The Best One Yet
👔 “Chrome Collar Jobs” — AI Agent workforce. Bachan’s viral BBQ. Urban Outfitters’ all-time-high.
Thu, 29 May 2025
Anthropic’s CEO says White Collar jobs will disappear in 5 years… so we’ll tell you how to prepare for the Chrome Collar workforce.The best-selling BBQ sauce in America is Japanese…. We got Bachan’s secret biz recipe.Urban Outfitters’ stock just hit an all-time high… because it beat Rent The Runway.Plus, the hot new investing strategy is T.A.C.O… Trump Always Chickens Out (we’ll explain).$URBN $CRM $KHCWant more business storytelling from us? Check out the latest episode of our new weekly deepdive show: The untold origin story of… Heinz Ketchup 🍅Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinks to listen.TBOY Live Show Tickets to Chicago on sale NOW: https://www.axs.com/events/949346/the-best-one-yet-podcast-ticketsAbout Us: The daily pop-biz news show making today’s top stories your business. Formerly known as Robinhood Snacks, TBOY Lite is hosted by Jack Crivici-Kramer & Nick Martell.GET ON THE POD: Submit a shoutout or fact: https://tboypod.com/shoutouts NEWSLETTER:https://tboypod.com/newsletter SOCIALS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tboypod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tboypodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tboypod Anything else: https://tboypod.com/ Our 2nd show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What are Chrome Collar Jobs?
I have an encyclopedic memory. I know, I know. Jack, it was the episode we did on Urban Outfitters selling iPods at their store. Oh, the 20 year old, like original iPod. Yeah, that was at Urban Outfitters. Well, Yeti's Urban Outfitters is back on the pod. Urban is like Abercrombie, but instead of cologne. They sell candles. They're Philadelphia-based. They own anthropology and free people.
In fact, Urban Outfitters is their smallest brand by sales. And yet, across all the urban stores, you can buy vinyl records, incense, and an $120 pair of jeans with holes in it. And here's the surprise news, Jack. Urban just announced record sales. That's right. Urban announced $1.3 billion in revenue last quarter, which is up 11% from last year.
Tariffs? Schmariffs.
Management thinks that tariffs will shave just 0.2 percentage points from profits this year. That was shocking. So the edgy apparel company stocks soared 25%. They're now at an all-time high. Their $7 billion valuation is nearly as high as The Gap and nearly twice as valuable as Abercrombie & Fitch. And the newest thing at Urban is pretty interesting. It's a concept called on rotation.
It's basically a new store within a store concept at Urban Outfitters. Okay, so what would that look like, Jack? At some Urban Outfitters, there's going to be a little section dedicated to a different brand. And the inaugural different brand is actually Nike. Yeah, Nike is renting space inside urban stores to get Gen Z to finally care about Air Jordans.
But the standout performer for Urban Outfitters wasn't candle, vinyl, or pre-ripped $120 jeans. No, no, no, no, no. It wasn't even a physical product. No, the standout item at Urban Outfitters was subscription revenue? We're not talking about Urban Plus. No. We're talking about Nuuly, which Urban Outfitters launched in 2019. It's a clothing rental business.
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Chapter 2: How did Urban Outfitters achieve record profits?
Basically, you get six new items from Urban Outfitters every month for 98 bucks. You send the six items back at the end of the month and then pick six new items for the month ahead. Newly is Urban's clothing rental service, and Newly has doubled its user base in three straight years. They now have 380,000 active subscribers.
But the wild part for Jack and I, Newly is now running away from the competition, literally. Rent the Runway has only one-third as many users as Newly does. I'm sorry, Jack. Pause the pod. We got to repeat this. Rent the Runway. invented the entire clothing rental concept 16 years ago. But now Newly is the unquestioned leader after just six years. And besties, here's the drama.
Unlike Rent the Runway, Newly is solidly profitable. Wow. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Urban Outfitters? Urban invented a new rare species, the profitable loss leader. Yetis, unlike Rent the Runway, which must rent out clothing profitably because that's its only business, Nuuly could lose money and that's okay for Urban.
