Helping Starbucks and IBM predict the weather is one hot business
AccuWeather and The Weather Company cater to huge, publicly traded clients that pay up to US$1 million a year for predictive analytics
By Kinsey Grant
When Starbucks Corporation in the US wants to gauge how many iced or hot drinks it may sell in a given season, it turns to AccuWeather’s predictive analytics team. AccuWeather can advise the coffee chain if, say, October will be colder than usual, meaning more hot Pumpkin Spice Lattes than chilled brews will fly out of the stores.
And when Class I railroads, including Norfolk Southern Corp, Union Pacific Corp and CSX Corp, need to know if tornadoes could derail their trains, they turn to AccuWeather, too, just as other clients, such as Live Nation Entertainment, Garmin Ltd., Ford Motor Company, Samsung, LG Display Co and Motorola Solutions Inc., do when they must find out if storms, blizzards and heatwaves could disrupt their businesses.
Accuweather is one of two major weather predictive-analysis firms that cater to companies that rely on forecasts to stay profitable. The other is The Weather Company, also a provider to multinational companies.
Accuracy, naturally, is paramount, and, predictably, each company claims it has the edge. But both companies have been named “most accurate” for different aspects of meteorology. Last year, ForecastWatch cited AccuWeather as the most accurate source of overall temperature forecasts and The Weather Company, the most accurate overall across time and geography.
So they do have accolades. However, their histories and client bases differ.
Joel Myers founded AccuWeather in 1962 by cold-calling almost 25,000 companies to snag his first 100 clients for what he claimed would be more accurate than the government’s. Fast-forward 55 years, and Myers, now 77, is still at it. But he’s working with bigger and more deep-pocketed clients that make up more than half, 245, of the Fortune 500.
