Hi Shopifreaks
Big news this week — I turned 40!
You'd never guess I'm 40 years old, given that I'm in the best shape of my life and not a wrinkle or gray hair in sight. 😂
My wife actually tricked me this year (which she's never been able to do).
A couple weeks ago she said, “What do you think about having a romantic birthday with just the two of us this year? Since we haven't been able to spend as much time together recently.” (Comes with the territory of having a baby.)
I said, “That sounds great! I couldn't think of a better way to spend my birthday.”
But it was all a big decoy! She actually had a big surprise party planned with friends, family, and all my favorite foods. She finally got me!
I shared a couple photos on LinkedIn and Facebook. Feel free to connect with me on either platform (although I don't talk about e-commerce much on Facebook).
If I had to sum up how I feel at 40 years old – it's grateful. I'm blessed with a wonderful family, my businesses are thriving, and I'm able to live and work remotely which has always been my dream. Although I may not be in the “best shape of my life” like I like to joke — I'm still in great health (and will continue to work at that).
So a big thank you to everyone in my life — including you — for supporting my dreams and my businesses. Thank you very much for your patronage of this newsletter in particular.
Last week also turned out to be a huge week in the world of e-commerce!
A US court made a long-awaited decision on the TikTok divest-or-ban case, Jeff Bezos returned to Amazon, and the record-setting sales results of Black Friday / Cyber Monday arrived. Let's dive in…
In this week's edition I cover:
- How much time developers spend coding
- The TikTok ban-or-divest law holds up in court
- Jeff Bezos returns to Amazon
- Black Friday / Cyber Monday global sales figures
- Amazon sued for discrimination
- The EU cracks down on Temu and Shein
- Roblox-Shopify integration is now in closed beta
- BNPL use at an all-time high
- Global ad revenue to top $1 trillion
- Bing is testing an e-commerce shopping card in results
- Alibaba released a new AI design tool
- PublicSquare named Donald J. Trump, Jr. to its board
All this and more in this week's 203rd Edition of Shopifreaks. Thanks for subscribing and sharing!
PS: Last call on submitting your 2025 E-commerce Predictions! Please hit reply to this e-mail and send them my way if you'd like them included in this year's report. (Or simply send me the link if you've already published your predictions elsewhere.)
Stat of the Week
According to Amazon Web Services: “Today, developers report they spend an average of just one hour per day coding. They spend most of their time on tedious, undifferentiated tasks such as learning codebases, writing and reviewing documentation, testing, managing deployments, troubleshooting issues or finding and fixing vulnerabilities.”
I can definitely relate to that one! Sometimes writing the actual code is the easy / quick part. It's like that old story about the electrician who charged $2,000 for a minute of his time. With coding, it's all the work that goes into knowing what to write for that hour.
1. TikTok's ban holds up in court, but the war goes on
TikTok Shop hit $100M in sales on Black Friday this year. Americans viewed over 30,000 TikTok shopping livestreams that day, with one creator picking up $2M in sales from a single session. Throughout the entire BFCM weekend, the platform saw a 165% increase in shoppers year over year, with a third of all purchases made going to small and medium-sized businesses.
Fast Company reports that Americans are turning to TikTok's creator rewards program to crowdfund medical bills, using TikTok payouts of $1 per 1,000 views to raise money for treatment costs.
TikTok is aware of the impact its platform is having on crowdfunding, and actually just launched an updated Donation feature to make it easier for users to raise donations for organizations directly within its app.
However none of that might matter soon…
A three-judge panel in Washington, D.C. unanimously upheld the new US law last week that will require TikTok to divest to an American owned company or face a ban, ruling that the law did not violate free speech protections under the First Amendment. The decision leaves the Supreme Court as TikTok's last hope for stopping the law from taking effect.
Eric Goldman of Technology & Marketing Law Blog wrote:
“The decision will be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, with uncertain prospects, so this is probably not the final word on the matter–or possibly even an important one.”
