Author: wildgreenquest@gmail.com
Key Takeaways Patricia Nash built her namesake brand at age 50 after discovering a bag as old as she was in her mother’s closet and realizing that handbags could carry powerful memories. Her “affordable luxury” formula is to use full-grain leather and high craftsmanship while stripping out most traditional marketing margin, giving that value back to customers in lower price points. She scaled to around $100 million in annual revenue by combining unique assortments for each retail partner and high-visibility sales through HSN and QVC. In 2010, when Patricia Nash helped move her mother out of the house she’d lived…
On Friday, Trumark Homes—which has been majority owned by Japan-based Daiwa House since 2020—announced that it has struck a deal to acquire a Seattle metro-based homebuilder JK Monarch.The deal is the latest in a recent string of U.S. homebuilder acquisitions by Japanese firms. Exactly five weeks ago today (February 13), Japan-based Sumitomo Forestry announced that it had agreed to acquire Tri Pointe Homes—a giant public homebuilder ranked No. 715 on the Fortune 1000—for $4.5 billion.Then on February 23, Stanley Martin Homes—which has been owned by Japan-based Daiwa House since 2017—announced that it has agreed to buy United Homes Group, which…
Key Takeaways Warren Buffett recently doubled down on the Giving Pledge, calling it “quite a success” and saying he still quietly recruits members. The initiative faces a growing “billionaire backlash,” including a campaign by Peter Thiel, who said that most signatories he has spoken to regret joining. The broader tension is over how billionaires should do good: through large philanthropy or through business-building. Warren Buffett is making a rare public statement to reassert his allegiance to the Giving Pledge, a commitment made by the world’s wealthiest philanthropists to give the majority of their wealth to charitable organizations throughout their lifetime…
Amid the ongoing partial U.S. government shutdown, social media is dominated by images of airports in chaos. Security lines are stretching into airport parking garages. Wait times are hours long. More and more travelers are outright missing their flights due to the delays.On paper, the solution is clear: restore funding to the TSA to get agents paid again and back into airports. But President Donald Trump had a different idea that’s gone into effect as of Monday: send ICE agents into airports instead.The partial shutdown began when the Department of Homeland Security’s funding lapsed on February 14, with Democrats refusing…
Key Takeaways Meyer launched her jewelry brand Spicy Dan, know for its bold beading and carabiner claps, in 2023. In the beginning, she sold mostly to family and friends; that changed with a viral TikTok moment. Meyer continues to scale Spicy Dan with a small team and strategic collaborations. This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Danielle Meyer, the New York-based founder of jewelry brand Spicy Dan. Meyer officially launched her business in 2023; now, the brand is on track for $2.5 million this year. Here’s how she did it. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.…
As return-to-office mandates tighten, many workers are reckoning what life in a cubicle looks like. If it’s up to the Swiss furniture and design firm Vitra, your next cubicle might not look much like a cubicle at all.Vitra partnered with German industrial designer Konstantin Grcic to create Scout, a family of minimalist office furniture built to adapt to the flexible ways people work today. Launched on March 19, Scout is comprised of five pieces that range in sizes, offering stationary and mobile workspaces with customizable options for workplaces and schools.Konstantin Grcic [Photo: courtesy Vitra]The tables feature trapezoidal desks that have…
If you pick up plastic trash from a beach, you’re helping protect marine wildlife from harm. And every little piece—from a plastic bottle cap to food wrappers—matters, because even small amounts of this trash can be deadly to animals like sea turtles and seabirds.A new calculator from Ocean Conservancy can now quantify that impact. If you enter the amounts of different types of plastic that you clean up into the Wildlife Impact Calculator, it will tell you how many animal lives would have been at risk, had those items made their way into the ocean and been ingested.“We hope that…
President Donald Trump on Monday extended his deadline for Iran to reopen the crucial Strait of Hormuz to international shipping, saying the U.S. would hold off on strikes against Iranian power plants for five days.Shortly after Trump made the announcement on his Truth Social site, Iranian state television put up a graphic that read: “U.S. president backs down following Iran’s firm warning.” The reprieve came hours ahead of Trump’s self-imposed deadline later in the day.Writing in all capital letters, Trump said the U.S. and Iran have had “very good and productive conversations” that could yield “a complete and total resolution”…
Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. When Valerie Oswalt became CEO of breakfast and snack products company Kodiak in November 2022, she inherited a fast-growing business with beloved products, dedicated employees, and an outdoorsy vibe, befitting its Park City, Utah, headquarters. She also walked into a company that needed to bolster the talent, tools, and systems needed to scale the company. Her challenge: bring the discipline and knowledge she’d acquired during leadership stints at consumer packaged goods (CPG) giants such…
Published March 23, 2026 03:54AMA vivid comet could soon adorn the evening sky. If it survives its early April approach toward the sun, the cosmic orb could even become visible to the naked eye, and possibly as bright as Venus.Yet a lot has to go right for this to happen, and astronomers are crossing their fingers that it does because Comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS) is a special type of snowball. It’s known as a sungrazer, a term used for any comet that gets especially close to the sun (within 850,000 miles). Comet MAPS, named for a group of French astronomers…