 |
|
|
|||||
Most upstart companies prepping a new product launch would probably not be thrilled to receive a cease and desist letter from an established giant of their field. But as is readily apparent from its insane packaging (not to mention its insane name), the gummy candy purveyor Rotten is not most companies. Last May, founder and CEO Michael Fisher had his signature gummy worms on hand at the industrys Sweets & Snacks Expoand a flyer for a new product: Rottens Gummy Cruncheez, which launch today and bear resemblance to Nerdss uber-popular Gummy Clusters. [Image: Rotten] Nerds and their parent company Ferrara got wind of the product, took a photo of the flyer we had up, and soon after the Expo sent us a legal letter in efforts for us to halt production, Fisher says, adding that, sure, it was a bit terrifyingbut it was ultimately validating. Getting a letter like that so soon after from Ferrara and from Nerds actually gave us a lot of confidence that we might be onto something pretty big here. Nerds has every right to be protective. After all, as Inc. reported in October, those cult-fave Gummy Clusters beloved by Kylie Jenner and others made hundreds of millions of dollars last year. Can a new brand focused on healthier ingredients and utterly wild throwback design get in on the action and take on Big Gummy? View this post on Instagram A post shared by Rotten (@eatrotten) CANDY, IN MODERATION According to Rottens website, its candy was developed in a lab by the infamous Dr. Rotten (see here)so when I scheduled an interview with Fisher, I was expecting an eccentric on-brand variant of just that. But in lieu of a shock of gray hair and a general sense of deranged zeal, Fisher showed up rather clean cut and mild-mannered. For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved gummy candy, particularly sour gummies, he says. When I started Rotten, one of my best friends from freshman year in college reached out and was like, ‘Ah, this makes so much sense, because you would always have those in your dorm room.’ That dorm room was at Stanford, where Fisher earned a degree in management science and engineeringand where he says everyone was creating some sort of startup. After Stanford, he was a 2019 fellow at Venture for America, a nonprofit that connects young grads with emergent businesses, in his case, the online caregiver supply shop Carewell in Charlotte, NC. [It] was a super exciting opportunity for me to think about entrepreneurship outside of the context of Palo Alto and Stanford, and really get out of that bubble, he says. I just had the most fun I’d ever had doing anything, building that. And I knew I wanted to be able to do that for myself and build my own brand. Fisher had been cutting soda and sugar out of his diet, but missed eating candy on road trips or while watching TV late at night. He tried some zero-sugar and low-sugar gummy alternatives, and was not a fan. He saw a gap in the market for a gummy that was healthier than what was in stores, but didnt feel like it was sacrificing taste or texture to do so. Soon, he found himself attempting to make his own. That really started my journey, he says. Quickly I learned that I was not going to be making this product at home by myself. Gummies are incredibly technical. Fisher found a food science partner mid-2021 to help with the R&D, and they developed a line of regular and sour gummy worms using fruit juices, fruit powders and allulosea non-artificial alternative to sugar found in figs and raisins thats nearly as sweet, but with far fewer calories. The way that we’ve developed our product is . . . to try to be kind of about moderation, Fisher says. You won’t see us come out with zero-sugar products. You won’t see us come out with a product that only has one gram of sugar. And thats very intentional. [Image: Rotten] CREEPY CRAWLERS AND GARBAGE PAIL KIDS When you eat Rottens products, they dont taste like diet candy or a health-food alternative. They taste like . . . candy. But heres the ingenious thing: Given his healthier take on the product, Fisher knew he had to compensate for it with the packaging design. And marketing. And name. Candy is all about indulgence and this kind of release from the mundane, he says. Oftentimes, things that are very healthy don’t deliver on those. And so [I] really wanted to build a brand that felt super fun and exciting and nostalgic. His goal was to create a product ecosystem that felt like it could have its own show on Adult Swim. So, he developed the Dr. Rotten backstory, along with an associated mythology to the candy. He leaned on imagery that would have felt at home in the 80s/90s universe of Garbage Pail Kids and Creepy Crawlersa subset of the omnipresent era that has somehow not been plumbed as deeply as the rest of it. And then theres the name. Yes, people tried to fight him on it. But he was a fan of Liquid Death, which was taking off around the time he moved to Los Angeles. He liked that they had a strong identity and brand positioning. To this day, we get comments on our posts or ads of people saying, Naming a food company Rotten is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of, he says. Ultimately, we just keep the mindset of, ‘We’re not going to be for everyone, and that’s okay.’ And at the end of the day, if you hate us and you remember us, that’s a lot more than a lot of other brands are getting. As a market test, Fisher (who to this day is Rottens only full-time employee) launched a Kickstarter in the fall of 2021. He hit his $10,000 goal in four hours, and the project was more than 320% funded by the fifth day. His backers soon became R&D partners who offered feedback and helped iterate and develop the gummies alongside Rotten. In the wake of extensive testing and refinement, the brand formally launched online in October 2023. Today, a rep for Rotten says its in more than 1,000 storesfrom Zumiez to Safeway to Sprouts to Hy-Veeand has sold more than 1 million units. Which brings us back to those Gummy Cruncheez. Like Rottens flagship worms, theyre free from any artificial elements or dyes, and Fisher says they have 60% less sugar than Nerds offering, thanks to ingredients like chicory root fiber, monk fruit, and allulose. True to Fishers palette, there is also a sour option, something the market crrently lacks. His biggest focus for 2025? My vision for Rotten is it’s available wherever you’re buying candy, which is everywhere, he says. Ultimately, most candy purchases are impulsive and happening in storeand so expanding in retail is our main goal this year. One legal letter from Big Gummy was encouraging fodder. Does he foresee a second? I hope not, he says with a laugh.
