Today's Ecommerce Pulse
Target launches Circle Deal Days to rival Amazon Prime Day
Target announced its Target Circle Deal Days running June 23‑26, positioning the free‑to‑join program as a direct competitor to Amazon Prime Day. New members who enroll between June 14‑22 receive a 15% discount on their first purchase and a free Starbucks coffee or Bullseye cookie on June 23. Additional perks include 50% off the first year of Target Circle 360.
Also developing:
By the numbers: Howdens to acquire DIY Kitchens for $495M
Why Stitch Fix Is Doubling Down on Human Stylists as AI Gets Better
Stitch Fix is reinforcing its human‑stylist model even as generative AI matures, unveiling the AI‑driven "Stitch Fix Vision" that creates personalized, shoppable outfit images from client selfies. The platform’s autonomous quality checks and sharing features have lifted repeat purchase rates and sparked a product‑led growth loop. AI handles routine styling tasks, freeing stylists to engage in deeper, real‑time conversations through tools like Connect and stylist profiles. The company’s experimental culture, flexible subscription options, and clear distinction from fast‑fashion players underscore a hybrid human‑AI strategy aimed at sustained growth.
Amazon Big Spring Sale 2026 Is Fast Approaching
Amazon’s third annual Big Spring Sale is still missing a confirmed US launch date, while Europe’s Spring Deal Days have been set for March 10‑16. The US event is rumored to repeat last year’s March 25‑31 window, but Amazon has...
Online Retailer Zalando Trims AWS Bill by Getting Manual with Flink Stream Filtering
Zalando, which generates roughly €3 billion in quarterly fashion sales, ran into soaring AWS costs and unstable Flink clusters due to the way Flink 1.20’s Table API handled chained joins. The joins caused state to balloon to over 240 GB per application, leading...
Amazon Overtakes Schwarz Group (Lidl) as Europe’s Largest Retailer
Amazon has become Europe’s largest retailer by sales volume, posting €179.7 billion GMV in 2023. It narrowly surpassed Germany’s Schwarz Group, owner of Lidl and Kaufland, which recorded €179.4 billion. The gap to the third‑place Aldi exceeds €80 billion, highlighting Amazon’s dominant marketplace...
Swiftly Announces Partnership with Merchants Distributors (MDI) to Power Next-Generation Shopper Engagement Technology and Enhance Digital Experience for Independent Grocers
Swiftly announced a partnership with Merchants Distributors (MDI) to equip more than 600 independent grocers with a modern web platform, SmartCircular™ weekly circular solution, and the AI‑driven Audience Optimizer™. The collaboration aims to unify digital circulars, off‑site amplification, and targeted...
With a Shift to Bot Shopping, Retailers Must Redesign for AI
Retailers are confronting a surge of AI‑powered bot shoppers that can locate deals, compare specs and complete purchases in milliseconds. Bots ignore visual design and focus on clean, structured product data, transparent pricing and fast search results. To stay visible,...
Confusing Shopify App Charges Drive Top Support Tickets
App charges on Shopify bills being in arrears are so confusing to merchants. Top 3 cause of support tickets for us "why did I get billed" https://t.co/EUxxOda41J
How Hyper-Personalization in Retail Works: Architecture and Implementation
Hyper‑personalization in retail has evolved into a real‑time, event‑driven strategy that relies on a unified customer data platform, streaming pipelines, and AI decision engines. Retailers must shift from batch‑oriented segmentation to continuous identity resolution and sub‑200 ms response times across digital...
Postscript and Tie Launch Integration to Help E-Commerce Brands Recover More Revenue From Abandonment SMS Automations
Postscript and Tie have launched an integration that links anonymous website visitors to existing opted‑in SMS subscribers, enabling brands to trigger 41% more abandonment SMS automations. The identity‑graph technology works across devices and browsers without relying on cookies, turning offline...
Why Waiting for a Sellout Will Kill Your Brand & What To Do Instead
Founder Lindsey Carter explains how SET Active avoided brand death by never waiting for a sell‑out. She emphasizes pre‑emptive reorders, taking calculated financial risk, and constant community communication to keep momentum. The brand leverages data‑driven drops, focuses on best‑selling styles,...
