So Expensive Season 4 Marathon

from real truffles to champagne camel milk to Japanese swords we traveled around the world to find the hidden stories behind many luxury products our first stop is somewhere in the South of England where we came to hunt for truffles the exact location is kept tightly under wraps as these funghi as such a highly prized treasure luxury cousins of the mushroom truffles are an indulgent food enjoyed across the world but these fragrant funghi will cost you in 2014 the world's largest white truffle was flown to New York accompanied by a security guard and sold at auction for sixty one thousand dollars discovered in Italy this gigantic fungus weighed almost two kilos so what is it that makes them so expensive there are a lot of types of truffle there are at least 40 species many of which aren't edible and new species have been discovered as recently as 2018 you've probably seen luxury truffle products in supermarkets or fancy restaurants but the unique truffle flavor you recognize might not be real truffle at all cheap truffle oil often hasn't been anywhere near a real truffle many cheaper truffle products use two for dye fire pentane a synthesized compound containing one of the main aromatic components of photo de guaranteed to give it that earthy taste real truffles are seasonal and pricey with a short shelf life they were originally sniffed out using truffle pigs but while pigs are very good at finding truffles they're also very good at eating them too and these days dogs are much more common truffle hunting companions these funghi can be found across the world but they all require a very specific climate to grow while different varieties may have somewhat different requirements one thing is certain you can't have truffles without trees truffles are always found with trees and they have to be the right type of trees the under the ground the the truffle is just the fruiting body so in accordance of an apple and we've also got a lot of then what we call the mycelium microscopic level threads up to 100 meters in a teaspoon of soil and these and this my scene was actually attached to the roots of a tree like the fingers on a glove onto a hand and it extends the reach of the tree act and it actually takes that water and nutrients and partisan through the tree and the tree gives it sugars in return so to help the truffles the fruit develop even when you have exactly the right conditions truffles aren't guaranteed and hunting them is a labor-intensive process once you know where to look you have to sniff out and dig up each truffle by hand and they can be tricky to find so it still sits there it's still in the ground so do I want to take you out of the ground or not it all depends if it's right because it's unright there's no point in having it so the notice comes into play we actually sniff the ground for it it may take a while but finding a good one could make it worth the work yeah that's the nice one yep that's probably a 70 80 grams truffles also have a short season often appearing for only a few months of the year and even when you do get your hands on them they don't last for long an unripe truffle unlike a tomato which you could cut from the vine and ripen on your windowsill once the truffles out of the ground the clock is ticking it's just sort of slowly going to degrade over time so we want to get that to customers nice and fast after just five days out of the ground that pungent truffle smell will have halved you can farm any truffle varieties besides the rare Italian whites and many people have been successful in setting up truffle orchards but it's not easy trees need to be planted in the right soil conditions inoculated with truffle fungus and often irrigated constantly it can take as long as six years before you get a good truffle harvest and there's no guarantee that the funghi will grow at all so after all that effort what do they actually taste like hmm the smell just made me think it was gonna be really strong the flavor is actually quite subtle there's a nuttiness there there's there's like an earthy flavor they're quite light and fragrant it doesn't it tastes a lot nicer than it smells it smells like damp dogs that's good I mean this is the first time I actually eat a truffle by itself you know it's a bit like mushroom but it's more of a meaty meaty bite these days farming has taken over us our primary source of truffles and today 70% of the world's truffles are cultivated through the loss of woodland and climate change the number of wild truffles has decreased significantly since the 19th century production in France has fallen from over 1,000 tonnes of season to just 30 tonnes and climate change could mean that truffles would disappear altogether in the future the weather conditions are so important not just immediately over the whole season we're getting the much lower numbers and much lower average size at roughest not at 7% water certainly its rainfall to help it grow some UK truffle scientists are thinking that your traditional areas the climate is going to move forward further north and they're not going to have a truffle industry within nope I think perhaps 50 years there's threats there's opportunities but rain we do need rain when we get a drive some up that the holiday makes that delighted but I keep crossing my fingers a bit of rain every now and again not far away in the town of Lowestoft is a factory that's been producing watercolor brushes for over a hundred and fifty years and there are only nine people in the world trained to make these brushes making a series seven kolinsky sable watercolor brush isn't easy the largest sized brush can take almost a week and a half to make you can pick up a cheap synthetic brush for under two dollars but the series 7 could cost you over 300 so why would anyone pay for a brush the cost over a hundred times the price originally created on the request of Queen Victoria the series seven brush was first made in 1866 and was designed to be the finest possible brush for watercolour painting since then the skill and craftsmanship that goes into making each one of these brushes has remained exactly the same to achieve this the company needed skilled brush mages and so in 1946 set up a new factory in Lowestoft England a fishing town with a history of rope making this Factory now makes over 25 million brushes a year the intricate work and dexterity required means that these brushes are almost exclusively made by women it takes three years to train and there are only nine brush makes in the world that can make these top-of-the-range series seven brushes I joined here when I was 16 I worked 18 years and I had 12 years off and I've been back 11 28 years I've been working for the company when you first start you would probably only make a few you've got to get like anything you've got a skill and you build on that and you get to learn the skill and then you get to do the speed the components play a big part in the cost each brush head is made from kolinsky sable a Siberian weasel this hair is said to cost three times the price of gold by weight these weasels are hunted sustainably every spring under satie's guidelines across Siberia and Manchuria only guard hairs from the tail will do kolinsky hairs are chosen because every single strand has a surface of directional interlocking scales increasing the surface area and giving the hairs their strength and while many other natural and synthetic hairs are used for brushes nothing has quite matched the quality of sable once the hairs are cleaned and graded it's time to start making the brush the wool has to be removed with the comb and the hairs are packaged up and carefully boiled and ironed the brushes have to be made with hair at its natural length and the skilled brush makers can effortlessly separate between 28 and 32 millimeter length pairs just with their hands this skill takes years of training and practice the nine brush makers each have 27 years of experience on average hairs that a blunt or twisted have to be discarded and most importantly as each natural hair comes to a point every hair must be the correct way up the removed upside-down hairs can be flipped and reused every single hair is checked over by hand the smallest brush size hairs is just seven millimeters long shorter than an average eyelash we can't afford to let standards drop in any way shape or form well I would say from that is what this Factory has is hand skills it has individual skills it has skills that when I have new people come in here they don't sometimes believe that this kind of work still happens we show them what people do they will turn around and say I'll never be able to do that but they will be able to do that if they understand that quality comes first when the hairs are all sorted they're ready to go into the cannon the bundle is tied together and gently twisted through individual hairs added or taken away until it's an exact fit they need to have that fine point to work with basically it has that color carrying capacity the the brush will split or do anything that it shouldn't do basically through the hair that we news through the skills of our makers and how they make them we've done everything we possibly can to make sure that we have produced the best product we possibly can then it's time to attach the handles the factory uses birch wood handles imported from Italy the brush is glued into place and then the brush heads are crimped onto the handles this crimping process bends the metal to shape and keeps the handle tightly attached to the brush once the paintbrush is assembled it needs to be branded and tested the size and logo of each brush is stamped in gold on the handle where point testing assures that everything works