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On Patagonias website, starting today, you can shop for new and used clothing at the same time. The company first launched its resale platform, Worn Wear, nine years ago, making it a pioneer in the brand-owned secondhand clothing space. The platform lets customers send back used clothing in exchange for a gift card; the clothing is then cleaned, repaired, and sold at a deep discount to someone else. But until now, you had to open a different website to actually buy refurbished Patagonia clothing. Now its in the same place, and you can add new and used clothing to the same shopping cart. [Photo: Courtesy Patagonia] The shift is a way to bring resale to the center of our brand and the forefront of our customer experience, says Sam Brown, Patagonias head of resale, noting that in the past, many customers havent been aware that Worn Wear exists. Resale has become ubiquitous across fashion brands, but it typically happens separately from new sales. Patagonia’s integration is the next step in making secondhand shopping the new norm. The brands website includes a used section that customers can browse. If you look up a new item, you’ll see links to buy a used version when its available. (Previously, new-product pages linked to the separate Worn Wear site.) [Photo: Tim Davis/Courtesy Patagonia] Bringing everything to the main site also helps give the resale platform a sense of more legitimacy. There’s still a gap of customers who are willing to buy used or trade in, Brown says. And I think we can close that gap by helping to normalize the shopping experience. The project took four years to fully build. Putting used [products] on a typical main e-comm platform is definitely fitting a round peg into a square hole, Brown notes. Nothing about this has been easy. [Photo: Tim Davis/Courtesy Patagonia] First, since its not common for brands to sell new and used products in the same place, the companys UX design team had to find ways to make the differentiation clear for consumers, such as different colored backgrounds for used products. The team also had to deal with new complexity. Rather than selling a particular new sweater, for example, suddenly it had to work with multiple sweaters with different levels of wear, sometimes in colors that are no longer in production. We were figuring out how to come up with a solution where we can manage single-SKU logistics on the back end in the warehouse, and then present something to customers where theyre not choosing across 10 different individual items, Brown says. Thats a really hard technical hurdle, and something well probably have to iterate on. [Photo: Tim Davis/Courtesy Patagonia] The company now has to manage tens of thousands of products from its 20-year history, with a constantly changing assortment based on what customers decide to sell back, rather than a single season’s worth of styles and colors. [Photo: Tim Davis/Courtesy Patagonia] Making it easier to buy used products means more competition with sales of the brand’s new products. But that’s the point, Brown says: The copany wants to sell more used items so it can reduce the environmental impact that went into making them in the first place. Right now, it’s also still relatively limited in scale, because the company can sell only the items that customers happen to send back; this year, the brand has sold nearly 160,000 used items. Patagonia sees room to do more. “We have our work cut out for us in that so much apparel ends up in a landfill or it sits in people’s closets,” Brown says. “There’s definitely more utility we can get out of the stuff we’re making. It’s just a matter of building the infrastructure and the awareness of these programs.”
