A display window at a Versace clothing store on Fifth Avenue in New York City.
Robert Alexander/Getty Images
A judge has granted a preliminary injunction to halt the merger between Tapestry and Capri Holdings.
The two companies planned to have multiple luxury brands — including Versace — operating under one umbrella.
Following the ruling, on Thursday, Capri's stock plunged 45% in after-hours trading.
Versace's parent company, Capri Holdings, suffered a steep loss in after-hours trading on Thursday after a federal judge blocked its proposed merger with Tapestry, the parent of fashion brands Kate Spade and Coach.
Jennifer Rochon, a judge in the Southern District of New York, granted the Federal Trade Commission's request for a preliminary injunction to halt the merger of the two companies while the commission investigates the deal.
Rochon wrote that the FTC argued in its case that the merger would "substantially lessen competition in the market for accessible-luxury handbags."
Rochon ruled in favor of the FTC's stance, writing in her ruling that the "merging parties are close competitors, such that the merger would result in the loss of head-to-head competition."
"The Court thus finds that there is persuasive additional evidence of unilateral effects of the merger causing anticompetitive harm," Rochon wrote.
Following the court order, Capri's stock was down 45% in after-hours trading on Thursday. The company's stock is down 18% year-to-date.
Tapestry's stock, however, surged about 12% in after-hours trading.
In response to the judge's ruling, Capri released a statement saying that it — along with Tapestry — intends to file a notice of appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Tapestry announced in August 2023 that it would buy Capri for $8.5 billion. Under the proposed merger, six high-end fashion brands would operate under one umbrella: Capri's Versace, Jimmy Choo, and Michael Kors, along with Tapestry's Coach, Stuart Weitzman, and Kate Spade.
However, in April, the FTC announced a lawsuit to block the merger. The FTC wrote in an April 22 press release that it believed this business move would give Tapestry "a dominant share of the 'accessible luxury' handbag market" and "eliminate fierce competition between the two companies."
"The proposed merger threatens to deprive millions of American consumers of the benefits of Tapestry and Capri's head-to-head competition, which includes competition on price, discounts and promotions, innovation, design, marketing, and advertising," read the FTC's April 22 statement.
The FTC added that the deal would impact the companies' incentives "to compete for employees and could negatively affect employees' wages and workplace benefits."
Tapestry and Capri said in an April 22 statement responding to the FTC lawsuit that their companies "face competitive pressures from both lower- and higher-priced products."
"In bringing this case, the FTC has chosen to ignore the reality of today's dynamic and expanding $200 billion global luxury industry," Tapestry said in its statement.
The trade commission celebrated the Thursday ruling.
"Today's decision is a victory not only for the FTC, but also for consumers across the country seeking access to quality handbags at affordable prices," Henry Liu, director of the agency's Bureau of Competition, said in a statement to The New York Times.
Representatives of the FTC, Capri Holdings, and Tapestry didn't respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside business hours.
Hanna is a former Google AI ethicist who worked alongside Timnit Gebru, who was fired from the tech giant after voicing concerns about its natural language processing tools. Hanna now oversees research at Gebru's Distributed AI Research Institute. Her work centers on communities most affected by AI. "A near-term AI dystopia is one in which there's not a masterful AI that takes over the world — that's bullshit — it's a world in which there are AI tools which are promised to do XYZ and that many employers have effectively bought into only to lay off full-time workers and hire them back at a calcualized rate," Hanna told Business Insider. "So it increases that gigification and casualization of work." She's writing a book, "The AI Con," with the University of Washington linguistics professor Emily Bender examining what they see as the harms posed by AI and the myths around what it can and cannot do.
In practice, though, many Bhutanese workers have little time left for the pursuit of happiness. The tiny country tops the ranking for the average number of hours worked in a week.
According to the International Labour Organization, Bhutanese employees work an average of 54.4 hours a week, far exceeding the 38-hour average in the US.
Bhutan also has the world's largest share of employed people working more than 48 hours a week, the data said — the level the World Bank considers overwork.
That covers 61% of Bhutan's workforce, the ILO said, compared to 13% in the US.
Long hours, little rest
It might come as a surprise — the small Buddhist kingdom is often viewed as a tranquil paradise of mountains and temples.
Bhutanese workers challenged that impression, telling Business Insider that they feel compelled to spend most of their waking hours on the job.