exactly as expected and there aren't any loose or crooked hairs each brush is then gum a process that gives the brush head its final shape and allows it to bounce back the shape of the natural hairs gives the brush a wide belly and a fine point so the key to our brush making is the people and that is the skill we retain knowledge from generation to generation so we have makers now that are working under an apprenticeship of a 49 year served brush maker who himself had an apprenticeship under another 49 year serving brush maker who was brought into the business and he's father who made brushes directive Queen Victoria and it's very key that we retain that knowledge throughout the business generation to generation and we are now bringing in the next generation to make sure that we uphold very high quality standards that we based on in the hundred and fifty year these brushes have been used art across the world has evolved modern and contemporary artworks are often controversial but each work can fetch millions of dollars modern art is expensive from completely white canvases to simple abstract colors these seemingly basic works can cost you millions so what makes their price so high and how can they possibly be worth this much money Modern Art is a wide field covering everything from around 1870 to 1970 but say modern art to someone on the street and chances are they possibly picture something like this at the turn of the century art changed from the birth of abstract Impressionism to the minimalists and even performance art art was no longer just about representing the world with skill that skill faded away after photography was invented once photography was invented that was a skill that camera could do so artists no longer felt that that was their primary reason for making art art isn't about beauty that's it never was really aa generally became more conceptual and more challenging but this change wasn't popular with everyone in a 2016 study of the British public twenty-eight percent of people don't consider this art the sixty five percent of people don't think this is art an eighty three percent of the public definitely don't consider this to be out over a hundred years after its creation the work is still somehow as divisive and controversial as ever with the public but that hasn't stopped record prices being sent I think most people think that modern or contemporary artists are having a laugh at their expense and nobody wants to feel a form for many who are immediately dismissive of these pieces frustration also often comes when they see the price most of us I think tend to be cynics and we I think a lot of times associate art with value and that I think that triggers the question of well why why is it that much or why such a high value if you know I could probably do this I think unless you're in the market and actively buying art there's no need to look at art and think of a price tag it shouldn't I mean it shouldn't be the way you look at art for the artists involved what looks simple can be the culmination of a lifetime's work take the black square for example painted by turn-of-the-century avant-garde artist Casimir Malkovich this simple black painting didn't come out of nowhere it's the result of 20 years of simplification and development when it was shown the black square was a revolutionary symbol exhibited at the top corner of the room a spot reserved for Orthodox religious icons making this work wasn't exactly an easy decision either and in 1913 Stalin's regime confiscated Malevich's artworks and manuscripts and he was jailed for two months yes the white canvases are or the black canvases are very rarely all they've done they haven't just come out of schools that I could paint a black canvas I mean as much as we might think we could do that yes we could do that but the artist has thought of it and probably had a journey quite a long journey and a process to get there the works aren't just made for profit it's often only after the artist is dead that the art can fetch the incredible price that it's reached today in 2008 one of Malevich's abstract works sold for 60 million dollars and the demand for these important modern works is only going to increase the natural trend is for you to see you a rise in prices but that's because it's these true masterpieces are rarer to find because they're really all in museums but setting an actual price can be tough in the end the value is only going to be what people are willing to pay as long as there's going to be artists producing there's always going to be sort of shifts in tendencies and tastes I would say also in taste in the market it seems like every year there's a new record price and as extreme wealth inequality increases so do the number of millionaires willing to pay the fortune required for these works no matter what the artist intended art is now seen as an easy investment by many and companies have appeared the tree are purely as an asset for financial gain but despite the ever-increasing prices of the modernist masterpieces for 99% of the artists out there their work has always been a labor of love there are obviously people out there with a lot of money who view art just to be a commodity nothing else but there's gonna be people who purchase or engage with it with it because they take genuine pleasure from it or it stimulates them or they feel it enriches them I'm an abstract painter not really dealing much form I became quite obsessed that was painting or all day or night and it was just some of their own I'm really that kind took ahold of me so it's it's not easy being an artist in London there's a lot of really good turn out there I think you've really got to be good to actually make any money you don't have the I suppose network initially yeah it sort of really expensive habit written to be honest that's why I suppose everybody's got the vices but a little it's my kind of passion in a hobby so that's where all my time effort and kind of spare finances go trends in the market may change and prices will shift but the popularity of modern and contemporary art isn't going anywhere up in the clear lakhs of Scotland thousands of oysters are grown each year but they weren't always the symbol of luxury that they are today [Music] Easter's are a sure sign of high-end decadence but look back 200 years and they were handed out as free bar snacks so what made them the luxury food that they are today Oh esters have been around for a while estimates but the shellfish around 300 million years old at least and humans have been enjoying them for centuries boy stur cultivation was invented by Sergius errata a Roman engineer also often credited with the invention of underfloor heating and since his invention oyster farming has become big business while you may be seeing oysters on the menu more these days their popularity now is nothing compared to just 200 years ago hoist ER sales boomed from the early 19th century onwards and the shellfish was sold as Street food across London Paris and New York as they remained a cheap and accessible snack to many in 1864 small British seaside town of Whitstable alone was sending 50 million tonnes of oysters to London each year and by 1900 New York was eating 1 million oysters every day but as their popularity grew so did the problems industrialization and dredging of the waters in England led to overfishing and as more people moved to the coast more and more sewage ended up dumped in oyster growing waters soon they were outbreaks of typhoid and other diseases and many oyster beds had to be closed hard winters and new diseases killed off many of the remaining native oysters and gave the shellfish a bad reputation that lasted for years to come there's something else that kept the price of oysters down around the turn of the century child labor in the early 20th century American photographer Lewis Hine captured photographs of many of the children working in the oyster industry even photographing four-year-old Mary who had apparently shucked two pots of oysters each day things had to change though we soon realized the importance of clean water in the oyster growing process an outlawed child labor making oysters environmentally safe and ethical to grow came at a cost as the shellfish take a lot of work to produce and now when oysters are raised the environment they're grown in is one of the main considerations yeah there's no industry there's very what will even farming here what you've got out in the walk is just everything that is natural and the walk so the feed none the best possible feed that you could want and there couldn't be an any more natural product each oyster takes 2 to 3 years to mature and they start out microscopically small the tiny shellfish are grown in hatcheries when they're large enough they're transplanted to their final growing place well we get the oysters then from our hatchery when they're about your thumbnail size we will grow them in these baskets for approximately two to three years and then we'll send them to the decoration center for deputation and then for packing for dispatch at Loch Fyne every oyster is decorated a process that cleans the oysters and removes any dangerous bacteria every single oyster must be checked by hand making sure that each oyster is shipped live is paramount believe that Noah we sell roughly about $35,000 every week over here and every single voice that is an individually checked so what will we do is when we're packing the oysters we'd pack up to oysters and we would tap them together now you can obviously see that one's dead but when you're packing thousands at a time you wouldn't necessarily see it and sometimes it's all open just a little teeny bit but when you tap that oyster you can hear it's