E-commerce Industry News Recap - Week of Aug 28th, 2023
Paul Drecksler
13,000+ E-commerce Professionals Read My Weekly Newsletter - Shopifreaks.com is the Internet's highest rated weekly roundup of the top e-commerce news stories that impact your business.
This is a summary recap of the?136th Edition ?of the?Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter ?- brought to you by?Paul Drecksler . Check out the?full edition ?for links and sources.
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1. TikTok is sunsetting its Storefront feature, which launched in the U.S. and U.K. in August 2021. The integration will be removed on Sept. 12. Storefront enabled merchants on Shopify , BigCommerce , Ecwid by Lightspeed , Square and other platforms to sync their product catalogs to TikTok and then have the customer complete checkout on their website. Those platforms can still integrate with TikTok — but now the company is pushing those integrations to their TikTok Shop feature instead, where the checkout will happen within TikTok's app.
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2. According to a report from The Information , TikTok is also planning to ban outside e-commerce links to sites like 亚马逊 and other retailers and marketplaces. The report says that the move would be a way for the platform to force people to use TikTok Shop if they want to purchase an item. If TikTok were to implement a ban on outside e-commerce links, it would be taking a page out of Douyin’s playbook (TikTok's Chinese counterpart that is also owned by ByteDance), which banned external e-commerce links to Alibaba’s Taobao in 2020. TikTok, however, denied the claim.
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3. A leaked e-mail revealed that Shopify is about to tell 16k of its Plus merchants, who pay upwards of $2k/ month for the service, that they will no longer have access to success managers, which was one of the key perks of the higher end subscription:
? Plus merchants making less than $2M in annual sales = no more success managers.
? Plus merchants selling between $2M and $10M in annual sales = no more success managers, but will get access to success teams for specific, escalated situations relating to sales.
? Plus merchants selling over $10M in annual sales = continued access to success managers.
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4. Nordstrom Q2 net sales fell 8.2% YoY to $3.7B, while e-commerce, which represents 36% of total sales, fell 12.9%. Despite the declines, the company is pushing forward with its Rack expansion, having opened eight new Rack stores so far this year with plans to open 11 more by the end of the year.
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5. Macy's also showed significant declining numbers, with online sales dropping 10% in the most recent quarter, and net sales declining 8% to $5.13B. However it's not just a matter of e-commerce returning to normal post-COVID. Sales were actually 7.5% lower than they were pre-COVID in Q2 of 2019!
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6. Neiman Marcus Group is weighing a possible deal to sell itself to rival Saks Fifth Avenue . However Saks Fifth Avenue, which declined to comment on the rumored acquisition, isn't doing so hot itself either, having reported an 8% decline in GMV in Q1 this year.
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7. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents more than 340,000 UPS employees, ratified a new labor agreement with 美国联合包裹服务 , averting a strike that could've caused a major disruption this holiday season. The new contract will offer:
? Full-time and part-time UPS union workers will get $2.75 more per hour in 2023
? New part-time hires will start at $21/hour and advance to $23/hour, and then increase $7.50 over the length of the contract
? New worker protections including in-vehicle air conditioning and cargo ventilation
? Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a full holiday for the first time
? No forced overtime
? By the end of the five-year contract, UPS drivers will earn an average of $170k in annual pay and benefits
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8. Beginning Sep 18th, Amazon will charge Prime members ￡1.99 for same-day delivery in the U.K. on orders under ￡20. Other delivery options will remain free for Prime members. Non-Prime members will still pay the same ￡5.99 fee for the same-day delivery service. Amazon employs a similar structure in the U.S., where same-day deliveries are free for orders over $25, but come with a $2.99 fee under that amount. Non-Prime members pay up to $9.99 for same-day delivery.
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9. DoorDash is launching an AI-powered voice ordering system for restaurants that will answer all of the calls they receive and allow customers to place orders with no missed calls or wait time. DoorDash published a 2023 Restaurant Online Ordering Trends Report earlier this year which revealed that one in five customers prefer to order takeout via phone, but up to 50% of customer calls are left unanswered. This new AI system could resolve that issue and more.
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10. 70 of the world's top 1,000 websites have blocked GPTBot, the web crawler that OpenAI revealed two weeks ago that's being used to collect massive amounts of information from the Internet to train ChatGPT. OpenAI promised not to crawl websites per their instructions in a decades-old web tool called robot.txt, which is a text file that tells bots whether or not they can crawl or index certain pages. However robots.txt instructions are merely a request, not a rule. Companies are not legally bound to recognize the restrictions, which simply help search engines like 谷歌 determine which pages should and shouldn't be indexed.
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11. Solana Pay, a decentralized payment protocol built on top of the layer-1 blockchain Solana, integrated its plug-in with Shopify, allowing merchants to use it for payments. USDC, the second-largest stablecoin with a $25.9B market cap, will be the initial payment option for the integration.
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12. 阿里巴巴集团 is shifting its focus back to e-commerce in a push to revive earnings, and is looking to leverage content creators and its cheap prices to compete in a now crowded market. The push comes in response to the rise of Douyin and Xiaohongshu, Chinese apps similar to TikTok and Instagram respectively, which have taken advantage of user engagement to branch out into e-commerce and gain momentum among younger consumers.
