E-commerce Industry News Recap - Week of Oct 9th, 2023

This is a summary recap of the?142nd Edition ?of the?Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter ?- brought to you by?Paul Drecksler . Check out the?full edition ?for links and sources.

1. STAT OF THE WEEK: Adobe forecasts online holiday spending will exceed $221 billion this year. Mobile shopping is expected to make up more than half of that amount. .
2. Uber is now offering return package shipping through UPS, FedEx, and USPS. Customers can send up to five packages at a time for a flat $5 fee or $3 for Uber One members, its $9.99/month subscription plan. In comparison, FedEx charges between $3-4 per package, UPS charges $13 for same-day pickup and $8 for future-day pickup, plus up to a $6.50 surcharge for picking up from a residence, and USPS offers free package pickup from your home or office. (USPS is amazing.) .
3. One of my favorite publications, Rest of the World , created a report that highlights 40 global companies that are outmaneuvering Silicon Valley for market share domination in their respective countries. Highlights include PhonePe (480M registered users, beating Google Pay and WhatsApp Pay), Nubank (largest digital bank in the world, based in Brazil), Grab (ride-hailing app that beat Uber in SEA), and BYD (Chinese-made EV about to overtake Tesla). .
4. A redacted portion of the FTC's antitrust lawsuit against 亚马逊 has come to light, offering more details about a secret pricing algorithm known as Project Nessie. Inside sources spoke to the WSJ and claimed that the algorithm was used to test how high Amazon could raise prices before being undercut, automatically return prices to their previous lower levels when rivals did not match their hikes, and discount goods if a competitor reduced prices -- which Amazon says is just normal retail behaviors. .
5. At its annual Refresh event, Squarespace announced several new platform features. The standout feature added was Squarespace Payments, a native payment solution that will let business users collect money for goods and services without having to integrate an external payment processor. This is Squarespace's answer to Shop Pay and Woo Payments. .
6. Flipkart launched Flipkart Commerce Cloud, a suite of retail tech solutions including Marketplace Technology Stack (helps retailers launch marketplaces), Retail Media Solution (ad engine that understands shopper intent), and Retail Pricing Manager (cloud-based SaaS pricing tool). .
7. Flipkart launched its VIP subscription program in preparation for the festive season of sales, taking on Amazon's Prime membership in India. The membership will be priced at Rs 499 annually ($5.99/year), undercutting Amazon Prime in the country which is priced at Rs 1499 annually ($17.99/year). In response to the Flipkart VIP program, Amazon launched Prime Shopping Edition for Android, which gives users access to free shipping and one-day deliveries for Rs 399 ($4.79/year), but does not include access to Prime Video, Music, Reading, Gaming, or other offerings. .
8. 谷歌 and 雅虎 announced new email-sending policies that could impact e-commerce merchants. The policies require: E-mail Authentication via SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, Single-click unsubscribes when sending more than 5k e-mails a day, and Low complaint rates (reported Spam rates of less than 0.3%). Historically it's been recommended that companies authenticate their e-mails using the tools above, but now Google and Yahoo are making them requirements versus recommendations. .
9. PayPal was hit with a class action lawsuit by consumers alleging that its anti-steering rules stifle competition against lower-cost payment platforms such as Stripe and Shopify. PayPal's rules say that if a retailer accepts PayPal or Venmo payments, they agree NOT to offer discounts or incentives to persuade consumers to use other payment options, tell customers that other payment options are more cost effective, or present other forms of payment earlier in the checkout process. The suit states that PayPal’s merchant agreement leads to consumers paying more to make purchases, which “if PayPal’s agreements were transparent, consumers would quickly see a price difference between PayPal and Venmo and its competitors.” .
10. Pitney Bowes is evaluating if the company should sell off its global e-commerce business unit, which provides retailers with a parcel delivery and returns network and other fulfillment services. Last week the company's President and CEO Marc B. Lautenbach stepped down, effective immediately, after being pressured by a large investor to do so from both roles. He also resigned his seat on the company’s board. Jason Dies, who most recently served as the company’s executive VP and group president, was named interim CEO, while the company searches for a permanent successor. .
11. WPP launched a strategic partnership with Shopify to jointly develop products with shared insights and pair WPP's network of 13,500 commerce experts with Shopify's platform. The two companies will also roll out customized training and certification pathways for WPP employees, creating 300 certified Shopify specialists across WPP's network within the first year. Earlier this year I reported a similar partnership between WPP and BigCommerce. .
12. 微软 is sunsetting its Supply Chain Platform, a composable platform designed to help enterprise organizations optimize their supply chain that launched less than a year ago. The platform will be deprecated on October 31, 2023. .
13. 特易购公司 , a UK-based superstore, is launching an online marketplace where shoppers can purchase a selection of third-party products, in addition to grocery items already available on its website. The company has been developing the marketplace for two years and expects it to roll out at the beginning of 2024. .
14. Intuit Mailchimp and Wix entered into a multi-year partnership and cross-platform integration that'll offer merchants stronger functionality to make their marketing activities easier. Coming soon to the US, Canada, and the UK, users will be able to sync and organize their customer data between the two services, customize campaigns with real-time behavioral data, and drive better engagement using AI-powered features. .
