Futurist Ray Kurzweil has a new book out today in which he endorses the wild notion that the first person to live to 1,000 years old has probably already been born. Kurzweil credits his optimism to developments in nanomedicine, foolishly ignoring the true driving force of longevity: people's sheer force of will to, at long last, clear their Netflix queue.
In today's email:
Grocery labels: Paper or… digital?
That's cool: More Americans have AC than ever before.
Why, though?: How lawn darts got banned.
Around the web: All about bridges, what a city sounds like, free coloring books, and more.
👇 Listen: More on AI's latest innovation: potentially ruining the planet.
The Big Idea
Why are stores switching to electronic labels?
Why retailers are switching to digital price tags.
2024-06-25T00:00:00Z
Juliet Bennett Rylah
Walmart recently announced it would add electronic shelf labels to 2.3k stores by 2026 — and Walmart's not alone.
Retailers including Whole Foods, Amazon Fresh, and Ikea are also getting in on the trend.
What's wrong with paper?
Apart from wasting a bunch of it, employees don't have to walk around manually changing digital labels.
Walmart first tested digital labels at a Texas store. The switch cut price changes from two days of work to only a few clicks.
Some labels have lights that flash when an item needs restocking, or to help employees and third-party shoppers — Instacart, Uber Eats, etc. — find items faster.
Stores can instantly change prices, such as lowering the cost of soon-to-expire items or hiking prices on in-demand merchandise.
That last one sounds a bit unethical
It certainly could be, and we definitely saw stores get in trouble for price gouging on hand sanitizer and masks amid the pandemic.
But Santiago Gallino, a retail management professor at University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, told NPR it's more likely retailers will chill on surge pricing to avoid upsetting repeat customers, instead using digital prices to ensure online and in-store pricing remains consistent.
How else might this affect shoppers?
Shoppers may find digital labels more engaging, depending on how they're used. For example, if they can scan labels with their phones for more info about a product, or to learn about sales and promos.
The flashing lights could also potentially be used to help shoppers identify specific items, such as gluten-free snacks or EBT-eligible purchases.
Or — and we're just throwing this out here — every item with truffle oil, thanks!
Toolbox
You haven't clicked through these tips and tricks yet, but we'll say get ahead of it and say "you're welcome" now.
📚 Case study: How Red Bull's outlandish marketing moves — like, perpetuating rumors about itself — made it into a $16B empire.
🧠 Founder wisdom: Which path is worth pursuing: money or passion? These 40 minutes can help you decide.
📈 Grow your audience: If you're struggling to expand your social following, sorry 'bout that. There are no quick fixes, but this is a good place to start.
TRENDING
What goes up (and up and up and up) must come down: Nvidia's unstoppable stock finally hit a mild correction, tumbling 13% over the last three days of trading and erasing $430B off its market cap. The chipmaker has nothing to sweat — it's still up 140%+ this year.
SNIPPETS
Apple is the first Big Tech firm charged for violating the EU's Digital Markets Act, but don't expect it to be the last. European authorities accuse Apple of stifling competition with restrictive App Store rules.
Target is letting some of Shopify's popular merchants apply to sell their products on Target Plus, the retailer's third-party marketplace. It has some bulking up to do: Target Plus has ~1.2k sellers while Amazon has ~2m.
Speaking of Shopify… it launched Sidekick, a chatbot to support merchants with tasks like creating discount codes or generating reports. The AI tool is limited to English stores in North America, for now.
Fast-fashion retailer Shein, which has faced issues with its US IPO due to labor and environmental concerns, filed for an IPO in London.
Under Armour will pay $434m to settle a 2017 class action lawsuit. The suit alleges that the company knowingly misled shareholders about revenue growth.
Another lawsuit: The Recording Industry Association of America is suing AI music companies Suno and Udio, accusing them of using copyrighted recordings without permission to train their AI models.
Two ex-Twitch employeesalleged that Dr. Disrespect, one of its most popular streamers with ~4m followers, was banned in 2020 due to inappropriate messages to a minor.
