Weekend Digest: The Revolutionary Socks Edition

TV PREVIEW: SENS. BOOZMAN AND COTTON
This week on Talk Business & Politics, which airs Sundays at 9 a.m. on KATV Channel 7:

Running for re-election in 2016, Sen. John Boozman joins us from Washington, D.C. for his take on Iran, Cuba and Donald Trump. Plus, Sen. Tom Cotton, who has a different take on some of those issues, also is our guest. The state’s two U.S. Senators are on-camera for two one-on-one interviews.

On the business front, Arkansas’ housing market is improving. But how solid are the gains and are they likely to hold up? We’ll go inside the numbers for a closer look. And, we’ll round up a week’s worth of business and politics as well as preview our five new industry microsites.

Tune in to Talk Business & Politics Sunday at 9 a.m. on KATV Channel 7.

WHY ONE MAN DITCHED HIS BANK
A writer for Business Insider posts, “I spent the first two weeks of this month ignoring my conventional Capital One checking account. Instead, I did all my banking through a company called Simple.”

Before we get into what Simple is, let’s be clear on what it is not.

Although Simple is designed to replace your bank (and does so quite well, I argue), it’s not a proper bank itself. Your money sits in FDIC-insured accounts maintained by Simple’s banking partners, but this is distinctly separate from what Simple really is — a company that provides free tools for checking your balance, depositing checks, tagging and categorizing your purchases, and even sending paper checks through the mail at no cost.

So what is Simple and why is this user “never going back” to his bank again?  Find out at this link.

REVOLUTIONARY SOCKS
That’s right we’re talking plain ole everyday socks and a company that raised $86 million to revolutionize “the tired, boring world of socks.”

Six years in, Stance still only makes socks; despite a legion of avid fans, it isn’t (yet) a household name. But the company has attracted $86 million in funding, including a $50 million series C in March and initial investment from celebrities like Will Smith and Dwyane Wade, and signed a deal in April as the NBA’s official on-court sock.

Famous fans include LeBron James and Rihanna — in fact, a RiRi-designed line is on its way — and the brand has a cohort of influential ambassadors dubbed “Punks and Poets,” some with their own Stance sock designs, which includes athletes and artists like Allen Iverson, Santigold, skater Andrew Reynolds, and rock trio Haim. In a startup world crazy with competition to find a niche, Stance’s founders realized theirs was hiding in plain sight.

So what’s so special about these socks and what about the “lab environment where you could innovate on a platform like socks,” the company’s founders wanted?

Go to this link to read a story that, well, might knock your socks off.

A ONE YEAR SHOPPING BAN
How could a personal finance writer have a credit card debt of almost $20,000?  Shocking as that seems, that’s exactly what happened to Canadian Cait Flanders.

Student loans accounted for $4,500 CAD ($3,600 USD), but as for the rest?

“I don’t have a great answer for it. I just lived a lifestyle I couldn’t afford,” she says.

She wasn’t even a big shopper, and her rent, at $1,100 CAD ($870 USD), is below average for her city. It was mostly just inattention to her finances: “If my friends were going to dinner, I never wanted to say no. So even if that meant going out to dinner every day of the week, I said yes.”

“She started a blog, Blonde on a Budget, which now gets about 30,000 readers monthly, and after two years of scrimping — one haircut, no travel, no dining out, putting as much as 55% of her monthly income toward her debt — she was debt-free.”

But that’s not the end of the story. Flanders still wasn’t saving enough even on her more austere budget. A month later, she embarked upon a year-long shopping ban.

So how do you “successfully complete a year-long shopping ban?”

Click here for the rules.

YOU CAN RUN A GREAT TV CAMPAIGN WITHOUT TV
“Say that again,” you may ask. And that’s what we thought when we saw this story line. So what gives?

Marketers are projected to spend about $79 billion on TV advertising this year, so clearly many recognize it as an effective medium to reach consumers. However, some might be missing the big picture.

While TV remains a prestige buy for advertisers and the Super Bowl in particular keeps a popular hold on the advertising world’s imagination, TV is fast becoming just another medium. Soon it won’t even be the biggest.

“For a startup looking across the landscape of media options, TV doesn’t make a lot of sense. Unless you’ve got millions to waste – which no one does anymore – you’d be best off leaving TV to established brands.”

So what’s the alternative? Click on this link for a “quick and fairly cheap” answer.

CONFEDERATE REVIEW
The Washington Post reports this past week that Speaker Boehner has called for a review of Confederate symbols and memorabilia.

This of course is in the wake of the tragic shootings at a black church in South Carolina and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley signing legislation to remove the Confederate battle flag that has flown on the state’s capitol grounds since 1961.

The furor over the flag rippled through the halls of Congress on Thursday when House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) called for a review of Confederate symbols and memorabilia, which is likely to include those on display in the Capitol.

Boehner was forced to halt consideration of a government funding measure after it became engulfed by the Confederate flag controversy and whether it was appropriate to display the flags at national cemeteries where Confederate soldiers are buried.

