E-commerce Industry News Recap - Week of July 17th, 2023

This is a summary recap of the?130th Edition ?of the?Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter ?- brought to you by?Paul Drecksler . Check out the?full edition ?for links and sources.

1. Shopify is launching an AI assistant called “Sidekick” to help merchants accomplish tasks on its platform. Tobias Lütke revealed Sidekick in a video on his Twitter last week, along with a few screen grabs of the AI assistant in action running reports, predicting trends, and updating a Shopify theme. The assistant is embedded as a chat icon that looks like Robin (ie: Batman's assistant) within the Shopify admin area.

2. Shopify and Roku are partnering up to let viewers buy products from their TV with one click of their remote. After seeing an ad for a Shopify retailer, Roku viewers can press “OK” on their remote to learn more about the product and purchase it directly from their TV with pre-stored payment and shipping info. It better be pre-stored! It takes me long enough to enter my password with a Roku remote. Can you imagine how long it'd take to enter my billing and shipping info?

3. Speaking of video checkout, Roku isn't the only one looking to capitalize on the medium. Bold Commerce released a new tool that lets retailers enable checkout directly from a video or e-mail without having to visit a product page — however note that we're talking about video on web devices now (not on TVs). The new functionality uses API calls to integrate a shopping link into a pull-down menu while watching a video and offer checkout without ever leaving the video. The initial focus is on YouTube, but the company plans to expand into other video channels in the future — both live and pre-recorded.

4. Etsy is expanding its Make an Offer feature to handmade goods sold on its marketplace. The optional feature was first introduced earlier this year for vintage goods, and is now being expanded to handmade items. Although the company stresses that the feature is a “work in progress” and not yet available to all sellers.

5. What y'all wanna do? Wanna be ballers? Shot-callers? Brawlers? That's what Sean “Diddy” Combs is asking Black entrepreneurs with the launch of his new e-commerce platform Empower Global (EG). EG allows consumers to discover and buy products exclusively created and sold by Black entrepreneurs. The platform, which Combs announced in 2021, launched last week with over 70 brands.

6. Last week Shopify embedded a meeting cost calculator into employees' calendar apps that estimates the price tag of any meeting that has three or more people. The calculator works by factoring in the average compensation across roles and departments, with the amount of people attending, and meeting length. Shopify found that the average cost of a 30-minute meeting with three employees can run from $700 up to $1,600, and with executives can run up to $2,000 or more.

7. 亚马逊 revealed that July 11, the first day of its Prime Day sale, was the single largest sales day in its history. As usual, Amazon didn't provide revenue numbers for the two day event, only noting that Prime Day shoppers saved more than $2.5B worldwide, surpassing previous Prime Days. Did they though? How exactly are those savings calculated? Because I saw way too many posts on the Internet last week, showing items for sale on Amazon, where sellers raised their price 100% just to put the item on a “50% off” Prime Day Sale. So is that $2.5B savings estimate being calculated off the price of the item during Prime Day? Or off the average price of the item the rest of the year? Regardless of the actual savings amount, which is an ambiguous and misleading number to put out that no-one can really refute, Adobe Analytics estimated that Prime Day this year helped push U.S. e-commerce up 6% YoY on July 11th and 6.4% on July 12th. Across both days, U.S. online sales rose 6.1% to $12.7B.

8. Emmy Nominations for this year's Outstanding Commercial have been announced — and 苹果 absolutely crushed it with four out of the seven nominations which include: 1) Forever | The Farmer's Dog, 2) Quiet The Noise | Apple, 3) Cost of Beauty | Dove, 4) The Greatest | Apple, 5) R.I.P. Leon | Apple, 6) Call Me with Timothée Chalamet | Apple, 7) The Singularity | Squarespace

9. Reddit, Inc. is sunsetting its coins and awards features in September, which were offered as a premium way for users to award other users for posting valuable content and comments. In typical Reddit fashion, the company did not announce what would be replacing the coins and awards, other than to say that a new direction for awarding will be shared in the coming months. However, APK notes reveal that Reddit will be adding a tipping feature for U.S. users.

10. Dukaan? , a Bangalore-based enterprise e-commerce platform, laid off 90% of its support staff and replaced with with an AI chatbot, while simultaneously launching a service to let other companies do the same. The company claims that their response time went from 1:45 to instant, and resolution time went from over 2 hours to 3 minutes. It would be objectively funny if the AI bot was simply marking open tickets as “resolved” after a few minutes, and no-one ever checked!

11. Federal prosecutors put some blame on Amazon's practice not to share with sellers the reason behind their account suspensions, as to what had led some consultants to bribe Amazon employees to obtain the internal annotations used to get clients reinstated. The defendant in the bribery case claimed that Amazon employees had been advertising internal annotations for sale in a “sort of black market.”

12. The Shopify Australian Retail Report revealed that 78% of Australian consumers prioritize value for money when shopping and are almost twice as likely to be stressed out about higher prices of groceries and essentials than they are about the cost of housing. 93% of Australians say their priorities have changed over the past 3 years.

13. Levi's long-awaited 575k square foot fulfillment center in Northern Kentucky is now open for business. The facility, which cost approximately $48M to upgrade, will create around 300 jobs and is expected to bring all of Levi's U.S. e-commerce business under its own roof.

14. DealShare , a New Delhi-based e-commerce platform, appointed Saurabh Kishore as its Chief Technology Officer, where he will lead the company's technology initiatives with a focus on driving innovation and enhancing the company's infrastructure. Kishore brings over 20 years of experience with global and national brands and leading retail and e-commerce companies including Target, Tata Cliq, and IBO.

