And eBay why this? Why now? Myself Hendrik Laubscher were joined on a post Valentines Day nostalgic walk down Saly lake City Drive reminiscing of better days. Is history repeating itself? We have been critical of eBay over the years and it is a lack of identity we talk about, not performancel Indeed, under Jamie Iannone they are on a nice trajectory and Q4 did Q4 things for them. But growth is hard to come by, so bully for them.

Is this purchase a defensive move against Vinted or is this just a tiredd acquisition strategy. We got in on Whatnot and getting back to core among many other things. Watch this full episode of the Ostrich Report to see where we land see if you agree.

eBay internally said they wanted to crush amazon, externally they said they do not want to be Amazon. mission accomplished for the wrong reasons. But do ebay get a bad rap? Are they exactly what David Marcus talked about last week in his PayPal address? Should we celebrate middle of the road or are they quietly ambitious - PLacing bets every few years not afraid to offload when the pressure is high (unliek Drake Maye, maybe he is just too young).

Ostrich Report doing Ostrich report things - Sorry, Ben is hidden by the banner in the final version !! NNNooooooo

Jamie runs the marketplace business at Dr. Squatch, with a heavy focus on Amazon plus retail.com 1P. She’s not a “thought leader,” she’s the person who has to make the numbers work every 90 days.

A few threads we pulled on:

Marketplace Inception = a P&L inside a P&L.

Jamie’s team owns the whole thing end to end:

What to sell

How to get it into Amazon

How to price, bundle & merchandise it

How to put media behind it without destroying the margin.

If you’re promising +25% YoY on Amazon, you better understand what that actually entails operationally.

📦 1P vs 3P the knife fight.

We unpacked:

Why running 3P means owning the inventory.

How bundles become your secret weapon.

The real trade-off.

Cannibalization is out, incrementality is in

Two years ago, everyone was panicking:

“Is Amazon cannibalizing my DTC?”

Today Jamie’s more focused on:

“How do I prove incrementality of media and new product launches across channels?”

Jamie is magical. A caring, natural leader who listens and learns. A clasic practitioner who trusts her team. This enables success. Admittedly, she is a nerd for this stuff, but maybe you gotta be.

Jamie spends 20–30% of her time inside the numbers. First tab open: yesterday’s sales in Seller Central. Then deeper analytics Squatch has built in-house.

The bit most brands won’t say out loud:

Every channel has horrible blind spots.

Amazon just happens to give you enough data to keep you hooked and “just informed enough” to keep spending.

You win on Amazon by owning intent.

We debate whether AI agents will:

Supercharge big CPGs with deep pockets.

Or reward the brands who are faster at updating content, testing, and staying “recent” in LLMs.

Jamie’s view: we’re still early, there’s a lot of buzzword bingo, and the real work is still growth & media strategy, not AI theatre.

Culture > strategy (especially in marketplaces)

We also get into how she:

Runs a distributed, multi-time-zone team.

Keeps marketplace from being a weird silo off to the side.

This is a whopper episode.

Shares data & reporting so the rest of the business actually uses marketplace insights instead of treating Amazon like a dark art.

Oh, and yes, we did manage to talk about Star Wars soap, Chewbacca as a scent choice, and why marketplaces should still be fun.

…this episode will either make you feel seen or mildly attacked. Maybe both. Presented with our good friends from EVOLVE Commerce Club our communuty partner.

Episode here:

There are cultural moments. And then once a year China lights the ecommerce beacons, JD.com flexes its fulfilment biceps, and the rest of us sit there whispering:

“How… in the actual…?”

Welcome to our latest episode of The Ostrich Report, where Hendrik Laubscher and I dove beak-first into Singles Day 2025 the shopping festival that casually moved $238.3 billion in the time it takes most Western brands to agree on “final-final-final creative.”

And this year?

It wasn’t just big.

It was absurd.

The Headline Numbers (aka: “Your CFO Just Fainted”),.695 trillion yuan in GMV roughly the GDP of Greece, Portugal, AND the HSE’s full budget for the next 7.8 years… combined.

Growth? +14.2% YoY. Slower, yes but scale so large the Richter scale needs a side extension.

Instant retail (1-hour delivery) up 138.4%, because apparently patience is dead.

JD.com:

+40% shoppers

+60% orders & a cross-border expansion so broad it should probably get its own airline.

80 brands smashed 100M yuan in the first hour. Apple did it in, checks notes, minutes. And because we love perspective around here…

One Singles Day = 57% of Apple’s annual global revenue

One Singles Day = 37% of Amazon’s annual earnings

One Singles Day = all of NASA… for nine years

One Singles Day = New York City… for two years

One Singles Day = Ireland’s entire health system… nine times over

(Yes. Nine.)