almost straight away and that is the best way to tell if I noise does going to reach its shelf life whether it should be discarded [Music] hoist is may only have a nine day shelf-life but that doesn't stop them being shipped all across the globe and their popularity and image as a luxury treat means that their demand is only going to rise [Music] another sure sign of luxury real champagne grown only in this small region of Northeast France a vintage bottle could cost you thousands champagne is synonymous with wealth and luxury it often cost double the price of other sparkling wines such as Prosecco or cava a decent quality bottle of it can cost you anywhere from fifty to three hundred dollars and vintages can often sell for thousands so what makes champagnes so expensive champagne is often used as a generic term for sparkling wine but in fact champagne is only true champagne if it's made here in Champagne about a hundred and fifty kilometres east of Paris this highly protected region of France is home to the world's most prestigious and expensive champagne cellars and sellers such as moet and Chandon and Perrier us all other sparkling wines made outside of this region even those from neighboring parts of France must be labeled differently which means in this relatively small area a little over twice the size of San Francisco the world's entire stock of true champagne is made that's over 300 million bottles every year with an annual revenue of over five billion dollars champagne sales have grown steadily since the 1950s but its future growth depends on the protection of the region's unique climate northern France is variable conditions of the first factor for elevated prices with an average temperature 50 degrees Fahrenheit this location is cooler than France's other wine-growing regions which gives the grapes the right acidity for sparkling wine production however an often freezing continental weather front makes the winemaking process more difficult than other dependable ecosystems the particular entity champagne sales in the worst situation geography Italy the condition climatic chaos wheat Avedon onset wind process fish deliberation Katy Katy puffy negate Amelia ray will fill the do town in the sacrament no Brisco about the producer Eggman more carried the reason is demo aphid maturity sedation equity trade as a motto on sweet new processes refutation Alcala gradual denis and then below we evaluated them low during harvest a hundred and twenty thousand workers descend on champagne to pick grapes from 84,000 acres of vines it's harvested by end because the the machine it's forbidden by law and it's important to select only the best grapes especially because of the virginity of each different plots and each different lines for me it's a really good sign an important sign of quality to be under allure it's really good things for the expedition the Sun it's our weather going on the vines all the day when it's raining the water never stopped it's going on the bottom this is where strictly we are the best spiritual of the soil champagne it's clay and chalk this is really the best quality in terms of soil authentic champagne is produced via the method champagne was where the wine undergoes a primary fermentation in oak or stainless steel vats and a secondary fermentation inside the bottle this method is controlled and restricted within the European Union so that wines from outside the Champagne region cannot be described as champagne however wines from all over the world are produced in exactly the same way and instead are labeled as sparkling wine produced via the Met or traditional some winemakers in countries outside of the EU ignore European labeling laws altogether and continue to produce sparkling wine wearing the champagne name these imitations are constantly challenged by the committee champagne which works with more than 80 lawyers worldwide to protect the authentic champagne brand ultimately despite similarities in production and possibly taste only true champagne comes with the history and prestige of the region champagne production dates back to the third century when the Romans first planted vineyards in northeastern France during the mid 17th century with the development of bottled fermentation champagne officially became a sacred drink when it was served at the king's courts during the accession of louis xiv however the carbon dioxide gas which built up inside these early bottles often caused them to explode in the cellars therefore great efforts went into reading the wine of its bubbles but by the 19th century the sparkling version of champagne had grown in popularity especially among the rich and royalty as the large Champagne houses optimized mass production of sparkling champagne with the development of thicker glass and corks the modern champagne industry began to fall amazingly despite the region becoming a key battlefield during both World War one and World War two some champagne production still continued it's estimated that by the end of the Great War about 40% of champagnes vineyards had been destroyed because of the cutback in production bottles made during either war fetch a high price in 2015 sada B's auction - Krug cellar visit and a tasting of their wartime 1915 vintage for one hundred and sixteen thousand dollars champagnes affiliation with luxury wealth and celebrity as kept prices high from crowning Kings to launching great ships even jay-z is gotten in any action in 2014 he became part owner of Armand de Brignac also known as ace of spades a champagne brand run by the Cartier family in September 2019 they released their rarest priciest cuvee yet comprised of three vintages from 2009 2010 and 2012 the wine was left to aged for six years until the bottles only 3535 of them were made available for a cool $1,000 per bottle but what about the future champagne became the world's first wine growing region to examine its carbon footprint and implement a carbon plan as a result of worrying statistics global warming has seen temperatures in the region rise by 1.2 degrees Celsius over the last 30 years and the grape harvest dates have moved forward by a fortnight as champagnes perfect climatic conditions are changing and the Paris Accord climate targets failed to keep up with global warming the future of winemaking in this historic region could be in jeopardy [Music] and now popular across the world anti-aging products can be some of the most expensive liquids on the planet but are these products at all worth their huge price anti aging products come in the form of creams and serums they claim to make you look younger by reducing hiding or preventing the signs of aging high-end anti-aging products are some of the most expensive single-use items in the world just one fluid ounce of this rejuvenating serum will cost you $1,800 making it one of the most expensive liquids on the planet but do anti-aging products actually work and does this explain why they are so expensive in all honesty a number of these creams are used as placebo effects more expensive doesn't necessarily mean better or more effective most anti-aging cosmetics even budget items tend to include a standard set of ingredients water glycerin acids oils and vitamins however the costliest creams contain an array of extravagant additions for example creme de la Mer includes a trademarked miracle broth comprised of hand harvested giant sea kelp which it claims has self-regenerating powers these forests are a source of concentrated energy we unleash for skins benefit we call it Miracle Bra but according to skin experts these expensive ingredients aren't guaranteed or necessarily proven to be more effective often what companies will say is my product contains this really interesting botanical and natural ingredients it's there for 10 times better at moisturizing the skin than something else however they're under no obligation to prove that it's that ingredient itself that is causing the moisturizing properties or something very basic as glycerin which is found in most moisturizers product claims don't necessarily have to stack up in such a necessarily rigorous way in the US for example anti-aging medications must have approval from the Food and Drug Administration for both safety and effectiveness whereas anti-aging cosmetics such as creams and serums do not require FDA approval before they go on the market when it comes to anti-aging promises it's a very gray area a number of this companies promise people that they will actually reverse aging they will actually make people look youthful again simply by just allowing a clinical population to test your product if there is a great deal of smoke and mirrors other states because in reality we can actually say with confidence that most of these clinical studies are not to be trusted and the price consumers pay for the most expensive products is significantly higher than the cost of production a 2010 investigation by The Daily Mail found that recreating a 3.4 ounce pot of creme de la Mer from readily available ingredients is estimated to cost roughly $35 whereas lemare markets their products at five hundred and ten dollars we contacted the mayor about this investigation and they responded saying the value of creme de la Mer reflects the highest quality ingredients the time intensive and complex processes needed to create it and the powerful skincare benefits experienced by its thousands of loyal devotees around the world when it comes to purchasing a very expensive product most likely about 60 to 70% of the price that we might be paying is related to the cost of the manufacture to produce and package the cream run the actual product but the desire to retain youthful looks is nothing new Cleopatra is thought to have taken daily