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Here’s the thing about Wellington boots: They’re great when it’s raining, because they keep your toes dry and toasty. But when the rain stops, you feel a little silly stomping around in heavy rubber boots. But what if your rain boots looked like any other fashion-forward boot you’d be comfortable wearing rain or shine? What if they looked like, say, a classic pair of Dr. Martens? I have good news. Dr. Martens has designed a rain boot that mimics one of its most iconic designs, the 1460 eight-hole lace-up boot, which first came to market in 1960. It has a lot of the hallmarks of a Dr. Martens boot, like the heel tab for easy pull-on, the grooved sole, and even the stitching. What’s different though, is that each component is waterproof, ensuring that your feet will stay dry in puddles and downpours. “You style this boot just like you would any other Dr. Martens,” says Adam Meek, Dr. Martens’ chief product officer. “You could wear them to a festival, or a night out on the town.” The original 1460 (left) and the 1460 Rain (right) [Photo: Dr. Martens] The Comfort Boot That Became A Sensation Dr. Martens was originally founded by a German doctor, Klaus Martens, in the postwar years. At the time, most boots were made from hard leather and provided very little arch support. After he hurt his ankle in a skiing accident, he began tinkering with the design of a new kind of boot made from softer leather with soles that had air pockets that provided cushioning and bounce. This distinct insole was later branded “Airwair” and has been incorporated into the Dr. Martens logo. The shoes he prototyped were so comfortable that he decided to sell them for 2 (68.31 or $90 in today’s money). Within five years, the brand was selling so many shoes that Martens decided to open his own factory and sell them globally. In 1960, the brand launched the 1460, a lace-up boot distinctive yellow stitching and a pull tab, which went on to become the brand’s best-selling style, and continues to be popular today. [Photo: Dr. Martens] Dr. Martens shoes immediately took off with working class people who needed durable, comfortable everyday shoes. They were quickly adopted by postal and factory workers. But as the brand entered the ’60s and ’70s, it became popular with youth subcultures, including mods, punks, goths, new wave musicians, and hippies. And today, Meek says the brand continues to have a very wide range of customers. Last year, the brand generated 787.6 ($1.03 billion) in global revenue, which was a 10% dip from the year before, partly due to the overall slow down in the U.S. market. “From a design perspective, we stick very closely to the brand’s original design principles, which are grounded in simplicity and comfort,” he says. “But that has allowed for enormous versatility, and allows people to use it as a vehicle for self-expression. We sell boots to young people trying to make a statement, and older people just looking for comfort.” [Photo: Dr. Martens] Designing a Rain Boot That Doesn’t Look Like One While many Dr. Martens fans wear their boots out in inclement weather, since many styles are fairly water-resistant, the brand hasn’t designed many truly waterproof boots in its 78-year history. To design the new 1460 rain boot, Meek went back to the brand’s archive, and found boots that the original Dr. Marten designed before he even launched his brand. He found one that was waterproof, but did not have the silhouette of the Wellington boot, which has become the de facto rain boot design of our time. This inspired the team to think about how to reinvent the rain boot to look more like a traditional Dr Martens boot. “It was obvious there was a need for more rain boots,” he says. “Extreme weather means that it is becoming wetter in many parts of the world. We wanted to create a versatile boot that stayed true to the brand.” [Photo: Dr. Martens] The team took the structure of the 1460 boot, but tried to make it fully waterproof. The boot is made from PVC plastic. All elements that would let water seep in have been eliminated, such as laces. And while there appears to be stitching around the heel, these are actually faux stitches: The heel is actually heat sealed to the upper using Goodyear Welting technology used to make tires. And the sole features that same comfy AirWair technology. [Photo: Dr. Martens] Fashioning for Durability For the original working class people who embraced Dr Martens, it was important that the boots were durable, because they didn’t have a lot of disposable income to frequently replace footwear. Meek says that that durability continues to be an important design principle. Most boots within the brand’s catalog are designed so they can be easily resoled by slicing off the sole with a heated knife, and sewing on a new one. In fact, the brand has a resale site where customers can send in old boots, which will be resoled and then resold. The company is in the early stages of developing a system that will allow customers to send in their old shoes to be refurbished so they can hold onto them for longer. [Photo: Dr. Martens] These rain boots have been designed along the same principles. They’re made from heavy-duty materials that will live up to years of inclement weather, and eventually, when the sole wears out, it will be possible to replace them with a welting process. For Meek, this is important because this encourages more environmentally friendly behavior. “We approach sustainability through longevity,” he says. “I like to think of our products as something you can hand down to a family member, along with all the stories they carry.”
