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When Nova Scotia-based pro surfer and entrepreneur Dean Petty wanted to fix up his dad’s 2002 Toyota Tacoma, he didn’t simply take it to a mechanic. Instead, he went to see the folks at Squirrel Concepts in Long Beach, California, the foremost experts in vintage Toyota repair, to learn how to do it himself. This is the concept of Petty’s new YouTube series with menswear direct-to-consumer (DTC) retailer Huckberry. Shop Class chronicles his journey to learn new skillsfrom fixing Toyota truck engines to crafting wood surfboardsby tracking down the best people who do it and asking a lot of questions. It’s just the latest in a roster of Huckberry-backed shows that has grown exponentially over the past two years. In fact, Petty became a Huckberry ambassador and host as a result of his own participation in another of the brands shows called Huckberry Homes. The episode on Pettys North Atlantic surf oasis has more than 2 million views, but the DIY of a dream garage wasnt even the main attraction. It’s this beautiful, incredible surf shack. But what resonated with everyone was Dean himself. He’s just such a lovable personality, says Huckberrys chief brand officer Ben OMeara. “At its core, it’s kind of our version of Dirty Jobs. This notion of finding engaging characters doing interesting and inspiring things isnt just the leading factor in any Huckberry content project. It is the linchpin in an overall strategy that’s building a robust audience and community, as well as some really fun entertainment that spans travel, fashion, lifestyle, and yes, even vintage Toyota truck engine mechanics. And its working. The brand has grown steadily and profitably at a clip just south of 20% year over year for the last five years, with 2025 revenue projected to be about $200 million. Now, as it opens its first permanent brick-and-mortar store in Washington, D.C., its time to see how the robust online community and audience Huckberry has built with its content will translate IRL. Digging Dirt Shop Class is the seventh episodic show in Huckberrys lineup. It joins the aforementioned Huckberry Homes; Gear Lab, which features designers and other experts breaking down various items, from trail running shoes and selvedge jeans to technical backpacks and summer wardrobe advice; 72 Hours, an ongoing challenge show teaming OMeara and other Huckberry folks for three-day adventures; Everyday Carry Dump, in which the brand gets pro photographers, entrepreneurs, musicians, and more to break down their daily gear must-haves; and Ask Huckberry, a style and gear advice column come to life. By far, though, the most popular is the brands flagship show, Dirt. Hosted by former pro snowboarder and Saturdays NYC cofounder Josh Rosen, the show has been refining its engaging mix of travel, food, and adventure since it began in 2022. Each episode is framed around Rosen going to a new placefrom Ireland, New Zealand, and Japan to New York City, Texas, and Atlantato meet chefs, farmers, and other food and drink producers, all with a goal of gathering ingredients for a feast at the end. So far, seven of its 13 full-length episodes have garnered about a million views or more. The success of Dirt provided OMeara and his team with a content model to try and scale across a variety of topics. It opened the brand’s eyes to the potential of longer-form episodic content. It definitely was a catalyst for us, OMeara says. There was almost an apprehension because we’d always done shorter-form, snackable content. Can we really drive true audience and engagement with something that’s 30 minutes long? Yeah, Dirt has proven that. It really does come down to the story and figuring out how to get the best parts about the story most effectively out there. The brand’s embrace of longer-form content is tapping into the broader trend of more and more people treating YouTube like traditional television. Individual YouTube videos are trending longer, so 30-minute shows are becoming increasingly commonplace. Often, viewers are literally watching these shows on their TVs. According to Nielsen, YouTube averages 11.1 million Americans on TV during prime time, compared