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If you think drones are noisy in flight, try building and testing them. During a visit last month to the drone startup Zipline’s factory in South San Francisco, California, industrial noise welled up in corners of the facilitythe roar of a wind tunnel, the rhythmic clack of a test rig simulating motor casing wear, and other mechanical sounds in a symphony of engineering. Zipline has to subject its delivery drones to that kind of abuse because its been building them in-house since 2016a strategy management sees as wiser than relying on outsourced manufacturing. Zipline has intentionally designed ourselves as a very vertically integrated company, says Eric Watson, head of systems engineering. The companys facility, located just below the flight path of jets departing San Francisco International Airport, combines warehouse, assembly, and testing space. [Photo: Rob Pegoraro] That, Watson says, lets the company iterate rapidly and frequently. We can quickly get the design engineer who built the thing to look at it, he tells Fast Company. And then we can update the test, update the drawing, whatever needs to happen. Founded in 2014, Zipline (one of Fast Companys picks for 2024s Most Innovative Companies) began delivering medical supplies in Rwanda in 2016. Today, it bills itself as the largest commercial drone delivery service. The live display on its site counts more than 1.5 million deliveries to date; over a two-hour period on Saturday, that counter showed another 48 had been completed. (For comparison, Wing, the drone-delivery service owned by Googles parent company Alphabet, says its made more than 450,000 residential deliveries.) In the U.S., Zipline offers Walmart customers the option of drone deliveries in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and Pea Ridge, Arkansas. (404 Media found that Zipline had recently supplied the Pea Ridge mayor with talking points that then ran almost verbatim in a blog post on the companys own site) [Photo: Rob Pegoraro] Zipline makes two battery-electric drone designs. It describes its older Platform 1 aircraft (or P1) as optimized for deliveries of up to 4 pounds to enterprise, business, and government customers over distances up to about 60 miles from a Zipline-operated delivery hub. The newer Platform 2 (P2) is built for home delivery from third-party sites, able to carry twice as much payload but with a service radius of only 10 miles. And where P1 drops its payload via parachute, P2 spools it down under a 300-foot winch in a cargo compartment that has its own fans to guide its descent to a precise spot on the ground. Watson described the adoption of that winch architecture as a lesson learned about the difficulty of trying to keep a drone hovering directly over a delivery point in the wind: We now move the aircraft upwind. That setup also keeps the whir of a Platform 2s five combined rotors 300 feet away from people on the ground, where the company says that noise is nearly inaudible. P2 drones depart from and return to the underside of a landing dock, nestling a connector at the top of their fuselage into the well of that contraption. During my visit, the factorys operations looked focused on P2. Racks of that aircrafts laughably light carbon fiber assemblies of wings and rotor nacelles sat in one corner of the building (I easily picked one up), test stations for components scattered around, and at a series of assembly stands in the middle, workers performed such tasks as attaching a P2 drones two redundant system boards. [Photo: Rob Pegoraro] Amid signs warning of the dangers of testing hardware with spinning propeller bladesone outside a closed door warned of a high-risk test area with extremely loud noise levels and moving equipmentthere were moments of whimsy and warmth. The first Platform 2 models required two to three days of work, but the company can now crank out three a day. We have made a ton of progress with our Platform 2 manufacturing, Watson says. Later this year we should be producing an aircraft every hour. Zipline, however, doesnt fabricate every single component itself. Beyond standardized parts such as fasteners, it has its own network of suppliers building subsystemsfor instance, the carbon fiber airframesto its specifications. The way that we have trended over time is bringing more things in house, Watson sys. [Photo: Rob Pegoraro] Labels on some incoming boxes noting their origins in China or Vietnam provided a reminder that this company remains exposed to President Donald Trumps tariffsif much less than drone services relying on consumer drones built in China. We do have a global supply chain, Watson says, adding that Ziplines vertical integration does allow us quite a bit of flexibility in suppliers. The entire field of drone delivery has exhibited some of the same problems of too-soon