#e-commerce

#e-commerce

Piles of folded sweaters and polo shirts cascaded into disorder, their tags boasting incremental markdowns that seemed to shout over one another. The escalator, unmaintained for close to a year, stood inert. Nervous-looking shoppers bouldered their way up its heavy corrugated steps in search of washrooms or the closest exit to the parking lot. All the beauty counters featured displays which had been denuded to East German levels of bare.

Pinterest is opening the floodgates for creators to monetize their content for the first time, permitting both the tagging of Ideas Pins with shoppable products and brand partnerships with sponsored content. The income streams are open to anyone with a business account, removing friction between the point of inspiration and a purchase decision by linking directly to in-stock items on the retailer's website.

"Our organization has become slow and inefficient," Heaf said. "Unnecessary complexity has reduced our speed and dampened our innovation."

The world's largest online retailer says this amounts to "computer fraud" when not disclosed. The clash between the two companies offers "an early glimpse into a looming debate" over "agentic artificial intelligence." Perplexity is among several tech firms, including Google and OpenAI, racing "to rethink the traditional web browser around AI," with automated agents that can complete tasks like emailing or shopping.

European Union finance ministers have agreed to impose customs duties on low-value parcels entering the bloc at some point next year, scrapping the long-standing "de minimis" exemption for goods under €150 (or $175). The move is seen as a way to slow the flood of cheap Chinese imports from platforms such as Shein and Temu. These goods now account for the bulk of the EU's 4.6 billion small parcels a year, more than 90% of which came from China.

Amazon's e-commerce business, which was shaky for several quarters, has made a major comeback. Revenue at its core North American business rose to $106 billion from $96 billion in the same quarter a year ago. Operating income dipped slightly to $5 billion. Revenue in its cloud business, which is considered its growth engine, rose from $27 billion to $33 billion year over year.

This growing exposure to foreign pricing, product range and service standards is subtly rewriting what people expect when buying locally. You now have instant access to global benchmarks, sometimes without even realising it. The simplicity of comparing multiple international sites in one place has normalised the idea that every transaction should be transparent, fast and competitively priced. The result is that British shoppers, once content with familiar high-street names, are beginning to demand the same level of choice and speed they experience from abroad.

While Nvidia ( NASDAQ:NVDA ) has delivered almost 1,200% over the past three years, and Palantir Technologies ( NASDAQ:PLTR ) has outperformed even that, with gains of 2,370%. Yet one stock has surpassed both of them - combined. AppLovin ( ) has posted a jaw-dropping 3,980% return over the same period, and there is no reason to believe it won't keep on growing going forward.

When Chinese fast-fashion online retailer Shein opened its first boutique last week there were both protests and a crowd of shoppers. The brick-and-mortar shop inside the BHV Marais department store in central Paris hit a nerve and not just because it is in the home of haute couture. It was a love-hate response to company seen in many other areas.

On Friday, Amazon announced the debut of Amazon Bazaar, a new low-cost shopping destination for Asia, Africa and Latin America that will be available separately from the main Amazon shopping app. On Bazaar, most products are available under $10, and some are as low as $2, the retailer says. Amazon says more markets will gain access to the app in the months ahead.

"It's very clear that live shopping in the US is going to be a huge, huge, huge market," Lafontaine told me. "And it's definitely going to be one of those shifts we see in e-commerce over the next 5 to 10 years. It's sort of been happening in Asia over the past decade or so, where upwards of $1 trillion worth of products are being sold through live video in China."

The e-commerce shift saw shoppers move over to Amazon and Walmart online for office supplies, while less demand saw remote and hybrid work sharply reduce office supply needs. There's also a foot traffic drop, where in-store visits and small-business purchasing both declined.

MercadoLibre (NASDAQ: MELI) will report third-quarter results after the bell Tuesday. Last quarter, MELI posted revenue of $6.79 billion, up 30% year-on-year, but missed EPS forecasts as normalized earnings came in at $10.31 versus consensus of $11.75, a 12% downside surprise. Despite the margin pressure from free-shipping and marketing campaigns, management reiterated confidence that these initiatives will accelerate user engagement and long-term monetization.

Absorb LMS is a well-known name in the corporate learning world. It gets a lot of attention for its deep e-commerce engine, making it a common choice for businesses that sell training. The learning platform also efficiently manages complex external training programs for customers, franchises, or partners. But no single learning management system, even a very capable one, can be the perfect tool for every company.

VeJa is a company that creates guitar plugins simulating amplifiers for music production. They were selling exclusively on the MOD Devices platform but wanted to expand their reach with their own online store. The challenge? They had great products, a loyal niche following, but no website. Just a logo. And us. The brief was simple: Our bootcamp team of three had just 8 days to prototype a e-commerce platform that would help VeJa compete