Try as you might, you can’t control the stressful situations life throws your way. Your babysitter cancels, you’ve got a big presentation at work, your dog gets sick, your car breaks down, you get a surprise bill in the mail — whether you plan for them or not, these kinds of things are bound to pop up (often at the very worst time).

What you can help, though, is how you respond. Change your mindset, the thinking goes, and you’ll be happier, healthier, and better prepared for any unforeseen obstacles that get in the way of your day. But is your mindset really something you can control, when so often it feels like the reverse is true?

Science suggests that it is — and even more promisingly (especially for those forever in a losing race against their to-do lists), two of the most effective strategies for shifting your mindset take only a few minutes a day. Daily gratitude and mindfulness practices serve separate but related purposes, and when integrated into a routine, they’ve been associated with reduced stress and greater emotional satisfaction. 

Of course, sticking to a routine is often a challenge unto itself, which is why Fitbit’s Sense smartwatch provides mindfulness tools for stress management, silent reminders to help with accountability (such as the bedtime reminders and an hourly step-count suggestion), and guided breathing sessions for focus and relaxation. Just like you might wear it to help track your miles as you train your body, you can use the Sense to stay on top of signs of stress and help you manage it through mindfulness and meditation as you train your brain. 

‘The gateway to optimism’

Gratitude is about learning to find the positive in any situation, including difficult ones. Even if the good is as simple as a cool breeze and the bad is as overwhelming as grief or heartbreak, if we don’t notice and acknowledge the former, we’re likely to be consumed by the latter. 

On a neurophysiological level, humans are “attuned to be afraid and to be alarmed and to be negative. That’s how we’re wired,” says Arthur Brooks, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School and Business School and the author of several best-selling books on happiness. “Our evolution has led us to become fear machines.”

This might seem like a rather cruel Darwinian trick, but it’s actually what’s kept humanity alive as a species over the course of our history.

The problem? Nowadays, it doesn’t necessarily matter whether the biggest threat we encounter is a lurking predator or an email notification. We’re still primed to react. 

When triggered, the pituitary gland in the brain signals the adrenal gland to pump out stress hormones, which can be damaging to the body over time — raising your blood pressure, making it harder to sleep, and, in chronic cases, putting you at risk of problems like depression and heart disease.

To help you better understand your response to stress, Fitbit Sense features an electrodermal activity (EDA) sensor that gives you feedback on your body during a mindfulness or meditation session. You can also see how well your body’s handling stress with a daily Stress Management Score that’s based on your recent exertion, EDA readings, sleep patterns, and heart rate variability. 

Where there’s room for improvement, gratitude may function as a switch to refocus our brains on the positive. It is, says Sharon Grossman, a psychologist and the author of a book on burnout, “the gateway to optimism” — but it’s a skill we need to develop so we can tap into it when we need it most. That’s where a regular gratitude practice comes in. 

Brooks recommends taking the time once a week to write down five things you’re grateful for — whether that’s the health of a loved one or the fantastic burrito you had for lunch. Then, every day, take out the list and think about each item you wrote down, returning to update it weekly.

There’s a growing body of scientific research to support the effectiveness of gratitude practices. In one such study, 300 university students seeking mental health treatment were divided into three groups for a three-week exercise — one was instructed to write a weekly letter expressing gratitude, one was asked to write about their feelings around stressful experiences, and the third was given no writing assignment. When the researchers followed up four weeks and 12 weeks after the exercise, the gratitude group reported significantly better mental health. Elsewhere, studies have also found that gratitude is associated with higher self-esteem, improved physical health, better sleep quality and duration, and deeper interpersonal connections.

Focusing on the now

The pursuit of mindfulness, meanwhile, has an even richer scientific and cultural history. Its goal is neutrality — to notice our thoughts and emotions just as we notice our surroundings. 

“So much of the time, we end up being really reactive. We’re in this autopilot mode and we’re missing so much of the information around us,” says Grossman. 

Mindfulness teaches us to slow down, be present, and observe what’s really happening — something most of us rarely do. Instead, we tend to spend more than half our time thinking of the past or the future (“mental time-traveling,” in psychology-speak). In itself, this may not be harmful, but when we don’t pay attention to the here and now, it’s easy for negative emotions to take over. 

Even if it’s subconscious, we can self-sabotage; fall into self-criticism; or become so attached to a vision of the future, we spend our lives worrying about whether it’ll ever materialize. “Even when you’re aware of habits you want to change, you might find that it’s nearly impossible to do so because they’re so ingrained,” says Grossman.

A mindfulness practice can be as simple as shutting off your phone, putting your book away, and paying attention to what’s going on around you on your subway ride home, says Grossman. It can also take the form of daily meditation — whatever that might look like to you. 

The meditation techniques that can help with accessing and maintaining a state of mindfulness have their roots in early Buddhist teachings, but today they’re popular with people of all religions, ages, and backgrounds. Mindful meditation has been shown to help reduce stress, foster well-being, and even lead to better relationships. All for just a few daily moments of pause.

Fitbit offers a range of guided meditation sessions to introduce beginners to the experience or give seasoned practitioners a convenient library of resources accessible in just a few taps (and if you’re a Fitbit Premium member, for a limited time, you also have access to a complimentary six-month Calm membership). Along with the meditation library, Sense wearers also have access to the relax app (which not only provides a guided deep-breathing session, but also helps determine your breathing pace via your heart-rate variability data), their stress management score (calculated by sleep patterns, your physical activity, and heart rate), and are able to set a daily mindfulness goal. The combination of these stress-management features allows Sense wearers to easily work towards staying present and regularly checking in with themselves, regardless of where they are.

Building better habits

Key to both mindfulness and gratitude practices is making sure they’re part of a daily routine. That way, when a tough situation does arise, you’ve already done the work to prepare — so you’re not running a marathon before you ever go out for an easy jog.

The good news is this all becomes less work overtime. Once a behavior becomes habitual, says Brooks, it’s governed by a different part of the brain — the nucleus accumbens, rather than the prefrontal cortex — and doing it doesn’t have to take focus or energy away from other things.

He compares it to starting a new job and learning the commute: at first, you have to turn on your GPS, watch the street signs or subway stops, maybe miss a turn a few times before you know the way. After a few months, though, you could probably get there with your eyes closed (though, of course, that wouldn’t be very mindful).

