#183 – Prime Day injuries, Depop repeats history, & Temu telemarketing

by Shopifreaks | Jul 22, 2024 | Recent Newsletters

Hi Shopifreaks!

What'd you buy last week on Prime Day? Were you able to scoop up any incredible deals?

I tend not to take part in shopping events for a few reasons:

I'm rarely in the US (currently in Cuenca, Ecuador)
I barely ever shop (prefer experiences over things)
Half the deals are bogus!

I remember working at Best Buy when I was a senior in high school and having to go around and mark up all the accessories the day before Black Friday so that the store could “mark them down” to their original price for the shopping weekend. Ever since then, I've been weary of the legitimacy of deals during shopping events. Sure some true deals do exist, but a lot of others just appear to be deals.

I enjoyed the TikTok videos this year of consumers who discovered that they paid more for some products on Prime Day than they would have before or after the event!

While many of the deals on Prime Day and other shopping events are bogus — at the end of the day, if you're happy with what you bought, it's a win!

Now let's dive into some e-commerce news…

In this week's edition I cover:

Amazon Prime Day's record-setting sales
The true cost of those Prime Day sales
The consequences of those sales on the UPS Store
Depop taking a move from Mercari's playbook
USPS sharing your data with Meta, Google, Microsoft, Pinterest, and Snap
Meta acquiring a 5% stake in Ray-Ban's parent company
TikTok's partnership with Eventbrite and DistroKid
Cash App exiting the UK
Temu's alleged illegal telemarketing scheme
Squarespace's CMO telling Gen Z to work for free
JPMorgan Chase disallowing BNPL payments with credit cards

All this and more in this week's 183rd Edition of Shopifreaks. Thanks for subscribing and sharing!

Stat of the Week

Amazon “makes up about one-tenth of our profits, but it takes up about 90 percent of the working day,” said Jeremy Walker, a store associate who worked at a UPS Store near Dallas that received between 300 and 600 returns per day. — According to The Washington Post

In 2023, Americans racked up $247B in online returns, according to the National Retail Federation, much of which it collects through its returns partners like The UPS Store, Whole Foods Market, Kohl's, and Staples.

Retail workers told The Washington Post that the increased stress, labor hours, and cost of materials make collecting Amazon returns a bad value proposition, especially during peak periods like Prime Day.

The UPS Store in Texas had to add two extra employees to deal with Amazon returns, and the Staples store in Tallahassee recently allotted eight paid hours per week for Amazon returns.

1. Prime Day sales hit $14B in the US

Amazon Prime Day shoppers in the US spent more than $14B this year during Amazon's 48-hour sales event, up 11% from a year ago, according to Adobe Analytics.

Amazon described this year's Prime Day event as the “the biggest Prime Day shopping event ever, with record sales and more items sold during the two-day event than any previous Prime Day event.”

The company also noted that a record-breaking number of customers signed up for Prime in the three weeks leading up to the event, but it did not provide exact figures, which is typical for Amazon (and why sales estimates always come from third-party analytic companies like Adobe).

Here are some more Prime Day stats from various sources:

Mobile shopping drove 49.2% of sales, reaching $7B, up 18.6% from last year.
Prime Day was huge for electronics, a category which saw sales rise 61% compared to average daily sales in June.
Back to school purchases like backpacks, lunchboxes, stationery, and other school supplies rose 216% compared to June.
Children's apparel sales rose 165%.
Home furnishings saw a doubling of online transactions and a conversion rate up 75%, according to Criteo.
Discounts averaged 22%, up 10% over last year, according to Salesforce.
The number of participating retailers running sales was up 88%, according to Criteo.
Shoppers used BNPL to pay for 7.6% of their purchases, amounting to $1.08B this year, up 16.4% over last year.
Prime Day also reached record spending in the U.K. with £1.3B in sales, up 8.8%.

The results of TikTok Shop's first annual ‘Deals For You Days’ were underwhelming in comparison:

Salesforce found that the event didn’t drive value or higher discounts among retailers.
Discounts were lower during “Deals For You Days” than on Prime Day — 18% versus 22%.
GMV growth was down 6% during the event, whereas it increased 3% during Prime Day.