“Still, it’s a troubling ruling as a standalone microcosm of how judges’ attitudes towards censorship and free speech are flexible. And my students still are in denial that TikTok would actually be banned…despite the multi-year efforts of two presidents and Congress to do exactly that, plus now the endorsement of a unanimous DC Circuit appellate panel. Millions of Americans are in for quite a shock if the ban sticks.”
Goldman noted that the judges acknowledged that the divest-or-ban requirement is censorship, but upheld the law anyway, and that the question becomes whether the censorship can be excused due to concerns that the Chinese government might exert control over the American population through its algorithm.
However the US Government acknowledged through the court proceedings that it “lacks specific intelligence that shows the PRC has in the past or is now coercing TikTok into manipulating content from the United States.”
So now we just ban apps for NOT breaking any laws?
Goldman really hit the nail on the head with this statement: “if we are worried about Chinese authoritarianism, the correct response isn’t to expand our own authoritarianism. The solution is to embrace our core values more dearly.”
Donald Trump to the rescue?
TikTok will seek a Supreme Court injunction to hold off the current January deadline, pushing the matter into Trump's administration — but will that matter?
Dave Lee of Bloomberg wrote, “The wild card is Trump himself, whose views on TikTok have been characteristically inconsistent. His current state of mind over a ban is unclear. I know this much: taking him at his most recent word would be foolish.”
In August 2020, Trump signed an executive order forcing TikTok's divestiture within 45 days, but by 2024, Trump had done a complete 180 and said he would never ban the app.
Trump told CNBC: “There’s a lot of good and there’s a lot of bad with TikTok, but the thing I don’t like is that without TikTok, you’re going to make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people, along with a lot of the media.”
However flash forward post-election and Trump is having Thanksgiving dinner with Mark Zuckerberg, while Elon Musk was his campaign's biggest donor — both who would benefit immensely from a TikTok ban.
So the reality is, we have no idea what Trump will do or not do. Plus, even if he truly is ‘anti-TikTok ban', it's not like he can just wave a magic wand and reverse a Supreme Court decision if they were to uphold the law as well.
What's next?
Today (Dec 9th), ByteDance and TikTok filed an emergency motion with the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, requesting a temporary halt to the law's enforcement pending Supreme Court review. They argued that without this stay, the law would “shut down TikTok—one of the nation's most popular speech platforms—for its more than 170 million domestic monthly users on the eve of a presidential inauguration.”
The timeline for the Supreme Court to decide whether to hear the case remains uncertain. If the Court agrees to take up the case, it could issue a stay on the law's enforcement until a final decision is made. However, if the Court declines to hear the case or does not issue a stay, the January 19, 2025, deadline would remain in effect, potentially leading to a US ban on TikTok if ByteDance does not divest its ownership.
Project Liberty, founded by billionaire Frank McCourt, has pulled together participants for a consortium of investors interested in pursuing a “peoples bid” for TikTok, but they aren't the only ones itching to buy TikTok. Granted, TikTok said it would never sell — which would normally drive up the price if they company didn't have its back against a legal brick wall.
What are your thoughts on whether TikTok should be forced to divest or face a ban? Hit reply and let me know.
2. Jeff Bezos is back at Amazon to focus on AI
After stepping down as CEO three years ago, Jeff Bezos has re-emerged at Amazon, focusing 95% of his time working on the company's AI initiatives.
Speaking at the DealBook Summit on Wednesday, Bezos said, “My heart is in Amazon, my curiosity is in Amazon, and my fears are there, and my love is there.”
One of the cornerstone projects under Bezos’s watch involves building a cutting-edge supercomputer in partnership with Anthropic, which is expected to power a multimodal AI model capable of analyzing images, video, and text, further enhancing Amazon’s AI capabilities.
Amazon aims to make itself a de facto element of AI, much like it has done with e-commerce, and believes that offering a selection of AI models through a single API to business customers will be one of the keys to succeeding at that mission.