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E-Commerce
Spend a few minutes on developer Twitter and youll run into it: vibe coding. With a name like that, it might sound like a passing internet trend, but its become a real, visible part of software culture. Its shorthand for letting AI generate code from simple language prompts instead of writing it manually. In many ways, its great. AI has lowered the barrier to entry for coding, and thats pulled in a wave of hobbyists, designers, and side-project tinkerers who might never have touched a codebase before. Tools like Warp, Cursor, and Claude Code uplevel even professional developers, making it possible to ship something working in hours instead of weeks. But heres the flip side: when AI can move faster than you can think, its easy to run straight past the guardrails. Weve already seen how that can go wrong, like with the recent Tea app breach, which shows even polished, fully tested code can hide critical vulnerabilities if humans dont review it thoroughly. Optimizing for speed over clarity lets AI produce something that works in the moment, but without understanding it, you cant know what might break later. This isnt just technical debt anymore; its a risk to customer trust. The instinctive reaction to solve this trade-off is to throw more tech at the problem: add automated scans, add a secure by default setting. Those things matter. But Id argue that failure in vibe coding doesnt start with tooling, it starts with leadership. If you dont lead your team through this new way of working, theyll either move too slow to benefit from AI or move so fast they start breaking things in ways a security checklist cant save you from. The real job is steering, not slowing down When we built agentic coding agent Warp 2.0, we put a simple mandate in place: Use Warp to build Warp. That means every coding task started with prompting an AI agent. Sometimes it nailed it in one shot; sometimes we had to drop back to manual coding. But the point wasnt dogma, it was to force us to learn, as a team, how to work in an agent-driven world. We learned quickly that more AI doesnt automatically mean better. AI can write a thousand lines of plausible-looking code before youve finished your coffee. Without structure, thats a recipe for brittle, unmaintainable systems. The real challenge was getting people to treat AI-generated code with the same discipline as code they wrote themselves. Thats a leadership problem. Its about setting cultural norms and making sure they stick. Three things leaders need to get right 1. Hold developers accountable The biggest mental trap is treating the AI as a second engineer who owns what it wrote. It doesnt. If someone contributes code to a project, they own that code. They need to understand it as deeply as if they typed it out line by line. AI wrote it should never be an excuse for a bug. Leaders cant just say this once; they have to model it. When you review code, ask questions that make it clear you expect comprehension, not just functionality: Why does this query take so long to run? What happens if the input is null? Thats how you set the standard that understanding is part of shipping. 2. Guide AI with specifics Using large, one-shot prompts is like cooking without tasting as you go: sometimes it works, but usually its a mess. AI is far more effective when you request small, testable changes and review them step by step. Its not just about quality, it also builds a feedback loop that helps your team get better at prompting over time. In practice, this means teaching your team to guide the AI like theyd mentor a junior engineer: explain the architecture, specify where tests should live, and review work in progress. You can even have the AI write tests as it goes as one way to force smaller, verifiable units of work. 3. Build the review culture now In AI workflows, teams move fastest when AI and humans work side by side, generating and reviewing in small steps. The first draft of a feature is the most important one to get eyes on. Have someone review AI-generated work early and focus on the big-picture questions first, like whether its secure, reliable, and solves the right problem. The leadership challenge is making reviews a priority without slowing anyone down. Have teams aim to give feedback in hours, not days, and encourage finding ways for work to keep moving while reviews happen. This builds momentum while creating a culture that values careful, early oversight over rushing to get something done. Guardrails only work if people use them Safety tools and checks can help catch mistakes, but they dont replace good habits. If a team prioritizes speed over care, AI guardrails just get in the way, and people will find ways around them. Thats why the core of leading in the AI era is cultural: you have to teach people how to integrate AI into their workflow without losing sight of the fundamentals. The teams that get this right will be able to take advantage of the speed AI enables without bleeding quality or trust. The ones that dont will move fast for a while, until they ship something that takes them down. Vibe coding isnt going away, and I think thats a good thing. So long as teams lead with people, not just technology, they will come out ahead and create better experiences for users along the way.