According to the World Bank's report on Bhutan's labor market, published earlier this year, overwork is particularly prevalent in the country's private sector, especially in family businesses, construction, transportation, and hospitality.
Bhutan has the world's longest working weeks according to the International Labour Organization.
Eric Lafforgue/Art in All of Us/Corbis via Getty Images
A couple of hours into working overtime, 22-year-old Ten Choezim joined a video call from the kitchen of the hotel where she works in Thimphu, the capital.
Choezim and other workers in this article gave their real names but asked that their workplaces not be identified for fear of retaliation.
She told Business Insider that working beyond her contracted 12-hour shift is normal for her. She often hits 16-hour days and regularly clocks in a 112-hour week, she said.
Once, she said, she worked a 16-hour shift pattern for three weeks without a day off.
"I had aches, back pain, my legs were sore," she said. "Mentally, I couldn't speak well."
Though she often feels exhausted by her work, Choezim saw few alternatives.
"After some time, I got used to it," she said, noting that she wouldn't be able to afford to live there if she worked any less or left her job.
Many Bhutanese are leaving the country
Although Choezim said she enjoys living in Bhutan, her intense workload has made her consider leaving for better pay and working conditions.
"Our country is peaceful and all, but when it comes to work, it is heavy," she said.
Her sisters have already joined the exodus of young Bhutanese, moving to Australia. She said she feels obliged to remain to care for their parents.
In his State of the Nation address in July, Bhutan's Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay said that about 64,000 people — around 9% of the country's population — have migrated, mainly to Australia.
He described it as an "unprecedented existential crisis" that could hinder the country's development.
Overwork is widespread in Bhutan.
Sergi Reboredo/VW Pics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Kalyani Honrao, an Asia analyst for the Economist Intelligence Unit, told Business Insider that Bhutan is caught in a vicious cycle.
She said the mass departure of skilled workers created to a "brain drain," leaving employers unable to fill skilled vacancies.
As a result, she said, the burden on those who remain increases, leading to them doing the "heavy lifting."
Meanwhile, according to Honrao, there is a huge supply of unskilled and semi-skilled jobs, which makes workers easily replaceable. "People try to do their best to stay employed and accept overwork as normal," she said.
'It's just enough to sustain me and my family'
According to the World Bank, the main reason given for overwork in Bhutan is that the job requires it. The second biggest reason is that workers need more money.
For Namgyal Dorji Wangchuk, 43, both apply.
He told BI he works up to 90 hours a week, including unpaid overtime, as a sales and marketing professional at a hotel.
To supplement his income, he occasionally takes extra hours as a freelance consultant.
His hotel job requires him to work six days a week, often with late-night shifts. It brings in about $361 a month.
Bhutan also has the world's largest share of employed people working 49 or more hours a week.
Anupam Nath/AP Photo
"It is just enough to sustain me and my family," he said. It covers rent, bills, and some costs associated with raising two teen daughters. He said he has little, if anything, left to save.
Most days, he's home too late to see his children before they fall asleep. "So, just once a week I get a good time with my family," he said. "Otherwise, mostly, I am mostly working."
Bhutan's innovative Gross National Happiness index, introduced in the 1970s and enshrined as a national goal in the constitution, aims to take a holistic view of development.
It values the population's well-being and happiness alongside, or even above, traditional economic indicators.
In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País this month, Prime Minister Tobgay said the framework takes into account measures like how the population uses their time, which he said is crucial to "find out whether it's balanced, if you're sleeping enough, how you manage work-life balance, etc."
Gross National Happiness is a development indicator in Bhutan's constitution.
Peerapon Boonyakiat/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Meanwhile, Bhutanese employment laws aim to codify these occupational standards by establishing an eight-hour workday, mandating rest breaks, and entitling workers to overtime pay at a rate equal to or higher than their regular wages.
But Honrao of the Economist Intelligence Unit said these labor laws are rarely enforced, and semi-skilled and unskilled workers tend to put up with violations for fear of losing their jobs.
Bhutan's Department of Labour did not respond to repeated requests for comment from Business Insider.
'A job is a job'
Bikash Sharma, 46, is a supervisor at a company that exports construction materials near the Bhutan-India border.
He told BI he usually works 12-hour days, six days a week, but is only paid for an eight-hour day.
