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When Hyundai recently celebrated the grand opening of its new Metaplant in Georgia, a $7 billion-plus factory that will manufacture both electric and hybrid vehicles, many lauded the South Korean automaker for its impeccable timing. The grand opening took place the same week that President Donald Trump announced a slew of upcoming tariffs, including on cars and auto parts. The Georgia plant will buffer Hyundais electric offerings from some of those tariffs. But the outlook for auto sales in the U.S., particularly EVs, is still uncertain as Trump introduces rapidly changing tariff policies and as the future of EV tax credits isn’t clear. [Photo: Hyundai] Still, Hyundai is focused on building up its EV market. In the U.S., under the Hyundai brand, it currently offers four EVs, four hybrids, and one plug-in hybrid. Globally, it’s investing $90 billion through 2030 to bring 21 new EVs to market, and to double its hybrid offerings to 14 under its Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis brands. (At the New York International Auto Show this week, Hyundai unveiled a hybrid version of its Palisade SUV, set to arrive in the U.S. in early fall.) Hyundai aims to sell 2 million EVs annually by the end of the decade. That would mean that EVs would account for a third of the company’s total global sales. (In 2024, it sold just over 750,000.) Separate from the Georgia plant, Hyundai also recently announced a $21 billion investment to onshore U.S. manufacturing and supply chains, including for steel and EV battery components. To navigate the uncertain market, Olabisi Boyle, SVP of product planning and mobile strategy for Hyundai Motors North America, says the company focuses less on policy changes and more on consumer demand. That means offering a diversity of powertrains (internal combustion engine, battery electric vehicle, and hybrids); localizing production (Hyundai broke ground on the Georgia plant in October 2022); and staying flexible (the Metaplant was originally meant to build just EVs, but has since been expanded to include hybrids). Hyundai has also promised to keep all prices steady until June 2 amid tariff uncertainties, and Hyundai CEO José Muoz said this week that vehicles wont see huge price increases overnight. In 2024, Hyundai was the No. 2 EV seller in the U.S., behind only Tesla. We are focused on that strategy, Boyle says. We want to be the choice if people get sick of anybody else. [Photo: Hyundai] Boyle recognizes that charging infrastructure and affordability are still challenges for the EV market here. As EV sales move from early adopters to the early majority, sales will have a less inclined slope, she says, meaning that growth will still happen, just at a slower rate. And then there will be a time where that slope inclines more, and so you dont want to be out of the game either. In the meantime, she adds, charging infrastructure will improve and battery costs will continue to decrease, making EVs less of a compromise for buyers. Hyundai is also working to grow its EV sales across Europe to meet an EU goal requiring new cars sold by 2035 to be zero emission. To drive that growth, it now sells a compact EV called Inster that debuted in early 2025; it retails for less than $30,000. (Overall in Europe, Hyundai’s market share is around 4%. The Inster is also available in Korea, where Hyundai and Kia combined lead the EV market with a 70% share.) [Photo: Hyundai] The Inster was named the 2025 World Electric Vehicle during the New York International Auto Show this week. Boyle couldnt speak to whether that EV will eventually come to the U.S. market, but said, “If we think affordability is important to our customers, well have products that are affordable to our customers. There’s been a general lack of affordable EVs for U.S. buyers; 2024 research found that only 3% of U.S. EVs cost less than $37,000. Hyundai is also continuing to explore hydrogen fuel cells to add another option to its offerings, though Boyle says that may be more applicable to commercial vehicles. With a hydrogen fuel cell, an EV could fully charge in about five minutes. No matter the current uncertainties in the U.S. market, she says the EV industry is still growing globally, particularly across Europe and Asia. It is unwise [for anyone] to say just because we pull back [on EVs] well be good, Boyle says. Youll be good maybe for this year. You wont be good for 5, 10 years from now, because then the other people have taken over. She adds: The future will include electric vehicles. We want them to be the best electric vehicles and the best choice for the customer. That’s not going away.
