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Here’s a question for business leaders: When was the last time you or someone on your team had a frustrating experience as a customer? Perhaps you were shuffled between departments, asked to repeat information multiple times, left feeling like no one grasped your specific needs, or that the information changed depending on who you talked to.
Now flip the scenario. How many of your customers might be experiencing that same frustration with your company right now?
Most well-intended, talented teams can have blind spots with their own customer service. Its like sleeping in the guest room at your house to truly understand what your visitors experience. Even the most gracious hosts might not realize just how lumpy that mattress is, or how loud the dining room chairs are overhead.
The truth is that delivering a seamless customer experience is one of the most significant challenges for B2B companies. Despite our obsession with customer satisfaction metrics, most organizations still prioritize internal structures over customer needs. I see it constantlythe customer lifecycle journey fractured across marketing, sales, customer success, and renewals, with each department guarding its own territory and creating an inconsistent customer experience.
The hidden cost of fragmentation
This fragmentation is more than a customer annoyance. Its also a business liability. When departments operate in isolation, several things happennone of them good:
Decision making becomes slower and more reactive
Customers waste countless hours repeating themselves to different teams
Valuable context gets lost in departmental handoffs
Inconsistent messaging and experiences create confusion and erode trust
Opportunities to anticipate customer needs vanish into the gaps between teams
When departments operate in silos, the silos have a real and substantial impact on customer trust and loyalty. By flipping the traditional marketing structure on its head, youll gain a new and valuable perspective. You and your team will have the advantage of seeing things from the outside-in, and reap the benefit of turning customers into partners and champions. Lets discuss how to do it.
Build bridges, not silos
The shift toward a unified customer lifecycle cant be done at a surface, optics-only level. A cross-department meeting or two to share ideas isnt going to cut it here. True unification means ripping off the Band-Aid and totally rethinking how we structure, measure, and reward our organizations.
It sounds intimidating, but its possible. Ive lived this shift. Ive spearheaded this shift. And it is so, so worth it.
Here are three key practices that make the biggest difference:
1. Establish cross-functional ownership
Breaking down silos starts with shared accountability. Consider experimenting with creating cross-functional teams responsible for specific segments of the customer base. These teams might include representatives from marketing, sales, customer success, and technical support who each own a specific part of the customer experience.
This approach ensures no customer falls through the cracks during handoffs between departments. It also creates natural collaboration points where team members develop a deeper understanding of the entire customer journey and can identify common pain points more quickly.
2. Align metrics that matter
Disconnected metrics breed disconnected experiences. Marketing teams traditionally focus on lead volume and pipeline contribution, while customer success teams track retention rates and satisfaction scores. These separate scorecards create invisible walls.
The shift requires developing shared, customer-centric metrics that every department contributes to. Net retention rates, customer satisfaction scores, and customer lifetime value provide more holistic views of success than departmental vanity metrics.
This enhances accuracy and reduces overlap and rework, while eliminating dangerous knowledge gaps.
3. Leverage integrated technology
Metrics are critical, but you also have to inform those metrics with the right data. This might sound like the same thing as number two, but metrics are about asking the right questions, and data is about getting the right answers. A unified customer experience requires unified data. Without a single source of truth about customer interactions, teams operate with incomplete information and fail to make data-driven decisions.
This doesnt have to be done manually, and probably shouldnt be. Integrated technology with a high-powered platform is critical to making this unification streamlined and accurate.
If you continue using individual, specialized tools, they must share data seamlessly. When marketing automation, CRM, support ticketing, and product usage analytics feed into a comprehensive customer database, everyone gains visibility into the complete customer picture.
Make the change real
I know the kinds of results that can happen when an organization commits to unifying the customer experience:
Reduced time-to-resolution for customer issues
Increased customer retention rates and enhance customer trust
Higher expansion revenue from existing accounts
More accurate prediction of renewal outcomes
Improved employee satisfaction across customer-facing teams
By breaking down silos and ensuring smooth handoffs between departments, unification can eliminate friction points that often lead to customer frustration and attrition. Who doesnt want to see positive results in key performance indicators like these?