Like a free sample at Costco, Nuuly is a $98 a month sample of Urban's brands. So as long as Nuuly got people to buy more Urban outfit or clothing, it didn't matter if Nuuly itself lost money on the subscriptions. But that's not what happened. Newly was able to raise prices by $12 a month last year, and yet demand only grew.
In fact, in 2024, Newly achieved a full year of profits while also boosting sales of the other Urban Outfitters divisions. So Newly is like a lost llama in the sense that it drives the sales of the other divisions. Right, right, right, right. But it doesn't lose money. It's profitable. What you're saying, Jack, is that Urban Outfitters has invented a new species. The profitable lost llama.
Like a centaur, it's half man, half horse. It's half profits, half losses. For our second story, the CEO of Anthropic just said AI will take half of all white-collar jobs within five years. If true, unemployment would spike to as high as 20%. So we're unpacking the truth and the timing. And we're introducing a new concept we call chrome-collar jobs.
Yetis, everyone talks about ChatGPT, which must be really annoying if you're Anthropic. So true. So true. Anthropic is a huge and valuable AI company also. They have Claude, which is the number two AI chatbot. Basically, Claude is the Luigi to OpenAI's Mario. The Garfunkel to its Simon. Jack the Goose to its Maverick, if you will.
And this San Francisco-based company, Anthropic, is led by Dario Amadei. And he said something scary this week. That's right. He said Dario was blunt in his interview with Axios, saying AI will take half of all white-collar jobs. He said that the unemployment rate will rise from 4.5% today... to 10 to 20% within one to five years.
Yeah, Jack and I heard those words, and it is dark, it is freaky, it is dire, but Amadei says it's the truth, and society needs to face it so it can plan for a transition. How would all that happen? How would this mass replacement of human workers happen, Nick? Well, it would happen, Jack, with AI agents, which are basically computer windows that do work.
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Chapter 3: What is Bachan's BBQ sauce and its business story?
But chrome-collar workers, which are AI agents, will do the work on computers. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for everybody who just peed their pants a tiny bit? Tech leaders tend to be right about what happens, but wrong about when. Yetis, when the internet started booming in the 1990s, tech leaders predicted it would change the world. And the internet did eventually change the world. It did.
Tech leaders were just off by like 10 or 15 years. So we got the dot-com bubble in the meantime. Another recent example of this, Elon Musk is famously right with his predictions, but he's infamously wrong with the timing of them. So when an anthropic CEO says that AI will replace half of white-collar workers within one to five years, we take that seriously.
But we take the timing with a huge grain of salt. And if we have more time, then maybe both Dario and Sam could both be right. Right, good point, Jack. AI could replace half of white-collar jobs, but we'd have enough time that humans would find better jobs. So besties, the way Jack and I see it, tech leaders tend to be right about what happens, but wrong about when it happens.
Every big moment starts with a big dream. But what happens when that big dream turns out to be a big flop? From Wondery and At Will Media, I'm Misha Brown, and this is The Big Flop. Every week, comedians join me to chronicle the biggest flubs, fails, and blunders of all time, like Quibi. It's kind of like when you give yourself your own nickname and you try to, like, get other people to do it.
and the 2019 movie adaptation of Cats.
Like, if I'm watching the dancing and I'm noticing the feet aren't touching the ground, there's something wrong with the movie.
Find out what happens when massive hype turns into major fiasco. Enjoy The Big Flop on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to The Big Flop early and ad-free on Wondery+. Get started with your free trial at wondery.com slash plus.
For our third and final story, the biggest barbecue sauce in America is a Japanese barbecue sauce, and it's called Bichon's. Bichon's barbecue secret sauce to success? It was not getting labeled as an international food. Now, Jack, we should point out, full disclosure, you and I have explored a fair variety of barbecue spots together, have we not, my friend?
Because you take birthdays very seriously.
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Chapter 4: What is the T.A.C.O. investing strategy?
Chapter 5: How will AI agents change the job market?
You had a theme for like a dozen years. I don't think it's still ongoing. It's still ongoing. But every year, every year, we would go to a different barbecue joint for Nick's birthday party. Okay, we had Feta Sal in Brooklyn. We had Dinosaur Barbecue up in Harlem. I think that was your favorite. And Mighty Quinn's in the East Village. Great ones, great ones, great ones.