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E-Commerce
Your old Barbies could be turned into speakers, power banks, and more.Gomi, a sustainable U.K. design studio, put out a call for old Barbie dolls for its Childhood Memories Collection, a new collaboration with the Mattel-owned brand to give old plastic dolls a second life as tech products.The collection includes $371 speakers, $95 power banks, $61 wireless chargers, and $45 tracker tags that are compatible with Apple devices and have a built-in alarm. Each is made from recycled plastic that comes in a one-of-one design, a marbled pattern of melted-down Barbie dolls, accessories, and other recovered plastics that make for a bright, playful palette of swirled pink, purple, turquoise, and Barbie blonde yellow. The batteries for the speakers and power banks are also recycled, using lithium from damaged and retired e-bike batteries.[Photo: Gomi]Gomi was founded in 2017 with the goal of creating sustainable technology products. It focuses on flexible plastic waste, which isn’t recycled in much of the U.K. The company created its first product, a speaker, in 2023, and each one is made from the equivalent of about 44 plastic bags. The swirl effect on the products is created after plastic is melted at the lowest possible temperature. Once molten, color layers are stacked, twisted by hand, and cut.Working with different waste streams is a challenge because plastics vary in quality and shrink rates. To allow for these inconsistencies, Gomi uses a textured mold to ensure every piece looks and feels desirable.[Photo: Gomi]Gomi made speakers out of Barbies after the 2023 movie came out. Cofounder Tom Meades tells Fast Company that months later, he got in touch with Mattel, which was “keen to partner on a collaboration.” The official collab brings major brand recognition to Gomi’s product line, not to mention a more playful color palette than some of its others products. There’s also a deep emotional attachment.[Photo: Gomi]“I’m not sure anyone has ever made electronics from recycled materials that have so much sentimentality attached to them,” Meades says.[Photos: Gomi]Toy manufacturers have increasingly offered consumers a way to return toys after they’ve outlived their use. For example, Hasbros toy recycling program launched in 2018, and Legos Replay program began cleaning and repackaging old Legos in 2019 to be reused and donated to educators and community groups.[Photo: Gomi]Mattel launched its own PlayBack program in 2021 to accept old Barbie, Hot Wheels, and Fisher-Price toys, which it recycles and repurposes into new items like playground equipment.Gomi shows there’s still a commercial life for old Barbie dolls and accessories. By giving a childhood memory a new life and form, the studio turns nostalgia into something functional.
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E-Commerce
When team members disengage, most leaders instinctively tighten the reins. It’s an understandable response, but rarely an effective one. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2025 report found that 70% of the variance in team engagement stems directly from the manager. How we respond to disengagement doesn’t affect just one person; it shapes the engagement of everyone around them. Research on Threat Rigidity Theory helps explain the instinct to assert control. When we perceive a threat, whether that’s pressure to deliver, resistance to change, or risk of failure, we naturally narrow our focus and become more directive. The problem is that greater control creates compliance, not commitment. What controlling disengaged employees looks like in practice Sam was head of retail operations, with six area managers reporting to her. The business was in deep transformation: new systems, new targets, and new ways of working rolling out almost every month. Most of her team were finding their footing in it, except for one member. In team meetings, he’d challenged nearly every change, not by asking questions like some of her more engaged leaders did, but by undercutting it before it had a chance. Sam noticed the eye-rolling and the cutting remarks about head office. Hed respond to a new initiative announcement with heavy silence, and speak about the company’s direction with a kind of weary sarcasm. He hit his targets. But he’d stopped doing anything beyond them. He used to flag problems before they became problems, push back on Sam directly when something didn’t make sense, and put his hand up for the harder rollouts. Now he did exactly what he was asked to do and no more. Sam had already addressed the behavior with him in a one-on-one conversation. She made it clear that the negative comments, public resistance, and lack of support for the changes were not what she expected from one of her senior leaders. He acknowledged the feedback, but his behavior didn’t change. By the time she brought it to a coaching session, she’d decided what came next. She was going to put him on a formal performance plan, document every instance, and tell him plainly that his attitude was no longer compatible with his role. If it didn’t change, she’d start looking at whether he should still be on her leadership team at all. What Sam was doing is what many leaders are tempted to do when our team members aren’t as engaged as we’d like them to be. Control creates compliance, not commitment Team members might comply because they have to, but compliance isn’t the same as commitment. They’re less likely to be genuinely invested in the change, take ownership, or contribute beyond what their role requires. Research also tells us that autonomy is one of our three basic psychological needs. According to Self-Determination Theory, when team members feel controlled rather than involved, their intrinsic motivation, sense of ownership, and willingness to contribute decline. Perhaps most importantly, a controlling approach focuses on the behavior rather than what’s driving