Last year the company introduced a service called Amazon Bedrock that lets business customers choose from a selection of AI models to train for their own needs and to serve as a foundation for their own gen AI applications, and last week, the company double downed on that strategy by announcing Bedrock Marketplace, which offers a total of 100 AI models.
Amazon wrote in a blog post, “Finding and evaluating these models can be challenging and costly. You need to discover them across different services, build abstractions to use them in your applications, and create complex security and governance layers. Amazon Bedrock Marketplace addresses these challenges by providing a single interface to access both specialized and general-purpose [foundation models].”
Bezos, who has continued to serve as Amazon’s executive chairman since stepping down as CEO, said, “I’ll always be there to help, and right now, I’m putting a lot of time into it. It’s super interesting, so why not?”
Bezos also told the Dealbook Summit audience that he's not worried about Donald Trump's second term, saying he's “actually very optimistic this time around.”
3. How did we do on Black Friday / Cyber Monday?
The reports are in — this year's BFCM weekend sales set records around the globe! Anecdotally, my clients and I also set personal bests this year.
Just how big of a weekend was it? I've rounded up reports to find out.
- Cyber Monday was officially the biggest online-shopping day ever, according to fresh data from Adobe and Salesforce. US shoppers spent $13.3B (per Adobe) or $12.8B (per Salesforce) on Monday alone.
- Approximately 197M Americans shopped during the Thanksgiving weekend, surpassing the National Retail Federation's anticipated 183.4M shoppers, but was still lower than the 200M shoppers in 2023.
- Consumers on average spent $235, or $8 more than 2023, with top gift purchases being apparel and accessories, followed by toys and personal care.
- US e-commerce sales surged 14.6% during Black Friday, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse, while in-store sales edged up 0.7% from last year.
- Adobe expects total US holiday sales this year to top $24B, up 8.4% from last year. Salesforce's forecasts are closer to 8% growth for the period.
- Shopify merchants hit a record $11.5B in sales over the BFCM weekend—up 24% from last year. From early Friday in New Zealand to late Monday in California, 76+ million customers around the world bought from brands powered by Shopify.
- More than 67,000 merchants had their highest-selling day ever on Shopify.
- Average Shopify cart price was $108.56.
- Walmart made four times as many transactions between Black Friday and Cyber Monday on Walmart.com, resulting in its highest single sales day ever.
- Amazon said that the 12-day shopping period ending on Cyber Monday resulted in record sales compared to the same period in prior years, but it's always ambiguous about its actual sales numbers.
- Temu generated $53.3M in sales on Black Friday and $55.1M on Cyber Monday, which were both records.
- Shein also hit new highs, with sales of $34.2M on Black Friday and $38.9M on Cyber Monday.
- As mentioned in story #1, TikTok Shop hit $100M in sales on Black Friday this year, with Americans viewing over 30,000 TikTok shopping livestreams that day. Throughout the entire BFCM weekend, the platform saw a 165% increase in shoppers year over year, with a third of all purchases made going to small and medium-sized businesses.
How was your BFCM weekend sales? Hit reply and let me know.
4. Amazon sued for excluding predominantly Black zip codes
Washington, D.C.'s Attorney General Brian Schwalb is suing Amazon for allegedly excluding certain predominantly Black zip codes from speedy Prime delivery. According to the lawsuit, Amazon relied on UPS and USPS carriers to make deliveries to these neighborhoods, which resulted in longer delivery times.
Schwalb claims that beginning in 2022, Amazon stopped using its in-house delivery systems for Ward 7 (83% Black) and Ward 8 (82% Black), while still charging those customers the same amount for a Prime subscription — even though only 24% of packages to these Wards were delivered within two days. Schwalb also alleges that Amazon didn't notify any of these customers about the changes.
The lawsuit says Amazon has nearly 50,000 Prime members who live in the two areas, who have collectively ordered more than 4.5M packages in the past four years and are more likely to rely on Amazon since they have fewer services and retail stores nearby.