However there's a consequence to all those record-breaking Prime Day sales. Continue reading on to story #2 below…

2. Prime Day causes a massive number of injuries

All those Amazon Prime Day sales mentioned above — they come at a price. Fast Company reports that Prime Day is the cause of a massive number of injuries for warehouse workers.

Last week the Senate's Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee released the interim results of a yearlong investigation into Amazon's warehouse conditions for workers. According to internal data, Amazon reported “just under” 45 total injuries per 100 workers.

Keep in mind that there are two types of injuries:

Serious injuries that require medical treatment beyond first aid like broken bones, back injuries, and sprains — which Amazon is required to report to OSHA.
Non-serious minor injuries like paper cuts, scrapes, bruises, and diarrhea — which Amazon is not required to report to OSHA.

From that first category of reportable injuries, Amazon reported more than 10 injuries per 100 workers, which is more than double the industry average. (An average that Amazon already lifts, given how averages work.)

From that second category of non-reportable injuries, Amazon reported just under 45 injuries per 100 workers, which is objectively a LOT of injuries.

The caveat to those numbers above is that the HELP Committee argues that Amazon misreported many injuries such as torn rotator cuffs and concussions as “non-reportable” because they failed to refer the workers to outside medical care, even though they should have, and that the actual number of OSHA reported injuries should be significantly higher.

The Senate committee's report says that Amazon's high accident rate is caused by:

Understaffing, particularly during Prime Day and other busy times.
Having too few employees in general, leading to work endangerment.
Amazon only meeting 71.2% of its hiring target.
Requiring employees to move at an unrealistic pace.
Failing to install safety features, such as an automatic stop feature on a new conveyor belt in an effort to get up and running quicker.

Senator Bernie Sanders, chair of the HELP committee, said, “Amazon continues to treat its workers as disposable and with complete contempt for their safety and well-being. That is unacceptable, and that has got to change.”

An Amazon spokesperson said that the Senate's report “ignores our progress and paints a one-sided, false narrative using only a fraction of the information we’ve provided,” and that “since 2019, we’ve made significant progress—reducing our recordable incident rate (which includes anything that requires more than basic first aid) in the U.S. by 28%, and our lost-time incident rate (which only includes more significant injuries that require an employee to miss at least one day of work) by 75%.”

However I don't know if those improvement stats paint the pretty picture Amazon was hoping — their argument essentially being, “Yeah, but it used to be worse!”

So just remember next time you shop on Amazon… you're probably directly contributing to the permanent back damage of at least one warehouse worker!

🔥 Partner News

eStreamly launched the second stage of their partnership with Visa and their Unified Checkout solution, providing a seamless and consistent checkout experience for customers across your online store and shoppable videos. In video checkout with Unified Checkout, powered by Visa's payment technology, customers can complete their purchases using Visa's credit card and digital payment interface while still watching videos or livestreams from your website, social media, e-mails, and SMS.

3. Depop takes a move from Mercari's playbook

Depop, a peer-to-peer fashion-focused social commerce platform owned by Etsy, is eliminating seller fees for users in the US and shifting them to buyers, who will now pay up to 5% of the item purchase price plus a fixed amount of up to $1.00.

Depop wrote in a press release:

“The move is designed to empower Depop’s growing community to earn more from their wardrobes, offer improved value and choice for buyers, and encourage a wider audience to try selling, and join the secondhand revolution.”

Previously sellers paid a 10% fee on every sale. Now they will pay a 3.3% + 45 cent payment processing fee (seems high) on the total amount including shipping and tax.

Buyers will see the 5% + up to $1 fee at checkout, and will only pay the fixed amount once per transaction if multiple items from one seller are purchased together.

Kruti Patel Goyal, Depop CEO, said:

“This change will give sellers more cash in their pocket from each sale, empowering our existing community – as well as those who may be new to resale – to list more, sell more and earn more while contributing to a more circular fashion system.”

Will it though? Will the new buyer fees give sellers more cash in their pocket from each sell? Or could the buyer fee potentially dissuade shoppers from continuing with checkout once they see the fees — ultimately hurting conversions and inevitably putting less cash in sellers' pockets?

