China
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Chinese government admits collection of deleted WeChat messages
Chinese authorities revealed over the weekend that they have the capability of retrieving deleted messages from the almost universally used WeChat app. The admission doesn’t come as a surprise to many, but it’s rare for this type of questionable data collection tactic to be acknowledged publicly.
As noted by the South China Morning Post, an anti-corruption commission in Hefei province posted Saturday to social media that it has “retrieved a series of deleted WeChat conversations from a subject” as part of an investigation.
The post was deleted Sunday, but not before many had seen it and understood the ramifications. Tencent, which operates the WeChat service used by nearly a billion people (including myself), explained in a statement that “WeChat does not store any chat histories — they are only stored on users’ phones and computers.”
The technical details of this storage were not disclosed, but it seems clear from the commission’s post that they are accessible in some way to interested authorities, as many have suspected for years. The app does, of course, comply with other government requirements, such as censoring certain topics.
There are still plenty of questions, the answers to which would help explain user vulnerability: Are messages effectively encrypted at rest? Does retrieval require the user’s password and login, or can it be forced with a “master key” or backdoor? Can users permanently and totally delete messages on the WeChat platform at all?
Fears over Chinese government access to data held or handled by Chinese companies has led to a global backlash against those companies, including some countries (including the U.S.) banning Chinese-made devices and services from sensitive applications or official use altogether.
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Report: Chinese smartphone shipments drop 21% to reach lowest level since 2013
Analysts have long-warned of a growth crunch in China’s smartphone space, and it’s looking like that’s very much the case right now.
China’s smartphone growth has been the feel-good story for domestic OEMs who have clocked impressive figures as the billion-plus population has rushed online via mobile devices. However, the market reached saturation point in 2017 — when sales stopped growing for the first time — and the first quarter of this year is already showing savage results.
In a report released today, Canalys claimed that shipments across the industry fell by 21 percent year-on-year in Q1.
The total number of mobile devices shipped in China dropped below the 100 million mark in a quarter for the first time since late 2013, the firm added.
“Eight of the top 10 smartphone vendors were hit by annual declines, with Gionee, Meizu and Samsung shrinking to less than half of their respective Q1 2017 numbers,” the report read.
Ouch.
Of the field, only Xiaomi — the firm tipped for an IPO at a $100 billion valuation — was able to post positive momentum as its numbers grew by 37 percent to reach 12 million. That was enough to see it overtake Apple into fourth place, but Xiaomi numbers are still heavily reliant on its $150 Redmi range, which isn’t as lucrative as its higher-end products.
Huawei, Oppo and Vivo led the market. Somewhat incredibly, those three firms plus Xiaomi now account for a very dominant 73 percent of all shipments, which Canalys believes is bad for consumers and smartphone aficionados in China.
“The level of competition has forced every vendor to imitate the others’ product portfolios and go-to-market strategies,” analyst Mo Jia said in a statement. “While Huawei, Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi must contend with a shrinking Chinese market, they can take comfort from the fact that it will continue to consolidate, and that their size will help them last longer than other smaller players.”
There might be a bright spark coming soon. Canalys anticipates growth in the second quarter as Oppo, Vivo and Huawei trot out new flagship devices. But China’s once-booming industry is now having to contend with the same issue as the U.S.: consumers don’t upgrade their phone as frequently as carriers would like.
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Xiaomi promises to give money back to customers if its profits get too high
Xiaomi, the Chinese smartphone maker tipped for a public listing this year, has made a unique pledge: if it makes too much money, it’ll give a chunk of its profits back to its customers.
Yes, that’s right.
The company said today it will forever limit to just five percent the net profit margins after tax for smartphones, smart home devices and other hardware. If it makes more money than planned over a calendar year, it plans to “distribute the excess amount by reasonable means to its users.”
Today our CEO Lei Jun announced a promise to all our fans…#Xiaomi will forever limit the net profit margin after tax for our entire hardware sales (including smartphones, IoT and lifestyle products) to a maximum of 5%.
Do you like the sound of that? pic.twitter.com/ZbEjaVeBLf
— Mi (@xiaomi) April 25, 2018
It’s hard to know exactly what “reasonable means” Xiaomi is referring to, but here are some thoughts.
Spoiler number one alert !! — Most companies in mobile make a scant profit, if any at all, on hardware.
