San Francisco Has Become a 'Consumerist Graveyard'
Downtown San Francisco retail is dying. What's replacing it is so much worse.
As I stroll past the bones of retail giants, “For Lease” signs mark abandoned storefronts like lurid headstones. I see the empty Uniqlo, H&M and Forever21, along with a vacant Walgreens and the former Diesel outpost, which looms over Market Street like a pillaged kingdom. Overall, the neighborhood feels less like an economic epicenter and more like a consumerist graveyard.

But among these depressing corporate relics is an unusual and perhaps welcome sight: groups of stylish young people with mullets, micro-tattoos and designer clothes hobnobbing inside a new, sleek retail space on Geary Street. From a distance, it’s unclear what, exactly, it’s supposed to be, or what types of products it intends to sell.

Inside, EDM blasts from a coffee cart while baristas pour oat milk lattes and flat whites. In front of them is a wooden, cage-like structure lined with mysterious-looking white spheres. But this isn’t a modern art gallery opening or a new Mac store: hordes of tech enthusiasts and local news crews are here to celebrate the unveiling of Sam Altman’s new — and dystopian — “proof of human” technology, also known as the Orb.

It almost seems like a cruel joke that this flagship location, which literally compares itself to an Apple store, sits directly next to the decades-old Macy’s that humbly advertises old vanguards like Wetzel’s Pretzels, the Cheesecake Factory and Jamba Juice. Weary, disinterested shoppers in sweatpants slowly emerge from the department retailer, shuffling past tech enthusiasts in Celine jackets and avant-garde designer outfits.

When I left, I couldn’t help but wonder: As major retailers leave gaping holes in San Francisco’s commercial epicenter, is this what’s going to fill the void? And, ultimately, do we really need or want this? Based on the general public’s response — and the types of powerful people behind these business ventures — I wasn’t optimistic. sfgate.com


Businesses Getting Queasy Over Tariffs
Tariffs and Business Uncertainty: The Current State of Play

Mid-sized American companies increasingly believe that tariffs will have a negative impact on them and worry about their ability to adapt to supply chain disruptions.

The Trump administration’s highly fluid global tariffs campaign is increasingly testing the limits of mid-sized firms to plan and make operational decisions. Uncertainty clouds short-term outlooks for trade, consumer spending and the economy, and companies must decide how to respond.

PYMNTS Intelligence surveyed the heads of payments at U.S. middle-market firms generating annual revenues between $100 million and $1 billion in late March. At the time, the April 2 “Liberation Day” announcement was approaching, but no one knew exactly what that meant. Companies still largely don’t, amid a bourgeoning U.S.-China trade war, constant adjustments for some levies on major trading partners and mixed signals about “reciprocal” tariffs on nearly all countries. “Pervasive” uncertainty, as the Federal Reserve called it, leaves the picture as muddy now as when we collected the data.

Meanwhile, warning signs are building. The U.S. economy shrank 0.3% from January through March, the first quarterly contraction since 2022, and things could quickly worsen. The levies would broadly increase prices on everything from toys and electronics to luxury watches and cars, and crimp consumer spending. This hit would have knock-on effects for businesses, jobs and investments. PYMNTS Intelligence recently estimated that even a mild decline in consumer spending could vaporize $92 billion per year from the economy.

More than half of the heads of payments we surveyed in goods verticals believe tariffs will be bad for their companies, a sharp increase from the previous month. These firms are bracing for supply chain disruptions, with about 9 in 10 expecting product delivery delays or shortages and higher raw material costs. Respondents at services firms, which rely less on imports, are generally more ambivalent, but still flag many concerns of their own.  pymnts.com


National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Dismantled
NIOSH Upheld Workplace Safety for Millions in the US. Trump Is Dismembering It.

The Trump administration is dismantling the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

For more than half a century, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), a division of the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), has worked to improve workplace safety and to study the effects on workers of exposures to toxins such as lead.

Its teams of epidemiologists, occupational nurses, specialist doctors, toxins experts, and others do everything from going into pharmaceuticals production sites to monitor for dangerous levels of pharmaceutical dust, to making sure the ventilation at cannabis processing facilities is safe, to investigating fatalities and injuries at construction sites.

NIOSH is a congressionally created, and funded, agency, having been established as part of the larger Occupational Safety and Health Act in 1970. It has roughly 1,300 staff spread around the country, in offices in Washington, D.C.; Ohio; West Virginia; Alaska; Pennsylvania; Washington; Georgia and Colorado. Taken as a whole, despite the fact that the agency’s budget is only $363 million — which translates to a little over two dollars per year per U.S. worker — the agency’s employees do some of the most important public health and labor safety work in the country, carrying out, at the request both of employers and of employees and trade unions, evaluations, and then remediation, of potentially dangerous workplaces.

HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. moved NIOSH from under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and placed it under the auspices of the newly created Administration for a Healthy America, where it was summarily dismembered. truthout.org

 
In-Store AI
Lowe’s rolls out AI assistant for store associates
Lowe’s store associates have a new artificial intelligence tool designed to enhance customer service as well as employee onboarding.

Lowe’s Companies Inc. is introducing Mylow Companion, an AI-enabled employee app developed in partnership with Open AI, developer of the ChatGPT generative AI model. Purpose-built for associate sales floor devices, the app provides access to product details, project advice, and inventory information, and also speeds up the employee onboarding process.

According to Lowe’s the launch of MyLow Companion to all associates across its more than 1,700 stores marks the first time a retailer has successfully implemented this kind of technology at scale. Mylow Companion uses generative AI to let associates obtain answers to customer inquiries using natural, conversational prompts, including voice-to-text for faster, hands-free use.

Mylow Companion is built on the same platform as Lowe’s recently launched Mylow customer chatbot. Mylow delivers quick, conversational answers directly to customers’ home improvement questions and can provide insights on customer projects during their product discovery, helping ensure they find and purchase the right tools and materials for their projects. chainstoreage.com 


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