Plus: Meta’s VR battle and maple syrup’s market cap.
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1) In 2022, sales of the Ivy Park brand, Beyoncé’s streetwear partnership with Adidas, dropped 50%+ to ~$40m — well below internal projections of $250m. This year, Adidas initially targeted $335m in sales for the brand. It’s on track to hit $65m.
2) This week, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey is hitting 1.5k screens in the US. In Mexico, the film has made $1m+ at the box office since its Jan. 29 debut, off a “very, very tight” sub-$100k budget that included a $650 Pooh mask.
3) The New York Times published 700 recipes last year, but its most popular is still Molly O’Neill’s 12-ingredient “Old-Fashioned Beef Stew” from 1994. It has been viewed 24m+ times since 2019, including 6.7m times in 2022, and boasts 19k+ reviews.
4) The Quebec Maple Syrup Producers recorded a record yield last year, and expect to sell 179.2m pounds this year. The North American maple syrup industry is valued at $1.5B.
5) China-based TikTok parent ByteDance is carving out market share in the VR headset space. Early last year, Meta held 90% of the market. By Q3 of 2022, that was down to ~75%, and ByteDance’s Pico held 15%.