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Outdoor product company Yeti is best known for its coolers, but this summer, it has a surprise hit product that doesn’t having any cooling functionality at all. It’s a tote bag that’s been part of its existing product offering for yearsbut has gone viral on TikTok after taking a page out of the Stanley playbook, with product offerings that are colorful, accessorizable, and collectible. Launched in 2018, the durable, waterproof, $150 Yeti Camino Carryall Tote Bag isn’t new, but now dubbed the hottest mom tote of the summer, it’s taking on a new life as the sort of colorful must-have consumer product we’ve seen previously with the likes of Stanley cups or Trader Joe’s totes. At least one analyst credits the bag’s new level of popularity with a rise in stock price for the company, which reported quarterly sales of $351 million, up 3% from the same period last year. [Photo: Yeti] The bag’s hefty design is at the heart of its appeal. At 18.1 inches by 15.2 inches, the bag is big, “but not too big,” according to Yetis product page. And though it weighs barely more than 3 pounds empty, the tote’s oversize handles were built for carrying a lot at once, including bottles and half-gallon jugs that can be organized with deployable dividers. As its name implies (camino means road in Spanish), it’s tough and designed to be used on the go. “You can carry everything from firewood to kids’ sand tools to water for washing your hands after camping somewhere,” Yeti’s head of marketing, Bill Neff, told Fast Companys Jeff Beer in March. “Then you can hose it out. It became the super versatile piece for us.” The idea behind the Camino was Yeti cofounder Roy Seider’s, but not everyone at the company saw its potential at first. It was Yeti’s second bag product after branching out into the category in 2017, it and became a quick hit. “We didn’t know what it was going to be,” Neff said in March. “We thought it was going to skew female. No one really understood it, except for Roy, but we launched it and it was bananas how fast, for both male and female customers, it became the product that they used for everything.” For a company whose coolers have been called a luxury good for bros, though, the tote has offered an avenue to market specifically to women. Product images and TikTok videos tagged with the bag skew female, while colorways like influencer beige, pink, and cherry blossom cater especially to female tastes. As of this writing, all the fun colors are sold out on Yeti’s website and you can only order the Camino in boring colors: olive or navy. It’s clear the Camino is not just a bag for the outdoorsman anymore. It’s become a bag for moms too, as a heavy-duty, all-purpose utility purse or as a beach or diaper bag for long summer vacations or a quick trip to the park. It’s functional for sure, with room for everything, but like a dude donning North Face in the city, there’s an element of gorpcore in its appeal as an accessory. The ability to customize the bag with patches, charms, or Labubus, plus a rotating, limited-edition seasonal colorways, gives the product an extra edge on TikTok, where newness, exclusivity, and conspicuous consumption reign supreme. Yeti is now doubling down on bags. The company bought the Montana bag brand Mystery Ranch in January, and on its earnings call in May, CEO Matthew Reintjes credited the Camino specifically for helping Yeti’s strong quarter. “Yeti is bringing a unique point of view to this fragmented bag space supported by our strong design, brand and commercial engine,” Reintjes said. “We remain very optimistic about the massive global addressable market we see in front of us across premium bags, packs, and luggage.” Reintjes calls the Camino tote “the sleeper product” in Yeti’s portfolio. “It’s like the Swiss Army knife of bags,” he said in March. It’s more than just its versatility and durability, though, that have proven valuable for the company. Every brand is looking for its Stanley cup moment, and with the Camino tote, Yeti has found in its portfolio a product capable of viral TikTok infamy of its own.
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E-Commerce
Legos newest set is a replica of a Nintendo Game Boy, and its designed to tap into the millennial nostalgia thats ruling the cultural zeitgeist. The 421-piece set is the latest in a series of collaborations between Nintendo and Lego, which have included builds based on the Super Mario, Animal Crossing, and Mario Kart worlds. Currently, the Game Boy is available for preorder at a price point of $60; it will be purchasable online and in stores starting October 1. [Photo: Lego] According to a press release, the collectible is an almost one-to-one replica of the original Game Boy, standing at just over 5.5 inches tall and 3.5 inches wide. It comes complete with a control pad, A and B buttons, a contrast adjustment, and a volume dialessentially, all the elements youd find on the original device. The main drawback is that, tragically, the brick-based Game Boy is not playable. However, it does come with a Game Pak slot and two Game Paks (also made of Legos, of course) based on The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening and Super Mario Land. The Game Paks come with lenticular screensor screens that use light deflection to mimic movementreplicating scenes from the respective games, so you can briefly pretend that its a functioning electronic. Legos Game Boy replica comes as 80s and 90s IP has flourished in pop culture. Movies like Barbie and Twisters, fast-food menu throwbacks, and the return of 90s fashion (like via the long-dead J.Crew catalog) have all brought millennial nostalgia into the limelight. [Photo: Lego] Theres also renewed interest in retro tech aesthetics, even among younger generations who werent around during the products heydays. In 2024, that meant product releases like Anduril founder Palmer Luckeys 90s-esque portable gaming device and a pager by Sega that only sends emojis. So far this year, the Commodore 64 PC has already made a comeback and the iPod Nano got turned into a design object. Now the Game Boy is on sale againif only in Lego form.
