Written for the leaders, owners and professionals of the 11 million businesses with between $50,000 and $50 million in revenue.

Google Pay and Apple Pay have been on mobile phones since 2011 and 2014, respectively, but they took awhile to catch on. As of 2024, though, over half of Americans — 51% — are using contactless payment (either mobile wallets or tap-to-pay credit cards), according to Mastercard.

That’s good news for business owners with a modern point-of-sale (POS) system, because a new study found that customers spend more on purchases when they use contactless payment instead of cash. This is especially true for “conspicuous consumption” and “in periods of economic growth.”

To get started, read business.com’s guide to The Best POS Systems of 2024.

Pivot point: Why the 180-degree rebrand is trending

Limited Too: Tween mall brand is back from the dead

Star Wars: TruMoo brings saga’s blue milk to the real world

(Source: Shutterstock)

Earlier this year, famed Los Angeles hotspot Sage Vegan Bistro announced it would drop the “vegan” part, embracing meat and dairy as the newly rechristened Sage Regenerative Kitchen & Brewery. While the social media backlash was swift — many longtime diners saw the move as a betrayal — it generated a massive amount of free publicity.

Meanwhile, Bumble — which spent a decade marketing itself as the “women make the first move” dating app — has a new feature that allows men to message first (if a user has selected that preference).

Over the past year or so, Etsy likewise has shifted its core handmade values, according to unhappy traditional sellers who are struggling to compete with less-than-artisanal dropshippers and AI-generated print-on-demand.

All of these turns may have a simple explanation: throwing a Hail Mary straight into economic headwinds. Sage hadn’t “been profitable since 2020,” writes the Los Angeles Times; Bumble reported a $1.9 million net loss in 2023 on top of a $114 million loss in 2022; Etsy’s stock is down approximately 23% so far this year.

When faced with typical macro challenges, business strategies tend to include cutting spending, managing cash flow, and reevaluating marketing; you focus on what you do well and lean on your core values to weather the storm. The buzzword for that approach is “resiliency.”

But in untested waters, the 180-degree pivot might be its own micro trend. Yes, 3 in 4 companies eventually refresh their brand to stay relevant, but if 2024’s about-faces seem particularly radical, here’s another buzzword: “unprecedented times.”

Your business’s financial health is like its heartbeat, but the accounting required to maintain it can be a hassle, and hiring an accountant can be costly. To better manage your money and get a holistic view of your finances, you need accounting software that makes things easy.

That’s where QuickBooks Online comes in. Its seamless accounting software makes tracking receipts, income, and bank transactions simple. Manage your bills, expenses, inventory, invoices, and tax deductions with intuitive tools that won’t take you ages to learn. QuickBooks Online even integrates with your payroll and time tracking systems, so you won’t need to switch between apps and enter the same data multiple times.

Get your accounting done quickly, easily, and correctly. With pricing plans suitable for every budget, QuickBooks Online works for any business, from small to enterprise.

(Source: Limited Too)

For many women of a certain age (millennials), the words “Limited Too” inspire dreamy memories of colorful clothes, inflatable chairs, notebooks, fluffy pens, silky PJs, and CDs. Limited Too, the little sister of apparel shop The Limited, reigned supreme at malls in the ’90s and 2000s.

Though Limited Too merged with the lower-priced tween brand Justice in 2008, women in their 20s and 30s still love to reminisce about the brand. Now, inspired by the current uptick in Y2K fashion, it appears we’ve manifested the actual return of Limited Too, teased for weeks on Instagram in June before official confirmation.

As of July 12, Limited Too’s initial new collection has launched at Kohl’s, “with additional styles continuing to drop throughout the month,” a spokesperson tells b., adding, “Limited Too has been floored by the response on social media of the brand’s comeback — we can’t say exactly what’s coming down the pike, but the brand has been listening to their followers!”

(Source: TruMoo)

It took almost half a century, but the very brief appearance of blue-hued milk in 1977’s Star Wars — Luke Skywalker’s aunt pours it for the growing future Jedi, who then stops his pouting — is finally back and available to fans through July while supplies last.

As perhaps the weirdest product featured in the Disney franchise’s annual Star Wars Day marketing push last spring, TruMoo announced its officially licensed, honest-to-goodness cerulean milk would hit grocery store shelves galaxy-wide.

In 2019, actor Mark Hamill recalled that the actual on-set blue milk was “warm, oily, sickly-sweet” and “gag-inducing.” Thankfully, TruMoo’s version is just vanilla-flavored. And at 1% fat, it’s on the light side of the dairy Force. 

Written by Dan Ketchum and Rachel Brodsky.