Schwalb said in a statement, “Amazon is charging tens of thousands of hard-working Ward 7 and 8 residents for an expedited delivery service it promises but does not provide. While Amazon has every right to make operational changes, it cannot covertly decide that a dollar in one ZIP code is worth less than a dollar in another.”
Amazon responded with the following statement:
“The claims made by the Attorney General, that our business practices are somehow discriminatory or deceptive, are categorically false. We want to be able to deliver as fast as we possibly can to every zip code across the country, however, at the same time we must put the safety of delivery drivers first. In the zip codes in question, there have been specific and targeted acts against drivers delivering Amazon packages. We made the deliberate choice to adjust our operations, including delivery routes and times, for the sole reason of protecting the safety of drivers. And we’re always transparent with customers during the shopping journey and checkout process about when, exactly, they can expect their orders to arrive. What we’d like to do, and have offered, is to work together with the Attorney General and their office in an effort to reduce crime and improve safety in these areas. Nevertheless, we will proceed in the process and demonstrate that providing fast and accurate delivery times and prioritizing the safety of customers and delivery partners are not mutually exclusive.”
This isn't the first time Amazon has been called out for excluding majority Black neighborhoods from fast Prime delivery. A 2016 report in Bloomberg indicated that the practice was common in several metropolitan areas. Amazon has since followed up by expanding its same-day delivery to many of the neighborhoods mentioned in the report.
I've got to agree with Amazon about one thing — this doesn't sound like discrimination against predominantly Black neighborhoods. This sounds like discrimination against predominantly dangerous neighborhoods. Would Amazon have taken a similar course of action if the neighborhoods were predominantly White or Latino? Likely, so. The company is under no obligation to put their drivers in danger, regardless of neighborhood demographics.
However I've got to agree with Brian Schwalb about one thing — Amazon should have informed its customers. Advertising two-day or faster delivery times and then only delivering on that promise 24% of the time is blatant false advertisement, and Amazon should settle up on the matter. From there it can come up with more transparent practices regarding communicating delivery times to high danger areas in which they choose to not operate their delivery vehicles, and it'll be up to the residents to decide whether they'd like to purchase Amazon Prime memberships given the extended delivery times.
The issue of false advertising two-day delivery goes beyond dangerous neighborhoods. There are many rural areas as well in which Amazon relies on last-mile delivery partners, which results in packages not arriving within two days to Prime members. If customers were able to view statistics about average delivery times for their zip code prior to subscribing to Prime, then this whole thing would be a non-issue in my opinion.
What are your thoughts on the matter? Is this a discrimination issue or a transparency problem? Hit reply and let me know.
5. EU to crack down on Temu and Shein with new laws
The European Union is preparing stricter measures to address the surge of low-cost packages entering the region from Chinese e-commerce platforms like Temu and Shein.
With nearly 4B low-value parcels expected in 2024—triple the number in 2022—the influx is overwhelming customs checks, allowing the entry of dangerous goods, such as toxic toys, and counterfeit products. Most packages shipped from China to the EU fall under the region's €150 customs duty threshold and bypass scrutiny.
The EU is proposing the following measures:
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Revenue Tax and Handling Fees – a new tax on on e-commerce platform revenue and an administrative fee per package.
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Removal of Tax Exemptions – potentially eliminating the €150 customs duty exemption.
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Stricter Enforcement – to reduce the flow of unsafe products like toys and cosmetics.
Would all that even be possible?
Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport and Rotterdam port handle a combined 3.5M packages a day, which equates to 40 packages per second. An EU diplomat told FT, “There is no way you can check it all.”
A tax on the revenue of e-commerce platforms, which would be applied to both EU and foreign businesses, would require approval from the bloc’s 27 member states, and would also impact European businesses and consumers.
