Mediaboss Marketing

(PRESS RELEASE) Safilo Group announces the closing of the acquisition of the 70% stake in the equity of the California company Blenders Eyewear LLC (the Company).

Founded in San Diego in 2012 by Chase Fisher, Blenders Eyewear has built an advanced e-commerce platform, with unique digital and social media skills, achieving fast and profitable growth. The Company generates approximately 95% of its current business through its proprietary direct-to-consumer e-commerce platform.

Blenders Eyewears value for money products are inspired by the California active and progressive lifestyle, particularly appealing to a broad range of consumers with a focus on Millennials and Generation Z, both female and male.

The brand, profitable since its inception, has fuelled its rapid growth through highly effective social marketing strategies, partnering with influencers, athletes, lifestyle enthusiasts, and product collaborations which have driven sales and brand awareness.

Blenders Eyewear closed 2019 with net sales of USD 40.7 million, up 38% compared to the previous year and with a 3-year CAGR of 174%.

Angelo Trocchia, Safilos chief executive officer, said:

The closing of the Blenders acquisition represents a big leap forward for us on the 360 digital transformation strategy we presented in December last year and which we are now accelerating in all its three key components, from the launch of the latest technologies in the B2B and CRM fields to the strengthening of digital and social marketing capabilities, to the Direct to Consumer distribution. Blenders Eyewear is a compelling price-to-value eyewear proposition, a digitally native business model and a strong e-commerce pure player which goes to enrich our proprietary brands portfolio in a crucial moment for our Groups business development and for our industrys evolution. We are working in difficult times, turning around our business in a challenging and fast-evolving marketplace and I am firmly convinced that a focused execution of our strategies will put our Company in a stronger position, better equipped to meet our challenges head-on and to be frontrunners in some of the new business opportunities that lie ahead.

Chase Fisher, founder and CEO of Blenders Eyewear, commented:

We are super excited to have finalized our union with Safilo, ready to progress faster than ever on our growth and development projects. The global pandemics lockdowns that we have been all suffering have undoubtedly elevated the importance of e-commerce and digital channels, also pushing new consumers to shop online for the very first time. We, at Blenders Eyewear, have seen and are experiencing this digital escalation. Our results were very solid in the first quarter of the year, with sales up more than 30%, and further accelerating in April and May. Together with Safilo, we aim to continue scaling up our digital capabilities, constantly improving the customer journey and experience, alongside pioneering new ways of engaging with ever more demanding consumers, building profitable traffic and conversion.

The overall consideration for the 70% controlling interest in the Company is USD 63.9 million (corresponding to Euro 57.5 million).

Chase Fisher will retain full ownership of 30% of the equity interests and, pursuant to the contractual terms, these remaining equity interests are subject to customary reciprocal put and call options which can be exercised starting from 2023. Chase Fisher will remain CEO of Blenders Eyewear which will continue to run out of its San Diego home.

The acquisition has been entirely financed through the utilization of the Euro 60 million second tranche of the Euro 90 million subordinated loan provided by Safilos reference shareholder, Multibrands Italy B.V., controlled by HAL Holding N.V., as communicated to the market on February 10th, 2020.

Go here to read the rest:
Safilo Completes Acquisition of the 70% Stake in Blenders Eyewear - InvisionMag

Josh Brown, CEO and co-founder, Ritholtz Wealth Management (Photo: Bloomberg)

New RIAs should focus their marketing efforts on their local areas instead of looking to go national and, when it comes to social networks and the Internet, they should focus their efforts on LinkedIn and search engine optimization, according to Ritholtz Wealth Management CEO Josh Brown.

Start locally and forget about building a national brand, he said Thursday during the BNY Mellon | Pershing webcast Faster Growth as a RIA: How Freedom, Flexibility, and Creativity are Used to Fuel Advisor Growth.

It is, after all, hard to compete against established players who had a huge head start, he said. Besides, if you are an RIA in Omaha, you dont need somebody in Hawaii reading your content because theyre not going to become your client, he told viewers.

If you are in Omaha and have a great blog and podcast providing relevant financial information and combine it with information specific to your market, such as bands you saw at a local bar or golf courses you like playing at, you are much better off, he suggested. Most people search for local things to do, so your name will come up when they search online if you do that, he noted.

Therefore, become a star in your pond first and then broaden if you want to after you find huge success locally, he suggested.

Usually, he explained: The only time a financial advisor gets a new client is when theres a catalyst in their life that makes them say I need a financial advisor. You cant make somebody want to be your client. Those main catalysts tend to include the birth of a child, the need to save for college or retire and the sale of a business, he pointed out.