Lead the change
This wont happen on its own. As executives, we must champion this approach from the top. The process starts with:
Modeling collaborative behaviors across your leadership team
Creating clear customer journey maps that span departmental boundaries
Redesigning incentive structures to reward collaboration
Investing in technologies that enable seamless information sharing
Measuring success through the customer’s eyes, not internal metrics
The first step is often the hardestacknowledging that our existing structures may be optimized for our convenience rather than our customers’ success.
The competitive advantage
Ready to figure this out? Ready to spot opportunities earlier, solve problems faster, and build deeper customer relationships that competitors struggle to displace?
One of th biggest reasons for making this shift is creating an environment where employees can focus on delivering value rather than navigating internal complexity. Teams become energized when they see the direct impact of their work on customer success. And happy employees = happy customers. The trust and loyalty you cultivate with your teams has a direct impact on the trust and loyalty your organization benefits from with your customers. When customers trust their vendors, they become more aligned, viewing you as a partner, not an adversary.
I believe the business landscape is quickly moving toward prioritizing unified customer experiences. Clinging to fragmented approaches will put organizations at a disadvantage as customer expectations continue to rise.
Why not start now?
Melissa Puls is chief marketing officer and SVP of customer success at Ivanti.
U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, the man accused of shooting and killing Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealth Group’s insurance division, in New York last year.
In a statement, Mangione’s lawyer Karen Friedman Agnifilo called the decision to seek the death penalty “barbaric.”
“While claiming to protect against murder, the federal government moves to commit the pre-meditated, state-sponsored murder of Luigi,” Friedman Agnifilo said.
Mangione, 26, has pleaded not guilty to New York state charges of murder as an act of terrorism and weapons offenses. He could face life in prison without parole if convicted in that case. New York does not have the death penalty for state charges.
Mangione faces a parallel federal indictment in Manhattan federal court over Thompson’s killing, which is where Bondi said prosecutors will aim for the death penalty. He has not yet been asked to enter a plea to the federal charges.
If Mangione is convicted in the federal case, the jury would determine in a separate phase of the trial whether to recommend the death penalty. Any such recommendation must be unanimous, and the judge would be required to impose it.
Thompson was shot dead on December 4 outside a Midtown Manhattan hotel, where the company was gathering for an investor conference.
Luigi Mangiones murder of Brian Thompson – an innocent man and father of two young children – was a premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America,” Bondi said in a statement.
“After careful consideration, I have directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in this case as we carry out President Trumps agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again,” Bondi said.
The brazen killing of Thompson and ensuing five-day manhunt captivated Americans.
Police officers in Altoona, Pennsylvania, found Mangione on December 9 with a 9-millimeter pistol and silencer, clothing that matched the apparel worn by Thompson’s shooter in surveillance footage, and a notebook describing an intent to “wack” an insurance company CEO, according to a court filing.
While public officials condemned the killing, some Americans have cheered Mangione, saying he drew attention to steep U.S. healthcare costs and the power of health insurers to refuse payment for some treatments. He is currently being held in federal lockup in Brooklyn.
Bondi lifted a moratorium on February 5 on federal executions imposed in 2021 by her predecessor Merrick Garland, the attorney general under Democratic President Joe Biden.
Doina Chiacu and Luc Cohen, Reuters
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday aimed at ending price gouging for live entertainment tickets, with musician Kid Rock at his side in the Oval Office wearing a bright red, white, and blue bejeweled suit.
Anyone whos bought a concert ticket in the last decade, maybe 20 yearsno matter what your politics areknows that its a conundrum, Kid Rock told reporters. Trump said while he didn’t know much about price gouging, “I checked it out, and it is a big problem.
