| Happy New Year! I hope your 2026 is off to a good start and you haven’t abandoned your resolutions yet.
Each year I identify a few brands to watch; these are brands that are heading into interesting years. Some seem poised to do well and others face challenges.
Let’s see how I did on my 2025 list.
Private College Tuition
Private colleges have long embraced a simple tuition strategy: raise tuition each year and boost financial aid for families that need assistance. This makes a lot of sense on the surface, but the strategy no longer works. Fewer and fewer students pay the full tuition, which means that most of the incremental revenue is just given back in financial aid.
The higher tuition makes the institutions seem elite and inaccessible. They become easy targets for political attacks.
I wondered if a leading college would embrace a new strategy such as freezing tuition levels or even reducing them.
I thought this wasn’t likely and I was right. Private colleges continue with the usual approach.
This was a missed opportunity.
The cause has now been politicized as a tuition freeze was one part of Donald Trump’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” This makes it less likely that school leaders will embrace an approach that makes sense because they don’t want to be seen supporting an idea from Donald Trump.
Beyond Meat
I predicted that Beyond Meat would have more troubles in 2025 and I was correct.
This company started this year with its stock trading at $3.85 and ended the year with its stock at just $0.82, a decline of 79%.
Beyond Meat has quite a collection of troubles, but its most significant is the lack of a motivating benefit. Why should the average person eat Beyond Meat products? It isn’t clear. |
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Louis Vuitton
The Louis Vuitton brand began 2025 in a difficult spot, as demand for luxury goods around the world softened.
I predicted there wouldn’t be a quick recovery for Louis Vuitton and LVMH and this was not entirely correct. The stock price rose, from $125 at the start of the year to $151 today.
The LVMH recovery reflects the power of strong brands; people are willing to spend for special brands that provide value.
BYD
I anticipated that Chinese EV car manufacturer BYD would have a big year, and that was correct. BYD has now surpassed Tesla as the largest EV manufacturer in the world, with sales up 28% to 2.26 million globally. Tesla sales fell 8%.
Still, BYD faces challenges, including small margins due its value pricing strategy and import restrictions in different parts of the world.
DEI
I predicted that we would hear little about DEI, as firms abandon the now toxic brand. This certainly was the case in 2025. It is hard to think of a brand that has fallen so far, so fast.
I wondered if business leaders would find a new word to describe efforts to reach diverse customers and attract a wide range of employees. We haven’t seen one emerge.
Stock Market
The stock market did well this year, and I didn’t see that happening. I predicted that the stock market (S&P 500) would finish at 5,706, down 3%. Results were quite different, with the actual finish at an impressive 6,846.
The good news: I know it is almost impossible to accurately forecast the market, so I didn’t sell anything. My advice continues to be simple: buy stocks and never sell them.
I’ll be back with my 2026 Brands to Watch later this week.
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