Category:
E-Commerce
The dream of an all-electric world in which every bike, car, and truck silently cruises on roads of happiness and joy is in trouble. From really bad environmental and social issues to slow adoption and President Donald Trumps recent ban on subsidies, things look grim for EVs. The only thing that keeps going forward is innovation (well, mostly), as companies continue coming up with some really great ideas to fulfill the EV promise. One of them is a Finnish company that has designed something brilliant called the Donut. Donut Labs, which unveiled a family of in-wheel electric motors at CES 2025, has spent almost a decade searching for one of the holy grails of the EV industry: in-wheel motors that actually work. These motors aim to outperform current individual-wheel drive (IWD) systems, which are widely used in todays EVs, while also surpassing competing in-wheel motor technologies that are still in the prototype stage. Donut Labss curious designwhich looks like an empty metal cylinder with tapered edgescould mark a pivotal moment for EV propulsion systems, with huge implications for vehicle performance, cost, and design flexibility. [Photo: Donut Labs] Current electric vehicles predominantly rely on IWD systems, where each wheel is powered by its own independent motor. Unlike traditional internal combustion engine vehicles that use a central drivetrain, IWD systems employ inboard motors connected to wheels via half shafts. This design allows for features like torque vectoringadjusting torque at each wheel for better handlingand tank turning, where wheels on opposite sides rotate in reverse to pivot the vehicle on the spot. IWD systems are used in many vehicles, like the Rivian R1S and the Tesla Cybertruck. However, these systems still rely on mechanical components, like drive shafts and differentials, which add weight and complexity, wasting energy and increasing cost at manufacturing and over the lifetime of the car. [Photo: Donut Labs] The in-wheel motors like the ones that Donut Labs has created, also known as hub motors, aim to eliminate these components by integrating the motor directly into the wheel hub. There is no transmission. No extra pieces. The motor directly drives the wheel inside the wheel. By doing so, hub motors simplify vehicle architecture and reduce drivetrain losses. Yet adoption of hub motors has been slow due to technical challenges and concerns about unsprung massthe weight of components directly connected to the wheelsaffecting ride quality. There are also questions about long-term durability. These have limited their application in EVs, leaving most efforts in the prototype phase due to cost and poor performance. Until now. A sci-fi fantasy come true Donut Labs has been developing Donut motors for nearly seven years, starting with the idea of rethinking what propulsion systems and whole system architectures could look like in different kinds of vehicles if there was a high performance and low mass in-wheel motor available, CEO Marko Lehtimäki tells me in an interview. He says his team looked at all existing electric motor designs, analyzed their potential, and found that not a single motor in the world met the performance and feature set they wanted to achieve, especially when it came to reducing mass to a level suitable for in-wheel motor use. This inspired them to start from scratch and imagine a new type of motor, optimized for performance, weight, and cost. Lehtimäki says that the Donut Labs team went through several design generations and endless smaller iterations combining different winding techniques and magnet configurations before identifying the right ways to provide the highest performance while using common and inexpensive materials. Our Donut motor is a solution that no longer requires compromises, Lehtimäki tells me. Weve managed to bring something new to operators in the field that has previously not been possible. [Photo: Donut Labs] Now on the road The car motors introduced at CES are ready to go into production, but still not in any vehicle. Their in-wheel technology is already on the road, like Donut engines used on the Verge TS Pro bike, by Verge Motorcycles. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, Lehtimäki says. Many riders initially worry theyll miss the roar of a traditional engine, but after just a few minutes on our electric bike, they discover that the near-silent torque is every bit as thrilling, if not more, than engine noise. Its like a Tron Lightcycle fantasy, without the laser mayhem behind. The motors used in the Verge bike are just the first of a modular platform that includes battery modules, software, and control systems designed to work seamlessly together in the wheel, adaptable to every vehicle imaginable. The platform allows manufacturers to assemble vehicles faster and more efficiently by choosing from a catalog of interoperable components. Lehtimäki explains that traditional vehicle development involves extensive integration work with components sourced from various suppliers. Our solution enables all parts to function without any trouble, accelerating the development effort and opening new opportunities in many fields of industry, he says. And the