Firms like LG and Samsung rely on component divisions and other consumer brands to record the bulk of the revenue that makes them profitable. More broadly, the competitive market means there’s not much money to claim in selling phones. Apple is estimated to account for a whopping 87 percent of all smartphone profits despite just 18 percent market share.
Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 was widely lauded when it launched last year
Spoiler number two alert !! — Selling hardware with a low net profit has always been a component of Xiaomi’s strategy.
Indeed, former head of international Hugo Barra previously said it didn’t make money on hardware sales. That approach may have changed, but Xiaomi had never put a figure on its take-home margin before.
This pledge aligns itself neatly with the company’s core focus of providing cutting-edge tech, or as close to, at affordable prices. Much has been said over the years of the bang-for-buck of its $150 Redmi range, while countless comparisons of its higher-end Mi phones — which typically sell for $150-$300 — and flagship products from Apple and Samsung have graced the internet.
Xiaomi has said from the get-go that smartphones are just one part of its wider ecosystem — which includes Xiaomi-branded smart home and “lifestyle” devices from third-parties, and, crucially, services that link all the hardware together. Those include services such as online video, e-commerce, financial products and other digital services.
“From the beginning, we embarked on a relentless pursuit of innovation, quality, design, user experience and efficiency advances, to provide the best technology products and services at accessible prices. We hope that our products and services will help our users to achieve a better life,” CEO and co-founder Lei Jun said in the money statement that accompanies today’s announcement.
Xiaomi is widely tipped to go public this year in an IPO that could value its business as high as $100 billion, according to Bloomberg. Chinese media recently claimed that the company is planning a dual-IPO that would see it list both in Hong Kong and on Mainland China, as our sister site Technode explained.
Such a double-headed IPO would be unique but, as Xiaomi showed today, it has no intention of sticking to so-called convention.
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Startup ecosystem report: China is rising while the US is waning
Startups are a gamble, but it’s possible to better understand why some thrive and many more die by looking at the ecosystems in which they operate. Such is the mission of eight-year-old Startup Genome, composed of a group of researchers and entrepreneurs who, every year, interview thousands of founders and investors around the world to get a better handle on what’s changing in the regions where they operate, and what remains stubbornly the same.
The larger objective is to figure out how to help more startups succeed, and the outfit — which this year surveyed 10,000 founders with the help of partners like Crunchbase and Dealroom — produced some data that should perhaps concern those in the U.S. To wit, China looks positioned to overtake U.S. dominance when it comes to numerous tech sectors. Consider: In 2014, just 14 percent of so-called unicorns were based in China. Between the start of last year through today, that percentage has shot up to 35 percent, while in the U.S., the number of homegrown unicorns has fallen from 61 percent to 41 percent of the overall global number.
You could argue that investors are simply assigning China-based startups overly lofty valuations, as happened here in the U.S., and we partly believe that to be true. But China is also clearly “in it to win it,” based on a look at patents, with four times as many AI-related applications and three times as many crypto- and blockchain-related patents registered in China last year. With so much of the tech industry now focused on deep tech, it’s worth noting. In fact, though we loathed the January Financial Times column penned by famed VC Michael Moritz, who suggested U.S. companies follow China’s lead, his underlying call to arms was probably, gulp, prescient in its own way.
What else should startups know? According to Startup Genome’s findings, in addition to the rise of AI, blockchain and robotics manufacturing, there are clearly declining sub sectors, too, including, least surprisingly, adtech, which has seen a roughly 35 percent drop in funding over the last five years. No doubt that ties directly to the growing dominance of Facebook and Google, which accounted for 73 percent of all U.S. digital advertising last year, according to the equity research firm Pivotal.
That doesn’t mean adtech startups are cooked, notes the study’s authors. Rather, declining sub-sectors are often “mature” but can be revived by new technologies. In this case, while funding for adtech has dropped, virtual reality and augmented reality could well inject some new growth into the industry at some point. Maybe.
Either way, to us, the most interesting facets of this report — and it really is worth poring over — are the connections it’s able to make by talking with so many people around the world. It addresses, for example, how Stockholm, a relatively small startup ecosystem, is able to produce sizable startups at a meaningful rate, versus Chicago, whose ecosystem is ostensibly three times bigger. (The answer: Stockholm’s startup founders are apparently better connected to the world’s top seven ecosystems.)