EuroCommerce, which represents EU retailers, noted that a handling fee would be difficult to justify under World Trade Organization rules that limited the amount of fees and charges for customs processing to the approximate cost of the service rendered.
The organization told FT, “For now we urge the European Commission and member states to step up enforcement at national and EU level, and break down silos between different enforcement domains.”
6. The Roblox-Shopify integration is now in closed beta
In September, I reported (story #1) that Shopify and Roblox teamed up to pilot Shopify's checkout within Roblox's virtual worlds, marking the first platform commerce partnership for Roblox. Through the integration, brands on Shopify can sell physical items to customers using real currency without ever leaving the Roblox platform.
For example, a Roblox player can interact with a t-shirt display on an in-game mannequin and then purchase the real life version of the shirt along with a digital replica for their character using Shopify checkout. After purchasing, the customer receives an order confirmation e-mail from the Shopify store, which takes over the sale. The customer then receives a virtual version of the item immediately, and the real / physical item is sent in the mail.
At the time, the integration with Shopify was in a pilot phase, with a broader rollout planned for 2025.
As of last week, the platform has entered a closed beta test, allowing a select group of developers to gain access to the integration tools, including the creators of the Roblox experiences “Catalog Avatar Creator,” “Tower Heroes,” and “Creatures of Sonaria,” with more experiences expected to launch their stores over the next few weeks.
Digiday reports that some of the store operators are already reporting a significant boost in sales as a result.
Evan Zirschky, Lootbloc's Director of Partnerships, said, “We’ve actually been very surprised by how much merch we’re selling now, especially compared to what we were selling just a week ago. We actually sold our first plushie with them back in July, and we’ve had products like hats and embroidered shirts on our website since then. But now that it’s actually in-game, we are selling tens or hundreds of multiples more than we were before.”
Louqman Parampath, Roblox's VP of Product, Ads and Commerce, said, “We are seeing some early positive signals from these tests showing how commerce can enable creators and brands to tap into existing user interests and build deeper connections with their audiences. While creators are still experimenting with merchandising and placement of offerings within their experiences, the implementations so far have felt additive and easy for them to leverage as an extension of their creation process. This is encouraging as we work towards offering self-serve tools to our broader community in 2025.”
7. BNPL use is blowing up!
While BFCM weekend was record setting across the board for most retailers, the behind-the-scenes winners of the weekend were buy now pay later providers.
- Splitit told Business Insider that order volumes were up 62% during Cyber Week compared with last year, and that average order value was about $800, up from $650 last year.
- Affirm data showed that BNPL represented 7% of e-commerce sales this year, up from 2% in 2020. It also noted that customers are using the service more frequently, going from about three transactions a year in 2022 to more than five now.
- Klarna said it saw a 26% increase in orders from Black Friday to the following Sunday.
- Afterpay said it saw a 10% increase from Friday through Monday.
- Adobe said BNPL use reached a record high on Cyber Monday, accounting for almost $1B in sales.
- Of the $131.5B in online spending tracked by Adobe during the month leading up to Cyber Monday, $9.4B was spent using a BNPL.
Merchants are using BNPL to increase both sales and average order value.
For example, Splitit's CEO Nandan Sheth told Business Insider that one of his clients offered two smartphone models, with BNPL available only on the more expensive option. Sheth said, “They had 45-50% skewed towards the expensive phone because the consumers were selecting the ability to split the payment.”
BNPL doesn't seem to be slowing down anytime soon either. PYMNTS reported that Affirm has partnered with eight more major merchants and retailers including Agape Diamonds, Discount Tire, Ever/body, FullBeauty, Garmin, Hotels.com, Living Spaces, and Sweetwater.
According to the company, Affirm accounts for a third of the volume and more than half of the revenue in the US buy now pay later space.
8. Global ad revenue to top $1 trillion, dominated by Google and Meta
In a new report, GroupM projected that the advertising industry will surpass $1 trillion in total revenue for the first time this year and grow 7.7% to $1.1 trillion in 2025.
