The Best One Yet - 😈 “Radio$#@&k” — RadioShack’s vulgar strategy. Virgin Galactic’s mothership. The end of online returns.

Episode Date: July 8, 2022

RadioShack went bankrupt 7 years ago, but its Twitter account has never been more alive. Virgin Galactic figured out how to financially get you into space: The Mothership. And if you try to return that turtleneck to Target, they don’t want it back — just keep it. It’s the end of online returns.$SPCE $BA $TGT $WMTFollow The Best One Yet on Instagram, Twitter, and Tiktok: @tboypodAnd now watch us on YoutubeWant a Shoutout on the pod? Fill out this formGot the Best Fact Yet? We got a form for that tooLearn 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. It's Friday, the real Friday, July 8th. And today's pod is the best one yet. This is a TBIOI, Nick. TVOI. It is Friday, but Jack is sprained a ligament in his right dorsal toe. I did. My foot's hurt. I'm playing hurt today. He is, put me in, coach. Put me in coach. We're still doing T-Boy Live on Instagram today at 3 o'clock Eastern Time. Just like Vin Diesel said, the show must go on. No amount of metatarsal pain is going to stop this show, Nick. Jack, quit that hoblin and tell us our show. first story over there. Radio Shack went bankrupt seven years ago. Then it went bankrupt again. But its Twitter account has never been more alive. But Jack, does crazy convert into cash?

That's the question. For our second story, Virgin Galactic stock jumped 12% because it has a new way to send you to space. They call it a mothership. Jack and I are calling it a little brother ship. For our third and final story, if you want to return that turtleneck you got a target, they don't even want it. Just keep it. Keep it. It is. the return of the end of the returns again. But before we hit that wonderful mix, man, honestly, this is a perfect mix and you are being a team player. Look at you.

You're so stable over there. Thank you, but is anyone going to a wedding this weekend? Yeah, yeties, if you're going to a wedding this weekend, pay close attention to the altar. Let's look closely at the wedding party because they're mostly like high school buddies, college buddies. Yeah, and then you got that one weird cousin mom made her include Vivian. But some of that wedding party is on the clock.

Some of that wedding party is getting paid to be there. Some of those bridesmaids were hired bridesmaids. We just read an article written by a professional bridesmaid. Literally, she has made of honor on her resume. She started a paid bridesmaid business. Yeah, she did. She's charging $2,000 per ceremony for brides who don't have enough close friends or aren't super type A. Must have experience holding veils and holding Tammy's hair in the bathroom.

Claire Cleary, she seems cool on LinkedIn, but can she tear up on demand? So, Jack, what are the positives of being a pro bridesmaid? Free cake, free drinks, free dancing, free roboc. Jack, what are the negatives of being a pro bridesmaid's? Well, you've got to work late Saturdays. You're hung over on Sunday. And that rehearsal dinner speech, it was awkward. You made it all up.

And get this besties. Pro bridesmaids, they get invited to the Bachelorette party. That's right. For an extra fee, that professional bridesmaid will plan the naughty Nashville weekend. So if you just shelled out $3,000 in cash to go to the Amalfi Coast for a destination five-day wedding weekend, then remember this. You could have been paid $3,000 instead. Jack, let's regret our three stories. Fifteen years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dorm. They had an idea to cause a cultural storm.

It's the best few percent. That's a fat. T-boy City on your at list If you know you know Cause we're ready to go We can't wait no more So just start the show Start the show

For our first story Radio Shack They went into bankruptcy But their Twitter account Just went rogue Crazy does get you followers It does But not necessarily conversions

Jack if you didn't get Your brick-sized yellow Game Boy from Radio Shack Where did you get it man Dongles Wires Floppy Discs CD burners. Yeah, it's 1996. Jariot Radio Shack

is going to hook you up. Radio Shack was worth six lifts back in 2007. Not too shabby. They had thousands of stores just a few years ago. But then Radio Shack went bankrupt in 2015. And then Radio Shack went bankrupt in