"It's not fair enough, but what to do?" he said. "A job is a job, and you can't just get another job very easily."
He added: "It's very difficult, but we have to feed ourselves and our family."
Sharma said that sometimes he is so exhausted from work that he just wants to "run away somewhere and hide."
However, despite these fantasies of escaping, he has no intention of leaving Bhutan.
He said the kingdom's low crime rates, absence of war, tranquility, and the comfort of being with his family surpass other considerations.
Bhutan is a picturesque country, but many citizens leave for other countries, primarily Australia.
Eric Lafforgue/Art in All of Us/Corbis via Getty Images
Instead, Sharma is trying to embrace Bhutan's guiding philosophy — finding greater value in sources of joy other than the size of his bank balance.
"We are not very rich, " he said, but "we are happy."
He added, "I do wish my standard of living were just a little bit better."
Jonah Weinbaum joined a hacker house to work on a neurotech project in summer 2023.
The hacker house, Myelin, aimed to develop a wetware computer with $8,000 in funding.
Living in the hacker house shifted Weinbaum's career focus from academia to entrepreneurship.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation withJonah Weinbaum,a 19-year-old who moved into a hacker house during the summer of 2023. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
After finishing my freshman year at the University of Michigan, I planned to spend the summer on campus working on an independent computer science research project.
A few days before the summer semester started, I was talking to a friend on campus when a random student sat down to join our chat. We talked about nonlinear dynamics and exchanged phone numbers.
He recruited me to live in a hacker house and work on a neurotech project
Later that day, he sent me a message explaining that he was starting a hacker house called Myelin and asked if I wanted to live there and work on a neurotech project for three months. I had heard of hacker houses before but didn't know of any around campus.
The guy I met and three other students wanted to build a wetware computer. They pitched the idea to different VCs and other organizations and received around $8,000 in funding through Emergent Ventures and the 1517 Fund.
Once they had the funds, they rented a house in Ann Arbor for three months. They aimed to recruit a handful of people to work on the project, hoping it would become a startup.
He recruited me because he thought I was good at physics. The project's novelty seemed exciting, and I needed a break from just doing coursework.
I was majoring in math, physics, and cognitive science. I wanted to do something interesting now instead of in seven years. After learning more about the opportunity, I said yes. I moved in in May 2023, when I was 18.
I got free rent in exchange for helping the team work on a project
Myelin house.
Courtesy of Jonah Weinbaum
When I looked for summer housing, it seemed like I'd have to spend around $1,500 for three months. It was a big draw that living in the hacker house came with free rent for the summer.
The house also supplied some meals and covered the utilities. All I had to pay for was the extra food I wanted, but I ate very inexpensively, so my bills were around $30 a week.
At any given time, 7-14 people from places like Michigan, Washington, Canada, Russia, and California lived there. Some people had internships in the latter half of the summer and left the house early.
Not everyone was a student; some were later in their careers, but most of us were college-aged. They came because they wanted to work on and talk about neurotech, and such places aren't easy to find.
A handful of us moved in on the same day, picked our rooms (I got lucky and had my own room), cleaned the house, and had our first meeting about the project and how we would operate.
Every hacker house operates differently
There were three teams, each with three or four people. The teams started with somebody presenting an idea for a team, and people joined if they liked it. The house was full of neurotech equipment and people working on projects ranging from personalized medicine to EEG-based object control and biological neuron computers.
Whenever we woke up, at around 9 a.m., we started working on the project and worked on it all day until we went to bed at random late hours. We didn't do anything else. I was the only person enrolled in a summer class and completed my work during lunch or dinner breaks. I didn't travel or see friends outside this.
Despite the high-tech focus, life in the house was simple. We had a piano that was played at regular intervals, food in the fridge, and beds. Some house members slept less than others, so there was almost always some conversation in the living room.
I spent my time doing research and sharing it with the other members of the house
Our goal was to design a low-cost wetware computer that one could use for edge computer applications (robotics, drones, etc.).
I worked with two other house members to develop a new paradigm for wetware computing. We eventually found a set of plausible methodologies for the project and wrote a white paper on how we could see them coming together. Being near the University of Michigan campus gave us constant opportunities to speak with researchers.
We'd spend our days talking to researchers, reading papers online, and synthesizing everything. At the end of every week, we'd present our progress to the rest of the house.