Category:
E-Commerce
When Johnson & Johnson launched the first disposable diaper in 1948, it revolutionized modern parenting. But it also, unwittingly, created an environmental disaster. Diapers are largely made of plastic, which does not biodegrade, but breaks into microplastics that pollute our waterways and end up in our food chain. And yet, more than 300,000 diapers are thrown out every minute, bound for landfills or incinerators, and accelerating climate change.[Photo: Hiro]Theres now a movement to design a more eco-friendly diaper, from creating easier-to-use cloth diapering systems to diapers that use less plastic. But Hiro, a newly launched startup, may have the most creative solution yet. It has launched a diaper that comes with a packet of plastic-eating fungi, which the company says will enable the diaper to biodegrade in the landfill.The startup is the brainchild of two serial entrepreneurs: Miki Agrawal, founder of Thinx period underwear and Tushy bidets, and Tero Isokauppila, founder of mushroom coffee brand Four Sigmatic. Agrawal has always been interested in tackling taboo issues, and when her son Hiro was born, she wanted to develop a diaper that was less harmful to the planet. Thats when she met Isokauppila, a Finnish entrepreneur who has devoted his entire career to making mushrooms more mainstream.[Photo: Hiro]A Fungi FanGrowing up, Isokauppila worked on the farm his family has tended since 1619. His work partly involved tending to mushrooms, which sparked a lifelong fascination with the plant. He went on to study fungi in college, learning about their powers as superfoods as well their ability to help other materials decompose. His knowledge of the a fungis nutrients to launch Four Sigmatic, which sells coffee that incorporates functional mushrooms.Now, Isokauppila is interested in how fungi can help us tackle the plastic crisis. Unlike other plants, mushrooms do not use photosynthesis to create energy. Instead, they need external food sources, and over the past 2.4 billion years they have existed, they have evolved to consume all kinds of materials. In the earliest days of our planets existence, they ate rocks, says Isokauppila. When trees started growing, they evolved to consume trees, helping to transform them into fossil fuels.About 15 years ago, a group of Yale undergraduates went to the Amazon and came across the first plastic-eating fungi. Plastic polymers are made of fossil fuels, and thats a material that fungi has been interacting with for billions of years, according to Isokauppila. My guess is that with so much plastic in our environment, fungi needed food, and plastic is fairly similar structurally to other materials it has consumed in the past, says Isokauppila.[Photo: Hiro]The Plastic-Eating Hiro DiaperThere are now many scientists working on how to use fungi to process the enormous quantities of plastic in our environment, which accelerates the microplastics problem. In fact, there are already some solutions being developed. German scientists are trying to incorporate them into sewage treatment plants, while researchers from China and Pakistan identified plastic-eating fungi in a landfill in Islamabad. Even furniture companies are experimenting with additives that can help their plastic pieces degrade faster. Now Hiro is trying to use a strain of plastic-eating fungi in its diaper product.[Image: Hiro]Hiro diapers themselves are fairly typical. They have the same plastic content as other premium diapers and are made in a factory in Canada that produces diapersfor other brands on the market. However, in the Hiro box, each diaper comes with a little packet of plastic-eating fungi that is dormant until it comes into contact with liquid. During changing time, you simply empty the whole pouch into the dirty diaper. This begins the process of biodegrading the plastic in the diaper. The company claims that within a year, the fungi in the diaper will completely consume the plastic.Isokauppila says that the goal is to incorporate the fungi directly into the Hiro diaper itself, to make the process more convenient. But when the company did focus groups with parents, they realized that they were very concerned about product safety, particularly since diapers make direct contact with the babys body. Over time, we hope that with education, we show that the fungi is perfectly safe, he says.Another question that comes up is whether the fungi is safe when released into the environment. Will it begin eating the plastic in trash bags or items in your environment that you dont actually want to decompose? Isokauppila says that the decomposing process is slow, taking about a year. And once it is out in the wildsuch as in the landfillit will function much like other fungi in the environment. They are already part of nature, he says.