baths in donkey milk for his acidic properties while women of the French Court would pour aged wine on their faces a process which is now recognized as having exfoliating benefits but a blitz of beauty adverts in mid 20th century magazines that demonized women for having so-called middle aged skin was the catalyst for a now booming anti-aging industry the anti-aging market is expected to exceed two hundred and sixteen billion dollars by the end of 2021 but a large part of that includes cosmetic procedures such as Botox and facelifts arguably an extreme answer to our natural aging process I feel like I'm seeing a lot of young women in their mid-20s that are worried about skin ageing we are currently living in a society that is so focused on outwards aesthetics so I think there is also a driving need for people more interested in things like laser surgery or injectables like Botox or filler from a much much younger age than we've seen before so despite the lure of magical remedies and luxurious concoctions avoiding skin damage and combating the signs of aging don't need to be so expensive budget products can be equally as effective as their more expensive counterparts the focus shouldn't be on the cost of the product wearing a good-quality sunscreen SPF minimum 30 ideally 50 throughout the year the reason for that is that 80 to 90% of the signs that we associate with skin aging occur directly because of sunlight so we're talking fine lines wrinkles pigmentation number two is the use of a vitamin A based product or a retinoid one doesn't need to spend a fortune and probably we're just spending beyond more than 2530 pounds on a product it's probably unnecessary another new industry that suddenly emerged is CBD oil and with the many surrounding health claims a 50 milliliter bottle can cost over $200 depending on who you ask CBD oil can be a miracle cure a snake oil placebo or something vague in-between this poorly regulated industry which has boomed over the last three years is a minefield for newcomers considering that manufacturers are unauthorised to make medical claims how can one CBD oil cost fifty dollars while another of the same volume cost three hundred and ninety dollars an hour premium CBD oil justified for being so expensive firstly what is CBD CBD stands for cannabidiol that's the chemical name for one of the chemicals in the cannabis plant the CBD oil that you're seeing on shelves that consumers can buy out a prescription is actually from low THC the stuff that makes you high varieties of the cannabis plant CBD is a new and rapidly growing phenomenon with sales tripling in the last three years but the line between what consumers are using it for and what manufacturers can say to attract them is increasingly blurred it can be used for a variety of purposes things like inflammation anxiety stress and it can also be used to support general wellness now the differentiating criteria between a medicine and a supplement is you cannot make a claim that it treats or cures a specific medically diagnosed disease and that's really important for companies to understand because they can get their products pulled off the shelves and they can also potentially sometimes unintentionally mislead consumers in the age of anxiety is no surprise that CBD has become a hot ticket for manufacturers who infuse all sorts of products with cannabidiol shrewdly tapping into its perceived wellness benefits and bumping up the price of otherwise standard items like gummies sportswear tampons and even dog treats but how do we assess the value of CBD oil which is actually produced in two different ways if full or broad-spectrum product is made from the whole plant extract they take the flour and they process it and they come up with a an extract that not only has CBD but it has other plant chemicals other cannabinoids are there terpenoids other things in the plant that work together in this what's called this herbal synergy this entourage effect and what you get is greater than the sum of its parts but some manufacturers process the extract even further into CBD isolate a substance devoid of all other plant chemicals and labeled as pure CBD but this isolate which often features in expensive products is generally considered to be less effective and cheaper to make some brands and some companies will put CBD I slip into a product and then branded as a premium product even though the cost of actually making it because the cost of the isolate is quite a lot lower than the cost of a full or broad spectrum CBD but because of lacks regulations in the industry this fundamental difference in CBD oils is often disguised by manufacturers the front of this premium $300 bottle for example does not display that it is in fact made from isolate sometimes you have to dig into the nitty-gritty of the ingredients and sometimes you even have to you might have to call the company and see what they've actually used but in general the labeling criteria are becoming a little bit stricter so more and more consumers will be able to know what is a CBD isolate product in what comes from a full or broad-spectrum source these products can also be measured by the amount of cannabidiol in each bottle what you really need to look for is the number of milligrams in the entire bottle and then the number of milligrams of CBD per dose that's really gonna tell you the bang for buck the even high dosage full-spectrum CBD doesn't have the approval from the Food and Drug Administration the FDA says it recognizes the significant public interest in cannabis and cannabis derived compounds particularly CBD however there are many unanswered questions about the science safety and quality of products containing CBD more worryingly lab tests conducted by the Center for medicinal cannabis found that 62% of CBD products tested in the UK didn't contain the cannabidiol content promised on the label one product actually contained no CBD whatsoever CBD is shrouded in mystery and confusion for the consumer on the one hand a 2018 cross-sectional study of CBD users found that almost 62% reported using CBD to treat a medical condition stating that CBD has brought therapeutic value but on the other hand manufacturers cannot use the research data to make medical claims leaving spokespeople in the unenviable position of having to promote their products to a certain demographic while avoiding endorsing the public's perception of CBD so what we're not allowed to do with our products is make any medicinal claims because we're not medical products all our products that we sell our wellness products to improve sleeps and moods we see CBD as a homeostatic products which balances the levels in your body to get you into a normal state in balanced mind thankfully despite the misconceptions no matter what you use it for there is a way to get a snapshot of the quality of CBD oil you want to look for a certificate of analysis that means that that is a third-party tested lab report they test their product to make sure that it's not contaminated make sure it doesn't have accidental THC levels above the allowed limit make sure it doesn't have heavy metals in it make sure there's no microbial so bacteria fungus that can grow in these plants no herbicides pesticides things you don't want in it so why is it so expensive the cost of producing CBD oil isn't particularly high in relation to other large-scale crops but there appears to be a premium on all canna video as revealed in this comparison of full speck CBD which shows that as prices grow pretty uniformly according to the price per milligram in each bottle with any wellness product with the global hype high demand means high prices statistics show that sales of CBD will likely reach 1.8 billion dollars in the next two years but without regulation medical research and clear consumer knowledge the human value of Beadie oil will for now remain a matter of opinion [Music] Gold has been used as a currency since its discovery and its rich color has been sought-after for centuries so what makes this rare metal so precious [Music] Gold is the shining embodiment of wealth not only as it used to make expensive products but it's also used to add extra bling to luxurious items from smartphones to supercars and even beefsteaks but other metals that are rarer than gold are much cheaper so why is gold so expensive scientists believe gold arrived on earth after the collision of two neutron stars in space forged gold atoms together into meteorites which crashed into Earth about 3.9 billion years ago over millions of years Earth's bubbling hot core forced gold nuggets towards the surface gold flakes have been found in Paleolithic caves estimated to date back roughly 40,000 years marking the first known instance of human contact with the material but what exactly is gold gold is a relatively rare metal with lots of versatility it's highly malleable meaning it can be deformed or changed without fracturing the material but what distinguishes it from other useful precious metals is its totally unique bright yellow appearance these factors give gold many practical and superficial uses on earth if you're a bright gold is the perfect embodiment of love and emotion if you're an investor of gold's an excellent portfolio diversification tool people like to know that they've got an element of their wealth which they can feel often it looks beautiful it's got a wonderful design on it and that adds a degree of emotion to the investment and if you're a manufacturer if you're someone making smartphones or tablets Gold is an element with the symbol na and the atomic number 79 viewed as the most noble of all of the noble metals it's a perfect material or conduct electricity and it doesn't corrode it doesn't rust so it's great