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Brand licensing deals can be an easy way to make a quick buck, but it’s not without risks. A man who splurged for one of President Donald Trump’s officially licensed watches learned that lesson the hard way after the timepiece arrived with an unfortunate typo. The $640 limited-edition “Inauguration First Lady” watch the Rhode Island man bought read “Rump” instead of “Trump” across its pink face. “We expected that it would have the integrity of the president of the United States,” Tim Petit, who bought the watch for his wife, told the local news station WJAR. He said it made his wife cry. [Screenshot: NBC 10 WJAR/YouTube] Perhaps expecting integrity from a product that trades on the name and likeness of the first felon president in U.S. history, a man whose second term in office has become a historic tangle of conflicts of interest, is asking for too much. But it’s also a pitfall that all brands face when they outsource their products. Licensing your brand can increase brand recognition and profits without cost risks, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, but without specific, enforced licensing requirements, you risk losing out on quality control. Not that the Trump brand is particularly airtight. Trump has long made money from licensing deals, with resulting products such as Trump: The Game, Trump Water, and Trump Steaks. In between terms, Trump cashed in on new product releases like Trump Sneakers and God Bless the USA Bibles, all using LLCs that licensed his name and likeness to manufacture and market Trump-themed kitsch to his political supporters. [Screenshot: gettrumpwatches.com] Trump Watches aren’t sold directly by Trump, his business, or an aligned political entity, but by TheBestWatchesonEarth LLC, a manufacturer with a business address at a nondescript Wyoming building, which is also home to a daycare center. With Trump back in office, Trump Watches and other licensed storefronts represent something unprecedented: a president personally profiting off of merch sales, a category that until now has been relegated to campaign fundraising. And in a shocking but not surprising twist for the president who’s made domestic manufacturing central to his political agenda, the watches make no claim to be made in the United States (GQ actually sourced them to China). Luckily for the Rhode Island couple with the misspelled watch, the story has a happy ending. Though Trump Watches has a strict policy of no refunds or exchanges and states on its website that “images shown are for illustration purposes only and may not be an exact representation of the product,” the company made an exception for the “Rump” watch, though only after the media got involved. Petit said he didn’t hear back from the company until after WJAR reached out for comment, and then he got a call from Trump Watches offering to replace the watch and gift him an $800 coupon. Sometimes all it takes is a free press.
Category:
E-Commerce
Its easy to forget how big a splash the first Roku box made when it debuted on May 20, 2008. At launch, the device worked only with Netflix, best known at the time as a mail-order Blockbuster rival that was just ramping up its streaming service. The 10,000 movies and shows you could watch skewed toward the random and musty: Back then, Netflixs mail-order DVD service offered 10 times as many titles. But the $100 Netflix Player by Roku took a process that had been geeky at bestgetting internet video onto a TVand made it approachable and affordable. In the unassuming gadget, wrote The New York Timess Saul Hansell, I think you can see the future of video. Hansell was right. And though that original box has grown quaint with time, Roku is still riding the streaming wave. The company ended 2024 with 89.8 million streaming households, an increase of 9.8 million year over year. In the first quarter of 2025, it streamed 35.8 billion hours of video, up 5.1 billion year over yearand more than 10 times what it was doing per quarter when it went public in 2017. Behind the scenes, Roku has constructed a diversified business to keep those figures growing and monetize them in new ways. Yes, it still makes streaming boxes, along with streaming sticks and soundbars. However, it also provides North Americas most popular operating system for smart TVs, which it licenses to other manufacturers and uses on its own Roku-branded televisions. It operates the Roku Channel, the most-watched free ad-supported streaming channel, having recently passed Tubi. Its a powerhouse of streaming ads, giving marketers tools such as Roku Ads Manager and Roku Data Cloud. That Roku found itself in a place to build all this involved an early twist of fate. Founder and CEO Anthony Wood oversaw the first streaming boxs development as a skunkworks project for Netflix. When Netflix decided it didnt want to sell a device of its own, Rokuwhich had made internet radios and digital signage controllers, among other productsinherited it. With the introduction of the Roku Channel Store in November 2009, the box began to evolve from a Netflix player into a comprehensive streaming portal. The Channel