Glen Powell has done it all on screenfrom battling storms in Twisters to trading banter in the rom-com Anyone but You. But his latest role? Its a little unexpected: reinventing the American pantry.
The actor is stepping into the food world as a cofounder of Smash Kitchen, a new condiment brand hitting Walmart shelves nationwide on April 2. The line includes ketchup, mustard, mayo, and BBQ sauceall made with better-for-you ingredients like organic tomatoes and mustard seeds, cage-free organic eggs, and none of the usual suspects like high-fructose corn syrup or artificial additives. The goal? To bring all your favorite condiments under one cleaner, tastier brand.
Were trying to give you the flavor that you love and youre used to, with more integrity, Powell tells Fast Company. When you look at these legacy brands, they dont evolve because they dont have to evolve.
The Powell-backed brand is leaping into the $12 billion U.S. condiments category, which is projected to grow an additional $1 billion by 2029, according to market researcher Mintel. Unlike other food categories like coffee, soda, and yogurt where upstart brands have made inroads, Unilevers Hellmanns mayonnaise, Kraft Heinzs namesake ketchup, and McCormicks Frenchs mustard are the market leaders and have easily retained those positions for decades.
[Image: Smash Kitchen]
We have a tremendous sense of loyalty to these brands, says Matthew Barry, food and beverage insight manager at researcher Euromonitor International. People are really attached to Hellmanns and Heinz ketchup.
Smash Kitchen is the first business venture that Powell has announced outside of his career as an entertainer, which began with his big screen acting debut in the 2003 film Spy Kids 3: Game Over. Powell has since racked up dozens of film and TV credits and recently formed his own production company called Barnstorm. The creation of Smash Kitchen, Powell says, was inspired by his affinity for hosting dinner parties and barbecues in Los Angeles and his home state of Texas.
My family life and my favorite memories always evolved around the kitchen, says Powell. Food is how we show our love.
Smash Kitchen is backed by venture capital firm Collaborative Fund, an early investor in Olipop, Sweetgreen, and Blue Bottle Coffee. Powells co-founders Smash Kitchen CEO Sameer Mehta, a cofounder of dog food brand Jinx and former VP of strategic partners at mattress company Casper, and President Sean Kane, who co-founded consumer goods purveyor the Honest Company. The trio were brought together through a mutual connection with venture capital fund Iconiq Capital founder Divesh Makan.
Ultimately, you shouldn’t have to choose what’s better for your budget and and better for your health, and Glenn is super excited to be able to bring that to not only his family, but people everywhere, says Kane.
Smash Kitchens pitch to shoppers is not only a focus on a cleaner nutritional label that avoids high fructose corn syrup and tomato concentrate, but prioritizing the creation of condiments that taste good. Retailers, Mehta says, told the team that people arent picking up condiments for health benefits. They are picking it up for the flavor.
The more distinctive flavors from Smash Kitchen, like hot honey BBQ sauce and spicy mayo, may have greater success luring shoppers, as those flavor profiles arent as intrinsically linked to childhood memories as the classic Heinz ketchup. Weve seen hot honey get household recognition within the pizza category, says Mehta. Nobody has infused it with ketchup. Its a flavor profile that we know consumers are wanting.
Theres no hot honey sauce that is so emotionally resonant and widespread among the American consumer, says Barry. Its open to disruption. Anyone could be the hot honey sauce of America.
Smash Kitchens range is priced slightly above what larger rivals command. The classic 20-ounce ketchup has a standard list price of $3.97 versus Heinzs $3.48 at Walmart.com. Smashs yellow mustard is priced at $3.47, compared to $2.54 for Frenchs. Barry says inflation-wary shoppers remain particularly sensitive to grocery prices, but may be willing to spend a bit more on a cleaner ingredient label. The organic claim, he adds, has lost some luster because it has become so ubiquitous across the grocery store.
If you can be a little fun treat for people, a little moment of happiness and joy at a reasonable price point, thats really prominent right now, says Barry.
Audiences are used to Hollywood mining pre-existing material for movies. For over two decades now, the industrys go-to source for blockbusters has been comic books. And increasingly, its been video games. But occasionally, Hollywood turns to Reddit, too.
This week, it was announced that the popular Hollywood actress Sydney Sweeney had acquired the film rights to a four-year-old Reddit post. As noted by The Hollywood Reporter, the Reddit post in question is a short story by a Massachusetts-based high school English teacher named Joe Cote.
That short story and post, titled I pretended to be a missing girl so I could rob her family, is about a girl who shows up at the house of a family whose daughter went missing years earlier. The girl says she is their missing daughter so she can stay with them for the nighta lie she uses in her attempt to rob their house.
The Hollywood Reporter says that Warner Bros. won the rights to the film deal, which was described as competitive. Warner Bros. picked up the rights after Sydney Sweeney became attached to star in and produce the short story adaptation.