The goal of a gratitude practice is the same: when you encounter a stressful situation, you want your good habits to kick in before you have the chance to think about it. So, you must practice those responses. Much like how the commuter might rely on GPS to guide them on their new route home, Fitbit’s mindfulness and stress-tracking tools can help guide you on a new path of staying present and increasing your calm until it becomes second nature.

Nothing brings joy to a home quite like a pet — and in an ideal world, all pets would live in loving homes.

All dogs would have beds to snooze on and parks to play in. All cats would have laps to curl up in and toys to bat around the living room. After all, don’t they deserve it for the endless cuddles, slobbery kisses, and getting us out of the house (and out of our heads)?

One look at rescue accounts on social media, though, and it’s clear this is far from the reality today. Worldwide, pet homelessness is a persistent, complex issue, with hundreds of millions of stray cats and dogs living on the streets or in shelters. 

Some of these animals may find homes through adoption. Jill Hilbrenner, Vox Creative’s executive editor, welcomed her second rescue pup earlier this year, and says she can’t imagine getting through the pandemic without Suzy Lee and Blanche. 

“Having a dog — and now having dogs, plural — is grounding,” she says. “When I feel my chest clenching from worry, I can look at my dogs, and it helps that melt away. I’m not saying skip the therapist, but I am saying dogs are great medicine.” 

That said, she adds, “It breaks my heart thinking about what they had to go through before we met.”

Where we stand today

Even with so many prospective owners willing to rescue — and with dog and cat ownership on the rise in countries like China and India — we have a long way to go.

But how far, and how can we get there? Mars Petcare took on a first-of-its-kind initiative to answer these questions by measuring the global scale of cat and dog homelessness and helping to identify the root causes. Created with a panel of animal welfare experts and organizations, the State of Pet Homelessness Index analyzes data from 200 global and local sources to quantify the issue and help identify its underlying causes at a country-specific level. The initial phase evaluates nine countries on their care for, acceptance of, policies to support, and cultural attitudes towards pets to help provide a crucial benchmark to measure progress.

In the UK, for example, data show strong legislation protecting animals against cruelty brings the Index score up, but show it’s pulled down by a lack of pet-friendly housing. While in India, data show most people report a positive experience owning a cat or dog, but a high prevalence of strays and a low sterilization rate represent significant obstacles to tackling pet homelessness.

The past tells us that progress is possible, though. In the 1970s, the US was euthanizing 13.5 million homeless dogs and cats yearly; today, that’s down to about a million annually, even as the country’s pet dog and cat populations have more than doubled. 

“There’s been a huge improvement in the way [animal welfare organizations are] seeing this particular challenge,” says Andrew Rowan, president of WellBeing International and one of the Index experts. “And so the question is: how much better can we do, and how do we get there?”

Addressing a global issue

According to Index data, 224 million homeless cats and dogs live in the US, UK, Germany, China, India, South Africa, Greece, Mexico, and Russia. Of those, 114 million are stray cats, 91 million are stray dogs, and 19 million are cats and dogs in shelters.

At the start of the Index project, Mars Petcare’s Advisory Board began with one fundamental question: What does the word ‘homeless’ mean for pets? Homelessness looks very different from one country to the next, so a one-size solution is unlikely.

In some regions, says Rowan, it’s common for dogs and cats to get food and shelter from the community, but that stops short of veterinary care. Sterilization is often credited with reducing the number of US dogs and cats euthanized, but a similar initiative in India would mean sterilizing 30 to 50 million female dogs — a massive undertaking that won’t happen overnight. Once pet homelessness is defined, the data show a localized approach is needed.

Why measure pet homelessness?

Science tells us that both humans and pets benefit from the other’s companionship. For humans, research shows pet ownership can have positive physical and mental health impacts by reducing stress, lowering blood pressure, and helping prevent heart disease, among other illnesses. Dogs can also experience spikes in oxytocin — a neurochemical closely associated with trust, love, and social bonding — during positive interactions with their owners. Dogs have evolved over generations to be largely reliant on humans for food, shelter, and care, and without sustained care they’re more susceptible to disease, malnutrition, and accidents.

“Across our family of veterinary businesses, our Associates have seen the problem of pet homelessness around the world and have worked to provide care and support for these animals,” says Jen Welser, Mars Veterinary Health’s chief medical officer. “We’ve implemented a wide range of programs on responsible pet-ownership education, improving access to veterinary care, and shelter support.” Until now, Welser notes, there was no way to reliably evaluate such a multifaceted issue, and no clear way to measure programs’ impacts.

The housing dilemma

Many pet owners (especially those in big cities) know the challenge of finding pet-friendly housing. Policies that ban or restrict animals can deter many people from adopting pets or even drive owners to relinquish pets they have.

According to Index research, more than half of prospective owners said it’s hard to find a rental that allows dogs, and 1 in 4 agreed it was difficult to find one permitting cats.

“There’s a mantra, especially in the United States, that there are too many animals and not enough homes,” says Ellen Jefferson, president and CEO of Austin Pets Alive! and American Pets Alive! “And the reality is there are enough homes, but if a lot of those homes are not inclusive of the pet part of the family, then that is driving shelter intake and driving animals to be euthanized in shelters.” With more data and awareness, she says, lawmakers and landlords can take steps to address this issue.

Creating care for all

Improving access to quality veterinary care is also essential. According to the Index data, one in three pet owners avoid the vet because of cost concerns. With more education and support, owners could be better prepared for costs when they arise. 

“If we can really hone in on providing that support, think about the dramatic decrease in shelter intake that would happen,” says Jefferson. Plus, this support doesn’t just help pets — it also helps the people that love them.

Before adopting, Hilbrenner studied up on caring for rescues — “how to appear non-confrontational, how to read dog body language” — and over time, she says, both dogs have gained confidence. Still, it’s an ongoing process.

“I like to think we’re teaching each other to be more trusting and to spend less time in fight-or-flight stress mode,” she says.

People thrive with pets, and pets thrive with people — and with the help of the Index, a world where both have access to the support they need is in sight.

