Fred Fox is the founder and CEO of Weather Planalytics, a company specializes in Business Weather Intelligence — the study, development and commercialization of weather analytics. His clients are companies and NGOs who seek to better understand the impact of weather related events on their ordinary business. Fox is the holder of weather analytics- related patents for Weathernomics.
His motto: Don’t Just Blame it on the Weather.
Most companies are surprisingly unaware of the impact of weather on their business. Retailers, shippers, and other firms whom you would expect to have at least a passing awareness of weather impact have only at best a rough generalization.
Fox points out that without accurately measured base lines, anytime weather gets blamed it looks like excuse making. He advocates developing a corporate weather history in order to make reasonable assessments when future weather related events occur.
A retailer who blames snow in February doesn’t get much empathy from the media or analyst community; however, if that retailer could point out the prior 4 Februarys had 10 inches of snow versus this February where 48 inches of snow accumulated at least is making an fact based argument using actual data. Planalytics gets granular with the data to the point where they can make a reasonable forecast for how much X amount of snow will impact the month’s and quarter’s sales.
Some of Fox’s favorite books are found here.
You can stream/download the full conversation, including the podcast extras, on Bloomberg, iTunes, Overcast, and Soundcloud.
Our earlier podcasts can all be found on iTunes, Soundcloud, Overcast and Bloomberg.
Next week, we speak with Quantitative Finance expert Paul Wilmott.
The Accidental Superpower: The Next Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global Disorder by Peter Zeihan
The Discovery of Freedom: Man’s Struggle Against Authority by Rose Wilder Lane
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