Sweeney reportedly then brought Oscar-winning scriptwriter Eric Roth, of Forrest Gump fame, to make the story into a screenplay. A release date and director have not yet been announced.
Hollywood has been interested in adapting Reddit posts into films before
But I pretended to be a missing girl isnt the only Reddit post that has been picked up for a movie adaptation before. This is actually the second confirmed time a Reddit post has attracted Hollywoods attention. The first time happened nearly 14 years ago.
As reported by Variety in 2011, Warner Bros. (seems like the studio loves Reddit, doesnt it?) picked up the film rights to a Reddit post with the lengthy title Could I destroy the entire Roman Empire during the reign of Augustus if I traveled back in time with a modern U.S. Marine infantry battalion or MEU?
This post was another short story, and this one explored what would happen if a group of modern-day U.S. Marines were transported back in time to the Roman Empire. The film adaptations working title was Rome, Sweet Rome. The short story was written by author and Jeopardy! champion James Erwin.
However, those Reddit scribes hopeful that their next postshort story or otherwisewill be picked up by Hollywood and see them soon walking down the red carpet need to understand one thing: just because a studio picks up the film rights to something doesnt mean that the film will ever see the light of day.
The majority of acquired film rights go on to languish in development hell, an industry term used to describe projects that get stuck in purgatory for whatever reason, often due to a revolving door of talent coming to and leaving a project.
In 2018, Little White Lies reported that Rome, Sweet Rome was stuck in development hell.
Of course, just getting anything picked up by Hollywood, even if it is never made into a movie, is a success in its own right. And when it comes to Reddit posts, its now happened at least twice.
As the superhero genre continues to die a slow death, Hollywood is certain to be looking for something it can generate movie ideas from for years to come. As the two examples above show, Reddit may be one of those places.
It’s been a wild few years for Snowflake, from a record-breaking IPO to a plummeting stock price to a data-breach scandal. Sridhar Ramaswamy took over in the heat of the turmoil and helped steady the ship, in part by betting big on AI. Ramaswamy shares lessons from the company’s turnaround including insights behind high profile partnerships with OpenAI and Anthropic, how Snowflake embraced China’s Deepseek early, and why Ramaswamy calls Snowflake the most consequential AI-data company in the world.
This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.
I had a guest on the show recently who confided that a lot of CEOs are kind of paralyzed right now by sort of external uncertainties in the world, shifting tariffs, and regulations, and executive orders. How do you deal with, and think about, the environment and all the changes relative to the things that you can control yourself?
One of my firm beliefs in life is that you need to focus on the things that you are going to have an impact on. There are many things that, let’s face it, we are simply not going to have any impact on. Obsessing about unchangeable things in the short term is the recipe for being uncertain about life.
There is a lot of macro uncertainty. Businesses will react, and we will have to worry. For example, if the stock market keeps going down, or if the business climate gets worse, it’ll have an impact on Snowflake, but so far, it’s been heads down, get great product work done, get great customer deployments done.
You recently said that Snowflake is the most consequential data and AI company in the world. That is an ambitious assertion, especially for a business that, at least previously, was known as a data storage company. How do you back up that claim?
The most important data for the most important enterprises in the world is already stored on Snowflake. Snowflake is the gold standard for analytics. We have something like 700-odd Global 2000 companies that are on Snowflake, and if you exclude the folks from China that we are not even going after, that is 700-something out of 1,600.
They all put their most important prized information on top of Snowflake. Large public companies close their books every month on top of Snowflake. Financial institutions share data with each other. Snowflake is the beating heart of at least the U.S. financial system in terms of how data moves from place to place.
I mentioned at the beginning that Snowflake was one of the first U.S. companies to adopt DeepSeek. You’re also the only data platform, big one, to offer models from both OpenAI and Anthropic. What did you see in DeepSeek, and second, why have you leaned into having multiple models available?
Our strength is as a data platform. We are not a foundation model company, and honestly, most companies have no business of pretending that they are foundation model companies. It takes very specialized expertise, incredible talent density, and a very, very big wallet.
And so for this, we decided to go the way of partnerships. We collaborate with a lot of folks. We focus on developing data products, which, in my mind, is the place where value is going to be realized.
When people think about OpenAI, they think, “Ah. These are the people that make the foundation models.” No, no, no. OpenAI is an amazing product company. ChatGPT is a legitimate product. It is going to approach the pantheon of the greats, the products that have a billion-plus users, and so helping people get value from models and the data that Snowflake has is what we are about.
Hence the leaning into heavy partnerships. Things like hosting DeepSeek quickly, that’s just a little bit of making sure that you can still run the hundred-meter sprint in 10 seconds. It was a challenge. It was an amazing model. We had it out in two days flat.
There was a lot of anxiety about DeepSeek. You don’t necessarily feel that same kind of anxiety, or even if you do, you feel like you have to have it available.