Vilnius-Based Food Supply Marketplace Saltz Raises €20 Million Series A, Plans 100+ Hires as It Expands Across Europe
Vilnius‑based Saltz secured a €20 million Series A round led by the EBRD, aiming to accelerate its pan‑European food‑supply marketplace. The funding will fund expansion into new markets, broaden supplier offerings, and support hiring over 100 staff by 2026. Saltz’s platform consolidates...
THG Ingenuity Launches Gift With Purchase Channel
THG Ingenuity has launched an external Gift‑With‑Purchase (GWP) channel, extending its proven retail‑media solution to third‑party brands. The service integrates curated gifting offers into key moments of the shopper journey across beauty, nutrition and lifestyle sites. Early campaigns on LOOKFANTASTIC...
BuytoGive Launches £500,000 Funding Round
BuytoGive, a UK e‑commerce marketplace that converts regular online purchases into charitable donations, announced a £500,000 seed round, the first half of a £1 million raise at a £3 million pre‑money valuation. The company recently secured access to 1.2 million products via a...
ABOUT YOU Opens Its Marketplace to New Sellers
ABOUT YOU, a Zalando Group fashion retailer, has opened its marketplace to any fashion seller, removing minimum product‑count and revenue thresholds. The new self‑service Seller Center lets brands launch in as little as four weeks, with no onboarding fees. In the...
Wayfair Launches Loyalty Program in Canada
Wayfair has rolled out its Wayfair Rewards loyalty program in Canada, marking the first international expansion after a successful U.S. debut. Canadian members pay $39 per year to receive 5% back in reward dollars, free shipping on all orders, exclusive...
TikTok Shop Is Dominating U.S. Health & Beauty E-Commerce
TikTok Shop has surged to become the sixth‑largest U.S. health and beauty e‑commerce retailer, with sales surpassing $1.34 billion and accounting for 79.3% of its total revenue. Since its September 2023 launch, the platform’s buyer base grew 88%, and average annual spend...
Amazon Now Offers a 7% Discount on Late Deliveries
Amazon announced a new option that gives customers a 7% rebate when they select a slower delivery window, signaling a pivot from its traditional fast‑shipping promise. The move comes as UPS and FedEx have raised basic shipping rates by roughly...
John Lewis Invests in TikTok Shop Launch and AI-Powered Shopping
John Lewis has launched a 90‑day TikTok Shop trial ahead of Mother’s Day, offering a curated selection of beauty and gifting items that can be bought directly on the platform. The move is part of an £800 million multi‑year transformation programme...
Menzies Aviation Accelerates E-Commerce Strategy
Menzies Aviation has launched the MILE (Menzies Integrated Logistics for e‑commerce) initiative to capture the booming air‑cargo demand from online retail. The program blends the carrier’s global ground‑handling expertise with parcel‑level processing, ULD break‑bulk and first‑to‑last‑mile integration, while the MACH...
Growing Up “Constantly Online”: What Teens’ Online Lives Really Look Like | Behind the Numbers
In this episode, analysts Emmy Liederman and Paola discuss how teens (ages 12‑17) live constantly online, highlighting the dominance of smartphones for activities like social commerce, shopping, and media consumption. They reveal that 40% of teens now report being online...
EBay Sponsors Sky’s Saturday Night Live UK
Sky Media has named eBay as the headline partner for the UK launch of Saturday Night Live, bringing the American comedy brand to British screens on March 21. The deal centers on eBay Live, the platform’s interactive shopping experience, with eBay‑branded...
Puma Bets on Direct Sales Playbook of New Top Shareholder, China’s Anta
Puma reported a record €645.5 million net loss for 2025, driven by a 13% sales decline and heavy discounting in its wholesale‑dominant model. CEO Arthur Hoeld blamed over‑exposure to retail channels and has begun pulling inventory back from stores, while cutting...
Boost Forecast Accuracy, Margin, and Savings with Prophit Engine
Our new Prophit Engine service is now live. In this episode I cover: Who’s it for Why you should care And how to get started. https://t.co/iSLVAmatFe My challenge to every founder, CFO or CMO is to listen and ask yourself if 1)...
