Debenhams Group Appoints Paul Aspden as CTO to Scale Marketplace Tech and AI Push
British retailer Debenhams Group has promoted Paul Aspden to chief technology officer as it accelerates its AI and marketplace strategy. Aspden, who helped build the company’s Mirakl‑based marketplace and AI pricing tools, will now oversee platform scaling, faster brand‑partner onboarding, and deeper AI integration across operations and customer experience. The move follows a strong financial turnaround, with full‑year adjusted EBITDA climbing 36% to £53 million (about $67 million) for FY26, driven by a 76% surge in second‑half earnings. Debenhams also launched an AI Skills Academy and an AI‑powered shopping experience with PayPal under Aspden’s leadership.
Meet Jere Calmes: The Iconic CEO Who Turned Reset Into Momentum
Jere Calmes, CEO of The Iconic since 2023, was named #8 in Inside Retail’s Top 50 People in E‑Commerce. He led a strategic reset that trimmed an unsustainable cost base built during the pandemic and refocused the business on technology, logistics...
Why Mondelez Is Hiring a Global Lead to Solve for AI-Driven Shopping Bots
Mondelez International is creating a global lead role to shape its emerging agentic commerce strategy, targeting AI‑driven shopping bots that could handle a sizable share of online traffic. Retail partners expect 30% of site visits to come from such bots...
Lowe’s Aims to Make Mulch Buying Easier with AI
Lowe’s has introduced “Mulch Me Now,” an AI‑driven feature within its Mylow assistant that asks customers yard dimensions and desired depth to calculate exact mulch quantities, then suggests products and adds them to the cart. Launched in spring, the tool...
Sam’s Club Hires ‘Experts’ to Make Video Reviews for Product Pages
Sam’s Club is rolling out a new "expert review" video feature on product pages, hiring niche specialists—such as chefs, tech gurus, or health professionals—to create short, brand‑specific videos. The initiative, announced on April 16 as part of the Member Access Platform,...
Why Your E-Commerce Dev Team Ships Slower than Your Competitors (and How to Fix It)
E‑commerce development teams often ship slower not because of headcount but due to hidden infrastructure friction such as shared staging, manual pipelines, and fragmented compliance. These bottlenecks turn week‑long feature cycles into month‑long projects, causing missed campaign windows. Upsun’s platform...
Colombia’s Bre-B Surpasses 600 Million Transactions: What the Milestone Means for Latin American Instant Payments
Colombia’s central‑bank‑backed instant payment system Bre‑B has processed 638.7 million transactions and registered over 34 million users in its first six months. The average transaction value is roughly $43, and the platform has created 103.38 million payment keys since its October 2025 launch. By...
Amazon, USPS and the Risk of a Widening Delivery Divide in Rural America
Amazon plans to cut roughly 20% of its USPS shipments—about 200 million packages a year—shifting them to its own logistics network. The reduction will leave the Postal Service spreading fixed costs over fewer parcels, intensifying its $9 billion net loss and prompting...
Tackling the Trust Factor for Secondhand Watches
Bezel, an online marketplace for pre‑owned luxury watches, announced it now hosts over $1 billion in listings, marking rapid growth since its 2021 launch. Founder Quaid Walker highlighted the platform’s mission to solve pricing opacity and authenticity concerns that have long...
The Souled Store: The Making Of A ₹700 Cr D2C Lifestyle Brand On Fandom Fashion
The Souled Store, founded in 2013, has evolved from a niche licensed‑merch tee seller into a full‑stack D2C lifestyle brand targeting fandom culture. It posted FY25 profit of ₹11 Cr (≈$1.3 M) on revenue that rose 37% to ₹492.4 Cr (≈$59 M) and projects...
Football Ticket Net Is a Football-Focused Online Ticketing
Football Ticket Net operates as a football‑focused secondary‑market platform that aggregates inventory from multiple brokers, giving fans access to tickets for sold‑out Premier League, Champions League and international fixtures. The site emphasizes buyer protection with a 100 % money‑back guarantee and...
The Growing Debate over Digital Price Tags
Retail giants Kroger and Walmart are accelerating the rollout of electronic shelf labels (ESLs), replacing paper price tags with digital screens. ESLs promise faster price updates, higher accuracy, and reduced labor for store employees. However, the United Food and Commercial...