Let’s break that anxiety down. There are many parts of DeepSeek. One is the open-source model. DeepSeek also offers services on servers that are hosted in China, where if you use their app, for example, everything that you are typing in is getting sent to China.
Now, without getting too much into geopolitics, people will rightfully say that sending business data to China is a bad idea. It’s the same kind of fear that we have about TikTok. Hosting the DeepSeek model does not introduce any kind of security compromise. We host it. We take security and risk management very seriously. Us hosting DeepSeek did not cause issues like that.
Any anxiety about, “Oh, DeepSeek can do things so much more cheaply than OpenAI. They’re cheaper, faster ways to build these models”?
See, that’s the part of it that I actually like. That’s not anxiety. The reason I like that is because if there are highly capable-models that are freely available, the value of the data that is in Snowflake goes up. It doesn’t go down.
The value of the model companies goes down, and they have to innovate even harder. But innovation is a good thing for all of us. The cheaper that models get, the more broadly adoption there is, the more benefit that we, as society, are going to get, and certainly, Snowflake as a business.
You have mentioned the trend of businesses moving to India. You are an immigrant to the U.S. from India. You came from India with just a few suitcases and a couple hundred dollars, as I recall. There’s so much angst in the U.S. around immigration right now. How much do you think about it, given your personal experience?
Look, I’m incredibly blessed. I came with a bachelor’s degree, yes, I think it was $700. Neither of my parents went to college. I got a doctorate from Brown that Brown entirely paid for.
I got a monthly stipend and a free PhD, and I think I’ve contributed in meaningful ways to the country, helping create great, amazing businesses. I think the larger issue is that our population feels like there is enough prosperity to go around.
People in our country need to feel like they have a prosperous future before they’re willing to lean in and say, “We want more immigrants to share in that prosperous uture.” But I think those are the core issues that our government needs to address, where all of us feel like they have the opportunity like how I got the opportunity. My take is there’s no generosity without prosperity.
What do people and business leaders most misunderstand about the state of technology right now?
I think they are both feeling pressure about things like AI, but are also flooded with options for what to do. I think there’s just so much noise coming in terms of partnerships between X and Y or this new agent, take this or the other.
I think that just separating out what is real from what is hype, I think, is very hard. I would say this is less a misunderstanding than an amount of confusion, and I don’t think the AI industry helps itself with things like not talking about hallucination rates or not talking about things like what it takes for something to truly be enterprise-grade?
There’s a little bit of, “look, ma. It’s so cool,” kind of attitude to some of the things that happen in AI. I think there is a maturity process that is going to happen, but figuring out what is real from what is hype is the biggest challenge that business leaders, enterprise leaders face today.
Its rarely possible to be 100% efficient, 100% of our workday.
We need breaks and working with others means we need time and space for that collaboration to happen. But oftentimes, a needed break or interaction can balloon into an unneeded time suck that leaves you feeling frustrated that you didnt accomplish what you actually needed to get done.
So how do you identify when youre spending way too much time in an area and then eliminate that waste so that you have more time for whats most important? As a time management coach, heres what Ive found to be the most effective ways to make this happen.
Identifying your time sucks
Honest awareness: Sometimes you already know exactly whats stealing your time. You just need to be honest with yourself and willing to address it.
Do you know that you just cant resist checking your email every time a new message indicator pops up?
Do you know that you think you can just watch one YouTube video and then seemingly the next second you realize youve watched 10?
Do you know that you can never just send a quick text to your best friend, it always becomes a 20-minute text conversation?
Write down what you already know is taking more time than it should during your day as a commitment to admitting it and fixing the issue.
Automatic monitoring: Once youve recorded what you already know, one of the easiest next steps is to look at the automatic monitoring already in place on your phone.
Most phones will give you a weekly report of where you spent time on different apps. You may think that youre not scrolling that much on Instagram, but the data may tell a different story.
You can also set up automatic reports of your computer usage if you find thats an issue in addition to your phone.
Personal time tracking: A third way to identify your time sucks is through personal time tracking where you can make note of where your time is going both on and off the screen. I typically recommend tracking your time for at least two days, but if you want to do a more thorough analysis, document it for a week.
This can be done on paper, in an Excel document, or by using tools like Toggl or Timeular. My clients sometimes prefer the software options because of the ability to see consolidated reports. But if you find them overwhelming, its completely fine to keep things simple.
If you complete the above three steps, youre starting to get a clear picture of where your time might be overinvested. Then its time to take action. Here are some tips on eliminating, or at least reducing, the three biggest time sucks in most peoples days.
Eliminating Your Time Sucks
Screen time
Some screen time can be a nice mental break. But if your data shows that you have more than 30 minutes of personal screen time during the workday that doesnt fall into designated times off, like your lunch break, then youre probably spending too much time in that category.
If you cant handle social media or news sites, put the nuclear option on your device so that youre completely blocked from viewing them outside of scheduled times and have no option to undo the choice. You can also add online shopping sites or TV or movie sites like NetFlix or Hulu to the blocked list. If you work from home and are a gamer, considering locking up your controllers in a timed box so that you cant even think about beating the next level.