Paramount+ will cost $1-$2 more come August. The struggling streamer isn't alone — Peacock's price goes up in July (its second bump in 2024), and Max said it'll soon up its cost, too. Miss cable? So do we.
TMRW Sports, owner of new Tiger Woods-backed golf league TGL, isn't even a thing yet and it's already valued at ~$500m. TGL, which mixes golf teams with "advanced technology," is scheduled to put on its first event next year.
Hootersclosed ~40 restaurants in the US this week, citing poor market conditions. The 41-year-old casual dining chain says it's still "highly resilient and relevant" and bless them for believing that.
Land a job with AI: This toolkit covers 20 AI apps and 60 chatbot prompts to help you edit resumes, prep for interviews, and overall be a better candidate.
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We're pretty big email fans around these parts, but it isn't always the answer. Check out six of the worst questions to ask clients via email.
Data Point
A chill country: It got very hot in some parts of the US last week. Thankfully, many could find respite in front of their air conditioners — but that wasn't always the case. The first "apparatus for treating air" was patented in 1906, and it spent almost 50 years solely cooling public spaces like movie theaters and department stores.
By 1940, some lucky, sweaty Americans got their hands on air conditioners for their homes — but fewer than one in 400 had even a single AC unit. Over the next decades, the tech became commonplace, with 77% of American homes having AC by 2001 and 90% by 2020, perThe Atlantic.
With the proliferation of AC came a mindset shift: What was once considered extravagant is now thought of as necessary. A 2006 Pew survey showed that 70% of people consider AC a necessity. And, despite the high price of energy bills, households making less than $30k are only slightly less likely to have AC than those making $100k+.
Fit The Bill
There are thousands of companies valued at $1B+. How many clues do you need to identify today's billion-dollar brand?
Clue 1: This commerce giant's first sale was a doozy: a $14.83 broken laser pointer.
Clue 2: It was responsible for moving $73B in gross merchandise volume last year, and we really need to emphasize gross here— this is, after all, a platform that once sold William Shatner's kidney stone for $25k.
Clue 3: As of May 1997, this company had auctioned off $500m worth of Beanie Babies online, true to its original brand name AuctionWeb.
👇 Scroll to the bottom for the answer 👇
Why, though?
Why it's (thankfully) hard to buy lawn darts
Lawn darts turned out to be a shockingly dangerous party game.
2024-06-25T00:00:00Z
Juliet Bennett Rylah
There are a lot of toys and games that don't seem safe — the NSA once investigated the Furby as a possible security risk.
But in the case of lawn darts, a simple toy turned out to be fatal.
Jarts Lawn Darts…
… was a popular backyard party game where players tried to toss metal-tipped darts fitted with plastic fins into a plastic hoop on the ground.
But in 1987, a 7-year-old California girl was killed when her brother's friend tossed a dart so high that it swept over a fence and hit her in the head.
The darts — inspired by an ancient Roman weapon — weren't particularly sharp, but were weighted so that the tips would stick in the ground when thrown. This put an estimated 23k pounds of pressure per square inch on the girl's skull.
After the tragedy
The girl's father, David Snow, wanted them banned. He learned they had been in the '70s, due to injuries sustained by children, but Jart makers got around the ban by agreeing to label them for adult use only.
When Snow took the issue to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), he found the agency had an inaccurate picture of just how dangerous the game was.
Over eight years, the darts had sent 6.1k people to the ER, 81% of whom were children 15 or younger.
Meanwhile, many manufacturers failed to include the warning label and a third of surveyed retailers stocked the darts alongside children's games.
The commission voted to ban the sale of lawn darts again in 1988 — the same week that a dart put a Tennessee girl in a coma. CPSC now recommends any remaining darts be destroyed. They're also banned in Canada.
Today…
… lawn darts and other similar games are available without metal tips — which manufacturers really should have done after the game's first ban.
The seemingly benign lawn game offers a tragic reminder about the importance of product safety — and how label requirements often aren't enough to prevent serious harm.
AROUND THE WEB
🏳️🌈 On this day: In 1978, the first rainbow Pride flag appeared at a San Francisco Pride event. Its creator was drag queen and clothing designer Gilbert Baker.