For decades, musicians have been feuding with ticket sellers like Ticketmaster over the high fees they pass on to fans, going back to 1995 when Pearl Jam canceled their tour after a dispute with Ticketmaster, over what they said were excessive and unfair fees.
Here’s what to know about the new executive order.
What does the executive order do?
The executive order is designed to stop price-gouging by middlemen, and orders the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to ensure price transparency at all stages of the ticket-purchase process” and work with Attorney General Pam Bondi to better enforce the 2016 Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act against companies and individuals demonstrating unfair, deceptive, and anti-competitive conduct, like using bots to buy concert tickets in bulk and then resell them.
It comes after the Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster and parent company Live Nation Entertainment last May, arguing their monopoly over live events in the U.S. has eliminated competition and driven up ticket prices.
Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, and Golden State Warriors fans also experienced price gouging
Another notable price gouging case occurred in 2015 when ticket seller StubHub sued rival Ticketmaster and the Golden State Warriors basketball team, arguing they unfairly required fans to resell game tickets on Ticketmasters platform, which increased ticket prices.
However, the most publicized example is when Ticketmaster fumbled pre-ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s Eras tour in 2022, after the site crashed, leaving users logged out or frozen and causing “Swifties” hours of frustration as they attempted and failed to buy tickets. (In 2023, those tickets eventually reached between $11,000 to $22,500.)
On Monday, Lady Gaga fans experienced something similar as they attempted to buy tickets for her highly anticipated The MAYHEM Ball tour, when dynamic pricing, which raises prices in real-time, drove tickets sky high with the help of bots and resellers. Now, many angry “little monsters” (the name given to Lady Gaga fans) are weighing whether to shell out thousands of dollars to see their favorite artist.
Angry fans took to social media, where one X user complained tickets for Lady Gaga’s New York show were already “$1,770 for good lower level tickets . . . Just disgusting.” Meanwhile, another X user recalled Ticketmaster’s most infamous fiasco: “Like be for real . . . 1066 to be front row . . . like what in the Taylor Swift are these prices!?”
Employees across the massive U.S. Health and Human Services Department began receiving notices of dismissal Tuesday in an overhaul ultimately expected to lay off up to 10,000 people.
The cuts include researchers, scientists, doctors, support staff and senior leaders, leaving the federal government without many of the key experts who have long guided U.S. decisions on medical research, drug approvals and other issues.
At the National Institutes of Health, the world’s leading health and medical agency, the layoffs occurred as its new director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, began his first day of work.
The revolution begins today! Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote on social media as he celebrated the swearing-in of his latest hires: Bhattacharya and Martin Makary, the new Food and Drug Administration commissioner. Kennedy’s post came just hours after employees began receiving emailed layoff notices.
Kennedy announced a plan last week to remake the department, which, through its agencies, is responsible for tracking health trends and disease outbreaks, conducting and funding medical research, and monitoring the safety of food and medicine, as well as for administering health insurance programs for nearly half the country.
The plan would consolidate agencies that oversee billions of dollars for addiction services and community health centers under a new office called the Administration for a Healthy America.
The layoffs are expected to shrink HHS to 62,000 positions, lopping off nearly a quarter of its staff 10,000 jobs through layoffs and another 10,000 workers who took early retirement and voluntary separation offers. Many of the jobs are based in the Washington area, but also in Atlanta, where the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is based, and in smaller offices throughout the country.
HHS said the layoffs are expected to save $1.8 billion annually from the departments $1.7 trillion budget, most of which is spent on Medicare and Medicaid health insurance coverage for millions of Americans.
Some staffers began getting lay off notices in their work inboxes at 5 a.m., while others found out their job had been eliminated after standing in long lines outside offices in Washington, Maryland and Atlanta to see if their badges still worked. Some gathered at local coffee shops and lunch spots after being turned away, finding out they had been eliminated after decades of service.
One wondered aloud if it was a cruel April Fools’ Day joke.
