E-commerce Industry News Recap - Week of Oct 16th, 2023

This is a summary recap of the?143rd Edition ?of the?Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter ?- brought to you by?Paul Drecksler . Check out the?full edition ?for links and sources.

1. 亚马逊 may have gotten hit with a major lawsuit by the FTC two weeks ago, but that didn't stop the company from having a stellar October Prime Day event last week. Amazon, who is notoriously ambiguous about their sales figures, only reported that this year's October Prime Day (the second Prime Day event they've ever held in October) “outpaced last year's” but fell short of July's Prime Day record-breaking $13B in sales. The company also noted that customers ordered more than 150M items from third-party sellers, up from about 100M items in 2022.

2. A recent Shopify - Gallup survey (performed Sep 1-14) asked 1,761 US shoppers when they plan to start holiday shopping this year. The results revealed that: 14% already started, 10% planned to start that month in September, 17% in October, 39% in November, 20% in December.

3. 沃尔玛 is testing several generative AI-based search and shopping solutions with the hopes of enhancing its search experience to better understand context, enabling customers to search by specific use cases, and generating more relevant results that allow customers to save time. For example, customers could search “Paw Patrol themed birthday party for 3 year old” instead of conducting multiple separate searches for Paw Patrol plates, streamers, and hats.

.

4. Mozilla is about to introduce a Review Checker feature in its Firefox web browser to help users identify fake reviews on e-commerce sites like Amazon, Flipkart, and Walmart. The feature is powered by Fakespot, a startup that Mozilla acquired earlier this year. Review Checker uses machine learning and AI (doesn't everyone?) to identify and eliminate unreliable reviews from e-commerce websites. It then grades a product's reviews A to F, with A representing the most trustworthy. It'll also display an adjusted rating out of five stars with unreliable reviews removed.

.

5. 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, INC. introduced a new corporate gifting platform called SmartGift for Business to help customers manage corporate gifting programs, automate sends, and create a recipient feedback loop to measure success. The platform can connect to a company's CRM and HR platforms to create instructions, such as sending a gift to every employee or client on their work anniversary or birthday.

.

6. Retail Dive did a roundup of upcoming e-commerce conferences in 2024 which include eTail? (Feb 26), Shoptalk (Mar 17), Shoptalk Europe (June 3), Shoptalk Fall (Oct 16), Shoptalk Meetup for Women (TBD), and CommerceNext (TBD). If you know of any other e-commerce conferences worth checking out next year, leave them in the comments.

.

7. 亚马逊 , 沃尔玛 , 苹果 , and other major retailers are facing growing demand from consumers, investors, and regulatory boards to reduce carbon emissions. And they are putting pressure on their suppliers and sellers to shape up or ship out! Starting in 2024, Amazon will require suppliers to share their emissions data, set emissions goals, and report on their progress, joining Microsoft, Walmart, and Apple in saying that suppliers must step up decarbonization efforts.

.

8. Eight companies have partnered together to bring awareness to and hopefully end the “tampon tax” — a tax on period products that still exists in 21 states. The Tampon Tax Back Coalition is made up of August , The Honey Pot Company , Rael , LOLA - mylola.com , Cora, DIVA , Here We Flo , and Saalt , which are all women-owned companies that sell products like pads, tampons, period cups, and underwear. If you purchase period products from any of these companies or from certain retailers that carry them, you can submit your receipts on tampontaxback.com within 10 days of purchase and receive a reimbursement for the tax you paid within 48 hours via Venmo.

.

9. Ulta Beauty 's UB Media network, which launched in May 2022 to offer its brand partners advertising to its Ultamate Rewards members, is expanding the reach of its retail network and providing more insight into ad performance on Meta platforms. By bringing data from Ultamate Rewards into Meta's measurement environment, Ulta can prove that purchases happened after seeing an ad on Facebook or Instagram. To which Apple commented, “But, but, but!

.

