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A decade ago, inventor Jeneva Bell launched a startup called Ruggable that seemed radical at the time: A rug brand with products that you could throw in your home washing machine when they got dirty. Rugs have been a household staple for thousands of years, adding warmth and color. But wool and cotton rugs are delicate and require expert cleaningwhich creates challenges for people who have toddlers, or pets, or cups of coffee that occasionally spill. Bell knew there was another way, so she designed a rug with two partsa base and a polyester top layerthat could be separated and cleaned in a home washing machine. She believed that if she created a product that looked and felt like a traditional rug but was easily washable she would have a massive business. And she was right: Ruggable now has nearly 1,000 employees, and its annual revenue is in the nine-figure range. [Photo: courtesy Ruggable] Today the company is launching its most innovative product yet. It’s called the All-in-One rug, and it doesn’t have a separate base and top layer. Instead, it looks and feels much like a traditional rug. It has a textured, cushioned feel, but its been carefully designed to be rolled up and washed in a home machine. The company is releasing this new design in two textures, Plush and Tufted, in four sizes, priced from $119 for runners to $1,299 for the largest size (10 feet by 14 feet). [Photo: courtesy Ruggable] Washability Isn’t Easy Bell spent two years tinkering in her garage before launching Ruggable. She took apart dozens of traditional rugs to understand their structure, identifying which parts were designed to provide padding, texture, or softness. The final rug she created was a two-part set: a rug base that went on the floor, and a soft top layer made of polyester that could be removed, thrown in a household washing machine, and laundered at least 20 times without wearing out. “Jeneva effectively deconstructed the rug into its core elements,” says Nicole Otto, Ruggable’s new CEO. The company took off quickly. And while some consumers loved the original rug system, feedback from others proved instrumental to continued innovation. The very first Ruggable rugs were very thin, with almost no pile. They added warmth to a cold floor and were useful under wheeled office chairs, but they couldn’t compete with thicker, fluffier rugs. So Ruggable’s team developed plusher, yet still washable, upper layers. “The past decade has been all about reconstructing the rug, but doing so in a way that makes it washable,” Otto says. New Tufted (left) and Plush designs from Ruggable [Photo: courtesy Ruggable] The idea for an all-in-one rug came in part from customer feedback. There are some benefits to a two-part rug system, like being able to swap out the outer later seasonally. But some customers found it laborious to have to separate the outer and bottom layers every time the rug needed to be washed. “Some people also found it hard to perfectly line up the two layers or get out the air bubbles between the layers,” says Maria O’Brien, Ruggable’s VP of global design. To design the all-in-one, Ruggable’s R&D team had to be strategic about each layer. They wanted to create a plush, cushioned feel under foot, which adds bulk. Adding a base layer to serve as a rug pad increases the size and weight of the final product. All of these factors affect washability; if the rug is too thick or rigid, it won’t fit into a home machine. [Photo: courtesy Ruggable] For several years, Ruggable tested different materials in its prototypes. The result is the All-in-One collection, which comes in two textures: Tufted, with a 7-millimeter pile height; and Plush, with a 14-millimeter pile height. Both are made from 100% polyester that has a waterproof barrier for stain resistance. Theyre also both significantly thicker than the companys original flat woven designs, which are just 2 millimeters high, as well as most other washable rugs on the market, which tend to be fairly thin. Originally, the Ruggable team wanted to create an even plusher, fluffier rug with a higher pile, but being washable was key. (Tufted All-in-One rugs up to 8 feet by 10 feet are compatible with home washers; Plush rugs up to 6 feet by 9 feet are compatible with home washers. They weigh between 10 pounds and 85 pounds, depending on size.) This outer layer is now glued to a middle layer of foam that adds a cushioned feel, and then a thin backing that isnonslip, serving as a kind of rug pad. “When you’re designing products, you’re usually cost engineering,” O’Brien says. “But here, we were weight engineering. We needed