hype as other tech frontiers. Amazons highly publicized venture into drone delivery has made legitimate advances but remains vaporware for almost all of the retail giants customers. The business model also remains unclear. Privately-held Zipline doesnt disclose revenue, per-delivery costs, or headcount, although funding that Crunchbase puts at $821 million does give it a long runway to work with. Zipline also has the advantage of having secured Federal Aviation Administration authorization in September of 2023 to operate drones beyond an operators visual line of sight (BVLOS), with automatic broadcasting of their location to other aircraft and altitude limits in place. In a January 2023 report, the consulting firm McKinsey emphasized the importance of BVLOS operation in letting drone-delivery services cut per-trip costs from what it estimated at $13.50 with one operator assigned to a drone to $1.50 to $2 with one operator supervising 20 at a time. In October, a subsequent McKinsey post highlighted a vast potential market$5 billion by 2035, with approximately 1.5 billion annual deliveries expectedbut warned that a customer survey it ordered up had revealed relatively low interest in drone delivery among U.S. customers. That survey found that 53% of U.S. respondents said they were willing to switch to drone delivery, but only 37% were willing to pay a premium. Both shares were the lowest observed in the six countries surveyed: Brazil, China, Germany, India, Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. That suggests that while the hardware and software of drone-delivery operations will need further iteration, the sales pitch itself remains in flight and may not land for a while.
Category:
E-Commerce
The workplace is changing faster than most leaders can keep up with. Were seeing changing expectations around work-life balance, the rise of burnout, and the prevalence of economic pressures leading to the rise of generative AI. This leaves little time to adapt, let alone rethink how we engage and inspire our teams. This shift has impacted the workforce. According to the latest Glassdoor Worklife Trends 2025 Report, 65% of employees feel stuck in their current jobs. But when it comes to managing and motivating people, some things never change. Employees want to feel valued, supported, and integral to something bigger. Trust, human connection, and purpose remain key to any companys success, no matter how fast technology evolves or how much the workplace shifts. Fostering these values requires more from management than just hiring the best people. Its about creating an environment where workers thrive. This means they take ownership, contribute ideas, and collaborate. While strong leadership is vital for setting the companys vision and strategy, real energy and innovation emerge when those ideas come from the workforce. Employees who align with the companys broader goals drive innovation in ways that no algorithm or technology can replicate. Fostering a culture that explicitly values and empowers staff leads to creativity and allows companies to tap into the true potential of their workforce. This approach invites employees on every level to emerge as leaders and innovators. The great detachment from momentum Were witnessing a massive evolution in the workplace. When Amazon announced its return-to-office policy for 2025, the backlash was swift and unsurprising. Weve all seen this coming. Employees have found new ways to create an impact that doesnt fit the traditional office-bound, 9-to-5 mold. Gen Z is poised to outnumber baby boomers. And the impact will go beyond their numbersmany of them have a different way of working and what they expect from the workplace compared to previous generations. They grew up during the pandemic when remote learning and hybrid environments became the norm. Gen Z employees are comfortable contributing in flexible, nontraditional waysworking in bursts of focus or sending deliverables at midnight. For them, the emphasis isnt on showing up to the office but on the impact of their efforts. However, a recent Gallup poll indicates an alarming trend of employee detachment, particularly among those under 35. This raises a critical question: Is your company still focused on activity? Are you measuring for actual impact? RTO mandates alone wont change the culture or drive performance. Real progress happens when we trust our employees to experiment, share, and make meaningful contributions. Empowering staff from the bottom up means prioritizing outcomes that create value and drive our businesses forward. Businesses can no longer rely on traditional productivity. Continuing to think in outdated ways will not position companies to keep pace with competitors with a workforce that is more flexible, innovative, and thriving. As leaders, we must create space for impact and let go of outdated performance