#e-commerce

#e-commerce

OpenAI brings ChatGPT Go plan to 16 more Asian countries OpenAI is expanding its affordable ChatGPT Go plan, priced under $5, to 16 new countries across Asia, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Maldives, Thailand, Vietnam, and Pakistan. In some of these countries, users can pay in local currencies, while in others, payments are required in USD, with final costs varying due to local taxes.

This summer, POKS Spices announced a somber business update on Instagram: After nine years of building a dedicated following on its own website, the West African seasoning company had decided to shift all product sales to Amazon. The choice is one many small entrepreneurs must make to survive-either stake their entire future on the e-commerce giant or shut down entirely.

The move will give more than 200,000 UK-based TikTok Shop sellers access to Royal Mail's full range of services - from parcel collections and tracked delivery to drop-off points and compensation cover - through a seamless integration designed to make online selling easier, faster, and more reliable.

Germany's Federal Cartel Office on Wednesday announced an investigation into Chinese e-commerce giant Temu, saying it wanted to examine conditions for traders and the company's treatment of the suppliers it relies upon to sell products. "Each month more than 100 million users from European marketplaces visit temu.com," Andreas Mundt, the president of the competition watchdog, said in a statement.

Google has added a new promotion option to Google Merchant Center. The new option is Google Wallet. Google doesn't detail what this promotion does but it likely lets you promote that you accept Google Wallet for purchases. This change was spotted by Gabriele Benedetti which was covered by Emmanuel Flossie who posted about it on LinkedIn and his blog - he wrote:

At first, Greg and Colin Cleghorn's approach involved acquiring distressed properties (usually at auction), renovating them, and leasing to tenants, followed by refinancing for further acquisitions, but once the brothers from Syracuse, NY, saw a need in the commercial space, they decided to pivot. Their success stemmed from a strategic shift to the commercial market driven by the rise in e-commerce.

ChatGPT users in the U.S. can now make Etsy and Shopify purchases within conversations, marking a next step towards the future of online shopping - both for consumers and the platforms that control product discovery, recommendation, and payments. In other words, OpenAI might be on the path to reshaping who holds power in e-commerce. OpenAI's new "Instant Checkout" feature is available to ChatGPT Pro, Plus, and Free logged-in users buying from U.S.-based Etsy sellers, with more than 1 million Shopify merchants like Glossier, Skims, Spanx, and Vuori "coming soon," per OpenAI.

ChatGPT users will now be able to make purchases in chat. Instant Checkout works with single-item purchases. It is available to US ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Free users. One of ChatGPT's biggest selling points is its ability to converse and fetch instant results without making you worry about traditional search engine keywords or result pages. As a result, many people turn to it as a shopping assistant -- and that experience just got a major upgrade.

It's the classic deserted desert island scenario: I have to pick just one stock that I would buy today and then hold forever. I can't move the goalposts by picking an exchange-traded fund (ETF) and I'm not planning to build a portfolio around this name. It's just one stock, and it will be my only investment for all time. All alone.

The first thing you see on Zara's homepage is a random product or collection, dropped in without context. No categories, no overview, just one item staring at you. It feels like starting a book from the middle. The description text is so small it might as well not exist. Unless you zoom in, you can't read it, which makes it useless and definitely not accessible.

Growth investors face a paradox: The best companies always look expensive, but waiting for "cheap" often means missing the compounding that builds fortunes. Recent volatility has cracked open entry points in three platforms growing 13% to 27% annually, with moats that deepen as they scale. Unlike the artificial intelligence (AI) darlings trading at 100 times sales, these businesses already generate meaningful cash while riding secular trends untouched by Fed cycles or politics. Read on to find out more about these three incredible growth stocks.

According to a release shared on the Sephora Newsroom, My Sephora Storefront allows influencers in the United States to build shoppable digital storefronts and share curated product recommendations with their followers. The platform, which seamlessly integrates with both Sephora.com and the Sephora app, was built in partnership with leading tech company Motom. Motom specializes in creator commerce affiliate programs. Sephora created My Sephora Storefront as part of their creator strategy efforts as well as to "reinforce" their leadership in the creator commerce space.

"Our agentic AI capabilities are designed to work seamlessly throughout the entire selling experience, which means sellers can go from handling every task themselves to collaborating with an intelligent assistant that works proactively on their behalf around the clock, while always keeping sellers in control," Amazon wrote in a press release. "Seller Assistant will be able to handle everything from routine operations to complex business strategy, so sellers can focus on innovation and growth."

Consumers have taken notice of the many challenges facing the economy; weakening labor conditions, the inflationary impact of tariffs, changes to the tax code, and a reprioritization of fiscal policy are all among the catalysts defining the outlook,

This funding from NatWest is a game-changer for us. It allows us to manage our cash flow more effectively, ensuring timely payments to our suppliers and preventing any disruptions in our supply chain. With this support, we're well-positioned to continue our growth trajectory and explore new market opportunities as well as building on our success in the US.

After college, I worked in sales for my mom during the day and packed orders at night. I didn't have a fashion degree. I just had a deep desire to build something that felt like me - bold, global, connected. The brand's identity is grounded in that relentless hustle and the belief that women can create their own rules and lifestyles.

This feature, which is only rolling out to the Amazon Shopping app on iOS for now, lets you pan your camera around a room or focus on a specific product. Amazon says Lens Live will use an object detection model to identify the products shown on your camera in real-time, and then compare them against the billions of products on its marketplace.

TikTok's US plans are up in the air due to a divest-or-ban law that puts its future in jeopardy. But it's still offering six-figure salaries to workers this year in key areas like e-commerce and artificial intelligence. It's sought to hire data scientists to sharpen its search algorithm, court workers to grow its e-commerce platform TikTok Shop, and bring in machine learning engineers to improve its content feed and recommendations.

Nike has consistently defined the future of athletic performance and style, and now the brand is expanding its reach through a new partnership with Amazon Fashion. The launch of Nike's dedicated storefront on Amazon marks a significant step in how consumers can discover and shop the brand, combining Nike's legacy of innovation with the convenience and accessibility of Amazon's global platform.

The intense rivalry among the three tech giants has showered Chinese consumers with dirt-cheap indulgences - bubble tea and lattes for as little as 1 Chinese yuan, or $0.14, and meals dropped at their door in under 30 minutes. It's not just food. As growth in China's traditional e-commerce slows, companies are racing into the new fast-delivery segment. "It can be flowers, it can be medications, it can be toiletries," Jason Yu, the managing director for Greater China at consumer insights company Kantar Worldpanel, told Business Insider.