When your time at a hacker house ends, the community doesn't
By the start of the school year, we viewed our operations through a business lens and realized the potential for a business from a device we had been building: a microelectrode array.
When school started in August 2023, we all moved out of the hacker house. I found other off-campus housing and returned to being a full-time college student.
Since then, I've had the opportunity to stay at two other San Francisco hacker houses while capital-raising for the wetware computing startup I worked on at Myelin. I'm still in touch with everyone I met at the Myelin house. The community has been very valuable.
Living in the hacker house changed the career path I was on
Before this experience, I was confused about what path to take. I thought maybe I'd pursue a Ph.D. Living in the hacker house changed my mind completely. I'm now 100% on the entrepreneurship path.
I used to follow the flow and did things because that's what I saw others do. I was always aware of the fundamental disconnect in my perception of the future but wasn't sure how to mend it.
My time in the hacker house taught me how to take a problem and investigate it intensely for a short period. I'll be able to speak about my neurotech research for decades.
My focus has now shifted. Instead of continuing school at the University of Michigan, I'm off to live in a pro-town, a town built for deep-tech entrepreneurs, in Texas.
Goldman Sachs forecasts muted S&P 500 gains, with a 3% annual return over 10 years.
Mega-cap tech stocks and AI enthusiasm have led to high index concentration.
Diversification and equal-weighted S&P 500 exposure may offer better long-term returns.
The S&P 500's bullish run over the past year, with an over 38% return, may come at the expense of its future performance, according to Goldman Sachs.
An October 18 note, led by David Kostin, forecasts muted gains for the foreseeable future. The index could post an annual return of only 3% over the next 10 years; it's well below the average consensus estimate of 6% based on 21 asset managers tracked by the investment bank. Still, all outlooks look grim: in comparison, the index posted a 13% average annualized return over the past decade. The bank's most bearish scenario would see the S&P 500 decline by an annual 1%, while its more positive calls for a gain of 7%.
You can thank the dominance of a small group of mega-cap tech stocks. Investor enthusiasm for the prospects of AI has cornered them into a handful of names, bringing the index's concentration to its highest in over 100 years, the note reads. That can make things a bit shaky at the top, especially since the attractiveness of AI darlings like Nvidia rides on hypergrowth and wide profit margins. The catch-22 of this type of setup is that such extreme growth comes in bouts followed by periods of normalization.
Even if the AI darlings remain on the top for the next decade, they may not be able to sustain the same growth margins, which is the reason investors are willing to pay a premium for them.
The forward-looking outlook of 3% is so muted that even lower-risk bonds, like the 10-year Treasury, are expected to outperform with a 4% yield. Goldman pegs the likelihood that bonds will beat the index over the next 10 years at a whopping 72% probability.
There's also a 33% chance the index won't outpace a 2.2% inflation rate. While it's a much lower probability, it's still at more than double the historical average of 13%. Even if it outperforms inflation, the base case would only provide real returns of 1%.
The chart below shows the distribution of returns on the index since 1930, demonstrating the rarity of such muted expectations.
Goldman Sachs
Indeed, it's a rare outlook considering that since 1930, equities underperformed the 10-year Treasury in only 13% of the time on a rolling 10-year basis, according to the note. The chart below shows the range of outcomes for the index's performance relative to bonds and inflation.
Goldman Sachs
So what should investors do?
The key word moving forward will be diversification.
The timing could be ripe for a rotation to broader market exposure. Simply put, history shows that the equal-weighted S&P 500, which spreads the contribution of each stock to the basket's overall performance equally, outperforms the aggregate index over the long term. This outperformance is even sharper in the periods that follow peak stock-market concentration. This was the case during the 10 years following the bear market of 1973 and the dot-com bubble of 2000, according to the note.
The chart below demonstrates the annualized 10-year returns of the equal-weighted S&P 500 relative to the aggregate one, with returns fairing better in the former on a long-term outlook and in sharper bouts following peaks of elevated concentration.
Goldman Sachs
Adding an exchange-traded fund that tracks the equal-weighted S&P 500 could be one way to go about it. This also means investors will increase their exposure to small-cap stocks, another perk in a reversion-to-the-mean type scenario, where this sector has room to catch up.