Store launched with 10 providers, including Pandora and Flickr; the company doesnt disclose the current number, but its in the thousands, including more than 500 free ones. Roku founder and CEO Anthony Wood presents at the companys New York product launch on April 23, 2025. [Photo: Courtesy of Roku] It’s amazing how companies underestimate that, Wood says. They still do. They don’t really understand what it means. For example, sometimes people will be like, Your UI, your home screen, hasn’t changed that much. Like that’s terrible. And I’m like, No, our market share keeps going up! So it’s not terrible. People like that. Anyone who scoffs at Rokus lack of change for changes sake might want to consider how successful its been in a business that many others, including Google and Amazon, have long coveted. When you think about the power of an operating system, in the mobile world you think of Apple and Google being the two dominant platforms, says media and technology analyst Rich Greenfield of LightShed Partners. In connected TV, the platform that is far and away the largest is Roku. Hardware is hard Woods early realization that devices were most valuable as a springboard to build a platform did not involve any unique insight. Everyone in consumer electronics knows that hardware is hard and services can drive profits. But Roku has been one of the few consumer electronics companies to make it all workcertainly more consistently so than Sonos and GoPro, both of which have been through more than their share of tribulations in recent years. (Fun fact: All three companies were founded in 2002.) Just as Wood anticipated, Roku became a services company. In the first quarter of 2025, it made $881 million in revenue from its platform business, which spans advertising, subscriptions, and software licensing, with a gross profit of 53%. In devices, it had $140 million in revenue but a $19 million loss, for a margin of minus 14%. Overall, the company reported a loss from operations of $58 million and an adjusted EBITDA of $56 million, compared to a $72 million loss and adjusted EBITDA of $41 million for the first quarter of 2024. If youre watching the Roku Channelor another streaming service thats part of the Roku Audience Networkyou see ads the company has inserted in streams. (Overall, according to data from Pixalate, 38% of connected-TV programmatic ads in the first quarter of 2025 were delivered to Roku viewers, the highest percentage of any platform; Amazons Fire TV was second with 18%.) If youre watching something else, such as Disney+ or Max, Roku can monetize that, too: Its built-in payments service, Roku Pay, lets it handle billing in return for a fee. Rokus use of its platform as a giant marketing opportunity for its streaming partners extends to everything from its home screen and screen saver to the dedicated app-specific buttons on its familiar remote control; in March, it raised eyebrows by testing ads that play even before the home screen loads. As I was finishing this article, the platform was thick with messages promoting discounts associated with Streaming Day on May 20a holiday it invented to celebrate the anniversary of its first box. Anti-Roku sentiment expressed online usually reflects frustration with the quantity of advertising and other promotional elements, though the company recently got blamed for some ads it didnt place. Wood says that customer satisfaction studies help determine changes to the platform, but in some cases tweaks get the go-ahead even if theres a very neutral [reaction] or a slight decrease in satisfaction. Because youve got to remember, the revenue ultimately [results] in more content, more free content, more features, and lower cost. Overall, he adds, Those revenue streams have really worked for usdistributing streaming services, merchandising them, selling them, billing for them, and free content with ads. If Roku hadnt done an intrepid job of navigating a TV hardware ecosystem thats radically changed since it shipped its early devices, it wouldnt have a booming ad business. Back then, few people owned smart TVs; the companys competition consisted of other boxes, most of which were clunkier and costlier than its own. But as streaming took off, most TVs added it as a standard feature. Theoretically, that could have rendered Roku and its add-on boxes redundant. The reality, however, was that the home-brewed software cobbled together by many TV manufacturers was terrible. That opened up an opportunity for Roku, whose interface was already widely praised for its polish and straightforwardness. In 2014, the company introduced Roku TV, a platform designed to be embedded into televisions rather than delivered via a box. It launched on models from Chinas TCL and Hisense, respectively the third- and fifth-largest TV brands at the time. Looking back, Wood says that TV makers were skittish about ceding control of the on-screen experience. When we first started going to TV companies, one of the biggest challenges we had was they all wanted a custom UI, and they didn’t want their UI to look like their competitors, he remembers. In the end, many were convinced to standardize on Roku, which