With nearly half of Americans now living in states where weed is legal, holiday sales are going to be lit
It’s the Mardi Gras of marijuana, the most important day in the stoner calendar. And this April 20 (“420” is stoner code for, um, weed) is shaping up to be the most lucrative yet for the legal U.S. cannabis industry.
This year’s holiday comes at a strange historic juncture. Despite restrictions on in-person sales and, despite/because of living in the midst of a deadly pandemic, U.S. consumers have ramped up their (legal) cannabis consumption exponentially in the past year. Data analyzed by Leafly shows that sales of medical and adult-use marijuana increased by 71% over 2019. …
Before winner-take-all became the name of the game, a bookseller called Ingram showed a better way
Note: This is a republication of an article that I published last week on LinkedIn Pulse exploring the limits of Amazon’s vaunted “customer obsession” when pursued at the expense of suppliers, and contrasting it with the philosophy of Ingram, the book wholesaling platform that gave Amazon its start.
A few days later, Jeff Bezos published his 2020 letter to Amazon shareholders, which almost reads like a response to my article. Though that could not have been possible given that his shareholder letter must have been well underway when my article first appeared, the update to Amazon’s thinking is very relevant…
A new kind of agent could help creators navigate and negotiate a rapidly evolving landscape
Part of making it as a creator is the luxury of having an agent — someone who pitches your talent to others, advocates for your rights in contract negotiations, and makes sure the value of your talent is captured to the maximum extent possible in every situation.
Having an agent’s representation has long been the privilege of elite actors, authors, and athletes. But an agent’s core service — representing and amplifying a person’s talent to others — is something everyone should have the opportunity to benefit from.
One stellar literary agent was a game-changer for me as a writer and…
No Mercy No Malice
The notorious co-working giant is the beneficiary of the ongoing remote work revolution
Real estate is an awesome gig.
For starters, the supply of fertile land (urban centers) is finite, but the source of demand keeps growing (more people/capital moving to cities). On top of that, we’ve granted real estate development such favorable tax treatment that it is nearly immune from taxation. Even Donald Trump, arguably the worst business person in U.S. history, made money in real estate development, despite the serial failure of the underlying business. As one tax law expert put it, the real estate industry “thinks of the tax code as a basket of goodies to feast on rather than…
Republicans are attacking big companies for pushing a progressive social agenda. Is this anything more than political game-playing?
After a chorus of Fortune 500 companies criticized Georgia’s new law imposing new voting-rights restrictions, and Major League Baseball pulled this year’s All-Star Game out of Atlanta, a chorus of Republicans responded by inveighing against what’s often called “woke capitalism” — big companies flexing their muscles in defense of progressive social causes. Donald Trump called on his followers to boycott a laundry list of companies that had come out against the Georgia law: “Major League Baseball, Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, JPMorgan Chase, ViacomCBS, Citigroup, Cisco, UPS and Merck.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warned corporations to stop behaving like a “woke…
After Covid-19, big retailers now own 90% of the online pet food market. Can a new organization help small pet shops hang on?
As the cold darkness of winter set in and the calendar flipped to a second year of Covid life, Kaite Giordano, a fourth-grade teacher in New York City and the mother of seven-year-old James, made a major decision. To break free from the doldrums, their Brooklyn household needed to expand.
And so James got a new bestie: Chewie, a Cavapoo named after everyone’s favorite Wookie—not the online pet supply juggernaut. Although Giordano had never owned a dog before and wasn’t really a pet person, she thought a four-legged friend was just what the family needed. “The loneliness and isolation of…
Metropolis
With the rise of remote work, cities like Tulsa and Tucson are offering big bucks to lure talent untethered by an office
Metropolis is a column about the intersection of technology, business, and cities.
It’s not Instagram, but it may as well be. Tucson, Arizona, flaunts its star-filled desert sunset landscapes, taunting you with the thought that this could be your backyard view. Northwest Arkansas sells itself with a thrilling picture of a mountain biker navigating an elevated trail: sparkling water on one side, lush forests on the other, and, one assumes, a bright, adventurous future ahead. Vermont’s photos — small towns, steeples, and all, framed by rolling green mountains — tug at one’s sense of nostalgia. These aren’t ads targeted at…
Gastro-nomics
With a Super Bowl ad, a massive Starbucks deal, and a public offering on the way, Oatly is suddenly everywhere. Just don’t call it milk.
Gastro-nomics is a column about the intersection of food, business, and culture.
My initiation to Oatly, the Swedish alternative-milk darling, came in the storybook way that chief marketing officers dream about. The barista at my precious south Brooklyn neighborhood coffee shop recommended it back in 2018 as a way to supercharge my coffee habit. Apparently, he wasn’t the only barista making the recommendation: Later that year, the Great Oatly Shortage arrived — a famine so dire it led coffee shop operators and oat milk fanatics to seriously consider ponying up $200 for 12-carton packs of the plant-based milk to strangers…
As remote workers return to their buildings, iconic elevator maker Otis grapples with a product everyone’s suddenly terrified of
The first movie to include coronavirus was, appropriately enough, a horror film. Corona, a Canadian film, unfolds like the stuff of an oft-tweeted pandemic nightmare: Seven neighbors are trapped in an elevator — where it’s impossible to socially distance — and one of them has Covid-19.
Stephen Nichols hasn’t seen the film but he doesn’t need to. Nichols is the associate director of engineering for Farmington, Connecticut-based Otis, the 167-year-old elevator company that operates in more than 200 countries, maintaining some 2 million elevators. …
Everyday Design Icons
Why the symbol of corporate creativity will survive the remote-work era
Chances are if you’ve spent time in offices, you’ve spent time around whiteboards — and, perhaps, you’ve spent time dreading them. But where did these things come from, and how did they become a physical symbol of the mandatory brainstorming session?
Fittingly, the precise history of the whiteboard is somewhat tentative and subject to revision and correction. Many accounts give inventor credit to a Korean War veteran named Martin Heit, who discovered he could write on film negatives with a Sharpie, then wipe the markings away; in the mid-1950s, he designed the first whiteboard, essentially coated with a similar laminate…
