On this episode of The Reboot Chronicles, beauty health and wellness industry leader Joel Palix joins me to discuss the brand and shopping “Jungle” consumers are faced with. Over the years, Joel has been a game-changer across various industry sectors including beauty, wellness, fashion, luxury, and premium service brands. His experience has led him to advise brands, startups, and private equity funds, with this he founded  Palix Unlimited a boutique consultancy. Prior, Joel served as CEO of Feel Unique, a cool e-commerce brand selling various inclusive beauty brands ranging from skincare and fragrance to cosmetics and supplements—and is currently run by CEO, Sarah Miles.

Beauty Is A Jungle

The beauty industry is really like a jungle, as Joel explains. There are so many ingredients, claims, products, and brands, that it is overwhelming for consumers. This has led to  beauty tech solutions that help consumers navigate the jungle of choices, with personalized  diagnostics and pinpointed product  recommendations. Providing consumers personalized search for products and the option to receive assistance as needed, is becoming a preferred combination of human touch and tech.  Consumers no longer need to deal with human intervention, and can virtually try on and buy products.Revieve is a prime example, making it simple for consumers to virtually try on and buy products, through simple selfie-based solutions, in partnership with retailers, brands, ecommerce and social platforms.

The travel and leisure industry has been devastated in 2020. I invited my friend, colleague and digital thought leader, Atif Rafiq President at MGM Resorts International on the Reboot Chronicles to explore how he is helping to reboot Vegas and the global hospitality industry.

Over the years, Atif has worn a variety of hats as an exec. at Amazon, McDonald’s, and Volvo. Now, at the $14 billion dollar Fortune 300 company, Atif has a full plate overseeing marketing, sales, revenue management, direct marketing, digital products, IT, and business and corporate development. Additional key components include rebooting MGM's growth strategies including business models, customer experiences and commercial approaches. Bringing a diversity of experience, Afit describes his career pivot as “an art as much as it is a science”, with an evolving toolkit of tips you can use when rebooting your organization

Pivoting Your Culture and Taking Flight

On this episode of the Reboot Chronicles, we take a trip down memory lane with Robert Pasin, CEO of Radio Flyer, and explore why brave leaders are needed to reboot their organization's People, Platform and Passion.

Humble Beginnings

Radio Flyer was founded in 1917 by Robert’s grandfather, Antonio, an Italian immigrant who moved to America,  at the age of sixteen, searching for a better life. The young entrepreneur found work in Chicago and eventually opened a shop to continue the family carpentry tradition. His work began with furniture and cabinets and shifted to wagons after Antonio built one  to haul around his tools. This bit of serendipity eventually pivoted the shop into creating the iconic red wagon, which grew in popularity over the decades, and became a part of American history.

Engaging iPhone Kids

Through ethnographic research, Robert's team observed what people like and don’t like about existing  toys and created white-spaces to make them better, like creating longer-lasting battery-operated children's cars. This discovery led them to partner with Tesla to create a lithium-ion battery-powered mini Tesla for kids. This very cool car Platform,  is just like an actual Tesla, and allows for customizing the car's color, license plate, and allows for a phone or mp3 player plugin. Nowadays, children are drawn to devices rather than playing outside. Children spend only ten minutes a day on average compared  to approximately five hours a day using electronic devices. Radio Flyer combats this and brings innovation and fun toys for kids to use their imagination while riding in style.

Join Dean 迪恩 DeBiase and Author & CEO at OutThinker, Kaihan Krippendorff – Strategy and Innovation Speaker, business strategist, keynote speaker, former McKinsey consultant, and author of four business strategy books, for a discussion about Rebooting Companies: The new challenges in technology and strategy.

Named “one of the most creative and brilliant business minds of our time” by Forbes, Salesforce’s Global Innovation Evangelist, best-selling author, keynoter and futurist Brian Solis joined me for a fun episode on The Reboot Chronicles.

Over the years, Brian has immersed himself in mastering business market disruption, society and the future in a digital anthropologist role. Now working at the $17 billion dollar giant Salesforce, analyzing trends and technologies to gain new perspectives, he has no shortage of insights to share in and around digital transformation, innovation, cognitive experiences and human behavior.

Who Moved My Playbook?

The 2020 pandemic will have a lasting impact on all of our businesses, some permanently! It seems that most everyone is struggling to figure out their next steps without a Playbook. Brian labels it the Novel Economy, with a new normal that, in my opinion, is too new, too foreign and way too unusual for society. And, since we don't have a current Playbook, many of us are searching for the best way to re-establish forward momentum in our lives and organizations, including what specific steps to take and how to re-invent most everything.