- More than half of that trillion dollars will go to the top five digital advertising companies: Google, Meta, ByteDance, Amazon, and Alibaba.
- Digital advertising is expected to account for 81.7% of revenue in 2025.
- Total TV revenue is only expected to grow 1.9% in 2025 to $169.1B.
- Streaming TV is expected to grow 12.9% next year, while linear TV declines 3.4%.
- However that doesn't mean linear TV is dying. Linear will represent 72.6% of total TV revenue in 2025 (roughly $122B).
- Global retail media ad revenue is expected to grow another 13.8% to reach $176.9B in 2025, following an 18.2% growth increase this year. Next year it is expected to surpass TV revenue for the first time ever.
GroupM’s report only touched on the possible effect of AI tools such as autonomous bots, but predicts that they will have a pronounced impact on the space. (It's hard to show advertising to consumers when bots are doing the shopping for them.)
Kate Scott-Dawkins, global president of business intelligence, noted that “Competition in the age of AI does require significant resources and scale,” and that “most folks will tell you that we’re still a little ways away from really being able to hand over the reins” to AI.
9. Other e-commerce news of interest
Bing is testing an e-commerce shopping card panel at the top of its search results, which looks strikingly similar to Google's recent tests. The screenshots captured show a three column card layout that shows a product grid in the first column, followed by buyer guide tips, popular brands, and related searches in the second and third columns.
The European Commission is stepping up its monitoring of TikTok's compliance with its Digital Services Act in response to recent election interference in Romania that led to Călin Georgescu, an independent, far-right, pro-Russian nationalist, as the lead candidate in the first round vote in the country's presidential election last month. TikTok admitted to allowing 10M fake accounts to push disinformation in the two months before the election. The Romanian Constitutional Court ordered a recount due to concerns over potential foreign interference from Russia and China, however, the recount revealed no significant discrepancies, so the court certified the results.
X added a new image generator to its Grok assistant called Aurora that appears to have very few restrictions. Aurora can generate images of public and copyrighted figures like Mickey Mouse without issue, as well as graphic content — just no nudes. The image generator excels at photorealistic images, showcasing example images of Ray Romano and Adam Sandler on a sitcom set together.
Wix integrated its TWIPLA session recording toolkit into its analytics reports, enabling users to replay actual customer journeys through the site to better understand their behavior. Wix says that this is one of the most popular tools it offers to help clients make tangible improvements to their websites, particularly because the granular filtering system makes it easy to find session replays that match specific visitor segments.
TikTok is moving closer to testing Mini Apps in-stream, similar to what it already has in the Chinese version of the app called Douyin, where third-party developers are able to integrate smaller, more lightweight versions of their own applications directly within the app. App researcher Radu Oncescu found a new reference to “TikTok Minis” in the app, which could indicate that although TikTok isn't testing the feature yet, they could be on the way. Snapchat launched its own version of Mini Apps back in 2020 called “Snap Minis,” but eventually shut down the project in 2022 amid broader cost cuts and lack of user interest.
Alibaba International released a new solution called Pic Copilot, an AI-powered e-commerce design tool designed to streamline photography and design for merchants on its platforms. Pic Copilot features 12 one-click AI design tools that make tasks easier like swapping image backgrounds, editing images and videos, conducting virtual try-ons, and generating ads.
PublicSquare, a West Palm Beach-based online marketplace that connects consumers with businesses aligning with conservative values, named Donald J. Trump, Jr to its board of directors. Trump, Jr. has been an investor in PublicSquare since before the company went public via a SPAC in July 2023. The company's stock nearly quadrupled following the announcement, but has since leveled out at double the price it started prior to the announcement.
Vietnam suspended the operations of Temu after it failed to meet a government deadline to register the company by the end of November. The suspension comes after the ministry had raised concerns about the authenticity of Temu's cheap products and their impact on Vietnam manufacturers. It is unclear if Temu will be allowed to resume its business after it registers.