to make sure the final product was flexible, and not too stiff, dense, or tight to fit in a washing machine.” [Photo: courtesy Ruggable] A big market A decade after Ruggable’s founding, washable rugs are more common, as consumers are looking for low-maintenance home decor solutions. According to a report by analytics firm Market Intelo, the global washable rug market was valued at $6.2 billion last year, and its forecasted to hit $13.7 billion by 2033. While Market Intelo’s report notes that Ruggable is a standout player in the space, theres increased competition, including Lorena Canals, Karastan, and Nourison. In fact, washable rugs are ubiquitous, available everywhere from Ikea and Walmart to Amazon. [Photo: courtesy Ruggable] Ruggable aims to maintain its dominance through continued innovation. To meet consumers varying aesthetic preferences, O’Brien says the company has been open to collaborations. It has worked with designers Iris Apfel, Jonathan Adler, and Justina Blakeney, the Netflix show Bridgerton, and Architectural Digest magazine, among others. Since Ruggable manufactures its rugs in its own factories in California and Illinois using digital printing technology, it can make rugs on demand, allowing for a wide array of offerings. Ruggable is now trying to expand beyond its primary market of the United States. North America currently leads the washable rug market, making up 38% of global market share, but Europe and the Asia-Pacific region are now showing interest in the trend. Otto says Ruggable is investing heavily in expanding to Australia, the U.K., Germany, and France. “Having such a diverse range of styles allows us to connect with a diverse consumer base around the world,” she says. “We’re finding that wanting a rug that can be easily washed is a universal desire.”
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E-Commerce
In summer 2019, Bob McDonough took a full stack web development coding bootcamp at the University of Pennsylvania. An English-turned-telecommunications major in college, McDonough had been working at a bar while sending out job applications for positions he barely wanted. Most paid below $50,000 a year, an undesirable salary for a 27-year-old in Philadelphia. McDonough says his degree really wasn’t doing it for him. So, I figured I’d add a certificate to stack my résumé, he says. What McDonough was doing was upskillingthe practice of learning new skills or sharpening old ones to attain maximum desirability in the job market. While taking this web dev course, McDonough wasnt sure it would be worth the time and cost. But by the end, he had a polished portfolio, he says, a filled-out GitHub and new skills added on LinkedIn. Within three months of completing the course, McDonough had a salaried job at a design studio. Someone saw my profile and gave me a call pretty quickly, he says. But hes not sure job seekers could replicate his experience today. The skillsets deemed desirable seem to be shifting faster than ever, and job seekers are reporting dismal experiences on the market. In the 2010s, “upskilling” may have just meant enrolling in a coding academy and hoping for the best. But fast, seismic changes like the rise of AI have quickly made a path to professional staying power much murkier. Ten years ago, completing a certificate might have been enough to land a role in high-demand fields, says Nora Gardner, senior partner at McKinsey. The days of taking a General Assembly course and landing a plum coding job may be gone. In this Premium story, youll learn: Hear from workers who upskilledand whether or not it led to new jobs Learn out-of-the-box ways to make yourself desirable beyond “learn Python” What employers are actually looking for, beyond certifications on LinkedIn The uncertainty surrounding AI is immense, and the job market continues to be rough: In an August survey by the New York Federal Reserve, participants reported a new low of 44.9% likelihood of finding a new job should they lose theirs. On top of that, research from the McKinsey Global Institute suggests around 10% of American workers may need to switch jobs by 2030. But 45% of employed survey respondents said that their need for more or different work experience, relevant skills, credentials, or education was the top barrier to finding a new job. And yet, the way to upskill effectively doesnt resemble the path McDonough took just a few years back. But that doesnt mean upskilling courses are obsolete. Combined with continued on-the-job development, the dedication can communicate to employers the soft skills it takes to succeed in a rapidly evolving workforce: adaptability, willingness