to have in your product over many centuries civilizations across the globe became enamored with the beautiful metal such as the ancient Egyptians not only did they use it as a currency they also buried themselves in God believing it to be the flesh of the in fact King Tutankhamen was laid to rest in three gold wrapped coffins the innermost of which was made from sheets of pure beaten gold which would now be worth over $1,000,000 in 1792 the US Congress passed the coinage Act which established a fixed price of gold to US dollars over the next century gold mining captured people's imagination during the great US Gold Rush the first was in 1799 after 12 year-old conrad reed discovered a huge 17 pound gold nugget on his family's farm in North Carolina 50 years later in 1849 tens of thousands of prospectors known as the 49ers raced to San Francisco in search of riches giving name to the San Francisco 49ers football franchise these gold rushes heralded the start of modern-day gold mining despite humans mining gold for millennia the complexity of this process hasn't changed mining is just as challenging and difficult as it's ever been before what's changed probably is they become the labor intensity in some mines as people have increasingly used technology but some of the challenges aren't necessarily associated purely with mined production they could be associated with the environments within which they are operating so licences that people need to operate whether its formal license from a government or social license from a local community I mean those are still challenges that mining companies need to navigate and kind of a kind of work their way through and that contributes to the complexity of mine production today probably just as much as it did many many years ago identifying gold mines is a daunting task it can take up to 10 years for geologists chemists and engineers to examine a potential site and even then the likelihood of a mine being developed into a productive gold mine is less than 0.1% only 10 percent of these sites contain enough gold to justify further development but above-ground gold is everywhere on our fingers around our necks and even in our mouths gold is used in medicine architecture and almost every electronic component we even launched gold back out into the universe from where it came not only as a reliable component of spacecraft circuitry but also in the lining of astronauts visors to protect them from the sun's harmful heat and ultraviolet light so with all that in mind it might surprise you to know how little gold that actually is here on earth if you melt it down the world's entire above-ground stock of around a hundred and ninety thousand tons of gold it would form a 72 foot cube however if that was divided up equally for every person on earth we'd all get roughly an ounce of pure 24-karat gold each that's about one and a half thousand dollars worth so how does this volume divide out into different industries if we have a look at the bunch of ninety thousand tons of stock of gold above ground the lion's share it's in jewelry around about 50% of it is in jewelry the next level down comes to private investment so that could be individuals holding bars or coins or indeed individuals holding a share of an exchange-traded funds and then you've got central bank central bank's account for around about seventeen percent of that stock of gold to a very significant volume and then the final element around about 1314 percent is technology or dentistry is the future of gold as bright as its surface new deposits of gold are increasingly hard to come by and increasingly difficult to locate geologists have estimated that only 55 tons remains buried away in the Earth's crust which means if current global mining rates continued we could run out of newfound gold in just 20 years so as gold mining continues to slow and the costs associated with mining increase to meet the challenge of extraction gold could become even more expensive in Japan tamahagane a or precious steel is used to make intricately crafted Japanese swords these blades can take months or even years of work to make Japanese sword making is a tradition that goes back centuries and one that's carried on to this day each sword requires dedication skill and can take over 18 months to create the resulting blades can be worth thousands of dollars so what makes them so expensive since occasionally Motiti to dig dig up a known I'm talking about karma I love it disco yaki we Rita so no colony Oh today New York Elliot is not it's no conscious 51 colada no uh-uh no and he owned dogs in war not listening Master Akira has been making swords for 21 years he was inspired by a sword crafted by the legendary 13th century swordsmith Masamune and after a five-year apprenticeship and years of training he became one of the 180 sword smiths working across Japan Japanese swords have always been more than just weapons they were artworks status symbols and throughout history held a huge spiritual importance from Cuzco Miyake ah Garrett are tossing Hagen Eva Maharaj current guru toes and sincerity status so no sorry you know I know which I heard Canada cotton on yaar to calculate a cotton oh he's only tasted toonsters three minutes calico Tony okay Yahoo Simon Amano Parramatta studies mr. Corrigan it epic I know dog to stake a no on Jeannie totem Oneonta - you'll get about 90 again the idea was Tuscany on visit to him to see where every cotton Accords could be locally this kiddo yuria know he's on your clearance Garrity musta see mostly easily took a knee re naraba mabushii guy you know Joe Cocker a doc a note Oh money what assets good deal it's motivates characters know cotton a kazoo the cotton of sweet baby you - you know me Mary yo Thomas Mario Elkins was a Thomas Mario got a unique cutter no correction sittin smothered whatever you do anything so you gotta mean screw bottom ROC Areva auto motor dicta our Yamaha Stanga dicta mus Melo yamaneika soy de Bono oh mama you gotta Otto's it's good to E or C 2 equal today each sword is a unique artwork and one that is made to be admired as you would a painting as sheets of Steel are folded into each other again and again woodgrain like patterns form and these patterns coupled with the skill of the sword master create a completely unique blade [Music] another community now what does the katana know she was earning an Oreo gotten an in-game currency reto musta got on Naruto should we cut another Arriba some cotton Akatsuki diavik arimasu she gained dino Morea ribosomes are kaga don't you Dino Milania - cannot you sakuya Waqar Younis knowing what to look for in each sword is important characteristics like angle and length of the blade or the way the metal is folded could give away the era in which it was made and even who made it his second oven - you know go ma you don't know Chuck st. Luke's a girl's mother basu demo at the katana casino with a Nomi seguro de marchi so no kata now Tory otoki-san oh they know me said Oh grody Mario's their baklava cocka cocka Tanaka's Minor Arcana Toby Stull my Nana boo boo boo raucous Matakana so hibachi ma consider a jamon no you ain't no homo sacer main artery modesty so de marte co-host Iona Kira Kira stop sugah mirakuru tamales [Music] looking at the months of work that go into creating each blade it's easy to see why these swords command such a high price and as there are less and less sword masters across Japan these works of art are only going to become more valuable Sakhalin touched a psycho nominal to conduct awakening do you second income to shimai-konda honne suresh tossing a book not try it or forget it it's in any monster on activate tonight watches so on I can hear this name rotten almost silly johan de mer I'd like to go to market at a more to the same entity so now same language tobacco cotton or winter bikini is a kingdom of integrals because soya not scary type [Music] across the sea in Malaysia we wanted to take a moment to look at one of the cheapest products for a change and one of the most controversial palm oil palm oil is cheap and ubiquitous it's used in thousands of everyday products and is the most widely consumed vegetable oil on the planet you can get a kilo of palm oil for just two dollars but its usage has become unsurprisingly controversial as huge areas of rain forests have been cut down or burned to make way for palm plantations so why is this oil still so cheaply and readily available palm oil is in everything from chocolate to bread instant noodles to shampoo and without even really thinking about it globally we each consume on average about 8 kilos of palm oil every year but even if you look through the ingredients of your product you may not be able to spot it because written on the back label you could see any of these these days Indonesia and Malaysia make up 85% of all palm oil production but the oil palm species used actually originated in West Africa the trees were introduced to Malaysia in 1875 but for a hundred years something was missing for years the flowers were pollinated by hand requiring hundreds of workers and limiting efficiency until in 1981 African palm weevils were introduced to the country these little beetles pollinated the plants with no extra work from humans and suddenly palm oil yields boomed since this Parma's popularity has done nothing but rise demand spikes again in the 90s as companies suddenly realized the negative health implications of the trans fats found in many processed products and replaced them with palm oil and as ultra-processed foods increased so did the use of the oil but this incredible rise came at a cost the rapid expansion of palm oil plantations has led to the destruction of huge areas of tropical rainforests creating dangerous co2 