At the NIH, the cuts included at least four directors of the NIHs 27 institutes and centers who were put on administrative leave, and nearly entire communications staffs were terminated, according to an agency senior leader, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution.
An email viewed by The Associated Press shows some senior-level employees of the Bethesda, Maryland, campus who were placed on leave were offered a possible transfer to the Indian Health Service in locations including Alaska and given until the end of Wednesday to respond.
At the FDA, dozens of staffers who regulate drugs, food, medical devices and tobacco products received notices, including the entire office responsible for drafting new regulations for electronic cigarettes and other tobacco products. The notices came as the FDAs tobacco chief was removed from his position. Elsewhere at the agency, more than a dozen press officers and communications supervisors were notified that their jobs would be eliminated.
The FDA as weve known it is finished, with most of the leaders with institutional knowledge and a deep understanding of product development and safety no longer employed,” said former FDA Commissioner Robert Califf in an online post. Califf stepped down at the end of the Biden administration.
The layoff notices came just days after President Donald Trump moved to strip workers of their collective bargaining rights at HHS and other agencies throughout the government.
Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington predicted the cuts will have ramifications when natural disasters strike or infectious diseases, like the ongoing measles outbreak, spread.
They may as well be renaming it the Department of Disease because their plan is putting lives in serious jeopardy, Murray said Friday.
The CDC has not provided a breakdown of cuts, but employees in different parts of the organization described to the AP extensive layoffs in programs that track asthma, air pollution, smoking, gun violence, reproductive health, climate change and other health threats.
The intent seems to be to create a much smaller, infectious disease agency, but it is destroying a wide array of work and collaborations that have enabled local and national governments to be able to prevent deaths and respond to emergencies, said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.
Dr. Tom Frieden, the CDCs director during President Barack Obama’s administration, said he is particularly concerned about cuts to the CDCs Office on Smoking and Health and the agencys Global Health Center.
Weakening tobacco prevention is a gift to Big Tobacco that would guarantee more addiction, disease, and death, Frieden said, while cuts to the CDCs global disease detection work will cost lives.
Among the hardest-hit centers was the CDCs National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, with more than 1,000 employees. NIOSH is based in Cincinnati but also has people in Pittsburgh; Spokane, Washington; and Morgantown, West Virginia.
Cuts were less drastic at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, where Trump’s Republican administration wants to avoid the appearance of debilitating the health insurance programs that cover roughly half of Americans, many of them poor, disabled and elderly.
But the impact will still be felt, with the department slashing much of the workforce at the Office of Minority Health, which no longer has a functioning webpage.
Jeffrey Grant, a former CMS deputy director, said the office is not part of a diversity, equity and inclusion program, the kind Trump’s Republican administration has sought to end.
This is not a DEI initiative. This is meeting people where they are and meeting their specific health needs, said Grant, who resigned last month and now helps place laid-off CMS employees into new jobs.
The Office of Program Operations & Local Engagement, which does local outreach for CMS operations, was also gutted, Grant said.
Beyond layoffs at federal health agencies, cuts are beginning at state and local health departments as a result of an HHS move last week to pull back mor than $11 billion in COVID-19-related money. Some health departments have identified hundreds of jobs that stand to be eliminated, some of them overnight, some of them are already gone, said Lori Tremmel Freeman, chief executive of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.
A coalition of state attorneys general sued the Trump administration on Tuesday, arguing the cuts are illegal, would reverse progress on the opioid crisis and would throw mental health systems into chaos.
HHS has not provided additional details or comments about Tuesdays mass firings, but on Thursday it provided a breakdown of some of the cuts.
__ 3,500 jobs at the FDA, which inspects and sets safety standards for medications, medical devices and foods.
__ 2,400 jobs at the CDC, which monitors for infectious disease outbreaks and works with public health agencies nationwide.
__ 1,200 jobs at the NIH.
__ 300 jobs at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the Affordable Care Act marketplace, Medicare and Medicaid.