architecture Donut Labs has designed allows the company to produce motors for all kinds of vehicles, from sports bikes to cars to buses to commercial trucks. Unheard power According to the companys numbers, its in-wheel motors stand out due to their performance metrics. The flagship 21-inch motor for cars delivers 4,300 newton meters (Nm) of torque and 630 kilowatts (kW) of power, while weighing just 88 pounds (not quite 40 kilograms). Pound by pound, those stats are unheard of in the current in-wheel motor prototypes and in the current EV and industrial combustion engine car industry. For comparison, Protean Electrics Pd18 in-wheel motor generates 1,250 Nm of torque and 80 kW of power, with a similar weight of 36 kilos. Ville Piippo, chief product officer at Donut Labs, says that it was very hard to design a motor with this level of performance using regular materials, which is key to keeping the cost low (the company hasnt disclosed the price of its engines). A lot of people think that one can only get these kinds of crazy performance specs by going exotic in material selection, but this is not the case, Piippo tells me. The Donut engines use standard magnets, steel laminations, and winding materials, but Piippo says by combining multiple big innovations and a whole lot of smaller ideas, we created in-wheel motors that have both the highest torque density and the highest power density of any electric motor in the world. The result is an electric motor with a peak efficiency of over 97%, again an unheard figure in the industry. The real beauty is in the way we can optimize the efficiency map to have high efficiency in the area of revolution per minute and load where it’s needed in a specific application, Piippo says. This means the motor can deliver maximum energy transfer, from the battery to motion, with minimal losses to match the load and speed requirements, translating to greater range and lower energy consumption. The key to all of this, Piippo says, is the Donut. The most significant innovation lies in our motors unique shape. By using a larger diameter with minimal active materials, were able to achieve higher torque and power density, essentially delivering more power and torque per kilogram than conventional motors. The unsprung mass problem Historically, unsprung mass has been a major obstacle for in-wheel motors. This is an important parameter in handling, or how a vehicle feels like to drive. All mass that is in direct contact with the road without going through suspension is unsprung mass: a wheels tires, in-wheel motors, brake rotor, control arms, steering arms, etc. Generally speaking, less unsprung mass is most often better than more unsprung mass, Piipo explains, but it is just one parameter among others, so one should not overstate its importance over other parameters. A more important metric is the ratio of unsprung mass to total vehicle mass, he says. Adding a lot of unsprung mass in a very lightweight vehicle can have negative effects, but adding a small amount of unsprung mass to an already heavy vehicle will have little to no effect. The relative weight of the Donut motor is so small that, for the first time, the unsprung mass is insignificant, Lehtimäki explains. At the same time, the company claims its in-wheel designs positive effects are impressive. These include precision in traction control, reduced system complexity, and improved overall vehicle performance. By integrating the motor directly into the wheel, Donut Labs says the need for components like drive shafts and gearboxes is eliminated, reducing weight and simplifying assembly, thus greatly reducing the cost of the overall car. Driving ahead In-wheel motors from other manufacturers have made strides but fall short of Donut Labss achievements. ProteanDrive, for example (which has Bentley behind it) integrates inverters within the wheel hub but lacks the torque and power density of Donut motors. The Elaphe L1500 targets SUVs and trucks but doesnt match Donuts performance metrics either. DeepDrives dual-rotor design promises material efficiency and range improvements but remains in the lab. In contrast, Donut motors are already in production. The companys motorcycle motors, used in the Verge TS Pro, deliver 150 kW of power and 1,200 Nm of torque at a weight of just 21 kilograms. Perhaps thats why, after the car motor introduction at CES, that the interest from the automotive industry has been extremely strong, according to Lehtimäki, who says, We are in serious discussions with hundreds of potential partners. (He doesnt reveal any names due to the nature of negotiations.) The companys design performance and the scalable motor lineup, which includes designs for trucks, two-wheelers, and drones, is key. But the biggest point may be the cost. Reducing manufacturing costs through the use of common materials and eliminating drivetrain components, the Donut Labs design allows for more affordable EV production. Lehtimäki says that this is the first electric motor that truly responds to the current requirements of electric vehicles and opens doors to completely new types of solutions. And in these times of EV crisis, these may be the definitive selling point of the technology.