emissions and destroying the remaining habitats of already endangered species it's extremely cheap its shelf stable it has natural preservative qualities it is a really good vegetable oil but the fact is it has been grown in a way that's caused a lot of environmental damage and has also impacted communities and the workers that have been employed to harvest the material seeing the devastation caused your first instinct might be to cut out palm oil completely but searching for an alternative might actually make things worse palm oil is so efficient that using an alternative oil would require up to 10 times the land to grow this efficiency is the main reason the oil is so cheap oil palm trees evergreen and perennial they produce oil all year round and can happily grow in soils that many other plants can't NGOs and companies from around the world came together to set up the roundtable on sustainable palm oil in 2004 to create a set of criteria to grow this crop sustainably but it's only since 2018 that the roundtable has embraced the high carbon stock approach a system that helps identify valuable areas of forest and keeps the power more they certified completely deforestation free the fact is it's just a plant it's how and where we've done it and how we've grown it that causes the problem but that means that it's a human problem we created the issue that means that we also have the ability to solve that issue to fix that issue fixing this problem isn't going to be easy there there are numerous barriers that exist for companies trying to implement zero deforestation commitments so one of those is the fact that you have highly complex supply chains it's difficult to know exactly where your palm oil is coming from another one is that you have varying levels of government support in different regions with their produce palm oil and the extent of government support it plays an important role in whether a company can produce without deforestation for complex reasons so are we doing enough the round table now certifies about 19 percent of palm oil worldwide but getting to this point has been a long slow process and we're running out of time critically global consumption for palm oil will invariably increase until 2050 as we approach nine point six billion people you also have to set the assistance of large markets such as China and India where there is a much more of an emphasis on price rather than the sustainability profile of the product and this means that if you're a manufacturer say and you're trying to buy palm oil and encourage your suppliers to make sure that their production is deforestation free you have limited leverage because they always have an alternative market they can sell into so there are these challenges with implementing a commitment to zero deforestation which make it very difficult to achieve India China and Indonesia now account for nearly 40 percent of all palm oil consumed and it looks like palm oil is going to remain cheap for a while longer but the cost of the planet could be devastating but it's not just palm oil that's the problem palm oil still pales in comparison in terms of its contribution to deforestation where it pales in comparison with cattle and beef products which some estimates indicate may be responsible for as much as a quarter of all tropical deforestation global canopy published a list of 500 companies and financial institutions linked to tropical deforestation from soy palm cattle and timber only half of these companies have made zero deforestation a commitment by 2020 and not a single one of these companies is on track to make this target global canopy also says that despite the commitments that have been made evidence shows that rates of commodity driven deforestation have not decreased since 2001 whether its palms soy beef leather all ingredients companies have a responsibility not to wait for the consumer to make the demand they have a responsibility to do it before the consumer demands any force that's being cleared as we face what it many would call a climate crisis is too much so what we know we have to do is we have to take a very hard look at how we consume things why we're consuming it and how we go about sourcing and growing our materials like palm oil or soy beef or cotton [Music] over in Dubai is one of the largest camel milk farms in the world the milk is popular across the Middle East in Africa the farming camels isn't exactly easy camel milk can cost you $30 per litre compare that to cow's milk and it's almost 30 times the price but for hundreds of years camels have been used to produce milk yogurt and even cheese so why would any one milk a camel and what makes the milk so expensive camel milk may not be quite as popular as cow milk compared to the 600 million metric tons of cow milk produced worldwide only about 3 million tonnes of camel milk are produced each year however camel milk is an important staple across Africa and the Middle East and some cultures rely on it Somalia and Kenya alone produced 64 percent of the world's camel milk camel Isha's in Dubai has over 6 thousand camels on its farm and produces 4 million litres of milk each year and as you know the people in the Middle East connected with the camels for transport and for food and their main diet was camel milk and dates so it's a long history the demand for cabin milk increasing day by day and we are facing now a challenge which to meet the demand because the supply is less and the demand this demand has kept the price high and camel-milk profile as a new health food has boosted sales it's slightly lower in saturated fat has ten times the vitamin C and has more calcium and potassium than cow's milk these benefits have led many people to start using it as an alternative medicine despite very limited evidence online celebrity endorsements have also led more and more people to try it while new camel farms are appearing across the world the popularity is still limited and in Europe there is still 12 thousand cows for every single camel but even if you do have a lot of camels it's not exactly easy work to get the milk roughly we are making 1,300 camels twice a day so it's a very intense work lots of people are included into the job so when cameras are arriving here they go through a very strict quarantine procedure where we checked them for different diseases whenever needed we treat them and we start training them for the milking parlor it's very crucial that that we provide a very relaxed very calm atmosphere fodder for the cameras during milking to be able to release the milk so we had to train the camel to be able to milk them without the car so that was a very intensive work and every camel is different so for some cameras the training itself - for the milking party - 3 days but folks for some camels it took weeks once this training period is over and your camels are producing milk you still don't get anywhere near as much as you would from a cow one cow can give around like fifty little birthday while the camel milk can give six to seven liter the cow and three years will give more than 50,000 liter while in the camels and three years you'll get maximum four to seven thousand liter unlike the dairy industry where male calves are often killed and disposed of every camel must be kept near its young to continue producing milk meaning that two animals will need to be kept fed and healthy to produce just seven liters of milk each day camel milk is costly in addition to that their feed costs we are here at camel Isha's defend our camels natural and fresh alfalfa a in addition to which plan only we are not giving any concentrates or any feed additives so after all this work what does the milk actually taste like smells like milk [Music] yeah it does have it does have a different taste to it it's a bit salty I would say saltier than normal milk but it's quite creamy I don't hate it it's almost like salty I'd would I would say it doesn't taste like regular milk I would have it again as this milk grows in popularity and selective breeding leads to camels that produce more milk the price may come down but for now camel milk remains an expensive luxury camel is a different species so we didn't want and still don't want to turn them into a milking machine because we are thinking long-term so we would like to have a long production life here with these cameras on this farm [Music] from the Middle East to California avocados prevalence has risen dramatically over the last few years as their popularity is increased so of their prices avocado has become one of the world's trendiest foods as the poster child of millennial healthy eating this superfood is now a mainstay for foodies everywhere but have you noticed your Avvo on toast is costing more and more avocado prices have rocketed in recent years by up to one hundred and twenty nine percent with the average national price of a single Hass avocado reaching two dollars and ten cents in 2019 almost doubling in just one year so why are vacarro's so expensive archeologists in Peru have found domesticated avocado seeds buried with Incan mummies dating back to 750 BC but it was the Aztecs in 500 BC who named it a curtain which translates to testicle when Spanish conquistadors swept through Mexico and Central America in the 16th century they renamed it AG huacatay the farming of aguacate developed over the next few hundred years predominantly in Central America and South America but consumption of the alligator pear outside of these regions before the late 19th century was almost non-existent the commercialization of a guaca Tay began in the early 1900s but was focused on branding avocados as a delicacy for the wealthy like this advert in The New Yorker from 1920 which declared them as the