The Best One Yet
🏆 “Trader-Costco-Gonia” — America’s favorite brands. Dockers’ Casual Friday innovation. Klarna’s revenue-per-human.
Wed, 21 May 2025
TBOY Live Show Tickets to Chicago on sale NOW: https://www.axs.com/events/949346/the-best-one-yet-podcast-ticketsAmerica’s 100 favorite brands show... Reputation takes 20 years to build, 1 second to lose.Dockers khakis just sold for $300M… but did ya know Dockers invented Casual Friday?Klarna just invented a new financial metric: Revenue per human… you’re gonna start see it everywhere.Plus, “Plant Nanny” is the hot new job… It pays $50/hour to pamper someone’s succulents.$LEVI $COST $TMWant more business storytelling from us? Check out the latest episode of our new weekly deepdive show: The untold origin story of… LaCroix 💧 “The Cinderella of Seltzers”Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinks to listen.About 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 the top three pop business news stories today?
There's a new industry of caretakers that is emerging. But not to take care of your kids, take care of the elderly, or take care of your pets. It's a new thing called plant nannies.
That's right. According to the New York Times, plant nannies will now come to your home to pamper your plants.
They're basically a botanical babysitter. Yeah, this is like the Mary Poppins for your Monstera. It's the Mrs. Doubtfire for your dolly. Jack, it's the Fran Drescher. For your fig tree. Plant nannies will come into your home. They'll do a spritz on a leaf here, a trim of a stem there. They're basically landscapers, but for inside your house. The plant nanny doesn't just water your plant.
They actually feed it with filtered spa water. water. Get this. According to the New York Times, plant nannies are charging 50 bucks an hour on average. Jack, I think that's like twice the going rate for a nanny for a human baby. We repeat, humans are paying nannies more money to take care of their plants than their babies. But Jack, let's be honest here.
You're hiring someone to look after your plants. You probably got banked. Yeah, that's a signal. Apparently, there's one business in Brooklyn that's charging 100 bucks for a one-hour plant visit. And extra if your ficus tree is over six and a half feet.
And Now, personally, I should point out, I believe Jack has been fighting for three years to keep his bird of paradise alive. Is that true, man?
It's barely hanging on. With me as a plant daddy, it's no paradise for that bird, man. I'm going to call plant child support, Jack. It needs to be done. But yetis, puppies were the new babies, but now plants are the new puppies. So Jack, I think that means we need a new acronym to capture this wild plant spending trend. How about plants? P-L-A-N-T-S. People love acquiring new trees. So much.
So much. So much. Jack, happy P-L-A-N-T-S to you. Let's hit up three stars.
15 years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in a dorm. They had an idea to cause a cultural storm. It's the best one yet, but the best is the norm. Jack Nick, that's it. I don't even think they need to practice. 50%, that's a fat tip. T-Boy City on your at list. If you know, you know, cause we ready to go. We can't wait no more, so just start the show.
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Chapter 2: How did Dockers khakis change office culture?
So Casual Friday became a fashion revolution, from the Midwest office manager to the Silicon Valley tech worker. And the whole idea was incepted by Dockers. So Dockers sales hit a billion dollars back in peak khaki era. Yeah. And actually, one year in the 90s, Dockers even awkwardly beat Levi's in the men's category for total sales. How wild is that?
HR managers were the first accidental fashion influencer, and Dockers was the puppet master. That is a sentence no one has ever said before, Jack. If you're at work and you're not wearing a suit right now, You should thank Dockers. Again, only pant you can wear to a job interview and a date. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies in khaki over at Dockers? Customers are like cake.
You can make them from scratch. Yetis, some people think demand is predetermined.
Either the market wants it or the market doesn't.
You can market to get customers' attention, but there has to be buyers out there if you want to make a product. Well, this Docker story is a reminder that you can literally create customers out of nothing. Back in the 80s, pre-Dockers, you wore a suit on the weekdays and sweatpants on the weekends. There was no need for something in between. So Dockers invented the category of business casual.