Communication
In addition to screen time, inefficient communication can be a huge time suck in your workday. In fact, I see it as one of the biggest time wasters among people who are working much longer hours than they would prefer.
To start, youll want to reduce or eliminate any scheduled meetings that dont actually need to happen. There are many times where an email could suffice instead of a meeting. For example, when people contact me who I dont know asking for a 15-minute meeting to explain something, I always reply by asking them to send over more information in written form. That way in less than a minute, I can scan what they sent and decide if it merits a conversation, and my workflow isnt interrupted by unnecessary meetings.
If youre in an office environment, beware of the drive-by meetings. They can be super useful, but they also can be productivity destroying. If you really need to focus and have a door, close it. If you dont have a door or people open your door spontaneously, put up a sign and/or put on headphones. Some of my clients even go so far to set up office hours, which are times when theyre OK with drop-in chats. Outside of those office hours, they request that people schedule a meeting.
And finally, email and other asynchronous communication tools like IM or Slack can consume massive amounts more time than needed if you let them. One of the best ways to reduce time in these areas is to have designated times you log in and batch reply to all of the new messages, such as at the beginning, middle, and end of the workday. If thats not permissible, at least give yourself a few spaces throughout the day to get focused work done by turning off notifications and if needed, putting up Do not disturb.
Disorganization
A final category of time suck during the workday is plain disorganization. You can waste so much time by being lost or losing items.
Start with a plan: I encourage all of my clients to make daily and weekly planning a ritual so that theyre clear on their priorities and always know what to do next. But if thats too overwhelming to start, at least write down the three most important things to accomplish for the day. That simple act can dramatically increase your progress on your most critical tasks.
Leverage your energy: If youre a super morning person, purposefully block that time from meetings, spend minimal time on email, and get your hardest tasks done first. If youre barely awake until 10 a.m., do the opposite. Start slow responding to others and having a few meetings, and then block off 3 p.m. and later for your own work. Failing to organize your tasks around your energy levels can leave you frustrated because you have the time but not the mental capacity to get hard work done.
Organize your environment: You dont need office drawers worthy of a Pinterest post. But you do need to be able to find what you need when you need it. If your physical disorganization or electronic disorganization is causing you to waste needless time searching for things, take some time to get yourself in order. Sometimes that looks like spending a couple of hours purging your desk and filing things away. Other times, its best to work on a few papers or folders a day until you have sufficient organization.
Your time will rarely be 100% utilized. But by following these tips you can dramatically reduce the time lst on time sucks so that you can invest it in what matters to you most.
Welcome to Pressing Questions, Fast Companys work-life advice column. Every week, deputy editor Kathleen Davis, host of The New Way We Work podcast, will answer the biggest and most pressing workplace questions.
Q: Help! None of my coworkers have kids and dont understand what its like.A: No two peoples lives are the same and people with all kinds of family structures have issues that pull their time and attention away from work. That said, few things in life are as schedule-disrupting as being a parent.In an ideal world, your boss and coworkers wouldnt need to be parents themselves to understand things like needing to miss work when you have a sick kid or having a hard out each day at daycare pick-up time. Also, in an ideal world the school day and calendar would align better with the typical work day. We are obviously not in an ideal world, and unfortunately resentment between parents and coworkers without children is common.
Here are my suggestions to deal with it.
Suggest changes that would benefit everyone
Most parents cant make 8 a.m. meetings, as thats prime time for getting the kids out the door and to school. You know who else hates 8 a.m. meetings? Just about everyone. Rather have your colleagues resent you for being exempt from attending, suggest to your manager that morning meetings get rescheduled for after 9 a.m.The same goes for taking time off for lifes unexpected problems. You have to leave work when your kid is sick or when theres a snow day, doctors appointment or a recital. But everyone has things pop up, whether its their own dentist and doctor appointments, or the needs of their relatives or pets. If you’re in a leadership position, you can help foster a culture that recognizes that lifes obligations sometimes need to take priority over work.
If youre not in a leadership position, you can be the change you want to see by happily covering for your colleagues when something comes up. Hopefully the next time your kid gets pink eye theyll remember the time you took over for them when their dog had to go to the vet.
Call it out
If you feel like youve made a good faith effort to prove how you’re a team player, have demonstrated that you are just as productive as the non-parents on your team, and have offered solutions and you still feel resentment, you might want to be direct and talk to your coworker or manager about it. As with any difficult workplace conversation, you can still enter it with a collaborative mindset. Theres a problem and you are going to solve it together. You are not on opposing teams.
As with other workplace disagreements, it can be helpful to approach the conversation with curiosity. Try something like: Ive noticed a lot of comments about my schedule. Is there something thats causing an issue for the team or workflow that Im not aware of? If there is an issue youre not aware of (like a domino effect of work falling on one person when you leave), once its out in the air you can problem solve. If theres not an actual issue, just vague resentment, calling it out might force the person to address their own bias, or at least be the start of a conversation that can lead to more understanding.