now ships on TVs from 35 brands, including JVC, Walmarts Onn house brand, Philips, and Westinghouse. In some cases, they play up the platforms brand and benefits on their packaging even more than their own. Among the TV manufacturers who still dont offer Roku models are three of the best-known brands: Samsung, LG, and Sony. Wood contends thats worse news for them than for Roku. Samsung still makes their own platform, he says. They just don’t have enough scale and monetization, even as large as they are, to do what we do in terms of features. . . . And so we’re just a better product, and consumers care about that. Then there are the most Roku-centric TVs of all. In 2023, the company introduced its own line of televisions; it went on to sell a million of them in 2024. Are the TV makers who license Rokus software okay with it competing with their products? They’d probably prefer we didn’t, allows Wood, who calls it just another move to build market share. Along with catering to customers who want the purest possible Roku experience, doing so lets the company test new features before rolling them out more widely, he explains. It also helps retailers plug holes in their TV lineups when they cant get all the models theyd like from other brands. Even in an age of smart TVs, Rokus streaming sticks arent done evolving. [Photo: Courtesy of Roku] At the launch event where I spoke with Wood, Roku unveiled its 2025 line of TVs. But it also introduced two new add-on streaming devicesnot boxes but sticks that plug directly into a TVs HDMI port, a diminutive form factor the company has offered since 2012. Its still finding ways to improve them: The new models are slimmer than their predecessors, so they dont block adjacent HDMI ports. They also draw power from the TV, eliminating the need for a cable and charging plug. Given that its now tough to buy a TV that doesnt have streaming features built in, how is it possible that these sticks are still a thing? Even inside Roku, Wood says, many people expected the market for them to trend sharply toward zero. So far, it hasnt: Every year we keep selling themwe sell a lot of streaming sticks. Some customers, he says, use them to upgrade aging smart TVs whose built-in software is no longer getting updates. Others may simply prefer Roku to other streaming interfaces. Rokus continued focus on streaming shows a fair amount of discipline given that its brand is among the most recognizable in smart home technology. (Googles Nest, by contrast, has migrated from thermostats to security systems, speakers, screens, Wi-Fi routers, and other products but lost its early buzz along the way.) Not that Roku hasnt played around the edges: In 2022, I wrote about its foray into cameras and doorbells. Rather than lavishing attention on the project, it started with devices built by Wyze and then provided security and software upgrades, along with integrations with its TV platform. Today, Roku sells millions of products a year based on its Wyze partnership and is still rolling out new models. But the initiative shows no signs of broadening into an all-out effort to conquer every area of household tech. Our primary business is streaming, but its kind of a nice accessory, Wood says. Its a channel, too For much of its history, Roku expanded the utility of its devices by supporting new streaming services as they came along. By 2017, its Channel Store had more than 5,000 of them, from the expected name-brand giants to upstarts represeting an array of niches. That was the year it launched a service of its own, calledperhaps inevitablythe Roku Channel. That move went on to transform how the company made money by letting it sell ads on its own streams. Today, Its a multibillion-dollar business for us, Wood says. Having its own channel also gave Roku the opportunity to simplify streaming even more by taking responsibility for what Steve Jobs would have called the whole widgetthe entire experience from the design of the remote control to the lineup of shows. In some ways, the Roku Channel is at the center of what they’re doing, says LightSheds Greenfield. Focused on free ad-supported programming, the Roku Channel is a sprawling streaming service inside the Roku platform. [Photo: Courtesy of Roku] Calling it a mere channel is a bit of a misnomer, though. Its become a sprawling streaming service unto itself, with on-demand movies and episodes, live channels, and premium for-pay options such as Starz, AMC+, and the service soon to be known once again as HBO Max. The Roku Channel also has a life well beyond Rokus own platform: You can watch it on the web, using iPhone and Android apps, or even on two of Rokus archrivals, Google TV and Amazons Fire TV. Almost eight years into its existence, the Roku Channel has quietly gobbled up a meaningful percentage of the hours humans spend consuming video content. In April, according to Nielsens the Gauge, it accounted for 2.4% of all TV watched by people ages 2 and up (sorry, babies). That might not sound huge, but its 2.4% of all TVbroadcast and cable as well as streamingand is up 71% year over year. And though its below YouTube (12%), Netflix (7.9%), Disneys streaming