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On a recent stroll by my local Allbirds store in Harvard Square, I had to do a double take. In the window, the brand was advertising its new Varsity collection: a 70s-inspired sneaker line with a rubber sole and a feminine color palette that weaves together pink, olive green, mustard, and brick red. It’s an unmistakably fashionable shoe that wouldn’t look out of place at New Balance and Saucony, or even Valentino and Celine. Allbirds, which launched in 2014, isn’t known for chasing trends. It has always led with sustainability, starting with the “wool runner” that quickly became a cult sneaker in tech circles. Over the years, it hasn’t strayed far from this original aesthetic. It’s made high-tops, performance running shoes, and slip-ons with a quiet, minimal design so the focus would remain on the materials. [Photo: Allbirds] Allbirds has never marketed itself to sneaker heads, but a decade later, the sneaker landscape looks very different. Sustainability is no longer a differentiator; it’s table stakes. Meanwhile, fashion has swung decisively toward vintage silhouettes, expressive color, and sneakers that feel as considered as the rest of ones outfit. Against that backdrop, Allbirds began to feel staticand customers, it seems, noticed. [Photo: Allbirds] Since going public in 2021, the companys stock has fallen roughly 80%, leaving it with a market capitalization of approximately $32 million as of early 2026. In 2024, Allbirds reported $190 million in revenue, down from $254 million the year before. More recent financial reports show continued revenue declines and ongoing losses. In January, the company announced it would close all 20 of its full-price U.S. stores by the end of this month as part of a broader effort to cut costs. (Two outlet stores, in California and Massachusetts, will remain open.) The stakes are high. A brand that once felt like a category disruptor is now in reset mode. Inside Allbirds, the design team isnt just chasing financial survivalits chasing relevance. The companys comeback strategy hinges on a clear pivot: leaning harder into fashion, targeting women more intentionally, and expanding its aesthetic without abandoning its commitment to sustainability. [Photo: Allbirds] Moving Beyond the Wool Runner The Varsity collection is the clearest expression yet of the brands attempt to broaden its visual language without losing its identity. “The question we’ve been wrestling with is how to stay true to what Allbirds is while pushing into new spaces and becoming more relevant to more people,” says Erin Sander, who joined Allbirds a year ago as VP of product and merchandising after a decade at Sorel. Over the past five years, vintage sneakers have dominated fashion, as heritage brands like New Balance, Adidas, and Saucony dug into their archives to revive styles from the 70s and 80s. Varsity draws from that same retro runner traditionbut filters it through the restraint, comfort obsession, and materials philosophy of Allbirds. [Photo: Allbirds] Compared with competitors chunky soles, Varsitys rubber outsole is slim and pared back. The silhouette is streamlined rather than bulky. Inside, the shoe is lined with wool, a familiar touch for longtime Allbirds customers. Where the shoe really distinguishes itself, though, is in its materiality. Most sneakers rely on conventional cotton, leather, and petroleum-based plastics. Varsity, by contrast, is built entirely from more sustainable alternatives. The upper is made from a blend of organic cotton and hemp, a carbon-negative crop. The leather accents come from recycled leather scraps. And the sole is made from a sugarcane-derived plastic. [Photo: Allbirds] Developing Varsity has given Allbirds a new design playbook: Take popular, in-demand sneaker styles and retrofit them with lower-impact materials. That same approach is now extending into more elevated footwear. The company has identified demand for leather sneakers that can plausibly replace dress shoesand has gone searching for a material that looks and feels like leather without carrying the same environmental cost. That search led Allbirds to Modern Meadow, whose suede-like material Innovera is made from plant proteins, biopolymers, and recycled rubber. Its being used in footwear for the first time in the newly launched Allbirds Terralux collection, which includes skater, runner, and vintage-inspired silhouettes. Terralux [Photo: Allbirds] Speaking to Women The Varsity collection also reflects a deeper strategic shift. Allbirds is now explicitly designing and marketing with women in mind. While the brand has always had female customers, it has often been perceived as male-coded, partly because it first took off among the male-dominated Silicon Valley set. Elaine Welteroth [Photo: Allbirds] When CMO Kelly Olmstead joined Allbirds after two decades at Adidas, she found that this perception doesn’t align with the data. The customer base actually skews slightly female, and this discovery helped her crystalize a new direction. Women control north of 80% of the purchase decisions in a household, Olmstead says. Women need to be top of mind when were thinking about what we make, how we make it, and what she wants. Justine Lupe [Photo: Allbirds] Color has become a key tool in that repositioning. After years of neutrals and subdued tones, the brand is embracing richer, more feminine palettesdusty reds, earthy blues, warm yellowsthat feel expressive without turning the shoe into a statement piece. Footwear is an accessory, especially for her, Sander says. The brands recent marketing reinforces that message by spotlighting women. Its spring campaign features actress Justine Lupe (of Nobody Wants This), editor and TV host Elaine Welteroth, celebrity makeup artist Nikki DeRoest, and entrepreneur Grace Cheng. Olmstead says they embody the Allbirds customer: women juggling careers, families, and social lives, who want footwear that looks polished but works all day long. Grace Cheng [Photo: Allbirds] For Olmstead, this push to expand the brands aesthetic and audience feels like a natural next step. Coming from Adidas, a 75-year-old heritage brand, she sees Allbirds as just emerging from startup modeand entering a more demanding phase of its life. Ten years in, it kind of feels like were coming through our teenage years, Olmstead. Now its about growing up.