Furthermore, investors should consider a more mixed asset portfolio of stocks and bonds without tilting toward one more than the other. This would create better risk-adjusted returns. Factoring in the types of yields across bonds is another option. Consider the 10-year US Treasury at a yield of 4%, investment-grade bonds at 4.8%, and high-yield bonds at a 7% yield.
Finally, be open to readjusting the allocation tilt based on macroeconomic shifts. This flexibility is referred to as a "strategic tilt," according to a May 28 note led by the head of asset allocation research, Christian Mueller-Glissmann. For example, in an environment where economic growth is strong but there's a risk of inflation, leaning more into equities, especially stocks with strong cash flows, may be the right direction. Meanwhile, if growth is slowed and inflation is muted, consider further allocation to bonds.
Brandon Bell; Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images; Alyssa Powell/BI
After a full day of meetings at Julie, a startup that sells a morning-after pill, CEO Amanda E/J Morrison jumped a flight from New York to Boston and headed to a small, private college, where a trivia night awaited her. Dozens of students shuffled into a classroom with plates of chicken tenders, Texas toast, and bright blue boxes of the emergency contraceptive.
Morrison had worked with the Planned Parenthood Generation Action club at Suffolk University to sponsor the event, part of Julie's efforts to win a new generation of consumers. However, she had another, more pressing reason for being there. Julie is doing more campus events to clear up some of the confusion about emergency contraception — namely, that it isn't medication abortion.
Standing at the head of the classroom, Morrison read off a projector screen, "Emergency contraceptives like Julie are legal in how many states? 25, 48, 50, 37." Students tapped their answers into a quiz app. "It's 37," Lily, a spirited sophomore, whispered to her teammates.
In a minute, the correct answer appeared on screen, and the quiet chatter rose to a clamor. Half the teams said 37 states.
When asked why she said 37, Lily said, "Just the way things are going."
In states that outlaw abortion, some patients and politicians worry that contraception could be in legal jeopardy, too. There's no federal law preserving access to birth control, rather, a patchwork of state laws and court decisions holding it in place. Another Trump term could change that.
For Julie, "that's the million dollar question of this election," Morrison said.
Students with the Suffolk University chapter of Planned Parenthood Generation Action hold up prizes at a trivia night hosted by Julie, an emergency-contraception startup.
Julie
"We're not worried about some big ban happening in the first hundred days. But how those decisions trickle down — what is presented in Congress as a bill, how the Supreme Court reacts, what trickles down to the states — becomes a real secondary concern," she said.
Founders of women's health startups feel doubly invested in this election, one of the closest presidential races of the century. Half a dozen founders and investors of women's health companies, all women, told Business Insider that if Vice President Kamala Harris wins, it's business as usual. They said another Trump victory creates uncertainty for reproductive health startups, from period trackers to online abortion clinics to embryo banks.
For startup Julie, the legal status of emergency contraception is the "million dollar question of this election," said Amanda E/J Morrison.
Julie
While Harris's presidential campaign has been marked by unrelenting support for reproductive healthcare, including contraception and abortions, Trump's position has been a moving target.
The former president suggested in May that he was "looking at" restrictions on birth control, then walked that position back in a social media post later that day. During the September presidential debate, he called himself a "leader" on IVF, a move that angered parts of his base that have sought to restrict fertility treatments. He said in October that he'd veto a national abortion ban after deflecting the question for months but would support states ordaining their own abortion bans.
Trump's waffling on reproductive rights has put founders of women's health startups on notice. "It is one of the major issues that we're discussing and that our CEOs are focused on — how to continue to provide care to women, especially women of childbearing age," said Trish Costello, founder of Portfolia, an investing platform that pools money from female accredited investors.
The day after the presidential debate, Mika Eddy was vibrating with the weight of the election. The race's outcome could drastically change reproductive rights, foreign policy, gun safety, and climate law — all issues close to Eddy, a 35-year-old Californian and mother of two.
But Eddy also has skin in the game as the chief executive officer of Malama Health, a startup helping women with gestational diabetes access better care. Its doula network assists patients on Medicaid with applying for benefits such as diabetes-friendly meals and medical transport.
Eddy worries that if Trump wins, he would restrict access to the coverage and benefits that her users rely on, weakening one of Malama Health's key services.
