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The sun is out and your weekends are packed with plans to head to the nearest beach or pool. Now, you have to figure out how you’ll carry the piles of things you need for a day out, which might include towels, hats, drinks, a change of clothes, sunscreen, books, snacks, toys for the kids, and more. While you could throw all of these items into a cotton tote bag and call it a day, a well-designed beach bag can go a long way to improving beach time. For one thing, it needs to be easily washable, since you’re going to be in sand. Ideally, you want to have compartments to separate wet items (like a bathing suit) from dry ones (like your print copy of Fast Company). And if you’re planning to bring food or drinks, you want these items to stay cool. We’ve tested some of the best beach bags on the market today and identified five that are thoughtfully designed to improve your day out. [Photo: Yeti] Great For Picnics Yeti Backpack Cooler, $275 A day out in the summer usually involves a picnic of some kind. And if you want to keep your beverages and salads cold, this backpack cooler is a fantastic option. To give you a sense of its capacity, it can fit up to 20 cans. As with other Yeti products, food stays very cold inside, especially if you include an ice pack. The material is waterproof and repellant, which means anything you pack inside will stay dry even if water is splashed on it. I found it useful to bring a couple of pouches and wet bags to keep books and phones dry within this backpack. [Photo: State] Beach, But Make It Fashion State Wellington Cabana Tote, $165 So you want to be styling at the beach, but you don’t want to compromise on functionality? Do I have the bag for you. State has created a jelly tote, made of the same thick plastic you might find in jelly sandals. It’s enormous, with thick straps that won’t break, and comes in a very chic tortoise shell print (as well as other sophisticated colors, like caramel and latte). The material is very easy to clean, which is useful when you want to get the sand out. But it also comes with two nylon pouches inside: I use one to keep my phone and popsicle money out of sight, and the other to store wet swimsuits. [Photo: Bogg] Perfect For Large Hauls Bogg Bag, $100 (plus more to trick it out with accessories) There’s a reason the Bogg bag has become a phenomenon over the last few years. The original sized bag is ideal for the beach: It is made from strong, durable plastic, which is easy to clean, and can fit up to six large towels. Its large base means that it stands upright even in sand, making it easy to find items. But the bag has gotten even better thanks to a growing array of accessories that neatly clip onto the holes on the bag. There are holders for beverages and phones, keeping these items easy to reach. There are toppers that function like a little table, allowing you to keep drinks and snacks elevated while you’re in the sand. There are also dividers, to keep the cavernous space inside the bag organized. [Photo: Away] You Love Pockets Away Beach Tote, $125 I you’re an organization freak, the luggage maker Away has made the perfect beach bag for you. It has created a mesh bag with six exterior pockets for you to stash your keys, sunglasses, sunscreen, and novels. Everything is visible, so you can easily locate it. Inside, there is a large zip pocket that can keep your wallet and other items out of view. There’s a dedicated water bottle holder insider. And on the exterior, there’s a clever loop for you to store your towel. (Or yoga mat.) The bag is made of a durable, sturdy plastic that is easy to wash. And the mesh makes it easy to shake off sand. All in all, a very practical bag. [Photo: Leatherology] An Eco-Friendly Option Leatherology Canvas Beach Tote, $105 If you’re interested in a sustainable beach bag, consider Leatherology’s. It is made of organic cotton canvas that has been certified by both Global Organic Textile Standard and Organic Cotton Standard to ensure it has minimal impact on the environment. The trim is made from Italian leather that has been certified by the Leather Working Group. All of these materials are biodegradable, but it is designed to be very durable, so you will carry it for a long time. The bag is full of useful pockets, including three mesh pockets and three cotton pockets. There are also two large exterior pockets for stashing your phone and books for easy access. And since it is made from canvas, rather than plastic, it is slightly more versatile. It works well as a roomy everyday bag, even when it isn’t the summer. Leatherology also offers customization options, so you can add your monogram to the bag to make it more special.