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E-Commerce
Los Angeles Lakers guard Bronny James quietly debuted a new logo for his signature shoe during last week’s game against the Cleveland Cavaliers: a lowercase b (for Bronny) that features a 9 (for his jersey number) inside the letterform. The logo appeared on a bright pink pair of James’s father’s shoe, the LeBron Witness IX, but there was another logo on the shoe that was notable: a backwards Nike Swoosh. Since debuting in 1971, the Nike Swoosh has become one of the most iconic brand logos of all time. Still, Nike designers have occasionally had some fun with it by breaking brand guidelines and flipping the logo around. Though there’s no formal rule for who gets the backwards swoosh, throughout Nike history, the flipped logo has shown up on shoes worn by some of the strongest-willed players across sports and culture. [Photo: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images] The history of Nike’s backwards swoosh The backwards Swoosh appeared first in 1994 on the Nike Air Darwin, the big, chunky, boot-like sneaker worn by Dennis Rodman, and the mark later reappeared on Rodman’s Nike Air Ndestrukt. The backwards logo made sense for an eccentric player like Rodman, who was known for his hairstyles and tattoos as much as for his skills on the court. Dennis Rodman, ca. 1995. [Photo: Focus on Sport/Getty Images] Rodman set the pattern for when Nike pulls out the backwards logo. It also appeared on the 1994 Nike Air Flare worn by tennis player Andre Agassi, another athlete at the top of his game who was recognized widely for his style and attitude. In the 2010s, the backwards logo appeared on the shoes of other superstars and made appearances in youth-oriented crossover collaborations. The backwards Swoosh appeared on James’s dad shoe, the 2012 Nike LeBron X, as well as on the Nike Kobe AD NXT in 2017, one year after Kobe Bryant retired. On Giannis Antetokounmpo’s 2019 Nike Freak shoes, the backwards Swoosh was iridescent and memorably set on the midsole to make them look like they’re from the future. The backwards logo on the PG 2, a 2018 collaboration with Playstation, was bright neon colors. Travis Scott has popularized the backwards Nike logo since 2019, when the Travis Scott x Air Jordan 1 became the first in a string of Nike shoes from the rapper to use the backwards mark. Though Rodman complained that Scott “copied” him, the pair made up in 2024 when Rodman appeared in an ad for a velvet brown color way of Scott’s Air Jordan 1 Low OG, which, yes, had a backwards logo. Other global brands with a simple, well-known logos like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola have found creative ways to deconstruct or reinvent their logos by crushing them or turning them upside down, and Nike turned its Swoosh on the side in 2024 on women’s soccer jerseys to celebrate the growing popularity of the game. For such a valuable brand asset like the Swoosh, tweaking it signals a break from conventions. By debuting his signature Nike logo alongside the backwards mark, James joins a storied design tradition.