And then they invented a holiday to generate demand for it. Because customers are like cake. Yep. You can whip them up from scratch. For our second story, we just got the biggest brand report of the year. The Harris Poll of the top 100 American companies. We'll tell you who's up, who's down this year, and the one move you can make that'll put you on top.
Yetis, over the last 20 years, the research firm Harris does a poll of 17,000 Americans. Basically, the reputation rankings. We call it kiss, marry, kill, but for companies. Yeah, like which brand would you kiss? No commitment, it's just a kiss. Okay, which brand would you marry? You're in love with this brand. Which brand would you kill, Jack?
Oh, you want them eliminated from the face of the earth. Yeah, I don't even want them on the receipts, honey. Those are basically the questions that the Harris Poll asks Americans each year about the 100 most visible brands in America. Technically, they ask to rank the 100 companies based on their products, their values, and their impact on the world.
The big drama this year is that all of Elon Musk's companies plummeted in the rankings. X, SpaceX, Tesla. Yeah, Jack, you know, Tesla was number eight in 2021. You know where it is this year? Number 95, which is fifth from the bottom. Okay. Another shocker out there, Chipotle is up in the brand rankings, despite the whole burrito bowl portion size controversy.
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Chapter 5: What new metric did Klarna introduce?
Okay, right behind them is Spirit Airlines because you don't trust Spirit is going to get you there on time or honestly even take off at all. Honolulu. I said Houston. Yeah. That wasn't a fun flight. Yeah, and even Tesla's 32-spot plummet from last year is a reminder that years of trust can be gone in a flash.
Or as Warren Buffett puts it, reputations take 20 years to earn, but just one minute to lose. Or as Taylor Swift put it, my reputation's never been worse, so you must like me for me. Okay, this pod's officially vindicated.
Now, a quick word from our sponsor.
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For our third and final story, the buy now, pay later leader Klarna has postponed its IPO, but it hasn't postponed replacing humans with AI. Klarna's invented a new brag metric too. They call it revenue per human. But Jack, can we talk about the five wildest words we've seen this year? Buy now, pay later for burrito. Six words. Possible thanks to Klarna's partnership with DoorDash. That's right.
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Chapter 6: What jobs are emerging in the plant care industry?
And if you can throw a football more accurately than Tom Brady can, which I think I can, by the way. I think you can too, Jack. You could win $2 million. Sounds like a challenge, Jack. Put me in, coach. And finally, Warby Parker stock surged late yesterday on news of a $150 million investment from Google. Google basically sees those meta Ray-Ban sunglasses and says, I'll have what Zuck's having.
What are you doing?
Now, time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by Henry Solo from a city far, far away. Today is Talk Like Yoda Day. I'm sorry, Jack. Can you please repeat that?
Talk Like Yoda Day today is.
Now, the reason for this is that Yoda first appeared in The Empire Strikes Back, which was released on May 21st, 1980. Fun fact about that movie. Yoda was voiced and puppeteered by a man named Frank Oz. who also is the voice actor for Miss Piggy and Cookie Monster. And that strange way Yoda speaks is actually a literary concept. It's called anastrophe. Powerful you have become.
The dark side I sense in you. Yoda, he put the object and then the subject and then the verb. Yeah, that's what he did. Yetis, you look fantastic today, especially if you're one of those plant nannies out there. I plant nannied for my mother-in-law once. She didn't pay me anything. Now you're just showing off.
You can be Tom Brady, you plant nanny on weekends. Yetis, remember to five stars, drop down and give us please. Because the best way to show the grow.
He's got five-star ratings and reviews. Okay, you sound much more like Cookie Monster than Yonah. As it came out, I was thinking I merged the two. No, but that's fine because it's the same voice actor. And it all comes full circle. Yeti's Jack and I will see you tomorrow. And before we go, a happy birthday to Yeti Mason-Stokes in Etoka, Tennessee.
The soccer and track star's got the best birthday yet. Happy birthday to Steven Kleiman of the Upper East Side of New York City, who is celebrating with the New York Knicks appearance in the Eastern Conference Finals. Go New York, go New York, go! And Kimberly DeVede in Saratoga Springs, Utah, is a wonderful mother of three and has the best birthday ever.
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