No content you create will make people become your client if they feel they dont need an advisor yet, he told viewers. You have to be the person thats in the back of their head so that when some life event of theirs happens, they want to call your firm, he pointed out, adding: Thats how it happens for us nine times out of 10.

Dynasty Financial Partners, meanwhile, was an early mover on search optimization, Shirl Penney, CEO and president of that firm, said during the webcast. I think anyone listening now would agree that if youre not on the first page or first two pages, but probably first page, of Google Search, youre really not relevant, he warned advisors. If you are based in San Francisco, the name of your firm should come up near the top of a Google search for independent financial advisor San Francisco, for example, he noted.

LinkedIn has worked for Dynasty and does not cost a lot of money, Penney said. Brown agreed with him on the significance of SEO and LinkedIn. SEO is super important, Brown said, adding: I know it seems like its so attractive to be somebody with a million Twitter followers. [but] Twitter is not a big channel for us to find new clients.

On the other hand, I think LinkedIn should be the primary platform that advisors spend time on if they had to pick one social network because everyone on LinkedIn is career-oriented people are not on LinkedIn to stir up trouble, Brown said, noting his company has made key hires after meeting on LinkedIn discussing topics of interest.

On the other hand, only 22% of U.S. adults are on Twitter and 50% of those on that social network only check it once a month, he said.

Its just not where people spend their time. What do I get from it besides death threats? he said, drawing laughs from Penney and the moderators.

Remote working during the pandemic has worked out fine for Ritholtz so far, Brown also said during the webcast. Noting that it started as a cloud-based remote firm in 2013, he said it was second nature to shift to entirely remote work due to COVID-19 and there wasnt really a huge adjustment needed. All of its staff have been working remotely during the pandemic and he wasnt sure when they would be returning to the firms office in New York City, he said.

I know that the work is getting done by his firms staff even though theyre not in the office, he said, noting: So far so good.

However, he added with a laugh: I dont know about another year of this. He noted that, at times, he was getting under his wifes skin by being home all the time.

Related on ThinkAdvisor:

Go here to read the rest:
Josh Browns Advice to New Advisors: Start Locally, Pick LinkedIn Over Twitter - ThinkAdvisor

Antifa shortfor"anti-fascist" is the name for loosely affiliated, left-leaninganti-racist groups that monitor and track the activities of local neo-Nazis. The movement has no unified structureor national leadershipbut has emerged in the form of local bodiesnationwide, particularly on theWest Coast.

Some of the groups, such as the 10-year-old Rose City Antifa in Portland, the oldest antifa group in the U.S.,are particularly well-organized andactive online and onFacebook,while its members are individually anonymous.

President Trump has singled out antifa as part of what he calls the alt-left in his initial claim that "many sides" were to blame for violence in Charlottesville the weekend of Aug. 12, not just the neo-Nazis, KKK and white nationalists.

How is it pronounced?

"AN-tifa" with the emphasis on the first syllable, which sounds more like "on" in English than "an."

When did it start?

Anti-fascist groups, particularly in Europe, have been around for many decades, notably in Italy, against Mussolini, and in Germany, against Hitler. In the postwar period, antifa groups resurgedto fightneo-Nazi groups, particularly in Germany. In the U.S., the anti-fascist movements grew out ofleftist politics of the late '80s,primarily under theumbrellaof Anti-Racist Action.

What does the movementwant?

Theprimary goal is to stopneo-Nazis and white supremacists fromgaining a platform rather than to promotea specific antifa agenda. The antifa groups aredecidedly anti-racist, anti-sexistand anti-homophobia, but also by and large socially leftistand anti-capitalist.

How do the groupsoperate?

Mark Bray, a lecturer and Dartmouth andauthor of the new book Antifa: The Antifascist Handbook,says the groups "organize educational campaigns, build community coalitions, monitor fascists, pressure venues to cancel their events, organize self-defense trainingsand physically confront the far right when necessary."

A main goal is to try to deny fascists a public forum, which is why they turn out in numbers to physically confrontneo-Nazis, the KKKand white supremacists atpublic demonstrations. They also step in to protect counter-protesters at such events.

In addition, antifa is particularly active in"doxxing," or identifying neo-Nazis and like-minded individuals and disseminatingthat private information to the public and employers to discourage people from joining their ranks.

Is antifaviolent?

Memberspointedly do not eschew violencebut rather see themselves as engaging in "self-defense," protecting other protesters and primarily confronting neo-Nazis and white supremacists to deny them a platform to publicly spread their views.