If your eyes are watering, that’s normal. Mine did too.

Trends That Would Have Looked Unrealistic in a 2011 PowerPoint.

AI everything: tablets up 200%, smart glasses tripled, and consumers apparently fine with having their homes talk back to them.

Beauty brands went nuclear: 79 brands crossed 100M yuan BEFORE some of us finished our morning coffee.

The Chinese consumer is now the world’s most disciplined bargain-hunter with a black belt in “value.”

The campaign lasted 33 days we’re basically at “Singles Quarter” now.

Western Brands: The Overachievers’ Club

Apple cleared last year’s full-day total in two hours.

Nike likely crossed $1B in Singles Day sales again.

L’Oréal, Estée Lauder, Lancôme all hit 100M yuan in under 10 minutes.

Xiaomi casually reported $4.1B on its own.

Somewhere, a performance-marketing team whispered, “Are you not entertained?”

🎙️ So Why Are We Talking About This on The Ostrich Report?

Because Singles Day is, well, It’s big.

It’s fun.

It’s unhinged in places.

And it’s a reminder that the world’s largest ecommerce event still makes Black Friday look like a quiet Tuesday at Woodie’s.

🧵 Full Episode Drops Now

If you like marketplaces, cross-border chaos, nerdy context, or two grown men laughing at trillion-yuan events, this one’s for you.

🎧 All other epsiodes are here:

🎙️💵Amazon: https://bit.ly/3LAKds4

🎙️🍏Apple: https://apple.co/47zGjIu

🎙️🎚️Spotify: https://bit.ly/47TmAlV

🎙️📺Youtube: https://bit.ly/4nWYSLz

📈 24.7 million EU customers between April and August 2024.

🚀 By June 2025, that figure will hit 150 million active users.

💶 $1.2 billion in revenue from Europe alone.

💰 $120 million in profit, yes, profit, not “adjusted EBITDA.”

And they did it all by flipping the script: cross-border → credibility → local integration.

They’ve gone from “that Chinese discount app” to the default shopping channel in countries like Italy and Portugal, where 92% of consumers say buying direct from manufacturers saves them money without sacrificing quality.

Let’s be honest: Europe didn’t invite Temu in, Amazon’s complacency and eBay’s nostalgia did.

While old giants debated logistics and ad margins, Temu quietly built trust through delivery, gamification, and pricing transparency. You can now buy garden furniture in Ireland and get it in four days. eBay still can’t do that.

And that’s the part that should make every retailer nervous. Because 63% of shoppers already prefer marketplaces over brand sites, and 56% of those are impulse purchases. If you’re not there when the urge strikes, someone else is.

Meanwhile, brands selling on 3+ marketplaces grow 4.5x faster than those that don’t. My feedonomics report last year.

That’s new money. This is Arbitrage.

But here’s an uncomfortable question:

What happens when the most efficient marketplace on earth is also the least politically palatable?

Geopolitics will decide as much as strategy here. In the Nordics, 3 in 4 consumers say Temu increases price transparency. In the US, regulators call it a data Trojan horse. Both can be true.

So what do we do, block it, beat it, or learn from it?

Because whether you love or loathe Temu, you can’t deny one thing:

It’s teaching the West a painful lesson, speed, simplicity, and scale still win.

And if Europe is the battleground for trust and convenience, Temu just showed up with the biggest army we’ve ever seen.

🎙 Full episode now live: “Orange Is the New Commerce”, Hendrik and I unpack how Temu pulled off the fastest retail land grab since Amazon Prime.

💬 Question for you:

If Temu can win consumer trust this quickly, what excuse do Western marketplaces have left?

Proudly supported by our community partner EVOLVE Commerce Club

Subscribe now

🔮 Next Up

In our next episode, we dive into Temu’s explosive European growth the platform every EU regulator loves to hate. Expect strong opinions, questionable metaphors, and maybe a group therapy session for legacy retailers.

💸 Oh, and Sponsors…

We’re still looking for them.

If you’re a brave brand that wants your logo sitting next to this chaos, reach out. It’s cheaper than Google Ads and way more fun.

Episode 10 is here:

https://lnkd.in/ecNVXa4T

It’s a discipline.A way of thinking.A toolkit for solving problems across any industry.

Once you’ve learned to build and manage marketplaces, you start to see systems everywhere.The restaurant kitchen is just a fulfillment center with higher stakes. A hotel lobby is a loyalty program waiting to be optimized. Even real estate starts to look like product listings, search filters, and conversion funnels.