There's an unspoken rule in e-commerce: “Hide your fees from buyers.”

This is why traditionally e-commerce sellers have always absorbed fees like platform transaction costs, payment processing fees, and even shipping into their product costs. The end result is that the buyer sees the exact amount they'll be spending on a product while shopping, versus having additional fees reveal themselves at checkout.

The only company I've ever seen successfully charge buyers a platform fee on an international scale has been Airbnb, but even they eventually started giving the option to display the full out-of-pocket cost to buyers browsing the site after pushback from users.

The reality is that buyers don't want to be charged additional fees to patronize a marketplace, and turning the traditional model upside down isn't a good move for a marketplace.

Just ask Mercari US, who pulled a similar move back in April this year. The result of the change in fee structure was that Mercari turned off buyers and sellers alike. Do folks from Depop not read this newsletter?!

It was reported by Nikkei two days ago that Mercari has laid off nearly half of its employees from its US subsidiary as it struggles with falling sales and competition from low-price Chinese rivals like Temu — and nothing to do with their fee structure change earlier this year, right Mercari?

I don't imagine this will bode well for Depop. What are your thoughts? Hit reply and let me know.

4. USPS shared your data with tech giants

The U.S. Postal Service was sharing the addresses and other personal information of its online customers with Meta, Google, Microsoft, Pinterest, and Snap, according to research by TechCrunch.

Testing showed that tracking pixels used across its website were scraping the customer’s address from the Informed Delivery landing page after customers logged in, and then sending it to the tech companies. Informed Delivery, is a service that allows customers to see photos of their incoming mail before it arrives.

The pixels also collected other data, such as information about the user’s computer type and browser, their live location, and tracking numbers entered into the USPS website.

It's not clear how many individuals had their information collected or for how long, however, Informed Delivery boasts more than 62M users as of March 2024, so most likely a large portion of those customers.

A USPS spokesperson said:

“The Postal Service does not sell or provide any personal information that is collected from this analytics platform to any third party, and we were unaware of any configuration of the platform that collected personal information from the URL and that shared it without our knowledge with social media. We have taken immediate action to remediate this issue.” — but they didn't say what that action was.

A Facebook spokesperson said:

“We’ve been clear in our policies that advertisers should not send sensitive information about people through our Business Tools. Doing so is against our policies, and we educate advertisers on properly setting up Business Tools to prevent this from occurring. Our system is designed to filter out potentially sensitive data it is able to detect.” — but they didn't say what type of “sensitive data” was filtered out and what wasn't.

The world is quickly approaching a chapter where Internet users are going to have to choose between A) consenting to have their personal data collected and analyzed by major tech companies, and B) forfeiting the benefits that come along with that type of data collection. Read my post on LinkedIn for more on what's ahead in our lifetimes.

5. Meta to purchase a 5% stake in EssilorLuxottica

Meta is in talks to purchase a 5% stake in EssilorLuxottica, the maker of Ray-Ban and about 40+ other eyewear brands and owner of LensCrafters, Sunglass Hut, Pearle Vision, EyeMed, and other eyewear retailers and medical providers, in a deal that could be worth about $4.73B based on the company's latest market value of $94.6B.

The deal would give Meta further control over the roadmap for its smart glasses, just in time for its third-generation of glasses, which are expected to be ready by the 2025 holiday season.

Meta's first Ray-Ban smart glasses, Ray-Ban Stories, were launched in September 2021 — I bought a pair! I still wear them daily, although I don't think I've charged them up in over a year. While I don't use the tech anymore, they're still great sunglasses.

As for the partnership: Facebook came up with the concept, but the Luxottica team are the ones who re-engineered the components of the glasses to fit the technology, including its two speakers, three microphones, Snapdragon processor, touchpad, and battery.

Facebook got the benefit of Luxottica's expertise in eyewear, along with the Ray-Ban name recognition — unlike Snap's Spectacle glasses which are produced exclusively under the Snap brand.

The deal with EssilorLuxottica would be a match made in heaven, given that Meta has plans to continue developing further versions of its smart glasses with the company. They might as well own a piece!

