Big Ford Cuts, AppleCar Secrets Stolen, Costco Fashion Thriving on TikTok

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Tuesdays are for Troublemakers. Today we cover Ford’s layoff of 3000 workers, the guilty plea of a Chinese former employee working in Apple’s automotive division, and why so many TikTockers are talking about Costco. 

• Ford CEO Jim Farley and Executive Chair Bill Ford announced layoffs of 2000 US workers based in its Dearborn, MI headquarters and 1000 contract workers across the globe
  • This constitutes about 1% of Ford’s total workforce and is a move in the direction of cutting more than 8000 positions as announced by Farley back in june
  • Part of a broader restructuring of the company to be more cost competitive in the quickly developing EV space
  • Farley has committed to cutting $3B in expenses by 2026 in an effort to reach 10% in pretax profit
• A former Apple employee working on the secretive AppleCar project pled guilty in Federal Court on Monday to stealing trade secrets including downloading circuit board schematics as well as removing hardware from the facility
  • Xiaolang Zhang, faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250k fine after the plea
  • In 2018 Zhang took paternity leave and went back to his home country, China. When he returned, he resigned his position stating he was going to move back to China and take care of his mother. 
  • His plan was to work for Xmotors, a leading China EV maker
  • Apple has footage of him removing servers and a chip board from the facility as well as downloading a number of sensitive documents
  • An FBI agent disclosed Apple has 5000 employees on the projects with about 2700 having access to database
• Costco fashion deals are going viral on TikTok
  • The search term, “costco clothing finds,” on TikTok has 1.8 billion views on the platform as influencers and regular users are showing off their finds
  • Fashion brands such as Hunter Boots, Tommy Hilfiger, Pendleton, Puma, DKNY, Uggs, Calvin Klein, Fila can be found in Costco aisles at significant savings from regular retail pricing and users are thrilled
  • The ‘treasure hunt’ mentality is strong with this type of shopping and as opposed to traditional ‘treasure hunt’ outlets like Marshalls who may only have a few of each item, Costco stocks a plethora of sizes and colors of each item
  • Costco has a $6.5B clothing business…before TikTok :)

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Join Paul J Daly and Kyle Mountsier every morning for the Automotive State of the Union podcast as they connect the dots across car dealerships, retail trends, emerging tech like AI, and cultural shifts—bringing clarity, speed, and people-first insight to automotive leaders navigating a rapidly changing industry.

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