E-commerce Industry News Recap - Week of Sep 18th, 2023

This is a summary recap of the?139th 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: The Twitter alternative, Bluesky, hit one million users. Although Bluesky surpassed 1 million installs in July, it hadn't actually hit the 1 million users mark until now because more people had downloaded the app than actually had invite codes to sign up at the time. — According to TechCrunch

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2. 亚马逊 debuted new features for its Buy with Prime service at its annual seller conference last week including: (1) Buy with Prime Cart, which lets customers (finally) buy multiple items at once, (2) Buy with Prime Assist, which is live chat Amazon customer support for questions about shipping, current orders, and returns, and (3) Reviews from Amazon, which displays a product's Amazon reviews on the product page of a merchant's e-commerce website.

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3. Amazon also unveiled:

(1) Visual Search w/ Text - customers can add text inputs to their image searches

(2) View In Your Room - AR feature for seeing how furniture, home decor, and now small appliances look in your home

(3) Sales Trend Data - showing info like "10k+ bought in the past month" within search results and on product detail pages

(4) Find-on-Amazon - users can tap the share button on photos from social media and the web to find similar products on Amazon

(5) Easier Reorders - previously ordered items are now presented at the top of search results with the date of last purchase

(6) AI Written Product Descriptions - can write titles, bullet points, descriptions, and photo captions

(7) Supply Chain by Amazon - to expand its fulfillment and logistics operations for sales outside of its marketplaces

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4. Last Tuesday, TikTok officially debuted its long-awaited TikTok Shop in the US. Now with TikTok Shop, users can discover, learn about, and purchase products directly on TikTok without ever leaving the app. Whereas before, they could only discover products and were sent to the merchant's website to actually make the purchase. TikTok Shop offers In-Feed Video & Live Shopping, a Product Showcase, a Shop Tab, an Affiliate Program, Shop Ads, Fulfilled by TikTok (logistics), and Secure Checkout with a third party payments platform.

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5. Flexport , the company whose name you might recognize as having acquired Deliverr from Shopify earlier this year, launched a new end-to-end supply chain tool called Flexport Revolution and a membership program called Flexport+. Revolution offers small and mid-sized businesses access to freight, fulfillment, replenishment, and financing services, as well as direct replenishment into FBA, Walmart, and more than 15 wholesale distribution channels including Target, Costco and Nordstrom. Flexport+ is a new $149 membership program that offers merchants exclusive access to supply chain financing and priority shipping services.

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6. Affirm 's senior VP of finance, Rob O'Hare, said at a conference hosted by Barclays on Tuesday its funding cost will rise. O'Hare said, “We have been using warehouse facilities. That will drive up funding costs.” He later added that funding costs will “be a drag” on margins, “but we think we're doing a good job.”

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7. Albertsons launched a new e-commerce offering called Flash, which allows customers to place orders available for pick-up in 30 minutes or less. Through the Flash service: (1) Customers can choose up to 35 items for pickup or delivery. (2) Delivery orders have an $11.95 service fee and will be delivered within a 30-to-50-minute window. (3) Pickup orders have a $3.95 fee and will be ready in 30 minutes or less.

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8. 彭博资讯 reports that despite onboarding Linda Yaccarino as CEO of X with the hopes that the former NBCUniversal exec would bring back advertisers who had stopped spending on the site, she might be running out of time to make that happen for this holiday season. Marketers typically finalize their holiday budgets by August, leaving limited room for last-minute adjustments, and others are hesitant to jump back on the X bandwagon due to the platforms reputation for leniency for hate speech since Musk's takeover.

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9. Meta , on the other hand, is ready for what will probably be its highest revenue holiday season in history. Meta recently added new ad optimization tools in preparation for the holiday push including: (1) Budget sheduling for ads campaigns to avoid having to manually adjust budget, (2) Promotional ads for applying promo codes, (3) Reminder Ads to help build awareness and anticipation of brand events, and (4) Shop ads to allow a user to purchase directly from FB or IG within the app.

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10. Indonesia is planning to ban e-commerce on social media under new trade regulations designed to avoid predatory pricing on social media platforms, which the government feels was threatening offline markets in the country. Current trade regulations do not specifically cover direct transactions on social media. Jerry Sambuaga, deputy minister of trade, told the parliament that, “Social media and social commerce cannot be combined,” and that it was time for revisions to the country's trade regulations.

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11. Amazon is increasing pay rates for contracted delivery drivers in the US, investing $440M over the next year to make it happen. The exact bump in pay remains undisclosed, but Amazon expects drivers to earn an average of $20.50 per hour.

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12. Salesforce is planning to recruit 3,300 new employees, less than a year after letting go 10% of its workforce. A third of the new hires will join the company's sales group, a third will be engineers, and the remainder will work on Salesforce's Data Cloud product.

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13. Meanwhile in the world of cryptocurrency, Brian Shroder, the CEO of Binance.US , who's served in the position since 2021, resigned, and will be replaced by Norman Reed, the chief legal officer of the firm. The company is also reportedly laying off more than 100 workers, or roughly a third of its staff.

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14. Starboard Value, an activist investor and third largest shareholder of GoDaddy , urged the company in a public letter to either improve its stock performance, or sell itself. The investor said that GoDaddy needs to cut more jobs, reduce the tech budget, and address why it is falling short of its financial targets, while committing to delivering a growth and profitability metric of at least 40% by the end of 2024.