So far the partnership, as well as sales of the second generation of smart glasses, are going well. EssilorLuxottica CEO Francesco Milleri said that the new generation of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, launched last October, have sold more in a few months than the old ones did in two years.

6. TikTok partners with Eventbrite and DistroKid

TikTok partnered with Eventbrite, integrating the company's event promotion and ticket sales into its video platform. The collaboration allows users to include Eventbrite links into their videos, which lead to information about the event and the ability to purchase tickets directly within the app.

TikTok says the alliance lets any TikTok user become an event creator by hosting and promoting their event directly through their videos where their audience is already engaged.

For example, a #BookTok creator can organize a book club meeting, a #FoodTok creator can host a cooking class, or a #NewMusic creator can book tickets to a local concert.

Speaking of musicians, TikTok also partnered with DistroKid, a digital music distribution service that musicians use to put music into online stores and streaming services, to make it easier for independent musicians to build a presence in the app.

Artists using DistroKid will be able to quickly create TikTok profiles that include artist-specific features like a Music Tab, New Releases, By Artist, Behind the Song, Fan Spotlight, Ticketing, and more.

Social Media Today wrote:

TikTok’s influence over music trends is so significant that publishers are now changing the names of artists’ tracks to align with TikTok trends, while it’s also re-ignited the careers of older musicians via the same.

As such, it makes sense for TikTok to double down on this connection, as a means to drive more usage. The partnership with DistroKid will provide a means for lesser-known artists to tap into the same trends, and use TikTok’s massive reach to connect to a wider audience.

7. Cash App exits the UK on Sep 15th

Cash App, the mobile payment app owned by Block, is exiting the UK market, with plans to close down the app on September 15th.

The UK was the first international market to receive the peer-to-peer payments app outside of the US when it was introduced in 2018, but now Block says that it's revising its approach to focus on growing within the US instead of continuing to expand into new markets.

The company wrote in a statement, “We do not make decisions like this lightly, as we know they impact our customers, our partners, and our team members who have helped us build to where we are today.”

In January, Block announced that its Cash App business would be letting go of staff across its global, marketing and commerce teams, and then in February, informed shareholders that it would be revising its approach to focus on “growing within the US, not expanding into new markets.”

It's strange though to call the UK a “new market,” given that the company launched in the region 6 years ago, while only having launched in the US in 2013. Cash App has been part of UK for more than half its existence. I wouldn't necessarily call that new.

However it seems that Block may be moving away from the EU altogether, perhaps due to increasing regulation in the region. Last August, Block shuttered some of its European business operations in favor of “areas that have a higher potential return on investment,” including its peer-to-peer payment app Verse and its BNPL platform Clearpay.

8. Temu is an illegal telemarketer now?

A new class action lawsuit against Temu alleges that the company violates the United States' do-not-call registry status when sharing promotions.

Phyllis King, a Delaware resident, filed the lawsuit on July 3rd, claiming that despite her status on the federal do-not-call registry, Temu texted her directly four times in April.

The complaint read, “The text messages marketed ‘deals,' such as items on sale for $1.99 or $1, and asked [King] to access links to [Temu's] website.”

King claims she did not provide Temu with consent to contact her, nor did she provide the company with her phone number. She also added that she lacks interest in Temu’s products — which doesn't at all seem relevant to the case at hand, but good to know I guess, Phyllis.

King argues that herself and others receiving texts or calls from Temu means that “their privacy has been violated and they were subjected to annoying and harassing calls that constitute a nuisance,” and that the communication “occupied [King’s] and class members’ telephone lines, used up their time and prevented them from receiving legitimate communications.”

Oh no, that's awful! I hope she's alright!

King is seeking both monetary damages and injunctive relief, which would prevent Temu from future telemarketing communications with those on the do-not-call registry. The lawsuit is seeking $2,000 in damages for each call or text Temu allegedly made in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

A Temu spokesperson said in an e-mail to Sourcing Journal, “Temu takes consumer protection seriously. We believe the lawsuit is without merit and intend to defend our interests vigorously.”