to learn, and resilience. Mixed messages Multiple sources told Fast Company that employers are emphasizing experience over specific skillsets. But learning the latest tech in the workforce goes a long way. Diana Rocha, 37, a London-based product manager at predictive hiring company Applied, took a DeepLearning AI course on Coursera a few months ago. Then she went to Workeraa site where people can test their upskilled skillsand tested in the 75th percentile. She put that all on her LinkedIn in August, a quiet month professionally in London, but immediately saw at least two to three companies or recruiters reaching out to her per week, compared to the previous one to two per month, she says. Rocha originally got her Applied job by upskilling, too, via a masters program and Coursera courses on behavioral economics. However, Rocha isnt sure the recruiters recently reaching out on LinkedIn were only attracted to her new AI prowess. LinkedIn also shows her years of product management roles. Rocha says employers who contacted her were looking for that alongside the newer AI skills, so its unclear if upskilling truly led to the spike in recruiter interest. However, McKinseys Gardner says its the mix of both existing and upskilled experience that will most likely get candidates seen. If youve worked in your field for decades, certifications can signal commitment to learning, she says. But the differentiator is how theyre put into practice. Applying AI tools to improve workflow efficiency demonstrates adaptability in a way a credential alone cannot. Easier than you think? Today, McDonough has a new job, coordinating web content at a law firm. But his experience from the design role he landed via upskilling taught him to stay on top of the latest technology. He says he scouts YouTube and Reddit to see what people are talking about, he says. If I click on something that has 300 comments, then I know Im probably in the right spot. Learning while on the job is key to useful upskilling. While Molly Johnson-Jones, CEO and cofounder of job search platform Flexa, says organizations hawking upskilling courses often sell a dream, she adds that workers looking to switch careers can start doing so within their current company. Johnson-Jones says to identify what bits of your role could seep into moving towards that new role. Say you want to transition from marketing into tech: Find ways to collaborate more with your companys tech team, she suggests. Get to know the department leads. Doing that relies on soft skills: empathy, interpersonal awareness, and emotional intelligence that make workers effective collaborators and pleasant to be around. Were told these are the skills that AI will never snatch away from humans. Are those things even upskillable, though? Lisa Lie, founder of microlearning app Learna, thinks so. Her company provides 10-minute-or-less lessons on skills like boosting confidence, thinking differently, and working with anyone. Run by experts like psychologists and performance coaches, each short lesson begins by setting out a problem, followed by the expert walking users through the best language to use to diffuse a contentious situation with a coworker, for example. Lie doesnt call them soft skills, because they’re not optional or easy, she says. If AI is taking care of repeatable tasks, the value of people skills just went up. ‘You have to stay on top of it’ Upskilling can feel like throwing yet another stressor atop the existing mountain of stress that comes with being a working rofessional. But Gen Z appears ready to meet this future. Per Flexas Work Index study, which looked at more than 40,000 job posts and almost 30,000 job seekers, members of Gen Z are 68% more likely than older generations to prioritize personal development in their job search. Though millennials, both McDonough and Rocha have adopted this approach. Based on their own experiences landing new jobs as a direct result of upskillingit does seem to work. And if the youngest workers are prioritizing upskilling, it may well be the future. The tech moves so quickly, McDonough says. Instead of just taking a course like he did in 2019, he suggests job seekers looking to upskill today stay up to date, read, [and] listen to podcasts on what people are doing. The AI hype is going to calm down at some point, says Rocha. And yet? I wouldnt like to be left out because I didnt upskill on that front. McDonough agrees. AI might be todays hottest thing, but company executives are always reading about the latest trends, tech, and shifts, deciding what skills to hire for. You have to stay on top of it, he says, or else youll fall behind.