10. 百思买 will soon quit selling all physical media such as DVDs, Blue-rays, and 4K Ultra HD formats, following in the footsteps of Netflix , which recently ended its 25-year DVD delivery service. However it will continue to sell video games for the time being. When it comes to selling physical media, this leaves Walmart (with over 45% market share), Target, Amazon, and Redbox for rentals.

.

11. The same celebrities who previously shilled #crypto and #NFTs (including FTX) are now turning themselves into Facebook's AI chatbots including Tom Brady, Naomi Osaka, Snoop Dogg, Paris Hilton, Kendall Jenner, MrBeast, Charli D'AMelio, and LaurDIY. Futurism wrote, “The shameful ‘crypto to AI pipeline' is hitting a fever pitch, with stars ditching web3 in favor of the latest cash grab.”

.

12. Grocery e-commerce sales dropped 3.1% YoY in September to $7.5B, primarily due to a decline in order frequency during the month, according to Brick Meets Click and Mercatus. This marks the lowest order rate since the start of the pandemic.

.

13. Jeff Bezos bought a $79M Mediterranean home on the Biscayne Bay community known as “Billionaire Bunker” island, next to the $68M property he bought two months ago. The island has just 40 homes, all waterfront, as well as its own municipality including mayor, police force, private golf course, and docks where billionaires can anchor their yachts.

.

14. Ad buyers have discovered that large chunks of impressions (like up to 80%) spent on Google's Performance Max campaigns are ending up in less desirable places like on open web inventory and branded search terms. Google told Adweek that, “Performance Max optimizes for advertisers value based on their goals, not a specific percentage of inventory per channel.”

.

15. Over 1,000 Amazon workers at a warehouse in Coventry, England announced a four-day strike overlapping with Black Friday, as the latest escalation in their dispute over pay with the company. In response to a request for comment from Reuters, Amazon UK Country Manager John Boumphrey said the company offered competitive wages and benefits. At this point, Amazon just doesn't care. There's been an employee strike or walkout on Black Friday every year I can remember in recent history, and it's always resulted in business as usual for the company.

.

16. SHEIN named investor Marcelo Claure its group vice chairman, who formerly served as chairman of Shein Latin America where he oversaw the launch of Shein Marketplace in Brazil and the $150M initiative to localize Shein's manufacturing operations. Claure's role will “help accelerate strategic growth initiatives” across the company's international markets.

.

17. Alexandra Clark has returned to Shopify in a new role as Shopify's top communications executive after a leave of absence, replacing Erin Pelton who left the company a year ago. Clark previously served as VP of Strategic Initiatives, Chief of Staff to the CEO, and Director of Policy and Government Affairs at Shopify.

.

18. Walgreens appointed Tim Wentworth , who formerly served as CEO of the nation's largest pharmacy benefits management company, Express Scripts, as its new CEO beginning Oct 23. Walgreens board was intent on hiring an exec with deep health experience who could spearhead its ambitions of becoming a provider of health services beyond the pharmacy counter.

.

19. Cloudflare , 谷歌 , and 亚马逊 were hit with the largest #DDoSattack in history as a result of a newly uncovered zero-day HTTP/2 vulnerability. HTTP/2 speeds up page loading by allowing multiple simultaneous requests to a website over a single connection, which allowed the attackers to send hundreds of thousands of requests at once, overwhelming servers and taking them offline.

.

20. Woo partnered with Veem , a global payments provider, to extend their B2B payment capabilities on the platform. The partnership allows businesses to integrate domestic and international payment collections into their checkout flow without incurring any interchange fees.

.

21. Last month I reported that eBay informed sellers that it will begin charging them for UPS and FedEx shipping labels at the time of printing instead of after delivery, like they have with USPS for quite some time. The company has since “paused the feature” (ie: never implemented), but forgot to inform sellers, who were confused that they were still receiving shipping charges weeks after purchasing labels.

.