How Myntra Is Turning Cloud Discipline Into Business Leverage
Myntra has kept cloud spending essentially flat over four years while its revenue climbs about 15% annually and monthly active users hover around 70 million. The company instituted a FinOps practice that embeds budget ownership into engineering decisions, moving cloud cost...
Skip Shutters Express Lane, Lays Off Staff
Skip announced the shutdown of its Express Lane delivery service, a venture launched in 2021 that aimed to operate 38 ghost‑kitchen‑style fulfillment centers across Canada. The service offered roughly 1,500 items at grocery‑store prices and was sold exclusively through a...
Thailand Driving E-Commerce Growth
Thailand’s e‑commerce market exploded in 2025, posting a 51.8% year‑on‑year jump to $35.5 billion in gross merchandise value. The surge outpaced all Southeast Asian peers and cemented the country as the region’s fastest‑growing digital commerce hub. Shopee, TikTok Shop and Lazada...
The Human Side of Automation: What HR Teams Can Borrow From E-Commerce
The article shows HR leaders how to adopt e‑commerce automation playbooks to streamline repetitive, rule‑based tasks. It stresses that clean financial data is a prerequisite for reliable workflows, then outlines core pillars—marketing, fulfillment, support, finance—and the tools that power them....
Recruitment News: Shared Skills Between Traders and E-Commerce Professionals
The article highlights how stock traders and online marketplace sellers share core competencies, especially the reliance on algorithmic tools to outpace manual processes. Both groups use automated systems—trading algorithms and repricers—to execute decisions at electronic speed, gaining a structural advantage....
Uber Launches $5 Doorstep Return Pickups for Uber Eats Purchases Across 5,000 US Cities
Uber has introduced a $5 "Return a Package" service within the Uber Eats app, offering on‑demand pickup of items for return in roughly 5,000 U.S. cities. The feature works with nine retail partners, including Target, Best Buy and Dick’s Sporting Goods,...
Interac, Kijiji Partner to Raise the Bar on Trust in Peer-to-Peer Commerce
Interac and Kijiji have teamed up to embed Interac Verified identity checks into Canada’s biggest peer‑to‑peer marketplace. The integration lets users confirm their identity via participating banks, with a document‑verification option slated for later this year. Kijiji, which hosts over...
Newly Unsealed Records Reveal Amazon's Price-Fixing Tactics
California’s antitrust case against Amazon has unsealed deposition records showing the e‑commerce giant used Buy Box suppression to pressure third‑party sellers into raising prices on rival platforms such as Walmart, Target, and Wayfair. Sellers testified that a one‑cent price difference...
The $5 Photo Shoot: How a Small Austin Jewelry Brand Stopped Waiting and Started Producing
A husband‑and‑wife jewelry brand in Austin used the AI image generator Nano Banana to create lifestyle product photos in seconds, paying only five cents per image. In one afternoon they produced over 40 new assets that previously required costly photo...
Edible Arrangements Entices Early Mother’s Day Buying to Ease Operational Bottlenecks
Edible Arrangements is leveraging shopper data to push early Mother’s Day purchases, offering targeted discounts to reduce last‑minute order spikes that strain its 650‑store franchise network. The brand is also revamping its mobile app with gift quizzes, reminders and a...
Salesupply and BrandOn Group Announce Partnership
Dutch ecommerce provider Salesupply has teamed up with Italy’s BrandOn Group to create a unified cross‑border solution for Italian brands. Salesupply, which supports more than 500 online retailers with fulfillment and customer‑service capabilities, will supply its logistics network across Europe....
Does Best Buy Price Match? Everything to Know About Matching Prices Online and In-Store
Best Buy’s Price Match Guarantee lets shoppers obtain the lower pre‑tax price of a new, in‑stock item when a listed competitor offers it. The policy applies to 20 approved retailers—including Amazon, Costco and Target—but excludes marketplace, clearance, refurbished, open‑box and member‑only...
KELLEY WILLIAMSON LAUNCHES KELLEY KOUTURE, A MODERN LUXURY FOOTWEAR BRAND REDEFINING FASHION AND FUNCTION
Kelley Kouture, a modern luxury footwear brand handcrafted in Italy, launched its e‑commerce site kelleykouture.com on April 17, 2026. Founded by Virginia entrepreneur Kelley Powell Williamson, the line blends high‑fashion silhouettes with orthopedic‑grade comfort, featuring an adjustable two‑piece “K Heel”...
