2024-02-02
Amazon says “Temu/Shein... lol, who?” Amazon delivered at the fastest speeds ever, with more than 7 billion units arriving the same or next day. And in Q4 2023, “we increased the number of items delivered the same day or overnight in the U.S. by more than 65% year over year.” [image]
Amazon
Amazon Q4: revenue up 14% YoY to $170B, net income of $10.6B vs. $0.3B YoY, operating income of $13.2B, and subscription revenue up 14% to $10.5B; AMZN up 5%+
Revenue up 14% to $170.0 billion — Net income up 3433% to $10.6 billion — AWS up 13% — Subscriptions up 14% — Advertising services up 27% — North American sales up 13% —...
2023-11-27
Amazon is now biggest delivery business in the US, surpassing both UPS and FedEx in parcel volumes. Amazon predicts that it will deliver around 5.9 billion packages by the end of the year. Forget drones, look at Amazon nailing the boring stuff. https://www.wsj.com/... [image]
Wall Street Journal
Amazon data and sources: Amazon shipped 5.2B US packages in 2022, more than UPS, after passing FedEx in 2020; Amazon delivered 4.8B items ahead of Thanksgiving
Amazon is eclipsing both carriers, and the gap is growing — Amazon.com has grabbed the crown of biggest delivery business in the U.S. …
2023-11-10
Amazon and Meta have partnered to link Facebook and Instagram accounts with Amazon, enable on-platform commerce, and share data for ad targeting. https://www.marketplacepulse.com/ ...
Bloomberg
Amazon and Meta are testing a feature that shows US shoppers real-time prices and lets them buy products on Amazon directly from ads on Instagram and Facebook
Bloomberg :
2023-08-24
“TikTok planning to ban outside e-commerce links, such as to Amazon. The reported move is a way for the company to force people to use TikTok Shop if they want to purchase an item that they see on the app.” FB/IG and now TikTok want on-platform commerce. https://techcrunch.com/...
The Information
Sources: TikTok plans to bar links to Amazon and other e-commerce sites to force people to use TikTok Shop; source says Shop will lose $500M+ in the US in 2023
The cost of TikTok's online shopping expansion in the U.S. is beginning to add up. — TikTok Shop, the app's nascent shopping service …
2023-05-04
Shopify is moving out of logistics and selling the whole stack, including Deliverr it acquired for $2.1b last year, to Flexport. It is admitting they went down the wrong path and undoing it now rather than prolonging the pain. To me, this is the right move.https://www.cnbc.com/...
Bloomberg
Shopify reports Q1 revenue up 25% YoY to $1.5B, above $1.43B analyst estimates, GMV up 15% to $49.6B, and plans to cut 20% of its staff; SHOP jumps 20%+
Shopify Inc. cut jobs for the second time in less than a year and agreed to sell the majority of its logistics business to Flexport Inc …
“Shopify president Harley Finkelstein said in an interview that after going on a “side quest” to develop the company's own fulfillment and logistics businesses, it became clear that it could offer those services more effectively by integrating with Flexport.” Sounds pretty bad.
Bloomberg
Shopify reports Q1 revenue up 25% YoY to $1.5B, above $1.43B analyst estimates, GMV up 15% to $49.6B, and plans to cut 20% of its staff; SHOP jumps 20%+
Shopify Inc. cut jobs for the second time in less than a year and agreed to sell the majority of its logistics business to Flexport Inc …
2023-04-26
TikTok Shop is thriving in... Indonesia. Indonesia is TikTok's second-largest market with 110 million users. TikTok shopping is thriving there too, especially compared to its struggling US efforts. https://restofworld.org/... https://twitter.com/...
Rest of World
TikTok Shop is thriving in Indonesia, TikTok's second-biggest market with an estimated 110M users; Data.ai: the Shop seller app has ~5.5M Indonesian downloads
TikTok Shop, the controversial app's ambitious next phase, has caught fire in Indonesia. “This is truly the year of TikTok,” says one seller. Tweets: @juokaz , @shiraovide , and @...
2023-03-29
We keep hearing livestreaming commerce is going to take off “because China”. Well... it hasn't after years of trying and it might never will. https://www.wired.com/...
Wired
TikTok, Amazon, and others struggle to adopt China's livestream ecommerce model in the US, as experts blame differences between US and Chinese consumer behavior
Selling over livestreams is a $40 billion business in China. But Americans just aren't responding.
2023-02-17
TikTok has quietly launched its shop pilot in the U.S., an in-app checkout feature that brands and marketers have been waiting for as they look to capitalize on the #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt trend. Pacsun and Revolve appear to be among the pilot brands. https://adage.com/... https://twitter.com/...
The Verge
TikTok announces TikTok Trivia, a livestreamed trivia quiz with a $500K prize pool hosted daily between February 22 and 26, open to US users aged 18 and older
TikTok is taking a page out of HQ's playbook and launching a series of live trivia games, the company announced today.
