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Curt Covert would love for people to play his latest board gamebut with sky-high tariffs, hes not sure anyone ever will. At 54%, I had a plan, Covert tells Fast Company, referring to a tariff rate on imports from China imposed by the Trump administration in early April. That rate has nearly tripled since. His reponse: 145% brings business to a standstill. It is absolutely crushing to my business. Covert is the owner of Smirk & Dagger Games, a small Connecticut-based company that has been making quirky board games for more than 20 years. Its latest title, A Place for All My Booksa game designed for introverts with a love of literaturewas backed by 16,000-plus Kickstarter supporters, raising more than $1.1 million in pledged orders. This was our biggest campaign ever, Covert says. Around 13,000 of those backers are in the United States. Now Covert is trying to figure out how to fulfill their orders amid a trade war, since the game is manufactured in China. The tariffs make it impossible to import anything, he says. Even more pressure on creators Covert isnt alone. In recent weeks, numerous Kickstarter creators have used the platform to warn backers about shipping delays, rising costs, and other uncertainties. We have to revisit the numbers again, and again, and perhaps again, one creator wrote in an update. We’re in one helluva predicament right now, admitted another. Kickstarter has addressed the issue in multiple blog posts and is exploring new ways to support creators. While the platform hasnt seen a spike in canceled campaigns, a spokesperson acknowledged the pressure in a statement: Tariffs and rising production costs are putting even more pressure on independent creators, many of whom already operate with limited resources and tight margins. If these changes remain in place long term, theyll continue to pose real challenges around pricing, fulfillment, and backer communication. Kickstarter gained prominence for ambitious consumer electronics projects like the Pebble smartwatch, but it has long been a favorite of smaller creators, particularly in the board game community. To date, the platform has hosted nearly 1 million game campaigns, which have raised more than $2.5 billion. Much of that funding supported games manufactured in China, according to George Lam, former head of Kickstarter outreach in Asia and now a crowdfunding consultant. There just arent manufacturing sites outside of China that can do this, he says. Those creators now face steep import taxes. The board game space is very fragile, Lam adds. A majority of them are really small companies or mom-and-pop-type operations. A stopgap measure to buy time Covert recently got a taste of the tariffs impact when a delayed shipment of games was hit with a 20% tariff for leaving port two days after a grace period endedresulting in a $60,000 import tax bill. Now hes preparing to ship $500,000 worth of games to the U.S. and is scrambling to avoid paying what could amount to more than $700,000 in tariffs. Hes spent the past few weeks working on contingency plans, and believes hes found a temporary work-around. Logistics companies have long used so-called bonded warehouses in the U.S., where imported goods can be stored tariff-free and are taxed only when they leave the warehouse. Covert hopes to use one of these facilities to buy time, ideally until a new trade agreement is reached. If the trade war persists, he may need to ask Kickstarter backers to pay significantly more to receive their games on time. You can ask for a little patience, says Covert. But at some point, the backers will lose confidence. One of the Trump administrations justifications for the tariffs is to bring manufacturing back to the United States. Covert is skeptical. Most of his games cant be produced domestically, and the few that could would be far more expensive. A simple party game with cards that normally would retail for $20 . . . If I produced it here in the U.S., it would be a $50 dollar card gameand no one in the U.S. would pay [that]. Could new U.S. factories fill the gap? That takes three to five years, not three to five months, Covert says. Chinese manufacturers might actually benefit Ironically, Chinese creators might be the ones to benefit most from the current situation. Many are large manufacturers that have pivoted from producing goods for Western brands to launching their own products on platforms like Kickstarter. They’re in a much better position to cut costs, or find a different tariff code, or find a better logistics partner, says Lam. It’s what they do all day. Still, Lam believes there may be a silver lining for Western creators. If global trade slows down, so might shipping and marketing costs. The manufacturing cost of your product is often not the biggest cost on a per-unit basis, he says. If you sell something on Kickstarter, you might pay $15 to the factory to make it. But you might pay $40 [for ads on] Facebook to acquire one customer for it. Ad prices on platforms like Facebook have surged in recent years, driven by heavy spending from Chinese e-commerce giants like Temu and Shein. Now that these companies can no longer ship to the U.S. tariff-free, theyve started dialing back their ad budgets. Covert, however, remains unconvinced that any of this will help him get his new gameor any future titlesinto the U.S. without prohibitive costs. [Losing] the ability to print new games, and bring them in affordably would be the end of my company, he says. It wont [even] take a year.