22. bpost , Belgian's postal company, is planning on charging online sellers an extra euro to send packages during the holiday season, which it says is to compensate for additional costs during the busy period. Small businesses are expected to be hit hardest by the change, as bigger online stores can negotiate deals with Bpost and other suppliers to lower prices.

.

23. Amazon Vine, a program that allows brands to provide products for review, is introducing new lower-priced tiers, including a free-tier that allows up to 2 units per parent ASIN to get up to 2 reviews for free. This is followed by the other new $75 tier that allows up to 10 units and 10 reviews.

.

24. Flexport laid off 20% of its workforce, around 600 employees, last week, marking the second time this year that the company has laid off 20% of its workforce. On the same day, CEO Ryan Petersen , who took the reins a month ago, overhauled his top management team, leaning on several veteran managers as well as a couple new hires from Amazon who have taken on expanded roles.

.

25. Shopify released its POS Terminal hardware, which connects to its countertop POS kit, in time for the holiday season. The device's buyer facing display guides customers from payment and PIN entry to receipt selection and e-mail capture.

.

26. X users are reporting a new ad format that can't be liked, shared, blocked, or reported. The ad type has no associated account to identify who the advertiser is and no “ad” label to identify that what they're seeing is an advertisement. Sounds super legal.

.

27. Meta is updating the capabilities of Reels to improve the performance of ads. 1) Collection ads, which consist of one large video or image alongside smaller images, is available on IG and being tested on FB. 2) Multi-destination Reels carousel ads allow brands to direct customers to multiple product pages. And 3) Swipe left functionality enables people to swipe to find out more about a product. (I thought left swipe meant I don't like it?)

.

28. 苹果 is opening its online store in #Chile today, providing customers in the country with a way to purchase iPhones, Macs, iPads, and more directly from Apple. The site will also offer shopping assistance from Apple Specialist, a trade-in program for iPhones sales, free one-on-one online training sessions, build-to-order Mac options, and multiple payment options including financing.

.

29. Uber Eats introduced a multi-store ordering feature, which lets customers purchase food from two different merchants at the same time without having to pay additional delivery fees. I bet drivers love that. Twice the work for the same pay! Previously customers could only bundle items from convenience stores as a checkout upsell, but now bundling from another restaurant or store is built into the ordering process itself. In April 2022 I reported a similar feature by DoorDash.

.

30. Pitney Bowes extended its relationship with Ambi Robotics to automate middle-mile sorting tasks. The firm has deployed AmbiSort B-Series solution at U.S. coastal e-commerce hubs ahead of the 2023 peak holiday season to speed parcel sortation and improve productivity and accuracy. Last week I reported that the company is evaluating if it should sell off its global e-commerce business unit.

.

31. Klarna launched a new AI-driven shopping feature developed by OpenAI tech that allows customers to shop by taking a photo of products they like. The feature can identify more than 10M items including clothes, home decor, and electronics, and compare prices, retailers, and reviews. Google Lens and Pinterest Lens have offered similar features for quite some time.

.

32. Mobile users globally are expected to spend 50 billion hours this year within Android shopping apps, representing a 42% increase since 2020, according to findings from Data.ai . The apps with the most time spent include SHEIN , AliExpress , Temu , Wildberries , and Flipkart .

.

33. 81% of marketers believe that user generated content resonates more with customers than either professionally shot photos or influencer content. A majority also agree that visual UGC minimizes costs compared to using professional photography or influencer content. Coincidentally I was just talking on LinkedIn about how I've historically used UGC on my travel brand.

.

34. Plus 6 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including Block acquiring HIFI , a platform that provides financial products for musicians. Block is also the majority stakeholder in the music streaming platform TIDAL , which it bought in March 2021 for $297M in cash and stock.

For more details on each story, see the full edition: https://www.shopifreaks.com/prime-day-results-carbon-emissions-tampon-taxes/

I hope you found this recap helpful. For the full editions each week delivered straight to your Inbox with more details and links to sources, subscribe free at?https://www.shopifreaks.com

See you next week!

PAUL