with Netflixs 10.7 million. Aspiration and Relatability Huckberry was founded in 2010 by Andy Forch and Richard Greiner, and its current commitment to content remains true to the brand’s original vision of being equal parts store, magazine, and inspiration to help guys suck the marrow out of life. Still founder-owned and -controlled, Huckberry was bootstrapped and profitable for its first seven years, reaching tens of millions in revenue before it took its first outside investment in 2018. The brand began building its audience with its email list, treating every newsletter like its own little magazine, as well as with its online publication, The Huckberry Journal, a mix of adventure chronicles, fashion, and style advice. The video content is a natural extension of it all. OMeara says the company spends about 15% of its total marketing budget on content development and creation. But just as Forch and Greiner began writing about their own experiences in the brands Journal, OMeara says one of the most significant aspects of their success has been in finding the balance between aspiration and relatability. In order to do that, OMeara says the brand is working to build content around its own employees and ambassadors. If you look at what Food52 was doing, what Barstool has done, what Complex has doneit’s all around in-house talent, he says. Your brand has a point of view, and your content is more authentic and relatable.” This is Huckberry’s version of what has become the personality- and influencer-driven mediasphere. Sure, celebrities are still very much a thing, but the very foundation of TikTok and Instagram Reels is built on the thousands of everyday people who are building their own audiences and fan bases. Huckberrry is also experimenting with variations on this concept, most recently teaming with pro surfer Dylan Graves, making him a brand ambassador and funding his personal YouTube channel. Graves made, ahem, waves in content initially with a wonderful show called Weird Waves, presented by Vans, before he struck out in the creator wilderness on his own. Here, Huckberry gets the brand halo, but the surfing adventures live on Graves’ channel. The New IRL Show On August 5, the brand opened its first store in Washington, D.C.s Georgetown neighborhood. A Chicago store is currently under construction, and Huckberry has imminent plans for other American cities. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Huckberry (@huckberry) Other DTC brands that launched the same year as Huckberrylike Warby Parker and Everlanehave long made the jump to brick-and-mortar. But just as Huckberry has taken a slow-and-steady approach to investment and brand growth, it’s traveled a longer route to IRL retail. OMeara says that the store gives the brand a chance to create a space that embodies the vibe and ambition of its content for people to experience in person. Its really taking everything we’re doing online and making it not only a place to shopbut a living, breathing embodiment of our world. This notion of a retail space has been just about every brand’s goal since the first Apple Store opened its doors. And streetwear brands and skateboard shops have long subscribed to the retail space-as-community hub concept. But what makes the Huckberry version intriguing is how it has the opportunity to translate the vibe and personalities it’s been building through its content to its audience in person. That means not only staples like in-store bands but also screenings of new Dirt episodes and IRL Gear Lab events tied to product launches. The company is also directly integrating the brand’s stories into the store design. Sitting in the D.C. shop, for example, is a motorcycle that one of the brand’s creative directors used during a sabbatical adventure (of course, while wearing a waxed trucker jacket from in-house brand Flint and Tinder the entire time). I think our point of view comes through, just like how we try to speak to people online, OMeara says. Its not just, Here are specs of a product. It’s ‘This is how you can use it, or here’s the design inspiration, and here’s the person who created it.’ And a store is such a perfect place to express that.”
