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2025-05-06 13:01:00| Fast Company

The Trump administration’s layoffs across the federal workforce have already left tens of thousands of employees without jobs or on indefinite leave. But many federal agencies have since been instructed to make even deeper cuts to their workforce. In total, at least 12% of the 2.4 million workers employed by the federal government could be impacted, according to the New York Times. For many workers, the sweeping cuts have upended the stability that federal jobs long promised. They also significantly impact women and people of color, effectively making them another attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion effortssomething that has been a priority for the Trump administration. The diversity of federal agencies An analysis by the National Women’s Law Center takes a closer look at how these job cuts are chipping away at the diversity of the federal workforce, which has historically mirrored the demographics of the overall U.S. workforce. As of September 2024, nearly half of federal workers (46%) were women and about 41% were people of color. (Since the administration took down current demographic data on the federal workforce in March, the NWLC analysis draws on data from September 2024.) Among the agencies that have been ordered to further reduce headcount, women accounted for an even higher percentage of their employees relative to the overall federal workforce, according to the NWLC. The administration wants to cut 80,000 employees from the Department of Veterans Affairs, for example, where women comprise 64% of the workforce. The Department of Education’s workforce, of which 63% are women, has already been slashed in halfand President Trump is striving to shutter the agency altogether. Proposed layoffs at a number of other cabinet departments and agencies where women and people make up the majority of the workforce could impact tens of thousands of employees. Black workers, for example, account for 36% of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, as compared to 18% of the overall federal workforce. Latinos and Indigenous workers, too, are employed at higher rates by certain federal agencies that have been marked for layoffs, relative to the overall workforce. How probationary workers are affected The Trump administration has targeted probationary workers, in particular, who are not entitled to the same rights as federal workers with tenure. Probationary workers are typically in their first year of service or have recently been promoted to a new role. They also lack the protections that other federal workers have against being fired without cause. Nearly 25,000 of these workers have reportedly been fired; some were temporarily reinstated in response to court orders, but a new ruling in April granted Trump the ability to fire them yet again. Probationary workers are often younger and earlier in their career, but they’re also more likely to be women: The NWLC reports that half of probationary employees across the federal workforce are women, but in certain departments, well over 60% of them can be women. The same is true among people of color, who make up 46% of probationary workers overall and a far larger percentage of those workers at specific agencies like the Treasury Department and the Social Security Administration. The benefits of a federal job Beyond offering a measure of job stability, federal roles are often a source of solid benefits that are harder to come by in the private sector, like 12 weeks of paid parental leave. Federal jobs also offer greater salary transparency and narrower wage gaps, mitigating the pay inequities that are more likely to impact women and people of color in the workplace: As of September 2024, women in the federal workforce were paid 95 cents for every dollar that men earned, a stark contrast from the 83 cents per dollar earned by women across the U.S. workforce. (The NWLC found that some departments had even narrower gender wage gaps prior to the recent layoffs.)


Category: E-Commerce

 

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2025-05-06 13:00:00| Fast Company