Category:
E-Commerce
You might have a go-to hot sauce already. But for the past year or so, Sichuan condiments brand Fly by Jing has been repositioning to capture mainstream heat seekers, and its subtle packaging update, rolling out now, is the DTC darlings latest move to optimize for its new distribution channel of choice: mass retail. To call the visual changes a rebrand would be a stretch, but the subtle updates point to how the company is pivoting its messaging for analog sales. Its packaging uses pared-down graphics and copy, with more negative space and a strict focus on must-have details that allow first-time buyers to quickly make a purchase decision just by looking at the product in hand. What is it? Whats it taste like? And what do I put it on? There’s three seconds that [consumers are] going to see you on-shelf before they make a decision, says Fly by Jing founder and CEO Jing Gao. In this context, Fly by Jing cares less about brand story. Instead, it designs packaging for the three-second rule. Pivot to retail The refresh comes at a time when retail partnerships are commonplace for brands that originated as direct-to-consumer startups. CPG olive oil brand Graza is in a slew of grocery stores, including Whole Foods. Brands like Rare Beauty, Dieux Skin, and Glossier have diversified e-comm sales with wholesale partnerships at big-box beauty retailer Sephora. IRL shopping experiences continue to be a vital avenue for product discovery and testing, even if many thought the pandemic might kill brick-and-mortar shopping for good. Gao views the broad adoption of retail among DTC companies as a result of the 2021 iOS 14 update, which prompted users to give apps tracking permission. More than 80% opted not to be tracked. This made it difficult for companies to analyze how well targeted ads worked, and therefore more costly to advertise on third-party sites like Facebook and Instagram. Gao sees that moment as the sunsetting of the golden era of DTC, when digital-first brands had to diversify to reach consumers. Fly by Jing was no exception. Fly by Jing has already been making retail inroads. Gao initially marketed the chili crisp as a premium product with a $15 price point. That included premium packaging that highlighted its specialized ingredient sourcing and rich history, in part as an effort to educate consumers and counter prevailing stereotypes around Chinese food as inherently cheap. Fly by Jing has since cut its price point by 30% to make the product more accessible and reach a broader consumer base as it seeks to expand. Gao says the company achieved this by economizing its packaging design with changes like shifting from a pricey embossed decal on glass to a paper label, and finding efficiencies in logistics and supply chain. Its products are now available in 11,000 stores nationwide, including at major national retailers like Target, Sprouts, Wegmans, Albertsons, Safeway, and Walmart. As of 2025, its in 4,000 Walmart stores. It has also expanded its product categories to include prepared noodles, which launched last year and are relaunching in stores next month with new packaging. The Asian foods category is itself becoming more crowded, with brands like Momofuku and ML (formerly Xiao Chi Jie) offering chili crisp and prepared noodles as well. Theres lots of opportunity to go around: The ethnic foods market, which includes Asian cuisine, is expected to reach $200 billion by 2032. Fly by Jing now makes the majority of its sales in retail and is profitable. Although Gao said the company’s tariffs had doubled at the time we spoke in early April, and this has tightened the company’s margins, there are no plans to change its sourcing. She says the company should be fine due to cost-savings measures previously put in place and increased velocity in stores. She describes this refresh as a key part of that. [Photo: Fly by Jing] Less-is-more labeling The brands previous packaging, launched in 2020, took a Dr. Bronners more-is-more approach that packed the label with copy and graphics related to the brand story. A Venn diagram in the center of the label included details such as its ingredients sourcing. That graphic has been replaced with a transparent window that allows shoppers to see the product inside. Previous copy described Gaos founder story, including the reclamation of her birth name, Jing, rather than the Americanized Jenny shed typically used. Now copy focuses on the products taste description and use case. The label still boasts the original line You will find yourself putting this on everythingthats the mainstream playmade more prominent by reducing other copy. One of just a few front-of-label callouts reads: Makes anything taste better. The brand also unified product names as variations of its fastet-selling store SKU, its Sichuan chili crisp, to increase in-store velocity and create a sense of familiarity across the product range. [Photo: Fly by Jing] Online, you could tell this rich brand story. We created a brand universe you can really