Also quite interesting is the report’s findings about women founders, who build more relationships with regional founders and are more locally connected than their male counterparts — except with investors. That’s bad news for both women founders and investors, as local connectedness is associated with better startup performance.
To read the report in full, click over here. You have to fork over your email address, but with 240 pages filled with fascinating nuggets and other useful information, you’ll likely find it well worth it.
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Solar project lending startup Wunder Capital raises $112 million as renewable energy shines
As renewable energy continues to gobble up more and more of the new energy capacity coming online, the solar project lending company Wunder Capital has raised $112 million in primarily debt financing to boost its business.
The 90 percent debt and 10 percent equity commitment came from the multi-strategy investment firm Cyrus Investments, which has backed renewable energy projects for years through its investment in RePower Group.
“The debt component is going to blow out the lending opportunity,” says Wunder chief executive Bryan Birsic.
Wunder chose to consolidate the debt and equity round with a single lead investor to simplify the negotiation process on both sides of the table, Birsic said. “Since Cyrus is an equity holder in the company we can come to better terms,” on debt facilities and repayment, he said.
Wunder lends money to commercial solar energy development projects throughout the U.S. and its business has been buoyed by a flood of demand for new solar energy projects coming online.
Since its launch in 2016, the company has financed more than 180 projects throughout the U.S., which are generating somewhere in the range of 50 megawatts (or enough electricity to power roughly 32,500 homes).
The Boulder, Colo.-based company makes money in three ways: It charges closing fees, a servicing fee and annual interest rate on the debt it provides — typically Wunder will pull in between 4 percent and 5 percent off of each loan it provides to a project.
And business… for renewable energy… is booming.
For instance, the industry appears to have shaken off concerns over price increases stemming from the tariffs imposed on solar panels as part of broad punitive measures President Trump has taken against China (which supplies most of the world’s solar panels).
“It was really pleasant to see that folks were less reactionary and more responsive to the data,” says Birsic. The headlines, Birsic explains, were worse than the reality for the industry. The headlines in January predicted a 30 percent tariff on solar panels, but banks thought those increases would ultimately result in a 3 percent price increase for residential solar installations and a 4 percent price increase for commercial solar.
Those price increases would only bring costs in line with what they were at the end of 2017, since over the course of the year prices on installations declined 10 percent, Birsic says.
“We’re very cool with the economics as it existed in 2017,” he said.
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Buick unveils an all-electric SUV concept and it’s exactly what GM needs
General Motors is spinning up its electrification plans and today announced the stunning, poorly named Buick Enspire concept at Auto China 2018. As a concepts go, this one looks great and rather feasible.
GM says it’s powered by Buick’s eMotion powertrain that can produce a maximum output of 410 kW (roughly 550 hp). This should make it good for a 4-second sprint to 60 mph. Range is clocked at 370 miles and the battery can be recharged to 80 percent within 40 minutes. It supports both fast and wireless charging.
The 2018 Buick Enspire all-electric concept SUV
Inside is an augmented reality windshield, OLED display and wood center console. And because this is just a concept and nothing is real, the Enspire features a 5G connection.
GM made a big promise in 2017 to release 20 electric vehicles within the next five years. The company is going all-in on electric vehicles, and something like this Buick would fit nicely in the world of crossovers and mild SUVs. I think it looks better than the Tesla Model X, but of course, the Model X is real and this is just a concept.
The Envision was announced in China, where the Buick nameplate is well-loved. It will be interesting to see if GM releases this sharp SUV under a different brand though. To me, throw a new grill on it, drop the dumb name and that SUV could be the future of Chevy.
Pricing and availability were not announced.
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Tencent and education startup Age of Learning bring popular English-learning app ABCmouse to China
Tencent is teaming up with Los Angeles-based education company Age of Learning to launch an English education program for kids in China. ABCmouse, Age of Learning’s flagship product, has been localized and will be available as a website and an iOS and Android app in China, with Tencent handling product development, marketing, sales and customer support.
The new partnership extends Tencent’s involvement in ed-tech, which already includes a strategic investment in VIPKID, an online video tutoring platform that connects Chinese kids with English teachers and competes with QKids and Dada ABC. ABCmouse, on the other hand, uses videos, books and online activities like games, songs and stories to help kids study English.