I'm a strong advocate of companies respecting FTC regulation and telemarketing rules — however something seems fishy about this lawsuit. Since when does Temu or any other major e-commerce platform cold call or message non-customers? What is this, like 1980, and Temu's running a boiler room call center to peddle their wares?

My guess is that one of three things were happening:

King signed up for Temu at one point and didn't realize that buried somewhere in the Terms of Service, she was consenting to Temu sending marketing messages (which she probably could've just opted-out of with a simple text). Perhaps it could've been more transparent, but I don't imagine any laws were broken.
A Temu affiliate is cold marketing non-customers with bought lists and representing themselves as Temu, likely in violation of Temu's Affiliate TOS.
It's a phishing scam using Temu deals as a way to lure unsuspecting victims into clicking links and sharing personal details, and has nothing to do with Temu.

Those are my guesses, but I may be completely wrong. I'll be curious to see the results of this lawsuit, if they are ever publicly revealed.

9. Other e-commerce news of interest

94% of retail executives plan to increase their investments into e-commerce over the next 6-12 months, according to a survey from Pattern. The survey revealed execs plan to increase their investments by an average of 16%, with 25% of brand leaders reporting an increase of 31-98%. Only 6% indicated that they planned to decrease their overall e-commerce investment during the same period.

Squarespace CMO Kinjil Mathur is taking heat for saying that Gen Zers need to ditch their list of demands for prospective employers and start hustling, including being “willing to do whatever it takes” and “willing to work for free.” Various online communities and subreddits were quick to point out that the executive's privileged background allowed her to focus on experience over a paycheck in her early working years, which is a luxury that isn't available to the working class or their college-aged children.

Beyond, Inc, owner of Overstock.com, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Zulily, announced Overstock.com's grand reopening featuring a new website look and feel and an inventory lineup that includes closeouts, liquidation, factory direct, and reverse logistics merchandise. Marcus Lemonis, the company's executive chairman, outlined his plans to establish partnerships and joint ventures with manufacturers, retailers, distributors, and lenders to create product and deal flow. Sounds like Overstock wants to become the Temu of USA, before Temu becomes the Temu of USA.

JPMorgan Chase is blocking consumers from using credit cards to pay for BNPL loans from third parties like Klarna, Affirm, and Afterpay, effective October 10th. Richard Crone, a payments consultant, justified the move by noting that, “You can't pay for a credit card with a credit card.” But then again, Richard, you can oftentimes do a 12-month interest-free balance transfer from one credit card to another, so there's that. It's predicted that other banks are expected to follow suit, given that many, like JPMorgan Chase, are launching their own card-linked BNPL services.

Amazon is getting more serious about its return-to-office mandate and hosting one-on-one chats with employees who haven't spent enough time in the office. Amazon spokesperson Rob Munoz told Fortune in an emailed statement, “Now that it’s been more than a year, we’re starting to speak directly with employees who haven’t regularly been spending meaningful amounts of time in the office to ensure they understand the importance of spending quality time with their colleagues.” CEO Andy Jassy warned RTO-defying workers last summer, “If you can't disagree and commit, it's probably not going to work out for you at Amazon.”

Meta is rolling out Reels overlay ads on Instagram, which are banners that appear on screen with a large CTA prompt as either single image or carousel promotions. The new Reels overlay ads are being rolled out to advertisers over time, so while you might not have them yet, they are coming.

Dangerous levels of toxic heavy metals were found in items ordered from Temu by Channel 4 reporter Ellie Flynn. Though no legislation currently regulates the amount of antimony in clothing, the heavy metal can have very bad effects on the body, particularly with the nervous system. Temu's supplier code of conduct requires that sellers “never bring products or packaging to market that may cause harm to Temu's customers.” Temu confirmed Channel 4's findings, permanently removed the items in question, and said that it's working with the merchants involved.

Laybuy, a New Zealand-based BNPL firm, has gone into administration after becoming insolvent. A notice on the website reads, “Payment services are currently suspended across all regions… During this time, all existing orders will be processed as normal.” Laybuy had disabled its website in mid-June, which led to suspicion that the company would be ceasing operations, and now the news of its collapse has been confirmed.

