The Best One Yet - “Gucci or Pucci?” — TheRealReal’s luxe breakthrough. Sono’s Apple breakup. Venmo’s Synchrony secret.

Episode Date: October 7, 2020

TheRealReal shares surged 10% on a deal with Gucci that changes fashion more than Blue Steel did (Mer-man, pop. Mermannnn). Sonos stock dropped on word Apple’s pulling the “it’s not you, it’s me.” And Venmo’s new credit card launch is really a story about the company behind the plastic: Synchrony Financial.$REAL $SONO $AAPL $SYF $PYPLGot a SnackFact? Tweet it @RobinhoodSnacks @TBOYJack @NickOfNewYorkWant a shoutout on the pod? Fill out this form:https://forms.gle/KhUAo31xmkSdeynD9Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Nick. This is Jack. And this is Snacks Daily. It is Wednesday, October 7. Stocks fell somewhat badly yesterday. Yeah, Jack, you know that stimulus package? Like the one we really need? Yeah, yeah, I know that one. The one that, you know, could help the unemployed Americans

and the companies that are struggling from COVID. That's the one I'm talking about, Jack. Well, the White House announced yesterday that they stopped negotiations with Congress. Nothing will happen until after the election. Nothing's happened to the election. So in the meantime, Jack and I whipped up the best snacks daily. We've ever put together, no joke on this one. For our first story, The Real Real, just snagged the deal with Gucci that Vogue magazine is

referring to as a game changer. Merman dat! Merman! For our second story, Sonos stock dropped yesterday on word that it got unfriended and defriended by Apple. Honestly, it's not you, Sonos. It's Tim Cook. For our third and final story, Venmo is launching its first credit card.

But the real story here is who's behind the plastic, little company called Synckel. Synchranee Financial. Who do you work for? I work for synchrony financial. That's where I work. They're the company behind it off. But Snackers, before we jump into that, honestly, a wonderful mix of stories. There's a difference between a vessel and a boat and a ship. We asked this question, what's the difference between a vessel, a boat, and a ship? Yesterday on the pod, we got some great answers.

We got a lot of answers over on the Twitter. First came from Alan via his grandfather, who was a Navy vet in World War II, and Korea sounds legit. We'll take his word. A ship is a vessel. that can carry a boat. And a boat is a vessel that can be carried by a ship. Picture lifeboats on a ship, not shipboats on a life. Another snacker said in that boats are small. Under 65 feet. And ships are big. Over 65 feet. But both ships and boats are vessels. Any amount of feet. As Jared Westbrook pointed out, and which is confirmed by Allen's tweet from his grandfather. But then Dean jumped in and made

the point that there's actually one huge difference between a boat and a vessel and a ship. A boat, a vessel on the ship, they're all spelled differently. You can't argue with that. You can't argue with that. Dean is all over this game. That's the takeaway kind of. But then we got some late breaking expert testimony from my father-in-law, Claudia, aka Captain Claude, a vessel is also defined as just a hollow container. Right. It's not always nautical. A pen is a vessel for ink. If so facto, your head is a vessel for knowledge. So a vessel is something you can have drinks on or it can be used to drink. Otherwise known, as a recreational boat. Let's in our three stores.

You're tuned in to snacks daily. We spoke to the lawyers and we got to get something legal out the way. The snacks about to hear ain't food. It's air candy. They don't reflect the views of the Robberhood family. It's all informational just so. We're not recommending any securities.

It's not a research report or investment advice. Not an offer or sale of a security. Right. Snacks is digestible. Business news for you. Robahood Financial, LLC. Fembro slash SIPC. For our first story, Jack and I noticed that The Real Real jumped 10% on Monday on an unprecedented deal with Gucci.

Nick, Vogue called this deal game-changing, and Vogue knows more about fashion than us. Yeah, they do, but Jack, you know that feeling? It's the worst feeling. You splurge on the Oakley's. Turns out their Foclese. Happened to me in Aruba. $10 was too good to be true. Jack, how about some Tiffany's silver?