“For the first time, we have insights into which factors are influencing the issue most in each country. This means we can lean into the most impactful ways to make a difference to help deliver on our purpose: ‘A BETTER WORLD FOR PETS,’” says Mars Petcare’s Welser. “Our aim is that we — along with animal-welfare organizations, policymakers, pet professionals, academics, and researchers — can use this tool as a reference point that will better equip us all as we work to help end pet homelessness together.”

With two shots of Pfizer in her arm, Bri Blair recently did something she hadn’t risked since before the pandemic: She went to the mall.

She met up with her mom at a shopping center near her home in North Carolina to try on clothes at Belk and Earthbound Trading Company, eat chicken and rice in the food court, and generally reimmerse herself in society. And though there were some notable differences compared with the Before Times — masked shoppers, hand sanitizer stations, plastic bags covering the water fountains — she says she was surprised by how many other people were there.

After more than a year of quarantining and social distancing, being out in such a public space was a strange experience.

“I felt like I was hyperaware of everyone, for sure,” Blair says. Still, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing: She looked people in the eyes, took advantage of the dressing rooms, and appreciated the novelty of the store environment. “I was pretty immersed in the experience,” she added.

With nearly 40 percent of Americans fully vaccinated — a share that is ticking up by the day — and most states easing pandemic restrictions and planning full reopenings, shoppers are slowly emerging from behind their screens and returning to stores. And even as some retail workers are hesitant to come back to (or continue with) what has been an especially grueling job this year, companies are also working on a host of changes that may one day make their jobs obsolete.

US retail sales jumped 10.7 percent in March as a third round of stimulus checks padded consumers’ pockets, according to the US Department of Commerce. Apparel sales more than doubled over the same month last year, while sales at department stores rose 13 percent above their February levels. In April, sales were flat as the stimulus bump receded, though economists point to the sustained improvement over 2020’s dismal figures — and Americans’ increasing comfort with indoor activities — as reasons for hope.

“What we’ve seen in the latest data is that when provided with the ability and the possibility of spending in a safe way, consumers have the means and the desire to do so,” says Gregory Daco, chief US economist at Oxford Economics.

Already, the spending surge has contributed to rising prices in some categories, especially those where the demand for goods has most outstripped the supply of inputs, Daco says. Currently, inflation is hitting sectors such as tech and home building, which have been impacted by shortages in semiconductors and lumber alongside skyrocketing demand. As new parts of the economy reopen, though, Daco expects prices to adjust accordingly, with inflation shifting from goods to services such as flights, hotel rooms, and sporting events. (Though, as other experts have admitted, it’s impossible to say exactly what the economy will do in the pandemic’s aftermath.)

“Inflation at this stage of the recovery is almost unavoidable … but that does not mean that it’s uncontrollable,” he says, explaining it will take time for spending patterns to normalize and for supply to catch up to demand.

While foot traffic in stores hasn’t caught up to pre-pandemic highs, the country’s best malls are seeing improvement. Among a sample of 52 Class A malls, foot traffic in April was down just 18.7 percent from 2019 levels, analytics company Placer.ai told Vox in an interview. That was a marked gain even from March, when traffic was off by 23.7 percent.

With new cases of Covid-19 on the decline across most of the country and plans for weddings, concerts, and vacations on the horizon again, retailers anticipate a spending boom. After all, as ads for beer and shapewear now suggest, what better way to get “back to normal” than to buy new stuff?

But just because vaccinated Americans can safely shop like they used to doesn’t mean all of them will. Some have moved to the suburbs and now frequent strip malls instead of street-level boutiques; others have changed jobs and routines. Some won’t be going back to the office every day, so they’re less likely to buy a new dress shirt or pop into the downtown shops after work. Many have also grown accustomed to the ease of curbside pickup and now expect their trips to the store to be as quick and convenient as checking out online.

Even though e-commerce accounts for only about 14 percent of consumer spending in the US today, according to the Census Bureau, it may still be an existential threat to tens of thousands of existing stores. A recent UBS report forecasts 80,000 retail store closures, representing 9 percent of the country’s total retail footprint, by 2026. The report suggests more stores will close as Americans do more of their shopping online — a trend UBS says has only been exacerbated by the pandemic.

Back in February, as many as one in four US consumers said they no longer enjoyed the in-person shopping experience and didn’t feel safe shopping in stores, according to a global IBM survey.

Karl Haller, a partner at IBM Global Business Services, expects these concerns to flag, though, so long as local public health outlooks continue to improve. “As people are getting vaccinated and as restrictions are getting relaxed, safety will probably slowly migrate down in terms of its active importance in the minds of consumers, unless or until there is an outbreak of some sort,” Haller says.

While conspicuous Lysoling, mandatory hand sanitizer stations, and UV disinfection robots roaming the aisles — which the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson called “hygiene theater” — may assuage some customers’ aversion to germs, they don’t necessarily make for an enjoyable shopping experience. Do you really want to be reminded of the looming threat of plague when you’re trying to buy face cream?

A more subtle shift that could outlast the pandemic is more spacious store layouts, says MJ Munsell, chief creative officer at architecture design and strategy firm MG2. In the past 20 or so years, fixture spacing has tightened to accommodate more and more merchandise, she says. And while the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 sets some requirements for retailers — aisles must be at least 3 feet wide, for example — social distancing has awakened many companies to the value of a little extra breathing room.

“[Retailers] are realizing that it is a customer amenity to provide more space, to not feel crowded, to not feel like you’re going to bump into someone else when you’re shopping deeper into a store,” Munsell says.

Grocery chains and garden centers now tout their “massive aisles” alongside their low prices and merchandise selections. Contactless checkout sections are also here to stay, with Walmart rolling out its self-checkout kiosks in 1,000 additional stores this year. The country’s largest retailer is even testing a new format that would eliminate cashier-staffed checkouts entirely.

Retailers that added or expanded their fulfillment options — among them curbside pickup; buy online, pick up in-store; and ship-from-store — during the pandemic are now finding that they have to more seamlessly integrate those processes into their store designs.

Grocery giant Publix, for instance, recently debuted a new store format that includes a permanent online order hub, pharmacy drive-through, and designated parking spots for grocery pickup. The head of store operations at Ulta Beauty, meanwhile, told Morning Brew that it is renegotiating some store leases to include parking spots for curbside pickup.

Convenience is just one feature that retailers are ramping up. Many are also recognizing that people need a good reason to shop in-store when the same products can be found quickly and easily online.