15. Meta came up with a price for their EU subscription — $10.50/mo on desktop or $14/mo on mobile. The new subscription tiers are an attempt to comply with the EU's crackdown on personalized advertising. Now users will have a way to “opt out” of personalized ads. .
16. Speaking of social media subscriptions, X revealed that its currently testing a three-tier premium service that would charge customers different amounts depending on how many ads are shown. X Premium, which currently costs $7.99/month, would be split into Basic, Standard, and Plus variations. .
17. Etsy has been experimenting with cutting off product titles after the use of special characters like commas, parentheses, and dashes, without having informed sellers. Due to the testing, product titles looked incomplete, and sellers were losing sales before realizing what was going on. .
18. smatch , a German startup, launched a B2B platform to tackle overstock, which it claims is a 3 trillion euro problem each year with serious environmental impacts. On its new marketplace, brands and retailers can list their excess inventory, add product details, and even specify preferences about the type of sale, such as potential buyers or which regions and distribution channels to aim for. .
19. Dave Clark, the former CEO of Flexport who was publicly ousted from the company, fired back at Flexport via an X post, calling recent reporting on the company “deeply concerning.” Clark said he discovered extensive problems with he joined Flexport in Sep 2022, including a “revenue forecasting model that was consistently providing overly optimistic outputs.” .
20. Shopify's head of customer support, Clovis Cuqui, is leaving the company after more than eight years, to be replaced by Glen Worthington, who has worked at Shopify for five years. The organization Cuqui led was temporarily known as “merchant acceleration,” but will once again be known as “support” under its new leadership. .
21. X will run a livestream shopping event with Paris Hilton. The feature will allow users to watch a livestream video, chat with others, shop, and hang out in Spaces. The livestream infrastructure has existed long before Musk took over. Walmart was the debut partner to test it out in Nov 2022. .
22. Maybe X can livestream its upcoming lawsuits… The SEC, which is currently investigating whether Elon Musk violated federal securities law with his Twitter purchase last year, initiated a lawsuit against Musk due to his non-compliance with a subpoena. Give him a break — he was already fined $44B for the purchase! LOL. .
23. X is also being sued by X Social Media, a Florida-based legal marketing company, for trademark infringement over the name X. This is the first time X is being sued over the name change, but likely won't be the last, as there are hundreds of federal trademarks for X owned by various tech companies. .
24. TikTok Shop shut down in Indonesia as of last Wednesday, but many sellers are staying put on the platform. Since they can no longer checkout on TikTok, the sellers are sharing links to their storefronts on Shopee, Tokopedia, Lazada, or even on their WhatsApp accounts, however some have reported a 60% drop in sales. .
25. 萬事達卡 teamed up with Peacock and Instacart to offer special perks. New Instacart+ members will get a two-month free trial and $10 off their second eligible Instacart purchase every month, as well as no delivery fees on certain orders and reduced services fees. New Peacock subscribers will get statements credits each month for their subscriptions, as well as access to experiences like NBCUniversal's parks and studios. .
26. Amazon reduced its free delivery threshold to $100 from $150 in an attempt to boost its fresh-food business. The company previously offered free grocery delivery for orders more than $35 for Prime members, and then upped that to $150 in February, and now dropped it to $100. .
27. France began enforcing a new law that imposes a €3 minimum delivery fee on Amazon and other online retailers for book orders. The law is designed to set a level playing field between small local bookshops and tech giants who can afford to subsidize shipping costs and gain an unfair advantage over smaller competitors. A 2014 French law already prohibits free book deliveries, but Amazon and others have circumvented this by charging 1 cent per delivery, whereas local bookstores typically charge up to €7 for shipping a book. .
28. Meta is beginning to rollout generative AI capabilities in its Ads Manager this week including background generation, image expansion, and text variations. The company has been testing the features in an AI Sandbox, making them available so far only to a small set of advertisers, but they are expected to roll out globally by next year. .
29. Amazon is now offering the ability to buy games on its Luna cloud gaming service, but for the time being, only Ubisoft titles. Previously you could only play games on Luna by subscribing to specific channels of content, accessing a rotating set of games available to Amazon Prime subscribers, or playing Ubisoft games you already owned for PC. .
30. Waitrose & Partners , a UK-based supermarket chain, is in talks with Amazon to sell groceries via its marketplace, in an attempt to lure more shoppers and claw back market share. The company has lost ground to discounters Aldi and Lidl, and its share of the UK grocery market has fallen to 4.6% from 5.1% at the start of 2020. .
31. Plus 8 seed rounds, IPOs, acquisitions, and bankruptcies of interest including SmileDirectClub , a D2C dental care company known for its teeth aligners, filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after not being able to obtain third-party financing. .

For more details on each story, see the full edition: https://www.shopifreaks.com/uber-returns-flipkart-vip-new-e-mail-sender-policies/

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See you next week!

PAUL