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Shopify's list of competitors keeps growing, as other businesses see how valuable of customers early-stage, fast-growing e-commerce startups can be.
Big-box retailers Walmart and Target have been among the most aggressive in adding a variety of delivery options to match consumer expectations that have been set by Amazon. But now, with the holiday season approaching, department stores are also taking more aggressive steps to prove to shoppers that they too can win on fast delivery.
Rakesh Tondon, CEO of clothing and accessories rental provider Le Tote, said that his company's decision to acquire Lord & Taylor for $100 million was driven primarily by technology. Speaking at the Evolving E e-commerce conference in New York City on Tuesday, Tondon said that Le Tote was initially in talks with Lord & Taylor to open up Le Tote boutiques in some of its stores, as well as license its technology stack to Lord & Taylor, when reports broke that parent company HBC was looking to sell Lord & Taylor.
More than 80% of Steve Madden's revenue still comes from wholesale. But that doesn't mean that the footwear retailer can totally ignore its e-commerce business. "If someone discovers your brand at Nordstrom, the odds are very good that they will [eventually] come to your site," said. Jeff Silverman, president of global e-commerce for Steve Madden.
In February, Target announced that it was launching a third-party marketplace called Target+ to grow its online assortment in areas like home, toys, electronics and sporting goods. At the time, Target's chief marketing and digital officer Rick Gomez said in a blog post that the marketplace was "in its earliest stages," and that Target would keep the program invite-only to focus on building curated assortment. Still, six months later, the amount of products available through Target+ remains limited.
Google search is becoming less of a way for people to find links and more a destination for answers. As a result, marketers who once relied on the platform to facilitate transactions are forced to re-think their strategies.
TJ Maxx has been slow to invest in its website and e-commerce offerings, even as other retailers get into the off-price game and threaten to take away some of its market share. Its parent company, the TJX Companies, has been one of the few retailers to consistently post same-store sales growth over the past year. But that sales growth hasn't come on the back of significant investments in e-commerce.
As Shopify has grown, it's expanded its services to new areas – some of which its third party developers already had their hands in. This creates for a difficult tension; The platform needs to scale and expand, but also relies on a robust community of developers.
Blue Apron, in its latest earnings report, announced that it was no longer partnering with Jet.com. Announced last year, this alliance was one of the most highly-anticipated programs for the meal kit company to reinvigorate business. While other similar companies look into retail partnership, the results seem mixed.
Adidas is reinvesting in Reebok, and its paying off: Sales grew for the first time after years of decreasing revenue. The growth comes as Adidas has started to rededicate more marketing dollars to Reebok, and come up with a long-overdue digital strategy for Reebok, in order to help the brand stand on its own.
Within the past several months, Facebook has started to crack down more on businesses who are routinely being ranked by users as not being honest about their shipping times.
The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday in California, is just the most recent action eBay has taken against Amazon. In it, eBay singles out three Amazon representatives who, the suit claims, used eBay’s internal seller messaging system to poach sellers. Beyond those three representatives, the effort involved a network of Amazon reps in multiple countries that conspired to approach eBay’s sellers on the platform and convince them to join Amazon.
With a new model called genetic algorithms, Zappos' lead data scientist Ameen Kazerouni and his team built better term recognition into Zappos’ search that pulls in historical data and quickly picks up on new keywords that are introduced as soon as fashion trends start to pick up speed. In addition to smarter results, customers also see more personalized results based on what they’ve searched for in the past.
As Walmart has significantly expanded its online assortment over the past couple of years, it continues to see fashion as a key area in which it can fill a key white space in e-commerce that it can't fill through its stores. But in order to increase its assortment of online fashion brands, Walmart first had to convince premium fashion brands – many of whom may not have ever considered making selling through Walmart a key part of their growth strategy – to work with them
According to president and chief digital officer David Hayne, Urban Outfitters, Inc.’s well-oiled e-commerce and retail machine, as well as its deeper pocket of resources, will be Nuuly’s advantage as it takes on the rental apparel market.
As brick-and-mortar businesses struggle to stay competitive in the Amazon era, a retail revolution has occurred.
The service, which will operate separately from Elliot, will allow brands to have customers shop products straight from an interactive live stream. The live shopping network is meant to give viewers to ask questions about curated items' fit and texture, among other details, before clicking checkout on products.
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