“There can no longer be what I would call a Field of Dreams mindset when thinking about stores. It is not a ‘build it and they will come’ philosophy,” says Haller.

At the arts-and-crafts chain Michaels, new concept stores will include “maker spaces” with free supplies, classes, and crafting tutorials. Dick’s Sporting Goods, meanwhile, opened its first House of Sport megastore in April, featuring an indoor rock-climbing wall, batting cage, golf driving bays, and outdoor track and field that will be converted into a skating rink during the winter.

Lindsay Binette, director of field marketing at WS Development, says foot traffic is almost back at pre-pandemic levels at most of the company’s properties, which include the Boston Seaport and Tampa Bay’s Hyde Park Village. The Instagram-friendly ear-piercing studio Studs opened this month at The Current, the Seaport’s pop-up village, while Tampa customers are flocking back to the custom candlemaking shop The Candle Pour.

“People are really looking for more of that sense of discovery that you can experience in-store that you can’t experience when you’re online,” says Binette.

While retailers were already making more efforts to tailor each of their stores to the unique tastes and demographics of local markets prior to the pandemic, that task became especially urgent in a year when people rarely ventured far from their homes.

Nike is betting on this strategy with its Nike Live stores, which leverage data about customers’ buying patterns and engagement to “provide the ultimate localized brick-and-mortar shopping experience.” To that end, shoppers visiting the Nike Live boutique in Tokyo will have an experience very different from those visiting the store in Atlanta.

“It’s no longer a rubber stamp from store to store. You’re starting to see a real different mix based on the patterns of purchase that are happening in a particular community, and that’s really going to help make brands more relevant,” says Lara Marrero, strategy director and retail practice leader at Gensler, a global design and architecture firm.

If all retailers could be more like Nike, perhaps the outlook for America’s malls and brick-and-mortar stores would be brighter, but as it is, most experts predict that the glut of mediocre retail is unlikely to survive for long. Last year, a record 12,200 stores closed in the US, according to an analysis by the commercial real estate firm CoStar Group. About a third of them were department stores, clothing chains, and other mall-based properties. Department stores have an especially challenging road ahead: Only 1,600 mall-based locations remain in the US — down about 40 percent since 2016 — and half of them are expected to be shuttered by the end of 2025, according to Green Street Advisors.

Matt Anthony has seen what happens when a department store closes up shop. The Akron, Ohio, resident saw the writing on the wall when Macy’s left his local mall in 2016, and again when Sears and J.C. Penney followed suit soon thereafter. Last year, with no anchor stores remaining, the mall entered foreclosure proceedings, and just recently the property was bought by a developer who plans to turn it into a business park.

Anthony had witnessed this kind of decline a decade prior at the mall across town, which lost Dillard’s, Target, and Macy’s before shuttering in 2008. The property sat mostly vacant for years, earning its place in the annals of dead malls thanks to photos of its snow-covered atrium, the skylights caved in from neglect. Today, though, the site of the former mall is once again bustling with activity: On November 1, 2020, Amazon opened a distribution center where it once stood.

Akron has one remaining (and, fortunately, far more successful) mall, and Anthony and his wife recently drove there on a Friday night to run errands and enjoy a social experience after so many months hunkered down at home.

“It felt really good to be out among people again,” he says. “Just being able to meander and wander, given the fact that we’ve just spent the past year or more not being able to be near other people, was to me really refreshing.”

Going to Summit Mall was like “walking back in time to 20 years ago,” he says. The parking lot was full, Macy’s was open for business, and people seemed to be happy to be there. While he expects it will be a luxury one day to be able to, say, walk into a camera shop to ask a question rather than firing up a chat window with a faceless customer service person online, his trip to the mall that night reminded him that there are certain aspects of the brick-and-mortar experience that can’t be replaced online.

“It kind of harkens back to what it once was,” he says. “I wish we would have appreciated it a little earlier in the process before we gave our life over to Jeff Bezos.”

When a ship as long as the Empire State Building is tall got lodged diagonally across the Suez Canal on March 23, it provided immediate and exceptional meme fodder. This mammoth symbol of the hubris of capitalism, run aground by a windy day — like a modern-day Titanic, if all the passengers were giant metal boxes, no one died, and everyone was on Twitter.

For the logistics industry, though, the canal blockage was just the latest and most visible manifestation of the relentless cascade of problems created — or at least catalyzed by — the Covid-19 pandemic.

“It’s really just another example of how crazy things have been over the past year,” says Eytan Buchman, chief marketing officer of the online freight marketplace Freightos.

Even before the 220,000-ton Ever Given got stuck, global supply chains were facing a laundry list of stressors, from skyrocketing prices and container shortages to port congestion and unrelenting consumer demand. 

For the average shopper, most of these pressures have only been noticeable when they’ve gone to buy a couch or fix their washing machine and been met with months of delays. But as the pandemic drags on and the problems continue — now exacerbated by a very big ship that, in six days, held up nearly $60 billion in global trade — there are signs that we may eventually feel the crunch in our checkout carts, too.

“Rather than a very sexy explosion in prices overnight or a total lack of capacity, you’ll see a very, very long and drawn-out death by 1,000 small changes over the next couple of months or weeks,” says Buchman. 

By the time the Ever Given was refloated on March 29, more than 350 container ships were waiting to pass through the canal. In the coming days and weeks, those ships will all descend on ports at the same time — an effect that will be felt first in Europe and later on the East Coast of the US, where many of the ships are scheduled to stop before returning to Asia. 

“There will be more congestion and more ships that are stuck waiting, and then there will be a knock-on effect where it’ll be harder to get those same ships back to Asia,” thereby exacerbating existing container and commodity shortages, says Buchman.

For a sense of just how much stuff was left idling in the ocean as workers tried to free the stuck ship, Jett McCandless, CEO of the supply chain visibility company Project44, likened the cargo to the contents of nearly 900,000 two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartments. 

So while ports and terminals are no doubt working overtime to deal with the surge of ships that is set to arrive, he says, “when it comes to transportation supply chains, this really is a physical world. So just like there’s a traffic jam during rush hour because there’s only so many cars you can drive down a big highway, [at ports], there’s only so many trucks, there’s only so many people with cranes.”