Nah, ah. Spiffonies Bilver for you. I've got some Louis Vuitton. I'll give you a Louis Futon. Whatever, we'll take it, whatever it takes. That's where the $1.4 billion, the real real, comes into play, whose ticker symbol is not fake. It's actually just real.

No, it's real. They want the other four-letter word. Very focused, though, on not fake things. The Real, real IPOed last year as an online marketplace for authentically verified second hand luxury. We're talking like BMW-style certified pre-owned luxury retail, but for 17 million users, that's what they got right now. And not for cars.

You know, like blouses. Yeah, we're talking blouses over here. Let's say you want to part with those, you know, $800 lubaton red-sold pumps. Must be nice. Yep. Must be nice. It would be, but you're not dropping them off at like the local consignment shop around the corner of the village.

No, if you're going to give those away, you want trust, and you're going to go to the real real, because they'll get you a good price for it. Turns out the real real real real humans, not robots, who check the label, the fabric, the condition, and they make sure it's legit. And that robust verification, process is why buyers go to the Real Real and trust that what they're buying is the real deal. Trust is essentially the Real Reel's value proposition.

Because a used Prada handbag is still a used product handbag. Yeah, that's right. You go in the Real Real. Jack and I are on it right now. We're looking at these things. Use Prada handbag $1,800. And by selling it, the Real Real takes a 50% cut. Now, who wins with the Real Real? The buyers and the sellers. It's a classic two-sided platform. You got the sellers out there who just want a clean closet that's rid of their old Chanel. Remember the $800 pumps.

And then the buyers, they want discount Chanel. Which leads us then to who hates the Real Real. Chanel. Chanel hates the Real Real Real. The whole luxury industry, they want to control the supply chain and they fear counterfeits hurting their brand value. Oh, by the way, they also want you to go directly into the Chanel store on Fifth Avenue to walk in there and buy directly from Chanel.

They want to keep the entire profit of that $3,000 blast. It's as to why today's big news is such big news. Gucci just did a 180. True. Instead of resisting the Real Real, it is launching a three-part partnership with the Real Real. That's right. The first part of this partnership, there will now be a dedicated Gucci page on thereelreel.com. If Gucci says it's Gucci, it's no poochie.

No, it's not. The second part of this partnership, Gucci is going to start selling its own goods directly on the realreel.com. Gucci was too dependent on getting sales through only its own physical stores. So true. And it's COVID. You need an online outlet. Yes, you do.

Which then leads to the third and wonderfully arbitrary and random part of this partnership. For every item that is sold that is a Gucci item on the Real Real, Gucci will plant a tree. Feels like they threw that in there at the end to call it a three-part deal. You add that all up, though. And this deal kind of feels like the rare win-win-win. Consumers get options. The Real Real gets validation and trust. and Gucci gets the takeaway.

So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Gucci and the Real Real? The trend is your friend. Snackers, for years, luxury labels resisted the trend toward consignment. But the trend to sustainability. Consumers want low-impact fashion, just like they want low-impact farm-to-table food. And other techie consignment brands, we're talking like posh mark or thread-up, they are looking to IPO over the next year. They are riding that trend.

But when old-schoolers stop fighting the trend and just embrace it instead, they can ride that trend. Case and point, Disney ignored streaming video for years, insisting that cable TV was the only thing they could make money off. Finally, in 2019, Disney Plus launch, and now they've got 60 million paying subscribers. The Real Real represents the trend of sustainable lower cost fashion. But Gucci finally turned from a denier into a consigner.