Carla K. Johnson, AP medical writer
Associated Press writers Lauran Neergaard, Amanda Seitz and Matthew Perrone, and Mike Stobbe contributed to this report.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Reproductive health provider Planned Parenthood said on Monday the Trump administration would cut federal family planning funding as of Tuesday, affecting birth control, cancer screenings and other services for low-income people.
Planned Parenthood said that nine of its affiliates received notice that funding would be withheld under a program known as Title X, which has supported healthcare services for the poor since 1970. The Wall Street Journal reported last week the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) planned an immediate freeze of $27.5 million in family planning grants for groups including Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood says more than 300 health centers are in the Title X network and Title X-funded centers received more than 1.5 million visits in 2023. It did not say how much funding would be halted by the Trump administration.
HHS said in a statement it was withholding Title X payments to 16 organizations while it evaluates possible violations of their grant terms, including possibly of federal civil rights law and an executive order issued by President Donald Trump entitled, “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders.”
“HHS is conducting this evaluation to ensure these entities are in full compliance with Federal law and applicable grant terms, and to ensure responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars,” the statement said.
Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, predicted that cancers would go undetected, access to birth control would be severely reduced, and sexually-transmitted infections would increase as a result.
“President Trump and Elon Musk are pushing their dangerous political agenda, stripping health care access from people nationwide, and not giving a second thought to the devastation they will cause,” McGill Johnson said in a statement.
Trump has named billionaire Musk, who helped the president get elected, to head up an initiative to target government agencies for spending cuts.
Conservatives have long sought to defund Planned Parenthood because it also provides abortions. However, U.S. government funding for nearly all abortions has been banned since 1977.
Daniel Trotta, Reuters
On Tuesday investment banking company Jefferies downgraded its rankings on Delta, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and Air Canada. That caused airline stocks to drop. American Airlines (NasdaqGS: AAL) finished the day down 2.4%, Delta (NYSE: DAL) dropped 2.7%, and Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV) fell 5.9%. Even United Airlines (NASDAQ: UAL), which remains the only U.S. airline Jefferies still considers a buy, is down 1.2%.
Jefferies analyst Sheila Kahyaoglu wrote that corporate and consumer sentiment [are expected] to remain soft on swelling macro uncertainty. Indeed, the global business think tank, the Conference Board recently announced the latest reading for its US Consumer Expectations Index, which measures consumer expectations for business, income, and job prospects. It reached its lowest level in 12 years to 65.2 points amid Americans concerns over inflation and Trumps tariffs. Thats well below the threshold of 80, which the organization says typically signals a recession ahead.
In the Conference Boards report last week, Senior Economist Stephanie Guichard said consumers optimism about future income [has] largely vanished, suggesting worries about the economy and labor market have started to spread into consumers assessments of their personal situations.
One of the ways that Americans seem to be addressing these fears is by pulling back on spending, including travel expenses. Over the month of February, Bank of America reported a reduction of 7.2% in users credit and debit card spending.
Airlines are not only seeing reductions in consumer travel. At a conference last month, Uniteds Chief Financial Officer Mike Leskinen, said that government travel has fallen off here post-inauguration, in part due to mass government worker layoffs by the Trump Administration. With government air travel making up around 2% of Uniteds revenue and travel from consultants and contractors making up another 2% to 3%, the airline has reportedly seen a sharp decline in revenue from these cuts.
A Jesuit priest says he prefers going to prison than paying a 500-euro ($541) fine for participating in a climate activists’ street blockade in the southern German city of Nuremberg.
The Rev. Jörg Alt started serving his nearly month-long prison sentence on Tuesday in Nuremberg.
Today, I am starting my 25-day alternative custodial sentence in Nuremberg prison, he said before entering the prison. I dont like doing this, especially as my health is no longer the best at the age of 63. But I see no alternative, because its the last form of protest I have left in this specific case to draw attention to important issues such as climate change.
In November, Alt said that “as a priest, I have no income and no bank account due to my vow of poverty and that I do not want to harm the order and my fellow brothers by paying my fine, German news agency dpa reported.