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E-Commerce
A 95°F Los Angeles is much more palatable at 4,500 feeta 20-minute flight in a sleek new Cirrus Aircraft piston engine four-seater, from the Burbank to Camarillo airports, above a smog-laden urban sprawl that would otherwise take us an hour to drive. Cozy bucket seats, large windows, and large touchscreen control monitors give a modern vibe. Its a beautiful day to flyuntil calamity strikes and the pilot can no longer function. She turns to me, Okay, when you’re ready . . . I half-twist from the front passenger seat and push a large red button in the cabin ceiling in front of the two back seats. Immediately, a recorded female voice calmly announces: “Emergency Autoland activated.” Theres a barely perceptible shift in the plane, which is now stabilized and flying on its own, figuring out where to land. In truth, my pilot, Ivy McIver (call name: Poison, for Poison Ivy), is very much alert and demonstrating Safe Return Emergency Autoland by Garmin, an emergency system that takes control of the plane in the event of pilotor pilot and passengerincapacitation. Developed by Kansas avionics firm Garmin with considerable input from Cirrus to customize it for its planes, Safe Return is the star feature of Cirruss new SR series G7+ aircraft, which rolled out in May to an enthusiastic response. Ivy McIver [Photo: Susan Karlin] The Safe Return system already exists on Cirruss single-engine jet and turbine turboprop models, and competitors use their own configured versions of Garmins Emergency Autoland. But this is the first time any brand has integrated it into a single-engine piston aircraftthe type used by student pilots. Cirruss SR series is the worlds best-selling piston engine plane, with over 10,000 sold since 1999. The goal is to open personal aviation to a broader audience. We’ve had a lot of people, not in aviation now, say, this gives me the peace of mind to explore getting into aviation, because of this additional safety technology, says McIver, who is also executive director of the SR product line. So, we’re keeping more people in and growing aviation at the same time. [Photo: Cirrus] Though it won’t mention specific numbers, Cirrus has already noted a dramatic rise in its SR series order rate, both in the U.S. and abroad, where the craft is licensed to fly. Even budget-conscious flight schools are ready to meet the $674,000 to $1.3 million price tag, depending on model and add-ons. The flight schools have been like, `This is the reason why I want to get this aircraft, because it gives us peace of mind that our students, if they go up on a solo flight and panic or the weather turns and it’s beyond their capabilities, have a way to bring themselves and the plane back, she adds. When activated, Safe Return immediately levels the wings and stabilizes the aircraft at the altitude and direction it had been flying. Even with no one able to press the button, the softwarewhich tracks pilot interactions with the controlswill notice unresponsive flight deck sensors or erratic flying and take over. Conversely, if a passenger mistakenly thinks the pilot is in trouble and hits the button, the pilot can disconnect it. [Photo: Cirrus] Pilot incapacitation is mostly caused by medical issues, disorientation due to dangerous weather or visibility, and cabin pressure loss leading to hypoxia (oxygen deficiency) and unconsciousness. Such accidents are considered a subset of pilot error statistics and therefore difficult to tease out, though some estimates have noted three accidents per thousand and .045 and .23 times per 100,000 hours for pilots in their 40s and 60s, respectively. But Cirrus safety design has as much to do with psychological ease as stats. Cirrus has always tried to figure out how to get more people into aviation and make people more comfortable with the idea of flying in a small plane, says McIver. It was driven by our overall pursuit to make aviation safer and more approachable and comfortable, to grow the number of people participating in personal aviation. Our plane is now scouting for the nearest suitable mnicipal airport to land. (Were this an actual emergency, it would have communicated directly with nearby air traffic control. But as this is a demo flight, McIver is the one talking to ATC.) While the recorded human voice reminds us that the Safe Return system is on, text messages on the seat monitors announce upcoming airplane maneuvers and the time to landing. Passengers are also able to talk directly to ATC. If passengers are aware of what’s happening, it gives them a sense of control and comfort, says McIver. Its a point driven home in our flight. We are going to bank left, says one text message, moments before the craft tilts left into a full circle that slowly decreases our altitude. Had I not been alerted ahead of time, my heart would have leapt into my throat. Coming out of the loop, the text alerts: Five minutes to landing while the throttle handle moves on its own. The wing flaps deploy to slow the plane as it gradually descends into the Camarillo Airport airspace and gently touches down on its runway before coming to a full stop and instructing how to open the doors and exit the craft. I havent touched the controls this whole time, says McIver, holding up her hands. The piston problem Cirrus introduced Safety Return first to its Vision Jet in 2020, followed by its other digital engine aircraft. But it would take another five years to solve the engineering challenges of integrating it into a piston engine. Safe Return software more easily communicates with computerized engines. Incorporating it into a mechanized piston engine requires an interim layer of technology to translate digital signals into analog movements. The software now interfaces with servos (motion-controlling devices) attached to valve motors and engine linkages that move the engine throttles. As a result, the system must be built into the airplane from the ground upit cant be retrofitted. The system flies the plane, not with AI, but a preprogrammed algorithm that coordinates cloud-updated onboard map databases with the real-time flight datai.e., altitude, location, fuel, speed, weather, terrain, and nearby runway configurationsto determine the nearest airports with the safest approaches for landing. It will route a course around heavy rain and thunderstorms, and, in cold-enough temperatures, deploy an anti-icing system. In case the plane is unable to fly due to mechanical failure or an empty fuel tank, the system will tell passengers to pull a red lever on the roof and deploy the parachutea longstanding safety feature on all Cirrus aircraft thats saved over 265 lives. [Image: Cirrus] After landing, the system gauges runway length to determine how much brake pressure to apply and when to idle the power. One of the biggest challenges was figuring out how to program the software to control these mechanical features to elegantly control the airplane, says McIver. Landing involves a fair amount of pilot finesse, and we’re trying to basically computerize this pilot finesse. But dont expect it to land just anywhere. It’ll avoid Camp David, adds McIver. And Area 51.
