E-commerce Industry News Recap - Week of August 7th, 2023

This is a summary recap of the?133rd Edition?of the?Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter?- brought to you by?Paul Drecksler. Check out the?full edition?for links and sources.

1. 苹果 surpassed 1 billion paid subscriptions. The company added 150M subscriptions through the trailing 12 months. Apple also announced that its Apple Card logged $10B in deposits.

2. BigCommerce is adding AI to its platform via a partnership 谷歌 , leveraging the company's advanced Cloud AI technologies. Through the partnership and integration, new AI-powered solutions will become available to BigCommerce merchants including AI powered writing and SEO, personalized storefronts and product recommendations, deeper insight into business performance, and an upgraded BigCommerce E-commerce Insights tool.

3. In June I reported that Squarespace was acquiring approximately 10M domains from Google, which is selling its Google Domains division that it launched in 2014. The $180M acquisition is set to close in Q3 2023. Well it turns out that Automattic isn't going to let Squarespace have all the fun! WordPress.com sent out a promotion last week offering to cover the transfer cost for those interested in moving from Google Domains to them instead of Squarespace, plus an extra year of registration for free.

4. Instacart revamped its Instacart Storefront and Storefront Pro offerings, which power e-commerce websites and apps for grocers. The new updates make it easier for retailers to customize their storefronts and launch shoppable campaigns. Grocery retailers can now modify their website layout, create customized landing pages, integrate content into targeted campaigns, and set specific goals for campaigns.

5. Two weeks ago I reported that #FedNow, the U.S. government's new instant payment system that'll serve as a faster payment rail for financial institutions, is live with 54 financial institutions and service providers already participating. John Mitchell of American Banker feels that in order to succeed, FedNow must take some lessons from the world's most widely used real-time digital payments system: India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) including setting clear standards for API integrations, boosting corporate participation, making FedNow accessible to everyone, makign security a priority, and launching education campaigns to onbaord consumers.

6. A new bill in Washington is pitting retailers like 亚马逊 , 沃尔玛 , and 塔吉特百货 against credit card processing networks like Visa , 萬事達卡 , and 发现金融服务公司 . The Credit Card Competition Act is actually an old bill that was proposed a year ago, but never brought up for a vote in either the House or Senate, and is now being reintroduced via a bipartisan push to clamp down on credit card fees. The measure aims to bolster competition for the credit card processing industry by requiring big banks to allow at least one network that isn't Visa or Mastercard to be used for their cards, giving merchants who pay interchange fees a choice they otherwise rarely get. It also stipulates that Visa and Mastercard can only account for one of the choices as a way to prevent the two largest networks from being the only options offered to merchants.

7. Amazon extended access to its Fresh grocery deliveries to non-Prime members across a dozen cities, with plans to expand countrywide by the end of the year. Previously, Amazon grocery delivery had been limited exclusively to Prime members, who pay $139/year for the Prime subscription and $3.95 to $9.95 per delivery under $150, with free delivery on orders more than $150. Now non-Prime customers will have access to the grocery delivery service, at a slightly higher price, ranging from $7.95 to $13.95, with no option for free delivery at any price threshold.

8. Wix announced a new offering called Wix Studio, a platform for freelancers and agencies to grow their businesses with Wix's suite of tools. Wix Studio offers a business website builder, creation editor with coding capabilities, complete design and CSS control, AI design, team management, unified dashboard to power all projects and clients, and Wix Blocks to build and sell reusable applications.?

9. TikTok Live has quietly turned into a huge business as users pay for tips and gifts for bizarre entertainment. Viewers send streamers digital gifts using TikTok Coins, a currency that allows them to send cash via playful digital icons like stars, owls, school buses, and roses. The Atlantic's Caroline Mimbs Nyce spent hours on TikTok Live, discovering some of the most popular (and profitable) live streamers on the platform including a guy dressed as Santa who thanks senders for sending cash while Christmas carols play in the background, sleepfluencers, QVC-style salespeople, and NPC actors.?