Want some more reading on working parents? Here you go:
Im the CEO of a family tech company. Heres how Ive created kid-friendly work hours
The school year used to favor working parents, but not anymore
4 simple ways leaders can better support working parents
How longer school days benefit working mothers
Welcome to Pressing Questions, Fast Companys work-life advice column. Every week, deputy editor Kathleen Davis, host of The New Way We Work podcast, will answer the biggest and most pressing workplace questions.
Q: Help! None of my coworkers have kids and dont understand what its like.A: No two peoples lives are the same and people with all kinds of family structures have issues that pull their time and attention away from work. That said, few things in life are as schedule-disrupting as being a parent.In an ideal world, your boss and coworkers wouldnt need to be parents themselves to understand things like needing to miss work when you have a sick kid or having a hard out each day at daycare pick-up time. Also, in an ideal world the school day and calendar would align better with the typical work day. We are obviously not in an ideal world, and unfortunately resentment between parents and coworkers without children is common.
Here are my suggestions to deal with it.
Suggest changes that would benefit everyone
Most parents cant make 8 a.m. meetings, as thats prime time for getting the kids out the door and to school. You know who else hates 8 a.m. meetings? Just about everyone. Rather have your colleagues resent you for being exempt from attending, suggest to your manager that morning meetings get rescheduled for after 9 a.m.The same goes for taking time off for lifes unexpected problems. You have to leave work when your kid is sick or when theres a snow day, doctors appointment or a recital. But everyone has things pop up, whether its their own dentist and doctor appointments, or the needs of their relatives or pets. If you’re in a leadership position, you can help foster a culture that recognizes that lifes obligations sometimes need to take priority over work.
If youre not in a leadership position, you can be the change you want to see by happily covering for your colleagues when something comes up. Hopefully the next time your kid gets pink eye theyll remember the time you took over for them when their dog had to go to the vet.
Call it out
If you feel like youve made a good faith effort to prove how you’re a team player, have demonstrated that you are just as productive as the non-parents on your team, and have offered solutions and you still feel resentment, you might want to be direct and talk to your coworker or manager about it. As with any difficult workplace conversation, you can still enter it with a collaborative mindset. Theres a problem and you are going to solve it together. You are not on opposing teams.
As with other workplace disagreements, it can be helpful to approach the conversation with curiosity. Try something like: Ive noticed a lot of comments about my schedule. Is there something thats causing an issue for the team or workflow that Im not aware of? If there is an issue youre not aware of (like a domino effect of work falling on one person when you leave), once its out in the air you can problem solve. If theres not an actual issue, just vague resentment, calling it out might force the person to address their own bias, or at least be the start of a conversation that can lead to more understanding.
Want some more reading on working parents? Here you go:
Im the CEO of a family tech company. Heres how Ive created kid-friendly work hours
The school year used to favor working parents, but not anymore
4 simple ways leaders can better support working parents
How longer school days benefit working mothers
Vaping devices are getting a makeoverone that seems likely to turn more teens into consumers.
Experts have long worried that nicotine vapes appeal to minors with flavors like Cotton Candy and Blue Razz, along with bright candy-colored designs.
Todays vapes double as digital gadgets. Some mimic video games, others resemble smartphones or tamagotchi-style pets that die if you stop puffing. Its gamified addiction.
Behind the flashy designs lies a serious danger. Research shows that vaping harms both cardiovascular and respiratory health and can lead to nicotine dependency. Many of these new products are also unregulated, often smuggled in from overseas manufacturers. As vapes become more like toys, their health risksand appeal to childrenonly increase.
Vapes are going digital
Dozens of vape manufacturers have started integrating screens into their products, originally meant to show simple battery displays. Some keep it basiclike Fumots design, which features a digital-clock-style percentage gauge below its signature monkey icon. But others are going bigger. Raz uses animated fire symbols, while Geek Bar displays constellationsmini light shows embedded in a puff.
Some devices push things even further, embedding full-on video games just inches from the mouthpiece. The Craftbox V-Play, for example, comes in flavors like Strawberry Blowpop and Grape Escape, and features three built-in games: knockoffs of Pac-Man and Tetris, plus a fighter jet simulator. Marketed as a Vapentertainment system, the device even plays music as you game.
For those seeking more connectivity, some vapes now function like smartphones. The Swype 3000 is perhaps the most well-known. It syncs with the users actual phone, displaying notifications and offering a limited suite of apps on the vapes body. The tech is far from seamlessBusiness Insiders Katie Notopoulos reported issues like buggy games and blurry alertsbut the concept is catching on. Brands like Airfuze, Vookbar, and Feed Sync are also producing so-called smart vapes.