Glovo Set to Hold “Future of Commerce Summit 2.0” In Lagos
Glovo will host the Future of Commerce Summit 2.0 on April 22, 2026 in Lagos, bringing together government officials, entrepreneurs, and industry leaders. The event aims to discuss emerging trends and challenges in Nigeria’s commerce and logistics sectors. Interim General Manager Reni Onafeko...
Google’s AI Mode Can Now Help You Find Products in Stock Nearby
Google is expanding AI Mode to let users locate in‑stock products at nearby stores and track prices for specific hotels. The store‑check feature enables the AI to call local retailers based on natural‑language requests, rolling out in the United States...
Research: What China’s AI Agents Reveal About the Future of Commerce
Chinese super‑app Meituan launched the Xiaomei AI agent in late 2025, positioning it as an orchestrator‑plus‑execution tool that can place orders and handle delivery without user screen interaction. This marks the rise of “agentic commerce,” where AI agents not only...
Eroski Lets Customers Shop via WhatsApp and Delivers Within an Hour
Spanish retailer Eroski has launched Eroski Smart Shop, allowing customers to place grocery orders through WhatsApp and receive deliveries within an hour. The service is being piloted in nine Bilbao stores for a one‑year trial. Eroski will track usage, satisfaction,...
Google’s Product Feed Strategy Points To The Future Of Retail Discovery via @Sejournal, @Brookeosmundson
Google is repositioning Merchant Center product feeds as the backbone of retail discovery across its ecosystem, including Search, YouTube, Maps, Lens and AI‑driven formats. The company cites more than 1 billion daily shopping interactions and 20 billion Lens visual searches per month,...
Uber Eats Launches Retail Returns Feature
Uber Eats introduced a retail returns feature that lets customers schedule a courier to pick up purchased items and receive refunds, a first for on‑demand delivery. The service launches with Best Buy, DICK’S Sporting Goods, Petco, Pacsun and Pet Food Express...
Uber Eats App to Start Picking Up Customers’ Returns for Thousands of Retail Locations
Uber Eats is rolling out an in‑app returns feature, letting customers send eligible retail purchases back via a courier or self‑drop without leaving home. The service launches Friday for thousands of U.S. stores, including Best Buy, Dick’s Sporting Goods, PacSun, Petco...
Universal Music Group Launches Everything Jazz, a New Global Digital Platform for Jazz Music and Culture
Universal Music Group’s Global Classics & Jazz division launched Everything Jazz, a new digital platform and online store dedicated to jazz music and culture. Developed with major labels including Blue Note, Verve, Impulse! and ECM, the service combines catalog and...
Nvidia RTX 5070 Spotted at Rare MSRP Price in Woot Flash Sale — Move Fast to Secure a Bargain, 38%...
Tom’s Hardware reports a flash sale on the MSI RTX 5070 Ventus, priced at $549—38% below its $889 MSRP and $340 less than the typical market price of $629. The discount is limited to a four‑day window and applies to brand‑new...
AI Is Accelerating Commerce, but Service-Led AI Is Where Brands Win
AI‑driven agentic commerce is surging, with AI‑referenced shopping traffic up 693% YoY in late 2025 and still 527% higher in early 2026. While social commerce still leads referral growth, brands are finding the biggest upside by embedding AI directly into...
RunDTC Partners with Dooney & Bourke to Modernize Retail Ecosystem
RunDTC has been hired by luxury accessories maker Dooney & Bourke to overhaul its retail ecosystem, moving the brand’s global e‑commerce sites from Salesforce Commerce Cloud to Shopify and installing Shopify POS in all brick‑and‑mortar locations. The migration promises faster site performance,...
EBANX Expands Into Southeast Asia and Turkey as Cross-Border Demand Grows in $610B Market
EBANX, Brazil's leading cross‑border payments platform, announced its entry into Southeast Asia and Turkey, adding six new country operations to its portfolio. The move targets the $610 billion global cross‑border e‑commerce market, which is expanding at double‑digit rates. EBANX will offer...
Rithum SupplyExplorer – Discover and Connect with High-Value Suppliers
Rithum has launched SupplyExplorer, an AI‑driven platform that helps retailers discover and connect with high‑value suppliers. The core Merchant Match module generates curated supplier recommendations based on a retailer’s categories, growth priorities, and business needs. Complementary Network Profiles provide supplier‑controlled...