The Chinese version of ABCmouse includes integration with Tencent’s ubiqutioius messenger and online services platform WeChat, which now has more than one billion users, and its instant messaging service QQ, with 783 million monthly active users. This makes it easier for parents to sign up and pay for ABCmouse, because they can use their WeChat or QQ account and payment information. It also allows families to share kids’ English-learning progress on their news feeds or in chats. For example, Chen says parents can send video or audio recordings of their children practicing English to grandparents, who can then buy gift subscriptions with one click.
Though you probably haven’t heard of it unless you have young kids or work with elementary school-age children, Age of Learning has built a significant presence in online education since it was founded in 2007, thanks mainly to the popularity of ABCmouse in schools, public libraries and Head Start programs. Two years ago, Age of Learning hit unicorn status after raising $150 million at a $1 billion valuation from Iconiq Capital.
Jerry Chen, Age of Learning’s president of Greater China, says there are more than 110 million kids between the ages of three to eight in China and the online English language learning market there is “a several billion dollar market that’s growing rapidly.” He points to a recent study by Chinese research agency Yiou Intelligence that says total spending on online English learning programs for children will be 29.41 billion RMB, or about $4.67 billion, this year, and is projected to reach 79.17 billion, or $12.6 billion, by 2022.
The localization of ABCmouse will extend to the design of its eponymous cartoon rodent, who has a more stylized appearance in China. Lessons include animations featuring an English teacher and students in an international school classroom and begin with listening comprehension and speaking before moving onto phonics, reading and writing. Tencent-Age of Learning products will also include speech recognition tools to help kids hone their English pronunciation.
In an email, Jason Chen, Tencent’s general manager of online education, said that the company “reviewed several companies through an extensive research process, and it became clear that ABCmouse had the most engaging and effective online English self-learning curriculum and content for children. Age of Learning puts learning first, and that commitment to educational excellence made them a perfect fit for our online English language learning business.”
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Our digital future will be shaped by increasingly mobile technologies coming from China
Since the dawn of the internet, the titans of this industry have fought to win the “starting point” — the place that users start their online experiences. In other words, the place where they begin “browsing.” The advent of the dial-up era had America Online mailing a CD to every home in America, which passed the baton to Yahoo’s categorical listings, which was swallowed by Google’s indexing of the world’s information — winning the “starting point” was everything.
As the mobile revolution continues to explode across the world, the battle for the starting point has intensified. For a period of time, people believed it would be the hardware, then it became clear that the software mattered most. Then conversation shifted to a debate between operating systems (Android or iOS) and moved on to social properties and messaging apps, where people were spending most of their time. Today, my belief is we’re hovering somewhere between apps and operating systems. That being said, the interface layer will always be evolving.
The starting point, just like a rocket’s launchpad, is only important because of what comes after. The battle to win that coveted position, although often disguised as many other things, is really a battle to become the starting point of commerce.
Google’s philosophy includes a commitment to get users “off their page” as quickly as possible…to get that user to form a habit and come back to their starting point. The real (yet somewhat veiled) goal, in my opinion, is to get users to search and find the things they want to buy.
Of course, Google “does no evil” while aggregating the world’s information, but they pay their bills by sending purchases to Priceline, Expedia, Amazon and the rest of the digital economy.
Facebook, on the other hand, has become a starting point through its monopolization of users’ time, attention and data. Through this effort, it’s developed an advertising business that shatters records quarter after quarter.
Google and Facebook, this famed duopoly, represent 89 percent of new advertising spending in 2017. Their dominance is unrivaled… for now.
Change is urgently being demanded by market forces — shifts in consumer habits, intolerable rising costs to advertisers and through a nearly universal dissatisfaction with the advertising models that have dominated (plagued) the U.S. digital economy. All of which is being accelerated by mobile. Terrible experiences for users still persist in our online experiences, deliver low efficacy for advertisers and fraud is rampant. The march away from the glut of advertising excess may be most symbolically seen in the explosion of ad blockers. Further evidence of the “need for a correction of this broken industry” is Oracle’s willingness to pay $850 million for a company that polices ads (probably the best entrepreneurs I know ran this company, so no surprise).
As an entrepreneur, my job is to predict the future. When reflecting on what I’ve learned thus far in my journey, it’s become clear that two truths can guide us in making smarter decisions about our digital future:
Every day, retailers, advertisers, brands and marketers get smarter. This means that every day, they will push the platforms, their partners and the places they rely on for users to be more “performance driven.” More transactional.
