Frank Walsh still pays dues to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, but more than four years have passed since his name was called at the union hall where the few available jobs are distributed. Mr. Walsh, his wife and two children live on her part-time income and a small inheritance from his mother, which is running out.
Read the whole story at The New York Times
By Ted Siefer
Dec 12 (Reuters) - A Vermont T-shirt maker has been granted a trademark for the phrase "Eat More Kale," a decision the state's governor on Friday hailed as a victory for "the little guy" over a "corporate bully."
Bo Muller-Moore, who lives in Montpelier, had been ordered to cease using the phrase on T-shirts and other merchandise by the fried chicken chain Chick-fil-A, on the grounds it violated its trademarked slogan, "Eat Mor Chikn."
The United States Patent and Trademark Office this week approved Muller-Moore's application for the trademark, and on Friday he was joined by Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin on the steps of the state capital to declare victory.
"People recognize that a dude in Vermont that currently has people stealing my easily replicable designs, they recognize I need more protection," Muller-Moore said in an interview on Friday. "People recognize that I'm selling T-shirts online, and they're selling sandwiches in airports and malls and stand-alone stores. And there's plenty of room for each of us."
Muller-Moore's cause drew the support of top officials in Vermont, known for its commitment to family farms and small businesses.
"This isn't just a win for the little guy who stands up to a corporate bully, it's a win for our state," Shumlin said Friday. "In Vermont, we care about what's in our food, who grows it, and where it comes from."
A spokeswoman for Chick-fil-A, which is based in Atlanta, said in a email: "Cows love kale, too!"
Cows appear in the company's advertisements holding signs that read "Eat Mor Chikn."
The spokeswoman did not indicate whether the company would pursue further legal action against Muller-Moore.
Muller-Moore first created the "Eat More Kale" design in 2001 at the request of a friend who wanted a T-shirt he could sell to support his family farm. It's since become a rallying cry for enthusiasts of the leafy plant and healthy eating.
The kale battle was not the first time Chick-fil-A faced off with New England interests. In 2012, then-Boston Mayor Thomas Menino wrote a letter to the company asking it to stay out his city after its leadership came out publicly as opponents of gay marriage, which has been legal in Massachusetts for a decade.
The company has no locations in Vermont or in Boston, according to its website. (Reporting by Ted Siefer in Lowell, Massachsuetts; Editing by Scott Malone and Sandra Maler)
Dec 8 (Reuters) - E-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc plans to experiment with bike messengers to offer deliveries in New York City within an hour, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a source familiar with the matter.
The company was not immediately available for comment.
The superfast service, dubbed "Amazon Prime Now," attempts to replicate shopping in a physical store by delivering some items in an hour or two, the WSJ report said. (http://on.wsj.com/1qmehHu)
Amazon has been experimenting with three different courier services to pick the fastest and the most careful for its deliveries, the report cited the source as saying.
The bike messengers are paid around $15 an hour and work in eight hour shifts, the Journal reported.
Amazon will use its West 34th Street location as a base for the bike messengers. The company has built a lounge there with facilities including foosball, pool and airhockey tables, for messengers waiting between deliveries, the Journal added. (Reporting by Anya George Tharakan and Yashaswini Swamynathan in Bengaluru; Editing by Joyjeet Das)
LEWISTON, Maine (AP) — Whether it's "lumberjack chic" or old-school utility, demand for L.L. Bean boots is surging — so much so that some customers will have to wait until February to get their holiday purchases.
A backlog of 60,000 boot orders could grow to 100,000 by month's end, and the company is in the process of hiring 100 workers and purchasing additional equipment to catch up with demand.
"We just can't make enough of them," said Tom Armstrong, L.L. Bean's chief merchandising officer.
The rubber-bottomed, leather-topped "duck boot" has seen sales grow from fewer than 100,000 a decade ago to about 450,000 this year. Next year, the number is expected to top 500,000.
That growth has outpaced even the company's aggressive expectations, Armstrong said. But it's difficult to say exactly what's boosting demand — popularity on college campuses, new styles including bright colors or the plaid-and-boots style dubbed "lumberjack chic."
"Whatever is driving it is making us happy. We're scurrying to get them produced," said Royce Haines, L.L. Bean's operations manager, who oversees Bean's shoemaking operations.
L.L. Bean is adding a third shift this weekend at its leather-sewing operation in Brunswick, which joins an operation that makes rubber soles in Lewiston that's already working around the clock.