Busy Month for N Brown: Adds Six Brands to Its Platforms with North Face the Key Highlight
N Brown Group announced a busy month of brand expansions, most notably adding The North Face to its Jacamo, JD Williams and SimplyBe platforms. The partnership launches an 85‑piece collection supported by a nationwide out‑of‑home campaign from 8‑31 March, with special projection ads in...
Master Dropshipping in 36 Minutes, 2026 Playbook
Master Dropshipping In 36 Minutes (No Sponsors) WATCH HERE 👉 https://t.co/bYrSmpqSDb Master dropshipping in 36 minutes, no BS, no sponsors, just the exact 2026 playbook I’d use to build a profitable Shopify store from scratch in 2026. Product research, store...
Sudden CPA Spike Signals Broken Fundamentals, Not Trend Collapse
I was talking to a 7-figure founder recently who was convinced his trend was dying. He has a clothing brand, he rode the wave hard, and did $100K+ months for the first four months. Then in September, his CPA doubled overnight and...
What Are Offline Payments? How to Accept Them
Offline payments let retailers accept card transactions when the internet drops by storing encrypted payment data on the POS device until connectivity returns. Shopify POS offers this capability for up to 24 hours, giving merchants a safety net during outages at...
DTC and Influencers Can Outpace Wholesale Dramatically
MVMT went from $1M to $60M in revenue in just 2 years using DTC and influencer marketing. No retail stores. Got acquired by Movado for $300M. Meanwhile you're still chasing wholesale deals. That's the gap.
Chargeflow Review 2026: The Shopify Chargeback Platform That Fights Back So You Don’t Have To
Chargeflow is a Shopify‑native chargeback platform that covers prevention, real‑time deflection, and AI‑driven dispute recovery in a single dashboard. It offers a success‑based pricing model—free installation, $29 per deflected chargeback, and a 25% fee only on recovered disputes—removing upfront risk...
The AI Attribution Blind Spot
Artificial intelligence assistants are emerging as a primary channel for product discovery, compressing the traditional list of search results into a single answer. This upstream shift moves the consumer decision point into a system retailers cannot control or directly measure....
Why You Should Always Use The Panda Express App For Ordering Delivery
Panda Express encourages customers to order delivery through its own app, which eliminates the hefty fees charged by third‑party platforms like DoorDash. A Reddit user reported a $20 price gap for the same order, driven primarily by DoorDash’s $12.65 bundled...
Uber Eats Is Raising Delivery Fees for some Restaurants
Uber Eats announced its first delivery‑fee hike in a decade, raising the Lite tier from 15% to 20% and the Plus tier from 20% to 25% while keeping Premium at 30%. Custom contracts will see a 3% increase, capped at...
Ecom Founders Turn Sundays Into Strategy Sessions
Everyone on Sunday morning: Sleeping in. Ecom founders on Sunday morning: Reviewing last week's ad performance and planning this week's tests. Different mindset. Different momentum.
C2C Meaning: Pros and Cons of a Consumer-to-Consumer Model
The consumer‑to‑consumer (C2C) model lets individuals sell directly to each other through platforms that charge listing fees, transaction commissions, or premium placement. eBay exemplifies the model, generating roughly $40 billion by facilitating auctions, while newer entrants like Depop, TaskRabbit, and Venmo...
Server-Side Rendering (SSR) Vs. Client-Side Rendering (CSR): Performance Implications
An e‑commerce homepage that takes 3.2 seconds to render loses over half of its visitors, a problem Amazon quantifies as a 1 % sales drop per 100 ms of latency. The article contrasts server‑side rendering (SSR), which streams fully formed HTML and can...
Bold Branding Beats Blending In: Liquid Death’s $1.4B Success
Liquid Death built a $1.4B brand selling water. They packaged it in tallboy cans with heavy metal branding. Did $263M in sales by 2023. Meanwhile you're trying to blend in with your category. That's the gap.
