Business Critical: IKEA’s New Bike, Nest Recall Woes, McDonald’s Spooky New Mascot
By Ryan Parlee
IKEA Bike
As a leader of companies who strive to leave a minimal environmental footprint, IKEA is taking their lifestyle to the streets. The Folkvanlig will be released, initially, in select stores in Vienna, with the hopes that they can expand internationally. Priced at just over $1,000, the bike will hopefully gain some popularity.
This may be a great commuter bike, with the ability to power you 37-45 miles. It charges fully in 5 hours, which can be done during work hours or overnight. IKEA could possibly bridge the gap between home and office.
Nest Recalls Half a Million Alarms
Nest’s smartest feature, in their new product, Protect, has turned out to cause the newly Google owned company some trouble. The feature that alleviates the pain of turning off an accidental alarm, can be tripped by almost anything. Waving at the device is supposed to turn off the alarm, but in doing so the threat of a real fire being missed by the detector is highly probable. It will react to any type of movement, rendering the device useless.
Nest is recalling nearly 440,000 devices, but the issue could be solved, due to the device being connected to the internet. There is an update that will disable the feature, but Nest is still going to recall all the products sold. This is a lesson in the old adage “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.” The smoke detector is already a functioning product and even if a new feature is nice, it might cause issues later on.
Fast Company explains more about the recall notice.
McDonald’s New Mascot
Earlier this week, McDonald’s unveiled their new happy meal mascot. The reaction has been less than welcoming. Many have started to refer to the mascot as “McScary,” on twitter and other social media sites.
“Happy,” the official name of the mascot, has grown arms and legs, features a larger than life mouth full of oversized and daunting teeth, and his eyes are frighteningly large and unblinking. McDonald’s has produced some other frightening characters, such as the Hamburglar, Ronald McDonald himself and Grimace (originally named Evil Grimace), a milkshake stealing villain. We’ll see how McDonalds handles the reactions.
Read more about the new mascot at Adweek.