In the coming year, the company is also hiring 100 workers to bring the shoe-making operation to 500 workers and spending $1 million to purchase a second injection-molding machine like one that's currently in use in Lewiston. But the production boost won't happen overnight because it takes up to six months to get new workers fully trained.
L.L. Bean is an enviable position with its boots because price-conscious young consumers are willing to pay for the original heritage item as opposed to a knockoff, much like the growing demand for original Sperry Top-Siders, said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at market researcher NPD Group.
"You've got the younger consumer jumping all over it like they just discovered it but the boomer generation has been wearing it for all their lives. So you're getting growth from the top and the bottom of the age spectrum," he said.
Bean's boot is a rare success story for domestic shoe making.
Other well-known brands like G.H. Bass, Cole Haan, Sebago and Dexter long ago moved their production out of Maine in search of cheaper labor. Nationwide, the number of shoe-manufacturing jobs dropped from more than 200,000 in the 1970s to about 14,000 last year, according to the U.S. Labor Department.
Many of L.L. Bean's products are now made overseas as well, but the family-owned company has insisted on keeping production of its iconic boot in Maine.
L.L Bean's familiar boot started with the original "Maine hunting shoe" first produced by Leon Leonwood Bean in 1912. These days, the company has two giant "L.L. Bean Bootmobiles" that travel the country to promote the brand, and tourists pose for photos next to a giant boot outside flagship store in Freeport, Maine.
For now, there's no sign that demand is waning.
A couple of miles from the Lewiston plant, many Bates College students trudging across the snowy campus on a recent day were keeping their feet warm and dry with Bean boots.
"It's kind of a running joke that your outfit is not complete without a pair of Bean boots and a North Face jacket," said Caitrin Griffin, a junior from outside Chicago. "As a Bates student, that's what you wear. You see everyone walking around in them, especially after the first snowfall."
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Follow David Sharp on Twitter at https://twitter.com/David_Sharp_AP
While many of us have spent the past six months getting mad at Uber, Uber has spent the past six months making $22 billion magically appear.
The ride-sharing app maker, a lightning rod for controversy, announced on Thursday that it has raised $1.2 billion in new funding, bringing the company's value to roughly $40 billion. That's up from a paltry $18 billion six months ago.
Uber's investors are apparently unfazed by bad press. In recent months, the company has had to apologize for a top executive threatening to smear journalists critical of the business. It's also been rated F by the Better Business Bureau, protested by its own drivers, kicked out of Las Vegas and accused of dirty practices aimed at undercutting its rivals.
But Uber is willing to acknowledge it has issues.
"The events of the recent weeks have shown us that we also need to invest in internal growth and change," CEO Travis Kalanick said in the blog post announcing the new funding. He promised Uber would make changes to become "a smarter and more humble company."
One possible teensy consolation for Uber is this factoid suggested by Wall Street Journal editor Dennis Berman: Roughly four years ago, the company was worth $60 million. Today it's worth $40 billion. At this rate of growth, it is appreciating by $19,839 per minute, according to Berman's math.
If you had invested $10,000 in the company when it started, that $10,000 would be worth about $80 million now, estimates tech investor Semil Shah -- though the effects of the company repeatedly issuing new stock would have cut that gain down significantly by making stock worth less. Maybe your $10,000 share would only be worth $20 million today. Still, $20 million > $10,000, according to my math.
At the moment, Uber is worth more than most members of the Standard & Poor's 500 index. It is worth more than Delta Air Lines and the railroad company CSX. It's also worth more than all the personal real estate in Anaheim, California.
Whether the company is actually worth all that money, or whether it's just the poster child for a growing startup bubble, is a different question altogether. Uber is making a lot of money, though the exact amount won't be entirely clear until the company goes public -- at which point maybe you can help boost Uber's valuation, too.
An Uber spokeswoman declined to provide further comment.
Sony Pictures will announce that North Korea was the source of the company's recent hack, Re/code reports. The announcement could come "as soon as today."
A representative for Sony told The Hollywood Reporter's Matthew Belloni that Re/code's story is wrong, and that the company will not be making a statement on the attack:
A Sony rep tells me the studio will not be making a statement on the source of the hack. A contrary report out there is wrong, they say.
— Matthew Belloni (@THRMattBelloni) December 3, 2014
Sony did not immediately respond to The Huffington Post's request for comment.