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E-Commerce
Heat pumps can reduce carbon emissions associated with heating buildings, and many states have set aggressive targets to increase their use in the coming decades. But while heat pumps are often cheaper choices for new buildings, getting homeowners to install them in existing homes isnt so easy. Current energy prices, including the rising cost of electricity, mean that homeowners may experience higher heating bills by replacing their current heating systems with heat pumpsat least in some regions of the country. Heat pumps, which use electricity to move heat from the outside in, are used in only 14% of U.S. households. They are common primarily in warm southern states such as Florida where winter heating needs are relatively low. In the Northeast, where winters are colder and longer, only about 5% of households use a heat pump. In our new study, my coauthor Dan Schrag and I examined how heat pump adoption would change annual heating bills for the average-size household in each county across the U.S. We wanted to understand where heat pumps may already be cost-effective and where other factors may be preventing households from making the switch. Wide variation in home heating Across the U.S., people heat their homes with a range of fuels, mainly because of differences in climate, pricing, and infrastructure. In colder regionsnorthern states and states across the Rocky Mountainsmost people use natural gas or propane to provide reliable winter heating. In California, most households also use natural gas for heating. In warmer, southern states, including Florida and Texas, where electricity prices are cheaper, most households use electricity for heatingeither in electric furnaces, baseboard resistance heating, or to run heat pumps. In the Pacific Northwest, where electricity prices are low due to abundant hydropower, electricity is also a dominant heating fuel. The type of community also affects homes fuel choices. Homes in cities are more likely to use natural gas relative to rural areas, where natural gas distribution networks are not as well developed. In rural areas, homes are more likely to use heating oil and propane, which can be stored on property in tanks. Oil is also more commonly used in the Northeast, where properties are olderparticularly in New England, where a third of households still rely on oil for heating. Why heat pumps? Instead of generating heat by burning fuels such as natural gas that directly emit carbon, heat pumps use electricity to move heat from one place to another. Air-source heat pumps extract the heat of outside air, and ground-source heat pumps, sometimes called geothermal heat pumps, extract heat stored in the ground. Heat pump efficiency depends on the local climate: A heat pump operated in Florida will provide more heat per unit of electricity used than one in colder northern states such as Minnesota or Massachusetts. But they are highly efficient: An air-source heat pump can reduce household heating energy use by roughly 30% to 50% relative to existing fossil-based systems and up to 75% relative to inefficient electric systems such as baseboard heaters. Heat pumps can also reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, although that depends on how their electricity is generatedwhether from fossil fuels or cleaner energy, such as wind and solar. Heat pumps can lower heating bills We found that for households currently using oil, propane, or non-heat pump forms of electric heatingsuch as electric furnaces or baseboard resistive heatersinstalling a heat pump would reduce heating bills across all parts of the country. The amount a household can save on energy costs with a heat pump depends on region and heating type, averaging between $200 and $500 a year for the average-size household currently using propane or oil. However, savings can be significantly greater: We found the greatest opportunity for savings in households using inefficient forms of electric heating in northern regions. High electricity prices in the Northeast, for example, mean that heat pumps can save consumers up to $3,000 a year over what they would pay to heat with an electric furnace or to use baseboard heating. A challenge in converting homes using natural gas Unfortunately for the households that use natural gas in colder, northern regionsmaking up around half of the countrys annual heating needsinstalling a heat pump could raise their annual heating bills. Our analysis shows that bills could increase by as much as $1,200 per year in northern regions, where electricity costs are as much as five times greater than natural gas per kilowatt-hour. Even households that install ground-source heat pumps, the most efficient type of heat pump, would still see bill increases in regions with the highest electricity prices relative to natural gas. Installation costs In parts of the country where households would see their energy costs drop after installing a heat pump, the savings would eventually offset the up-front costs. But those costs can be significant and discourage people from buying. On average, it costs $17,000 to install an air-source heat pump and typically at least $30,000 to install a ground-source heat pump. Some homes may also need upgrades to their electrical systems, which can increase the total installation price even more, by tens of thousands of dollars in some cases, if costly service upgrades are required. In places where air conditioning is typical, homes may be able to offset some costs by using heat pumps to replace their air conditioning units as well as their heating systems. For instance, a new program in California aims to encourage homeowners who are installing central air conditioning or replacing broken AC systems to get energy-efficient heat pumps that provide both heating and cooling. Rising costs of electricity A main finding of our analysis was that the cost of electricity is key to encouraging people to install heat pumps. Electricity prices have risen sharply across the U.S. in recent years, driven by factors such as extreme weather, aging infrastructure, and increasing demand for electric power. New data center demand has added further pressure and raised questions about who bears these costs. Heat pump installations will also increase electricity demand on the grid: The full electrification of home heating across the country would increase peak electricity demand by about 70%. But heat pumpswhen used in concert with other technologies such as hot-water storagecan provide opportunities for grid balancing and be paired with discounted or time-of-use rate structures to reduce overall operating costs. In some states, regulators have ordered utilities to discount electricity costs for homes that use heat pumps. But ultimately, encouraging households to embrace heat pumps and broader economy-wide electrification, including electric vehicles, will require more than just technological fixes and a lot more electricityit will require lower power prices. Roxana Shafiee is an environmental fellow at the Center for the Environment at Harvard Universitys Harvard Kennedy School. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
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