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On a recent weekend in April, data consultant Shane Kessler wasnt at the grocery store to panic-buy eggs, but rather to scour the tall, narrow aisles of the the H Mart in Manhattans K Town for the viral Korean pastry known as a crungji, basically a flattened croissant. He hadnt found one yet, but his basket was filled with popular Melona ice cream, from South Korea, and two bottles of his favorite Japanese soy sauce from among the more than 100 varieties on offer. He was worried about tariffs raising the prices of his favorite goods. I never thought Id be stockpiling soy sauce, but here we are, he shrugged. Ive come to H Mart every weekend this month. Kesslers transformation from casual fan to hoarder of once-niche pantry items is symbolic of a broader shift in America. Last year, sales of Asian groceries grew almost four times faster than overall grocery sales in the U.S., according to data analytics company Circana, and topped $55 billion here, per research firm IBISWorld. Korean instant ramyun exports alone surpassed $100 million last year, thanks to the popularity of products like Nongshims Chapagetti noodles (seen in Parasite) and BTS-endorsed Buldak from Samyang Foods, which was the official hot sauce partner of this years Coachella. Leading that boom in the U.S. is H Mart, the 43-year-old Korean grocery chain that stocks thousands of brands from across Asia in what have become almost Walmart-size stores. Since its founding with a single outpost in Woodside, Queens, in 1982, H Mart has grown into the largest specialty grocer in America. Over the past three years alone, its expanded from 77 stores in 12 states to around 100 across 16 states, plus seven in Canada and one in London, generating $2 billion in annual sales, according to reporting by the New York Times. [Photo: Lane Turner/The Boston Globe/Getty Images] H Marts cultural reach has risen alongside its physical footprint, which in New York recently included a Squid Mart collaboration with Netflix for season two of Squid Game. The company has benefitted from the ascendance of K-dramas, K-pop, and the broader Korean wave, as well as TV-famous Korean fusion chefs, like David Chang and Roy Choi. Other celebrities have put an even finer point on it: Musician Michelle Zauners 2021 memoir, Crying in the H Mart, catapulted the grocery stores name onto the New York Times bestseller list. Nearly a third of H Marts customers are now non-Asian, it has saida significant pivot from the early days, when its original name (Han Ah Reum) appeared only in Korean characters. (Privately run by the Kwon family since 1982, H Mart largely shuns the media and eschews national advertising. It didnt respond to Fast Companys interview request.) Since early April, when President Trump held his Liberation Day press conference, hooked American consumers have been worried that their new obsession with Asian groceries could become a casualty of the administrations trade war. The roller coaster of tariff rate changes so far is dizzying. But unless new trade agreements are struck before the 90-day suspension expires, retaliatory tariffs will be imposed on July 9of around 25% on Japanese and Korean products, and up to 48% on Vietnamese items. Tariffs on Chinese goods, currently at 30%, could snap back to 145% by mid-August. Surveys show most Americans expect grocery prices to get hit the hardest, with half already adjusting their spending habits. On a recent earnings call, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon signaled that the rising price of imported food is a particular concern for the retailer. (Trump responded by telling Walmart to eat the tariffs.) Online, reactions have ranged from people copping to panic-buying Kewpie mayo and Fly by Jing chili crisp to grimly joking how skinny Im going to be once the tariffs hit their go-to specialty grocers aisles. Were all going to be crying in H Mart, one TikTok user commented. But the truth is more complex. H Mart, which has grown into a U.S. grocery powerhouse by stocking items from around the globe, appears hitched to such a remarkable growth trajectory that it may be less vulnerable than people fear. Asian brands, made in America Specialty foods are particularly vulnerable to tariffs. They rely on regional ingredients and techniques that are hardeven impossibleto replicate elsewhere. Champagne and Parmigiano Reggiano, for example, simply cant be produced on American soil. The same is true for many Asian food brands. Fly by Jing, for example, only uses ingredients from Chinas Sichuan province for its line of sauces and spices that launched in 2019. Founder and CEO Jing Gao says that the tariffs for her products stood at 160% prior to the 90-day negotiation period. Though Fly by Jing isnt sold at H Mart, it is carried by Whole Foods, Kroger, Walmart, and other major U.S. supermarket chains, which gives it some padding to absorb the extra costs. Even so, its an independent food brand, and Gao worries how the tariffs will impact food companies like hersand American culture, along with them. haring