That’s Rafael’s gift: taking the mindset forged in Brazil’s early eCommerce boom and applying it everywhere from Switzerland’s hospitality industry to AI-driven transformation projects today.

Some moments that hit hardest:

👉 “If you can build a marketplace, you can probably build any eCommerce business.” 👉 Marketplaces aren’t one-dimensional. You’re serving multiple “customers”: buyers, sellers, developers, and ecosystems. Balance or bust. 👉 AI isn’t just a buzzword, right now it’s about productivity. Next wave? Personalization. Think of it as the industrial revolution for intellectual work. 👉 Hospitality taught him that speed changes everything. Deliver food in 15 minutes or fail. That kind of timing discipline should terrify every retail exec. 👉 Coming from Latin America gave him adaptability muscles most of Europe doesn’t even know it needs.

This is why I love conversations like this,  they remind us that commerce is not a department, it’s a lens. Whether you’re selling sneakers, steaks, or square meters, the same underlying logic applies: systems, people, and the flow of value.

And that’s exactly what The Ostrich Report is here to explore. Honest, global stories that cut through the noise and show how commerce is really evolving.

🎧 Episode 1 is live now: Rafael Barini on marketplaces, AI, and the cultural power of adaptability. [Insert Spotify/Apple link here]

A big thanks to our community partner Evolve Commerce Club (where Rafael is also a proud member) for being part of this journey with us. And yes,  we are still looking for a headline sponsor to grow this show. If you believe in honest conversations about the future of global commerce, my inbox is open.

Big thanks again to Rafael for setting the tone for our very first guest episode, and Hendrik, you’d better bring the heat when you’re back on!

#ecommerce #marketplaces #AI #TheOstrichReport

Learn How How a former Wetherspoons kitchen worker built a freeze-dried sweet brand that sold 40,000 products on Temu in just two months — without spending a penny on ads.

This week on The Ostrich Report we sat down with Rhys Sandford of Exploded Sweets and, honestly, it was a masterclass in modern marketplace selling.

Rhys told us:

“No one ever buys something the first time they see it. You’ve got to constantly have these implants into people’s brains… where we currently use at Exploded Sweets, this cross-platform approach of being in people’s faces. People’s attention spans at the minute – they’ll scroll through 100 TikTok videos within ten minutes… having that cross-platform advertisement helps build those imprints into people quite early on.”

💥 Key numbers that stopped us in our tracks:
– 40,000 units sold on Temu within the first 2 months.
– 500 units sold in the first 3 days of launch.
– One customer placed 48 separate orders in 6 months.
– New product ideas turned around in days, not months.
– Feedback loops as fast as 3–5 days from purchase to implementation.

💡 What we learned from Rhys:
– Marketplaces aren’t just sales channels; they’re real-time R&D labs.
– Cross-platform discoverability isn’t copy/paste — you need unique twists for each platform.
– A culture of listening + iteration beats a big ad budget.
– Early adoption is a test lab, not a gamble. Rhys used Temu to refine products and discover new demographics (older generations as well as parents/kids).
– Speed is the new moat: feedback Monday, change Thursday, higher-quality product by Friday.

🍭 Why this matters:
Most CPG brands are still fighting algorithms, paying to get seen, and waiting weeks for insights. Rhys built a feedback loop so tight it turns sweets into data points and customers into collaborators.

Hendrik called it “utopia” during the recording. I called it a “unicorn” moment. If you sell on marketplaces (or want to), this is your wake-up call.

🎧 Listen to the full episode of The Ostrich Report here: [insert link]
Tagging my co-hosts [@HendrikLaubscher] and [@VinnyOBrien] and giving a nod to our community partners at Evolve Commerce Club for helping us surface stories like this.

For prospective sellers, visit Temu's seller portal at https://seller.temu.com/

Temu (yes, “Team-oo”) isn’t a sideshow anymore. It’s a $B+ engine of cross-border commerce, a logistics experiment running at TikTok speed, and a masterclass in how to make Western consumers rethink price, trust, and delivery promises. Everyone you meet in ecommerce has an opinion — good, bad, indifferent. This week we rewind to fast-forward: we set the scene, we break down the real story of Temu, and we ask whether its model is a warning sign, a blueprint…or both.

“You can tell by the way I wear my shirt, I’m a Temu guy.”
It started as a joke on the show. But it’s also a signal. Marketplaces like Temu are no longer fringe – they’re mainstream, and they’re already reshaping the playbooks brands, agencies and SIs thought were safe.

We dig into:
– How Temu is rewriting the rules of value and velocity.
– Why its model creates both irresistible reach and uncomfortable risk.
– What Western brands can (and can’t) copy.
– The bigger question: is “cheap” a moat or a time bomb?