Because of the scale and complexity of these supply chains — and because massive ships and the steel containers they carry aren’t the kind of thing you can scale up overnight — there’s little chance of these problems easing anytime soon.

“People should get comfortable waiting,” says McCandless. 

Much of the surge in demand for products like bicycles, furniture, and home appliances has been driven by consumers’ lifestyle changes during the pandemic — as they’ve spent more time at home and less money on services like haircuts or dining out, they’ve purchased huge quantities of stuff to meet their needs.

The ripple effects of this spending shift are everywhere: Peloton said in February that it planned to spend more than $100 million this quarter to expedite shipping for its exercise bikes and treadmills, opting to pay as much as 10 times more to ship the products by air rather than deal with ocean freight delays. In March, Costco reported shortages of imported cheese, olive oil, and lawn equipment, among other merchandise, which it attributed to backlogged ports. Nike, Urban Outfitters, Crocs, and Yeti have likewise reported inventory issues in recent months.

Cardboard boxes are also more expensive than ever thanks to the boom in online ordering, prompting producers to shift away from paper production in order to focus on churning out material for boxes.   

And with a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill passing last month, consumer spending seems likely to continue — provided there are, in fact, goods on the shelf. US retailers reported record-low inventory levels relative to sales in January, according to the most recent data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, even as consumer-goods imports reached a record high.

“If demand in Western countries continues like it has for the last nine months, these disruptions will go into 2022,” says McCandless.

What might eventually rein in consumers’ appetites is higher prices, he says. Already, some companies have begun passing along a portion of their higher shipping costs to consumers — and those that haven’t are likely considering it, especially if investors are pushing them for higher profits or if they simply don’t have the capital to absorb the costs themselves. 

In January, Freightos surveyed 901 small- to medium-sized importers and found that 77 percent experienced supply chain difficulties over the past six months; of that group, 44 percent raised their prices as a result. Unlike big-box stores, these companies have little negotiating power with carriers and suppliers and have therefore been hit even harder by shipping costs and delays — yet another way the pandemic’s effects are being disproportionately borne by the little guys (even if, in this case, the “little guys” still bring in millions in revenue).

Given that these problems are so widespread, it will be hard to pinpoint which price increases can be attributed to the Suez blockage when they arrive — though coffee seems to be one category that could see a direct impact. As Bloomberg reports, containers of robusta coffee — used in Nescafé and other instant coffees — were among the delayed cargo, and the canal supports almost all of the coffee beans that Europe imports. 

It’s hard to know what other goods were on the delayed ships, exactly, since that information isn’t part of the vessels’ public data, but experts say it’s just about every category of product.

“Name a brand, and it would be unusual if they don’t have something impacted by this,” says McCandless. 

So far, the companies that have reported having shipments held up range from Ikea to heavy-equipment maker Caterpillar, potentially setting back building construction alongside home-improvement projects. A tea maker with 80 containers of tea onboard several vessels called the situation “chaos,” while a Dutch sex toy company bemoaned the late arrival of 20 containers filled with dildos, vibrators, and other merchandise.

It’s not just obstructing goods on their way to stores or warehouses (or people’s bedside drawers), either. There are also countless raw materials, machine components, and spare parts that are made in Europe and used by US manufacturers, says Saar Yoskovitz, CEO of Augury, a company that uses AI to monitor machine health in manufacturing. 

“If spare machine parts are held up, manufacturers may be facing stalled production lines due to machine downtime,” he says. “At the same time, many manufacturers that are running low on raw materials, or are out completely, will need to ramp up production once backlogged materials or components arrive to meet demand.”

He points to one of the great supply chain incidents of our time — the great toilet paper shortage of 2020 — as a prime example of this: Wood pulp was one of the materials that was severely delayed.

As one advisory from shipping giant Maersk warned, “Even when the canal gets reopened, the ripple effects on global capacity and equipment are significant,” adding that the blockage will trigger “a series of further disruptions and backlogs in global shipping that could take weeks, possibly months, to unravel.”

It was spelled out right there on the sweatshirts: “MAGA Civil War January 6, 2021,” the font a kitschy tribute to a Marvel blockbuster. The three men wore their commemorative merch with Trump hats and self-satisfied grins, the violent insurrection for which they’d dressed coming to fruition nearby as a pro-Trump mob stormed the US Capitol.

In the wake of Wednesday’s deadly riot, images of the sweatshirts — presumably ordered days or weeks before the president’s supporters converged on Washington, DC — circulated widely on Twitter as evidence of how much preparation had gone into the event. For anyone paying attention to far-right online communities, this proof was unnecessary: The Capitol rioters had been organizing openly online for weeks, and several national media outlets had run stories warning about potential violence. Supporters certainly would’ve had time to order gear from one of countless custom merch sites — the same mostly innocuous ones from which you might buy a niche novelty tee or a personalized mug for your coworker — for the occasion.

The invocation of a coming civil war was also familiar territory, says Michael Hayden, senior investigative reporter for the Southern Poverty Law Center: In recent years, such rhetoric has moved from the fringes of the white power movement and anti-government extremism into the political mainstream, especially around the 2020 election.

What’s striking about the merchandise is how openly and casually these extreme views are now being displayed — how an untold number of Americans now affiliate themselves with conspiracy theories, bigotry, and the breakdown of democracy the way they may have once shown their pride in a favorite band or sports team. 

“It’s indicative that they think this is part of their team, their tribe, their culture now,” says Hayden.

That’s true even if — as with the MAGA Civil War design — the gear isn’t associated with a specific group like the Proud Boys or a movement like QAnon or neo-Nazis.

“That sort of sloganeering, shopping-mall vibe of those T-shirts is really, to stereotype, much more something you would be familiar with if you’re looking at the mainstream GOP base,” says Hayden. “To be wearing it like that in the middle of an insurrection really illustrates the degree to which that group of people in the United States has moved into a place that is much more openly radical and accepting of radical politics.”

Trump rallies have long been a safe space for his supporters’ most repugnant and divisive T-shirts. At a 2016 event, one attendee made headlines for a shirt that referenced lynching: “Rope. Tree. Journalist,” it read. “Some assembly required.” 

