Spudman Success

A jacket potato seller said he had sold almost 1,500 potatoes in a single day after global success on TikTok. Social media posts from Ben Newman - aka Spudman - are so a-peeling, he has become an international mash hit, but he admits to being in the dark as to why. In the meantime, he keeps posting and visitors keep arriving to his trailer in Tamworth town centre, Staffordshire. If you bake it, they will come. Among those to taste his taters, he said, were customers from across the globe. Mr Newman joined TikTok to promote his business in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. He has since been praised for using his prominent pomme de terre profile to promote the town and other local businesses. He said he simply posted updates on what he did, livestreaming his work, with thousands of people eventually tuning in from around the world to watch. He said: “We did a video with a couple who flew over from Malaysia, landed in Gatwick, hired a car and came straight over for a jacket potato.” Mr Newman has set up a partnership with a wholesaler, and will be handing out free potatoes at his pitch on Saturday. He said the gesture was funded through his social media activity, and he was pleased to have the chance to “give something back” after all the support he had been shown.

Spudman

Mr. Kipling Cuts Prices

Premier Foods, the company behind brands such as Mr Kipling, Bisto and Angel Delight, is planning to cut prices on more of its products. It plans to extend price cuts seen at the end of last year to ranges such as Mr Kipling Bakewell slices and Loyd Grossman cooking sauces. Recent data suggests that food prices are rising less quickly, offering some respite to squeezed household finances. However, Premier continued to increase prices of own-brand products. Many shoppers have switched to cheaper supermarket own-brand goods in the face of surging food prices over the past year. Premier supplies both own-brand products for supermarkets and the food ingredients used to make them. Premier Foods started lowering prices of major branded products, such as Batchelors Super Noodles and some of the Mr Kipling slices range, in the final three months of 2023. The group said the discounts helped it to report strong trading over Christmas, with group sales up 14.4% from the year before. Suppliers and retailers have been under the spotlight recently amid concerns that savings are not being passed on quickly enough down the supply chain to shoppers.

Mr Kipling

The Apprentice is Back!

The Apprentice is back, fronted by business tycoon Lord Sugar alongside his trusted advisors Baroness Karren Brady and Tim Campbell MBE. The series returns with 18 candidates and brand-new tasks, where we’ll see the hopeful business candidates battle it out for the opportunity of a lifetime for Lord Sugar’s £250,000 investment and mentorship. Series 18 kicks off in style as candidates head straight to the Scottish Highlands, tasked with a corporate hospitality challenge where we’ll see the men’s and women’s teams compete to put on high end away days for corporate clients in the hope of impressing Lord Sugar. Those who make it through the first boardroom will face a host of equally challenging tasks over the series – from a virtual escape room through to creating children’s cereal. There will also be a hop over the channel to Jersey for the classic discount buying task, and further afield to Budapest for a tourism challenge. And of course, The Apprentice wouldn’t be The Apprentice without the ever-popular TV shopping channel task.

The Apprentice

Apple Take Top Phone Spot

Apple now has the lion's share of the global smartphone market, knocking Samsung off the top spot for the first time in 12 years. The American phone giant accounted for more than a fifth of phones shipped last year, according to data from the International Data Corporation (IDC). Samsung took 19.4% of the market share with Chinese phonemakers Xiaomi, OPPO and Transsion following behind. Smartphone sales have been faltering as many people upgraded in the pandemic. The IDC reports that almost 1.2 billion smartphones were sold last year - a drop of more than 3% on the previous year. It is the lowest amount sold in a decade, with many consumers tightening their purse strings in the face of economic challenges and high interest rates. Experts predict the market will recover this year. Still, the IDC said Apple - which sold more than 234 million phones last year - is "the biggest winner". Huawei has recently made strides in making its own chips, after being banned from buying chips that were made using US technology over claims the company poses a national security risk to Washington. Offers to trade in old models as well as interest-free financing plans are also driving demand for premium devices like Apple. It's disappointing news for Samsung which - until now - had the top spot as the world's largest maker of memory chips, smartphones and televisions.