authentic ingredients and flavors is one of the most powerful ways to explore the nuances of other cultures, she tells Fast Company. Tariffs not only threaten our brands prosperity, she adds, but rob Americans of an accessible way to connect with and appreciate cultures at a time when we need it most. [Photo: Lane Turner/The Boston Globe/Getty Images] Large companies, as well, are wrestling with the operational unknowns that Trumps tariffs have unleashed. Last month, at an international ramyun conference in Seoul, the CEO of Samyang Foods noted that his company was forming a task force to study U.S. tariff policy more closely. Samyang has been focused on wooing American consumers. Its U.S. sales hit $280 million last year, growing 127%, thanks to its Buldak ramyun sales. For its pop-up experiences at Coachella this year, the company enlisted influencers, K-pop stars, and even American rapper GloRilla to drive awareness. But Samyang doesnt have any manufacturing facilities here, at least not yet. Some Asian food brands are in a very different position. Shoppers might be relieved to learn many of H Marts top brands outsourced production of their U.S. products years agoto right here in America. Though industry analysts say its difficult to ascertain what proportion of products H Mart imports versus sources domestically, a fair number of the brands that it stocks have manufacturing facilities in the U.S. Nongshim, the maker of Chapagetti, already manufactures the ramyun products for its North American market just outside of Los Angeles, in Rancho Cucamonga. Pulmuone, the worlds largest tofu maker and a popular H Mart brand, produces tofu in the same area. Kikkoman, Ajinomoto, and CJ Foods also maintain extensive U.S. production facilities. Some are even expanding: CJ Foods, which aims to become the No. 1 provider of ethnic cuisine in the United States, is building a 700,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. (It will be one of the worlds largest when it comes online in 2027.) H Mart stocks more than a hundred items made by these companies, from packaged noodles and frozen foods to bottled sauces. None of these brands would talk tariff strategy with Fast Company, or even discuss their own recent cultural momentum within this context, underscoring the general sense of confusion about what comes next. (As one high-level PR professional who works with retail food brands put it: Our clients cant get far enough away from this right now.) But last fall CJ Foods CEO Misook Pak explained the companys U.S. strategy to Bloomberg, sounding very Made in America, If you look at something like mandu [Korean dumplings], were able to take this product and localize it for consumers in the U.S., he explained. Indeed, the companys Bibigo dumplings, which are sold at H Mart and produced domestically nowadays, are available in special American flavors like chicken and cilantro. [Photo: Lane Turner/The Boston Globe/Getty Images] H Marts community hubs H Mart, for the moment, seems to be shrugging off any obstacles. The grocer has been on an expansion tear, and there are no signs yet that its slowing. In San Francisco last May, it paid $32 million to buy a strip mall in Ingleside, going from tenant to owner. It now rents storefronts in the space to Korean bakery chain Paris Baguette, a Vietnamese coffee shop, and a boba tea outpost. The largest H Mart in existencea 100,000-square-footeropened last summer in the Salt Lake City suburbs, between a Mormon church and a sporting goods store. Next, H Mart debuted its own dining hall at the countrys second-largest mall, New Jerseys American Dream, where diners can try a dozen different eateries offering create-your-own hot pots, bulgogi heroes by a Michelin-star chef, and a self-serve beer bar. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Hmart Utah (@hmartutah) Dallas will soon have a $42 million, 16-acre H Mart Plaza, set to hold 50 stores and restaurants. People in Orlando are counting the days until the state of Floridas first location opens. Las Vegas welcomed its first outlet just last week. Ive heard about it, Ive seen it, there are books about it, an excited local raved to ABC 13. These locations arent just larger than their predecessors. They’re also taking over spaces where rivals crashed and burneda fallen Super Target in Orlando, a closed Save A Lot in Illinois, a former Kmart in Salt Lake City. H Mart recently swallowed up two underperforming Albertsons stores in Los Angeles. Where H Mart thrives, it seems to refigure sterile supermarkets into vibrant community hubs. H Mart’s shoppers arent after Tide pods, after all. Theyre there for the food court, the live lobster tank, the wagyu ribeye bulgogi free samples, the cotton candy dispenser near the row of Korean claw machines full of stuffed Pokémon toys. The grocers immersive experience could help it continue to reel in shoppers even amid rising prices. That sense of discovery and connection expands beyond the stores themselves. According to data provided by market research firm Datassential, the proportion of restaurants within a