In the following years, Confederate flags and QAnon symbols proliferated. Last month’s “Million MAGA March” protests in support of Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud ratcheted it up further, with Proud Boys members wearing “Death to Liberals” and “RWDS” (“Right Wing Death Squad”) across their chests. (That night, four people were stabbed in clashes involving the group; its leader, Enrique Tarrio, has since been charged with firearm possession and burning a Black Lives Matter banner that was ripped from a historic Black church.) 

The storming of the Capitol brought together such a cross-section of right-wing extremism that many photos of the event are effectively a “Where’s Waldo” of white supremacist, anti-Semitic, and conspiracy theorist symbols. While some will only be recognizable to those familiar with the dark recesses of 4chan, others were unmissable even to the layperson.

One man wore a “Camp Auschwitz” hoodie with the slogan “Work brings freedom” — a rough translation of the message that Jewish prisoners passed at the entrance of the Nazi concentration camp — on the front and “Staff” on the back. He was among those photographed walking the halls of the Capitol after the breach, the ones to whom Trump directed his tough message: “We love you. You’re very special. Go home.”

If the hoodie was meant to shock (and it surely was), it was a success. Twitter users expressed disgust, holding it up alongside a Republican Congress member’s comments about Hitler the day prior, in which she credited the dictator for being “right on one thing,” as evidence of anti-Semitism’s enduring grip within the GOP.

Internet sleuths tracked down and called out custom T-shirt sites carrying versions of the “Camp Auschwitz” design, tagging their payments processors and flooding their servers until the companies yanked the links offline or the websites crashed. Etsy issued an apology after the Auschwitz Memorial flagged a listing on the marketplace. One intrepid resident of Manhattan’s Upper East Side even plastered signs on street corners alerting people to the fact that TeeHands, a custom apparel site with several Nazi-themed designs listed, was doing business out of an address in the neighborhood. 

The crowd waged a similar campaign against sites with “MAGA Civil War” styles, but even as they were taken down, others popped up in their place. Experts say this process is all but inevitable today given how easy it is for users to upload a design to these sites, and how few resources most of the sites have to proactively moderate them.

“Because of the ease, it sadly becomes almost like a game of whack-a-mole,” says Christopher Magyarics, a senior investigative researcher for the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. A design like this “just keeps popping up here and there. And so you’re inevitably going to find it at some point.” 

Because the individuals who upload these designs are anonymous, it’s also unclear who is profiting from their sales in these situations. There are, however, certain e-commerce sites that directly fund some of the groups that participated in the Capitol riot. On the Proud Boys-associated 1776.shop, dubbed “The swag shop of the far right” by Slate, supporters can buy a T-shirt reading “Proud Boys Standing By,” a reference to President Trump’s infamous instructions to the group in a September debate. More explicitly violent offerings include “Kill Your Local Pedophile” (a designation that, for QAnon believers, includes much of the Democratic establishment) and “You’re next comrade / Socialists and communists fly free” (a reference to former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s practice of dropping political enemies from helicopters).

While several e-commerce and payments companies have cut ties with the president and far-right associates throughout the past week, citing their roles in inciting violence at the Capitol, Magyarics says there will no doubt be hustlers finding ways to sell new, more timely merch in the coming weeks, especially with all the attention they’re getting from the mainstream media.

“Never underestimate the power of the dollar, because I’m sure they’re making some pretty hefty cash off this kind of merchandise,” he says. 

What remains to be seen, says Hayden, is how long this attention lasts.

“Every time these things happen, there is a moment of, ‘Oh, my god, what is this? How is this going on?’ And that seems to be the only time we notice these T-shirts that call for civil war, this rhetoric where people are talking about ‘no political solution,’ which used to be considered totally taboo for mainstream Republicans,” he says. 

“And then two or three days later, the news cycle moves on and we have the same pundits suggesting that concerns about far-right extremism are overblown and that it’s just liberals trying to generate political points.”

In a normal year, a holiday marketing email landing in my inbox the first week of October would have been cause for an immediate “unsubscribe.” In 2020, though, the premature arrival of festive cheer and seasonal discounts hardly registered as unusual — coming, as it did, after months in which my experience of time seemed to bear little connection to my calendar.

Brands that might otherwise wait until mid-November to start pushing out holiday promotions had plenty of reasons for getting a head start, most of them related to the Covid-19 pandemic: reducing last-minute crowds, capitalizing on the momentum from Amazon’s months-delayed Prime Day, and accounting for shipping delays caused by the expected flood of online orders.

The wild card that marketers say has been at the top of all of their minds, though, is the upcoming US presidential election, a single day in November that could very well monopolize the country’s attention long past the closing of the polls. 

The coming weeks will be a test of what happens when the holiday shopping bonanza collides with one of the most fraught political events in recent history. How do you get customers excited about your new air fryer or eyeshadow palette when they’re worried about the future of democracy? How soon is too soon to advertise a sale once the polls close?

Just as America’s top political strategists are currently mapping out different election outcomes — a landslide victory for either side, a contested race that takes weeks to call due to record numbers of mail-in ballots, civil unrest stoked by President Trump’s unfounded cries of voter fraud — brands are creating contingency plans for how and when they’ll be able to sell you stuff again. 

Vickie Segar, the founder of Village Marketing, an influencer marketing agency, says she’s advised her clients to scale back significantly during the first couple of weeks of November. She wants to make sure they don’t get caught in the same situation many did four years ago, having to redo campaigns that audiences never saw. 

“During the election in 2016, we assumed there would be a couple of days where we would go dark on media,” she recalls. Instead, Trump’s win sent the country reeling, keeping audiences’ attention on national political news rather than shopping or lifestyle content.

In the past two presidential cycles, consumer spending dropped 6 percent year over year during the week of the election, according to Epsilon’s Abacus database.

Those clicks and dollars did bounce back, but not until at least a week after the election, Segar says — and this year, with the likelihood of contested results and the concurrent threat of the pandemic, the outlook is even more uncertain. “It’s like a perfect storm,” says Segar, whose agency is also working with Joe Biden’s campaign to reach young voters on social media. “We just have to be prepared.”

For some companies, this means preparing for business disruptions: Maggie Merklin, executive vice president at Analytic Partners, a marketing analytics company, says one client, a restaurant group, anticipates another lockdown if Biden wins the election and is planning out scenarios for national or statewide closures. The CEO of ServiceChannel, a facilities management company that works with gyms, retailers, and other businesses, told the Wall Street Journal that hundreds of its clients have plywood and contractors ready to mobilize in case of protests and civil unrest.