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E-Commerce
For its 2026 postage stamps, the U.S. Postal Service is going colorful and graphic. USPS gave a first look at some of the stamps set to be released next year, including the latest edition of its Love stamp, stamps commemorating the 250th anniversary of the U.S., and stamps depicting figures including a boxer, a martial artist and actor, and a pair of published poets. The stamps will be released on a rolling basis beginning in January and available at Post Office locations and online. This early preview of our 2026 stamp program underscores the Postal Services commitment to celebrating the artistry and storytelling that make stamps so special, Stamp Services director Lisa Bobb-Semple said in a statement. Each stamp is a small work of art an entryway into a larger story that connects people, places and moments in history.” [Image: USPS] Many of the stamps are bright or use typography in bold or creative ways. The 2026 Love stamps are a series of four illustrations of stylized red, white, and blue birds by illustrator James Yang that were inspired by midcentury U.S. design and Japanese children’s book illustrations, according to USPS. [Image: USPS] Stamps for Muhammad Ali designed by USPS art director Antonio Alcalá show an Associated Press photo of the boxer with his gloves up and his last name in big, all-caps, sans-serif type in red and black that evokes a boxing match promotional poster. [Image: USPS] A painting of Bruce Lee by artist Kam Mak shows the martial artist and actor against a yellow brushstroke background as he kicks the words “USA FOREVER” and “BRUCE LEE,” which were cleverly angled to look like he snapped them in two. [Image: USPS] For its “Figures of the American Revolution” stamps, multiple artists depict 25 people, from household name Founding Fathers like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin to lesser known figures as Deborah Sampson, the only woman to earn a military pension in the war after she dressed up like a man called Robert. The diverse selection of people were chosen to represent the Revolution as a collective effort, USPS says. “Its unusual to design a pane of stamps featuring 25 different portraits” USPS art director Ethel Kessler said in a statement. “But that number felt essential. How else could you begin to tell the story of the Revolutions complexity with fewer?” [Image: USPS] The typographic “Declaration of Independence” stamp also marks next year’s anniversary with “1776” written out in feather quill pens by typographer Juan Carlos Pagan. [Image: USPS] The “Lowriders” stamps pay homage to customized lowrider cars with photos by Philip Gordon and Humberto Beto Mendoza and gothic-style type paired with flourishes borrowed from lowrider paint jobs. Photographer David Schwartz contributed images for the “Route 66” stamps, which celebrate the 100th anniversary of the iconic highway. [Image: USPS] Other forthcoming stamps including “International Peace” showing an origami crane by Peace Crane Project founder Sue DiCicco, “Bald Eagle: Hatchling to Adult,” a pane of five stamps depicting the life of America’s national bird, and a stamp commemorating Colorado’s 150th anniversary. [Image: USPS] Writer Phillis Wheatley, who published what’s believed to be first book by a woman of African descent in the American Colonies, appears on the 49th Black Heritage stamp by artist Kerry James Marshall. Sarah Orne Jewett, a novelist and poet, appears on the 35th Literary Arts series by artist Mark Summers. Next year’s Lunar New Year stamp shows a horse mask by Sally Andersen-Bruce. [Image: USPS] USPS says more stamp announcements are forthcoming, and it’s also planning to rerelease an old stamp next year as part of its Stamp Encore Contest. [Image: USPS]
Category:
E-Commerce
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