Apple v Samsung

Stanley Cup Craze

Would you camp outside a supermarket for a water tumbler that has gone viral on TikTok? Increasingly, viral buzz means the answer for some is yes, but only if it is a Stanley cup - specifically, the Adventure Quencher Travel Tumbler. TikTokers in the US documented their experience queuing overnight at a Target supermarket car park in an effort to secure a special Starbucks edition, which retails at an eye-watering $54.50 (£42.99). The #StanleyCup hashtag now has 7.2 billion views worldwide and is also gaining popularity in the UK on the video-sharing platform. Thirst for the craze has even seen people resort to attempts at law-breaking, with one popular video showing a man jumping across a Starbucks counter in an effort to steal a hot pink limited edition of the flask. The Stanley cups, known for their large handle and distinguished straw, were first popularised by eco-friendly, health-conscious, often teenage TikTokers who frequent the platform's #watertok community The bottle is not the first to become a hit with the public as society becomes more sensitive to single-use plastic - Chilly's reusable bottles, as well as branded Love Island tumblers, made famous on the show, were previous on-trend items. The boom in interest has reaped huge financial rewards for Stanley 1913, the drinksware company behind the model. According to CNBC estimates, profits are likely to rise significantly, as sales for the last year are set to hit about $750m, a sharp increase from the $70m in annual sales made in 2020.

Stanley Cup

M&S Sunderland Closure

Residents have complained that there will be "no shops left" in their city centre after a retailer announced a proposal to close its High Street branch. Marks and Spencer (M&S) said it was proposing shutting its Sunderland shop in response to changing shopping habits. M&S said the Sunderland store would not close until its new branch in nearby Washington opened. M&S has been pulling out of city centre locations as it reviews its retail offering. The company is set to open a 47,000 sq ft store at the Galleries Retail Park in Washington in spring 2024, and said the Sunderland city centre branch would remain open until then. Peter McIntyre, from Sunderland City Council, said the council had been in talks with M&S about the branch for five years. Shopper Robert Ing said: "There are a lot of elderly people who come out and they go over there [to M&S] because it is so convenient for them. "It's really upsetting that they are taking this business away from the town centre."

M&S

HelloFresh Fined

Food delivery company HelloFresh has been fined for sending millions of spam emails and texts to customers. The recipe box firm was told to pay £140,000 following a 2022 investigation by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). It found 79 million emails and one million texts were sent out over a seven-month spamming campaign. The ICO said it marked a "clear breach of trust". HelloFresh said it had made changes to its SMS and email policy. Investigations began in March 2022 after 14 complaints were made directly to the regulator, and another 8,729 were made to the 7726 spam message reporting service. The ICO found HelloFresh continued to contact some individuals even after they had asked it to stop. It also found customers were not given enough information that their data would be used for marketing for up to 24 months after cancelling their subscriptions. HelloFresh was founded in 2011. Members choose meals from a changing online menu and receive recipes and fresh ingredients in a box once a week ready for cooking. Subscribers are often attracted by deals with up to 60% off their first box. The recipe box market is "very tough", according to food retail retail expert Teresa Wickham, with competitors including Gusto and the Mindful Chef. "It's a highly competitive business," Ms Wickham said. "Overhead costs, with labour, electricity and fuel to deliver, are high. But [profit] margins in horticulture and wholesale are quite low. It's cut-throat." The former supermarket director said the ICO investigation would damage HelloFresh. "Any fine will hurt them," she said. "It will affect their brand and their bottom line."

Hello Fresh

Nike End Tiger Woods Sponsorship

 

Tiger Woods and sportswear giant Nike have ended their long-term partnership after more than 27 years. The 15-time major golf champion has used the brand's products and equipment since he turned professional in 1996. Nike said it was an honour to partner with "one of the greatest athletes the world has ever seen". Woods, 48, first signed a $40m (£31.5m) five-year contract with Nike upon turning professional as a 20-year-old in 1996. The deal became one of the most lucrative partnerships in sports history as Woods dominated the world of golf for more than a decade to put him second on the list of men's major champions, three behind leader Jack Nicklaus. Becoming one of the world's most famous sport stars, Woods signed multiple further deals with Nike over his career, including a 10-year contract in 2013 worth a reported $200m. In 2013, the academic was part of a research team that looked at the impact of Woods on the sales of Nike golf balls, which he switched to using in 2000. The research found that between 2000 and 2010 the company recovered 57% of its $181m investment in Woods (at the time) in sales of golf balls in the US alone. Prof Derdenger said when Woods turned professional, Nike "didn't have a strong prominent position in the golf industry" and so struck gold when it launched the its golf line with the upcoming star. In 2016, the company stopped selling clubs, bags and balls after years of falling sales and shifted its focus into golf footwear and clothes, which included sponsorship deals for another big name in four-time major winner Rory McIlroy.