15. In 2022, Europe's top six e-commerce markets generated 72% of online spend in the region including the U.K. (28%), Germany (18%), France (10%), Italy (6%), Spain (5%), and the Netherlands (5%). While the U.K. and Netherlands have returned to their pre-pandemic growth trends, the other three countries are still growing above trend.?

16. lululemon laid off 100 employees from its Lululemon Studio business, an online platform that offers expert-led fitness classes to streaming devices. As part of its strategy shift toward digital content, the company will be fully integrating the studio into Lululemon, with many employees offered ongoing roles in social media, talent acquisition, and content strategy.?

17. Madison Reed, a U.S.-based brand of hair care and hair color products, appointed Angela Jaskolski as their first chief revenue officer where she will lead the company's hair color bar business and e-commerce revenue operations. Jaskolski joins the brand as it continues to expand into omnichannel platforms and create wholesale partnerships with Ulta Beauty and Amazon.

18. GoLogiq , a U.S.-based provider of fintech and consumer data analytics, appointed company director Granger Whitelaw as their new CEO. Granger succeeds interim CEO Brent Suen who will remain chairman of the board.?

19. Amazon Stores CEO Doug Herrington wrote in a blog post last week that, “Launching Amazon Prime and independent sellers on Amazon were big bets that a lot of people didn’t understand at first. It’s the same thinking that we’re bringing to one of our latest big ideas, one that I’m incredibly excited about: Buy with Prime.” To further push the new sales channel, Amazon highlighted Buy with Prime deals through a blog post on their website last week.

20. 京东 unveiled a large language model for enterprise use, joining domestic peers like Alibaba in the race to develop generative AI applications. The service, called ChatRhino, will first roll out for JD's own use in e-commerce, logistics, and marketing, before extending to enterprise clients in the first half of 2024.

21. Nine of the top ten retailers in the U.S. have joined Meta 's new Threads app including Macy's , Kroger , Nordstrom , 塔吉特百货 , and 沃尔玛 , with the notable exception of Costco. Retailers are flocking towards Threads as a safe space to reach a younger audience after the exodus of advertisers from Twitter in the past 12 months.

22. Speaking of Threads, the social app topped 100M users last week and now boasts one-fifth the weekly active user base of Twitter worldwide and 86 times the weekly active user base of Truth Social, the largest Twitter rival in the U.S. That's impressive, but let's see how those numbers hold up in a few months after Threads is no longer the new shiny object in social media.

23. Meta updated its policies on cannabis-related products with a new title for the category and updated rules around how CBD advertisers need to conduct their promotions on the platform. Advertisers of certain CBD products will also no longer need specific permission to run ads.?

24. Sav, a UAE-based fintech app, launched its new Save Now, Buy Later feature, which aims to highlight the importance of disciplined savings and promote a savings-focused approach to big-ticket purchases rather than relying on credit. It's a bit silly to need a specific app for that, but I support whatever it takes to get consumers off debt.?

25. Amazon filed a lawsuit in the European General Court, claiming that it is being targeted because of its size outside the region. Under the EU's new Digital Services Act, Amazon is classified as one of 19 “very large online platforms” or VLOPS, which are now subject to tougher content rules for having over 45M users, but Amazon contests that over 70% of its profits came from North America last year and said, “we are not the largest retailer in any of the EU countries where we operate.”

26. A group of congressional Democrats reported that three large tax preparation firms sent “extraordinarily sensitive” information on tens of millions of taxpayers to Meta over the last two years to create targeted advertising to its own users. The report urges federal agencies to investigate H&R Block , TaxAct , and TaxSlayer over the companies' “shocking breach of taxpayer privacy”.

27. Dollar General rolled out a new cash rewards program that allows customers to earn cash back in their DG Wallets on eligible purchases. Customers can sign up for the new cash back program on their website or app, and then add available offers on the Deals page of their profile, which they can then redeem rewards for future in-store purchases.

I shopped at a Dollar General the other day and their discount program is annoying. First you have to download the app, clip a digital coupon, and scan each individual coupon at the register in order to get the discounted price shown on product tags in the store. I understand wanting customers to download the app, but this one-off coupon clipping system needs a revamp, and the new cashback program sounds just as cumbersome. I shop at Dollar General for their low prices, not so that I can trade my time for discounts.?

28. TikTok is experimenting with a new way to integrate shopping into the app via a Shop tab adjacent to the Following and For You tabs. The new Shop tab, which is side swipeable from the main screen, displays the home screen of TikTok Shop, which looks similar to the homepage of Amazon or Temu. They should experiment with displaying UGC following popular shopping hashtags instead, or content that showcases products in TikTok Shop. Maybe that's on the horizon.

29. Flipkart commenced a $700M one-time discretionary cash payout to employees, marking the single largest compensation of its kind in the Indian startup ecosystem. The company is compensating employees for the separation of PhonePe from the group, which devalued Flipkart's shares.?

30. Albertsons Companies and Meta announced a partnership with mobile ad solutions provider Kargo to pilot interactive advertisements on Meta's platforms, offering deals at local stores that consumers can clip digitally. Albertsons intends to add similar capabilities for connected TVs to make its campaigns more effective on a local level.?

31. Plus 4 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisition of interest including Pantastic Apps ' acquisition of Refersion .?

For more details on each story, see the full edition: https://www.shopifreaks.com/shopify-ai-assistant-t-commerce-puff-daddy/

I hope you found this recap helpful. For the full editions each week subscribe free at?https://www.shopifreaks.com

See you next week!

PAUL

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