"We are unapologetic about the reality that fighting fascism at points requires physical militancy, Rose City Antifas Facebook page reads. Anti-fascism is, by nature, a form of self-defense: the goal of fascism is to exterminate the vast majority of human beings.

Political activist and author Cornel West, speaking to Amy Goodman on the program Democracy Now about the clashes in Charlottesville, saidantifa intervened when the "neofascists" move against his group of protesters."We would havebeen crushed like cockroaches if it were not for the anarchistsand the anti-fascists," he said.

Bray says the riseof fascism in the 1930s demonstrates that it wasa mistake to allow such groups to air their views in hopes that public opinion would blunt their growth."We should be wary of those who are more distressed about alleged violations of the speech of fascists than the actual violence they perpetrate," he says.

Where has the movementdemonstrated?

In addition to Charlottesville, antifa forces, whooften dress inblack and wearmasks, have confronted or clashed with far-right groups in such places as the University of California at Berkeley,where protests by West Coast antifa forces, some of whomsmashedwindows and setfires,forced the cancellation of aspeech by alt-right activistMilo Yiannopoulos in Februaryand another by conservative commentator Ann Coulter in April.

In June, antifa forces turned out to protest a pro-Trump free-speech in Portland. Some antifa counterprotestersbegan throwing objects at police, who responded with flash grenades and pepper balls, according to the The Oregonian.

Antifa was also out in force in Juneto confrontPatriot Prayer, a free speech groupprotesting political correctness and hatred at Evergreen State Collegein Olympia, Wash.

Read this article:
What is antifa and what does the movement want? - Dallas County News

BAGHDADThe Islamic State is stepping up its attacks in Iraq, fulfilling the expectations of many analysts that the extremist group would mount a comeback after the Iraqi government declared victory over it in 2017. While the Islamic State has yet to show the same capabilities it had at its peak in 2013 and 2014, when it gained control of several provinces and population centersincluding Mosul, one of Iraqs largest citiesthe tempo of attacks has been increasing for over six months. This coincides with a period of domestic unrest due to widespread anti-government protests. The U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State has also reduced its aerial activities due to heightened tensions between Washington and Tehran following the U.S. assassination of Irans top military commander, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, in January.

The Islamic State has been ramping up a campaign of violence in rural parts of Iraq since the second half of 2019, focusing on Diyala, Kirkuk and Salahaldin provinces, to the east and north of Baghdad. Both the frequency and character of the attacks have been steadily increasing, and there is data that suggests the Islamic State is moving skilled fighters to the area from Syria to stoke a new insurgency. If true, this would be reminiscent of the groups buildup in 2012 and 2013. In April, the Islamic State staged 108 attacks in Iraq, including against an intelligence building in Kirkuk. A large assault targeted the paramilitary Popular Mobilization Forces on May 1 near the city of Samarra, showing that the Islamic State is willing to move beyond guerilla tactics and engage in coordinated and sustained fighting. ...

Link:
With ISIS Resurgent, Can Iraqs New Government Avoid a Repeat of the Past? - World Politics Review

One lesson: if you treat a neighborhood like a battlespace, youre well on the way to losing the war.

When armed contractors from Blackwater Security Consulting encountered an angry crowd at Baghdads Nisour Square, they wound up killing 17 people and injuring another 20. In part, they were the wrong team with the wrong training in the wrongplace.

These guys were part of a set of teams that took a heavy-handedapproach. They got into hundreds of firefights in that period, doing that kind of work, said David Kilcullen, who served as chief strategist in the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the U.S. State Department in Iraq and as Gen. David Petraeus chief counterinsurgency advisor during the 2007-08 troopsurge.

Kilcullen noted that another private security firm, Aegis Defence Services from the United Kingdom, did hundreds of missions without getting into a single firefight. They had a completely different approach to working by, with, and through thepopulation.

The anecdote has at least one lesson relevant to the current crisis in police community relations in the United States: imported security forces who use heavy-handed tactics on local populations dont quell civil discord; they make itworse.

Subscribe

Receive daily email updates:

Subscribe to the Defense One daily.

Be the first to receive updates.

That lesson has gone unlearned, so far, by President Donald Trump. In a call with governors on Monday, Trump urged them to dominate their streets with police and National Guardunits.