2017 too. We went to their Wikipedia page and we control F to the word bankruptcy. It's mentioned 60 times. Yeah, more than they mentioned the word revenue, sales, or evaluation. Now, right before the pandemic, however, Radio Shack got resuscitated. Yeah, get this. A company called Retail E-Commerce Ventures acquired the Radio Shack brand because they thought there was more value in the Radio Shack brand than in the Radio Shack business. Here's what retail e-commerce

ventures does. They buy bankrupt companies with recognizable brands, and then they try to sell stuff under those recognized brands online. Yeah, they got some classics here, like looking at the lineup now. They own Models, Pier 1 imports. linens and things, and now they own Radio Shack's brand. But all the attention right now isn't on Radio Shack's brand. Right. It's on their Twitter account. And this is what Jack and I found fascinating about the story. The Radio Shack Twitter account is tweeting like it was hacked by a horny 12-year-old who

likes spitballs. Honestly, couldn't have said it better. Salacious, wild, vulgar. Jack and I pulled up some examples, like we were going to tell you on the podcast. We don't even feel comfortable saying them on air. The CMO defended this new Twitter account, saying that it's anti-corporate speak. Yeah, but as Siskel and Ebert looked at this, they'd give it like an NC-17 rating. It's very trollish, but it is getting engagement.

Right, Jack, what were the numbers? It grew 114,000 followers on Twitter in just days. A couple of their tweets are getting 40,000 likes. Lizzo retweeted Radio Shack. Miley Cyrus retweeted Radio Shack. Ironically, Amazon. is what put Radio Shack out of business, but Radio Shack is getting more press than Amazon this week.

Shocker, though. Inflammatory tweets are getting high engagement. Those Twitter algorithms, they're pretty predictable. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Radio Shack? Crazy gets followers, but not necessarily conversions. Yeties, the end goal of any brand's social media account is ultimately to drive sales to the business, indirectly or directly. Are Radio Shack's dirty tweets driving sales?

That's the question. see evidence of it. Okay, so it looks like these tweets have boosted Radio Shack awareness, but they haven't boosted the price of Radio Shack's cryptocurrency. Oh yeah, they launched a cryptocurrency too. It's true. They did. So Radio Shack's Twitter account, they built up followers, but followers aren't dollars. Yeah, in an increasingly digital age, the number of followers, the number of likes, the views, that seems incredibly important, and it is. And followers' likes and views, they have value for sure, but brands do need to get paid too. Radio Shack. Shack shows us that crazy gets followers, but not necessarily conversions.

For our second story, Virgin Galactic, it just jumped 13% because it's unleashed the mothership. One wing is worthless? Yeah. Two wings makes a plane. Virgin Galactic. Owned by Richard Branson, who, when he isn't jet skiing off Antigua, he's running a $2 billion rocket tourism company whose stock is down 90% so far in the last year. Like every other stock. other stuff. But big update before you buy one of the $200,000 tickets to go into space on one of these

spaceships. Virgin just announced they're launching a mothership. A mothership. Yeah, yeah. And we know what you're picturing here because Jack, I know what you were picturing. Can you share, what were you thinking when you heard this story? We're picturing Independence Day. When Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum get together and like insert a nuclear bomb into that gigantic spaceship to save the world. Right, because like the alien mothership was like bigger than a continent. It was huge. It was overtaking the world. The only other thing we think of is a Death Star, which has

like dozens and dozens of Imperial Star Destroyers coming out of it. So the way Jack and I are seeing this, hey, if Richard Branson the billionaire is going to launch a mothership, this thing is going to be like a whole planet with DJs and cool hotels and like 10,000 of Getsies. It's going to be fantastic. But Nick, lovely. Was Virgin's

mothership like that? No, it wasn't. Is it big? Not really. Does it go up in space? No, it doesn't. Virgin's mother ship, yet it's a glorified plane. Yeah, this thing takes off on a runway like a plane, and it flies super high, kind of just like a plane. The part where the mother happens is when it's up really high in the sky, it releases a smaller ship, the baby ship, if you will, which is a rocket that can finish the journey up into space itself.

It feels, therefore, like a marketing move, but it's really a financial move. Because this mothership lets a space tourism company scale a very unscailable thing. And Jack, what is that unscailable thing? Space tourism. Yet is this one mothership is going to let Virgin go from doing like a handful of flights to 200 flights per year. And it's making two of them. So two moms can do 400 flights a year.

400 flights a year, not too shabby. That means they're taking off one per day, maybe two on Saturdays, because you've got to have that mothership madden it. And this is all starting in 2025. when the two motherships are in service. Now, Jack and I should point out one thing here. Virgin's long-term profitability does depend on this mothership. But someone else is making this mothership for Virgin.