Wix has been ordered to pay €35k in compensation to the former Irish employee who was fired after she labeled Israel a “terrorist state” on social media. Wix accepted that it had unfairly dismissed customer care team lead Courtney Carey in Oct 2023 for gross misconduct over online comments she had made about her concerns over the situation in Palestine. Either that, or the company simply decided that it was cheaper to pay the €35k than continue battling Carey in court.

ByteDance qualifies as a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act, according to the General Court of the EU, which subjects the company to stricter regulations aimed at ensuring fair competition and user rights. The Commission assigned ByteDance gatekeeper status in Sep 2023, which ByteDance challenged by arguing that their effect on the European internal market was limited, but the General Court ultimately ruled that the company's significant market influence and substantial user base position it as a critical player in the digital market.

E-commerce sales were up 8% YoY in June, driven by strong performance in the grocery and general merchandise categories, according to the latest Signifyd E-commerce Pulse data. According to Signifyd, a decline in prices likely contributed to increased sales in general merchandise, which was up 30% YoY last month.

Teenagers are accessing TikTok Shop via a loophole in the platform, despite the platform restricting shopping to users who are 18 and older. The issue occurs when a teen originally lies about their age when signing up for TIkTok, but then is later required by a parent to pair the account with theirs using TikTok's built-in parental controls. Despite the pairing process, the teen still has access to the Shop feature. Wait a minute, are you telling me that teenagers lie about their age on TikTok? Color me surprised!

H Mart, an Asian supermarket chain that serves the US, launched a new online store and expanded its delivery offering in partnership with Uber Eats. The company is leveraging the VTEX platform for e-commrce, which allows customers to order both shelf-stable and fresh products in the same cart, while accessing store inventory to provide real-time available info on products. VTEX also includes a pick and pack app, which the company uses to enable in-store picking of products for online orders.

The Nigerian government is planning to regulate e-commerce platforms and introduce cyber insurance for consumers, as part of its new National Digital Economy and E-Governance Bill currently under review. The bill would require e-commerce platforms to provide clear and accurate information about sellers, goods, services, and transaction terms including payment methods, returns, and refund policies, as well as create a legal framework to accelerate Nigeria's digital economy.

In other Nigerian news, the government fined Meta $220M for WhatsApp violating the country's data and privacy laws. The violations include appropriating personal data without consent, abuse of dominant market position by forcing “unscrupulous, exploitative and non-compliant privacy policies,” and sharing personal data without consent. Meta says it disagrees with the decision and the fine and will appeal.

Kevin Scott, chief technology officer at Microsoft, is joining Shopify's board. Shopify wrote in their announcement, “Kevin’s no stranger to the art of innovation. He’s built an engineering culture at Microsoft focused on making AI more accessible, and developing tools that help people tackle previously unsolvable problems. An incredible asset for Shopify and our merchants.”

ReBound, a global returns management specialist, teamed up with Loop, a returns technology platform, to streamline retailers' returns processes by integrating advanced logistics and returns management with an easy to use technology platform. Loop integrates with Shopify and currently represents 15% of the total GMV sold on the platform, while ReBound handles more than 100M return transactions annually for global brands. Last month I reported that Loop made Happy Returns its preferred returns portal partner for Shopify brands, as well as their recommended partner for in-person box-free, label-free returns.

Macy's board of directors voted unanimously to end discussions with Arkhouse Management and Brigade Capital Management, who were attempting to acquire the company, and instead pursue its own turnaround strategy to remake the department store chain by closing underperforming stores and investing in its luxury Bloomingdale's and Bluemercury chains. The investors planned to take Macy’s private and subsequently spin off its real estate assets or separate its online operations from brick-and-mortar stores.

Amazon restocked and sold a used poop-stained washable swim diaper that had gotten returned to an FBA brand named Beau & Belle Little, resulting in a 1-star review that sent the company into a fast downward spiral over the next four years as a result of Amazon's algorithm amplifying the review and accompanying photo. Even though Amazon's policy is to remove reviews relating to packaging, shipping problems, product condition, or damage, the brand's e-mails and requests to remove the review went unanswered for four years. Amazon finally removed the review after Bloomberg ran a story on it last week, but at this point, the once successful brand has collapsed, and the owners are having to work outside jobs to make ends meet.

