In the midst of posting another blockbuster quarter, Amazon dropped the bombshell news that founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is stepping out of the top role in Q3 to become executive chairman. He will be replaced as CEO by AWS head Andy Jassy. Bezos started the $1.6 trillion company as a bookseller on the nascent internet in 1994.
Passport, a provider of international parcel shipping services, has raised $12 million in a Series A round to build out its parcel supply chain network for ecommerce and DTC brands. Funding for the round was secured by M13 and included participation from Resolute Ventures, Precursor, Kleiner Perkins, RiverPark and Republic.
You may have read somewhere that 2020 was an extremely disruptive year in every aspect of the retail industry. Ecommerce, already on a rapid trajectory, took off into the stratosphere as consumer flocked online. To take a look into what we can expect in 2021, four experts offer their views and some bold predictions.
In a linkup of major players, ecommerce platform Shopify, with more than 1 million merchants, has partnered with hugely popular Chinese video sharing site TikTok. A new TikTok channel on Shopify lets sellers can set up, manage and track campaigns natively within the platform, accessing a global audience of 800 million users.
ShipBob, a provider of third-party logistics with facilities in the U.S., Canada and Europe, has raised $68 million to fuel growth, expand its platform and more than double its global network, a signal of the significant venture capital flowing into logistics to support the ecommerce explosion. This brings the total raised to $130.5 million.
Companies that are resistant or slow to change face real threats from the emergence of a new group of DTC brands, boosted by technology, that can deliver a complete end-to-end customer experience. Laggards need to address their operations urgently, or risk being digitally leapfrogged and left behind by the pack of hungry DTCs.
Google has been busy on the ecommerce front lately, announcing a plan to drop commission fees for sellers who use its Buy on Google checkout service, while making its pilot-tested product recommendation engine publicly available to let sellers display more personalized offers.
Website design and builder firm Wix has enhanced its ecommerce solution by adding a number of capabilities, taking aim at market leader Shopify by giving SMBs an entire raft of tools to set up and run their e-shop without breaking the bank. Wix said the COVID-driven explosion in ecommerce accelerated its development plans.
Amazon is taking a serious run at counterfeit sellers on its marketplace, with the creation of a Counterfeit Crimes Unit that includes former federal prosecutors, investigators and data analysts. The company said it has limited counterfeit complaints to 0.1% of items listed, but legislators and media investigations have still taken it to task.
Walmart has made another move in the never-ending ecommerce battle with market leader Amazon, through an alliance with ecommerce platform titan Shopify that gives Shopify’s 1 million-plus merchants access to Walmart’s online marketplace.