His remarks came after a Bavarian Higher Regional Court rejected his appeal to a lower court’s decision and confirmed Alt’s conviction for coercion for participating in a sit-in blockade.
After the court’s decision, authorities repeatedly asked Alt to pay the 500 euros, before the fine was eventually commuted to the 25-day prison sentence.
The court ruling in November was in connection with a street blockade in August 2022, when the Jesuit priest and about 40 other activists blocked traffic in Nuremberg by gluing their hands to a street in front of the city’s train station to draw attention to climate change.
Numerous similar protests have taken place across Germany and other countries in recent years, as activists try to draw attention to the urgency of tackling climate change. The public and political response to such road blockades has been mixed.
While some Germans have said they support the protesters cause, if not their means, activists have also faced violence from enraged motorists and calls for tough punishment from conservative politicians.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has sharply criticized climate activists as nutty for drastic protests such as blocking streets or gluing themselves to famous paintings in museums.
Last year, activists belonging to one of the main protest groups, the Last Generation, announced that they would abandon the tactic and move on to holding what they call disobedient assemblies.
Alt has said that he had also decided to serve the prison sentence instead of paying the fine “in solidarity with those climate activists who are treated similarly by the administration and the judiciary it may all be lawful, but it is unjust.
It’s not the first time, that Alt was convicted for his activism. In May 2023, a court also convicted him of coercion after he participated in a road blockade in Munich and ordered him to pay a small fine.
Kirsten Grieshaber, Associated Press
Think youve got game? Time to put it to the test with Tinders latest launch in collaboration with OpenAI.
On Tuesday, Tinder rolled out The Game Gamea new experience designed to help users practice their flirting skills by chatting with an AI voice, powered by OpenAIs GPT-4o model. Players are dealt a stack of virtual cards, each introducing a different AI persona and a hilariously exaggerated rom-com scenario (think: a luggage mix-up at the airport or accidentally crushing someones sunglasses on the beach). Your challenge? Charm your way through it.
The bot makes the first move, and users respond in real timeearning feedback on their game as they go. Nail the convo, land a date, and you win. But dont get too cozy with your digital crush: Each session is capped at three minutes, and users are limited to five plays per dayjust in case you forget Tinder is still about connecting with real people.
While The Game Games April 1 launch date might raise eyebrows, its no prankits just not that serious. Using speech-to-speech AI, the game delivers absurdly funny scenarios designed to make you laugh more than sweat.
Our Future of Dating report found that 64% of young singles are totally fine with a little cringe if it leads to a real connection, Hillary Paine, Tinders VP of product, growth, and revenue, tells Fast Company. We didnt want it to feel overly polished or intense. Instead, we leaned into humor, awkwardness, and low-pressure moments to help users practice flirting in a fun, playful, and judgment-free way.
Tinder has built in safeguards to ensure that conversations stay appropriate and follow community guidelines. And no, theyre not trying to create an AI companion (this isnt Her). The goal is to blur the line between the digital and the real worldsomething Tinder has been exploring with events like the Single Summer Series, Chaotic Singles Party, and Swipe Off.
According to a Forbes Health survey, 79% of Gen Z reported feeling dating-app burnout in 2023. Tinder is betting that a little fun might just reignite the spark. Our mission has always been to spark real connections by making dating feel less like a chore and more like something to look forward to, Paine says.
At a launch event hosted at OpenAIs New York City office, I got to try The Game Game myself. Lets just say my gym meet-cute didnt exactly end in a rom-com-style kiss in the rain. Humbling, to say the least.
The Game Game is now live for U.S. Tinder users on iOS for a limited time.
Gadgets sold without batteries. Toys sold in slimmed-down boxes or no packaging at all. More household goods that shoppers need to assemble themselves.
These are some of the ways consumer product companies are retooling their wares to reduce costs and avoid raising prices as President Donald Trump levies new import taxes on key trading partners as well as some materials used by American manufacturers.
