Uncommon Goods reviews

>Location. The walk from the subway to the offices is HORRIBLE. Worst part of my day. Also, have fun finding a decent place to eat for lunch. >They pretend they care about work-life balance - but in the end, they honestly don't. >The company has an identity crisis. They want to appeal to everyone. Marketing 101: choose your audience! >They don't pay their full time employees the amount a NYC professional should be paid. Several people leave the company and find a job in that same field in NYC for 10-20k more. They lowball you as much as possible. They do a lot of talk about bringing up the minimum wage for hourly workers (which is great) but when it comes to their full time employees - it's like pulling teeth to just get a simple increase in pay. Loyalty of staying with the company for years means nothing to them - they would rather let you go, hire someone else who accepts the low ball salary - before giving you the salary you deserve. (Also heard this from multiple people from different departments.) I'm sure they give all their higher up managers a decent pay because if they leave everything would go crazy. But everyone else...peanuts. >They don't take risks at all. There's a lot of "we should do this and that" but "this and that" never, ever happens. It's all talk. >The website is very old fashioned compared to other e-commerce sites. The creative team does a great job with images and the direction they receive, but in the end, the overall template is very bland. >They want to market towards a younger audience but won't make any major changes to the type of products they curate and the marketing strategies aren't very dynamic. >Individual face-to-face time with employees are great but for some reason during the day when everyone is sitting together at their desks the mood is very awkward and gloomy. >A huge part of their profit is still dependent on catalogs. A bit bizarre and scary. >I would recommend this place to a friend only if they didn't have any other great prospects. But with that recommendation, I would have about 20 warnings along with it.

This company is slowly falling victim to the changing retail landscape and becoming increasingly irrelevant. The products are no longer unique (or are so unique, they are comically useless and wasteful for even existing), the company's sustainability focus has become standard in retail, they refuse to offer free shipping, etc etc. The result is flailing sales and a major identity crisis that has created many problems and team members are leaving in droves (and not being replaced, which is a bad sign if you ask me). Every team is operating as a separate entity with no clue as to what is going on elsewhere and managers are basically robots trying to save their own jobs. Senior leadership has gone in a strange, ruthless corporate direction obsessing over KPIs and repackaging old tired ideas as exciting new initiatives that will turn the business around. I was particularly put off by the new merchandising leader, who was apparently fired from her previous job and seems to have a bunch of people under her spell. The CEO has lost touch and reminds me of the type who pine for the "good old days" while begrudgingly making the tiniest, slowest steps to change with the times. It's sad to see a company that used to be so creative, unique and anti-corporate change so much. I hope they get their groove back, but I sincerely doubt it will be possible with its current leadership at the helm.