"There is this common misperception that, 'we're in California, we're in a liberal state, and so we're safe.' And I don't think that's the case," Eddy said.
For some founders of women's health startups, this election is more than a political contest; it has ramifications for their livelihoods. With so much at stake, they're planning how to handle a scenario where states or courts might impose more limits on reproductive rights.
Kamala Harris wants Congress to pass a national law codifying access to abortion.
Samuel Corum/ Getty Images
Hey Jane is a telehealth startup that connects patients to medical providers who offer online appointments and delivers abortion pills to their doorsteps. A year after the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion, Hey Jane started selling birth control and treatments for urinary tract infections, yeast infections, and herpes, both oral and genital. The new products cushion the business against a "plan E" scenario of a national abortion ban, said Carli Sapir, a Hey Jane investor and founding partner of Amboy Ventures.
"We're thinking about how to make sure those other verticals are in a good place to continue carrying the company forward," said Sapir.
This time last year, one of Hey Jane's rivals, Choix, shut down after three years in service. The company said in a press release that "the stigma and politics surrounding abortion care posed significant fundraising challenges." It raised a $1 million seed round in 2022.
While direct providers of abortion, like Hey Jane, could see major restrictions or shutdowns to their core businesses if Trump returns to the White House, a wider range of companies expect to feel the ripple effects. Startups that seem removed from the front lines, such as those involved with period tracking and fertility treatments, are also preparing for potential challenges.
In 2020, Donald Trump became the first sitting president to attend the anti-abortion "March for Life" rally.
Mark Wilson/Getty Images
If a national abortion ban were to occur, apps like Flo Health or Clue might face increased scrutiny, according to Deena Shakir, a general partner at Lux Capital. These apps track when women have their periods and when they miss them. In today's post-Roe America, privacy experts worry that such data could be used to suggest that someone has had or is thinking about having an abortion, potentially putting women at risk of prosecution in certain states.
The stakes could be equally high for companies involved with fertility treatments.
The demand for services like in vitro fertilization, or IVF, and surrogacy has been climbing for years as people have kids later in life and infertility rates increase. That's birthed a global fertility market that includes companies that operate clinics to provide services like egg freezing and IVF, companies that run labs and tests, and firms that help people pay for the procedures.
However, the industry's future is uncertain following attacks on abortion access. The end of Roe v. Wade opened up the legal terrain for states to interfere with access to other reproductive care, said Lauren Berson Sugarman, founder and chief executive officer of Conceive, a startup that offers personalized fertility guidance, including text support from nurses and peer groups.
In Alabama, the state Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos should be considered children. That put patients and fertility clinics on edge that they could be criminally charged for destroying extra embryos. A handful of Alabama clinics paused IVF treatments while patients throughout the South began moving their embryos to jurisdictions with more stable legal protections.
"We see a lot of patients come to us and say, should I move my embryos out of a red state? Because what happens if they come after IVF?" said Berson Sugarman.
The push for "embryo rights" could have wide-reaching repercussions for startups like Maven Clinic or Carrot Fertility, which offer fertility benefits for employers, and TMRW Life Sciences, a biotech company creating robots for the safe storage of frozen sperm, eggs, and embryos.
Moreover, it could influence the type of research that startups conduct and where. Alice Zheng, a principal at women's health investor RH Capital, explains how the shifting legal landscape might affect companies like Vitra Labs. As a biotech startup working on developing eggs from stem cells for IVF, "they're doing really cutting-edge research for fertility, but they need to think very carefully about where they set up shop," Zheng said. "Some of their research might involve certain types of tissue, which is more closely scrutinized in some areas than others."
While emergency contraception is not the abortion bill and is currently legal in all 50 states, it is continuously confused with the abortion pill, which can have damaging consequences.
Julie
Two years ago, in the hours after the Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to an abortion, Morrison's phone started ringing and didn't stop. Investors wanted to know if the ruling would kill Julie's launch in Walmart stores that fall. Job candidates wondered if the company would still exist in six months. Morrison's mom called, concerned for her daughter's future.
"For probably two weeks straight, I was just doing reassurance calls," Morrison said.
While emergency contraception is not the abortion bill and is currently legal in all 50 states, it is continuously confused with the abortion pill, which can have damaging consequences. In June, the medical journal JAMA Network Open published a study that found retail pharmacy fills of Plan B, a leading morning-after pill brand, fell by 65% in states with near-total abortion bans the year after the Dobbs decision, partly due to clinic closures and confusion about its legal status.