10. Adobe employees are concerned that moving forward with AI in the art space will cause companies to downsize their graphic design departments, which could result in fewer subscriptions to its Creative Cloud offering. The threat of its own technology has become a very real conversation at Adobe, with many concerned that the company is “in danger of cannibalizing” its own source of income.

11. Shopify has chosen finance automation platform Ramp its sole expense management provider, after the company launched a new tier for larger companies called Ramp Plus. (Panding to Shopify a little with the name?) Ramp is also now offering a new and automated “procure-to-pay solution” to give large enterprises an alternative to incumbents in the space like Amex, Concur, and Coupa.

12. Meesho deactivated 4.2M counterfeit listings and 1M restricted products within the span of six months, after integrating AI tools aimed at detecting and flagging suspicious listings and accounts. Whew! That doesn't speak too highly to the junk that must've been populating the marketplace previously! The company also established the Suraksha List, which is comprised of approximately 1,800 high-risk brands vulnerable to infringement and counterfeiting.?

13. In other Meesho news, the company reported profitability in the month of July, overtaking Flipkart and Amazon as the first e-commerce company in India to do so. However Meesho did not disclose the exact profit figure, so it could very well be like 80 cents.?

14. Stripe launched Stripe Tax, a service that platforms like WooCommerce, Mindbody, and Squarespace can offer their customers to help them sell cross-border and deal with the complex tax requirements that international selling brings. The service is an expansion of Stripe Tax, which launched in 2021, and automatically calculates and collects sales tax, VAT, and GST across 40+ countries.

15. EverAdNet Media and Woo teamed up to provide a unified solution for merchants to add tracking pixels to their websites for real-time monitoring of customer actions like adding items to their cart or viewing the checkout page. Merchants can then use the data to create customer profiles based on their shopping journey, which in turn allow them to target customized ads and e-mails to specific segments.

16. BigCommerce hired Steven Chung as its new president, who will oversee the company's sales, marketing and services organizations, and consolidate the company's go-to-market teams. Chung previously served as president of Delphix, where he led the company's strategic and commercial operations globally.

17. Overstock unveiled its new Bed Bath & Beyond website for U.S. customers, which will carry kitchen, bed and bath products, and home furniture and decor. It looks good! Last month I reported that Overstock bought the BB&B brand from bankruptcy for $21.5M and is adopting the name, which will replace the Overstock brand name moving forward.?

18. TikTok is building a dedicated team tasked with boosting sales of pre-owned luxury items like handbags and sneakers, according to a new set of job openings on its website. The company is also thinking about how to loop more influencers into the sales category.

19. USPS is about to deliver its third quarter financial report tomorrow, likely continuing its run of financial losses that began in 2007. eCommerceBytes expects USPS to simultaneously announce its third postal rate hike of the year in the form of its temporary holiday surcharge which ran from Oct to Jan last year.

20. Amazon will begin archiving orders older than two years next month, giving sellers 30 days notice to download orders if they need access to buyer information. The move is related to new-ish laws regulating the storage of buyer names and personally identifiable information, such as the EU's GDPR.

21. WooCommerce, which powers over 3.4M online stores, announced ambitious plans to expand its reach even further with upcoming improvements focused on performance, payments, product management, and site design, with aims to power 10-15% of all websites globally. WooCommerce is also adopting the Gutenberg visual editor from WordPress, and releasing AI features to assist in generating product titles, descriptions, and AI content.

22. Block is shutting down Cash App 's Verse brand in the EU and its BNPL platform Clearpay (Afterpay) in Spain, France, and Italy, after dismal growth and profitability, with plans to shift resources towards areas that offer a higher potential ROI. The company acquired Verse in 2020 with hopes of replicating the success of Cash App in Europe, and Clearpay is the European brand of Afterpay, which Block bought in 2021 for what would've been the dumbest and most overpaid acquisition of the decade at $29B, if not for Elon Musk sweeping in and buying Twitter for $44B the following year.

