Bookmarks: 5 Interesting Articles That May Help You This Week

July 16th, 2018

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four "corners:" corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles.Commercial Real Estate Implications of the Steel and Aluminum Tariffs"The most important thing developers and contractors can do to minimize risk is to include clear contractual roadmaps for addressing eventualities such as price increases on raw materials." www.nreionline.com[tweet_box design="box_09" float="none"]"..minimize risk is (with) clear contractual roadmaps for addressing eventualities such as price increases on raw materials[/tweet_box]

Watch Out, Retailers. This is Just How big Amazon is Becoming

"You knew Amazon was big. But did you know it was this big?

Amazon's e-commerce sales in the U.S. are expected to reach a staggering $258.2 billion this year, up nearly 30 percent from a year ago, according to a new survey from eMarketer that looks at the company's sales by product category.That means Amazon is expected to capture nearly half of the U.S. e-commerce market by the end of 2018, eMarketer said. The company ended 2017 with about 44 percent of the market." www.cnbc.com

People on Higher Floors of Office Buildings Tend to Take More Risks (WSJ Paywall)

"People apparently take the idea of the heights of power literally.So says a group of researchers who found that being on the higher floors of a building tends to make people feel more powerful—which may lead them to take bigger financial risks.

“We know that people who are taller take more risks, and we have a sense that people who are risk takers gravitate toward high-elevation activities like skydiving, but I wanted to understand if the reverse is true in a controlled environment,” says Sina Esteky, an assistant professor of marketing at the Farmer School of Business at Miami University in Ohio, and the lead researcher for the recent paper published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.” www.wsj.com

This Scrappy Startup Wants To Save Family Farms. But Big Ag Is Fighting Back

“Based south of the San Francisco airport and backed by nearly $200 million in venture capital—from the likes of T. Rowe Price, Temasek, Kleiner Perkins and GV (Google’s VC arm), among others—FBN is trying to do nothing less than save America’s family farms while also building what its brash CEO, Amol Deshpande, hopes will become “the biggest agricultural business in the world.” The startup’s founders, Deshpande, 40, and Charles Baron, 34, want to shift leverage from giant manufacturers like DowDuPont and Monsanto. Collectively, farmers produce nearly $200 billion worth of crops a year, but individually they have little bargaining power. By bringing them together, FBN’s sprawling operation helps farmers get better prices on both the goods they buy and the crops they sell. As it spends heavily to sign up farmers and build its online store, the startup has yet to turn a profit. But it expects revenue of $200 million this year, up from $72 million in 2017, and Deshpande and Baron are already talking about an IPO.“What they are doing is amazing in terms of its business potential and its social impact,” says Nancy Pfund, founder of DBL Partners, an investor in FBN and a descendant of farmers. “Certainly big data is in vogue, but information is not enough. You’ve got to bring farmers together so they can level the playing field.” www.forbes.comYour success blesses others. I wish you a great a hugely impactful week!