aristocrat of salad fruit but a selection of Californian growers realized that the hard to pronounced aguacate was off-putting for the mass market so they formed the California avocado Association by the 1950s production scale grew an avocado prices fell to about 25 cents each popularity increased further with the wave of inter-american immigration in the 60s as Latin Americans brought their love of avocados with them to the US but as demand increased supply had to keep up and the true difficulties of yielding large-scale avocado crops began to show avocado orchards require an extraordinary amount of costly resources in to flourish there are multiple inputs that avocados require whether it's water fertilizer pruning pest control the sunburn protection of trees all those go into making your chances better of having a very good quality crop when we decide to plant an avocado orchard we'll plant trees that come from certified nurseries we have to place our orders years in advance on average if we're producing a hundred thousand pounds per acre that takes about a million gallons of water so a hundred gallons per pound so it'd be about 50 gallons per 8 ounce fruit but that's dependent on what Mother Nature will throw at you you know we have wind we have intense Sun it's really hard for a grower to manage the unmanageable things that will affect a crop the surge in popularity of avocados stalled during the fat fighting frenzy of the 1980s with an average of only one pound per capita being consumed in America by 1989 the decades low-fat obsession drove consumers away from have Accardo because of its high fat content without really understanding the nutritional truth hidden within when it comes to fat in food in general people tend to get a little bit concerned because we often hear in the media that fat isn't good for us but the type of fat that in avocados is monounsaturated fat which is actually often deemed healthy fat or heart-healthy fat so while there is a lot of fat in avocados it's actually quite good fat avocado started its meteoric comeback at the turn of the millennium and it was helped by an unlikely political decision in 2005 the US Department of Agriculture lifted a ninety-year-old ban to allow the importation of Mexican avocados to all 50 states initially this decision angered Californian growers who feared the move could slash local growers sales by as much as 20% what actually transpired and took place was as that Mexican supply became much more prevalent and available retailers got behind marketing and selling avocados food service providers restaurants started putting in his permanent parts of their menus and demand started to boom because the inconsistent supply chains before were consistent and consumers were allowed to enjoy avocados every day of the year the biggest day of the avocado calendar became Superbowl Sunday when it's now estimated that almost 200 million pounds of avocados are eaten during the big game in America but if you take a moment to consider the resources needed to produce that amount you can start to understand avocados elevated prices according to experts it takes roughly 270 liters of water to grow a pound of avocados so 200 million pounds could require as much as fifty four billion liters of water which means droughts or heat waves can have devastating consequences on the avocado industry in fact that's exactly what's been happening in California for the last seven years with the Sunshine State only recently being declared drought free in 2019 which goes a long way to explaining record avocado prices in some countries like Chile avocado cultivation is being blamed for exacerbating droughts as lush green orchards overlook dry riverbeds perhaps the biggest reason for avocados rise to dominance is the emergence of the clean eating lifestyle no longer just a chip dip for special occasions this superfood can be found in a plethora of recipes in cafes and restaurants everywhere around the world and those who are eating them are really keen for you to know about it just type hashtag avocado into Instagram and you'll be hit with over 10 million search results but is the glorification of avocado justified there's quite a big hype around avocados but it actually is quite justified when it comes to how nutrient-dense this food is there's not many foods that actually replicate it in terms of a nutritional profile when it comes to calling something a superfood I'm not ready for that label avocados are definitely good food to include in your diet but like I said you're not really missing out if you don't like them or if you can't eat them for any reason monounsaturated fats we can find that in things like olive oil and olive nuts and seeds vitamins and minerals we can find that in other green vegetables so spinach and broccoli and things like that so there's ways of getting those nutrients in without having avocados all of this produce requires an astonishing amount of labor even once grown pruned and picked avocados need costly distribution methods in order to be delivered fresh and ripe to far-flung corners of the world if you're living in Philadelphia right you want to buy a ripe avocado in Philadelphia what they do is they ship green avocados from California to Philadelphia they send them to the ripening Center they warm them up and get ethylene in them so they all ripen and then when they're moved out to the retail stores you're actually buying something that's almost ready to eat or ready to eat because if you were to buy a green avocado that's shipped straight from to your market you know you would have to ripen it yourself over seven to ten day period and most consumers are a little more anxious for their avocado toast than waiting 10 days with prices so high the commodity of avocados has attracted a spate of thefts from orchards and delivery trucks worldwide in New Zealand armed night patrols and electric fences have been introduced after a grower in Northland had 70% of his orchard stolen there's even further grim reading for avocado lovers in Michoacan where 80% of Mexico's avocados originate cartels run a so-called blood avocado trade violently enforcing a non negotiable extortion fee from farmers based on the size of their land and the weight of their crop some restaurants have begun an avocado boycott as we alway up the ethics behind our eating habits experts suggest that water shortages could affect 5 billion people by 2050 and rainfall in the so called drought belt which includes Mexico and South America is predicted to decline but whilst evidence of environmental degradation is mounting the avocado industry is still growing along with consumer demand in certain places the sustainability of avocado production will become untenable also rising in popularity is Apple in 2018 it became the first company to be worth one trillion dollars but how did it get to this point and what makes its products so expensive in 2016 the iPhone 7 started at six hundred and forty nine dollars three years later Apple's flagship iPhone costs 54% more it's even more dramatic for the Mac Mini when Apple released its new model the price increased by 60% these prices bring in huge profits for Apple as the u.s. is first trillion-dollar company Apple's market cap is higher than the GDP of Switzerland so what makes Apple products so expensive Apple has over the years built a reputation for our quality and the industrial design of his products that reputation has created millions of loyal customers so that brand loyalty translates into a premium that they're able to extract from customers who are unwilling to switch out of the Apple ecosystem that premium is also known as the Apple talents while paying more simply because it's an Apple product the 256 gigabyte MacBook Air for example cost one thousand two hundred and ninety nine dollars but you can get a more powerful Windows laptop for over $100 less Apple's high prices reached mean proportions during the announcement of its Mac Pro in June 2019 claps tend to gasps when John Turner's unveiled a one-thousand dollar monitor stand as an add-on for the five thousand dollar Mac Pro display and the pro stand $9.99 and mic the Mac Pro they'll all be available in the bar in truth $6,000 for a professional reference monitor of this quality is comparable to the competition but that didn't matter applet botched the messaging and his $1000 stand became infamous Apple does something else that's a bit sneaky which is that when you're buying the iPhone you can't add memory to it so if you want more memory you have to pay more Apple tax with apples computers these upgrades get even more expensive if you want a 13-inch MacBook Pro with 512 gigabytes of storage you have to pay $400 more than the base model and Apple's accessories also have high premiums compared to non apple products like it's a hundred and twenty nine dollar keyboard or at $79 Mouse even apples cables cost more Apple has kept its proprietary lightning connector while removing useful ports like the headphone jack and the SD card reader forcing consumers to buy expensive dongles like its $39 SD card to USB see reader but are these products worth the premium Apple loves to talk about its innovation these are the most powerful and most advanced iPhones that we have ever built in a stunning new design an iPhones have added great features like oh le D displays faster processors and thin bezels but competing products have many of the same features the components that go into making a smart phone are fairly standardized for example of Sony competes with Apple in smartphones but all the camera sensors that go into an iPhone are made by Sony and those components cost a lot less than a new iPhone the Bill of Materials is about four hundred and