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E-Commerce
For the third consecutive year, venture capital investment in climate tech fell in 2024. Investment in the sector reached only $37.8 billion, nearly 40% lower than its all-time high in 2021. Looking ahead to 2025, a report from PitchBook suggests climate tech investments could fall even further. The broad scope of climate tech means the companies focused on it are subject to policy and industry changes impacting many sectors, such as energy, agriculture, and transportation. However, even as tariffs and shifting policy priorities threaten companies bottom line, many venture investors in the space say there is no cause for alarm. This isn’t surprising to us, says Sara Simonds, executive director of Venture Climate Alliance, an organization that brings together climate-focused venture capital firms. Many of the VCs that we work with have been investing in these sectors for the better part of a decade or longer and are accustomed to the ebbs and flows in industry outlook. The last surge of investment started in 2021, when the market for renewable energy and other climate technologies looked very different. Favorable policies under President Joe Biden bolstered the sector and made it a hotbed of activity even for venture capitalists who werent previously involved in the space. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, for example, invested billions in clean energy, electric vehicles, and other climate-friendly technologies. That act built on tax credits for electric vehicles, carbon sequestration, and other initiatives provided by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed by Congress in 2021. On the venture capitalist side, those policies led to expensive deals that pushed the annual VC deal value over $60.5 billion in 2021 and $53.8 billion in 2022, according to the PitchBook report. Now some climate-favorable policies and tax breaks are gone under President Donald Trump, and tariffs are raising the cost of clean energy in the U.S. (China remains the leading supplier of solar panels, wind turbine components, and lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles, according to the International Energy Agency.) Many tourist investors who temporarily entered the climate space during its period of high growth have taken these changes as a sign to scale back investments or leave the space. This, combined with declines in the number of VC deals in the tech sector more broadly, has added to climate techs troubles. However, venture capitalists who specialize in climate tech investments arent worried. In fact, they see opportunities for growth that may outweigh the financial risks these policy and market changes bring. Part of their confidence in the sector comes from having experienced past boom-bust cycles in climate technology markets. The CleanTech 1.0 eraa period in the mid-2000s when venture capitalists heavily staked renewable energy startups that ultimately failedwas a formative experience for many of todays climate tech investors. They observed not only how these businesses failed but also how others succeeded in their wake as the need for climate-friendly solutions grows. Climate change is the macro of all macro trends, says Andrew Beebe, managing director at Obvious Ventures. Maybe not as a human, but as an investor, the macro on climate is amazing. The challenge becomes greater by the day and that means the opportunities just become greater by the day. Additionally, many of the changes on the policy side have greater impacts on mature industries that venture capitalists are less directly involved in, says Matt Eggers, managing director at Prelude Ventures. Venture capitalists tend to invest in startups and other early-stage companies with potential to grow. While there is always innovation going on behind the scenes of mature industries, some that are well-established (like traditional solar and wind technologies) are less appealing to investors looking for groundbreaking new technologies or unexplored areas of industries. What many dedicated climate tech investors are looking for remains the same as when the sector hit its peak three years agonew or improved technologies that are scalable and have strong market potential. Last year, North America remained the largest market for climate tech investment, and it saw big gains in the energy sector, according to the PitchBook report. In particular, growth was notable in dispatchable energy sources whose output is easily increased or decreased to meet demand, and in infrastructure to produce, store, and transport hydrogen. Similarly, the first quarter of this year saw more investments in energy, with large fusion and nuclear deals. Weve got technology that were really excited about in the portfolio, Eggers says. He and Beebe both see opportunities in companies using electrification and artificial intelligence to transform the climate tech sector. Beyond the technology, Eggers adds that investors look for companies with strong leadership teams and ideas that appeal to big or fast-growing markets, particularly those that have been disrupted by the types of policy and economic changes plaguing many industries today. When theres disruption, theres opportunity, Eggers says. This extends to the investment space as well, where investors are finding promising companies to fund in this now less-crowded area of the venture market.
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E-Commerce
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