• DOGE employee Joe Gebbia, a cofounder of Airbnb and recent convert to the Republican cause, wants to reimagine how federal workers retire, a process currently conducted entirely on paper. In an ideal world, Gebbia said, applying for retirement as a fed would be a seamless, “Apple-Store-like” experience that would take just a few days. An overhaul is coming within months, he told Fox News.

Joe Gebbia, one of the founders of short-term rental site Airbnb and a member of the cost-cutting team of federal workers known as DOGE, has a positively technocratic vision for overhauling how government workers retire. 

Gebbia wants to change the retirement process from its current paper-based system to “an online digital process that will take a few days at most.”

“We really believe the government can be an Apple-store-like experience,” Gebbia said in an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier on Thursday.

Gebbia appeared with friend and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, along with six other members of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), in a largely friendly wide-ranging interview to describe the team’s cost-cutting efforts. (Amy Gleason, who the government says is the acting administrator of DOGE, did not appear and was not mentioned by the DOGE team.) 

Gebbia said he got involved with the effort when he “bumped into Anthony [Armstrong, a Morgan Stanley banker and fellow DOGE staffer] and Elon probably back in February and they told me something about a mine that dealt with retirement. I love the challenge so I jumped on board,” Gebbia said. 

The process to retire a federal employee involves going into personnel files stored deep in a limestone mine in western Pennsylvania, Gebbia said. The cave contains over 28,000 filing cabinets and over 200 workers who are relegated to their quarters—not because of secrecy, but for space, The New York Times wrote last month.

The system is entirely paper-based, and it currently takes as long to process one worker’s paperwork as it did back in the 1970s: about two months, according to the Times.

“There’s little doubt the mine is a paragon of inefficiency,” the Times wrote.

That means, according to Gebbia, the federal government can process only about 8,000 retirements per month, which became a roadblock for DOGE when it offered early retirement buyouts to hundreds of thousands of workers. 

“Probably in the next few months we’ll do an overhaul,” Gebbia said.

“It’s an interesting problem,” he said later in the interview. “We can use design to solve it and good engineering and create a better experience for everybody.”

Gebbia revealed his involvement with DOGE a month ago in a post on X, the Elon Musk-owned social-media platform, where he invited others to join him “to help design beautiful, user-friendly digital products.” Gebbia reposted an announcement from the Office of Personnel Management that it had processed a federal worker’s retirement entirely digitally for the first time. 

A longtime Democratic donor, Gebbia has said he voted Republican in the 2024 election and voiced his support for current Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Gebbia’s revelation prompted a flood of negative comments on Airbnb’s forums, following which the platform distanced itself from its founder, saying in a statement that “Joe is joining DOGE in his personal capacity.” While Gebbia remains an Airbnb board member, he “has not had an operating role at the company since July 2022, and his personal views don’t reflect the views of Airbnb or Airbnb.org,” the company said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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• Lululemon reported a strong fourth quarter where revenue increased 13%. But the popular active-wear retailer had a modest outlook for this year based on uncertainty about tariffs and lower consumer spending. Its stock dropped on the lower-than-expected guidance.

Lululemon’s exceptional quarter had largely to do with “newness,” CEO Calvin McDonald said during the activewear brand’s earnings call Thursday, but the future doesn’t look as bright for the company.

Introducing new products helped drive higher foot traffic and interest in the brand, he said, resulting in a 13% fourth-quarter revenue increase to $3.61 billion that beat Wall Street’s expectations for $3.57 billion, according to a survey of analysts by LSEG. The brand launched several new lines like Glow Up, BeCalm, and Mile Maker, which all helped “drive guests’ loyalty, repeat purchase, and long-term value,” McDonald said. 

But like many other retailers, Lululemon had a lower-than-expected outlook for 2025 due to the hot word of the moment: uncertainty. Indeed, Wells Fargo analysts wrote in a Friday note they believed investors were more interested in Lululemon’s “subdued” outlook. 

McDonald said the company had conducted a survey with Ipsos earlier this month regarding consumer sentiment, and found “consumers are spending less due to increased concerns about inflation and the economy.”

That follows similar warnings from top U.S. airlines that flagged softer demand for travel as well as from Lululemon rival Nike and retail giant Walmart, which said customers are exhibiting “stressed behaviors.”

It’s also in line with other consumer sentiment surveys released this week. Consumer confidence hit a 12-year low, The Conference Board reported Tuesday, and the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment survey released this week plummeted 11%.

At Lululemon, low consumer confidence is “manifesting itself” into slower foot traffic in the U.S. this quarter, McDonald said during the earnings call, adding that “we are controlling what we can control.”

For the first quarter, the company sees revenue of $2.34 billion-$2.36 billion, below Wall Street views for $2.39 billion.

Meghan Frank, chief financial officer of Lululemon, said during the earnings call “tariff headwinds” could lead to slower sales in 2025. In fact, management sees revenue of $11.1 billion-$11.3 billion this year, up modestly from $10.59 billion in 2024 but also below analysts’ expectations for $11.31 billion.

Upon that news, Lululemon shares dropped about 10% in extended trading. As of mid-morning Friday, shares were down more than 15% to $293.66 per share, which is also a 31% drop from a late-January high. 

Lululemon didn’t immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

Lululemon’s tough macro environment for 2025

Other investment banks including Morgan Stanley, Piper Sandler, and Raymond James downgraded their ratings for Lululemon following the earnings call, according to retail options tracker Jarvis. Jefferies analyst Randy Konik told Yahoo Finance “the theme remains that growth is fading.” 

Although Bernstein analysts called Lululemon the “market leader” for North American sports apparel, they said the company is “particularly vulnerable to macro weaknesses,” which could hurt foot traffic this quarter. 

Fresh economic data out Friday highlighted further the challenges that companies like Lululemon face. The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge ticked higher last month to an annual pace of 2.8%, topping views for 2.7%.

At the same time, consumer spending rose 0.4% on the month, below forecasts, even as personal incomes jumped 0.8%. That caution lifted the personal saving rate to 4.6%, the highest since June 2024.

Meanwhile, Lululemon has grown increasingly popular in China, with net revenue increasing roughly 40% during the fourth quarter. This year, Lululemon plans to open 40 to 45 stores, Frank said, a majority of which will be in China. 

But fast-growing challenger brands in the active wear space are setting up an “epic showdown” for the industry this year, according to a November report by the Business of Fashion and McKinsey & Co. 

“2025 is likely to be a time of reckoning for many brands,” the report said. This year’s  outlook “appears to be a continuation of the sluggishness seen in 2024: revenue growth is expected to stabilise in the low single digits.”

Lululemon plans to release more product lines—one of which could appeal to workers returning to the office. The company will introduce a new fabric called “LuluLinen,” which has the look and feel of linen, but the feel of athletic wear. 

But “as you are aware, the external environment remains dynamic, and there continues to be considerable uncertainty driven by macro and geopolitical circumstances,” McDonald said during the earnings call. “That being said, we remain focused on what we can control.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com