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B2C (Business to customer) news
Inside Priceline Group’s Diss of Trivago — The Backstory. A great read. It’s a boom time for trying to fathom the bust-up of Trivago. For several years, the Expedia-backed hotel-search company had been gaining share of the combined Priceline Group and Expedia Inc. advertising budgets. Skift
How Shopify Grew From a Snowboard Shop to a $10B Commerce Ecosystem. When Tobias Lütke and Scott Lake decided to build an online store in 2004, they had no idea they would end up creating the world’s biggest e-commerce platform. All they planned to do was build a site where they could sell snowboarding gear. Product Habits
China cuts import tariffs on a range of consumer goods - this will have a huge impact on cross-border e-commerce. China will cut import tariffs on some consumer products from the start of next month, the finance ministry announced on Friday. Tariffs on products such as food, health supplements, pharmaceuticals, clothing and recreational products will be reduced to an average of 7.7% from 17.3%, a notice from the ministry said. South China Morning Post
E-commerce is creating jobs, not killing them.According to an analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the retail apocalypse has actually created nearly as many jobs as it has killed. Axios, Federal Reserve of New York
Sea’s a steady ship, but shares drop after first quarterly results as a public company. Growth increased but losses widened during the three-month period that saw the company’s $844m IPO in New York. Tech in Asia
Alibaba Is Spending $2.9 Billion to Challenge Walmart in China. Alibaba will invest $2.88 billion for a major stake in the top Chinese hypermarket operator Sun Art as the e-commerce platform moves into the offline retail market. Fortune, Bloomberg Technology, Reuters
Macy’s credit card processors stop working on Black Friday. It’s one of the biggest shopping days of the year, but retail giant Macy’s can’t get its credit card processors to work. Customers have been waiting in lines across the United States to buy discounted items, only to find out that the machines won’t take credit cards or gift cards. Some Bloomingdale’s stores, which are owned by Macy’s, may have also been impacted. TechCrunch, Bloomberg
Approaching e-commerce investments in the age of Amazon. With Amazon as the 800-pound gorilla, many of my fellow investors choose to ignore e-commerce altogether. In fact, the industry hit recent lows in a number of deals and investments. TechCrunch
Why Amazon Needs to Get Into the Grocery Business. The upside for Amazon is that people will not stop buying groceries anytime soon. American’s on average take 1.5 trips to the grocery store per week. This opportunity for consumers to buy other items, an opportunity to buy other items through Amazon. Medium
Chinese e-commerce firm JD.com has invested $44 million in Tiki.vn, a Vietnamese e-commerce company founded in 2010, to serve the latter’s expansion plans, which includes training human resources, optimising transport to and from its warehouses and to conduct a study on promoting the Tikinow service, which is the company’s fastest click-to-delivery service. Fibre2fashion
Competitors Circle Amazon's Wine Business. While Amazon has officially announced its exit from its online wine sales platform, its retreat is only likely to be brief. The retail behemoth is just ramping up to become a major brick-and-mortar force with the almost-national footprint of its Whole Foods' acquisition, but in the meantime, a variety of online delivery services are about to take a dip into the, temporarily vacant, sales pool. Wine-Searcher
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D2C (Direct To Customer) news
From the Big Screen to a Billion-Dollar Brand: How Jessica Alba Built the Honest Co. How do you go from the Hollywood big screen to the cover of Forbes, alongside the title “America’s Richest Self-Made Women,” for building a $1 billion brand, in under a decade? The Fashion Law
Elizabeth and James Doubles Down on DTC, Introduces Watches and E-Commerce. Elizabeth and James is introducing a new category — and a new way to shop its wares — just in time for the holiday season. Business of Fashion
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Marketplace news
Amazon warehouse workers in Germany and Italy reportedly on strike as peak holiday season begins. Some workers at Amazon fulfillment centers in both Italy and Germany have gone on strike, according to a new report, as the all-important holiday shopping season kicks off. GeekWire, Reuters
Amazon launches in Switzerland. The entry of Amazon into the Swish e-commerce market seems imminent. The American e-commerce giant has signed a cooperation agreement with Swiss Post, which means the postal agency will carry out customs clearance for Amazon in the near future. Ecommerce News Europe
Debt: The secret sauce of Alibaba’s Singles Day success - a great read. The blood spilled on Singles Day (aka Double 11) by “hand-choppers”—Chinese slang for shopaholics—has long dried. The record-breaking figures from the top festival of consumerism owe much to the rise of easy consumer credit offered by China’s burgeoning fintech industry, including microfinancing and P2P lending companies such as PPDai, Qudian, and JD’s Baitiao. TechNode
Amazon Merchants Continue to Find Ways to Cheat. Maintaining order on Amazon -- where 2 million merchants compete to win billions of dollars in business from 300 million shoppers -- has become a running problem for the online giant and it only heats up during the busy holiday season. Bloomberg Technology