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E-Commerce
During the 2024 election campaign, the Republican Partys historically fraught relationship with organized labor appeared to be changing. Several influential Republicans reached out to unions, seeking to cement the loyalties of the growing ranks of working-class Americans who have been backing Donald Trumps presidential runs and voting for other members of his party. During Trumps first bid for the White House, the percentage of votes in households where at least one person belongs to a union fell to its lowest level in decades. In 2021, Marco Rubio, a U.S. senator at the time, wrote a USA Today op-ed supporting a unionization drive at an Amazon facility. Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, walked a United Auto Workers picket line in 2023 in solidarity with striking workers. As the 2024 GOP presidential nominee, Trump spotlighted International Brotherhood of Teamsters President Sean OBrien with a prominent speaking slot at the Republican National Conventionrewarding the union for staying neutral in that campaign after endorsing Joe Biden four years earlier. Yet O’Brien shocked many in the convention crowd by lambasting longtime GOP coalition partners such as the Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable for hurting American workers. Once in office, Trump continued to signal some degree of solidarity with the blue-collar voters who backed him. He chose former Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR), a Teamsters ally, to be his second-term labor secretary. Im a sociologist who has been researching the U.S. labor movement for over two decades. Given conservatives long-standing antipathy toward unions, I was curious whether the GOPs greater engagement with labor portended any kind of change in its policies. Fumbled at the starting line The GOPs various outreach efforts during the 2024 campaign led University of Chicago law professor Eric Posner, a scholar of declining labor power, to write, Is a pro-labor Republican Party possible? More than six months into Trumps second term, I would say that, based on the evidence thus far, the answer to Posners question is a resounding no. In late March 2025, Trump issued an executive order stripping hundreds of thousands of federal workers of their collective bargaining rights. Overnight, twice as many federal employees lost their union protections as there are members of the United Auto Workers union, making the action the largest and most aggressive single act of union-busting in U.S. history, according to Georgetown University labor historian Joseph McCartin. While affected unions have challenged that action and similar subsequent ones in court, the Trump administration is moving on to other agencies. In August, over 400,000 federal employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Environmental Protection Agency saw their union contracts terminated and their collective bargaining rights dissolved. Everett Kelley, the American Federation of Government Employees president, described the attacks on federal workers as a setback for fundamental rights in America. Tariffs, other policies arent helping The Trump administration has pitched its erratic tariff policies as a boon to U.S.manufacturing, including in the automotive industry, once the foundation of the U.S. labor movement. In reality, U.S. car producers are struggling to keep up with rising tariff-related costs of raw materials and parts. The number of factory jobs has fallen to the lowest level since the COVID-19 pandemic. Even United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain, a supporter of targeted tariffs to buttress the domestic auto industry, criticized the administrations trade policy in April 2025, saying, We do not support reckless tariffs on all countries at crazy rates. Other administration actions cast as relief for struggling workers are unlikely to deliver as advertised. The no tax on tips provision in Trumps huge tax-and-spending package excludes the nearly 40% of tipped workers whose earnings fall below the federal income tax threshold. Tipped workers make up a tiny share of the low-wage workforce. Culinary Workers Local 226, a powerful Nevada union representing many tipped workers in Las Vegas and Reno, supported the provision. Yet it blasted the overall package, calling it a big, horrible bill for