metrics that hold us back. Listen to your experts Leaders have the power to set the tone. Consider asking yourself,what do you need to learn or unlearn, and who can teach you this? Remember that its not your job to know everything. Thats what experts are for. Lean on them, trust them, and empower them. Elevate viewpoints from employees at all levels and champion their wisdom. Nurture a learning environment where you welcome candid conversations, and employees can exchange ideas without fear of judgment, blame, or backlash. Promote teamwork and collaboration. This requires removing obstacles and providing opportunities for talent that break down organizational silos and give life to new ideas. Create a collective spark Collaboration fuels creativity and impact. Leaders can foster this by creating space for employees to share ideas through brainstorms or reverse mentoring programs. They also need to find ways to empower employees to tackle challenges to encourage trust, innovation, and fresh thinking. These moments of connection and cocreation spark momentum that drives meaningful engagement and impact. The questions you ask shape the culture you create. Ask yourself, What steps can you take to empower leaders and employees to foster a sense of community? Who speaks freely, and who remains silent? Who receives credit, and who gets overlooked? Which employees get to create culture, rather than just to follow it? Create an environment where employees can influence processes. Encourage open conversations and employee input to simplify processes and make improvements that truly work for the team. This allows employees to sharpen their critical thinking, problem-solving, and leadership skills while contributing to meaningful outcomes. Create an empathetic culture Today’s employees are overloaded with information, juggling constant communication, evolving expectations, and endless demands. Leading with empathy is essential to fostering an environment that truly supports employees. A high say/do ratiowhere you consistently align your actions with promisesis critical to building trust and modeling the behavior you want to see. Your organizations culture is its most significant competitive edge. It can drive or hinder exceptional results, inspire a willingness to learn or a fear of failure, promote teams poised for problem-solving or riddled with distrust and toxicity, and encourage inclusivity or exclusion. Effective leadership isn’t about perfection; its about being present, intentional, and empathetic. When leaders intentionally tend to culture, they demonstrate to their employees what matters and is possible.
Category:
E-Commerce
Barbie x Keiichi Tanaami. Hot Wheels x Daniel Arsham. Masters of the Universe x Virgil Abloh. Uno x Shantell Martin, Takashi Murakami, Gary Baseman, Kartell . . . These collaborations might sound like an Andy Warhol pop fever dream, but theyre very real within Mattel Creations, the toy powerhouses hub for innovation and premium collectibles, which is celebrating its fifth anniversary as it continues carving out all-new business for the company. In February 2020, when the Cybertruck was more an anomalous conceptual piece of pop culture than a concrete political statement, Mattel was celebrating its 75th anniversary. The toy company launched its experimental wingand its first official producta 1:10 scale remote-control Cybertruck created in consultation with Teslas chief designer. The replica was priced at $400, could cruise up to 25 miles per hour, and even came with a cracked window decal. It was hobby-grade, large-scale, and full-control, Chris Down, Mattels chief design officer, says. It was absolutely beautiful, but not something that you would see at the local Walmart. Within three or four hours, it completely sold out. Chris Down [Photo: courtesy Mattel] In doing so, Down says it became the first real proof point that a high-end collectible platform could be viable for Mattel. It showed that the brand could connect with enthusiasts with more spending power than its average customer by creating high-quality toys with a luxe packaging and unboxing experience. And that was prescient. According to Circana, global toy market sales declined 0.6% in 2024. At the same time, sales of collectible toys increased 5%, accounting for 18% of overall volumes. Toy sales have been on the decline over the past couple of years at large, but adults have been buying more for themselves, a phenomenon that kicked into gear around the pandemic, and has only increased since. Down says that adult consumers have become Mattels fastest-growing consumer segment. Sales at the toy purveyor were down 1% last year, but perhaps it has a secret weapon in Mattel Creations, which a rep for the brand says has risen to become the companys fourth-largest domestic retail point, and its fifth-largest globally. [Photo: courtesy