If you haven’t heard already, Nokia is dialing down on its position as a mobile phone manufacturer. To mark its pivot, the company has adopted a dramatic new logo, its first brand identity transformation in decades.
The Finnish tech firm says the fresh wordmark—an abstract emblem with negative space at the front, middle, and tail—represents a more “energized” and “dynamic” Nokia. The overhaul includes an expanded color palette that goes spectrums beyond the singular ‘Yale blue’.
Well, this “dynamic” look has energized the people too, somewhat. Consumers always have something to say when a company introduces a new logo, and Nokia’s revamp is no different.
A stream of jokes on social media insinuates that it’s a good thing Nokia has been around since 1865, because people would have a hard time deciphering its name had it been new.
DID YOU KNOW: the new Nokia logo pays tribute to its mobile phone heritage by stylizing the “N” into a trendline graph of Nokia’s market share in phones pic.twitter.com/M2uI3P9iG2
The Czech Republic’s new name rolls off the tongue more easily. It now wants to be known as Czechia, though it will still keep the longer form for various scenarios.
To be clear, the terms ‘Czechia’ and ‘Czech Republic’ have been in use interchangeably in an official capacity since 2016. However, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the nation will henceforth only use the Czech Republic designation for formal contexts, such as on official government documents, embassy relations, and legal correspondence.
Meanwhile, Czechia will from now on be the preferred name for more general and casual settings. You’ll see it across literary works, newspapers, advertising signs, and in instances where the country is being represented in the fields of culture, sports, and science. International committees or politicians might even choose this name to appear more legible “and less distant” on official marketing and meeting collaterals.
In line with the transition, the Czech Tourism Board has rebranded to become VisitCzechia. Its new, more readable logo illustrates why the nation is putting so much weight on a name change.
Czechia’s Olympic team has already gone ahead to identify itself as ‘Czechia’, printing the shorter moniker across jerseys and merchandise.
Buying and returning on Amazon may seem extremely easy, but that simplicity comes at a cost.
Amazon has more than 115,000 drivers working under independent small businesses – Delivery Service Partners, or DSPs – who deliver Prime packages to doorsteps with one-day shipping. This is a large part of how Amazon delivers packages so quickly. CNBC talked to current and former Amazon DSP drivers about the pressures of the job. From urinating in bottles to running stop signs, routes that lead drivers to run across traffic, dog bites and cameras recording inside vans at all times – some of the 115,000 DSP drivers have voiced big concerns.
But once you receive your Amazon order, if there’s any reason you are on happy, more than likely it can be returned. Sending back an online order has never been easier. It’s often free for the customer, with some retailers even allowing customers to keep the item while offering a full refund. Amazon returns can be dropped off at Kohl’s, UPS or Whole Foods without boxing it up or even printing a label.
But there’s a darker side to the record number of returns flooding warehouses after the holidays.
“From all those returns, there’s now nearly 6 billion pounds of landfill waste generated a year and 16 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions as well,” said Tobin Moore, CEO of returns solution provider Optoro. “That’s the equivalent of the waste produced by 3.3 million Americans in a year.”
Moore says online purchases are at least three times more likely to be returned than items bought in a store. In 2021, a record $761 billion of merchandise was returned, according to estimates in a new report from the National Retail Federation. That report says 10.3% of those returns were fraudulent. Meanwhile, Amazon third-party sellers told CNBC they end up throwing away about a third of returned items.
At the head of the pack, Amazon has received mounting criticism over the destruction of millions of items. Now the e-commerce giant says it’s “working toward a goal of zero product disposal.” Last year, it launched new programs to give sellers like Clausen new options to resell returns, or send them to be auctioned off on the liquidation market.
This record number of online returns has created a booming $644 billion liquidation market. As supply chain backlogs cause shortages of new goods and Gen Z shoppers demand more sustainable retail options, pain points for one sector of retail are big business for another.
The nation’s only major public liquidator, Liquidity Services, resells unclaimed mail, items left at TSA checkpoints, and outdated military vehicles. It also refurbishes highly sought after electronics, from noise-canceling headphones to the machines that make microchips.
CNBC takes you on an exclusive tour inside a Liquidity Services returns warehouse outside Dallas, Texas, where unwanted goods from Amazon and Target are stacked to the ceiling before being resold on Liquidation.com or a variety of other marketplaces.
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