Woods x Nike

Boohoo Label Swap

 

Fast-fashion firm Boohoo put "Made in the UK" labels on potentially thousands of clothes that were actually made in South Asia, BBC Panorama has found. Plain T-shirts and hoodies had their original labels removed at Boohoo's flagship factory, Thurmaston Lane in Leicester, last year. Boohoo said the incorrect labels were down to a misinterpretation of the labelling rules. Thurmaston Lane opened two years ago and was promoted by the retailer as a UK manufacturing centre of excellence, offering end-to-end garment production in the UK. The mislabelling took place at the factory, affecting up to one in 250 of Boohoo's global supply of garments between January and October 2023. The garments had been shipped from Pakistan and other countries in South Asia to Boohoo's Leicester factory where they were printed on. Philip Dunne MP, chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, called the labelling findings a potentially very serious allegation. "Consumers should not be misled as to the source of garments that they're buying," he said. On Tuesday, the BBC reported that Boohoo is considering the closure of its Leicester factory, which is the Manchester-based retailer's only UK manufacturing site.

Boohoo Labels

Luke Littler Sponsorship

 

He may have just missed out on the top prize, but Luke Littler has made life-changing amounts of money most 16 year olds can only dream of, bursting on to the biggest stage in darts at the PDC World Darts Championship. While the money in darts is not as lucrative as in other individual sports such as golf or tennis, the potential earnings for Littler are "huge", according to sponsorship and marketing consultant Nigel Currie. Mr Currie told the BBC that Littler's social media following was a "key thing in the modern age" in securing big sponsorship deals with brands wanting to advertise their products through his accounts. The sponsorship consultant made comparisons between Littler captivating fans to the time Emma Raducanu won the US Open in tennis back in 2021. After an earlier win in the tournament, Littler celebrated by treating himself to "a kebab and a can of Tango". He has since been offered free kebabs for life by one London kebab house. "People are just looking to get that teenage market because it's quite hard to get at that market without going down the footballing root and that tends to be quite expensive."

Luke Littler

Supermarket Pay Battle

 

Sainsbury's has announced pay rises from March as supermarkets continue their battle to retain workers. It will increase minimum pay for employees outside London to £12 an hour, with wages for staff in the capital increasing to £13.15 an hour. The increase means all of its workers will be paid the voluntary Real Living Wage, which is higher than the compulsory National Living Wage. About 120,000 staff will benefit from the increase, Sainsbury's said. Sainsbury's workers outside London are currently paid £11 an hour, while those in London receive £11.95 an hour. With the National Living Wage, often referred to as the minimum wage, set to rise to £11.44 an hour in April 2024 - and for the first time including 21 and 22-year-olds - Sainsbury's decision will mean its workers earn 56p more per hour than the government minimum wage. Simon Roberts, the chief executive of Sainsbury's, said: "Our colleagues do a brilliant job delivering for our customers every day and at the same time they are continuing to face the rising costs of living." Since March last year, Aldi has paid its staff £11.40 an hour outside London and £12.85 inside the capital, while Britain's biggest grocer Tesco has been paying workers £11.02 an hour outside London since April and £11.95 in the capital.

Pay Battle

JD Shares Plunge

 

Shares in JD Sports have plummeted by more than 20% after the sportswear seller issued an profit warning. The company said its profits would be about £125m lower than previously predicted after a worse-than-expected festive trading period. It blamed more promotions and price discounting than anticipated, which it said reflected "more cautious consumer spending". It also said milder autumn weather impacted sales. Competition between retailers was fierce in the run-up to Christmas as customers, under pressure from higher prices and borrowing costs, shopped around for the best deals. JD Sports said there were more promotions than it expected, but did not specifically state whether the impact on its margins was as a result of discounts in its own stores, or through rivals cutting prices to take business away. It said it now expects its profits to be between £915m and £935m for its financial year ending in February. JD Sports is one of the UK's biggest sportswear retailers and a FTSE 100 company. It has 3,377 stores around the world.

JD Sports