Mattel] MSCHF AND MASHUPS The brand within a brand takes its name from the sign that hung above the companys original 1945 garage/workshop in Los Angeles. When Mattel launched Creations, Down says the goal was to hearken back to a creative time of product ideation and business models, offering a reset of how we think about opportunities. And its one that Mattels employees apparently love as much as toy collectors do. The core Creations team is made up of 20 to 25 people overseeing 150 to 200 high-quality limited-edition products annually, from exclusives like that first Cybertruck to artist collaborations, mashups, and more. But that team is also a conduit within Mattel HQ in El Segundo, California, to the companys larger beloved brands like Barbie, Hot Wheels, and Masters of the Universe. And the focus is on craft. From a design/product development and a care point of view, we put more into every single one of those items than we do on a $1 die-cast car that sells . . . half a billion units across the board, Down says. It’s good for Mattel, it’s good for the fans, its good for the creators. The teams internally love the stuff because it also showcases some of their most interesting work. Barbie x Tanaami [Photo: courtesy Mattel] That includes, say, a hypnotic, kaleidoscopic Barbie from pop art icon Keiichi Tanaami, alongside his Uno card deck and Magic 8-Ball (a life-size version of the Barbie was featured in his Tokyo career retrospective); a rusty, Frankensteined Hot Wheels Not Wheels by art collective MSCHF, created in homage to the beat-up but reliable car that many drivers start off with, as Mattel puts it; various Monster High mashups, with partners like Squid Games and Beetlejuice; and exclusives for the Barbie, Hot Wheels, Monster High, and Masters of the Universe fan clubs, which Mattel Creations has helped grow over the past five years. LeBron James Ken doll [Photo: courtesy Mattel] Reps for the brand declined to say how much it all contributes to Mattels bottom line, but the effort appears to be worth its weight in marketing goldparticularly when a product like the LeBron James Ken doll goes viral, as it did earlier this year. THE ART OF THE DROP While some Mattel Creations toys are sold outside of the brand’s dedicated site, the artist collaborations are entirely exclusive to it, and they have been a signature part of the innovation lab since the start. How do they come together? Organically, Down says. Mattel Creations works 12 to 24 months out, and the collaborations begin as conversations. They may never turn into anything, Down says. It’s not something that you can force. Barbie x Mark Ryden [Photo: courtesy Mattel] Other times, its kismet. Take painter Mark Ryden. Down says Barbie was a muse to the artist and had played a role in some of his pop surrealist creations, so collaborating on a set of dolls was effortless. Likewise with Masters of the Universe and Japanese artist Madsaki, who Down says learned English while watching the cartoons. Masters of the Universe x Madsaki [Photo: courtesy Mattel] The artist dictates the brand and format theyd like to create withinand ultimately the artist brings their fan base to the subsequent product, which no doubt is a boon to Mattel. Given the experimental nature of Mattel Creations, the product runs are sometimes as small as a few hundred and go up to the tens of thousands. Styling toy launches as drops kicks up the fervor, and has become a signature of the brand, with more than 100 over the past five years. Barbie x Mark Ryden [Photo: courtesy Mattel] On occasion, Mattel Creations has even tested ideas with crowdfundingsometimes to success in the case of, say, the WWE Ultimate Edition New Generation Arena, and sometimes not, in the case of Jurassic World the Gates. For the latter, that might mean 1,600 disappointed dino franchise fans, but for Mattel, fewer unsold units sitting in a warehouse (read: fewer duds). Not everything works, Down says, but a lot of what we put on Creations has exceeded our expectations in terms of how quickly it sells throughand how much it sells through. Monster High x Squid Game [Photo: courtesy Mattel] WHITE SPACE This year Mattel Creations debuted its second live Apple-style annual event, Revealed, where it announced what fans could expect from the year to come. Down says the brand is focused on new ways of engaging with those fans, as well as expanding the type of creators its partnering with on new products. Ultimately, It’s been a compelling creative experiment, he says. Our marketers, our folks in digital and e-comm, and our business leaders are also excited by it . . . because it represents white spaceand it fuels the rest of brand health and actually creates interest, where people start to realize the dimensionality of how our brands show up.
Category:
E-Commerce
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