Pop-A-Lock - March 2021

IS BIG FACE COFFEE COMING TO YOU?

opening my coffee shop. Right now, I’m charging 20 bucks a cup. So, if you want some, come through.” It’s true — a cup coffee from Big Face costs $20, whether players ordered a size large or small, a pour-over, or a cafe au lait. As Food & Wine magazine put it, “His prices make Starbucks look like a little kid’s lemonade stand.” The story started out as a funny riff for the media, who asked questions like, “How on Earth is he making steamed milk with a French press?” But last September, things got serious. First, Butler filed more than $4,000 worth of trademark applications to protect the name “Big Face Coffee,” its slogan “No I.O.U.s,” and future Big Face apparel, including everything from hats to coffee beans. Then in December, rumors started flying that Butler had offered his teammate Bam Adebayo a stake in Big Face for a cool $2.5 million.

According to Heat Nation, Adebayo turned down the offer, but now that he’s gotten a significant pay raise (he’ll make more than $200 million over the next five years), that could change. “And who knows, if Adebayo comes on board, we could be talking multiple locations,” writes Zac Cadwalader of Sprudge. “A Big Face Coffee on the corner of every hotel floor in the 2021 playoff bubble. Just think, you could meet your special someone at a Big Face Coffee.” Big Face Coffee beans could soon be headed to a store or website near you. In the meantime, though, you’ll have to be content with making a $20 cup of coffee on your own French press, a la Butler’s Miami hotel room. Visit CoffeeHow.co/French- Press-Coffee for a guide to making the perfect cup.

Last year’s NBA bubble, formed to combat the threat of COVID-19 infection, brought the world a year’s worth of entertainment — and a new coffee shop. That’s right: When the bubble rose at Walt Disney World in July 2020, Miami Heat all-star forward Jimmy Butler saw its bad coffee as a business opportunity. He opened Big Face Coffee and started pedaling cups from his hotel room.

“I’m working on my coffee skills,” Butler told ESPN at the time. “After my career, I’m

Trading Fast Fashion for Thrifted Threads How Poshmark and thredUP Captured Fashion-Minded Millennials

There might have been a time when buying secondhand clothes was a sign of poverty. Today, however, more and more shoppers are buying used clothes because they’re cheaper and it’s an eco-friendlier way to get the best brands. Several retailers, both brick and mortar and online, have capitalized on this trend — though maybe none as well as thredUP and Poshmark. The world’s largest online consignment and thrift store is now thredUP. Since it was founded in 2009, millions of people have mailed in their clothes to thredUP’s distribution centers, and the company has found new homes for over 65 million pieces of clothing. Poshmark captures the same fashion zeitgeist as thredUP but in a different way. On Poshmark, people can sell their used clothes to buyers directly. Sellers, sometimes called “Poshers,” pay a small fee for every item they sell out of their “closet.” To date, 60 million Poshers actively sell their used threads on the site. Both sites offer the convenience of online shopping for used and recycled clothing, but that’s not the only reason they’ve become more popular. According to Newsweek, 73% of millennials said that climate

change was personally important to them. Every item bought is an item kept out of landfills (notorious for producing methane, a noxious greenhouse gas), which makes buying thrifted items more appealing to young people. With its slogan “Have More, Waste Less,” thredUP has taken advantage of this trend. It also doesn’t hurt that both sites are great places to find name-brand clothing at deep discounts. Both Poshmark and thredUP also benefit from empowering their customers to use their sites to connect with others from wherever they are. Because it allows people to connect directly, Poshmark works as a social network and can be just as addicting as Facebook or Twitter. And, just like a lot of online businesses, both sites have enjoyed tremendous growth because they are accessible from home, where most people have spent a majority of their time during the pandemic. Nevertheless, with everything else they have going for them, the success of these online retailers is sure to continue.

2 WWW.POPALOCKKY.COM

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