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Sams Club shoppers will soon notice a change to the retailers private-label rotisserie chicken packaging. A new tray means the grab-and-go prepared foods favorite is now more sustainable. The clamshell packaging for Members Mark seasoned rotisserie chicken sold at Sams Club is composed of a top clear lid made from polypropylene (same as before) and a bottom piece made from a proprietary polypropylene and PCR (or postconsumer recycled content). Unlike the old tray, the new one doesn’t use a carbon mineral filler, according to Packaging Dive, which first reported the change. That carbon mineral filler is what gave the tray its black color; with it gone, the now-recyclable material takes on a neutral sand color. Sam’s Club tells Fast Company that 7 bottle caps are repurposed to make each tray, and the new packages result in a roughly 25% reduction of virgin plastic. Sabert, the company that manufactures the clamshell packaging, says the tray was developed with color specialists to mask the natural juices and stains that come from cooking chicken. The tray is also microwavable, reusable, and hand and dishwasher safe. Sabert’s chief sustainability and strategy officer, Richa Desai, tells Fast Company that Sabert is “seeing more customers embrace postconsumer recycled content for food packaging as part of their own sustainability commitments to reduce virgin plastic use.” Like CVS, Target, and other retailers, the Walmart-owned Sam’s Club is working to improve its private-abel offerings as consumers turn to generic brands to save money. For Sam’s Club, though, the competition is especially fierce considering its up against fellow membership warehouse club Costco’s private-label Kirkland brand, which is bigger than Nike. While Costco’s net sales in the most recent fiscal year were $176.63 billion, Sam’s Club reported less than half as much, at $86.2 billion. Chicken could be one small step toward closing the gap. Walmart declined to provide sales figures for its chicken, though in one Reddit thread, users claimed stores sell hundreds a day. Member’s Mark currently prices its rotisserie chicken at $4.98, though prices may vary in store and online, while Costco’s Kirkland brand rotisserie chicken sells for $5.84. Costco’s chicken also comes in a bag instead of clamshell packaging, a change last year that shoppers voiced their displeasure over. While Member’s Mark may have a way to go to reach Kirkland-level sales and cultural resonance, it seems to have at least gained a competitive edge when it comes to rotisserie chickens.
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E-Commerce
As Fast Company wrapped up its latest report on the state of the design jobs market, we wondered which companies paid the highest premium for designers. We looked at the 40,000 job listings wed gathered from Googles job search engine, over a period between December 2024 and February 2025, and zeroed in on the salaries that companies were offering to prospective employees across various different experience levels (entry level, 23 years, 45 years, 67 years, and anything above 8 years). We then averaged the salaries for all jobs that a company posted across these various experience levels and identified the seven highest spenders from each of seven categories: architects, game designers, graphic designers, urban designers, interior designers, product designers, and UX designers. The good news: Not every designer needs to be in the latter half of their career to reach the highest salaried heights. The bad news: All architects actually do need to be. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}))}(); Architects Architects face a thankless pay curve: earning a top rate means coming with top experience. All the highest paid positions, mostly at big firms like HNTB and Michael Baker, require senior-level experience of at least eight years. But architecture is also the only type of design we looked at where the top paying employer includes a food companythose upscaled La Colombe interiors dont come cheap. Game Designers As Fast Company has reported, the best door into the world of game design might not be at a gaming studio: Netflix is continuing its push into gaming, and it stands out among hiring organizations for offering the highest salary for game designers with fewer years of experience than bona fide game studios do. But dont count those studios out: CD Projekt Red and Riot Games still make the list of the seven highest-paying companies for game designers. Graphic Designers Graphic designers are typically among the lowest paid in the design profession, but they might top out their salaries the fastest: The most generous hiring companies, with the exception of ServiceNow and Nvidia, dont request senior-level status: Graphite and Crocs only ask for 23 years of experience. And apparently, the Prince Georges Parks Department in Maryland, has enough funding to duke it out with Nvidia for talent. Interior Designers Like architects, interior designers need to come equipped with senior-level experience to command top pay, with no employer among our top seven listed asking for fewer than eight years. And unlike other job types with at least a mild diversity of hiring organizations at their upper limit, all the top organizations seeking interior designers are design firms like HKS and Solize. Product Designers Netflix is the only company on our list to make the highest spot in two separate design categoriesgame designers and product designersand its job listings for senior product designers offer the highest salaries on that list, at an average of $427,000. But Netflixs average salary for midlevel product designers doesnt lag far behind, at an average of $317,000, just after Anthropic, which is sparing no expense to make experiencing Claudes profuse apologies as frictionless and stable as possible. Urban Designers Urban design shows the smallest variance in how much their top organizations are willing to pay, with the narrowest band of salaries at the upper levels. Pay tops out at $169,500, and as you would expect, the most generous organizations are all in the engineering consulting, design, and construction business. UX Designers Tanium is the kind of company that few people outside an IT department would ever interact with but that seemingly every IT department does. It provides an endpoint management system demanding a particularly sophisticated set of UX chops, which it pays handsomely for, and which one doesnt need to be a senior-level UX designer to earn. Taniums top designers can expect to make $377,500 with only 45 years of experience. The list of top-paying companies is rounded out with a few usual suspects, like Google and ServiceNow, as well as Blue Origin, which is probably spending its money well in hiring designers to determine how we get back from space. This article is part of Fast Company‘s continuing coverage of where the design jobs are, including this year’s comprehensive analysis of 170,000 job listings
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