What Does Revenue Generation Mean for Ecommerce? (2026) – Shopify
Shopify argues that ecommerce revenue is no longer a pure marketing outcome but a technical and operational challenge, with global conversion rates stuck at roughly 1.6 %. Speed, checkout architecture, and data automation are identified as the biggest friction points that...
Marketing Spend Drives E‑commerce SERP Dominance
eCom is a low opex game. He who can spend the most on marketing wins the SERP. The 25>15>10% evolution is underway. https://t.co/MP1L7T7MZ5
Sellers Say Amazon Charged Ad Fees Throughout Thursday’s Outage
On Thursday, Amazon experienced a widespread outage that left shoppers facing the familiar "dog page" error and prevented checkout, locker pickups, Kindle access, and seller dashboard functions. The disruption lasted roughly six hours, during which product listings returned 404 errors,...
How a Cost Center Works: Cost Centers Vs. Profit Centers
Cost centers are support functions that do not generate revenue but are essential for a company’s operations, such as IT, HR, and customer service. They are classified as personal (people‑focused) or impersonal (equipment‑focused) and are measured by their ability to...
Market Ignores Certainty; Test Everything First
I lost $12k on a product I was 'absolutely certain' would work. Market said no. I tested a 'stupid idea' for $500. It scaled to $80k/month. The market doesn't care about your certainty. Test everything.
Modern Retail Podcast: The New Rules of Product Pricing
In a Modern Retail Podcast episode, Newell Brands’ learning and development chief Kris Malkoski explains how Graco is reshaping its pricing playbook amid AI‑driven insights, tariff volatility, and price‑sensitive shoppers. The discussion reveals Graco’s use of artificial intelligence to fine‑tune...
ZyG
ZyG has launched an AI‑driven Growth Engine designed to help early‑stage direct‑to‑consumer (DTC) startups scale their eCommerce operations. The platform delivers product‑market fit analysis, centralized access to third‑party tools, and automated workflows that streamline growth initiatives. ZyG’s leadership team combines...
EBay Is Selling a Cornucopia of Russian Peptides
A quick search on eBay reveals a flood of Russian‑origin peptide products, from injectable ampoules to dubious oral supplements. The items, marketed by Vita Stream Inc. – a firm linked to former footballer Roman Eremenko – claim bioregulation benefits but...
Alchemy Pay Hits 15 Money Transmitter Licenses With Delaware Win
Alchemy Pay announced it secured a Money Transmitter License in Delaware, bringing its total U.S. state coverage to 15. The company added four licenses this year, including Nebraska, South Dakota and West Virginia, expanding its regulated fiat‑crypto payment network. Alchemy...
OpenAI Quietly Scales Back Direct Checkout Plans for ChatGPT
OpenAI has quietly scaled back its direct checkout feature for ChatGPT, postponing a broad consumer rollout and limiting the capability to a small group of pilot merchants. The company cited technical integration hurdles and regulatory scrutiny as primary reasons for...
One Person Can't Replace Four Without More Than AI
"Just hire someone smart and give them AI tools." That's not a strategy. That's a hope. Part 2 of the 10% OpEx series breaks down what actually has to be true before one person can do the work of four....
How Brands Are Leveraging Live Commerce to Move Excess Inventory
Brands are turning to live commerce to liquidate excess inventory, gaining real‑time pricing, product visibility, and storytelling that traditional bulk liquidation lacks. Platforms such as Whatnot, eBay Live, and Poshmark Live let sellers showcase condition and price instantly, targeting niche...
DSG Expands AI and Ecommerce Across Its Distribution Brands
Distribution Solutions Group (DSG) is embedding ecommerce and AI across its three main brands—Lawson Products, Gexpro Services and TestEquity—to boost sales efficiency and capture new customers. In Q4, Lawson’s online channel posted an 18% revenue increase, with over 30% of...
Swift Moves Ahead with Retail Cross-Border Payments Network
Swift has introduced a new framework for retail cross‑border payments, with over 25 banks slated to process transactions under the rules by June. The initiative expands Swift’s traditional focus on interbank and commercial transfers to consumer‑level payments, targeting faster settlement,...