[Photo: Hiro]Making Plastic-Eating Fungi WidespreadIsokauppila believes that the Hiro diaper can be a vehicle for popularizing plastic-eating fungi. As research begins to emerge around fungi that consume plastic, we will have more scalable solutions for tackling the enormous quantity of plastic that exists on our planet. But it is possible that consumers will find these solutions scary, partly because people in Western countries are just less familiar with mushrooms and fungi than in other parts of the world.In Asian culture and in Eastern Europe, people love mushrooms and have eaten them for thousands of years, he says. But in Anglo-Saxon cultures, there has been a fear of mushrooms, which is known as mycophobia. (It isnt clear exactly why; anthropologists suggest that it is because there is more mold in England because of the rainy weather, or because the church rejected the use of psychedelic mushrooms.)Isokauppila wants to normalize the use of fungi to break down the plastics we use at home everyday. And over time, if we are able to scale the technology used in Hiro diapers, we could reverse the damage caused by our overuse of plastic.While fungi do offer a glimmer of hope in our fight against the overwhelming plastic pollution problem, scientists say our goal should still be to cut down on our use of plastic. For one thing, we still dont have a solution to breaking down plastic at scale. But theres also the fact that when fungi does break down plastic, it releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, accelerating climate change.Ultimately, our goal should be to avoid plastic entirely. But when thats not possiblewhich is oftenthis is the next best solution. If we can break down a diaper, we can break down anything, he says. Once weve gained enough market share, we can partner with other brands and bring this technology to the world.
Category:
E-Commerce
To make the most of its stores and keep customers coming back to shop in person, baseball hat retailer Lids announced Wednesday that 20 locations will have a newly redesigned store concept this month built for customization and personalization. Physical retail’s not dead, but to breathe new life into itnot to mention make more money from the remaining square footagebrands are rolling out more personalized in-store customer experiences. Concierge-style customer service along with customizable products have become the name of the game to counter the many headwinds physical retail has faced in recent years, including the rise of online and social media shopping, the pandemic, and inflation. Personalized experiences create upsell opportunities, strengthen customer loyalty, and, most important, draw people into those dusty physical locations. [Photo: Lids] Lids does “north of 25 million transactions” in its stores, according to Glenn Schiffman, CFO of Fanatics, the apparel, merchandise, and collectibles company that owns a majority of Lids. Lids makes up a portion of the Fanatics commerce division along with Fanatics merchandise and collaborations with other brands, sports leagues, and celebrities. Its commerce division, which includes retail, is responsible for about three-fourths of its 2024 revenue, according to data from Sportico, a sports industry trade outlet. Parent company Fanatics grew 15% in 2024. [Photo: Lids] At Lids, the new store concept has a build-a-hat kiosk where customers can personalize headwear digitally; select locations will also have curving stations where customers can curve the brim to their liking. Known for its officially licensed and branded hats and apparel, Lids says the new stores have an increased emphasis on local teams and exclusive products. Exclusive product drops have become a common model for brands and artists to generate hypeand sales. [Photo: Lids] “Customization has always been at the heart of our brand, and this new store design takes it to the next level,” Lids President Bob Durda said in a statement. “This rollout represents our commitment to a dynamic, customer-centric experience where every visit feels personal, engaging, and tailored to each individual.” [Photo: Lids] Customization at Lids gives shoppers a product that’s distinctively theirs for a premium. The store offers hat curving for $10, stitching for $12, and patches for $15. Jersey personalization, which is available in some stores, starts at $50. Sure, you could get a cheap baseball hat from Amazon, or a custom jersey through the MLB’s pricey Fanatics-run online custom shop delivered in a few days. Lids seeks to counter these offerings with a premium design built to your liking with help from a professionaland you can walk out with it the same day. Personalization also increases the likelihood of return customers. A 71% majority of consumers expect personalized interactions from companies, according to a 2021 report from consulting firm McKinsey & Co., which also states that 78% of customers are more likely to make a repeat purchase from companies that personalize their offerings. The trend toward personalized, customized retail experiences can be seen across categories, from self-service kiosks at select Pizza Hut locations to DIY AI Jibbitz for Crocs. By giving customers the opportunity to build their own custom caps, Lids is giving them a store experience worth visiting.
Category:
E-Commerce
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