Sony was hacked last week, and the following five unreleased films were posted online: "Annie," "Still Alice," "Mr. Turner," "To Write Love On Her Arms" and "Fury."
There has been a bit of speculation about North Korea's involvement in the hack since it first occurred, as the country's government has been vocal about its objection to the upcoming Sony film "The Interview." The film, starring Seth Rogen and James Franco, involves a fictional CIA plot to assassinate North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Last June, North Korea's ambassador to the U.N., Ja Song Nam, wrote a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon saying that the movie was an "act of war."
As of last week, the FBI had begun investigating the hack.
This story has been updated to include additional details and clarify that the date of the announcement is still unclear, according to Re/code.
Soda sales are falling, so Coca-Cola is getting ready to sell us a new drink. You may have heard of it. It's called milk. It comes from cows.
Coke's new milk isn't just plain old white stuff, though. Called FairLife, the new drink is marketed as "premium" milk with 50 percent more protein, 30 percent more calcium, half the sugar of typical milk -- and a higher price tag.
“We’ll charge twice as much for it as the milk we're used to buying in a jug,” the president of Coca-Cola North America told analysts at a Morgan Stanley conference last week. “It's basically the premiumisation of milk," Coke's Sandy Douglas said, according to a transcript from the event.
Douglas compared the milk to Coke's high-end juice brand, Simply. If the new milk does as well as Simply, in a few years it will "rain money," he said.
So far, Fairlife is only sold in test markets. The soda giant plans to launch it nationally in the U.S. in 2015, according to a statement from a Coca-Cola spokeswoman. The enhanced milk is a joint venture between Coke and Select Milk Producers dairy co-op, a collective of large dairy producers.
The dairy industry needs this to work. American milk consumption is declining, along with soft drink sales, as Americans increasingly swap cereal and milk for breakfast bars and fast food breakfast sandwiches. Retail sales of milk dropped 3 percent in 2014 after falling 2 percent the year before, according to data from Euromonitor. Competition from non-dairy milk alternatives, protein drinks and ready-to-drink teas may make it difficult for the milk industry to reverse the trend.
Fairlife hits on a couple of food fads that may help it succeed. The drink offers more protein than traditional milk. And protein is having a moment, thanks largely to cross-fit enthusiasts and paleo dieters. Companies increasingly have been using claims of high protein to sell everything from jerky to cereal.
People also seem to love milk alternatives and are often willing to pay a little bit more for them. Soy milk and almond milk revenues are expected to grow by 7.1 percent annually over the next four years, to $1.4 billion, according to data from IBISWorld, a research firm.
Fairlife contains dairy, but the fact that “there is something special about the product” makes shoppers think of it a bit differently than “the basic private-label milk that people buy in supermarkets,” said John Sicher, the editor of Beverage Digest, an industry newsletter.
An ad for Fairlife.
Turning a staple drink into a premium beverage to justify a higher price isn't a new strategy. The alcohol industry does it with Grey Goose vodka, Patron tequila and Tanqueray gin.
Water is probably the best example. Once just something that you got from the tap or even, gasp, a well in the ground, water was a more than $11 billion industry in 2011, according to the International Bottled Water Association. In addition to fancy water like Fiji and Voss, there are now sommeliers and websites dedicated to helping shoppers find the most luxurious types of water. Coke is in the water business as well with Dasani, which contains filtered tap water and trace amounts of minerals.
For Coke, premium milk is part of a broader push to diversify as Americans tire of soda. Rival Pepsi, which owns Frito-Lay, has already done this. Coke's biggest competitor is pushing into dairy as well, with a yogurt brand sold in stores nationwide.
Earlier this year, Coke capitalized on the rising popularity of energy drinks by buying a 17 percent stake in Monster. Coke also will offer its brands in Keurig’s single-serve cold brew machines next year. Honest Tea is the first Coke brand Keurig users will be able to brew in single-serve form.
Injecting some new life into Coke’s business is paramount. The company reported a 14 percent drop in profit last quarter and announced a cost-cutting program aimed at reducing expenses by $3 billion a year by 2019.
The soda giant also reported a 1 percent decline in carbonated drink volume in North America and it’s “very unlikely” it will see much growth in the U.S. soda business in the future, said Howard Telford, a beverage analyst at Euromonitor International, a market research firm. Shoppers, increasingly aware of high levels of sugar in soda, are opting for other drinks.
Americans will drink way less soda over the next several years, according to this chart from IBISWorld.