its windfalls to the rich instead of the working class. Removing the watchdogs The National Labor Relations Board is responsible for ensuring that management and labor adhere to provisions of the National Labor Relations Act. Passed in 1935, that law estalished workers fundamental rights to collective bargaining. The board is responsible for conducting union elections, investigating allegations of unfair labor practices and outright abuses by employers, and enforcing court orders when employers or unions are found to have broken labor laws. Presidents regularly use vacancies to tilt the ideological balance of the board to a more or less labor-friendly position. Trump, however, went further. Soon after he was sworn in for a second term, Trump fired the National Labor Relations Boards general counsel along with board member Gwynne Wilcox, who was only halfway through her five-year term. Wilcoxs dismissal was unprecedented and violated the National Labor Relations Act provision on board personnel changes. Wilcoxs removal left the body without a quorum, preventing it from responding to appeals or requests for review and allowing employers accused of violating workers rights to delay any settlement. The Trump administration has left those important NLRB jobs vacant for months, although it has nominated two management-friendly replacements, both of whom awaited Senate approval in mid-August. In the meantime, the agency is unable to hear labor disputes. Disempowering the NLRB is a long-standing Republican tactic, suggesting more continuity with past GOP attacks on labor than a new era of partnership. Hawley standing out To be sure, Republicans dont all agree with one another on the importance of supporting workers and labor rights. One who has stood out so far is Hawley. The relatively pro-labor Republican senators stance led him to partner with Sen. Corey Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, to cosponsor the Faster Labor Contracts Act. This new bill would force employers to negotiate a contract in a reasonable time frame with employees once they have voted in favor of forming a union. Hawley also joined with Democrats to reintroduce a bill that would ban dangerous work speed requirements in warehouses. Hawley said, when summarizing his efforts on behalf of working people, Its time we deliver for them. The Missouri senator is not completely alone. Sens. Bernie Moreno of Ohio and Roger Marshall of Kansas, both Republicans, have backed some labor-friendly legislation in the spring and summer of this year. GOP leaders in Congress are not moving those bills forward so far, likely in part due to pushback from Republicans and their allies outside Congress. And there are limits to Hawleys labor friendliness. He voted for Trumps tax-and-spending package, despite publicly airing his misgivings about the harm it may cause his blue-collar constituents. Meanwhile, his past partners in the more labor-friendly wing of the GOP now occupy prominent administration posts. Yet they have largely fallen silent on union issuesexcept, in Rubios case, to oversee the firing of well over 1,000 State Department employees, many of them members of the American Foreign Service Association union. Trump’s labor approach echoes Reagans style Another GOP presidential administration courted segments of the labor movement to divide a key Democratic constituency, only to take actions that weakened unions. In 1980, for example, Ronald Reagan sought and won the endorsement of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization. A year later, he fired 13,000 striking members of that union. The Teamsters union also backed Reagantwice. It endorsed him in 1980 after he pledged during the 1980 campaign not to pursue anti-labor policies. Although he broke his promise, personal outreach from Vice President George H.W. Bush in the lead-up to the 1984 election earned him the Teamsters endorsement a second time. What seems clear in my view is that whenever the GOP has tried to cast itself as a labor-friendly political party, it has emphasized symbolism over substance, favoring using rhetoric embracing workers who belong to unions versus taking actions to strengthen labor rights. Jake Rosenfeld is a professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis. 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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