side of Japanese culture, basically the part of the night life when everyone is drunk and acting wild.  Miyachi goes around interviewing anyone who will talk to him, asking them very simple questions and receiving very random responses.  

While we’ve seen this kind of humour in the west from numerous sources, Tom Green being the godfather of street interviews, in Asia, everyone keeps to themselves, which makes this even more awkward and fun to watch.  Episode 1 of the latest season just dropped, check it out.