Lucas Krafts friends knew him as the guy who always had an antacid. His recovery from bulimia left him with gastrointestinal damage, which made him reliant on over-the-counter digestive medicines. But they were also filled with chemicals that didnt mesh with his health-conscious SoCal lifestyle.  Luckily, his brother Noah had an eye for predicting where consumer interests are headed.  He founded Doppler Labs, the buzzy 2010s startup hoping to create an in-ear computer, three years before Apple launched their AirPods. Doppler Labs was too early, but Wonderbellythe brothers digestive health brandhas been right on time with its focus on clean ingredients and opposition to existing giants of OTC medicines. In the late 2010s, clean beauty was already surging. Whole Foods and Erewhon were on the rise, but they were siloed within wealthy communities. But a new and growing swatch of health obsessivesboth within and without Robert F. Kennedy Jr.s Make America Healthy Again movementhas put Wonderbelly in an unusually dominant position. The superstores came knocking: First Target, then CVS, and now Walmart.  [Image: courtesy Wonderbelly] Wonderbelly products now feature prominently at 2,500 Walmart stores nationwide via a fleet of endcaps. These offerings include reworked packaging as well as a debut multisymptom product designed to compete with Pepto-Bismol.  Noah contrasts Wonderbellywhich is sold as an OTC product with health claims that are regulated by the Food and Drug Administrationwith the $53 billion supplements market. Supplements are the Wild West. They are unregulated, so when you take a supplement, its hard to determine whether it works or is a placebo, he says. As an FDA-regulated OTC medicine . . . credibility is key.  Growing the the old-fashioned way Medicine moves slower than Noahs native tech world. The brothers incorporated Wonderbelly in 2021, before spending two years deep in product development. (Noah got antsy in this period, so he made an app to track digestive health.) When the companys clean Tums alternative was ready in April 2023, Target was immediately on board. The retailer asked to place Wonderbelly in 2,000 stores, but the Kraft brothers needed more time, eventually agreeing to 650. Even that pared-back retail presence was important to Wonderbellys vision to build its brand credibility the old-fashioned wayin brick and mortar. People buy medicine as a bottom-of-funnel product, Noah says. You go into your supermarket, youre picking up bananas, and you grab some Tums. It is not the sort of thing where you go to someone’s website like you do with Casper. With more stores, Wonderbelly brought more products. For the company’s CVS launch, it debuted a clean Gas-X alternative. Now, with Wonderbelly’s new placement in Walmart, it’s rolling out a clean Pepto-Bismol challenger. Wonderbelly intentionally positions itself against these name brands; it’s not interested in customers shopping for generics. Even the store placement mattersthe company isn’t interested in selling in Whole Foods or Sprouts, because they dont carry Tums. We dont want to sit next to apple cider vinegar, Noah says.  [Image: courtesy Wonderbelly] Wonderbellys bet is that, when given the choice between a chemical-filled name brand and a cleaned up alternative, the premium customer will choose it instead. The strategy has been lucrative. While he declined to disclose specific financials, Noah notes that the company hit profitability in April. As of April 2024, Wonderbelly was valued at about $53 million, according to market insight tool PitchBooka number that Noah confirmed is still roughly accurate.  Jeff Behm, Wonderbellys VP of sales, points out that the company will double its sales year over year, having reached 100,000 points of distribution. (It helps that the company is incredibly slim: Wonderbelly has 12 employees, and Noah has no desire to hire more.) The Walmart launch is poised to skyrocket sales by introducing 2,500 colorful endcaps nationwide.  Walmart has a different customer, than the deep-pocketed shoppers that frequent the likes of Erewhon and similarly priced boutique grocers that dominate the clean space. So Wonderbelly created a new, cheaper $9.99 version of its antacidwith fewer tabletsto meet Walmarts everyday low prices mandate. It seems to have paid off: Looking at the first-week data from the brands soft launch, Noah says sales are where he expected them be after three months of a concerted marketing push. Customers are familiar with these legacy brands, and they’re going to stay connected to these legacy brands, says Kristin Piper, Walmarts vice president of wellness merchandising. Some customers are looking for innovation, like [what] Wonderbelly is bringing to the space. [Image: courtesy Wonderbelly] Navigating a MAHA minefield The Krafts grew up in Los Angeles, where their mother enforced a clean regime. Lucas describes a house full of alternative brands that always tasted so much worse. That includes drinking imitation milk at age 5. Noah points out that they werent allowed to drink Diet Coke. The brothers have mostly carried this clean ethos to their adult life, leading Lucas to count the ingredients on the back of his medicine bottles. Though Wonderbellys antacid has six ingredients to the average of 20 in Tums, that model of ingredient numbering can be reductive, especially in medicine, where some foreign chemicals are crucial to the products transportation around the body. So Wonderbelly makes its definition even clearer: non-GMO, vegan, free of artificial dyes, sweeteners, talc, titanium dioxide, parabens, and gluten.  The siblings timing with Wonderbelly couldnt have been better. The consumer wellness market skyrocketed coming out of the pandemic. Clean beauty, once a miniscule portion of the makeup market, is now valued at more than $8 billion. Consumers are buying Oura Rings and drinking kombucha. Its also not lost on the Krafts that their product appeals to a broad enough consumer base to include those buying into the Make America Healthy Again movement.  We strongly believe in science, but we also align heavily with a lot of the things that the MAHA movement is pushing for, Lucas says, adding that he and his brand are still positioned for people eating food that can upset their stomachs. Antacids usually dont come after youve had a big meal of kale salad. MAHAs reach is also broad, and has spurred actions that range from Sweetgreen eliminating seed oils in its food to the state of Utah banning fluoride in drinking water against prevailing medical consensus of the elements public health benefits. As a result, the Krafts have had to be somewhat judicious about who they associate the brand with. There have been several instances where were talking to someone and then we go to their socials, and were like, Thanks for the support. Please dont mention our company name, Noah says. 


Category: E-Commerce

 

2025-05-06 13:00:00| Fast Company

Instacart is launching a new stand-alone app called Fizz, designed for groups to order snacks and drinks ahead of parties for a flat $5 delivery fee. The platform, developed in collaboration with the hugely popular event invite app Partiful, enables partygoers in the 30 U.S. states where alcohol delivery is legal to add items to a shared cart from nearby participating grocery stores. Instead of splitting the bill, each user is prompted to pay only for what theyve added, with an option to include a tip for the shopper. Back in February, Instacarts chief product officer, Daniel Danker, approached Partiful CEO Shreya Murthy about partnering on the app. The teams began development in earnest in March, with Danker crediting artificial intelligence and mutual enthusiasm for the app’s rapid progress. There aren’t a lot of consumer apps being built these days, and there arent a lot of people solving some of these really core needs for customers in a simple and delightful way,” Danker tells Fast Company. Murthy says she was intrigued by the opportunity to address the common challenge of figuring out what to bring to a partyand finding time to pick it up. “Think about the last time you went to a house party. There was probably this implicit social expectation for you to bring a bottle of wine or a pack of beer,” Murthy says. “As for me, as a guest who would go to parties, that was actually kind of annoying because I’d forget. . . . And I can’t show up to this party empty-handed. “We basically productized BYOB,” she adds, referring to “bring your own bottle.” Instacart is one of the biggest players in the gig economy. It went public in September 2023, and its shares have risen nearly 57% since then. Partiful, launched in 2020, has also seen rapid growthit reported a 600% increase in user activity in 2024 and was named one of Fast Companys Most Innovative Companies of 2025. Fizz incorporates Partifuls web-friendly design, meaning users dont need to download the Fizz app to place orders. Party hosts can either start a cart and share the link in a group chat or create a typical Partiful invite and toggle the group order option to generate a shared cart on the event page. Guests can then add their items and see what others have selected. Each person pays for their share, while the host schedules the delivery and pays the $5 fee. Fizz orders will be fulfilled by Instacart shoppers. Danker notes that the more items in a cart, the more shoppers will earn. He also anticipates higher tips due to the low delivery fee. “If people didn’t feel like they spent a bunch on fees, he says, then they feel really generous when it comes to the tips.


Category: E-Commerce

 

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