June 6

We’ve been talking a lot recently about Shopify and the enterprise. Our CEO, Vince Santo, sat down with Brock Everett of Shopify to discuss: “Why Maze is seeing a market shift toward Shopify”. We also worked with our partner, @Flavorcloud, on a piece about how to position for international expansion.

Our team will be in NY next week for CommerceNext and VISIONS.

In the news

• Best Buy is cutting costs as sales are trailing 2023. (CNBC)
• Dollar General same store sales were up 2.4% in Q1 because of a 12.6% YoY increase in visits. People are coming in more but buying less. (Yahoo Finance)
• Gap appears to be turning things around. Sarah Shapiro has a good summary.
• Hanesbrands sold Champion to Authentic Brands Group for $1.5B.
• Google had an employee leak data causing an earthquake in the world of SEO. Michael King and Rand Fishkin have an excellent writeup.
• Ace Hardware was featured in a viral post on X. The question was: “How do they stay in business when their prices are 15% higher than Home Depot and Lowe’s and they don’t have much in stock.” The overwhelming answer was the customer service and proximity to their customers. It’s a reminder that location and excellent customer service will always be differentiators.?
• The cult of Costco: How one of America’s biggest retailers methodically turns casual shoppers into fanatics. (Fortune)
• Home Depot has rolled out Instacart delivery (in as little as an hour) nationwide. This includes big & bulky items up to 60 lbs. It will be very useful for contractors on job sites. All those DIY folks like me who struggle through multiple trips to Home Depot will understand. (DC360)?
• Wayfair opened their first large format store including a restaurant. 150K sq ft but no Swedish meatballs. (CSA)
• Kelly Goetsch from commercetools had a good piece on “What the End of the Web Means for Digital Commerce.” He highlights how commerce experience and SEO are going to be radically changed by AI.
• Paypal is expanding their new ad business. Powered by their customer data,? their ‘Advanced Offers’ product has been around since January and is being tested by Sezzle and eBay. Look for more of this from others. (WSJ)
• Luxury E-Commerce: Who’s Surviving and Why. They highlight Mytheresa, Ssense and Moda Operandi. Know your customer, merchandise well and excel at the basics. (BoF)
• Modern Retail had an interesting piece about how brands are using Facebook Groups to grow their community. Grove Collective, Instapot and others use it as a forum for ideas, test experiences and act as focus groups.
• Vans - Sun Choe joined as Global Brand President after leaving Lululemon. (RetailDive)
• USPS set to charge 25% more for Parcel Select starting July 15. (SupplyChainDive)
• Mysterious corporate breaches could link to Snowflake cloud accounts. Hackers appear to be targeting accounts that don't use multifactor authentication. (Axios h/t @mat feuer)???

Partners

• Shopify acquired Checkout Blocks. It allows for no-code customizations in the checkout.
• Okendo launched their Loyalty product. This adds to their suite of Reviews, Surveys, Referrals and Quizzes.

Until next time,

Nick