Yeah, it's like the mothership got itself a surrogate. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Virgin Galactic? One wing is worthless. Two wings make a plane. Besties, Virgin Galactic is a space tourism company, but it isn't manufacturing its most in. important product. Boeing is. The 100-year-old American publicly traded airplane company is. What we're saying is that Virgin and Bowen are going Dutch on Virgin's most important product.

They're splitting the responsibilities to compete with Bezos and Elon. Virgin Galactic will do the design, engineering, and final assembly of this mothership. Boeing, they're going to put together the chassis, which is what Boeing, the airplane company does best. So stocks of both companies jumped on news of this partnership. Because one week, is kind of worthless. Two wings, though, that makes a plan. And now a word about our sponsor, Robin Hood. So for the last three and a half years, Jack and I were running a startup, within a startup, basically. We turned our company Market Snacks into Robin Hood Snacks, the news arm of Robin Hood. And in Robin Hood, we co-hosted the Snacks Daily Pod that you got to know and love. At Robin Hood,

we also got to hire an awesome team of news people who run the Robin Hood Snacks newsletter. Wild fact here. The biggest newsletter in America, Robin Hood Snacks. A key detail, though, Not many are aware of is the editorial independence. So Jack and I set it up so that we could independently cover the most interesting and most important news stories of the day. Robin Hood's commitment to free, digestible news snack style was an awesome differentiator. Yeah, if you're not investing in Robin Hood yet to get started, go to robin hood.com slash t-boy and choose a free stock. That's robinood.com slash T-B-O-Y. Certain limitations apply. All investments involve risk.

Robin Hood Financial LLC member SIPC. By the way, Robin Hood is no longer affiliated with us or the podcast. For our third and final story, we're talking to you about online returns, because stores are sick and tired of you returning things. They're tired of your returns. Welcome to the era of just keeping. Honestly, Jack, Ma and I are running a fulfillment center in a living room right now. Every time I'm in your car, there's like two packages in the back that you have to return. Go to return that slam and salmon turtleneck sweater.

H&M is saying, hey, just keep it. That's the development. We covered a strange phenomenon almost two years ago on this pot. We did. If you want to return something you bought online, companies were telling you, just keep it. Yeah. Because it was so expensive to process your return during the pandemic, Walmart just didn't want it back. Think about a return.

Walmart has to pay to ship that sweater back. Then they have to inspect the sweater. And then they have to repackage it and put it back on a shelf in aisle 6. Instead, just keep it. There's a new, new development in this story, though. Even more stores are telling you to just keep it now, but for a new reason. Okay, Jack and I jumped in T-boy style. Looks like Target, Gap, American Eagle.

They all just said on their earnings calls, they got too much inventory. They got too much stuff. The slowdown in consumer spending has led to huge excess supply of shirts and Gap sweatshirts. Yeah, returns. We just told you they already were expensive. But now, there is literally. no room in aisle 6 for your slam and salmon sweater return. You can't tuck in that turtleneck.

No, you can't. So what Jack and I are noticing is just keep it. You get your money refunded. Yeah. And you get to keep the thing that you didn't want. Q Craigslist. We literally have a rejuvenation code hanger right now if anyone wants it. We tried to return it.

They said just keep it. So we tossed it on Craigslist. Now, stores aren't always going to tell you to just keep it. There's different return policies for different types of items. In particular, it's the bulky items that are most expensive to ship back that are getting the Just Keep It Treatment. Right. That West Elm patio table you got? It's big. It's heavy. They need like a fleet of sled dogs to get that back to the fulfillment center.

So here's $150 back for that patio table. Just keep it. Another item bad for returns is anything made of cloth. That cashmere speedo, we don't want to sanitize it. Just keep it. But expensive items? Okay. Jack, you're going to have to send that back. That iPhone 18, you can't just keep that.

Send it back. Uh-huh. Nice try. Yeah. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in everyone who's a retailer? There's a costly economic underbelly of e-commerce. Okay, Yetis, we have all been taught that e-commerce is the inevitable future of retail. Selling online is cheaper and lower priced because it cuts out middlemen.