Despite their digital upgrades, vapes remain cheap, often selling for less than $20 wholesale (comparable to their analog predecessors). And, of course, theyre still disposable. Once the nicotine runs out, youre left with a dead vape that doubles as a cheap video game consoleor a phone with no service.
A legal gray area
Many gamified, screen-equipped vapes operate in a legal gray zone. They’re rarely manufactured in the U.S. (most come from Chinese factories) and almost none have received marketing authorization from the Food and Drug Administration. In 2024, the FDA sent a warning letter to the online retailer Vapes and Such cautioning against selling products that may be attractive to youth by imitating a smartphone or imitating gaming technology.
Vapes have long faced criticism for their appeal to minors. In 2023, Juul agreed to pay $462 million in a settlement over its marketing tactics, which regulators said were designed to target children. Over time, concern shifted from flavors to designsleek, candy-colored devices that looked more like tech accessories than tobacco products. If it looks glamorous and it looks appealing, thats going to be the first driver that will bring a horse to water, Brian King, at the time the FDAs tobacco regulator, told The New York Times.
Screens represent the next evolution of that appeal. They dont just make vapes look glamorous, they make them status symbols. With built-in games and push notifications, theyre nicotine devices and conversation starters. But that allure can be dangerous, especially for young users.
In todays dynamic, diverse, and rapidly changing workforce, organizations’ success is dependent upon creating an environment where different perspectives come together. That’s how we produce the best ideas. Despite the recent attacks on them, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion principles provide a crucial foundation for thriving companies.
If companies want to experience the benefits of broad ideas, they need to attract talented employees from different backgrounds. And once theyve hired those top talents, they need to make sure that they dont exclude anyone from participating in discussions and sharing their honest views.
Many arguments support why successful organizations need to be able to capture the best from as wide a range of people as possible. Here are a few of the main ones.
1. Results in greater creativity and innovation
By bringing a wide range of perspectives, experiences, and ideas to the table, organizations ensure that they have a large enough reservoir that they need to come up with fresh approaches and new, groundbreaking solutions.
In my book, Emotional Intelligence Game Changers: 101 Simple Ways to Win at Work + Life, I delve into how to create a culture of creativity. In an organization, employees need to be able to bounce new and diverse ideas off each other. They also need to trust that the company will value their uniqueness and contributions. In a diverse and rapidly changing landscape, organizations that limit their circle to people of similar backgrounds risk stagnation. Theyre also likely to fail in their quest to recruit and keep talented people who are necessary for ongoing growth and success.
2. Boosts connection and collaboration
When all employees feel free and empowered to share their thoughts and ideas, it builds a culture of connection and collaboration. As a result, teamwork skills begin to develop among diverse groups, breaking down barriers and increasing understanding of and respect for those who are different from us. The effect of this is increased motivation and commitment to work toward shared goals. CultureCons latest showed that when employees feel their voices are genuinely valued, they are 3.5 times more likely to report higher job satisfaction.
3. Increases the organizations ability to attract and retain top talent
Being known as an organization that supports DEI principles is attractive to people who are looking for a place to work where they will be treated fairly and equitably. These individuals are looking for places where they can thrive and get the opportunity to work with other talented people. When they find a place where companies appreciate and recognize them, they are more motivated to remain with the organization. CultureCons research found that 63% of employees are more likely to stay at a company that actively prioritizes DEI.
4. Improves job satisfaction and well-being
When staff witness a genuine commitment to ensuring that they value, hear, and appreciate everyone, an atmosphere of trust and loyalty spreads through the organization. This leads to reduced turnover and enhanced job satisfaction, which makes people feel excited to be part of the organization. The result is greater productivity and overall organizational success.
5. Enhances the organizational brand and reputation
Having a strong commitment to diversity, inclusion, and social responsibility has far-reaching effects beyond the organization itself. The reputation that it builds will make the organization stand out as a leader. It will also attract new loyal customers, and secure more business opportunities. Customers and clients will search out organizations that they trust will develop fair, equitable, and diverse workplaces.
DEI might be under attack, but organizations that continue to invest in it will reap the rewards in the long run. An inclusive, supportive workplace that encourages a broad range of ideas to flourish will result in creativity, innovation, and a positive work culture. And in the long term, those are the organizations that will last.
Billy May is now deeply familiar with the intricacies of bedsheet factories. In 2023, May became CEO of Brooklinen. A retail veteran, he’s spent his career in top roles at J.Crew and Abercrombie, before becoming CEO of Sur La Table. But now, as head of a millennial-loved bedsheet brand, he’s learning about the warp and weft of cotton sheets, and which countries have the most expertise in manufacturing bedding. (Portugal and India are leading fabric-producing countries, he tells me.)