services (5%), Amazon Prime Video (3.5%), and Paramounts services (2.3%), it beats Tubi (1.9%), HBO Max and Warner Bros. Discoverys other services (1.5%), and Peacock (1.4%). Roku itself says that the Roku Channels streaming hours are up 84% year over year, and that its the platforms No. 2 service among U.S. watchers in terms of engagement. (The company doesnt officially disclose which one is No. 1, but according to one source, its YouTube.) Contentwise, what Roku is streaming on its service bears a certain resemblance to Netflix in its early, pre-House of Cards days, before it shifted decisively to original content. There are vast quantities of recognizable TV shows and movies. Its just that they arent the latest ones, and sometimes theyre decades-old comfort food. However, there are also more Roku Originals than I realized, including movies and series. These made-for-Roku items havent commandeered huge amounts of public attention, but 2022s excellent fantasy biopic Weird: The Al Yankovic Story and a show Roku picked up after Disney abandoned it, The Spiderwick Chronicles, both won Emmys. And having some exclusives buttresses the platforms story for marketers. As Wood puts it: You go and talk to advertisers, you don’t say, Hey, the Roku Channel has a whole bunch of reruns of Bewitched. (Note: It does116 episodes worth.) Marketers may like seeing Roku invest in original content, but a recent acquisition proves it isnt overly fixated on prestige. On May 1, the company announced it was spending $185 million to acquire Frndly TV, a streaming service whose 50 channels include rerun purveyors such as Lifetime, the Game Show Network, Hallmark Mysteries, andmy favoriteMeTV Toons. Starting at $7 per month, its a logical step up from the free stuff thats propelled the Roku Channels popularity. As a Roku property, it should benefit from the companys ability to put it front and center on the platform. The power of Rokus mass-market consumer footprint is so undeniable that even Apple has seen fit to embrace it. Like Roku, it has a streaming box: Apple TV, whose original version shipped even before Rokus Netflix Player. But in January, the two companies collaborated on an exclusive fan experience for the hit Apple TV+ show Severance. Shortly before the second season premiered, the first one streamed for free on the Roku Channel. Anyone whose appetite was whetted for the new episodes didnt need to buy an Apple TV box to catch them: Apple TV+ has its own Roku app. With Roku already in about half of American homes and its platform running about 40% of TVs and half of streaming devices, it runs the risk of maxing out its ability to scale up further. Wood acknowledges that U.S. growth is slowing, and emphasizes the importance of even more aggressive monetization. For example, the Roku home screen recently added a row with app recommendations the company can market to streaming partners. International expansion, he says, is also criticalalready, the company has a commanding market share in Mexico. Still, 18 years after Wood began introducing Americans to streaming, he sees the potential to reach even more of them. The strategymake it simple, make it cheap, and just keep goingabides. People are still upgrading TVs, and our market share for TVs sold also keeps growing, he says. So I think there’s room.
Category:
E-Commerce
In June 2024, a team of divers sank a curious assortment of 24 sculptures off the northern coast of Bali. The sculptures look like works of artand in many ways they are. But they are also memorial reefs that turn cremated ashes into structures that regenerate marine life. Over the past three years, a British startup called Resting Reef has been working to revamp the death care industry. Instead of keeping ashes inside an urn (which often ends up gathering dust on a shelf) or scattering ashes at sea (a fleeting gesture that leaves no lasting trace), you can have Resting Reef integrate them into an underwater memorial that can double as an artificial reef. Now, the results are in: Nearly a year after being placed on an otherwise barren stretch of seabed in Bali, the artificial reefs have attracted more than 46 new marine species. The site now boasts four times the fish biodiversity of the nearest comparable location thanks, in part, to the turf algae and coralline algae that have grown on the surface of the reefs, providing habitat for many marine organisms. The Bali reef pilot, which was funded by six government grants from the U.K., is the only such reef in the world. (It consists of pets ashes, but reefs made with human ashes are coming next.) The team is also in conversations with sites in Plymouth, U.K., and in Mexico. “Just as we have a cemetery around the corner, in the future well have memorial sitesmarine sitesopening around the world,” says Aura Elena Murillo Pérez, who cofounded Resting Reefs with Louise Lenborg Skajem. [Photo: courtesy Resting Reef] Nature’s fertilizer For all our beautiful differences when we are alive, all of us are reduced to the same chemical composition when we die. The exact composition of a person’s ashes can vary based on their weight, diet, age, and genetic makeup, but