Following its recent earnings report in early March, fashion retailer Nordstrom has announced the upcoming launch of nine additional stores for its Nordstrom Rack off-price retail concept. Most of the stores are planned to debut in the spring of 2024, while one store is scheduled...
Best Buy has reportedly eliminated hundreds of roles in its brick-and-mortar stores. The cuts are centered on the electronics and appliance retailer’s “consultants” who focus on selling computers, smartphones and other complex products, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Friday (April 14), citing unnamed sources. With these consultant...
ChatGPT and GPT-4 developer OpenAI has a new competitor. It’s Elon Musk. News broke Friday (April 14) that the firebrand owner of Tesla, Twitter and SpaceX, among other companies, has been quietly amassing the processors and engineers to create artificial intelligence (AI) tech to rival...
Non-federally chartered banks will soon be able to make Small Business Administration (SBA) loans. Effective May 12, the agency is lifting the moratorium on licensing new Small Business Lending Companies (SBLCs), adding a new type of lending entity called a Community Advantage SBLC and removing...
In retail, get ready for the “big reconsideration.” The latest retail sales data released Friday (April 14) show that in March — and for the second straight month — consumers pulled back their spending. Overall, the data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that spending...
Restaurant loyalty program use has broadly increased in the past year, but that increase has begun to plateau in recent months. Moreover, quick-service restaurant (QSR) customers remain far more likely to use loyalty programs than table-service restaurant customers, but when offered, consumers will use loyalty...
Everyday consumer goods are the primary target of organized retail crime (ORC) rings. Eighty-one percent of ORC groups focus on everyday consumer goods while only 11% target luxury goods, the National Retail Federation (NRF) said in a Friday (April 14) report. ORC groups have found...
With more than 100 million monthly users, OpenAI’s ChatGPT is the fastest-growing consumer application in history. Now, governments around the world are attempting to keep up with the rapid pace of innovation surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) technology, as a growing suite of headline-grabbing and efficiency-driving...
Government incentives are spurring nationwide industry investment as manufacturers race to find space to fulfill demand. As first reported last week (April 8) by the Wall Street Journal, the industrial real estate market is booming, as manufacturing-related construction reached a dizzying $108 billion last year. New factories...