Paying for views, bots (Russian or otherwise) or anything other than “dollars” will become less and less popular over time. It’s no secret that Amazon, the world’s most powerful company (imho), relies so heavily on its Associates Program (its home-built partnership and affiliate platform). This channel is the highest performing form of paid acquisition that retailers have, and in fact, it’s rumored that the success of Amazon’s affiliate program led to the development of AWS due to large spikes in partner traffic.
Chinese flag overlooking The Bund, Shanghai, China (Photo: Rolf Bruderer/Getty Images)
When thinking about our digital future, look down and look east. Look down and admire your phone — this will serve as your portal to the digital world for the next decade, and our dependence will only continue to grow. The explosive adoption of this form factor is continuing to outpace any technological trend in history.
Now, look east and recognize that what happens in China will happen here, in the West, eventually. The Chinese market skipped the PC-driven digital revolution — and adopted the digital era via the smartphone. Some really smart investors have built strategies around this thesis and have quietly been reaping rewards due to their clairvoyance.
China has historically been categorized as a market full of knock-offs and copycats — but times have changed. Some of the world’s largest and most innovative companies have come out of China over the past decade. The entrepreneurial work ethic in China (as praised recently by arguably the world’s greatest investor, Michael Moritz), the speed of innovation and the ability to quickly scale and reach meaningful populations have caused Chinese companies to leapfrog the market cap of many of their U.S. counterparts.
The most interesting component of the Chinese digital economy’s growth is that it is fundamentally more “pure” than the U.S. market’s. I say this because the Chinese market is inherently “transactional.” As Andreessen Horowitz writes, WeChat, China’s most valuable company, has become the “starting point” and hub for all user actions. Their revenue diversity is much more “Amazon” than “Google” or “Facebook” — it’s much more pure. They make money off the transactions driven from their platform, and advertising is far less important in their strategy.
The obsession with replicating WeChat took the tech industry by storm two years ago — and for some misplaced reason, everyone thought we needed to build messaging bots to compete.
What shouldn’t be lost is our obsession with the purity and power of the business models being created in China. The fabric that binds the Chinese digital economy and has fostered its seemingly boundless growth is the magic combination of commerce and mobile. Singles Day, the Chinese version of Black Friday, drove $25 billion in sales on Alibaba — 90 percent of which were on mobile.
The lesson we’ve learned thus far in both the U.S. and in China is that “consumers spending money” creates the most durable consumer businesses. Google, putting aside all its moonshots and heroic mission statements, is a “starting point” powered by a shopping engine. If you disagree, look at where their revenue comes from…
Google’s recent announcement of Shopping Actions and their movement to a “pay per transaction model” signals a turning point that could forever change the landscape of the digital economy.
Google’s multi-front battle against Apple, Facebook and Amazon is weighted. Amazon is the most threatening. It’s the most durable business of the four — and its model is unbounded on two fronts that almost everyone I know would bet their future on, 1) people buying more online, where Amazon makes a disproportionate amount of every dollar spent, and 2) companies needing more cloud computing power (more servers), where Amazon makes a disproportionate amount of every dollar spent.
To add insult to injury, Amazon is threatening Google by becoming a starting point itself — 55 percent of product searches now originate at Amazon, up from 30 percent just a year ago.
Google, recognizing consumer behavior was changing in mobile (less searching) and the inferiority of their model when compared to the durability and growth prospects of Amazon, needed to respond. Google needed a model that supported boundless growth and one that created a “win-win” for its advertising partners — one that resembled Amazon’s relationship with its merchants — not one that continued to increase costs to retailers while capitalizing on their monopolization of search traffic.
Google knows that with its position as the starting point — with Google.com, Google Apps and Android — it has to become a part of the transaction to prevail in the long term. With users in mobile demanding fewer ads and more utility (demanding experiences that look and feel a lot more like what has prevailed in China), Google has every reason in the world to look down and to look east — to become a part of the transaction — to take its piece.
A collision course for Google and the retailers it relies upon for revenue was on the horizon. Search activity per user was declining in mobile and user acquisition costs were growing quarter over quarter. Businesses are repeatedly failing to compete with Amazon, and unless Google could create an economically viable growth model for retailers, no one would stand a chance against the commerce juggernaut — not the retailers nor Google itself.
