The April 18th Edition

Spring is here and the tulips are poppin.

We were featured in a piece by RudderStack about Why Shopify will increasingly require data engineering expertise. There will be more to come on this since it connects many areas of enterprise commerce including email and personalization.

In the news

• GoPuff, in partnership with Shopify, launched Storefronts, powered by GoPuff. It’s a logistics and technology platform that enables brands to offer affordable delivery from their owned and operated online stores in as fast as 15 minutes. They offer the option for self management or fully by GoPuff. If the pricing works, it could be a good solution for many CPG brands.
• March online grocery sales largely remain flat year over year. (DigitalCommerce360)
• Bark - a strong win for Shopify’s CPG team. Ali Orr commented on publicly traded Bark’s recent move of all their properties to Shopify.
• Amazon released their annual letter to shareholders. If you haven’t read it already, it’s easily understandable for everyone and is filled with insights.
• Why JCPenney’s loyalty program is the next step in its $1B turnaround plan (MarketingDive). They're also opening their first physical store in 8 years. (ChainStoreAge)
• Stanley Brand president, Terence Reilly, to lead Heydude. (RetailDive)
• Golf fashion moves into the mainstream. (RetailDive)
• Dr Martens CEO is stepping down amid ‘challenging’ year ahead. (RetailDive)
• Lululemon is seeking a VP Commerce Platforms. They use Commercetools.
• FIGS launches a program that will give shoppers $50 off in exchange for old scrubs. (ModernRetail)
• Batteries Plus continues aggressive expansion. (ChainStoreAge)
• Drew Sanocki of PostPilot and his 25 years of experience on brand turnaround was on display in his 30 Tips on Fixing Big, Busted Brands
• Lands’ End publicly announced it wants to discount less. Before you scoff, they note they’re carrying less stock and updating offerings frequently with new fabrics and fits to encourage early shopping at full price. (WSJ)
• The Masters at the Augusta National Golf Club makes $10M per day on merch. They do this because of exclusivity. You can only buy it there if you get a golden ticket.?
• In sustainability news, Asics released a fully recyclable shoe and launched a new returns program to encourage runners to give back their shoes at the end of their use. (RetailDive)

Partner Updates

Klaviyo has a CDP case study with Ruffwear. In their words: “Getting the right discounts to the right people at the right time gives us better margins.”

Ordergroove ?has a new report on the State of Subscription Bundles and highlights the untapped potential.?I like their Ecommerce Strategy YouTube series with Eric AndrewsThe recent one on calculating unit economics and LTV was really good.

Loop - Jonathan Poma has a good piece on the extent of fraud (all time high) and methods to address it. It's a big 50 page report.

Listrak released their 2024 cross-channel benchmark report.

Yottaa - I liked their recent case study on Tarte Cosmetics and speed and conversion improvements on mobile. One release they had this year worth repeating is?Cache Experience. It anticipates what customers want to see and pre-loads the experience for faster page loading.??

Fast Simon has added new AI elements to their personalized cross-sell and upsell merchandising making them faster and more accurate. The new Conversational Commerce AI Bot is targeted towards fashion brands.