Amazon completed its first drone flight test in Italy using its MK30 drone, which can carry up to five pounds of packages through light rain, and in the US, is licensed to operate Beyond Visual Line of Sight. Last year the company announced its plans to expand its drone operations to Italy and the UK pending regulatory approval. In the US, Amazon's drone deliveries are up and running in College Station, TX and Phoenix, AZ.
Shopify and Weezer collaborated to build a shoppable arcade game to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the group's triple-platinum ‘Blue Album'. The game blended the nostalgia of a classic arcade game with a modern twist — players could unlock Weezer merchandise in the Shop app based on their scores. Very cool!
The FBI warned Android and iPhone users to stop sending unencrypted texts to users of the other operating system after the Salt Typhoon hack of several major US telecommunication providers. Apple's iPhone and Google's Android smartphones have encryption between devices with the same operating system, but messages between the two operating systems aren't encrypted. This sounds like a commercial for WhatsApp, doesn't it?
In 2012, Facebook printed a Little Red Book — a 148 page mishmash of pop art, corporate e-mails, and aphorisms that were meant to distill the ethos of the company. The book was produced by Ben Barry, a designer working at Facebook who ran an internal print shop called the Facebook Analog Research Laboratory. Bits and pieces of the book have appeared online before, but now an entire high resolution copy of the entire thing is available for your enjoyment, courtesy of Matthew A Parkhurst, who tracked down a physical copy on eBay and shared it with the world.
Speaking of books… Taylor Swift is on track to be this year's best selling author with her self-published The Eras Tour Book, which has sold over 814,000 print copies. Swift opted to sell her book without the aid of Amazon, Walmart, or Barnes & Noble, selecting Target as her exclusive distributor. This isn't Swift's first exclusive collaboration with Target. She's previously launched multiple exclusive albums with the retailer.
Snoop Dogg launched a new e-commerce site called SWED.com that builds off his brick-and-mortar dispensary in Los Angeles and coffee shop in Amsterdam, which opened earlier this year. The Shopify-powered store features a curated selection of authentic Snoop Dogg and Death Row Records branded products, accessories, and merchandise.
OpenAI hired Kate Rouch as its first chief marketing officer, nabbing the executive from Coinbase where she led global marketing and public relations. Prior to that, Rouch spent 11 years at Meta, including a role as global head of brand and product marketing for Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Facebook. OpenAI historically hasn't prioritized marketing, yet still manages to reach 250M weekly active users and boast over 1M paying customers.
commercetools appointed Matt Tuel as chief operating officer, where he will oversee global operations with a focus on enhancing operational efficiency. Tuel was recently COO as Profitero, a SaaS commerce company that was acquired by Publicis Groupe.
Former top Amazon exec Dave Clark, who recently raised a $100M Series A round for Auger, his AI-powered software startup that aims to transform the global supply chain sector, hired several former Amazon leaders to help bring his vision to life. Among those hires include Amazon's longtime chief scientist Russel Allgor, lead developer of Amazon's “Just Walk Out” technology Sanjay Dash, and former executive Alex Ceballos who helped oversee Amazon's acquisition of Kiva. All but one of the startup's 11 senior hires previously worked at Amazon, with the majority having spent at least a decade at the company.
Etsy is having a major executive shakeup next year. The newly created positions of President and Chief Growth Officer will be filled by Kruti Patel Goyal, a longtime executive at the company who currently serves as CEO of Etsy-owned Depop. There will also be a new Chief Financial Officer and Chief Marketing Officer. Etsy's current Chief Operating and Marketing Officer, Raina Moskowitz, is stepping down to become CEO of The Knot.
PayPal is raising fees for sellers on PayPal Pay Later (its BNPL solution), Alternative Payment Methods, Advanced Credit and Debit Card Payments, and Virtual Terminal. EcommerceBytes noted that PayPal sent an e-mail to customers alerting them to “some changes to our legal agreements,” but never mentioned in the e-mail notice that the changes involved fee increases.