23. Ocado Group 's mid-year financial reports revealed that the company paid $12.7M to buy 6 River Systems, Part of Ocado Group from Shopify , just 3% of the $450M that Shopify paid for the company in 2019. In May, I reported on the sale, but terms of the deal were not disclosed at the time.?

24. Pitney Bowes expanded its regional delivery network for e-commerce parcel shippers, extending 1-3 day delivery to more than 20 cities across the South. Three day delivery? What is this 1996? The move follows the company's decision to launch its first regional delivery service models in 2022 starting in California, New York, and Massachusetts.?

25. Last week I covered Shopify Collective, a new feature that lets brands on Shopify collaborate and sell products from each other's stores and mentioned that the company is very proud of the fact that Drake is on the platform. However at the time, I hadn't seen Drake's actual shop, which Business Insider did a write up on last week for its interactive shopping experience (albeit not a very usable one in my opinion).?

26. Salesforce announced the release of Einstein Studio with a Bring Your Own Model feature that allows customers to bring their proprietary data into Data Cloud to build and train their model. The solution is aimed at companies with data teams that have been building models in other places like SageMaker and want to put those models to work in other contexts.

27. Amazon plans to double its number of same-day delivery warehouses in the U.S. to compete with Walmart and Target in the business of ultra-fast delivery. The expansion of same-day delivery, which currently serves 90 metropolitan areas, will rely on smaller warehouses that are closer to customers than traditional fulfillment centers.

28. Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez hosted an engagement party last week aboard Bezos's $500M yacht in the Amalfi Coast, with big names like Bill Gates and his girlfriend Paul Hurd in attendance. Bezos and Sánchez got engaged this past May while on holiday in Cannes, France.

29. People are renting out SpaceX Starlink kits on Facebook Marketplace for $25-$30/day, with one renter making $5,000 a month renting out seven devices. The service costs about $599 for the equipment and $110/month in the U.S., depending on the plan, and is available in over 55 countries.

30. Meta and Alphabet reported a 12% and 3% increase in ad revenue for Q2 to $31.5B and $58B respectively. Within ad revenue, e-commerce was the largest contributor to YoY growth, followed by entertainment & media.

31. Amazon created a new alert system and dedicated page within accounts to view recalls and safety alerts impacting items you've purchased. The company has been criticized in the past for being slow to remove recalled products, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission accused Amazon of failing to remove hazardous and defective items from its marketplace in 2021, so this is their way of being able to say “Nah uh!” in the future.

32. Klarna dropped its open banking brand, Klarna Kosma, a tool that gives clients the ability to plug into Klarna's API and access account statements and banking data, and is planning to move the sub-brand directly under the Klarna corporate brand. Regarding the name, the company said, “Look away, I'm hideous!” Oh wait, that was Cosmo…

33. DoorDash is adding Staples to its marketplace just in time for the back-to-school season as part of its efforts to expand into new retail categories. With the new partnership, almost 1,000 Staples stores in the U.S. are now available to shop from via the app.

34. Salesforce laid off 50 sales and customer service employees from its Irish offices to top off their 8,000 employee / 10% companywide staff reduction earlier this year. The additional job cuts reflect the company's intensified focus on profitability.

35. Fanatics partnered with DAZN Group to introduce purchasable merchandise on Dazn's sports entertainment app. Starting this year, Dazn customers will be able to purchase licensed team merchandise and sports apparel directly from an integrated store within the app.

36. 苹果 launched a campaign called “Pay the Apple Way” promoting its Apple Pay service as a solution to the inconveniences of carrying around a bulky wallet, struggling to find the right card, and feeling concerned about privacy. The ads appear across prominent street and mall placements in the U.K. and U.S. with messages like “Your watch is your wallet” and “Pay the secure way” and “Hungry for Apples?”?

37. Plus 10 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including Google's Startups Women Founders Fund, which will provide $100k in equity-free cash to six female-founded startups this year.

For more details on each story, see the full edition:?https://www.shopifreaks.com/e-commerce-battles-tiktok-live-streamers-grocery-delivery-for-all/

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

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