Category:
E-Commerce
How can we all, as leaders, have a multiplier effect? How can we manage our impact on others so that we are multipliers who enable, encourage, and excite them to continuously raise the performance bar? What I mean by this is ensuring that everyone understands that to work here, you have two jobs: the job you were hired to do to continuously look for faster, better, cheaper ways of doing things. Lovely notion, but in many organizations, the weight of day-to-day activities stops them from doing this. They dont realize that its a false economy to see an irritatingly slow process and wait for someone else to do something about it because they just dont have the time. They dont see the dividend that would be paid next week if they stopped and fixed the problem today. You might be thinking that this is just la-la land. Theres no way we can get everyone to do this. But think of it this way: The opposite of continuously driving the performance bar upward is not stasis, its drifting backward. Your competitors will snack on your market share until theyve gorged themselves and left you starving. So how can this high-performance culture be realized? By creating a multiplier effect: meaning that employees not only do their job brilliantly well, but they enable everyone they come into contact with to do their job brilliantly well too. Not just their teammates. Not just their peers. Everyone. The other people in the meeting theyre in. The person from another department who needs some information. The junior employee whos learning how to do their job. The team whose project is going to heavily impact their department. Everyone. This diagram shows the alternatives to being a multiplier. None of them are performing. None of them are adequate. None of them are acceptable. [Illustration: Andrew Saffron] Bottom-left quadrant: Dead Loss These people hurt performance. They dont do their job properly and they get in the way of others doing their job properly. Bottom-right quadrant: Cheerleaders These people might seem great at first (particularly if theyve just replaced someone horrible), but it wont take long before their people realize that because their task skills arent up to scratch, they cant set direction, cant challenge them, cant answer their questions. So, their impact might initially be positive, but it will drift through neutral and end up being negative. Top-left quadrant: Brilliant Jerk This is the tricky one. You could argue that because of their great technical skills, theyre actually adding something to the organization. Yes, they might add something at first. But I believein fact, I knowthat this is a short-term thing. It doesnt take long for the impact of these peoples poor behavior to start impacting other peoples ability to do their jobs. Top-right quadrant: Multipliers Once again, people operating in this quadrant are having a multiplier effect because they do their job brilliantly well AND they enable everyone they work with to do their job brilliantly well. So, how do you ensure that you are a multiplier? There are three key behaviors: Empowerment Its a much overused and abused term, but I define empowerment as “devolving decision-making authority to the place of greatest information. That is, letting the people who know most about something get on with it. What, without checking their work? Yes. What, without weighing in with my huge intellect and exceptional experience? Yes. A lack of empowerment is a productivity issue (decisions getting escalated into a bottleneck), its a quality issue (decisions being made by those with less knowledge than the person who escalated), and its a customer service issue (as a result of suboptimal productivity and quality). And if youre thinking I cant possibly let that person make the decision. They wont do as good a job of it as I would, thats your faulteither because you havent given them the skills to be able to do it well, or youve tried to give them the skills, they havent learned, and youve done nothing about it. Helpfulness I truly believe that helpfulness is a key distinguishing feature of high-performing organizations. Everyone is enabled and encouraged to think about how they can be of greatest service to others in the organization. Some think of helpfulness as a bit anemic, a bit cutesy. Theyre wrong. Imagine if everyone in your organization were doing their best to help everyone else in the organization get the best result. Focus Empowerment and helpfulness are useless unless youre very clear about what needs to get done when it needs to get done, the resources required to deliver, and that people are held to account for delivery. Sounds like Management 101? Perhaps. But how often in your organization do people find themselves facing conflicting priorities, too many priorities, or changing priorities? A relentless drive to ensure that youre clear about focus areas and that everyone else is 100% clear on them takes a lot of pressure out of the system. Being a multiplier requires a big slab of self-awareness and the humility to know what you need to change. Start with yourself and then insist on this as a requisite to work on your team. Illustration from Better Culture, Faster by Andrew Saffron, published by Practical Inspiration Publishing.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||