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13. Belgian sellers on bol , a Dutch e-commerce marketplace, have complained about coercive contracts and the abuse of power by the platform, which allegedly asks for information about suppliers and a large revenue share. (Sounds like someone else I know.) A member of the federal parliament has called for a hearing to ensure that a fair and level playing field exists for all sellers.
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14. Squarespace unveiled its new Squarespace Courses platform, which aims to help entrepreneurs turn their knowledge and expertise into a new income stream. Examples of potential uses include chefs selling online cooking classes, wellness instructors creating meditation videos, and photographers teaching the basics of photography (like Udemy).
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15. Shopify is being sued by DKR Consulting LLC for allegedly copying the ability to allow retailers to sell directly to customers via social media after initially cooperating with the function's patent holder. The patents cover the distribution of a web widget to facilitate online commerce directly from sites such as Facebook and X, according to the filing.
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16. 苹果 brought its Tap to Pay standard to the Netherlands. Dutch merchants can now allow their customers to pay for goods and services using their iPhones without the need for a separate external payments device.
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17. Cuba is looking to expand its presence on 京东 where Latin American products are now more widely accepted by Chinese consumers. China is a leading destination for Cuba's goods and services including tourism, sports, rum, coffee, and honey, and now the country hopes to add cosmetics and guayabera shirts to that list.
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18. Meta launched the long awaited web version of Threads, which was previously confined to iPhones and Android phones since its launch in early July. Threads-com, a Slack replacement tool that launched in 2017, must be having the time of their lives from all the folks who instinctively go to the .com instead of Threads-net where the social media platform is hosted — except for the exorbitant hosting bill they'll probably receive at the end of the month. (I'd send that bill straight to Meta.) I can't help but notice that little ? symbol next to the name Threads though. Hmm…
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19. Meta launched a new search tool within their Ads Library that tracks branded content campaigns, which businesses can use to find posts, stories, videos and reels on Facebook and Instagram that include a Paid Partnership. The features gives advertisers the ability to gain deeper insights into competitors' strategies like their approach, creator-business relationships, and campaign frequency.
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20. The FDA sent letters to Amazon and 沃尔玛 over the sale of bogus homeopathic products falsely claiming to be antiviral cures marketed to children, in violation of federal regulations. The FDA identified four products on Amazon that claimed to treat molluscum contagiosum, including Naturasil's “Molluscum Treatment Kit”, which was also sold on Walmart.
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21. 星巴克 is experimenting with scanless pay, a new contactless checkout method that leverages a customer's current geolocation to identify them in the drive-through lane via their Starbucks app, so that they don't have to pull out their phone to pay. The company says that the innovation could speed up drive-through times. Sounds good, as long as no-one tries to pay it forward on themselves.
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22. Amazon filed a lawsuit against a group of online stores that sell pirated DVDs of titles such as “The Rings of Power” and “The Peripheral”, which Amazon doesn't produce or sell DVDs for these Prime Video series. Before going to court, investigators conducted more than twenty test purchases of pirated DVDs, which the Motion Picture Association independently confirmed were pirated. (So next time you pirate something, you can just say you were investigating.)
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23. Amazon, eBay , Meta, and Walmart are under investigation by the House of Energy and Commerce Committee for their alleged failure to stop the sale of recalled and banned goods. The lawsuit focuses on two specific child products: the Fisher-Price Rock ‘n Play sleeper and the Boppy Newborn Lounger, which have been linked to serious health risks, including the deaths of 100 infants.
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24. Only 41% of shoppers in the U.K. think that AI is having a positive impact on their retail experiences, however 70% prefer brands with personalized recommendations, which are often AI-powered. This indicates that most consumers have no idea what's going on behind the scenes when it comes to e-commerce or technology in general.
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25. Remember earlier this month when WordPress offered free transfer for anyone who had their domains at Google Domains, in an attempt to intercept customers before moving to Squarespace (who bought Google Domains' portfolio of domains)? Well, Matt Mullenweg shared that so far, 44,000 free transfer have occurred — still a far cry from the one million domains they offered to foot the bill for, but a healthy amount of domains nonetheless.
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26. Klarna announced that it now has more than 100M European users on its platform after achieving a 14% YoY GMV growth in the second quarter in Europe, and a 26% GMV growth in the U.K. Last year Klarna raised $800M in funding after its valuation dropped more than 85%, but the company hasn't slowed down despite the down round.
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27. 英伟达 's CEO Jensen Huang predicted that $1 trillion will be spent in 4 years on upgrading data centers for API, much of which he says will be paid for by the leading cloud providers such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta. As of June 30th, the four companies collectively had about $334B in cash and cash equivalents on hand, which makes Huang's prediction a bit aggressive to say the least. Don't spend that projected trillion too quick Huang. Let the checks clear first….
28. Plus 13 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest, including the IPO filings of Klaviyo , Instacart , and Arm.
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For more details on each story, see the full edition:
I hope you found this recap helpful. For the full editions each week delivered straight to your Inbox, subscribe free at?https://www.shopifreaks.com
See you next week!
PAUL
#ecommerce ?#ecommercenews ?#ecommercebusiness ?#ecommercewebsite ?#marketing ?#tech ?#retail ?#commerce ?#shopify ?#bigcommerce ?#amazon ?#wix ?#instagram ?#meta ?#facebook ?#temu ?#china ?#bnpl
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1 年It’s looking more and more like TikTok is going to be competing with the major ecomm players vs partnering with them. That giant white space for streaming commerce in North America is ripe for their taking.