The economic environment in which the president has imposed, threatened and occasionally postponed repeated rounds of tariffs is more precarious than during his first term. U.S. consumers are feeling tapped out after several years of inflation. Businesses say tariffs add to their expenses and eat into their profits, but they are wary of losing sales if they try to pass all of the increase on to customers.
Instead, some companies are exploring cost-cutting options, both ones that consumers likely would notice in time remember shrinkflation? and ones that exist too far down the supply chain for them to see. The changes may help minimize price increases, yet won’t be enough in every case to offset them completely.
These are some of the strategies retailers and brands have in mind:
A kink in the supply chain
After putting an extra 20% tariff on all goods from China, as well as a 25% tariff on imported steel, aluminum and automobiles, Trump said he would announce on Wednesday the targets of reciprocal tariffs that mirror the taxes all other nations apply to certain U.S. exports.
He argues the tariffs will spur domestic manufacturing, among other goals.
Also on the horizon: twice-delayed tariffs on most goods from Canada and Mexico, and duties on copper, lumber and pharmaceutical drugs.
Kimberly Kirkendall, president of supply-chain consulting firm International Resource Development, has told clients U.S. makers of shelving, home goods and food products that given all the uncertainty, this is not the time for long-term moves like seeking factories outside of China.
She encouraged them to focus on the short term, particularly the need to scrutinize product lines from every angle for possible savings.
Youve got to collaborate and work together with your suppliers in this situation to be able to bring costs down,” Kirkendall said.
Sourcing concerns are not only a worry for big companies that rely on Chinese manufacturers. Sasha Iglehart, founder of a small online clothing company called Shirt Story, has a collection of upcycled mens shirts that sell for around $235. She said she typically gets her vintage buttons from an Austrian supplier and knows Trump has talked about taxing goods from the European Union.
I will continue to look for local vendors and collectors here in the States as back up, said Iglehart, whose company is based in Connecticut.
Reworking a product
For many companies, evaluating which components or details they can remove from their products or replace with less expensive ones is the go-to move for absorbing the potential financial hit from tariffs.
Los Angeles-based toy company Abacus Brands Inc., which designs science kits and other educational toys, has most of its products made in China. By using slightly thinner paper in an 80-page project book that comes with two of its kits, the company expects to avert a $10 retail price increase, President Steve Rad said.
Three or 4 cents here, Rad said. Seven or 6 cents there. Two more pennies over there. All of a sudden, you’ve made up the difference.
Aurora World Inc., known for its plush pets and toy vehicles, is looking at using fewer paint colors as a way to counteract tariff costs, according to Gabe Higa, managing director of the California company’s toy division. All of Aurora World’s toys come from factories in China.
This is something that makes it a little bit simpler so that theres less manual labor involved or less material cost, Higa said. (It) doesn’t have a lot of incremental value so it’s easy to take away.
The company still may have to raise prices as long as the new tariffs are in effect, he said.
Economy packaging
Tweaking or reducing product packaging is another area where importers may cut back and carries the advantage of possibly appealing to eco-conscious customers.
Basic Fun CEO Jay Foreman, whose company markets classic toys like Tonka trucks, Lincoln Logs and Care Bears, said he is presenting retailers with three different packaging options and asking them to decide which ones they prefer for the trucks and some other products that will be in stores next spring.
The first is the current packaging, which consists of a box with a big open window that lets customers see what’s inside. The second option: no box, just a tray attached to the bottom of toys to hold them in place on shelves. The third: unwrapped but affixed with a simple paper price tag that features brand information.
The second-tier packaging would reduce the toy company’s cost per item by $1.25, and the package-free version would yield savings of $1.75, Foreman said. Both would diminish the appeal of the products and would not come close to canceling out the tariff on goods made in China, Foreman said.
He said he would make pricing decisions later this week after Trump provides details about his planned reciprocal tariffs.
