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BMW and Louis Vuitton’s 2014 collaboration is reportedly considered the most sought-after brand collaboration ever. Through its research, women’s online retailer Public Desire determined the top 10 collaborations by analyzing various factors, including original price, resale value , price growth, accessibility, and public interest. According to information provided to AFROTECH™, the company then calculated a composite score for each collaboration, which was ranked in descending order based on its performance across these criteria. With a composite score of 98.0, the BMX x Louis Vuitton collaboration, which produced highly exclusive luxury luggage, had the highest growth in resale value. When BMW announced the collaboration, Adrian van Hooydonk, senior vice president of BMW Group Design, highlighted the use of CFRP (carbon fiber reinforced polymer) in the company’s i8 sports car as an example of its “intelligent lightweight construction philosophy.” “BMW and Louis Vuitton share both...
In 2024, BMW remains one of the most prominent car manufacturers worldwide, known for its luxury and performance-driven vehicles and, sometimes, even flying cars (yes, you read that right.) That said, articles published earlier this year have estimated that BMW will make less money in 2024, with the issue being production costs. As investors consider BMW’s financial standing, an important metric to examine is its enterprise value (EV). So, what exactly is enterprise value, and how does it apply to a company like BMW? What Is Enterprise Value (EV)? Enterprise value is a comprehensive measure of a company’s total value, often used by investors to evaluate the full cost of acquiring a business. Unlike market capitalization, which only accounts for the value of a company’s outstanding shares, enterprise value takes into account additional financial factors, such as debt and cash reserves. Essentially, EV reflects what an investor would have to pay to acquire the entire company,...
Are flying cars officially real? A prototype flying car has officially completed a test flight between two cities, ABC 7 reports. The Klein Vision AirCar spent 35 minutes airborne between two cities in Slovakia, Nitra, and the capital Bratislava. According to Klein Vision, the AirCar Prototype 1 has now completed over 50 hours of test flights which includes flying at 8,200 feet and reaching a maximum cruising speed of 190 kilometers. Its engine is powered by a 160 horsepower BMW engine and comes equipped with a fixed propeller which allows it to transform from aircraft to road vehicle in less than three minutes. Upon landing in Bratislava on Monday (June 28), once the aircraft transformed into a car, it was driven into the city center by Klein Vision CEO Stefan Klein and company co-founder Anton Zajac. “AirCar is no longer just a proof of concept,” said Zajac in a press release. “It has turned science fiction into a reality.” Klein Vision is also developing a model called the AirCar...
AFROTECH™ Conference 2024 was in Houston, TX, from Nov. 13 to 17 — and on Day 3, LinkedIn hosted an Executive Stage session titled “The Path Forward: Adapting Amidst Rapid Tech.” Career expert Drew McCaskill and technology leader Bef Ayenew led the panel to discuss artificial intelligence’s transformative impact on jobs, teams, and companies. With 1.1 billion members leveraging LinkedIn for career growth, knowledge sharing, skill development, and community building, many have already enhanced their profiles with AI skills . “We’ve seen 140x in times in LinkedIn members globally adding AI skills to their LinkedIn profiles. That’s 140x increase in people adding those skills,” McCaskill said. “70% of companies are reporting that they’re using AI already at work. If you think about it like this, 25% of the skills needed for the jobs that all of us do and have been doing for the past eight years have changed.” “So even if you’re not changing jobs, your jobs are changing on you,” he...
Rumors surrounding Cynthia Erivo’s and Ariana Grande’s compensation have been addressed. T he two actresses star in “ Wicked ,” directed by Jon M. Chu. The film impressed with a stellar opening weekend, earning $162.5 million globally, according to Deadline. Based on the Broadway adaptation, it was produced on a budget ranging from $145 million to $150 million, per Screen Rant. Grande plays Glinda the Good Witch while Erivo plays Elphaba, The Wicked Witch of the West. Speaking on their roles, Grande commented to Blavity’s Shadow and Act, “I think it’s such an incredible honor and privilege to be trusted with the responsibility of playing Glinda, a role that I’ve loved since I was 10. And it does in a way, feel like a reintroduction. I feel like for both of us [Cynthia and I], this baby of ours has been a secret for such a long time. And I know it’s coming fast, and it’s loud, and it’s everywhere, but it’s been such an intimate part of our lives for the past three and a half years...
When considering the “It Girl”, Kirah Ominique is top of mind. She had no intentions of being a full-time content creator. In fact, she had first envisioned attending an Historically Black College and University, potentially Howard University or Texas Southern University, to obtain a pharmaceutical degree. Although that did not become a reality, her Plan B was to always be involved in the beauty field. “I was supposed to come become a pharmacy tech first. Girl, I failed pharmacy math like, ‘Yeah no let’s go to P lan B.’ Now Plan B is Plan A, doing something in like the beauty field but a mix with the medical. Or maybe a traveling nurse wouldn’t sound too bad either,” she explained in a YouTube video posted in May 2024. Ominique has stayed true to her interests in diving into the beauty world through content creation, which also encompasses fashion and lifestyle and has led to a strong social media presence. @kirahominique Get Ready With Me For Dinner In Thailand , Its Giving...
Millions are being impacted by an ongoing global tech outage. What Happened CNBC reports CrowdStrike, “the world’s most advanced cloud-native platform,” triggered a Microsoft operating system issue Friday, July 19, when it sent an update, causing a global outage that disrupted airlines, businesses, global banks, and emergency services. CrowdStrike Response At the time of this writing, the outage is reportedly not believed to be the result of a security incident or cyberattack, according to CrowdStrike President and CEO George Kurtz. “CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website. We...