ninety dollars for a phone that is priced at one thousand and ninety nine dollars as a comparison point the Galaxy S ten plus is about four hundred and twenty dollars bill of materials for a price of nine hundred and ninety nine dollars something changed when Apple released the iPhone 10 not only was it more expensive but the difference between the bill of materials and the retail cost was much greater obviously Apple wants to make a profit so the bill of materials has to cost less than the device what makes Apple special is its ability to pull larger profits than its competitors instead of a technology company think of Apple as a luxury brand as with Gucci or Hermes customers pay more because the logo is a status symbol that handbag isn't a more functional bag but customers still value it more so our products become an extension of our personality value elegance a value design a value simplicity I value it just works and that is what inspires a lot of loyalty and allows Apple to extract a premium for their products [Applause] because they make premium part layer and people are willing to prefer to pay for a simple seamless experience their catering to people that really really love ease of use and user friendliness I think that probably that layer of design quite cost a little bit and I'm happy to pay for it they are expensive because they know we will apply all of their things Samsung Android Apple thank you I think that customer loyalty is hard to earn but when you do earn the customer loyalty love is blind but this strategy might not work for ever competition with less expensive Android phones has got steeper and that's put the iPhones market share at risk Apple's performance in India is pathetic pathetic to the point that their market share is now slipped to less than 2% has become completely irrelevant and the primary reason there is that the price points are simply unaffordable for in the Indian market if Apple can't sell more iPhones it might have to sell fewer iPhones for more money charging a premium allows Apple to keep increasing its revenue even if its biggest category the iPhone is declining see whenever you create a new product what you want to do is to extract all of the premium that you can from the higher-end customers people who are willing to pay a premium that means the customers you buy the iPad pro or the $5,000 iMac Pro Apple does offer cheaper models like the iPhone 11 or the 11 inch iPad but those aren't always the models customers choose this is called extremeness aversion because you don't want to buy the cheapest you don't want to buy the most expensive so the middle one looks like a compromise but Mohan pointed out the Apple has a disadvantage compared to true luxury brands a luxury product is like a Rolex right and you would keep it for a lifetime we can keep a smartphone for a lifetime so premium perhaps not luxury so now Apple's reputation remains strong and the customers you don't want to spend $1000 on a new phone Apple has a plan for that keep the old models around just a very slight discount but if Apple wants to keep its loyal customers its innovation will have to keep pace with its premiums it may feel like it costs a lot to travel the world but compared to just fifty years ago the price of air travel has dropped dramatically sixty years ago air travel was far too expensive for the masses hooker flight between New York and London on Pan Am in 1960 and you'd be paying somewhere around three hundred dollars or about $2,600 adjusted for inflation but in 2019 you can catch the same flight for almost a tenth of the price it looks like flying has never been cheaper but is that the real story and how did we get here the first scheduled commercial flight took place in 1914 he had one passenger and was piloted by this guy Tony Janice the flight was from some Petersburg to Tampa what would have been a 12 hour train ride became a quick 23 minute trip the flight proved that there was demand for sheduled aviation as transportation Janice is largely credited with laying the groundwork for the modern aviation business which has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry in 2018 there an estimated forty five million flights worldwide and the average fare for a domestic flight in the u.s. was 350 dollars now 350 dollars is hardly considered cheap but take a look at this graph Patridge ticket prices have been steadily decreasing since 1980 in fact tickets are close to their lowest prices ever but from 1950 to 1980 flying was different before 1978 fares and routes in the US were closely regulated by the federal government and many routes had fixed minimum prices what ended up happening is you go into a highly regulated industry where the federal government set the various routes that you could fly set how much prices could be and the airlines were raking in the dollars the story across Europe was slightly different as most airlines with state-controlled an air travel was treated as a public service but in 1978 everything changed then President Jimmy Carter signed the airline deregulation Act and the aviation industry was open for business free from government regulation Airlines now had one goal to sell tickets really happened after deregulation was just this massive fight airlines were doing everything to get market share and not really looking at profitability the theory was the more people we can get onto a plane the more we can dominate the markets the more were winning but they didn't really look at it as a business where you need at the end of the day to make a profit and as soon as you had one little economic hiccup a bit of a recession or spike in oil prices that's when airlines really start to fail at the same time aircraft technology was also advancing which made the planes more efficient new wing technology was implemented such as winglets which made planes more aerodynamic and reduced flight times computer systems began to replace older cockpit technology making the planes less reliant on pilots shortly after planes got computers so did people and pricing began to get even more competitive websites like Expedia and Priceline launched in the late 90s began to catalog all of the lowest prices budget airline models were able to thrive because of this as consumers would regularly click the cheapest prices for many airlines this competition was unsustainable over the years a lot of companies folded merged or absorbed one another and today the four largest US airlines control 80% of the market one of these for Southwest has a fleet of 753 planes each of which has an average of six flights per day that's about 4,000 flights a day and while that may sound like a lot that frequency is decreasing across America this is because something called load factor is increasing one of the key metrics for the airlines is called load factor and this is basically your occupancy how many seats do you have available and what percentage of those are being sold or occupied by passengers basically that means aircraft flying at full capacity or close to it more often and this is good for airlines and for fliers sort of airlines are able to keep fares low because most of the seats have been sold which isn't always great for passengers ever been the last one on the plane and there's no more overhead luggage space or had no room for your legs because the seats are so close together there are tons of budget airlines around the world some of the more notable ones are Ryanair norwegian spirit and frontier these companies usually charge extra for traditionally included amenities like reserving your seat while cutting costs wherever they can this issue of cramming more passengers onto planes is happening all across the world you look at a discount carrier like why an air based in Ireland but flies all over Europe they're looking at putting 200 people on a Boeing 737 this is a plane that some airlines are still flying with 150 160 passengers that's really really crowded but it maximizes profits and when you fly in an airline like Ryan Air you know exactly what you're getting so take that three hundred and twenty dollar flight on Norwegian from New York to London need anything other than one small piece of hand luggage the fare jumps to four hundred and ninety dollars one two refundable ticket and two checked bags suddenly here at one thousand three hundred and seventy nine dollars that's about a hundred dollars more than the inflation adjusted 1977 price which came with all of those extras included as standard and more legroom - and non-budget airlines have seen the potential profit in this budget model more and more airlines are beginning to charge hidden fees on top of the ticket price from checking baggage to just choosing your seat find the right deals though and flying can be cheaper than ever but their original price you saw advertised may be misleading and the experience that you get these days might not be the most pleasant as manufacturers continue to cut costs but the world of bargain budget fares may not last aviation emissions are predicted to possibly triple by 2050 and many countries have begun implementing stricter environmental taxes for flights overall there's little that the industry can squeeze out of the air fare right now they're gonna get much more efficient with aircraft and that's gonna mean less fuel burning but the cost of labor is probably not gonna go too you still need good quality people to fly airplane and beer flight attendants [Music]

Channel: undefined

Views: 3,180,472

Rating: 4.7977996 out of 5

Keywords: Art, Travel, Food, So Expensive, Business News, Business Insider, UK Original Video, Apple

Id: Y-yAsuff-Fc

Length: 92min 7sec (5527 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 28 2020