by Sarah Fazio Dark green Control FreakSM that I am, I appreciate that my utility bills show my home usage relative to past months and also my neighbors’ numbers. Each month, the bills raise questions from the mundane (did I leave a basement light on all month?) to the existential (do my neighbors, perhaps, enjoy [...]
Posted in Consumers, Green
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Tagged Iconoculture, Iconowatch, Consumer trends, Sarah Fazio, Green monitoring, BP oil spill, Utility bills, Quant Analyzer, Sustainability, Dark green
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by Raya Jewell WHAT’S HAPPENING Spike Your Juice gives consumers a buzz to call their own. Getting started as a fermenting master requires a Spike Your Juice kit, 72 ounces of juice, and only 48 hours of time. Consumers add a magical powder to any juice (pomegranate or cranberry are recommended), then let it sit [...]
by Nissa Hanna WHAT’S HAPPENING A nasty rash? A suspicious bump? There are some things shoppers don’t want to share with their pharmacists. Costco is installing health and wellness kiosks in Ontario stores so customers can have private sessions (ChainDrugReview.com 6.2.10). Created by Portland-based company Aisle 7, the interactive kiosks allow consumers to self-educate on [...]
Posted in Consumers, Health, Retail
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Tagged Iconoculture, Iconowatch, Consumer trends, Nissa Hanna, health education, Costco pharmacy, Healthcare kiosk, Consumer MD, Aisle 7, Health retail
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by Lisa Parks WHAT’S HAPPENING Breaking into fashion can be difficult, but one designer is getting her colorfully customized foot in the door by taking her urban designs straight to the public. Erica Purnell, 28, is the creator of Pink Eye Fashions, a sneaker and apparel customization company based in Brooklyn. Purnell began redesigning shoes [...]
Posted in Consumer Trend, Fashion
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Tagged Iconoculture, Iconowatch, Consumer trends, customized clothing, Lisa Parks, Pink Eye Fashions, Erica Purnell, Customized shoes, Hip-Hop Honors, Airbrushed apparel
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WHAT’S HAPPENING Free Web application Avoidr puts a snarky spin on the location-based services scene by acknowledging that sometimes knowing where not to go is the primary objective (DownloadSquad.com 4.19.10). Built off of traditional LBS network Foursquare, Avoidr cheekily promises consumers the ability to “check where your not-friends are so you can avoid them.” Consumers [...]
Posted in Consumer Trend, Social Media
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Tagged Millennials, Social networking, Iconoculture, Iconowatch, Consumer trends, Rob van Alstyne, social media, Location-based services, Foursquare, Avoidr, Frenemies
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When it comes to my youngest daughter, Alicia, I’m a soft touch. So when the driver of her clique’s post-high-school-graduation roadtrip flaked, good old Dad gassed up for the long, boring ride from L.A. to San Francisco. Experience has taught me that the best way to avoid “Are we there yet?” syndrome is to keep [...]
by Abelardo de la Peña Jr. WHAT’S HAPPENING Trying to stretch an allowance is challenging enough for high school students. At three New York City-area high schools’ student-run banks, money management is something to learn, teach others and put to use. Harlem’s Thurgood Marshall Academy for Learning and Social Change, where the majority of students [...]
Posted in Latino, Money/Spending
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Tagged Iconoculture, Iconowatch, Consumer trends, Abelardo de la Peña Jr., Latino youth, Capital One, Thurgood Marshall Academy for Learning and Social Change, Student-Run Branch, Consumer finance, Unbanked, Underbanked
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by Sarah Barker WHAT’S HAPPENING Hoping to excise tedious and expensive trips to the ER, Summit Orthopedics of Woodbury, MN, opened the extended-hour OrthoQUICK clinic to treat breaks, tears, sprains and other bone and joint injuries (OrthoQuick.com 6.10). For consumers, the usual drill has been to rush to the ER for traumatic injury and subsequently [...]
by Charlotte Beal WHAT’S HAPPENING In a recent blog post for TheAtlantic.com, Lesley Freeman Riva wrote about a phenomenon she calls Foodiephobia: When Friends Fear Feeding You (5.26.10). Freeman Riva describes how she happily entertains (and cooks for) friends at her house, but then she began to notice that people rarely reciprocate. Finally, some of [...]
by Hans Eisenbeis WHAT’S HAPPENING The toll of financial illiteracy — and even more fundamentally, math illiteracy — can be staggering. A June 2010 study by Columbia University researchers found a direct correlation between a lack of simple math skills and foreclosure rates (NYTimes.com 6.9.10). Economists found that about 16% of surveyed consumers could not [...]
by Jeff Yang Two months ago, I visited Shanghai for the unveiling of the World Expo, an event that some have dismissed as a vanity theme park for the masses — EPCOT on steroids. That glib critique misses the Expo’s larger message. Like the 2008 Beijing Olympics, it’s the latest in China’s attempts to assert [...]
by Abelardo de la Peña Jr. WHAT’S HAPPENING Not all familias hungering for children’s books in Spanish have access to the library. But chances are, they do have a phone. That’s why Pennsylvania’s Berks County Library System is collaborating with Kutztown University for a free call-in service connecting families with recordings of Spanish-language children’s stories [...]
by Nissa Hanna WHAT’S HAPPENING Carcinogenic clock radios, endocrine-disrupting food storage containers, radiation from the WiFi… Some consumers are getting the feeling that home can be a dangerous place. Healthy Dwellings is helping them spot health offenders and remedy the situation (NYTimes.com 5.26.10). For a $375 fee, the service will send a building biology consultant [...]
by Tory Davis WHAT’S HAPPENING A fisherman’s collective on Tokyo Bay, Japan, has taken sales into their own, um, nets. Each day they post photos of the catch online; consumers scroll through, click “buy,” and the bounty is delivered to the buyer’s home the same day (Asiajin.com 4.27.10). As the fish and shellfish is caught, [...]
Posted in Consumer Trend, Food/Beverage
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Tagged Iconoculture, Iconowatch, Consumer trends, Tory Davis, Fisherman's collective, Online fish market, Fish brokers, Seafood auction market, Consumer Supported Fisheries, Tokyo Bay
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by Hans Eisenbeis WHAT’S HAPPENING Blippy pioneered the idea of tweeting all of its members’ credit card transactions. Now Piggymojo turns that idea on its head by allowing members to broadcast their thriftiness. Using text messages and Twitter, Piggymojo members can tell the world that they brownbagged lunch or drank office coffee for a small [...]
Posted in Consumer Trend, Money/Spending, Social Media
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Tagged Social networking, Iconoculture, Iconowatch, Hans Eisenbeis, Consumer trends, Great Recession, Piggymojo, Blippy, Social saving, Consumer savings, New normal
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