For our second story, Apple is cutting off ties with Sonos. And crushing Sonos' dream of getting a question. fired by Apple. Sonos, Sonos, Sonos, Sonas, based in Santa Barbara, California, which makes sense because most Sonos owners also have a wine seller. It just makes sense. It was created in 2002

to let high-end homes have one speaker system throughout the whole house. By way, Jack, when are we going to launch this wedding registry index slash ETF situation? $1,200 speaker. That's a reach item. Tickr symbol ring? Or should we go with ticker symbol gift? Take

advantage of this life moment. Put the Peloton on the registry. Sonos went public as a publicly traded stock on August 2nd, 2018, and on that same day, the stock price hit $21. Oh, we got to imagine they've framed the photo of the number 21 because they've only fallen from $21 since then. It literally has been downhill since. Track one was the climax of the album. Oh, I hate when that happens. But the problem here, Snackers, is actually a new phenomenon in the last years for Sonos. The sound of the music comes second to the integration with the smartphone. We know Juilliard quality violinist may sound best on a sono speaker system. But 99% of consumers don't notice the micro

difference in the microacoustics. What matters most to 99% of consumers is convenience. Honey, is the Wi-Fi working because it's not connecting? The ability to easily play music through your computer, your smartphone, your voice command, that's what matters now. And that's why the speaker business is getting attacked by the tech industry right now. Apple HomePod. Amazon Lexa,

read them off, Google Home, more. These are big problems for Sonos and Bose. Early takeaway here, connectivity beats acoustics. Which brings us to why Sonos stock fell even more

yesterday. Until yesterday, Apple was selling Sonos speakers in all its Apple stores and all its Apple online stores. And then without any announcement, none. Headphones and speakers from Bose, Sonos, and Logitech,

they were gone. Out of nowhere. In fact, Apple's now rumored to be unveiling a cheaper home pod speaker at its October 13th event that just got a next. for next Tuesday. So Apple's basically ghosting Sonos, and it's like, it's not you Sonos. It's me. Tim Cook, CEO of Apple. Sorry, Zonos. I found someone else. And it's also me. It's me. It's our

home pod. We're about to launch a new one. It's still me. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Apple and Sonos? Sonos stock was higher on hopes that Apple might acquire it, but that hope is gone. That's right. Snackers, when a company gets acquired, it tends to sell for higher than where the stock is trading at that moment. If you find yourself owning stock of a company that gets acquired, your stock probably is jumping on that day. Well, for the last few years, Sonos has looked like an acquisition target for Apple. You got the high-end speakers that fit very nicely into the club Apple ecosystem. Apple acquired beats headphones from Dr. Dre for $3 billion in 2014. And Sonos's white speakers look vaguely Apple-ish. But yesterday's news kills the possibility. So if you're

thinking about acquiring a company, you don't just kick it out of your store suddenly without notice. So in the stock fell 7% yesterday because it'll lose Apple stores as a sales channel. And it also fell because it lost a glimmer of hope that it may become an Applequisition. For our third and final story, Venmo just launched

its first credit card. But the real story is the secretive company behind that credit card, synchrony financial. The snackers, this story it's going to start way back a long time ago with Venmo. That's the Young Payments app owned by PayPal. Now Venmo is already great for, you know,

the peer-to-peer payments, sending some money over to Brianna. Venmo is the sixth person at your five-person brunch. The emoys confirm that. Then they launched a debit card in 2018. Yeah, your Venmo balance was basically becoming your second checking account. Now, starting this week, you can spend borrowed money with Venmo's new credit card. It lets you manage your Venmo balance in the app, and you get 3% rewards for your top spending category. The stock climbed 2.5% this week, as Venmo adds a nice money-making feature.

But if the story began with Venmo, Jack and I were more interested to where this story ends with a little company called Synchrony. Synchronic Financial is a bank with zero branches and 410,000 branches at the same time. We were intrigued, so we jumped in further snack style. PayPal is a tech company. It's great at building apps, but it's not a bank. That's because banks are incredibly highly regulated. PayPal doesn't want that.

No, you got the capital requirements, the reserve ratios, the FDIC, the whole stuff. So Synchrony Financial handles that heavy bank lifting. The credit card approval, the credit card issue. The Charging of Interest. If you're traveling to Dominican Republic for the weekend, you'll let synchrony know. Not Venmo don't care. But synchrony is interestingly a publicly traded company and it's made an entire business out of banking as a service. We're calling it Bass.