However, for other brands, this preparation has as much to do with the messaging they’ll put out. In the lead-up to the election, many brands have thrown their weight behind voter turnout efforts: Fashion labels have released “vote” merchandise, ride-sharing apps have offered free or discounted transportation to the polls, and companies of all persuasions have used their email lists, Instagram feeds, and celebrity ambassadors to encourage customers to do their civic duty. 

This kind of bipartisan message is a relatively safe way to get involved in the national conversation. According to a recent Morning Consult poll, 59 percent of Americans believe corporations should use their influence to ensure safe and fair elections. Picking a side — or being perceived to pick one — is riskier, with 52 percent of respondents saying companies shouldn’t be involved in getting politicians elected. 

Jennifer Bett Meyer, president and founder of the media relations agency Jennifer Bett Communications, says she has encouraged the brands she works with to be outspoken. “I don’t think it’s enough to just pause a marketing campaign because you’re afraid that you’re not going to get attention because there’s going to be so much attention on the election. I think it’s every brand’s responsibility to become part of that process and to speak up about what’s going on.”

Of course, some companies have a more natural entry to do so than others: Tia, a women’s health startup and a JBC client, published an open letter to the future president about what women want for health care in America, based on the results of a September survey of 900 women.

But even those that sell CBD drinks or cashmere sweaters will have to enter the fray eventually post-election. “Brands need to launch. People can’t stand still,” says Bett Meyer, adding that the holiday season is a crucial one for many of the startups and small brands with whom the agency works. “I think it always comes back to the messaging … it’s unbelievably important that brands are looking at their external messaging, whether that’s an email blast or a social media post or a sale, to make sure that it reflects the current landscape.”

Their ability to read the room can make or break consumers’ trust, as we witnessed this summer with brands’ at-times-haphazard attempts to weigh in on the Black Lives Matter movement. While people called out companies for empty pronouncements and black-square Instagram posts that contradicted their internal policies and practices, not posting was also a statement in itself — one that even many apolitical companies wanted to avoid.

“I can’t tell you how many brands were like, ‘We are not going to comment on Black Lives Matter.’ And then all of a sudden, they were like, ‘We need to comment on Black Lives Matter,’” says Carrie Kerpen, the co-founder and CEO of Likeable Media, a digital agency. With the election, she says, brands have to be prepared to shift their messaging and timing based on the outcome. “There’s no guidebook that says, ‘You wait five days, and then post.’ … The overused word of the century is ‘unprecedented,’ but it is. We don’t know. So you have to go with a little bit of gut.”

What consumers see (and don’t see) in the coming weeks will also be determined by ad platforms themselves: Facebook has banned new political ads in the week before the election and for an indefinite period after polls close, while Google will implement a post-election political ad ban expected to last at least a week. The two tech giants — which together control nearly 70 percent of the digital ad market — are making a public show of cracking down on misinformation (though how effective this will be amid all the lies that go viral for free is debatable). In doing so, says Kerpen, Facebook has begun labeling nearly all ads that even remotely touch on “social good” as “political” — so brands won’t be able to create ads that tread near these subjects until after the platform lifts the ban. 

Advertising on virtually any channel is also more expensive around the election. Kantar, a  consulting and research firm, estimates that political advertisers will spend $7 billion this election cycle, driving up costs and monopolizing prime spots on television, digital, and radio. On Facebook, ad prices were already surging before the election, with costs per 1,000 impressions (CPMs) up 23 percent between July and September, according to digital ad company Revealbot. On YouTube, Bloomberg reports, the deluge of pre-election political ads is outpacing the number of slots available in front of certain audiences, pricing out even some campaigns. 

For some brands, the October early holiday push comes back to the pandemic for another reason: They pulled back aggressively on their marketing spending in the spring, when mass unemployment and shuttered stores meant few consumers were shopping. According to Kantar, US media spending was down 19 percent in the first half of 2020 compared to the same period last year. Now that some sectors have stabilized, these companies have extra budget to spend — and with the looming threat of political upheaval, they’re under pressure to meet sales goals.

Merklin says many of her clients are directing these dollars at email marketing and other channels targeting existing customers for the weeks around November 3. “So they’re still advertising during the election, but on more of a targeted or a personalized level because they can do that a little bit more safely than just throwing out an ad on Facebook and not knowing what it’s going to be next to and in what context it might be observed,” she says. 

Brands, they’re just like us: They have no idea what happens next.

You don’t appreciate how indispensable your refrigerator is until it stops working. 

When Slomique Hawrylo’s Kenmore fridge broke down in mid-August, she realized this is especially true during a pandemic. At first, Sears quoted her two-and-a-half weeks to deliver a replacement — already a long wait for a five-person household — a date the retailer pushed back once, then twice, then three times, until she was looking at sometime in October. 

After an expensive experiment with dry ice, she bought a dorm-size mini-fridge to tide the family over. It wasn’t much help, though.

“I mean, once you put a gallon of milk in the refrigerator, that’s it,” she says. “So we found ourselves going to the store every day, we found ourselves eating out every day.”

Eventually, she gave up and canceled the order, finally tracking down one of the few available models at a local Lowe’s. “It was a humbling experience, to be honest with you,” she says.

It’s also a familiar one during the Covid-19 pandemic. Nearly seven months into the pandemic, people across the US are still finding themselves thwarted from purchases due to empty shelves or months-long back orders. While toilet paper may no longer be a scarce commodity, the supply of new bikes hasn’t yet caught up with the cycling boom, and dumbbells continue to see the kind of resale markups usually reserved for limited-edition Air Jordans. Now, as Americans get ready to hunker down for a projected next wave of the virus — or settle into masked and distanced school and work routines — they’re buying up a whole new range of products to prepare.

Retailers are struggling to keep up: Wayfair had sold out of nearly its entire selection of patio heaters by mid-September as people snatched them up for safer outdoor gatherings. School districts are facing shortages of Chromebooks, leaving tens of thousands of students without laptops for online learning. Big-box stores can’t keep enough furniture and appliances in stock to fill the homes where their customers are now spending so much time.

The disruptions are everywhere — and with the busiest shopping season of the year still ahead, experts say more delays are inevitable. 

