Pizza Express: discounted to death?
As news circulates about the once much-loved pizza restaurant struggling with debt, how did such a stalwart of the casual dining scene get into this position? onefourzero investigated how consumers saw the brand and discovered a worrying correlation between demand for the brand and discounting promotions, leading us to question if Pizza Express has been […]
Is Fast Food Becoming a Healthy Sector for Investors?
Over the last few years, a swathe of new fast food brands have popped up. These new brands aim to cater to changing attitudes towards healthy eating and dietary choices. The traditional players in the fast food space, those widely perceived to offer ‘unhealthy’ meals, are beginning to alter their menus, too. Healthy choices seem […]
Easy to be eco-friendly – why should investors care?
Last week, onefourzero published an article on growing demand and investment in the home automation sector. One area of home automation that consumers favoured were products that helped them save energy as well as money, such as smart meters. Today’s consumer is more environmentally conscious than ever before. Searches on Google for the term “eco-friendly” […]
Lessons from payday lending for other financial service providers
Consumer credit is booming in the UK, topping £200 billion for the first time since the financial crisis. Almost half of men and women under 30 regularly use credit to stretch their finances until payday. And a quarter of them are constantly in debt. One in ten have used a payday loan company. The sector has […]
Land of opportunity: Central and Eastern Europe Private Equity Trends
Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has rapidly risen since the fall of communism, as denoted by the chart below. CEE GDP per capita Even more interesting is that at 3.16%, the growth rate of CEE GDP per capita is nearly double that of the EU. This is a market that has […]
Who is looking at Digital Due Diligence and why?
Without meaning to be too self-aggrandising, we do think digital data is the bees knees. Digital data is useful for consumer-facing businesses for obvious reasons. To better your offer as a B2C company, you want to know what your consumers think about you, your competitors and their preferences. The beauty of ‘big data’, specifically online […]
HealthTech: a public health and investor’s dream, or regulatory nightmare?
Ten years on from the launch of the iPhone, the rise of the smartphone is the most significant technological development in a generation. Today the average iPhone is unlocked 80 times per day, with the average user spending 145 minutes interacting with their device, generating reams of personal data that has propelled a handful of […]
Market Research – ripe for disruption
Market research was born in the US during the 1920’s boom years, with the art of surveys and focus groups becoming the mainstay of the admen of Madison Avenue. A generation later the same techniques were adopted by the emerging commercial due diligence sector looking to serve the rise of the private equity titans. Market […]
Looking back on investment year 2016-17: How Private Equity Fell in Love with Digital
The continued fall out of the financial crisis combined with a year of political uncertainty and limited GDP growth have altered the characteristics of M&A activity. With limited market growth fund managers are holding on to assets for longer and (possibly not through choice) are taking the time to improve their assets. Therefore, the last […]
Update: Is Britain still good for business now that Article 50 has been triggered?
As our November analysis showed, the low value of the pound post Brexit resulted in a 500% increase in inbound searches for flights and hotels. This finding was in line with ForwardKey’s tourism market analysis report, which showed an immediate increase in international net bookings for arrival in the UK. According to Google Trend data, […]