TikTok has quietly launched its shop pilot in the U.S., an in-app checkout feature that brands and marketers have been waiting for as they look to capitalize on the #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt trend. Pacsun and Revolve appear to be among the pilot brands. https://adage.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Ad Age
TikTok quietly launches its in-app shopping checkout feature in the US; apparel brands Pacsun, Revolve, and Willow Boutique seem to be among the pilot partners
Erika Wheless / Ad Age :
2023-02-04
It's been 6 years since “Amazon's Antitrust Paradox” by Lina Khan. It would be a seminal case to have the antitrust suit against Amazon go through the courts, irregardless what the final decision is.
Wall Street Journal
Sources: the FTC is preparing an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, though the timing remains in flux, and is also scrutinizing Amazon Prime's bundling practices
2023-01-24
“Under the new agreement, Stripe will become a strategic payments partner for Amazon ... processing a significant portion of Amazon's total payments volume across its businesses, including ... Amazon Pay, Buy With Prime.” Why, though? https://stripe.com/...
PYMNTS.com
Stripe partners with Amazon to expand its AWS use and become a “strategic payments partner” for Amazon in the US, Europe, and Canada
PYMNTS.com :
2022-12-13
Shein's new moves: • “moving beyond selling its own brand apparel into a marketplace platform” • “diversifying its supply chain away from China. It has started manufacturing in Turkey, and has leased warehouses in Poland” https://www.wsj.com/...
Wall Street Journal
Memo: online fast fashion retailer Shein is exploring becoming a marketplace for third-party merchants and started diversifying its supply chain away from China
The fast-growing company founded in China has also begun diversifying its supply chain to Europe, according to memo to investors Tweets: @astaniscia86 Tweets: Giulio S. / @astanisc...
2022-11-09
Facebook, Stripe, Shopify and others did massive layoffs because “we thought the e-commerce surge early in the pandemic was a permanent shift. Oops!” If I was one of the let go employees I would be pissed. How could they misread the market so bad? https://twitter.com/...
Meta
Mark Zuckerberg says Meta plans to lay off 13% of its staff, or 11,000+ employees, and will cut discretionary spending and extend its hiring freeze through Q1
Mark Zuckerberg just shared the following with Meta employees: — Today I'm sharing some of the most difficult changes we've made in Meta's history.
2022-10-24
eBay concedes it lost to Amazon. “When you're talking to sellers who are selling ‘new and in-season’, they're going to be more likely to sell on Amazon or Walmart. Ebay tried to move into that space. I don't think it's a long-term place where we can win.” https://www.ft.com/...
Financial Times
An interview with eBay CEO Jamie Iannone on eBay's strategy to focus on the second-hand luxury market, as its market value has fallen from $53B in 2021 to $21B
Dave Lee / Financial Times :
2022-10-11
E-commerce growth will be flat in Q4 this year. “Adobe Analytics predicts consumers will spend $209.7 billion online between Nov. 1 and Dec. 31, a 2.5% increase year over year from 2021.” If the prediction is true, 2.5% would be slowest growth since 2008.https://www.retaildive.com/ ...
Financial Times
Amazon's second Prime Day event is an attempt to capture holiday spending ahead of Black Friday as growth lags; analysts estimate an extra $4.1B in Q4 sales
Amazon is holding its second Prime Day shopping event in a year for the first time this week in a bid to boost its flagship ecommerce product and reverse declining sales.
2022-05-06
My first unicorn exit! Shopify acquires Deliverr for $2.1 billion. https://news.shopify.com/...
Bloomberg
Shopify reports Q1 revenue up 22% YoY to $1.2B, below $1.25B est., and GMV up 16% YoY to $43.2B; Shopify acquires Deliverr for $2.1B; stock closes down 14.92%
Stefanie Marotta / Bloomberg :
2022-05-03
Amazon aggregator Thrasio layoffs 20% of staff and fires the CEO. They got too big too fast and too aggressive as the industry changed on them (competition, multiples, etc), and then e-commerce headwinds came. A lot of cash left yet to turn it around. https://techcrunch.com/...
TechCrunch
Thrasio, which buys and consolidates third-party Amazon sellers, names former Amazon exec Greg Greeley as CEO; sources: Thrasio is planning layoffs this week
TechCrunch :
2022-04-18
“The pandemic was supposed to push all shopping online. It didn't.” This is neither good nor bad - e-commerce in the US does not solve a problem, it solves for convenience. Thus it's unsurprising only 15% of retail is online. It will remain a slow boil. https://www.wsj.com/...
Wall Street Journal
Data shows e-commerce as a percentage share of all US retail has almost returned to pre-pandemic levels; in March e-commerce dropped YoY as in-store sales rose
Wall Street Journal :
2021-12-06
“In some ways Amazon doesn't really want to be a retailer,” said Juozas Kaziukenas. “It doesn't want to do curation or offer human interaction,” two of the essential qualities of retail. Today in The New York Times - why buying books on Amazon is broken. https://www.nytimes.com/...
New York Times
Some Amazon sellers are backdating books to fool Amazon's algorithms into changing where they appear, often allowing the sellers to charge exorbitant prices
David Streitfeld / New York Times :