half-mile of H Mart that are Korean, Chinese, Japanese, or another type of Asian food is anywhere from 200% to 1,500% higher than average nationwide. That reflects H Marts strategy of putting its stores in enclaves where the demographics closely match the offerings on aisles. But in some instances, H Mart itself is luring in other Asian-focused businesses. Almost a third of Paris Baguettes 191 U.S. cafés are within a half-mile of an H Mart, and about a quarter of all Bb.q Chicken outposts are. Both brands are frequently inside the H Mart food court. (Neither company agreed to comment for this story.) For the brand-new Las Vegas location, formerly a Savers thrift store, H Mart CEO Brian Kwon offered a rare public statement predicting, H Mart will become a place to experience the best of what communities have to offer, providing a convenient one-stop shopping place for diverse cultures and to the neighborhood, where different ethnicities of friends and neighbors can come, gather, and enjy. Already, other Korean establishments are flocking to join H Mart in its shopping plaza. Daeho Kalbijjim, which draws hourlong waits for its short-rib stews in San Francisco, just opened its first Vegas location in the H Mart shopping center. The new locations manager told local media that the proximity to the grocer is going to really help us a lot. Between H Mart carrying good food and his restaurant cooking good food, he said, we thought the combination was really good. Even as tariffs threaten costs, H Marts real edge might be something much harder to manufacture than a trade war: fierce devotion, tougher to break than any supply chain.
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E-Commerce
Follow your dreams.Its the first piece of advice most of us are ever given: as kids in the classroom, as students on campus, as graduates preparing to enter the workforce, and as working adults. We are told that jobs are for pursuing passions, not just paychecks. If we do what we love, money and success will follow. If we love what we do, well never work a day in our lives. And the corollary to all that dreaminess? If we dont find employment doing whatever we find most fulfilling, were somehow failures. We dont have to follow our dreams to end up with our dream jobs. In fact, Id argue the opposite. When it comes to careers, follow your dreams can be nightmare advice. Thats because most of us enter the working world without knowing what those dreams are.Instead, Id suggest its better to follow your opportunities. A culture of dreams We might think we know what our dreams are. We might even feel certain of them. After all, Americans are spoon-fed a diet high in dreams. Theyre the cornerstone of our cultural canon, the basis of fairy tales, superhero stories, and countless Disney and DreamWorks movies. And they arent just relegated to fiction and fantasy. Phrases like Im living the dream, Its a dream come true, The man (or woman) of my dreams, and Beyond my wildest dreams are part of our lexicon. Athletes say these words in post-game interviews after winning big and making it to the finals. Actors repeat them in acceptance speeches as they clutch a shiny statuette. Even contestants on dating shows utter them after receiving a rose and surviving for another week. From our youngest years, we are asked about our career dreams: What do you want to be when you grow up? Obviously, we have no experience at being anything other than a kid. So why not aspire to be a pro athlete or a pop star? A grab bag of options As we get older and prepare to enter the workplace, some of us still hold on to our childhood or teenage dreams, or we find new ones. Certainly, we are more mature and thoughtful at age twenty-two than we were at age five or fifteen. The sources influencing us are likely to be more logical: our favorite course in college, the recruiter we talked to at an on-campus career fair, or a summer internship that stimulated us intellectually or socially. But like our younger selves, were still picking from a grab bag of options largely chosen for us by others or offered from limited experiences. Even if we have a better understanding of what work is, our understanding of who we are is still limited. Consequently, most of us dont have a clear idea of what we truly want to be when we grow upespecially not at the start of our careers. And thats a cause for celebration! The point of living is to learn as we go (and grow). That should be the point of working, too: to try new things, to meet different people, to understand ourselves betterwhat we like and what we cant stand, what excites us and what bores us, what fills us with joy on a Monday morning and what fills us with dread on a Sunday night. We spend a third of our lives on the job. It just makes sense that whatever we fantasized about doing while dozing off in Econ 101 probably isnt what well want to be doing thirty years later. But instead of understanding how lucky this makes us, how much freedom we have, all too often we just feel lost. Because weve been taught to find direction in our dreamsthat they should be like