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15. Amazon Japan opened its first sortation center in the country to streamline its domestic distribution process. The sortation center is located in Tokyo and is capable of processing up to 750k parcels daily with the help of automated machinery.

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16. The same writers that are suing OpenAI are now suing Meta over content theft in a similar class action lawsuit that accuses the company of improper utilization of their literary works to train its Llama AI software. The lawsuit alleges that Meta employed their copyrighted writings, including pirated versions, to instruct its language model in generating high-quality, long-form responses.

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17. Meta's next generation of smart glasses made in partnership with Ray-Ban are rumored to be released sometime soon. Even though the first generation wasn't a hit, with the WSJ estimating that less than 10% of owners use the glasses on a monthly basis, Meta is moving forward with its next generation, which will let you live stream video to FB and IG and even hear comments from people watching your stream. I own a pair of the first generation and wear them daily! Although I haven't charged them in over a year. LOL.

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18. In other Meta headgear news, the company gave away free Meta Quest Pro headsets, valued at $1500/each, to attendees at the Roblox conference, indicating that the devices aren't flying off the shelves with consumers. Meta also told suppliers earlier this year that it wouldn't order new components for the device, indicating that production was to end when the company ran out of parts. However although the headsets aren't hitting sales expectations, their use-cases are slowly growing. Dozens of hospitals are using the Meta Quest 2 headset to train clinicians on complex procedures, and Meta launched a new teaching program in the US to inspire students to explore the opportunities of the metaverse.

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19. Amazon announced that its second Prime Day shopping event will take place on Oct 10th and 11th this year, with sales kicking off at 3am on the 10th. To generate early interest, Amazon is already offering incentives like $15 credits for downloading the Amazon Photos app, a free four-month trial to Amazon Music, and 10% back on select Amazon devices.

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20. With more than 17.7M people having submitted claims in the $725M Facebook data privacy settlement, plaintiff lawyers estimated that each claimant can expect to receive around $30. US District Judge Chhabria noted that the amount is lower than expected due to the unprecedented number of claims filed in the case. Reopen the case then!

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21. Speaking of Meta payouts, Norway is fining the company $98,500 per day for alleged data privacy breaches and the potential impact it may have had on Norway residents. The country also banned FB and IG from carrying out any behavioral advertising activities until October.

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22. Splitit , a NY-based BNPL firm that offers embeddable installment payment options for merchants, is expanding its “pay after delivery” service with AliExpress to the US. The service, which allows shoppers to start paying for their products after delivery is complete, first launched in Germany, Spain, and France earlier this year.

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23. X agreed to try to settle claims by thousands of former Twitter employees who say they were cheated out of severance pay after Elon Musk laid off thousands of employees. The former employees have been waiting for their promised severance ever since and hopes to reach a settlement.

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24. Disputes on Visa 's network rose to more than 90M in 2022, rising past their pandemic boom. Around 70M disputes were filed in 2019, which rose 24% in 2020 during the pandemic, and has since risen 2% a year in 2021 and 2022.

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25. Companies that use AI to help students cheat at school are thriving on TikTok and Meta , even though the practice and the ads are illegal in many countries. The tools include services like making texts feel more academic, writing entire essays, citing works, and checking for plagiarism using AI.

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26. Hallmark Cards is attempting to attract Gen Z shoppers by tapping into digital payment channels and mobile apps. The company teamed up with Venmo to offer co-branded physical greeting cards that include a unique QR code that redirects to Venmo to receive a money gift.

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27. HEYDUDE , a comfort shoe maker, reached a $1.95M settlement with the FTC on charges that it misled consumers by keeping negative reviews off its website and gave customers gift cards instead of cash refunds. The FTC complaint also says that the company failed to issue shipping-delay notices when it couldn't fill orders on time and failed to cancel customers' orders and issue prompt refunds when it couldn't send customers their shoes.

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28. Wix is now offering tap-to-pay on Android phones for merchants who accept in-person payments, after having launched the service for iPhones in March earlier this year. Payments are handled through Stripe, and the service is currently limited to the US.

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29. Shopify launched its POS Go hand-held device in the UK and Ireland. The device, which comes with a built-in scanner and allows retailers to initiate checkouts anywhere in the store, was first introduced in 2022 to retailers in the US and brought to Canada in May this year.

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30. Family Dollar Stores revealed that its upcoming mobile app will allow users to manage coupons and more easily locate products with improved search functionality. The company also promised enhancements that will include in-app e-commerce, personalization capabilities, and an “evolved” rewards experience for its sister company Dollar Tree.

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31. 谷歌 Domains stopped selling domains to new and existing customers last week and is now directing users to purchase domains through Squarespace instead, who bought its domain portfolio for $180M. The acquisition was completed on September 7th.

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32. A new study shows that the number of e-commerce sites globally surpassed 26.5M in 2023, ballooning from 9.2M in 2019. The US hosts nearly 14M of these sites, a figure that substantially overshadows other nations.

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33. Plus 9 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interesting including BIRKENSTOCK filing for IPO on the NYSE under the ticket BIRK. 彭博资讯 estimated in July that Birkenstock is worth around $8B.

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For more details on each story, see the full edition:?https://www.shopifreaks.com/tiktok-shop-amazon-vs-flexport-buy-with-prime-2-0/

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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