dive deep into, says Gao. But as time went on and as retail became the dominant channel for us, now all of a sudden people are seeing us on shelves for the first time versus on their phone where they can learn more, dig in more. Thats where the aforementioned three-second rule came in. [Photo: Fly by Jing] Making mainstream moves The brand’s retail expansion also meant it was entering markets it hadnt engaged before, and consumers who were not a part of its initial customer base of well-traveled, international people [who are] plugged in, says Gao. It’s constantly thinking about how do we meet people where they are in terms of their understanding, in terms of their experience? Gao recalls a product demo at Costco. The key was to make the pitch fast to catch people as they walked by. So she simplified it by asking passerby if they wanted to try hot sauce. Then she explained the flavors. We were able to communicate very quickly what the differences were, Gao recalls. People were like, Oh, I want the sweet one, or I want the crunchy one. That was the insight of, okay, maybe we should just pare it back for people instead of calling it Chengdu Crunchthis is a cool name, but now it makes someone think it’s different from chili crisp, when really you use it the same way. It’s just a variation. [Photo: Fly by Jing] Gao describes one of her early goals as divorcing chili crisp from the idea that its a Chinese condiment that can be used only on Chinese cuisine. Product imagery includes chili crisp on pizza, eggs, avocado toast, and ice cream. That’s what really helped us to bridge the condiment into the mainstream, says Gao. But if you look at this old jar, that’s not immediately apparent because there’s such a rich story here. There’s so many layers that if someone were just to interact with it on a very basic [level], from an I just care what it tastes like standpoint, they’re not going to be able to uncover that. So we wanted to . . . present the top three things that you should know about it, and then open up the window and allow someone in. Then you’ll see [it] a bit differently now, right? The packaging design changes are indicative of the brands mainstream play, and an ambition to become a household product synonymous with a product category, like Cholula hot sauce or Huy Fong Sriracha. Can Fly by Jing become the Heinz of chili crisp? No matter the food, the brand wants new consumers to have the same inclination to reach for its jar and think Eggs, avocado toast, or dumplingsit has to be Fly by Jing.
Category:
E-Commerce
Crocs have taken a lot of forms over the years. From collaborating with Balenciaga to send 10 inch platform clogs down the runway to collaborating with Taco Bell to make a sold-out Mellow Slide together, Crocs is no stranger to whimsy. Now, Cros is partnering with the happy-go-lucky Finnish design house Marimekko to produce a line of shoes that feature the brand’s signature prints. Marimekko and Crocs both have a very similar brand philosophy to bring joy, positive energy and playfulness to the world, says Rebekka Bay, Marimekkos Creative Director. Our lifelong mission at Marimekko is to bring joy and color to peoples everyday lives, and collaborations with global brands such as Crocs are one of the ways in which we can execute this mission. [Illustration: Ellen Porteus/Marimekko x Crocs] Marimekko is a brand known for its bold colors and patterns adorning clothing, home furnishings, accessories, and bags. Over its almost 74-year-long history, Marimekko has developed an impressive library of over 3,500 print designs. I feel that in order for us to look forward, we also need to look back, so we are especially focused on the ways that we can reflect on our rich heritage whilst creating something forward-thinking, says Bay. [Image: Marimekko x Crocs] Starting from April 23, Crocs classic clogs and sandals will don Marimekkos iconic Unikko print, which traces its origins back 60 years. For this collaboration, Marimekko wanted to explore new ways to interpret the flower design, from playing with the sizes to reducing it to just the patterns outlines. What was cemented during that process is that Unikko is an extremely strong print that can be applied into different forms or onto different surfaces and it is still recognizably Unikko says Bay. That is why it was also the perfect pattern for this collaboration: it brings as much joy as a larger black and white print as it does as a very small multicolored print. [Illustration: Ellen Porteus/Marimekko x Crocs] The Marimekko x Crocs collection will also include socks, a 5-pack of Jibbitz charms, and the first ever printed tote bag released by Crocs. Our partnership with Marimekko highlights the shared values that define both of our brands bold self-expression, unwavering authenticity, and unapologetic individuality, said Matias Infante, Vice President of Global Marketing at Crocs. You can find the collection for a limited amount of time on the Crocs website, at select Crocs stores, and wholesale locations.