May has been tasked with helping Brooklinen transition from a DTC startup into a nationally-known brand. He believes the way to do that is to create high quality sheets that you cannot get anywhere else. So Brooklinen is now redesigning all of its key products so they have unique fabrications. For instance, it has worked closely with its factory in Portugal to update its linen sheets to a weave that is exclusively available at Brooklinen; it’s softer and stronger than before, and made from traceable European flax. Brooklinen relaunches these linen sheets today, but we can expect the brand to unveil redesigned versions of its other classics in the months to come.
[Photo: Brooklinen]
This year, however, there’s been a new wrinkle in May’s plans: Trump’s tariffs. The administration has already announced steep levies on Canada, Mexico, and China which go into effect today, but it has also threatened tariffs on the European Union and India, which is where Brooklinen makes the majority of its products.
May isn’t panicking. He’s strategizing. I’ve been here before, he says, referring to his tenure as CEO of Sur La Table during the last Trump presidency. There are things we can do to mitigate the risk.
What Brooklinen Learned From the DTC Movement
To understand Brooklinen’s deep relationship with factories in India, Portugal, and Turkey it’s important to understand the brand’s origin story.
The company was founded in 2013 by a husband and wife team, Rich and Vicki Fulop, who wanted to make it more accessible for everyday people to afford the kind of luxurious sheets you get at a hotel. They studied the bedding supply chain, then tapped factories that made sheets for high-end brands. They believed they could price these products more affordably by selling them directly to consumers without a retail markup. This was a playbook they had seen from a new crop of DTC brands, like Everlane, Bonobos, and Warby Parker.
Over the next decade, hundreds of other DTC brands would enter the market, from Casper to Away to Allbirds. And, as Fast Company has reported in detail, many of these brands struggled in their efforts to scale and become profitable. One problem was simply how much competition there was. At one time, there were hundreds of brands making mattresses similar to Casper’s and dozens of brands making suitcases similar to Away’s. This also happened in the bedsheet industry. As Fulop said in Fast Company, I made a tactical mistake: I just told everyone about this amazing niche that were in, and now we have all these competitors.
[Photo: Brooklinen]
Many DTC brands failed to compete in this environment and folded. Brooklinen was among the survivors, and May says the brand is profitable. To transition to the next stage of growth, May believes that product differentiation is the only way forward. Brooklinen’s original pitch to customers was that it offered high quality. But now, May also wants to ensure the products are truly unique, such as the new linen sheets. If a customer falls in love with them, they cannot get this fabrication anywhere but Brooklinen.
But to create these high quality fabrications, May says that Brooklinen needs to have close relationships with its factory partners. They work closely with their partners to create prototypes, source materials, and get certifications, like the one that traces the origins of the flax in the linen. These are deep, long-term partnerships, says May. It’s the only way to create a high quality product.
[Photo: Brooklinen]
Brooklinen’s Tariff Strategy
Trump’s tariffs threaten to undo many brands’ relationships with their factory partners. Brands that produce products in China and Mexico, for instance, are suddenly going to pay significantly more to import their products into the United States.
When the tariffs were first announced, some brands sad they would immediately start finding factories outside of China. Steve Madden’s CEO, for instance, said he would start exploring factories in Cambodia, Vietnam, and Brazil. But this can have an impact on product quality. It takes years to build a relationship with a factory and work closely to ensure products are made to a brands’ standards. Moreover, some countries have far more expertise in making particular products. China, for instance, has thousands of footwear factories that have been making products for American brands for decadeswith a workforce that is well trained in manufacturing. Finding factories in other countries that can make products at a similar quality can be a challenge.
May says that Brooklinen has not been immediately affected by this first wave of products because it manufactures primarily in Europe and India. But the Trump administration has already threatened tariffs on both of these territories, and May is strategizing about what to do.
[Photo: Brooklinen]
Rather than abandoning factories, May’s first step is to work even more closely with them to navigate looming tariffs. In many cases, factories bear the brunt of tariffs, since they are exporting products to overseas warehouses. Some American brands will refuse to pay the higher costs incurred by the tariffs, so the factories will have to simply absorb these costs. But May is already talking with factory partners about how to share the burden. We’re working hand in glove with them on ways to share any potential cost increases, he says. It’s been an ongoing dialogue.
For May, this isn’t just a responsible thing to do. It’s also an important way to ensure that the company can maintain quality, since it has spent years working closely with these factories to make sure the product is exactly how they want it.
That said, having run a retail business in Trump’s previous term, which also involved tariffs, May says it’s important to have many tools to mitigate cost increases. Right now, the company is identifying its bestselling products that are always in stock, then preemptively sourcing materials and manufacturing large quantities, in case Trump makes good on tariffs.
And in the longer term, May is expanding its network of factories. Over the course of the last year, it has added 10 new factory partners across many different countries and started training them to make its products. This is partly because Brooklinen is growing fast and needs to be able to expand its capacity. But as new potential tariffs emerge, May says there will be some flexibility to increase orders in places where tariffs are lower.