BAS. Not base, bass. It works. 116 different brands have credit cards that are actually synchrony credit cards. Boom. Banana Republic. Amazon, T.J. Max. Dick's sporting goods. Those 116 brands have a combined four. 410,000 physical storefront locations. Mr. Kramer, would you like to save 50% on today's purchase by opening a Barnes & Noble credit card? That pitch you just got, that's synchrony.

And that's how they have 75 million credit card accounts. Even though you've never heard of them. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Synchronic and Venmo? New Tech is partnering with old banks to beat the big banks. Snackers, our central bank, the Fed, has decided that interest rates are going to stay incredibly low for the foreseeable future. indefinitely. And the big four banks of America, Citibank, Bank of America, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, they don't like it. Their stocks are down at least 30% each this year. Yeah, it's hard for Jamie Diamond to make money on loans when the 15-year mortgage rate is at 2%. Square and PayPal stocks, meanwhile,

are up 175% and 73% this year as FinTech gets all the love. But neither Square nor PayPal are banks, so they're not regulated like banks. They leave that less profitable business to companies like synchrony financial or Sutton Bank. So if you're a tech company and you'll want to enter banking, you can be a bank or you can partner with a bank. Right now, partnering is how tech is out banking the big banks. Jack, and you'll whip up the takeaways for us over there. Mattress, mattress, mattress.

That's a good one. Forgot about that one. The Real Real has been a pain to luxury fashion brands who don't like consignment very much. But Gucci is joining the Real Real because the trend is your friend. For a second story, Sonos Stock saying 7% Tuesday, on signs Apple, it's just not that indie. Apple Quosition hopes just got destroyed.

For a third and final story, Venmo, just launched a credit card thanks to Synchronic Financial. Synchranies got zero branches, but it's got 410,000 branches. Wow. Now, time for our snack fact of the day. This is a wild one, tweeted in by Haley in Dallas, Texas. I think it's her second. Jack, the honors. For a brief moment, PepsiCo had the sixth largest military in the world.

Yeah, that's right. During the 60s and 70s, America sent Pepsi. to the Soviet Union in return for some Russian vodka. But then in the 80s, Russia was a little short on vodka. True. And they were short on cash, too. Also true. So they traded Pepsi a fleet of submarines and military ships for a whole lot of soda.

17 submarines, a cruiser, a frigate, and a destroyer were $3 billion of Pepsi. Pepsi eventually sold those boats, ships, and vessels to a Swedish company for scrap recycling. If you like today's snacks, ask your buddies for us. H-Y-H-Y-Y-S-D. Have you had your snacks daily? Grow the snacks, everyone. Feel free to take a screenshot of this pod and post it to your Insta Stories. That's how you help us grow. And Snackers, before we go, a big happy birthday to Christy and Terrence Wong, siblings, but not twins, still born two years apart on the same day. Congrats Dave and Parsons for your 15-year work anniversary over in Wales, and happy birthday, Sarah Quist, over in Portland, Oregon. And Elizabeth Munoz, happy birthday

in Dallas, Texas. And Jamie Patel and Brandon to Florida. Happy first birthday to toast the profit puppy who just turned one. And Fred Hussein in Dumfrey's Virginia. Congrats Michael B for a new job gig at Coca-Cola down in Jacksonville, Florida. And to Wiley and Morgan Brocher, three-year anniversary over in Concord, California. Be congrats. Nick and I'll see you

tomorrow. Can't wait. This is Jack. I own stock of Amazon. Nick own stock of Apple and Square. The Robin Hood Snacks podcast you just heard reflects the opinions of only the hosts who are associated persons of Robin Hood Financial LLC and does not reflect the views of Robin Hood Markets, Inc. or any of its subsidiaries or affiliates. The podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended to serve as a recommendation to buy or sell any security and is not an offer or sale of a security.

The podcast is also not a research report and is not intended to serve as the basis of any investment decision. Robin Hood Financial LLC, member FINRA, SIPC.