March 2020 began on a high note for American business and ended with the economy in tatters This WSJ documentary goes behind-the-scenes to reveal how the coronavirus pandemic ripped through American business during the month of March 2020 — told through the firsthand accounts of 12 prominent executives. When the coronavirus tore through industry, commerce and society in March 2020, the U.S. economy came to a screeching halt. Top executives relive the tough decisions they made as they scrambled to weather the storm. Photo Illustration: Adele Morgan/The Wall Street Journal
Category Archives: Business
Online Shopping: ‘How Amazon Delivers Your Orders So Quickly’ (Video)
Since the beginning of this century, Amazon has emerged as a pre-eminent giant of retail. How? by creating an expectation among consumers that next day, or even same day, delivery is not only possible but basically routine for a dizzying array of consumer products. Millions of Amazon Prime customers all over the world have now come to expect this astonishingly swift service on countless items as standard, and this has put great swathes of the traditional retail landscape in trouble. So today, we’re going to look at how Amazon delivers packages so fast. Let’s pick a typical Amazon product as an example. Say you need a bicycle pump. How will Amazon get that bike pump delivered to your door, the very next day? How Amazon Delivers Packages So FastSHOW LESS
Video Profiles: Asha Deliverance And Her ‘Fabric-Welded Domes’
In 1979 Asha Deliverance sewed her first geodesic dome on an old Singer sewing machine, finishing it in time to become her eldest child’s first home. Motivated by the work of Buckminster Fuller, she continued to build dome homes for friends until she responded to increasing demand and opened the country’s first retail dome company in 1980.
Today, Asha has stopped sewing and relies on her team at the Pacific Domes headquarters in Ashland, Oregon to fabric weld her domes. The company provides shelters for families, glamping sites, greenhouses, climbing, events (e.g. Coachella) and extreme outposts. “To test some of the possible challenges of living on Mars, NASA joined forces with Pacific Domes in early in 2013 to erect a 44-foot geodesic-engineered dome on the northern slope of Mauna Loa, Hawaii.”
The company offers DIY dome kits starting at $5,500 for a 16 foot (5 meter) shelter that can be erected with their manual in a couple of days (instructions for the deck are included). When we asked Deliverance about the frustrations of some dome builders like Shelter Publications’ Lloyd Kahn she explained that in the ‘60s people were building domes out of wood which required sealing multiple joints, but that using fabric has made all the difference.
Defense Industry: How Companies Make Billions Off Missile Sales (Video)
Missile sales are the number two defense export in the U.S. and production is dominated by a handful of companies such as Raytheon, Boeing and Lockheed Martin. As technology advances, will expensive missiles and hypersonic glide weapons dominate the market, or could start-ups and cheaper technology change the missile economy?
Technology: ‘How SpaceX Makes Money’ (Video)
As side hustles go, Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX is really quite something. Entirely separate from the humdrum day job at Tesla, where his only real challenge is weaning humanity off the internal combustion engine, Musk’s multi-billion dollar SpaceX operation sets itself no less a target than bringing down the cost of space travel and ultimately helping mankind colonise Mars.
Spoiler alert – firing gigantic rockets into space every other week is not a cheap undertaking. And while there’s no question Elon Musk has a few bucks to his name, his pockets aren’t bottomless. Somehow, all those dazzling launches – and landings – need to pay for themselves. So strap in and get ready for ignition sequence, while we investigate today’s burning question – how does SpaceX make money?
In October this year, influential investment bank Morgan Stanley went on record saying it believed SpaceX would very soon be worth a cool 100 billion dollars.
Sustainable Foods: Inside A ‘Wind-Powered Vertical Farm’ In Denmark (Video)
Inside a warehouse in an industrial zone in Copenhagen vast stacks of plants soar almost to the ceiling. In time, this newly opened vertical farm will be one of the largest in Europe, while power from Denmark’s windfarms will ensure it is carbon-neutral, according to the company behind it.
Social Media: ‘Tik Tok As A Platform For Business’
TikTok is becoming a popular forum for Gen-Z and Millennials to learn about entrepreneurship and making money. To find out more, WSJ spoke with three TikTokers who are attracting large audiences that support their thriving online businesses.
Wine & Spirits: Making Handmade ‘Fire-Charred Whiskey Barrels’ (Video)
Adirondack Barrel Cooperage uses traditional coopering methods to build spirit barrels out of American oak. Their one-of-a-kind barrel charring and toasting process imparts complex flavors in spirits, like smoke, coconut, vanilla, caramel, and more.
Website: https://www.adirondackbarrelcooperage…
Credits: Producers: Carla Francescutti, Pelin Keskin Director: Carla Francescutti Camera: Murilo Ferreira, Carla Francescutti Editor: Carla Francescutti
The Future Of Work: ‘Is Working From Home A Long-Term Trend?’ (Video)
The white-collar world has been forced by Covid-19 into a “work from home” experiment, and the results are in. It turns out we can be just as productive at home, if not more so, and many don’t want to go back to the office — at least not full time. So what will happen to the office? Will we see workers coming in only when they have to? And if so, what does that mean to the multibillion- dollar commercial real estate industry?
Online Shopping: ‘How Amazon Drone Delivery Will Look & Work’ (Video)
It’s well over a decade since Amazon launched its Prime delivery service; in fact it was 2007 when the company first introduced us to unlimited next-day shipping on what was at the time almost a million products.
But in 13 years, we have seen little change. That is, until recently. Many areas now offer same-day delivery, but behind closed doors Amazon had been working on an ambitious plan to realise almost instant delivery. The goal? Just 30 minutes, from the click of the ‘order now’ button to the tangible products, in our hands.
Every delivery company can agree that the final mile or so of a product’s journey is the most expensive. As it leaves a shipping container, and steps away from the lorry’s vessel, it enters the smallest vehicle yet – vans, and sometimes cars. Rather than carrying millions of products, a driver can now only carry a few dozen. Employing thousands of drivers comes at incredible cost to shipping companies.
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