Mayors and governors must establish an overwhelming law enforcement presence until the violence has been quelled, he added in a Rose Garden address on Monday afternoon, as police and Guardsmen used chemical spray and rubber bullets to clear a peaceable crowd across the street from the White House. The president has also threatened to use active military forces against U.S. citizens. All this ignores, among other things, key lessons from twenty years of counterinsurgency in the MiddleEast.

Kilcullen, whosebooks on military strategy and counterinsurgency includethis yearsThe Dragons and Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West,says that in riots, as in insurgency, only a minority of participants are intent on unprovoked violence perhapsless than five percent. The vast majority of people we wound up fighting in Iraq, he said, we were fighting because we were in theirface.

Kilcullen acknowledges that heavy forces and equipment can certainly have a usefully intimidating effect. Its sometimes great to turn up with tanks, he said. But shock-and-awe only works at the very outset of a campaign. Once you are an insurgency, youre past that point. Tanks, heavily-armored security forces and military helicopters scare armies but embolden insurgents. Excessive use of tactical equipment to intimidate a civilian population is a sure way to turn a bad situation into something dramatically bigger and dramatically worse, hesays.

Patrick Skinner, who has seen his share of insurgent activity, agreed. Skinner served as a CIA analyst in counterterrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan during the height of U.S. military operations there. Later, he became the director of special projects for the Soufan Group, an intelligence and security consultancy. In 2017, he left all that behind to become Americas most overqualified beat cop in Savannah, Georgia, where hes now a detective. (He spoke to us in a private capacity, not as a representative of hisdepartment.)

He says that in cities where communities and police seem to be at war, leaders are making the same mistakes the United States made in Iraq andAfghanistan.

In a best case, I was a well-armed tourist/invaderWe cant be tourists as police. We have to live here. It doesnt work the otherway.

The United States has been grappling for years with how to strengthen bonds between communities and police. One strong effort was the 2014 National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice.

Six cities agreed to participate in the initiative, which trained officers to recognize implicit racial biases and hosted listening sessions with community members to understand historical grievances. The cities were Birmingham, Alabama; Fort Worth, Texas; Gary, Indiana; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Stockton, California; and Minneapolis. So what happened inMinnesota?

While Minneapolis made notable policy changes during the project, the police killings of Jamar Clark [in 2015] and Justine Damond [last year] very likely challenged this progress, said Daniel Lawrence, a principal research associate at the Urban Institute. Its not all too surprising to see patrol officers sitting through training with crossed arms and indifferent eyes. We cannot improve policing until those officers embrace the efforts and teachings of police executives and researchers who have identified better, more humanizing,approaches.

The big problem, says Lawrence, is that many communities see the police the same way many people in Afghanistan and Iraq saw the U.S. military: as an occupying, and thus illegitimate,force. Views of legitimacy have been shown to increase individuals willingness to cooperate with officers and obey the law; but when officers repeatedly behave with disrespect, dehumanize those they interact with, or with racist intentions, those views are going to be seriouslychallenged.

So how do you go from being an occupying force to a legitimate force? Skinner and Kilcullen point to two essential steps. First, cities should push policies to help departments recruit from local communities. Skinner said policing is too often seen as something you do to peopleIts not something you do with your neighborsA lot of people dont want to be anywhere near the people theypolice.

Said Kilcullen, Its always better to have policing drawn from the community. Aegis Defence Services again provides a key model. They would rely heavily on neighborhood recruits to engage with locals and take the lead while the foreign security workers would hang back with the heavyequipment.

Skinner pointed out that actually living within a neighborhood drastically changes the way he, as a policeman, interacts with the people hes policing. It makes it much harder to engage in what he called robotic police behaviors that lead to problems, like detaining people who dont need to be detained in order to run a warrant search, or pulling out the taser when someone gets indignant about being stopped. Its simply hard to do that to someone you might wind up seeing again at the grocery store or the post office. In earlier decades, it was common for cops to live in their communities, but changing home prices and urban and suburban sprawl forced police further and further away from the neighborhoods where they worked. Policing changed from being a community job to just a vocation. Census data suggests that in 2014, 60 percent of the police forces of the of the 75 largest U.S. cities didnt even live within the city limits, much less in the neighborhoods where theypatrolled.

The second key step both Skinner and Kilcullen recommend: restricting the amount of military equipment that can go to police departments. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, is leading just such a legislative effort. Militarizing the police is part of the problem here, said Kilcullen. Remove some of the fancy tactical gear and Youre going to get different policing behaviors, hesaid.

In other words, if youre dominating the battlespace of Americas cities, youre probably losing thewar.

See the article here:
What The Iraq War Can Teach Us About Better Policing - Defense One