it. Disengagement is often a symptom of something deeper: uncertainty, a loss of confidence, feeling unheard, disagreement with the direction, or simply not understanding the “why.” Asserting control can suppress the behavior for a while, but it rarely resolves the underlying issue. Seek understanding before taking action Now, the answer isn’t to lower your expectations or avoid holding your team members accountable. After all, accountability still matters. But before deciding what action to take, effective leaders pause long enough to understand what’s really happening. One of the most powerful shifts you can make is to become compassionately curious. That means being willing to seek to understand before seeking to solve. It’s choosing empathy over assumption and recognizing that there is usually more to someone’s behavior than you can see on the surface. Instead of assuming a team member is simply resistant, difficult, or no longer committed, get curious about what may have changed. What are they experiencing? What concerns do they have? What might they be seeing that you’re not? Create ownership together Once you understand what’s really happening, you can shift from trying to control the outcome to creating it together. Rather than prescribing the solution, involve your team member in finding it. Ask questions like: What do you think needs to happen from here? What support would help? What are we both willing to commit to? When team members help shape the solution, they’re far more likely to take ownership of it. That doesn’t mean every conversation ends with the outcome you’d hoped for. Sometimes behavior doesn’t change, and you still need to introduce accountability measures. But when you’ve first taken the time to understand what’s driving the behavior, you can make decisions that are better informed and more respectful. This is also far more likely to preserve trust. The next time one of your team members appears to have checked out, resist the temptation to manage harder. Get curious first. Work on solving the problem together. Because the behavior you’re trying to change is rarely the real problem.
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E-Commerce
Sony sparked a backlash among gamers with its decision to phase out physical game discs. Now Nintendo is reassuring its customers that it has no plans to follow suit anytime soon. We go off what the consumer prefers, and take that into account very heavily, Bill van Zyll, VP and general manager for Nintendo in Latin America, said in a recent interview. We also have a platform that was just launched. Were barely just over a year into [Nintendo Switch 2]. Its got both digital and physicalthat capability. Theres no plans to ditch physical.” Van Zyll’s comments are more of a reaffirmation than a new policy announcement. But in the current gaming environment, they’re giving Nintendo loyalists reason to breathe a sigh of relief. Physical game sales have been a hot topic since Sony’s announcement earlier this year. The company plans to stop producing physical discs for all new PlayStation games starting in January 2028. From an economic standpoint, it’s hard to fault the decision. Just 15% of the PlayStation games sold in the fourth quarter of last year were physical copies. And as Sony develops its next-generation hardware, it’s undoubtedly trying to keep costs as low as possible, especially given recent spikes in the prices of memory and processor chips. Jettisoning a physical disc drive could help achieve that goal. Still, for a company that once championed physical mediaeven mocking Microsoft’s restrictive game-sharing policiesthe move was bound to cause controversy. And Sony made things worse for itself in September, arguing in a legal filing that players who purchase digital games are buying licenses rather than ownership of the games themselves. Nintendo is hoping to sidestep that controversy, and it’s easy to see why. While Sony gets only a fraction of its software sales from discs, physical games accounted for 38.5% of Nintendo’s total software revenue in the quarter ending June 30. Van Zyll said Nintendo takes an “agnostic” approach to how games are distributed. Whatever consumers want is fine with the company. Whether Nintendo will maintain that position in the years to come is less certain. Van Zyll made no long-term commitments. Given how secretive Nintendo is about future hardware plansoften keeping its non-Japanese divisions in the dark during the early stages of developmentthat’s a promise he likely couldn’t make anyway. It’s also worth noting Van Zyll’s role. He oversees Latin America, where physical game sales remain particularly strong. In many ways, he was preaching to the choir rather than speaking directly to players in North America and Europe. And while the Switch 2 accepts game cartridges, those cartridges don’t always contain the games themselves. Many Switch 2 titles, particularly those from third-party publishers, use game-key cards that simply allow players to download the game from Nintendo’s servers. Nintendo’s own major releases generally contain the full game on the cartridge. For game-key cards, though, the preservation risk remains: If the game becomes unavailable to download, the cartridge alone won’t be enough to recover it. Microsoft, meanwhile, has taken a more middle-of-the-road approach. While it has made no announcements about the future of physical media, the company recently launched a program letting players claim digital access to eligible games they own on disc. Make no mistake: Digital is the future of game distribution, despite the valid concerns of preservationists and collectors. But after Sony’s PR bungle, other game makers are likely to tread more cautiously with future moves away from discs and cartridges. Companies like Nintendo will also pay close attention to regional demand. As long as that remains strong in important markets, some form of physical media is likely to stick around.