As Amazon And eBay Flood With Illegal Goods From China, Beijing Cracks Down On Foreign E-Commerce. It has been well documented that American e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and eBay have become cesspools of counterfeits and other illegal and potentially dangerous goods that are mostly coming in from China, but, impervious to the apparent irony, Beijing is upping the regulations on foreign e-commerce merchants selling goods the other way. Forbes
Alibaba and JD in a war of words via lawyers over claims of dominating China's e-commerce. China's two dominant e-commerce platforms in the world's largest online retail market are under the spotlight in an online debate via their legal representatives about their duopoly in the industry. NZ Herald, The Drum
Skolkovo resident Fibrum creates world’s first virtual stores for AliExpress. Fibrum, a resident startup of the Skolkovo Foundation’s IT cluster that makes virtual reality headsets, games and platforms, has developed the world’s first chain of virtual stores for the Chinese e-commerce platform AliExpress. Skolkovo
Marketplaces and trust - a great read. Trust is one of the most important aspects of building a liquid marketplace, but trust is hard to quantify. Lately, I have been wondering if there is a playbook around building trust or does the answer depend on what type of marketplace one is building. Hackernoon
Flipkart Financial Marketplace To Soon Roll Out Insurance Services. Taking a step ahead in its attempt to disrupt the financial services domain, Flipkart may soon start selling insurance products on its financial marketplace. Inc42
Carsales pays $244m to take full control of South Korean JV Encar.com. On Monday, Carsales announced it will purchase the remaining 50.1% of Encar.com it did not already own for $244 million, prior to adjusting for working capital, the company announced on Monday. Financial Review
Coupang keeps breaking records. Coupang announced that it has achieved a new revenue record in the first week of November. The weekly figure is up 16% from the peak set in July and up 8% from September. Markets Insider
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Fashion ecommerce news
Lingerie Startup Settles FTC Suit over Deceptive Subscriptions. An investigation into Adore Me last year uncovered customer grievances alleging that the company made it difficult to unsubscribe from the service. Business of Fashion
'I think you lose that exclusivity': Chanel holding out on expanding e-commerce offerings. The label, known for its tweed suits and US$4,300-plus quilted leather bags, already sells perfumes online, like its Chanel No 5, as well as eyeglasses and beauty products. But it will draw the line there for the foreseeable future, said Bruno Pavlovsky, president of fashion at Chanel. BNN Canada / Reuters
Walmart and Lord & Taylor: Brilliant, or badly matched? Walmart gets premium brands and an answer to Amazon’s steadily growing fashion sales. Lord & Taylor expects a surge of online traffic. But is this an odd couple pairing or a recipe for success? Retail Dive
Walmart may own ModCloth, but the women’s fashion retailer is showing some independence on Black Friday. ModCloth, a women’s fashion retailer that does most of its business online, is shutting down its site on Black Friday and said it is donating clothes with a retail value of $5 million to a nonprofit called Dress for Success instead. Recode
Stitch Fix’s CEO says ‘We’ve been underestimated before - interesting interview. ’It’s always been hard for Katrina Lake’s company to raise money. Recode
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Mobile commerce
As mobile holiday shopping grows, so does the threat of fake retail apps. Scammers are taking advantage of the popularity of mobile shopping this holiday season. Here's why fake apps are becoming more widespread and how guard against the threat. TechRepublic
The Fashion App Founder With a Pocket Full of Visas - an inspiring story. The immigrant entrepreneur’s road to Silicon Valley is paved with visas. And everyone tells a tale. In the case of Purva Gupta, who is now the 29-year-old founder of Lily, a Palo Alto-based startup that’s building an AI-driven fashion app, the precious US government documents weave a kind of personal epic. Wired
Makro has acquired a majority stake in on-demand delivery app, Wumdrop. This is yet another sign that big box retail businesses require last mile logistics delivery options for customers. The interesting thing is that Wumdrop does deliveries for other retailers in South Africa, so this will also provide Makro with data insights on competitors. Disrupt Africa
Checkers partners up with UberEATS in South Africa. Checkers announced it is partnering with UberEATS to make holiday entertaining even more convenient for its Cape Town consumers this summer. The retailer has made a number of solutions-driven convenience meals and household essentials available to order on the UberEATS app, including the exclusive Ready-to-Cook and Ready-to-Braai ranges. Fastmoving
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Stats and other interesting news
Black Friday racks up $5.03B in online sales, $2B on mobile alone. The final figures for Black Friday online sales are in, and it’s another record-breaking day e-commerce in the U.S. Adobe says that shoppers spent $5.03 billion online in a race for bargains for themselves and to gift to others. TechCrunch, Adobe
Comparing the e-commerce markets in Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia. These three countries are similar in terms of e-commerce and their economies in general. Tech In Asia
How Cainiao Set New Record Delivery Times for 11.11 - Alizila
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Thoughts on the news from this past week
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