When Chris Paul was drafted to the league he turned down a substantial amount of money. The NBA player had been drafted in 2005 as the No. 4 draft pick by the New Orleans Hornets, Fox News reports. He was just 19 years old at the time. During an interview with Forbes, Paul mentioned he had just $151 in his bank account as a college student at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC, when he entered the league. One of his earliest actions was to bring on board a financial advisor, which ultimately resulted in him receiving an upfront offer of $100,000. However, his parents interceded, leading Paul to accept nearly a quarter of the initial offer. “My financial advisor who we hired, they said they would send me $100,000 and my parents said, ‘No that’s too much,'” he told Forbes. During an appearance on “The Shop,” he elaborated further stating, “Y ou know what happened? I was at Wake in Winston. I went to the bank right up the street just so I could see what the statement looked...
From the time he was a kid, McKinley Thompson Jr. was never afraid to chase his dreams, and now everyone has him to thank for the Ford Bronco that the culture grew to know and love. Thanks to Thompson’s imagination and skill, he made history as the first Black designer to be hired by Ford Motor Co., and his first assignment consisted of working at Ford’s advanced design studio in Dearborn, MI, per the Ford media website. His love for cars first began around age 12 when he spotted a silver-gray DeSoto Airflow in Queens, NY, the neighborhood where he was raised. “It just so happened that the clouds opened up for the sunshine to come through,” Thompson recalled in a 2001 interview that was documented by The Henry Ford. “It lit that car up like a searchlight. I was never so impressed with anything in all my life. I knew that’s what I wanted to do – I wanted to be an automobile designer.” While serving as an Army Signal Corps in World War II, Thompson learned drafting and began work as...
Meet Emeline King, the woman who developed the interior design of one of America’s most beloved cars. According to the Ford Performance blog, after 80 years of business, Ford Motor Company hired its first Black female car designer, Emeline King, who would soon help the company develop the concept that led to the interior design of the 1994 Ford Mustang. Her father, Earnest O. King Sr. — a Ford Motor Company fabrication specialist — introduced Emeline King to the brand at a very young age. Ultimately, Emeline King “fell in love with the 1968 Ford Mustang” after taking a trip with her father to the auto show; as they say, the rest was history. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Something Black Made ® (@somethingblackmade) “I loved to play with toy cars when I was a child. It was an insult to give me a doll,” said King to Ford. King was raised in Detroit, MI, the place dubbed the Motor City for its role in the Industrial Revolution and home to many of the automotive...
This week, Naomi Campbell was a part of the stars kicking off New York Fashion Week (NYFW) with what she’s described as a “dream come true.” On Sept. 5, the supermodel debuted her clothing collection, PrettyLittleThing x Naomi Campbell, according to Los Angeles Times. The collaboration, based on her popular 1990s fashion looks, came together with the help of Black designers Victor Anate and Edvin Thompson.
Forbes has released its list of the 10 richest women in the world, and none of the women on the list are Black. Certainly, much ado has been made about Black women who are billionaires — and who can forget the fanfare surrounding Rihanna’s premiere on the Forbes Billionaire List thanks to the success of her Savage x Fenty brand? But that’s nothing compared to the trillions of dollars earned by the richest women in the world who did make the Forbes list. For example, Francoise Bettencourt Meyers (who is No. 1 on the list) is worth more than $74 billion, while runner-up Alice Walton (of Walmart fame) is worth more than $65 billion. Additionally, while many Black women millionaires (and billionaires) are self-made, many of the richest women in the world either come from generational wealth or had their wealth handed to them. For example, Miriam Adelson (No. 7) inherited her $27.5 billion net worth when her casino magnate husband, Sheldon, passed away. Susanne Klatten (No. 8) inherited...
Timbaland is known for always staying ahead of the curve in the music industry. And, things are no different in the world of technology as he is now one of the latest to notice how crypto is gradually taking over in music with the launch of his first non-fungible tokens (NFTs) collection. The legendary music producer is collaborating with Kevin and Jennifer McCoy — who pioneered the NFT format — on the Readymade NFT eCommerce Platform under their company Monegraph for his NFT Producer Mix Series, according to a press release provided to AfroTech. The stems, hooks and beats from his upcoming EP, “Opera Noir,” will be auctioned off individually as NFTs that can be remixed. The EP’s tracklist will have “five to eight different Music NFTs editioned differently based on uniqueness of the music elements and totaling approximately 50 – 90 digital collectibles per song.” “Music NFTs are now part of our business. They offer musicians a new way to express themselves and interact with fans,”...
There’s not a festival around that’s doing it like ONE MusicFest. The festival space may be filled with a line-up of people who look like us, but it’s rare that we are the ones with ownership of the events that are taking place. As one of the only Black-owned live music events across the nation, co-founder and chief marketing officer of the event, J. Carter has managed to find massive success thanks to partnerships with global brands like adidas, BMW, Heineken, and more. Although he’s succeeding in the festival space, Carter tells Black Tech Green Money’s Will Lucas some of the challenges that come with being one of the only Black entrepreneurs in the industry. “I first had the concept and idea back in ’08 and so the first thing that I do is look for mentorship,” Carter explained. “As the owner of two clubs, with one that’s more of a live music venue, entering the festival space was a different monster and I needed to figure out how to maneuver through it all and I couldn’t really...