I recently spoke with Carl Martin Lindahl, CEO of SVP Worldwide, on an episode of The Reboot Chronicles about how millennials are driving the company’s growth, what the latest technological advancements are in sewing and what new opportunities lie ahead for the company in terms of innovation and partnership.

SVP Worldwide is the world’s largest consumer sewing machine company and home of the legendary SINGER®, HUSQVARNA VIKING and PFAFF® sewing machine brands. Through their innovation and pioneering of offerings in the Internet-of-Things (IoT) segment, SVP Worldwide has helped make sewing today not only bigger and better but also higher-tech than ever before.

Millennials are Making Sewing Trendier Than Ever

According to an industry report, the sewing market is growing at a steady rate and surprisingly much of this growth is coming from millennials. “During the coronavirus lock-down, we have seen an explosion in growth - people have gotten into sewing to the extent that we had not anticipated at all,” says Lindahl.

The 2020 shortage of everything from boats to bicycles has extended into sewing machines, according to CNN. He says millennials are accounting for about 65% of the total growth of the industry on a global basis. According to Lindahl, there are multiple trends driving this growth among the demographic:

Upcycling. Lindahl believes that sewing can reach the level of art, or be a form of recessionary self-expression for consumers, especially Comic-Con attendees, who are willing to spend $500 dollars on a costume. Lindahl believes that the upcycling trend is primarily responsible for attracting customers, particularly those who are very conscious about sustainability, the environment and reuse.

Home Entertainment. Children who have been locked down during the pandemic are also now finding a way to learn how to sew with parents teaching their kids how to sew.

Urgent Care. Lindahl says sewing market growth was also driven by the increased demand for facemasks, respirator covers and the desire of consumers to donate to local healthcare systems.

He states in support of this SVP has donated thousands of machines to help consumers and local non-profit organizations. “We are donating sewing machines directly to hospitals and organizations to help sew face masks, gowns, respirator covers, and other PPE. We are in a unique position to help during this challenging time," says Lindahl

On this episode of The Reboot Chronicles, industry veteran Stirling Murray, CEO of Red Tree, the UK's leading international brand consultancy, joined me to discuss the challenges facing the global health, beauty and wellness industries.

Deep Roots

Stirling’s roots are deep in the beauty industry, having worked for copious companies, including Unilever, Estee Lauder, and Chanel globally. Red Tree is one of the top action-oriented consultancy groups that provides strategic advisement to a mix of large and startup brands, and the group also manages certain brands in specific regions around the world. He calls it “country managers” managing brands internationally, a new gig-economy type service that I think most startups and many large companies, across sectors will be considering in the 20's.

On this episode of The Reboot Chronicles, I took a look at startup Atolla, a custom skincare subscription company created by Co-Founder and CEO Meghan Maupin to dive into the insights of AI in skincare data and technology.

Meghan, an MIT graduate, created Atolla to target customer skincare concerns at a very personalized level. Her background lies in design, mass customization, 3D printing, and manufacturing. During her time at MIT, she struggled to take care of her skin and figure out the best products to target her skincare needs. With her creative background, she assembled a team where she and her fellow co-founders tackled skincare concerns through design, data science, and dermatology. After graduating, she began working with her team to build the technology, secure a patent to apply to their custom formulation process, and eventually launch in 2019. Atolla sales have skyrocketed, reaching more consumers, and increasing revenue monthly.

On this episode of Reboot Chronicles I had a no BS conversation with Rishad Tobaccowala on how we can stay human in the data-driven age, and what it means to be human in light of all the technology and data that’s flying around us. Named by Business Week as one of the top business leaders and top five marketing innovator by TIME, Rishad uncovers insightful secrets in his book Restoring the Soul of Business: Staying Human in the Age of Data about how balancing the analytical and intuitive sides of business can lead to increased profitability and even joy!

As most of us have plunged deeper and deeper into digital-data-driven worlds, the power of originality, storytelling and genuine human connections has never been more critical. But as data has become more available and we are more depended on it, common sense and empathy have often been discounted with negative results. So I wanted to know: how do we stay human in the age of data and can CEOs actually reboot or restore the soul of their businesses?

"I have been fascinated by the amount of innovation happening in the food and beverage sectors by big corporations and startups around the world. I invited Ellie Rubenstein a friend and CEO of a new private equity group, Manna Tree Partners, for an episode of The Reboot Chronicles to discuss the future of food and the importance of private equity and venture investing in the next-gen of human health."