But the viral barbecue sauce right now that is outselling every sauce is Bichon's. You recognize it because it's got a red flip top, a squeeze bottle, and a smiling octopus logo who's wearing a karate headband. Sriracha was the new ketchup, but Bachan's is the new sriracha. And the founding story of this sauce is heroic. Okay, we'd never heard anything like this.
Bachan actually means granny in Japanese, and it's based on the founder's grandma's homemade barbecue recipe. That founder is Justin Gill, and he started with $250,000 that he raised from friends and family. That wasn't enough money. So he maxed out his credit cards, he turned his home into a fulfillment center to ship packages, and he took crazy high-interest loans to make the business work.
He put all that money into Facebook ads to drive early sales of his sauce, but it wasn't enough to repay his loans. So the bank seized his house. It looked like his entrepreneurship was going to be a huge failure for everyone involved. But then, out of nowhere, sales of Bichon's barbecue sauce started rocketing. They jumped 4,000% in 2020 to $1.5 million.
And get this, this year, sales of Bichon's will reach $100 million, according to Bloomberg. Today, one out of 20 American households now has this $10 Japanese sauce in the pantry, the same $10 sauce that almost put Justin Gill and his whole family out of business. Jack, to quote Ted Lasso, barbecue sauce. But Jack, let's get back to the business kitchen here. What are we cooking with?
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Chapter 6: What is the impact of AI on white-collar jobs?
We're cooking with the secret ingredient that made Bachan go viral. Okay, so it turns out there were actually a few bigger megatrends out of Justin's control, but in a good way, they helped the business. The first was the pandemic. More people were cooking at home, and they wanted to spice up quarantine with a new flavor. Okay, the second reason is that sauce is boss right now.
Gen Z loves a good dip, which is why Cholula, Siete Salsa, both recently sold for billion-dollar exits. And the third reason is a broader trend toward Japanese flavors in America related to health. Matcha, yuzu, miso. To stay fit, we're swapping out Taco Bell for teriyaki beef. Jack, I know you like a good hojicha latte, don't you, my friend? Um, sure.
But the real reason this sauce went viral, it was one decision related to location, location, location. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Bachan's Barbecue Sauce? Category can be destiny. Now, yetis, when bachans first launched, they were only carried in the international aisle at the grocery store. Bachan was placed among Latin, African, Indian, and Asian flavors.
But here's the key. Strategically, Justin pushed for them to be moved to the barbecue aisle. And why is that, Jack? The market for barbecue sauce in America is way bigger than the market for international sauces. And then during the pandemic, as millions of people were reaching for Heinz ketchup, they also saw a bottle of Bichons decided to mix things up.
That's how they were discovered, because they were placed in the aisle where everyone shopped every trip to the grocery store. As Bloomberg put it, getting placed among the domestic barbecue sauces was the tailwind to becoming a mainstream brand. Location isn't just critical in neighborhoods and real estates. It matters all the way down to the aisle in the grocery store.
The store shelf is critical real estate. Because category can be destiny. Jack, could you whip up the takeaways for us for the new Friday? Urban Outfitter stock is at an all-time high, driven by their subscription, Newly. Move over, Chucky Darwin. Urban has found a new species, the profitable loss leader, the centaur. business.
For our second story, Anthropic CEO warned us that half of white-collar roles will be taken by AI agents within five years. We call them chrome-collar. And tech leaders tend to be right about the future, but wrong about the timing. And our third and final story is Bashan. It's the buzzy barbecue sauce of the moment. They're due for $100 million of sales this year. Because category is destiny.
But yetis, this pod's not over yet. Here's what else you need to know today. First, NVIDIA earnings. Sales of the world's trendiest chip business soared despite getting shut out of China. Sales of AI chips jumped 73% last quarter to $40 billion for NVIDIA. And that was just the last three months. Here's what investors love about it. Those profit margins on those chips are crunchy.
61% of each chip they sell is bad. Pure profit. And second, President Trump has approved Japan's Nippon Steel to acquire U.S. Steel, but only with something called a golden share. A golden share is unprecedented. It gives the U.S. government veto power on corporate decisions of this company.
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