There's no sales team to pay for, and there's no expensive store. But here's what Jack and I find fascinating about this. Behavioral economics may change the math on this. And why is that, Jack? Because you are four times more likely to return an item if you bought it online instead of in the store. And those returns are more expensive than you think, and they're getting even more expensive. Four times more returns is brutal because retail experts say that a return costs 15 to 30% of the sales price on average. Yeah, because you got the cost to sanitize. cost to repackage and the cost to hire Brian and his biceps to refold and restock that turtleneck. Well, that same retail expert said that profits are typically just 5% of the sales price.

Okay, if we jump in and do the math on that, if an item gets returned, that item is there for an immediate loss, even if they manage to resell it. In fact, that company has to sell four or five more items just to make up for that one turtleneck that got returned. So Yeti, that is why more and more online retailers are telling you, just keep it. Because of the costly economic underbelly of e-commerce. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us before the weekend? Radio Shack's Twitter account, no more Mr. Nice Guy. Crazy gets your followers, not necessarily conversions. For our second story, Virgin Galactic and Boeing are building two motherships, twin mothers if you will. One wing is worthless, two wing.

makes a plane. For our third and final story, online retailers are saying, fine, we'll refund you the money, but just keep it. Because of the costly economic underbelly of e-commerce. A lot of continents there, Jack. A lot of consonants. Now, time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by Hannah Perkins from lovely Tucson Steaks, Arizona. If you happen to be on a diet and you like mailing people letters, look out. Uh-huh, because get this, yeties, each stamp you lick has a nutritional impact. We were shocked to read this. Sit down.

You consume up to five calories. Stand up per lick of a stamp. Sit back down again. How many calories per stamp, Jack? Five calories per stamp. And that was confirmed by the Royal Mail of Great Britain. Bessies, if you think that adhesive tastes a little sweet, it's because it is. Now, we should point out that you also probably burn a calorie or two by licking.

a stamp. Now, we couldn't get that information so like Jack and I don't know the net calorie effect of licking the stamp while licking the stamp. But Her Majesty's Royal Mail confirmed that each stamp contains as many calories as two tick-tacks. We'll let that lie there.

Yet is, you looked fantastic all week. And remember, if you were at a wedding this weekend, you could have been getting paid for that wedding, man. You could have been getting paid. That's what we read our three stories. Celebrate some wins. Jack and I will H-Y-H-T-B-O-I. see ya. And before we go, happy birthday to Ethan Reichenberg, who's celebrating his birthday at six flags, probably on a roller coaster right now. And Gloria Steiner got her visa approved and just

moved to Santa Monica. Congrats. And Alberto Rojas just got promoted, but owes Gabby a lunch for helping him get the job. Congratulations to Sam, Potato Bratton, and Nancy Claire, who just got engaged in Birmingham, Alabama. And Chris and the slightly stupid band, congrats on kicking off your 14th year in a row in Montana for that summer tour. And shout out to the guys at Neighborhood Merch, who just relaunched their startup over the weekend. And Ania is at her Unilever internship, turn 23, in New York City. And a big happy 10th birthday to KDAR Shaker in Duval, Washington. And Michael Torbert, enjoy the birthday down in Houston.

To anybody else celebrating something today, make it a T-boy. Celebrate the wins. This is Jack. I own stock of Amazon and Unilever, and Nick and I both own stock of Robin Hood. And now word about our exclusive sponsor, Robin Hood. Look, we're not tech guys. We're not engineers. Nick, I'm no product manager. You look great, but we're not technically.

When our computer's not working, Jack and I turn it off and then we turn it back on again. But when we moved to California to join Robin Hood, we were in tech's mecca. So we were soaking up as much about the tech industry as we could. One thing we saw about the tech industry at Robin Hood was insane customer focus. Every product launched, every tweak made to the app was a laser-focused, on customers. Robin Hood would be interviewing hundreds of users to figure out of one tweak of one button in the app would improve the experience.

Inside of Robin Hood, we saw that everything the company did was focused on the best outcome for you, the customer. If you're not investing on Robin Hood yet, to get started, go to robinode.com slash t-boy and choose a stock. That's Robinhood.com slash T-B-O-Y. Certain limitations apply. All investments involve risk. Robin Hood Financial LLC member SIPC.

By the way, Robin Hood is no longer affiliated with us or for this podcast.