most people’s chemical signature will primarily be made up of calcium phosphate. [Photo: courtesy Resting Reef] This calcium phosphate is “one of nature’s main fertilizers,” says Skajem. If you spread someone’s ashes on your lawn, excess minerals will leach into the soil, but when captured as part of the mixture that makes up a Resting Reef, it will help various species attach to the structure and grow on its now bioreceptive surface. [Photo: courtesy Resting Reef] The exact ratio of materials is part of the company’s IP, but the team is committed to working with locally available materials. In Bali, the reefs used for the pilot are made from dog and horse ashes mixed with crushed shells and volcanic sand sourced from the island. In the U.K., the company has developed a non-cementitious formula that it says is very low on carbon. [Photo: courtesy Resting Reef] Redesigning death The business of death is in dire need of a redesign. The world is running out of space to bury our dead, and cremation releases an average of 500 pounds of carbon dioxide per person into the atmosphere (the equivalent of driving your car more than 500 miles). In response to the growing crisis, a number of startups have emerged over the past decade. These include companies that use biodegradable hemp coffins, shallow graves that grow into trees, and “aquamation,” which uses alkaline hydrolysis to dissolve the body in a more environmentally friendly way. By some estimates, in 2023 the green burial market was valued at $622 million and is projected to surpass $1 billion by the end of 2030. [Photo: courtesy Resting Reef] Resting Reef slots right into this ecosystem. The company still relies on remains from cremations or aquamations, but it was founded on the premise that we can honor our dead while giving new life to marine ecosystems around the world. When I first spoke with the founders in the spring of 2022, their focus was on oyster reefs, which are among nature’s greatest carbon sinks but have been lost to overharvesting and pollution. Now the model extends to whichever habitat is most in need of restoration. On the northern coast of Bali, that is corals. The artificial reefs come in two separate designs that can each accommodate various species: One features a ribbed texture that is ideal for benthic species like oysters; the other sports crevices and tunnels that mimic coral reefs and provide shelter for mobile species like juvenile fish. In the future, the team will have a portfolio of designs depending on the ecosystem or the intended aesthetic. [Photo: courtesy Resting Reef] And it’s not just about environmental impact. Resting Reef’s business model allows the company to invest in communities by employing local restoration experts (11 locals were involved in Bali) and running classes and workshops to increase marine literacy. “Kids don’t really know about what’s happening underwater, so it’s important that they become aware because we believe that they will become the guardians of the future,” says Murillo Pérez. [Photo: courtesy Resting Reef] Going beyond death More than a marine regeneration initiative, Resting Reef bills itself as a sustainable death care service that helps people build a meaningful legacy for themselves or their loved ones. Both Murillo Pérez and Skajem are certified funeral celebrants, which allows them to officiate funeral services and support families through bereavement. The 24 memorials that are currently underwater in Bali are all part of a community memorial for various pets (a spot in a Community Reef begins at $470, while a dedicated reef for your pet will cost you about $3,000). The pet memorial served as a useful pilot, but this summer Resting Reef will expand by launching its first memorial service for humans. The price of a dedicated memorial made with human ashes will begin at $5,200, which is cheaper than the average cost of a basic funeral in the United States. As of 2023, that was $6,280 for cremation and $8,300 for burial. The team will ask you to send the ashes by post, but some countries have a limit to the amount of human ashes you can send by mail. (The Royal Mail in the U.K. caps it at 50 grams.) So Resting Reef is considering other options, like collecting ashes from various funeral homes that could act as partners. For those who want to have a memorial ceremony and see the reef in person, the team offers a bespoke package called Experiential Reef. As part of the service, regardless of the tier, the team will send you a miniature version of your reef that you can keep close to you. You can opt in to have a portion of the ashes incorporated in the miniature sculpture, “because some people have difficulties letting go of the ashes,” says Skajem. And if you don’t, you still have a tangible object to remember your loved one by. Whether the distance turns out to be an issue remains to be seen, but to help people feel more connected, the team also sends regular updates in the form of impact reportsboth environmental and socialand footage of the reef as it evolves. As Skajem puts it: “That’s part of the legacy.”
Category:
E-Commerce
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