SHOWDOWN: EXOL vs REHBAND
BACKGROUND:
As I wrote earlier in a post, EXOL's closest target to beat should be considered the Swedish company REHBAND. It's a private company, but as I mentioned in an earlier post, financial data of Private Stock Swedish Corporations (Aktiebolag) are completely open for the public eye.
Why is this important? By no means should you ever try to find things in data and stats that aren't there, but the reason why I think this is interesting is because running analysis on businesses like this could very well be the most precise tool of measurement people on the outside can get of the day-to-day growth of businesses we invest/and or want to invest in. As well as indicator of what the current health of the company and the competitive space really is like.
In my opinion, when trading pennies, anything you can get your hands on that is realtime and accurate, is extremely valuable to help better predict any outcome and to ease any buying/selling decision.
NOTE: This is purely for the high entertainment-factor, you should not make any investment decisions based on this.
In this post, I'll be cross referencing EXO and Rehband on a number of datapoints. I've even made some queries on EXOL and REHBAND's instagram following via the Instagram API, Amazon and more. I must say, I wasn't expecting EXOL to put up with this kind of fight, considering that the difference in resources between the two is ten-fold.
First of all I see no proof that would indicate that EXOL is buying instagram followers. I've seen some speculations on this board, so let's just put that to rest. The growth curve represented is as expected from building up a following organically. That was the first thing I analyzed, because analyzing anything else would be pointless from then on.
Rehband is currently displaying a strong downwards trend in over-all interactions, but an equally strong upwards-trend in followers, which indicates to me that they could be buying followers. However, I do not know at this stage. In October 2016, Rehband saw a decrease in interactions from an average of 25k per month to 10k per month, so its significant. Exo on the other hand is showing a fairly linear engagement rate along with the increase in followers.
THE SHOWDOWN:
BASICS (A lot more to cover here, this is just a selection)
Founded EXO: 2015
Founded REH: 2013
2013 Revenue EXO: -
2013 Revenue REH: $0
2014 Revenue EXO: -
FISCAL 2014 Revenue REH: $5.27m (first year) w/ $1.34m in short term credits
CALENDAR 2015 Revenue EXO: $0.23m (first year)
CALENDAR 2015 Revenue REH: $7.5m w/ $3.4m short term credits
CALENDAR 2016 Revenue EXO: $0.7m
CALENDAR 2016 Revenue REH: $ not yet disclosed
1st yr in business growth EXO: 204,3%
1st yr in business growth REH: 42%
2015 Employee count EXO: 4
2015 Employee count REH: 4
2016 Employe count EXO: 6
2016 Employee count REH: 6
PRODUCTS (A lot more to cover here)
Total Number of products EXO: 55
Total Number of products REH: 146
AMAZON
Total Number of products on Amazon EXO: 5 (I'm positive I saw more than 5 products the other day, guess they must be updating)
Total Number of products on Amazon REH: 495 with duplicates and previous collections
Number of Amazon Reviews EXO: 136
Number of Amazon Reviews REH: 2925
Average Amazon Rating EXO: 4,25
Average Amazon Rating REH: 4,12
WEB
Neither sites are ranked high enough to collect any valuable insight or data.
INSTAGRAM
Followers EXO AOT: 21.6k
Followers REH AOT: 62.3k
Followers EXO FEB 2016: 12.4k
Followers REH FEB 2016: 34.1k
1yr follower growth EXO: 74%
1yr follower growth REH: 82%
1mo follower growth EXO: 13,6%
1mo follower growth REH: 12,72%
(December > January)
Total posts EXO: 624
Total posts REH: 559
Total amount of likes EXO: 124,333
Total amount of likes REH: 338,859
Total comments EXO: 4,409
Total comments REH: 7,310
Average likes per post EXO: 199.3
Average likes per post REH: 597.2
Average comments per post EXO: 7.1
Average comments per post REH: 13.1
Average Post engagement rate for EXO: 2.03%
Average Post engagement rate for REH: 1.52%
Average Profile engagement rate for EXO: 1.27%
Average Profile engagement rate for REH: 1.11%
MAX Profile engagement rate for EXO: 2.29%
MAX Profile engagement rate for REH: 1.92%
THE top-post engagement rate for EXO: 13.31%
THE top-post engagement rate for REH: 14.49%
Best time to post generally EXO: 7am-1pm GMT-6
Best time to post generaly REH: 7am-1pm GMT-6
Best time to post specifically
1. EXO: Sundays at 11am, 4,9% engagement (EXO posts little here)
1. REH: Sundays at 7pm, 10.8% engagement
2. EXO: Thursdays at 3pm -4,42% engagement
2. REH: Saturdays at 11pm - 8.55% engagement
3. EXO: Fridays at 12am, 7pm and 9pm. 3,38% engagement - 3,13% engagement
3. REH: Tuesdays at 9pm 4.76% engagement
NFL-star Brand ambassador EXO: 1
NFL-star Brand ambassador REH: 0
OBJECTIVE-ish CONCLUSION:
Rehband got a better start from the word go - Rehband have utilized all three channels that both businesses have identified as important to their business model for early growth, I dare to say better than EXO.
Website
Instagram/PR
Amazon
But what a run for the money EXO is giving Rehband with very different prerequisites from the start of both businesses, and what an exciting 2017 we have ahead of us. EXO wouldn't have to lift a considerate amount of weight in order to completely smash the 2016 results. Adding a few more products to Amazon, keeping up with their followers and customers - I generally do not want to make any predictions, but EXO will see fantastic growth this year, because they're doing so much more already than adding a few products to Amazon. It seems to me that 2016 was the year where EXO truly started to create momentum. 2017 is the first year where that momentum can be exponentially leveraged to generate even more momentum.
REHBAND - Will see massive growth this year, anything else would be a shocker - They're close to sniffing on hyper growth. But it won't be on the EXOL's direct expense (only missed opportunity if any). The two companies are currently in their own way leaders in what they do, but in the big picture, way to small, and the market too big, for both businesses to have a direct impact on each other.
One stat that I forgot to add is of course:
APPENDIX:
From February 25th 2016 - May 11th 2016, EXOL went from 12 452 followers to 17 700 followers. This was also during a period where EXOL posted more videos on a day-to-day basis than they have ever since.
From March 2015 - June 2015, EXOL banked an additional 4221 followers. This was during a period, when they posted more videos than they ever have.
EXOL, should perhaps more videos and less photos. Videos based on these stats obviously have a larger chance of generating new followers than images. BUT there are fewer people engaging with videos than photos (likes/comments) which is why I think EXOL is sharing more photos these days than videos, but each interaction is clearly "worth more". But it's contra intuitive.
Rehband's Instagram followers have, from February 2016-2017 gone from 34,126 - 63,318. And I can see the exact same patterns for REHBAND there. More videos = Increase in followers.
Stay tuned for more posts like this. $EXOL