That confusion could threaten Julie's sales, and puts the onus of the company to better educate consumers. It sponsors events like trivia nights and sorority house brunches. It has enlisted TikTok influencers to share videos of their drugstore hauls showing how easy it is to buy Julie. In one video, a young woman going back-to-school shopping walks off with a two-count pack of the emergency contraceptive pill. The caption reads, "double majors, not double strollers."
Other startups are urging consumers to fight for reproductive rights at the polls. Eddy's Malama Health has reminders to register to vote in its app and will tell users where their nearest polling station is closer to election day. The company asks for their ZIP codes during onboarding, Eddy explained.
"When you have a baby, you're like, 'I want to vote, but I don't know where to go,'" Eddy said. She hopes the emails will get more pregnant women and new moms to head to the polls. Eddy added that the emails won't support a candidate and are meant as a "nonpartisan resource."
A student at trivia night asked Amanda E/J Morrison (right) to sign her Julie-branded T-shirt.
Julie
Julie's content isn't political, either. It's not trying to change any minds about abortion rights. The goal is simply to spread awareness among young adults that emergency contraception helps prevent pregnancy, not end it. This way, Morrison said, a woman who is anti-abortion and has unprotected sex can feel confident taking Julie knowing that she isn't compromising her abortion stance.
It was past 9 o'clock on a weekday, and the competition at trivia night was heating up. Students in teams of two or three screamed with delight as they watched their names climb the leaderboard. They competed to win prizes like sex toys and T-shirts with the phrase, "A Better Morning After."
"Morning-after pills end pregnancy. True or false," the club president called out.
Thirty seconds later, the screen showed that every team had answered correctly.
Morrison pumped both fists in the air, beaming her approval.
Melia Russellis a senior correspondent at Insider covering startups and venture capital. She can be reached via the encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 603-913-3085 and email atmrussell@businessinsider.com.
Alcon Entertainment, the producer of "Blade Runner 2049" filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Elon Musk and Tesla on Monday.
Anna Moneymaker via Getty Images
The producer of "Blade Runner 2049" is suing Elon Musk and Tesla for copyright infringement.
Alcon Entertainment said Musk used imagery inspired by the film at its "We, Robot" event.
Alex Proyas, director of the 2004 sci-fi film "I, Robot," has slammed Musk as well.
"Blade Runner 2049" producer Alcon Entertainment filed a lawsuit against Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Monday, citing images he displayed at his big "We, Robot" event.
Musk was showcasing Tesla's robotaxi at the company's event on October 10 when he referenced the 2017 film. "Blade Runner 2049" is a sequel to director Ridley Scott's dystopian sci-film "Blade Runner," released in 1982.
"You know, I love 'Blade Runner,' but I don't know if we want that future," Musk said while presenting at the "We, Robot" event.
"I believe we want that duster he's wearing, but not the, uh, the bleak apocalypse," he added while flashing an image that resembled a still from "Blade Runner 2049."
Musk's slide featured a man wearing a duster jacket, observing a post-apocalyptic cityscape.
Alcon said in its lawsuit that the image was likely made with an AI image generator since they didn't grant Musk permission to use images from the film.
"Any prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk's massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account," Alcon wrote in its lawsuit.
"Alcon did not want BR2049 to be affiliated with Musk, Tesla, or any Musk company, for all of these reasons," Alcon added.
Representatives for Tesla and Alcon Entertainment didn't respond to requests for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.
Other people in Hollywood have also raised concerns about the content of Musk's "We, Robot" rollout — down to the product designs.
Alex Proyas, director of the 2004 sci-fi film "I, Robot," said the designs of Tesla's Optimus robot, Robovan, and Robotaxi were similar to the robots and vehicles seen in his film.
"Hey Elon, Can I have my designs back please?" Proyas wrote in an X post on October 13.
Tesla's "We, Robot" event was widely anticipated by investors and consumers, who expected Musk to lay out his vision for self-driving vehicles.
However, the presentation received a tepid response in the markets. Tesla shares fell by nearly 9%, closing at $217.80 on October 11, a day after the event.
On Monday, Tesla shares closed at $218.85 and were down by nearly 12% year to date.