Meta is facing up to a £3.1B class action lawsuit in the UK over claims that it exploited 46M users’ personal data through unfair practices stemming from its market dominance, after failing twice to have the case dismissed. The Competition Appeal Tribunal has certified the claim, allowing it to proceed to trial, with affected users automatically included unless they opt out.
Temu officially launched in Nigeria, now reaching the country's 200M population, which is Africa's largest consumer base. The Nigerian e-commerce sector was valued at over $12B in 2019, and market projections suggest it could reach $75B by 2025, with digital payment systems playing a crucial role in the country's rapid e-commerce growth in recent years.
10. Seed rounds, IPOs, & acquisitions
Zopa, a UK-based neobank that provides loans, credit cards, and savings accounts to around 1.3M customers, raised €82M in a round led by A.P. Moller Holding, at an over $1B valuation. The company is profitable and has been growing its customer base at a rate of around 35% annually, with expectations to end the year with 1.4M customers and £5B in deposits. Zopa described its previous fundraise as its “pre-IPO round” in 2021, but has since taken the idea of going public off the table for the time being.
Zimi, a startup that seeks to simplify cross-border commerce for merchants, raised $2M in a seed round led by Fearless Fund. The company is trying to solve the problems of brands facing high shipping costs, long delivery times, and having to rely on expensive distributors when shipping internationally. The company will use the funds to scale its US fulfillment networks and build and apply AI models to its merchant experience.
Veeam, a data protection, management, and recovery platform that supports AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and other major cloud providers, held a $2B secondary share sale led by TPG that valued it at $15B. The sale triples the company's valuation since it was acquired by Insight Partners for $5B in January 2020. Veeam plans to allocate the funds for strategic acquisitions and to bulk up its research and development team.
Enterpret, an AI startup that transforms customer feedback into insights that can inform product development, raised $20.8M in a Series A round led by Canaan Partners. The company's platform uses adaptive AI algorithms to unify and analyze large volumes of unstructured feedback data from sales calls, research surveys, support tickets, social media posts, and reviews to help companies understand key themes and issues customers have with their products and services.
MobiKwik, an Indian financial services startup that operates one of the most widely used mobile wallet apps in the country, is seeking to raise $69M in an IPO this week, well below the $255M it initially targeted back in 2021. The company, which services 161M users and 4.26M merchants, says it will use the proceeds from the IPO to fund its growth and to invest in AI.
Fresho, an order management platform that helps fresh food wholesalers operate more efficiently, raised $17M in a Series B round led by Geoff Tarrant, bringing its total amount raised to $50M. Fresho's platform transforms how fresh food moves from supplier to restaurant kitchen, addressing the industry's unique challenges where produce travels from farm or ocean to restaurant in days, prices fluctuate daily, and high-end restaurants demand perfection. The company recently celebrated processing its 30 millionth order since 2016, with 10 million orders in the past year alone.
OneRail, an Orlando-based provider of last-mile delivery solutions, raised $42M in a Series C round led by Aliment Capital. The company will use the funds to enhance OmniPoint, its platform that automates fulfillment orchestration and last-mile logistics by automatically selecting the right place to fulfill inventory from, the right shipping mode, and the right carrier to optimize every order.
DHL Supply Chain acquired a controlling interest in Brandpath, a UK-based e-commerce fulfillment provider, for an undisclosed amount. The deal will combine Brandpath's flexible e-fulfillment services with DHL's global logistics expertise and infrastructure spanning 220 countries and territories, while aligning with DHL Group's “Strategy 2030,” which focuses on accelerating e-commerce growth.
Celero Commerce ,a Tennessee-based financial services firm, acquired Precision Payments, a Sarasota-based e-payments technology provider for SMBs, for an undisclosed amount. With the addition of Precision, Celero’s annual card processing volume across North America is expected to exceed $28B.
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Paul E. Drecksler
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