a North Star to guide us. We may feel envious of people who seem to have a fixed dream to follow to help them on their way. Missed opportunities Heres the thing: Professional dreams can be incredibly limiting. When we enter the workplace convinced that we already know what we want to doand are committed to doing it at all costswhat were saying, in essence, is that theres nothing left for us to learn or be curious about, nothing that could change our minds, nothing else that would make us happier or more fulfilled. Were saying that even though our careers are only just beginning, we already know what we want out of them. With that mindset, we risk sleepwalking through life and hitting snooze on a host of bigger, better opportunities that come our way, opportunities that we never could have dreamed up. Just like we cant be what we cant see, we cant dream what we dont know. So, at any one time, our wants and wishes for the future have a near-infinite number of blind spots. They include every industry we havent yet worked in, every company we havent yet encountered, and every job we havent tried doing ourselves. Unfamiliar territory The world of I dont know is big and always getting bigger. New industries emerge all the time. New companies launch every day. The newer they are, the less likely we are to know about them. Even if we do, the more entrenched we are in our dreams, the less likely we are to want to step foot on unfamiliar territory. Instead, we live in the comfort of a decision we made years ago. But what feels like a seatbelt keeping us secure can also be a trap confining us. Those of us who arent committed to a specific dream, on the other hand, have the opportunity to follow new opportunities. Where the dreamers close themselves off, the non-dreamers stay open. Our culture likes to think of themof usas lost, but the best way to make ones way has always been to stay alert and be willing to turn left, right, or back to try a new route when necessary. We cant do that when our eyes are closed and we are dreaming about something else. Possessing dreams versus allowing them to possess us Does that mean we should discard dreams wholesale? Of course not. Theres nothing wrong with having them and holding on to them, even when they seem unlikely, and the odds are stacked against them coming true. Dreams can motivate us, guide us, and serve as reminders of whats most important to us. And achieving them feels great in a way thats hard to top. But theres a difference between possessing dreams and allowing dreams to possess us. Theres a difference between keeping a dream alive while remaining open to other opportunities and closing ourselves off to everything other than our capital-D dream. All of usand all our careerswould be better off if we did way more of the former and way less of the latter. Lifes most exciting and least expected adventures are found when we refuse to be restricted and restrained by what weve previously imagined. Maybe the random opportunity we say yes to gets us nowhere. Or maybe were great at it. Maybe it makes us truly happy. Maybe it ends up exceeding our wildest dreams. Maybe it becomes our wildest dream. Only now, unlike our childhood fantasies, well be equipped with a real understanding of what it entails, what it requires of us, and whether were up for itwhich makes it a whole lot more likely to become our reality and, quite literally, a dream come true.Excerpted with permission from 15 Lies Women Are Told at Work
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E-Commerce
After years of AI disrupting industries and streamlining repetitive workflows, the technology is now poised to transform animation. In 2024, director and writer Tom Patons AiMation Studios released Where the Robots Grow, a fully AI-animated feature film. Everything from animation and voice acting to music was generated using AI, at a cost of just $8,000 per minutetotaling around $700,000 for the 87-minute production. While IMDB reviewers criticized the film as soulless and uninspired, it proved that AI can deliver full-length animated features at a fraction of traditional budgets. But its not just filmmakers driving this shift. Indie game developers want to prototype characters and worlds in hours, not weeks. TikTok and social media creators are looking to animate original characters without studio resources. Major brands, too, seek emotionally resonant storytelling without monthslong timelines or ballooning 3D animation costs.The challenge: most 3D animation tools are still slow, technical, and expensive. Hoping to remove these barriers, a team of developers from OpenAI, Google, Pixar, and Riot Games launched Cartwheel, an AI-powered 3D animation platform.Cartwheel promises to make high-quality 3D character animation 100 times faster, simpler, and more affordable. Users can record motion with a smartphone, describe a scene with a text prompt, or pull from a library of expressive 3D movements. The platforms AI transforms input into production-ready animations. Artists can refine them in Cartwheel or export into tools like Unity, Unreal