If it were merely an issue of quarantine fads and a shift from offline to online shopping, these problems might have a quicker fix. But behind every sold-out product, there’s a vast supply chain linking raw materials to factory floors to distribution centers, and the fallout from the pandemic is impacting them in ways we are still coming to understand.

Many of the shortages we see now are the direct result of decisions made six months ago, says Rafay Ishfaq, an associate professor of supply chain management at Auburn University. In April, retailers looked at the growing economic and human toll of the virus and adjusted their purchase orders accordingly. At a time of record unemployment, it was understandable to think Americans might be inclined to buy less.

“Imagine a big-box retailer saying, ‘Let’s hold off. Let’s see where things go, and then we will restart [the supply chain].’ That’s what’s happening,” he says. When retailers told their suppliers not to produce more, those companies told their suppliers not to produce more, setting off a chain reaction.

As lockdowns eased and people started shopping, however, there was no switch anyone could flip to ramp back up to a pre-pandemic pace. 

“It takes time to gather that momentum and get this global supply chain or even the domestic supply chain going,” says Ishfaq. “For the producers to start making things, they need demand planners and merchants and the retail firms to tell them how much they need.”

While it may seem obvious from today’s vantage point that restrictions on indoor gatherings would lead to a run on outdoor heaters, that was hardly the case back in the spring. When Walmart placed its orders for fishing tackle earlier this year, it estimated that 25 million Americans would be fishing regularly. None of its forecasts predicted that number to jump to 35 million as lockdowns propelled interest in outdoor recreation.

Now, looking ahead, there’s no historical data to model whether people will still be scrambling to buy inkjet printers and chest freezers next April, or whether, by then, there will be a whole new “new normal.” 

Plus, says Ishfaq, even if retailers could meet every spike in demand at a few weeks’ notice, it’s not necessarily worth it for them to do so.

“Every retail chain is focused on their big sales items: what they sell most, what they’re known for, what the customers come to the stores to buy,” he says. “If that means that the peripherals or seasonal items or secondary product categories run short, then so be it.”

This is especially true when manufacturers are dealing with supply chain issues of their own. Fans of Coke’s or Pepsi’s more esoteric soda flavors — Diet Mountain Dew Code Red, Cherry Vanilla Coke Zero — have found them out of stock for months as the companies prioritized their “high-volume” products. 

Like other beer and soft drink makers, they’ve also had to contend with an aluminum can shortage — a consequence of consumers suddenly drinking at home en masse rather than at bars or restaurants, where most beer comes from a keg — as well as earlier disruptions in the supplies of artificial sweetener (imported from China) and carbon dioxide (produced as a byproduct of gasoline, for which demand plummeted this spring).

It’s not just beer and soda cans that are harder than usual to come by. Sales of canned food and home canning supplies have soared during the pandemic, and while the leading can manufacturer, Ball Corporation, has ramped up production at two US plants and begun construction on another, that extra capacity won’t come online until the latter half of 2021. Even that’s a better timeline than most: Paper towels are out of stock at many retailers, but “producers have no plans to build new manufacturing capacity,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “The central piece of the machinery needed to make paper towels takes years to assemble.”

Transportation bottlenecks are another culprit in the back order bonanza. Early on in the pandemic, US imports plummeted and shippers canceled planned voyages from countries like China, anticipating lower demand. As economic activity picked up and Americans tore through retailers’ inventory of standing desks and roller skates, freight couldn’t keep up: Ships were filled to capacity, leading to congestion and delays in ports. 

Months later, importers are still struggling to find shipping containers to send certain goods, and when they can, it’s costing nearly three times as much to ship from East Asia to the US’s West Coast as it was pre-pandemic, according to the Freightos Baltic Index. Shipments are also less reliable, and those delays and costs get passed along to the consumer. 

“Transportation has a limited capacity,” says Simone Peinkofer, an assistant professor of supply chain management at Michigan State University. “There are only that many containers that fit on a ship or number of products that fit on a truck, and thus, if there is not enough transportation capacity, then products will take longer to reach their destination.”

Stateside, the effects of Covid-19 have exacerbated a shortage of truck drivers, caused by the industry’s decades-long failure to increase drivers’ wages and benefits to reduce turnover. With workers retiring or changing careers in droves, companies aren’t able to recruit or license new drivers fast enough to meet increased demand.

Steven Melnyk, a professor of supply chain and operations management at Michigan State University, says we’ll be feeling the effects of many of these disruptions for months — and in some cases years — to come. One threat he expects will eventually trickle down to store shelves is supplier bankruptcies. In July, the International Monetary Fund warned that the bankruptcy rate for small- and medium-sized businesses could triple this year due to the pandemic, potentially destabilizing the supply chains they support. 

“Many companies are just going to disappear,” says Melnyk. “Why? Because if they file for bankruptcy and then they decide to reconstitute themselves, they have a 25 percent reduction in their ability to secure a loan from a bank because they previously declared bankruptcy. So guess what they do? They just shut the door.”

These so-called “silent bankruptcies” are already underway: One amusement ride manufacturer told the Washington Post that many of its suppliers in China and South Korea have simply stopped returning messages. 

In some industries, such as aerospace, suppliers may be highly specialized and therefore hard to replace when demand returns, says Melnyk. “When they go bankrupt, you don’t have a supplier. And it takes time for you to find an alternative and qualify them and develop them and vet them and integrate them.” 

Even if the market for children’s rides seems unlikely to see a sudden surge in demand, those companies, in turn, support a network of other businesses that could crumble if orders dry up — subcontractors who make specific components, suppliers of raw materials and manufacturing equipment, transportation and logistics companies, and so on — making a quick rebound even harder. 

In the shorter term, the holiday shopping rush is going to be a test of Americans’ patience. A recent Salesforce report found that as many as 700 million packages could face delays if online orders exceed shipping capacity by the expected 5 percent. 

Shoppers could also see fewer bargains on Black Friday, says Melnyk. While retailers usually compete on price during the holidays, this year, “The issue is going to be availability. … You might see some discounts but they’re not going to be the crazy discounts we’ve seen in the past.”

For those who have their eye on fitness equipment, a new guitar, or a working refrigerator, the question may not be, “Where can I find this on sale?” but rather, “Can I find it at all?”