May is also taking this moment as a chance to innovate. As Brooklinen explores new factories, it is also thinking about how it can develop new kinds of products that customers are looking for. It has developed a waffle blanket at one of its new factories so that it has a proprietary weave that holds its shape better and has a deeper pocket. It has also redesigned its plush towels with its Turkish factory to give them a unique fabrication that is more densely woven so it is softer and absorbs water quicker.
Ultimately, May believes this moment of economic uncertainty doesn’t need to squash innovation and growth. In some ways, it might even spur it. We think about other companies we admire like Apple and BMW, he says. They don’t rest on their laurels, but are constantly innovating product, and that’s how they keep their edge.
Our phones are making us unhappy, but Im not sure cutting myself off from humanitys universe of information with a dumbphone is the answer. Its kind of like how we know walking is healthier than driving, but its a moot point when the average person lives 27 miles from their workplace.However, maybe our smartphones dont need a lobotomy. Maybe they just need to respect our boundaries.This is an idea explored in a new concept called Aperture, by the London studio Special Projects. Its a case that crops your smartphone into a small square of your screen when you flip your case over, revealing a series of smart widgets.[Image: Special Projects]By the same firm that developed ideas like discrete, skin-pressed messages for Blackberry and a Paper Phone for Google, Aperture was inspired when Adrian Westaway, cofounder and director of technology and magic at Special Projects, flipped his iPhone case backward and saw a little window left open where the cameras were supposed to be.[Image: Special Projects]Senior designer Matteo Bandi ran with this idea in UI renderings, imagining a system in your full-feature smartphone could deliver a tiny version of just a few apps you need. These widgets might be a camera, step-by-step instructions pulled from a recipe, or even a compass pointing you toward your destination. Its a smartphones function without the fluff. Most of these experiences are even presented in stoic black and whiteslicing back the candy colors behind another dopamine hit. But the demo still finds a few moments of whimsy, largely through its little smiling mascots. (The mascots really come to life when, sitting at a table with friends, the faces from each phone look at one another and hop into a cozy ball.)[Image: Special Projects]Were trying to find the right balance between being helpful and not preachy, says Clara Gaggero Westaway, cofounder and creative director at Special Projects. Its like, we dont want to take technology away, but how can we help people to use technology in a way that makes them have a better life?[Image: Special Projects]Aperture is clever but admittedly not entirely original. Special Projects points to all sorts of precedent within the industry playing with this same idea. UX designers have been exploring the concept for more than a decade now, from a very charming birdhouse alarm clock, to an Apple patent for a smart iPad case that reveals just part of the screen, to the current Samsung Smart View case that allows you to see the time, answer a call, and skip the track of a song.[Image: Special Projects]But Aperture is framed a bit differently than any of these approaches. Part of that sensation might simply come down to the fact that Aperture wouldnt be as slickly integrated as Samsungs Smart View that easily folds open and closed. Instead, the team imagines you literally take your case off and turn it around, opting into and out of the experience.
One of the words that I think is quite key is friction, says Gaggero Westaway. You cannot use it compulsively. You almost have to have a conscious behavior to say, Okay, [now] Im gonna take it off and doomscroll again. [Image: Special Projects]At face value, we have products that get close to Apertures core idea. The Apple Watchs original pitch was to be a product that kept you from looking at your phone, and its screen size isnt so different from what an Aperture case would be. But Special Projects bristles just a bit at the idea of selling technology to amend your relationship with technology.Theres also something weird about it feeling like youve made a new object, Westaway says. Like you can have two things in your hands that youve always had, and then you just [put them together]. And now its reshaped. [Image: Special Projects]The other thing that Aperture reveals is what exactly makes our phones feel toxic these days. Tools to help with cooking and navigation feel additive to our experience. Screen time, in these senses, feels positive to our well-being. Its when trying to picture something like an Instagram or TikTok feed squeezing into that little window that my stomach lurches just a bit, and the mechanisms of addiction reveal themselves. Instead of a mini social feed, Special Projects imagined that Aperture would instead offer a break from social media. So if youre using Instagram when you flip your case around, Aperture will present a focus timer for you to do anything else but be on your phone. We sort of arbitrarily translated [Instagram as a] timer as an escape. I think that will be a space for us to explore, Bandi says, noting there are many ways to frame dedicated time to do something else. [Image: Special Projects]Aperture would be a challenging concept to bring to market, especially on iPhones, which have more rigid limitations than Androids. But a Special Projects client has expressed interest, and promised funding, to help commercialize the idea (probably in the form of a case you can buy). And with the advent of generative AI, it becomes easier to imagine how some of Apertures mini app interpretations, like its recipes, could feasibly work.[Image: Special Projects]But for now, Special Projects is putting Apertures earliest incarnations into the wild to solicit feedback, and understand what customers might want in such a product before realizing it for market. We were just putting this out as a thought piece, and were absolutely not going to try and commercialize it. Then this [funding] opportunity came up, Westaway says. Rather than disappear for a year, we thought we could have an exploratory approach.