Meta says it won't be launching its upcoming multimodal AI model that's capable of handling video, audio, images, and text in the European Union, citing regulatory concerns. The decision follows the passing of the EU's new AI Act, which requires AI companies to comply with copyright, transparency, and predictive policing policies by Aug 2026, and will prevent EU companies from using the model, despite it being released under an open license.

Meta also said it would be pausing the use of its gen-AI tools in Brazil due to opposition from the country's government over its privacy policy on personal data and AI. Meta was banned from training its AI models on Brazilians' personal data by the country's National Data Protection Authority earlier this month.

And speaking of Meta cutting back, the company is planning to cut the budget for its Reality Labs hardware division, which makes its VR headsets, by about 20% between now and 2026, in a move meant to put the division's out of control spending under lock. Bank of America estimated that Meta could save around $3B, which could be reallocated to its AI efforts — just not in the EU or Brazil apparently.

TikTok Shop surpassed Tokopedia to become the second-largest e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia, according to a Momentum Works report. Shopee stills maintains its dominant position with a GMV of $55.1B, owning 48% of SEA's market share. However while Shopee, Lazada, and Tokopedia all reduced their workforces during the past two years, TikTok Shop has expanded its workforce to over 8,000 employees since Dec 2021.

Flipkart is trialing a quick-commerce service called Flipkart Minutes among its employees in Bengaluru, with plans to offer it to a wider base of consumers in the next few weeks. The service seeks to instantly deliver electronics, groceries, and other products, competing in India with Blinkin, Swiggy Instamart, and Zepto, which all fulfill orders in less than 30 minutes.

Sezzle added Spanish language capability to its BNPL app and checkout, as a means to appeal to the 40M Americans who speak Spanish. Last week I reported that Ikea added Spanish to its online shopping experience and phone support. Where have these companies been? Are they just now discovering that people speak Spanish in the US?

10. Seed rounds, IPOs, & acquisitions

Lineage, a cold storage real estate investment trust backed by private equity firm Bay Grove Capital, is seeking to raise $3.85B in an upcoming IPO. The company will be offering 47M shares for between $70 and $82 each, according to a person familiar with the matter, which could give the company a market value of $19.2B. Lineage works with food and beverage companies for the storage, handling, and movement of frozen and perishable foods around the world via its 482 warehouses spanning 3 billion cubic feet of capacity.

Shaped, a developer-first platform that that makes it easier for businesses to combine their data from a variety of sources with large language models and other recommendation systems to offer personalized user experiences, raised $8M in a Series A round led by Madrona Ventures. The company's focus over the next year will be on expanding more deeply into search and becoming a full discovery platform.

The Carwow Group, a London-based automobile conglomerate that operates Carwow online marketplace, Auto Express, Evo, Driving Electric, and Carbuyer, raised $52M in a round led by Bessemer Venture Partners. Carwow's Sell My Car service offers sellers an instant valuation and then advertises their car to over 5,000 dealers via an online auction. The funds will be used to enhance its payment processes, expand its product and engineering teams, and accelerate growth in the UK, Germany, and Spain.

Qoo10, a Singapore-based e-commerce platform that serves Southeast Asia, is pushing for a merger of its major e-commerce subsidiaries including TMON, Wemakeprice, and Qoo10, in a strategic move to streamline operations and address financial inefficiencies. The merger plan aims to integrate the three subsidiaries, which have fallen into a state of capital erosion over the past few years, as a means to consolidate and push forward, likely under the Wemakeprice brand.

Klarna is preparing for an IPO in the US in the first half of next year, according to sources cited by the Financial Times. Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs are expected to lead the process, with the potential for additional banks to join. Klarna's valuation dropped to $6.7B in 2022 from $46B in 2021, but the company's executives believe that the IPO market will recover by 2025, which influenced their decision to pursue a listing.

Huboo, a U.K.-based e-commerce fulfillment platform, raised £60M in a Series B round led by Mubadala Capital, adding to the £14M Series A round it raised last year. The company, which operates four fulfillment centers in the UK and one site in the Netherlands, will use the funds to help fuel its expansion into continental Europe