July 29, 2020,
You’ve got plenty of time to think.
We all do during this global pandemic.
What are you thinking about? Scratch that. What should you be thinking about? Our suggestion?
Think about activities, endeavors, pathways, competitions, industries and the like that have a very positive future.
There is so much gloom and doom during an unprecedented crisis but one of the things that we’ve learned in our short life is that when one door closes, another opens.
For example, look at some of the businesses that have actually flourished during a time period when others are being decimated.
Sometimes there might be a perception that when things are so dire, yes we are all in this together, but necessarily in a bad way.
Here are a few examples.
grapplingstars.com, femcompetitor.com fciwomenswrestling.com articles nfhs photo via Stitch Fix
Stitch Fix is an online personal styling service in the United States. It uses recommendation algorithms and data science to personalize clothing items based on size, budget and style.
Stitch Fix had more than $1 billion in sales for 2018 to 3 million customers. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California and employs 8,000 people worldwide.
A large aspect of their business is selling materials and providing tutorials for people who want to learn how to knit and crochet.
Who would have thought? Knitting at home instead of watching a computer screen all day. Brilliant. In all fairness, timing too. No one saw this coming but knitting is perfect for long periods of down town and idleness.
In an interview with BBC news one of the co-founders, Ms. Jennifer Lam expressed "Sales are surging, up massively. We had an 800% increase in March alone compared to the same period last year," she said.
Who would have thought?
This one is a little more expected.
In our circle, we have been fans of Netflix for years. In our case, for around $14.00 a month, you get this incredible inventory of movies, television series and original programming that far out shines the tired old formulaic movies and programming you find on cable. The latter is stocked massively with repeats and cliché scripted viewing.
As of April 2020, Netflix had over 182 million paid subscriptions worldwide, including 69 million in the United States.
Incredible. We can’t get enough of them.
According to that same BBC article, almost 16 million people created accounts in the first three months of the year.
Talk about a door opening wide.
That is nearly double the number of new sign-ups it saw in the final months of 2019.
Impressive.
Then there is Amazon. Always in a category by themselves.
On May 6, 2020, according to thedenverchannel.com, “Amazon has released its financial report from the first quarter of 2020, and as many retailers struggle amid the spread of COVID-19, many customers apparently have gravitated toward Amazon.
According to Amazon, the online retailer saw a $15.8 billion increase in net spending compared to the fourth quarter of 2019, marking a 26% increase in sales.”
This makes sense too.
Many in our circle had to order webcams for communication purposes because we could no longer visit older relatives in nursing and assisted living facilities. Guess who we ordered it from?
To supplement out Netflix fix we also ordered Prime Video.
Prime Video, also marketed as Amazon Prime Video, is an American Internet video on demand service that is developed, owned, and operated by Amazon.
It offers television shows and films for rent or purchase and Prime Video, a selection of Amazon Studios original content and licensed acquisitions included in the Amazon's Prime subscription.
In some countries Prime Video additionally offers Amazon Channels, which allows viewers to subscribe to other suppliers' content, including HBO in the United States.
In our case we watched programming on Starz.
How do we like it? Quite a bit.
While it doesn’t have the library of Netflix, what it does offer is unique.
Which brings us to a sports category that has been surging and all indications are, it will continue to boom.
The Sun Prairie Star informed, “As the result of a concerted effort to accommodate the growing number of female wrestlers, the 2020-21 high school wrestling rules changes are headlined by significant adjustments to weigh-in protocol and appropriate hair length requirements.
During the 2018-19 season Sun Prairie had six females on its roster, the most in program history.
The National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) Wrestling Rules Committee met April 5-6 and recommended 11 rules changes to take effect next school year. In accordance with current health safety guidelines, the rules meeting was held in an online format. All rules revisions recommended by the Wrestling Rules Committee were approved by the NFHS Board of Directors.”
Girls wrestling is exploding across the United States, so much so that rule changes are inevitable.
The National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) is the body that writes the rules of competition for most high school sports and activities in the United States. NFHS's headquarters are located in White River State Park in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Over 19,500 high schools belong to associations that are members of the NFHS. Most high schools, whether public or private, belong to their state's high school association; in turn, each state association belongs to the NFHS. However, in states that have separate associations for public and non-public high schools, only the public-school bodies are full NFHS members.
At their website they reported, “While the sport of wrestling is not new or emerging, high school girls wrestling is seeing impressive growth across the country. According to the NFHS Annual High School Sports Participation Survey, girls wrestling has grown from 5,000 participants in 2008 to 16,562 in 2018. From 2017 to 2018 alone, an additional 1,975 girls became involved in wrestling programs. Participation in high school girls wrestling has doubled in the past six years.
At least 15 states have separate state wrestling tournaments for girls, including Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, New Jersey, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas and Washington. Nebraska is planning to add a championship for the 2019-20 school year. Other states are considering the idea, and in many states, girls wrestle on teams with boys.”
Both Nebraska and Colorado are involved with girls wrestling as a pilot program.
Maryland is another state that has recently added a girl’s state tournament.
New doors are opening all of the time.
If we can all get through this global crisis, in many ways the future looks very bright.
Even when you’re getting pinned to the mat.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stitch_Fix
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52383193
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Video
https://www.hngnews.com/sun_prairie_star/article_6968be14-3511-50ad-8537-9c4896d3b5c9.html
https://www.nfhs.org/articles/state-associations-adding-girls-wrestling-tournaments/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Federation_of_State_High_School_Associations
https://fciwomenswrestling.com/
https://www.fcielitecompetitor.com/
