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Increasingly, link-in-bio companies are building digital storefronts, where anyone who clicks a link in bio can toggle through various products that a creator has for sale. It's a shift that not only helps the link services stay relevant but also represents the latest example of e-commerce and product discovery moving to social media.
Despite offering competing sales, retailers are struggling to put a dent in Amazon's Prime Day momentum. Multi-category big box retailers like Walmart and Target, as well as Wayfair and Best Buy, all ran sales that overlapped with Amazon's June 21 to 22 Prime Day. Still, early data in app downloads and web traffic shows that these retailers are still seeing a modest uptick in shoppers relative to Amazon.
Etsy is making a play for Brazil with its latest acquisition of the online marketplace Elo7. Latin America is a weak-spot for Etsy, and it's the latest signal, as Etsy seeks to build a "house of brands," that it is increasingly on acquisitions — rather than partnerships — for new customer acquisition.
Amazon is known for its in-house electronics products. But this year, it gave its private-label products in its other categories an extra push. That underscores the extent to which Amazon is pushing specifically its non-electronics products -- which, unlike electronics, might inspire more frequent repeat purchases -- into consumers’ lives.
Visual search is witnessing a resurgence in interest that retailers may find difficult to ignore. On the one hand, social media and web giants are pushing visual search to the forefront of their platforms. Meanwhile, many retailers are opting to incorporate the feature directly into their existing apps, either individually or with the help of specialist tech startups.
Instagram and Shopify appear to be entering the affiliate commissions race. It's a sign that the two companies are trying to disrupt Amazon’s dominance over product affiliate links.
The recently-introduced Inform bills are essentially disclosure measures, stating that third-party marketplaces have to vet the bank information, government IDs, tax documents and other records pertaining to what the bill classifies as “high-volume third-part sellers.” Here's how these proposed laws could upend the e-commerce ecosystem.
Over the last year, influencer-created videos have increasingly popped up on Amazon product pages. With these videos, Amazon is trying to bring some of the cues from social platforms onto its own site -- and rather than have its influencers only recommend products on YouTube or TikTok, and just link back to Amazon, now Amazon is trying to bring more content natively onto its platform.
In early May, Instacart quietly added a new feature called “Product Library,” which lets brands whose products are bought and sold on Instacart edit how their products appear on the platform. The Product Library update might be small, but it showcases the extent to which Instacart, as it becomes an increasingly ad-focused company, has tried to make itself more friendly to brands.
As the Amazon acquisition boom continues, a growing number of companies are beginning to consider how -- and whether -- to turn the products they acquire into recognizable brands even off of Amazon. But question of how present the actual name of the rollup company should be in the minds of consumers also remains up in the air. “At this point, we have delivered products to one out of every ten households in America, but they have no idea that we’ve done that,” said Josh Silberstein, founder and co-CEO of Thrasio.
As DTC brands continue to look for new customer acquisition channels, Pinterest is becoming a bigger part of their shoppable content playbook. The social platform, which has been increasingly building out e-commerce capabilities, has partnered with several digitally-native brands on a shopping event featuring exclusive products.
While Amazon's Dash Replenishment might be the largest program in what remains a niche industry, a growing number of startups are pitching auto-replenishment systems to brands -- and to stand out, they’re making their case not on just the economic benefits of convincing customers to set auto reorders, but also on the potential consumer usage data that they can source.
One of the biggest storylines of this year’s Prime Day is inventory problems. Toward the end of May, third-party sellers began reporting that their inventory maximums had dropped suddenly -- meaning, essentially, that Amazon would only accept a reduced amount of inventory into its warehouses.
This week, Etsy announced that it has acquired Depop, a clothing resale app for $1.6 billion. That announcement comes nearly two years after Etsy acquired Reverb, a marketplace for new and used music gear. In its press release, Etsy laid out its rationale for acquiring Depop: It help Etsy further its "house of brands" strategy, in which it will operate the three marketplaces separately -- Etsy, Depop and Reverb -- but share technology, marketing, product and customer services staff.
Last week, the e-commerce rollup space got one of its biggest endorsements yet when the SoftBank Vision Fund led a $775 million investment round in Perch, a Boston-based rollup company that has been active since January 2020. Modern Retail talked to Chris Bell, a former Wayfair executive who is now founder and CEO of Perch, about how he is thinking about standing out in such a crowded market.
Every interaction a customer has with a brand is an opportunity to nurture the customer-brand relationship. This report highlights tactics that top brands are using to improve the customer experience.
After acquiring Transplace for $2.25 billion, Uber Freight is cementing its status as an important player in the growing world of digital freight brokerage. But it is also opening itself up to an entry into the parcel shipping space.
Read MoreAt Modern Retail’s Livestream Commerce Trends, we’ll explore how the growth of livestream and video shopping trends are transforming how retailers, brands and marketing teams are engaging with consumers in-stream and live across social and owned-and-operated websites.
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