Fashion

Patagonia partnered with an LA-based company called Suay Sew Shop, which has expertise in upcycling, to manufacture the pieces. Suay’s sewers take the patterns that Patagonia designs and make them out of bales of discarded clothes that Patagonia sends over every week. Kremer says Patagonia spends much more on the cost of labor for these garments, each of which takes several hours to make, but at the same time, the company doesn’t pay for raw materials. “The fabric is free,” he says. “We’re paying for the creativity and the craftsmanship of these sewers.” … [Read more...] about Patagonia has had enormous success with upcycled clothing. Could other brands follow?

When you build a brand, one of the most important measures of success is the actual engagement and connection of your loyal customers, followers, supporters, partners, fans and friends–your community. With the arrival of the digital age and 24/7 connectivity, social platforms are forcing companies to find new and compelling ways to keep up with daily communication and connection with the people who matter the most. Marketers are being forced to change their habits, moving from a reliance on traditional content marketing to editorialized “content curation” that delivers compelling points of view in an organized, entertaining or educational fashion, offering consumers different reasons to connect and engage with brands. So, if you’ve spent the past decade focused on content marketing, how do you make the switch to digital curation? … [Read more...] about How To Connect People Who Are Fired Up For Change

That’s more or less the flip side of Snapchat, where figuring the interface out can feel like a challenge that admits you into a private club, albeit a rather large one. For instance, rather than being playfully enigmatic like Snapchat—which dumps you into a live view of your smartphone’s camera the moment you launch the app—Instagram starts out by showing you friends who have posted new Stories. On Snapchat, when you peruse Stories, it can be tough to tell when one has ended and another has begun; to avoid that confusion within Instagram, Spalter’s design team created a nifty rotating-cube effect that provides an unmistakable line of demarcation. Instagram Stories also lets you rewind a story in progress to catch a moment you missed, an improvement that Snapchat found interesting enough that it also adopted the feature. … [Read more...] about How Instagram Changed—Before It Had To

The single most pressing need may have been simply to keep consumers informed about what to expect from businesses as they grappled with COVID-19 restrictions. A for-pay feature for businesses called Yelp Connect, introduced in September 2019, allowed them to post newsy announcements, a format that turned out to be well-suited to pandemic-related updates. Patel describes it as “a mechanism by which you can keep people who frequented your business up to date on how they should interact with you, or what’s changing. Are you doing meal kits this week? Are you doing to-go cocktails? Are you introducing family meals?” … [Read more...] about Now Yelp’s users get to report on COVID-19 safety measures

Health experts worry that if second doses are delayed they may not be as effective. The current vaccine efficacy rates are based on subjects receiving a second dose three weeks (Pfizer) or four weeks (Moderna) after the first. Only one COVID-19 vaccine, from AstraZeneca, has tested spacing out its vaccine doses two to three months apart. It’s not clear what kind of protection a single dose of COVID-19 vaccine from Moderna or Pfizer offers before the booster is administered. Some experts are also concerned that an overly delayed second dose could lead to vaccine resistance. … [Read more...] about The U.S. plans to release its stockpile of COVID-19 vaccines. Experts are worried