Bigbasket Appoints Arpit Jaiswal as Chief Growth Officer
BigBasket, the Tata‑owned online grocery platform, has hired Arpit Jaiswal as Chief Growth Officer to drive profitable expansion across products, user acquisition, retention, and new markets. Jaiswal arrives from Google Pay, where he oversaw AI‑led user growth and disciplined P&L...
Syndigo and DetailPage Partner to Improve Digital Shelf Performance, Conversion, and AI-Powered Search Visibility
Syndigo, a global product experience management leader, has partnered with DetailPage, an analytics platform that translates shopper‑driven signals into actionable content insights. The joint solution embeds these insights into Syndigo’s content workflows, allowing brands to prioritize edits that boost AI‑powered...
This Is Not Any Old Loyalty Scheme Refresh, Its an M&S Loyalty Scheme Refresh
British retailer Marks & Spencer has overhauled its Sparks loyalty programme, introducing AI‑driven, personalised rewards that refresh each Tuesday. The revamp, promoted with a campaign starring Emily Atack, adds real‑money credits usable across the entire M&S range and integrates new...
RIP QVC: Why Shoppers Switched Off the Channel that Changed Retail
QVC, the pioneering home‑shopping network launched in 1986, announced a Chapter 11 filing after its holding group succumbed to $6.6 billion of debt and more than $2.4 billion in 2025 losses. Viewership plummeted 61% since 2020, and the company’s linear, host‑driven model failed...
Bleckmann Partners Australian Swimwear Brand for First EU Logistics Base
Bleckmann has partnered with Australian swimwear label Kulani Kinis to launch the brand’s first European logistics hub in Venlo, Netherlands. The move shifts warehousing, order fulfilment and returns from Australia to Europe, cutting delivery times from up to six days...
OTP Ventures Leads Pre-Seed Round in Fragrance Brand FIFTH SENSE
FIFTH SENSE, a Gurugram‑based D2C fragrance startup, raised a pre‑seed round of ₹6.3 crore (≈ $760,000) led by OTP Ventures, with participation from Sadev Ventures, ISV Capital and angels including Swiggy CEO Rohit Kapoor. The funding will fuel expansion of its product...
Australia's Kulani Kinis Inks European Distribution Partnership with Bleckmann
Australian swimwear label Kulani Kinis has signed a European distribution agreement with Dutch logistics specialist Bleckmann. The partnership gives Kulani Kinis access to warehousing, order fulfillment and returns processing at Bleckmann’s Venlo hub, marking the brand’s first physical logistics footprint...
Quick Commerce Turning to Reset Lane as Profit Push Tempers Growth Metrics
Quick‑commerce leaders Blinkit and Instamart are expected to show slower growth in Q1 FY26 as they shift toward profitability. Blinkit’s net order value is projected to rise 67‑99% YoY, down from double‑digit growth, while Instamart’s gross order value is forecast...
Disney’s New Limited-Time “Disney Store” Concept Is Bringing Back What Fans Miss Most
Disney is launching a limited‑time "Disney Store" concept, debuting first in Pittsburgh’s Ross Park Mall on May 23, 2026 and later in New Jersey’s Westfield Garden State Plaza. The pop‑up blends the convenience of shopDisney with immersive, in‑person experiences, featuring exclusive merchandise, opening...
Ecommerce Trends: How Etsy Is Using AI
Etsy is accelerating growth by embedding AI across its marketplace, from consumer‑facing search and instant checkout powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT to seller‑side automation. The company has forged partnerships with OpenAI, Google and Microsoft to explore agentic commerce, a conversational shopping...
Alcohol Retailers Awaiting Digital Age Checks Lay Out What They Want From a Solution
UK alcohol retailers are pressing for practical digital‑ID age‑assurance solutions after the promised rollout by Christmas 2025 failed to materialise. At the 2026 Global Age Assurance Standards Summit, representatives from Co‑op, Tesco, Marks & Spencer and others outlined core requirements:...
How Ebay’s Trading Card Marketplace TCGPlayer Is Using Xerox to Expand, Maintain ‘Trust’ With Magic: The Gathering, ‘Pokemon’ and ‘One...
eBay‑owned TCGPlayer launched the Roca Sifter, an automation device that identifies, prices and sorts trading‑card‑game cards without damaging them, thanks to a partnership with Xerox. The company says the Sifter works through sleeves, lowering costs for game stores and expanding trust...