To further reduce its production costs, Abacus Brands is thinking of switching from plastic to cardboard for the package inserts that keep toy parts in place. Cardboard trays cost 7 cents per unit compared to 30 cents for the plastic version, according to Rad.
The change requires finding a new factory to make the inserts, a move that did not make financial sense before now, he said. The various tariff-related modifications should be effective for fall and holiday deliveries to stores, Rad said.
The compromises were making are things that do not matter to the consumer, he said.
Forget the extras
Shoppers will likely have to assemble more of their products at home as companies look to reduce shipping costs, according to Kirkendall of International Resource Development.
One of her clients manufactures self-watering planters that are made in China. The product is undergoing a redesign so it can be shipped as seprate nesting components instead of fully assembled.
Companies also are reevaluating the pieces of their products that are essential or extra. Chris Bajda, managing partner at online wedding gift retailer Groomsday, said accessories like batteries and decorative gift boxes may end up in the latter category.
We now carefully assess whats truly necessary and avoid including items that dont serve a functional purpose for the customer, Bajda said.
The return of shrinkflation?
Reducing the size or weight of products without lowering prices proliferated as a business practice from 2021 through 2024 as companies grappled with rising costs for ingredients, packaging, labor and transportation.
Edgar Dworsky, a consumer advocate and former assistant attorney general in Massachusetts, suspects the makers of consumer goods will embrace shrinkflation again to hide costs given the blast of new tariffs. The additional import tax on Canadian soft lumber, for example, might show up in smaller toilet paper rolls, he said.
Shrinkflation has been a little quiet in the last few months, Dworksy said. But I would expect to see both price increases and product shrinkage.”
Anne D’Innocenzio, AP retail writer
NFL games are slow. Theyre 11 minutes of actual action, spread across a 3-hour-and-12-minute broadcast. You can blame that pace of the game on penalties, injuries, and, of course, commercials. But now, the NFL is teaming up with Sony to fix one of the games biggest time sinks: measurements.
Beginning with the 2025 NFL season, all 32 teams will switch from human measurements to computer automation. Each stadium will be equipped with six 8K Sony Hawk-Eye cameras that track the position of the ball on the field. Its a significant upgrade to century-old technology.
Chains have been used to measure the position of the football since they were first introduced in 1898, when rules mandated the ideal tool for measuring progress down the field was two light poles about six feet in length and connected at the lower ends by a stout cord or chain exactly five yards long. By 1906, the five-yard standard in football switched to its current ten-yard mandate, and the chain has gone relatively changed since.
[Photo: Sony]
Now, Sony cameras will replace the chain operatorswhat can frankly feel like an antiquated tool in the days of slow-motion replays and 3D recreations of the field. While the cameras are installed at stadiums locally, all the footage will be sent to New York, where digital calls are coordinated by the NFL’s Art McNally GameDay Central Officiating Center.
Whereas it could take as long as 70 seconds for chains to measure the position of the ball, Sonys cameras do the job in 30. When that 40 seconds of savings is multiplied across the 153 average plays in a football game, thats a wild 102 minutes in savings. The game length appears to be cut in half.
[Photo: Sony]
Of course, all sorts of other things happen during those lengthy chain measurements. Every NFL broadcast is a masterclass in managing these logistics, juggling elements of the games narrative (wait, what penalty just happened?) and commercial cutaways (billionaire owners dont do this for charity). And so its unclear how much time these new automated measurements might actually save you on a Sunday afternoon this fall.
While weve reached out to the NFL to clarify this point, is it too soon to bring up another sore point of fandom? Because in the face of so much amazing automated technology, the MLB is facing its own reckoning with the home plate umpire. This evolution certainly makes sense: I can see those strikes and balls better from my couch than they can from behind the batter! But at the same time, professional sports imbued with automated visual processing will face a tricky balance. While automation may improve the flow and accuracy of calls on the field, robots offer little in terms of suspenseful drama.