Category:
E-Commerce
In 2020, designer and brand strategist Kim Berlin got a call she was not expecting. Her small New York firm was invited to help create the visual identity of a new budget airline being formed from the bones of a former charter airline. The new airline, Avelo, would focus on bringing low-cost flights to underserved regional airports like those in Burbank, California, and New Haven, Connecticut. Berlin worked with the company to develop everything from its logo to its airplane livery to the clothes its flight attendants would wear. It was actually a huge deal for me because I’m a one-person operation over here,” Berlin says. “I was selected to create an entire airline from scratch. It’s something that not even some of the largest design firms ever have the privilege of being able to do. The bright and cheery design she created has won her numerous awards, including the American Graphic Design Award, and an honorable mention in Fast Company’s 2022 Innovation by Design Awards for graphic design. It’s become a kind of calling card project for Berlin and her firm. [Images: Avelo] But then the business behind the brand made a controversial decision that Berlin is still trying to wrap her head around. Earlier this month it was reported that Avelo had signed an agreement to begin operating charter deportation flights out of Arizona for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. It’s a process the Trump administration has already begun implementing with other partners, including the U.S. military. Some of these deportations have been conducted without the due process of law, a violation of the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court unanimously stated recently that targeted individuals must be granted time to contest their removal. Protesters in front of Tweed Airport in New Haven, Connecticut, on April 17, 2025 [Photo: Roy De La Cruz/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images] Avelo’s agreement to participate in these actions has prompted a backlash, including a growing petition to boycott the company. In a statement, Avelo CEO Andrew Levy defended the partnership. We realize this is a sensitive and complicated topic, he said, noting that the airline’s flights would be part of a long-term charter program with DHS that would help with expansion and protect jobs. Berlin learned about the partnership via a Google Alert she had set up to track the company. In contrast to previous alerts about positive news like route expansions or growing revenues, the ICE partnership came as a shock. Historically I’ve been celebrating them all along and then this shows up and I’m like, oh my God, she says. It sounded so different from the initial objectives of the [company] when we started . . . five years ago. These actions have put Berlin in the awkward position of being so closely connected to a brand that has done something she neither expected nor wanted. It’s forced a kind of reckoning over how she should respond: whether to distance herself from the brand and her own work on it, to look beyond the politics of the decision, or to find some other way of celebrating the work while also opposing the decision of the company she once served. That is the question I have been chewing on ever since I found out about a week ago, she says. Avelo’s involvement in the deportation effort came as a surprise to Berlin because her experience working with the company’s leaders was such a positive one. I love everyone I worked with on this project, she says, noting that the company’s founding effort was driven by community and idealism. It was great. It was like the little guy for the little guy. Everybody was so family-oriented. Even through the design process, some of the families got involved. We were fielding comments from wives and children. Avelo did not respond to a request for comment by time of publication. Berlin’s processing is ongoingI’m still circling,” she saysbut she’s found herself leaning toward a set of principles she believes other designers may find helpful should they ever encounter a similar situation. “As designers we’ve got to recognize that these babies have a whole life of their own once they’re out in the world. And what our clients decide to do with the work is entirely their prerogative. That’s the way business works,” she says. “I also feel like now more than ever is a time when we need to ask whether the way business works is actually working for us.” The experience has led her to reevaluate how she will interact with clients going forward, allowing herself more time to decide whether to take on new projects. It’s also led her to a place of acceptance about what she can and can’t control. “I’m really proud of this work. And just because they’ve made a particular decision that I don’t necessarily aree with doesn’t necessarily mean that the work I’ve done has no value,” she says. “It was really a dream to do.” Her main piece of advice to designers is to not conflate one’s work with their identity. “You are not your projects,” she says. “If you did your best, then you did your best. Don’t let somebody else’s actions or decisions take that away from you.”