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E-Commerce
You dont need a perfect jump shot or the exhaustive knowledge (or opinions) of Stephen A. Smith to land a career in sports. You can get far on passion and a desire to spread that love of the game throughout an increasingly fan-driven world. Sports marketingwhich encompasses everything from managing multimillion-dollar sponsorship deals and crafting social media campaigns for local teams to coordinating fan activation at the Super Bowlis one of the most robust components of the sports industry, which is worth at least $500 billion globally. To understand the state of play in this arena, Fast Company analyzed nearly 2,800 job listings on Google for Jobs between April and June 2025. We classified hiring organizations into four types: property rights holders (e.g., leagues and teams), media organizations, brands, and agencies. And we divided the jobs themselves into three categories: strategy, creative, and experiential. We then looked at the salaries, job requirements, and locations involved. The results reveal an industry thats more accessible and geographically diverse than you might expect, with plenty of opportunities for people lacking in both educational pedigree and, presumably, athletic ability. {"blockType":"immersive-block-embed","data":{"embedSource":"","embedImageDesktop":"","embedImageDesktopCaption":"","embedImageMobile":"","embedImageMobileCaption":"","backgroundColor":"","paddingTop":0,"paddingBottom":0,"paddingLeft":0,"paddingRight":0,"mediaType":"ceros"}} Whos HiringProperty rights holders account for the highest number of jobs listed for any organization type, at about 34% of listings. And its not just the most recognizable leagues and teams looking for help, though the L.A. Clippers are in the market for a director of sales innovation. Miami University, youth sports company 3Step Sports, and the United Football League’s (UFLs) Memphis Showboats are all hiring. Media companies (such as Amazon and NBCUniversal) account for more than 26% of jobs; brands (think Nike, Lululemon, and Red Bull) represent more than 20%, and agencies (like Playfly Sports, Excel Sports Management, Two Circles, and Endeavor) make up more than 18%. But these different types of organizations arent uniformly looking for the same kinds of people. Media companies are the likeliest to hire for creative roles, with 41% of listings geared toward jobs developing and shepherding content. Agencies and brands are disproportionately likely to headhunt for people working in strategy, with those roles accounting for 60% and 52% of openings, respectively. And property rights holders need people to promote game day, making those kinds of companies the most likely to hire people to fill positions in experiential marketing. {"blockType":"immersive-block-embed","data":{"embedSource":"","embedImageDesktop":"","embedImageDesktopCaption":"","embedImageMobile":"","embedImageMobileCaption":"","backgroundColor":"","paddingTop":0,"paddingBottom":0,"paddingLeft":0,"paddingRight":0,"mediaType":"ceros"}} GeographyAlthough remote work accounts for the highest number of listings, two cities emerge as sports marketing hubs: Atlanta and New York. (Chicago is a distant third.) What explains Atlantas prominence? Its home to five professional sports teams: the Hawks (NBA), Dream (WNBA), United (MLS), Falcons (NFL), and Braves (MLB). Its also the HQ for brands known for getting their names in front of sports fans, such as Coke, Home Depot, and Delta. Charlotte, at No. 5, punches above its weight with its three major-league teams. Its also home to the Charlotte Motor Speedway, plus branches of major agencies like Octagon and Wasserman. {"blockType":"immersive-block-embed","data":{"embedSource":"","embedImageDesktop":"","embedImageDesktopCaption":"","embedImageMobile":"","embedImageMobileCaption":"","backgroundColor":"","paddingTop":0,"paddingBottom":0,"paddingLeft":0,"paddingRight":0,"mediaType":"ceros"}} SalaryAcross organization types, salaries start out roughly the same (north of $50,000 on average) and increase mostly in lockstep. Nike, despite 2024 revenues being down nearly 5% year over year, is among the brands shelling out the most, offering about $250,000 for two upper-level roles. Amazon MGM Studios is among the highest-paying media companies, dangling $223,250 for a senior-level job. As far as agencies go, Game Seven and Saatchi are the top spenders. Game Sevens $375,000 for a global head of accounts is the highest salary in our entire dataset. Full-Time Versus ContractThe vast majority of sports marketing jobs are full-time, at about 81%. The second most common type of employment are internships at more than 8.3% of openings, followed by part-time jobs at 7.7%, and contractors at a surprisingly low 3%. {"blockType":"immersive-block-embed","data":{"embedSource":"","embedImageDesktop":"","embedImageDesktopCaption":"","embedImageMobile":"","embedImageMobileCaption":"","backgroundColor":"","paddingTop":0,"paddingBottom":0,"paddingLeft":0,"paddingRight":0,"mediaType":"ceros"}} EducationIf youre looking to break into the industry and havent even started your freshman year of college, your best bet is to major in marketing. Forty-five percent of listings that stated a preference for any educational degree mentioned marketing in particular. But thats not your only option. The next most common requests are business (28%), communications (24.1%), sports management (15.2%), and journalism (7.4%). Brands are the most likely employers to ask for marketing degrees: 73.3% of jobs at these companies require them. But theres a good chance you wont need a degree at all. The majority of agency and media listings dont ask for one. Neither do nearly 40% of listings from brands nor 30% of listings from property rights holders. Of course, whether employers quietly prefer candidates to have one is another matter. MethodologyWe extracted jobs from the Google for Jobs search module monthly from April to June 2025, resulting in 2,774 jobs when duplicates were removed. We used a combination of Gemini and manual tech token search to extract information on salary, company type, job type, and educational background. The categorization of jobs as full-time or contract/internship and their geographic locations were contained as separate structured fields in Googles data. Monthly and hourly salaries were standardized to yearly rates by multiplying the rate by 12 for monthly salaries, and by 2,080 for hourly salaries.