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E-Commerce
I’ve been having a lot of conversations with industry leaders lately about the prevalence of so-called shadow AI. Theyre worried about the risks of unapproved AI tools at work, and most come to me wanting to know how to rein in their employees. But thats looking at the problem backwards. Their concern is well founded. Among organizations surveyed in IBMs Cost of a Data Breach Report 2026 that had experienced a data breach, 43% reported security incidents involving shadow AI, up from 20% the previous year. And the problem isnt going away. In our own recent survey, we found that roughly one in three respondents reported shadow AI use at their companies. The problem is, leaders are missing what shadow AI is actually telling them about their businesses. Most chalk it up to an employee problem, when its really a leadership one. The prevalence of shadow AI means your company is trying to innovate faster than youre letting it. Thats a significant risk in and of itself. Shadow AI is a signal Picture an HR professional who, frustrated with a repetitive task like assembling personalized onboarding materials, automates this process with an unauthorized tool. Some might say they put the companys security at risk to avoid doing the job theyre paid to do. But another way of looking at it is this: Your employee just revealed a way to create better onboarding materials, save time and money, and free up an entire team for deeper work. In other words, theyre showing you how to trim the fat on your business so everyone can focus on new opportunities to grow the company. Shadow AI is often the result of an organization’s standardizing its AI approach too early. It may seem like strong leadership, but by committing too soon to one set of tools, youre closing the door to new opportunities. If you force people to use tools that arent the best ones for the job, theyre likely to use the right tool anyway, creating unnecessary risks. How leaders should respond to shadow AI Shadow AI is a green sprout of innovation, so dont treat it like a weed. If, in the example above, the company simply fired or penalized that HR professional, they would be sending a message to employees that innovation is not welcome. Your main priority as a leader right now should be getting AI experimentation out of the shadows so everyone can benefit. One company we work with did this by hosting an AI amnesty month. Employees were encouraged to share the tools theyd been using without fear of reprisal. The company found that those using shadow AI were some of their best performers and were frustrated by having to keep their innovations in the dark. The initiative allowed the company to evaluate all the tools at its disposaltools that were already road testedand decide which to implement widely and which to formally reject. They celebrated the innovation and found a path for employees to operate them securely. Doing so mitigates another crucial risk. If your employees have found a more efficient way to do their jobs, your competitors will discover the same. You are ceding the advantage to them if you ignore what your team has found. How to build a culture of AI experimentation To be clear, shadow AI carries significant risk and should be discouraged. But how you discourage it will have an impact on how your company relates to AI in general, so be intentional in your messaging and reactions. Create a culture of responsible innovation by: encouraging employees to seek out new tools while establishing clear rules around what data they can use and what systems those tools can access coordinating with IT to create approved pathways for testing new tools rather than simply blocking them creating a sandbox system with synthetic data so employees can experiment without exposing company or customer information supplying employees with time, resources, and training so they have the space and ability to use these tools responsibly, and creating forums for employees to share whats working so that everyone can learn from each other. What leaders should communicate about AI The best way to fight shadow AI is to create a culture where no one feels the need to hide their usage in the first place. That comes down to the message youre sending to your employees: We will not tolerate shadow AI, but we will do everything we can to empower you to use AI. Let them know that because they are closest to the work, they know how to make the work better, and youre giving them the chance to do that. The way things have always been done is not the path to the future. If your employees arent stuck doing drudgery work, theyll have time to find ways of doing things you previously never thought possible. Leaders should follow the motto: Find a way; dont get in the way.
Category:
E-Commerce
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