Category:
E-Commerce
Last month, a food research organization called Nectar released an expansive set of findings from taste tests that rated plant-based meat alternatives alongside actual meat. One bit of information stood out: In terms of taste, 54% of people on average found 20 vegan products (such as burgers, nuggets, and sausages) from 13 brands (including Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods, and Gardein) to taste as good as or better than analogous conventional meat products. This should probably be good news for those of us who are concerned about the environment, public health, and animal welfare. But the flipside of this discovery is that even though plant-based meat is starting to taste just as good as (and in some cases better than) animal meat, most people arent changing their purchasing habits accordingly. If taste is king, it doesnt deserve the crownand ignoring this reality will doom alt protein to irrelevance. For many decades now, people in a whole array of fields have been on a mad mission to figure out how to get people to eat less meat. It has long been clear that education alone about the problems with factory farming isn’t enough to get people to change their behavior. Certainly shaming people, demanding total lifestyle overhaul, and expecting perfection are tactics that dont workthats why I cofounded the Reducetarian Foundation, because encouraging incremental change actually does work. But even that has its limits. Indeed, I have always believed that a more pragmatic approachoffering people better options in the marketplaceis ultimately one of the most effective ways to drive change. Specifically, I figured that the pillars of price, convenience, and especially taste were a sort of holy grail for the alt-meat industry. We can’t reasonably expect people to change their eating habits unless and until the more ethical, environmentally friendly, and healthy option is also the more affordable, convenient, and delicious choice. Interestingly, weve reached a point where, at least in the case of some products, plant-based meat is indeed as tasty as (or, to some people, even tastier than) real meat. Prices are nearing parity (though aren’t quite there yet) and in some cases are even cheaper than animal meat. And plant-based meat is easier than ever to find, with major brands like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat stocked in mainstream supermarkets and fast food chains like Burger King and Starbucks offering alt-meat options. Plant-based meat may not have totally surpassed regular meat in the price-taste-convenience (PTC) trifecta, but compelling data shows that were closer than ever. And yet, weve yet to see a real revolution in consumer habits. Plant-based meat still only makes up about 1% of total retail meat sales. Were still a nation of meat eaters, eating more than 225 pounds of meat per year (and climbing), making us one the biggest meat-eating nations in the world. Suffice it to say, the scales aren’t tippingat least not to the degree wed expect to see if the so-called PTC hypothesis were wholly true. It turns out that in 2023, researcher Jacob Peacock, of the think tank Rethink Priorities, actually put the PTC hypothesis to the test, reviewing existing research on plant-based meat and consumer behavior. His conclusion? PTC doesnt explain peoples choices. At least, not as comprehensively as some of us believed it would. Peacock explains some major problems with collecting good data on consumer choiceslike not enough real-world research, unreliable self-reports, and missing control groups. He also reviews many studies showing that people still prefer animal meat over plant-based meat, even when price and convenience arent issues and they say the taste is similar. Even in hypothetical situations, people tend to report that theyd still prefer real meal to alt-meat, regardless if it’s indistinguishable in terms of price, taste, and convenience. One of Peacocks conclusions is that we’ve been underestimating the importance of social and psychological factors. Diet, especially when it comes to meat consumption, is highly politicized. Conservative-leaning people are likely to be dissuaded by environmentally friendly messaging, and several Republican politicians have proposed legislation to keep the alt-meat industry out of their states. Meat is also gendered, being socially linked to masculinity. These ideas may be divorced from rationality, but people dont always behave rationallyemotional, social, and psychological forces are at play, too. It comes as a bit of a blow to think that even if someone in the culinary or food tech spaces creates the most delicious burger the world has ever seen, and at an affordable price, most people will still go for regular old beef. One caveat to all this is that the Nectar study found there’s still room for improvement in taste even among the top performing products. For example, it reported that among those who preferred the plant-based products, they prefered them less strongly than those who preferred animal meat. In other words, the animal meat attracted more die-hard fans. This partially explains why some plant-based brands won a Tasty Award, in the language of Nectar, but not a Parity or Superiority Award, which is reserved for products that have an equal or much greater chance of being preferred. Still, the limitations of taste are clear. Given more than half of participants rated 20 plant-based meat products the same or better than animal-based meat, wed expect plant-based meat sales to be a lot higher if taste primarily explained consumer behavior. As frustrating as it may be to champions of alt-meat, this is information we can use. Price, taste, and convenience are certainly factors in consumer choice (if smaller factors than we previously believed), and it can only help the sectorand thus, make a real difference in changing the way people eatto make plant-based meat as tasty and cheap as possible. All of the time and resources going toward that have, likely, not been wasted. But now, its clear we need to diversify our attention. We need researchers to delve into the more amorphous factors that drive peoples food choices, and we need marketers and educators to include them in their messaging. When someone chooses meat over plant-based alternatives, even when they acknowledge that the plant-based option tastes just as good, we need to find out why. We need to start gathering information so we can make a real effort to combat the psychological and social factors keeping people from switching to alternative meats. What is it thats actually stopping them, and how can we remove or lessen those obstacles? Answers to these questions wont come easy, but nothing worthwhile ever does.
Category:
E-Commerce
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