The dispute pitted Southern conservatives who asserted that the tradition was part of their heritage against members of the Congressional Black Caucus who view the flag as a symbol of slavery and oppression.

For more on this story, go to this link. Plus, this read from The New York Times on the Confederate flag also generated a lot of web traffic this week.

BERNIE SANDERS HAS A SECRET
POLITICO magazine posts this story about Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders – “Vermont, his son and the hungry early years that made him the surging socialist he is today.”

One morning last month in Burlington, Vermont, at the law office of John Franco, one of Bernie Sanders’ best friends since the 1970s, Franco talked to me at length about Sanders’ commitment and his consistency and his charisma.

Even at the beginning of Sanders’ career, he said, four decades before he started packing arenas in college towns and liberal havens as a renegade 73-year-old self-described socialist taking on Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Democratic Party establishment, “people didn’t want him to stop talking.” He talked about how Sanders “completely changed the political culture” in Vermont. He talked about how Sanders’ surprising current surge in national polls is “validation.”

“It’s always been this way with Sanders. The issues. The issues. Stick to the issues. The rich are too rich. Those with power have too much. The middle class is withering. Inequality is a crisis, and the system is rigged. With Sanders, what you see is what you get, insist the people who know him the best – and that’s almost all you get.”

But if his positions are well known, the person, it turns out, is less known.

So what about the person, the “radical agitator” from the 60’s and 70’s who became a congressman and then U.S. Senator?

What are his secrets? Follow this link for the full story.

TRUMP’S TROUBLES
In the wake of the fallout from Donald Trump’s blistering comments about Mexican immigrants, POLITICO reports, “Politics is the least of his worries; it’s his brand that’s taking a beating.”

Two months ago, Donald Trump was at least palatable. A silly, yet tolerable, mogul, he was, for what it’s worth, an icon of American excess, with his gold-plated penthouse, his TRUMP-emblazoned private jet, his expensive golf clubs, his spray-tanned beauty pageant contestants; he even had his own tag line, courtesy of prime-time TV.

But by Thursday afternoon Trump appeared to have jumped the shark of his own self-indulgence, thanks to his inflammatory comments about Mexican immigrants. And now the fallout might not hurt him only politically: Trump’s big plans for an over-the-top Washington hotel are also crumbling before his famously squinty eyes, along with the gilded name brand he he has spent so many years polishing.

Abandoned by two celebrity chefs, José Andrés and Geoffrey Zakarian, for his $200 million, Pennsylvania Avenue property, which is slated to open next year, Trump is now fighting with both of them after they abandoned the Trump Organization ship, along with more than a dozen corporate sponsors and business partners.

Could his presidential aspirations have to take a back seat as his empire crumbles around him?

Go to this link for an in-depth look at Trump’s troubles even as he “appeared to step up his anti-immigrant campaign with his Twitter account.”

NEW STAR WARS SPIN-OFF SERIES IN WORKS
Fortune reports, “The first film in the new Star Wars franchise isn’t even out yet, and already details are emerging about more of them.”

On Tuesday, The Hollywood Reporter wrote that Christopher Miller and Phil Lord, the duo that directed The Lego Movie, are working on a Han Solo origin film set to be released in 2018 as part of the Star Wars anthology series.

Disney, which bought LucasFilm in 2012 for $4 billion, confirmed the movie, in a statement with comments from the directors: “We pledge ourselves to be faithful stewards of these characters who mean so much to us,” said Miller and Lord.

Warp to this link to learn more about this “standalone anthology series” and when the first episode will come out.

JOHN GLENN SOUNDS OFF ON TEACHING EVOLUTION IN SCHOOLS
The first American astronaut to orbit the Earth and former U.S. Senator told Fox News “he sees no contradiction between believing in God and believing in evolution.”

John Glenn, who declared as a 77-year-old in a news conference from space that “to look out at this kind of creation out here and not believe in God is to me impossible,” says facts about scientific discovery should be taught in schools – and that includes evolution.

The astronaut, now 93 with fading eyesight and hearing, said in a recent interview that he sees no contradiction between believing in God and believing in evolution.

For more on Glenn’s comments, and the possible political reason behind why the American hero never flew in space again, go to this link.

LOOK OUT THEY’RE HERE!
Google’s self-driving cars that is. Fortune says, “Google’s computer-driven cars will debut on the public streets of northern California this summer,” according to the director of Google’s self-driving car project Chris Urmson.

Capped at 25 miles per hour (or 40 kilometers per hour), the cars will not be flying entirely solo just yet. They’ll have people on board and ready to take the wheel — a removable steering wheel, as well as gas and brake pedals – should the occasion call for it.

“That fleet has logged nearly a million autonomous miles on the roads since we started the project, and recently has been self-driving about 10,000 miles a week,” Urmson writes on the company blog. “So the new prototypes already have lots of experience to draw on — in fact, it’s the equivalent of about 75 years of typical American adult driving experience.”

Jump in and take a ride to learn more here.