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E-Commerce
The ChompSaw is a power tool made for kids to cut, craft, and create with cardboard. Its unique design makes it perfectly safe for little hands to use and easily carve precise corners or elegant edges through old boxes. Developed by college friends Kausi Raman and Max Liechty, ChompSaw raised $1.2 million in less than a month on Kickstarter and has already sold more than 30,000 units online. The ChompSaw is a winner of Fast Companys 2025 Innovation by Design Awards.
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E-Commerce
Below, Joe Nucci shares five key insights from his new book, Psychobabble: Viral Mental Health Myths & the Truths to Set You Free. Joe Nucci is a licensed psychotherapist. As a content creator, he contextualizes mental health misinformation. His videos at @joenuccitherapy reached over 10 million people in the first six months of posting and his writing can be found in his newsletter, Psychobabble. Whats the big idea? Psychobabble replaces mental health misconceptions with liberating truths that can help readers avoid misinformation, navigate important debates in the mental health field, and better maneuver their own therapy journeys. The problem is not that therapy has gone mainstream, but that some of the assumptions we have absorbed from therapy culture are actually holding us back from healing, growing, and solving our problems. 1. Psychotherapy heals mental illness, not problems of living. Therapy works, but it doesnt work for everything. Somewhere along the way, as mental health got destigmatized, we started to believe we could apply therapy to more than just mental illness. We started to believe it could save us from more than depression, trauma, and addiction. We started to believe that it could make us the ideal partner, the perfect parent, or help us achieve profound psychological comfort in all aspects of life. Unfortunately, there is no pill and no therapeutic intervention that can erase all of lifes struggles. And yet, therapy is often marketed as a cure-all for anything life throws at you. Of course, theres nothing wrong with going to therapy to vent or if youre bored or lonely. Furthermore, therapy can be quite effective in helping you with subclinical or nondiagnostic problems, like dating issues or struggles with a life transition. But there is a big difference between needing therapy and being able to benefit from it. Knowing where that line is can be really helpful in terms of maximizing how to get the most benefit from your therapy journey. It makes you a smarter consumer of therapy services and better at navigating self-help misinformation. Maybe you need to go to therapy, or maybe the answer to your problem can be found elsewhere. If youre not sure, speaking to a qualified therapist can help you figure that out. 2. Mental health is about agency, not identity. One of the dangers of therapy culture going viral is that mental health has become a form of identity and social currency. In certain places, mental health has become popularized. People collect labels like badges, flaunting their self-awareness: I am anxiously attached. I am neurodivergent. I am an empath. In the book, I share a patients story that is all too common. She could articulate every piece of her psychological history. She was practiced at naming her emotions and fluent in therapy-speak. But she wasnt changing. She wasnt healing. She was stuck and suffering from it. She didnt need more self-awareness. While becoming self-aware is often the first step, the magic of therapy isnt about the analysis; its about translating that insight into action. It is about having hard conversations, naming her needs, and making the call shed been avoiding for weeks. Diagnosis is a doorway, not a destination. Mental health shouldnt be about figuring out what you are. Its about being able to transform your attachment style, optimizing your life around your neurodivergency, or harnessing your empathy in an adaptive way. Its about building your capacity to be better. Diagnosis is a doorway, not a destination. A diagnosis is useful in the sense that it informs a treatment plan. Holding onto your diagnosis as an identity without building the capacity for agency is just taking extra steps to stay exactly where you are in life. That is not the promise of the mental health field. The promise is to transform what you can and accept the rest as problems of living. 