Engine, Maya, or Blenderwithout disrupting their pipeline.The startup was cofounded by Andrew Carr, a former OpenAI scientist who helped develop Codex and ChatGPTs code generation, and Jonathan Jarvis, former creative director at Google Creative Lab and founder of the animation studio Universal Patterns.The two met after OpenAI, intrigued by Jarviss concept for a generative animation tool, introduced him to Carr, who had just left the company to explore how AI could make animation more accessible.I had a unique job, where I used animation to share complex research concepts clearly within Google, and make prototypes that couldnt yet be built by software. Andrew always wanted to animate, and later invented a way to talk to Blender, a popular open-source 3D software, with computer code, says Jarvis. We always wanted to build tools to help others get ideas moving and sensed the potential to animate in new ways using gen AI, that it would be centered around creative control.After two years in stealth, Cartwheel is gaining traction. The company recently closed a $10 million funding round led by Craft Ventures, with support from WndrCo (Jeffrey Katzenberg), Khosla Ventures, Accel, Runway, and Tirta Ventures (Ben Feder), bringing total funding to $15.6 million.Over 60,000 animators, developers, and storytellers joined Cartwheels wait-list during stealth. Early adopters from DreamWorks, Duolingo, and Roblox are already using the platform.All of our AI models are developed in-house. Behind the scenes, weve employed careful software engineering to ensure that all the pieces of our system work together in a way that can be plugged into existing animation pipelines, Carr says. Ensuring that the generated animation is properly scaled, moves naturally, and remains consistent throughout has been one of our biggest challenges.[Image: Cartwheel]A Creator-First AI Animation ToolWhile the generative AI field is increasingly crowded, Cartwheel positions itself differently: not as a replacement for artists, but as a tool that amplifies their creativity.Animators and creatives dont care if motion is generated, done by hand, motion-captured, or drawn from a library. They just want it to move to tell their story, make their game, or get their job done, Jarvis says. Our motion models can generate a lot of useful animation quickly, but they cant do everything. Thats why we love a hybrid approach. Computers are great at finding patterns, but its the artist who brings the soul.A key differentiator for Cartwheel is its team. Carr and Jarvis are joined by industry veterans with experience in film, games, and interactive design. Catherine Cat Hicks, former Pixar animation director on Coco, Inside Out, and Toy Story 3, serves as head of Animation Innovation. Neil Helm, head of Interactive Animation, worked on crowd systems at Pixar for Turning Red, Lightyear, Up, and Inside Out 2.The platforms design is shaped by Steven Ziadie, former Sony and Riot designer, while production is led by Buthaina Mahmud, who helped define Unitys real-time animation workflows and developed shaders used in the Spider-Verse films.We reached out, and some reached out to us. Over time, we realized we all shared the goal to make storytelling faster, easier, and more powerful, Carr and Jarvis tell Fast Company. Culture is being shaped in increasingly dynamic, interactive, and immersive spaces like Fortnite, Minecraft, and Robloxall animation-driven experiences. Were building tools for where animation is headed, and thats resonating with industry veterans.User feedback has helped shape Cartwheels interface.We began with a focus on text to animation. In beta, we learned that while thats compelling in many situations, often folks want to browse motions for inspiration, use video reference, or act out the motion themselvesso weve moved to a multimodal interface, Carr says.Whats Next for Cartwheel?High-quality animation data remains scarce, with most data sets proprietary or lacking in diversity and detail. To address this, Cartwheel is using synthetic dataAI-generated animations that mimic real-world motionto train and refine its models.The next generation of AI companies has to find and curate the hard data types, and do the hard work to refine it and make it useful to people in that field. Thats where the value is, Carr says. While at OpenAI, I worked on the science of data quality and was able to generate millions of dollars of model improvements with just a few lines of code. We are following the same path at Cartwheel to ensure we produce he styles, qualities, and delightfulness in our motion data that artists need.With fresh funding, Cartwheel plans to deepen R&D, grow its team, and bring its platform to broader markets.Over the next 12 months, we aim to be a catalyst, enabling both large and small animation projects to flourish, Jarvis says. Ensuring ethically sourced data that empowers artists is fundamental to our approach. We are a team of artists building tools for artists.
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E-Commerce
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