As I’ve believed for a long time, becoming a part of the transaction is the most favorable business model for all parties; sources of traffic make money when retailers sell things, and, most importantly, this only happens when users find the things they want.
Shopping Actions is Google’s first ambitious step to satisfy all three parties — businesses and business models all over the world will feel this impact.
Good work, Sundar.
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Ethereum falls after rumors of a powerful mining chip surface
Rumors of a new ASIC mining rig from Bitmain have driven Ethereum prices well below their one-week high of $585. An ASIC – or Application-specific integrated circuit – in the cryptocurrency world is a chip that designers create for the specific purpose of mining a single currency. Early Bitcoin ASICs, for example, drove adoption up and then, in some eyes, centralized Bitcoin mining in a few hands, thereby thwarting the decentralized ethos of die-hard cryptocurrency fans.
According to a CNBC report, analyst Christopher Rolland visited China where he unearthed rumors of a new ASIC chip dedicated to Ethereum mining.
“During our travels through Asia last week, we confirmed that Bitmain has already developed an ASIC [application-specific integrated circuit] for mining Ethereum, and is readying the supply chain for shipments in 2Q18,” analyst Christopher Rolland wrote in a note to clients Monday. “While Bitmain is likely to be the largest ASIC vendor (currently 70-80% of Bitcoin mining ASICs) and the first to market with this product, we have learned of at least three other companies working on Ethereum ASICs, all at various stages of development.”
Historically users have mined Ethereum using GPUs which, in turn, led to the unavailability of GPUs for gaming and graphics. However, an ASIC would change the mining equation entirely, resulting in a certain amount of centralization as big players – including Bitmain – created higher barrier to entry for casual miners.
“Ethereum is of the most profitable coins available for GPU mining,” said Mikhail Avady, founder of TryMining.com. “It’s going to affect a lot of the market. Without understanding the hash power of these Bitmain machines we can’t tell if it will make GPUs obsolete or not.”
“It can be seen as an attack on the network. It’s a centralization problem,” he said.
Avady points out that there is a constant debate among cryptocurrency aficionados regarding ASICs and their effect on the market. Some are expecting a move to more mineable coins including Monero and ZCash.
“What would be bad is if there was only one Ethereum ASIC manufacturer,” he said. “But with Samsung and a couple other players getting into the game it won’t be bad for long.”
There is also concern over ICO launches and actual utility of Ethereum-based smart contract tokens. “The price of ETH is becoming consolidated as people become more realistic about blockchain technology,” said Sky Guo, CEO of Cypherium. “People are looking for higher quality blockchain projects. I believe a rebound in ETH’s price will come soon as panic surrounding regulations begins to fade.”
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Lynk & Co reveals the 02 crossover SUV and details European rollout plans
Geely’s Lynk & Co is one of the more interesting young automotive brands, with an approach to sales and marketing that more closely resembles modern gadget and lifestyle brand go-to-market strategy than traditional automaker sales. The Lynk & Co 01 SUV, designed to sit somewhere between Geely’s line on one end and Volvo’s vehicles on the other, debuted last year; now the company is revealing its 02, a more compact crossover SUV, again designed with mobility, connectivity, and the potential for shared use in mind.
The 02 was designed and engineered in Sweden, Lynk & Co says, by a team of international talent. It has a sportier look and feel when compared to the 01, but also clearly shares design traits with the original Lynk & CO. vehicle. The car is intended to capitalize on the rapidly growing crossover SUV model, which is particularly strong in Europe, where Lynk & Co is also finally revealing its market rollout plans after initially kicking off sales in China in 2017.
Lynk & Co will aim to start European sales of its vehicles in 2020, and will skip the traditional dealer model to launch what it’s calling “Offline Stores,” which sound in practice a lot like Tesla’s global showrooms: “Small, sociable brand boutiques in urban districts.” The automaker will also sell online via its Lynkco.com site, which is a trademark of its conception (again something seemingly derived from the Tesla playbook) and it’ll also have a rolling pop-up shop that can make visits to spots that won’t have a permanent Offline Store boutique.
Another bit of news from Lynk & Co this morning: They’re creating a design collaboration with online commerce platform Tictail . This will be a line of both clothing and home good that will be designed by Tictail’s designer community and sold via its platform, and it’s going to be called “The City Dweller Series.” It’s a bit heavyhanded, but it fits overall with Lynk & Co’s strategy of positioning itself as the brand of connected young professionals.
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