3. Therapists are not value-neutral. Therapists are taught to be nonjudgmental, but nonjudgmental doesnt mean value-free. Every therapist brings a worldview into the room. They have their own pasts, politics, and values. A bad therapist will pretend that they are perfectly neutral. This kind of therapist is blissfully unaware of how their own personal lives impact the work you are trying to accomplish in the session. A good therapist will be aware that they are not a blank slate. They are self-aware enough to consider how they might say something thats more about them than about you or why you are seeking their help. They will withhold sharing when its not clinically appropriate. But a great therapist? A great therapist can be simultaneously aware of how their past or personal values might influence them while honoring that your past and life philosophies may differ. They may even talk about their differences to assist in your healing. A good therapist will be aware that they are not a blank slate. The unfortunate truth is that some therapists feel emboldened to let their personal worldview encroach on their patients worldview. Some therapists see themselves as activists advancing a certain agenda. It could be political or philosophical. It might mean encouraging a client to end a relationship, label a parent as toxic, or reframe social dynamics as systemic harm. Sometimes thats warranted. But sometimes its projection. 4. Tragedies dont always result in trauma. Trauma is real, but so is the casual misuse of the term. Not everything bad that happens to you is a trauma. Its inaccurate to say that events are traumatic in themselves because two people can get into the same car accident and one will develop PTSD while the other one will not. A trauma response is not about the past. Its about the present moment and your current relationship to the thing that happened to you. Sometimes, pain metabolizes naturally. Sometimes, people move forward without assigning their suffering a trauma diagnosis. And thats not repressionits capacity. By insisting that everyone has trauma, we risk flattening a wide range of emotional experiences into one narrow framework. We must consider the dynamics of grief, growth, and the full range of negative human experiences that shape our lives. Disappointment, regret, embarrassment, and heartbreak are hard, but they are not necessarily traumatic. Calling them trauma can subtly reinforce the idea that we are fragile and need clinical intervention to process every difficulty. This rebranding is surely good for therapists who want a steady stream of patients, but the idea culturally undermines resilience and turns the lens inward in ways that are often disempowering. 5. Therapy-speak can be medicine, or a weapon. One of the best things about therapy is that sometimes, when you name omethingwhen something becomes conscious through languagethat thing no longer has power over you. Ive seen firsthand how being able to name trauma or abuse can provide relief almost instantly. Ive personally experienced the agency Ive gained from being able to articulate a dynamic that was previously ineffable. But if language can heal us, it can also hurt us: A patient once said, Im drawing a boundary, right after cutting off a friend without explanation. Was it a boundary? Or was it a way to avoid a hard conversation? He gaslit me sometimes means He disagreed with me. Im dysregulated becomes shorthand for I dont want to talk about this. We think were speaking the language of healing. Sometimes, were just dressing up our defenses. Sometimes, using psychology jargon is just a logical fallacyan appeal to authority. When we do this in a way that allows us to be more disconnected from ourselves and from each other, that is the opposite of the promise of the field of mental health. Learning these concepts is a little bit like learning a new language. At the beginning, its important to stay rigid with your grammar and pronunciation. Over time, as you become more fluent, its less about the words you use and more about how you use them. Its not about labeling gaslighting correctly or incorrectly. Its about knowing how to handle it when somebody disagrees with you and knowing what to do if somebody is trying to gaslight you. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
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E-Commerce
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