This isn’t your typical “hot-take” podcast. We’re building a real community around unfiltered marketplace talk. Evolve Commerce Club are our community partner on The Ostrich Report — bringing founders, brand operators, agency leads, and curious industry nerds together around each episode.

And yes — we’re looking for a sponsor. If your company wants to sit at the intersection of global marketplaces, brand strategy and unvarnished conversation, our DMs are open. This is where ecommerce people actually talk like ecommerce people.

Over the next few weeks, we’re bringing some truly global, wildly talented guests to the show — operators and thinkers who’ve built, scaled and sometimes burned down the very models everyone else is still copying. It’s going to be unmissable.

🎙️ Episode 7 — “Temu, Kermit & the Future of Value” — is live now. Watch, listen, share, argue, tag the friend who swears Temu is a fad, and then tell us what you think.

In this episode, we unpack:

• The magic of eBay’s early years — when auctions, Beanie Babies, and broken laser pointers defined the internet.

• The one big thing eBay missed (hint: logistics + payments = Amazon’s crown, not eBay’s).

• The cultural highs and management lows — from PayPal to Skype to “why does eBay still feel like a flea market?”

• What founders and brands today can still learn from eBay’s wins and its missteps.

As Hendrik put it back then: “To understand eBay you have to understand ecommerce.” Thirty years later, that lesson still stands — even if eBay isn’t the one teaching it anymore.

This week we put the Ostrich in Ostrich Report by burying our heads deep into one of the most head-scratching deals of the year: JD.com spending €2.5B to buy Ceconomy, the German parent company of MediaMarkt and Saturn.

Yes, JD — the Chinese giant that was born an online retailer, flirted with marketplace models, wandered into logistics, cloud, and other shiny objects — is now buying two of Germany’s most traditional electronics retailers.

If you think this sounds like Amazon buying RadioShack in 2025, you’re not alone.

💡 Why this matters

• Amazon Germany is the marketplace gorilla, owning the customer relationship and the search bar. JD isn’t walking into an open field — they’re walking into an Amazon-owned parking lot.

• Germany’s retail culture is famously conservative. Family-owned businesses, slow digital adoption, and an in-person-first mentality. Perfect conditions for a Chinese e-commerce titan… said no one, ever.

• MediaMarkt & Saturn are legacy names with massive store networks. Great for physical reach, but also great for draining cash if the pivot to omnichannel fails.

🎯 Key questions we ask in this episode:

1. Is JD buying growth or buying a headache?

2. Will they try to “China-fy” the German market or adapt to it?

3. Is this a play to hedge against Temu and Shein eating their lunch at home?

4. If this fails — and JD does not have a glowing history of European success — what’s Plan B?

5. Is this a long-term strategic anchor or just an expensive LinkedIn announcement?

🔥 Hendrik’s take: This could be the M&A of the year in Europe — if it works. But history says Chinese e-commerce players have a tough time in European retail. Logistics strength means nothing if the consumer doesn’t want your basket.

🔥 Vinny’s take: The boldness is admirable, but so is jumping into the Atlantic in January — doesn’t mean it’s sensible.

If you’re into deals where corporate strategy meets cultural friction, and you want your retail M&A with a side of sarcasm, Episode 6 delivers.

🎧 Listen here before JD releases a “synergy roadmap” PDF full of clip-art and German buzzwords.

#Ecommerce #Retail #Marketplaces #MergersAndAcquisitions #TheOstrichReport

🎙️The Ostrich Report Ep 5 just dropped, and if nostalgia had a stock price, we'd all be rich… until activist investors spun it off for parts. Say his name Hendrik Laubscher - Humperdink (IYKYK)

Three big takeaways from our gloriously unhinged post-mortem on eBay's ‘meh decade’:

🔥 1. eBay didn’t lose its edge. It sold it.

“If eBay executed and innovated, we wouldn’t have seen The RealReal, StockX… or even Zillow.”

They were first to everything. Trust, buyer protection, vertical communities, Skype integration before Zoom was even born. But somewhere between 2005 and Carl Icahn’s morning espresso, they swapped imagination for margins. There, I said it.

💸 2. Innovation died in San Jose. It’s been replaced with Excel.

“We’re doing nothing and we’re happy about doing nothing.”

From spinning out PayPal under pressure to flopping the Skype play twice, eBay mistook "innovation" for "cash-out." Spoiler: The CEO who green-lit PayPal’s spin-off became Chairman of PayPal. Misalignment? Or just Silicon Valley's version of dating your ex’s richer sibling? In many reality shows, this seems to be normalized.

🪦 3. AI isn’t the future at eBay. Apparently, advertising is.

“We are in mid-2025, and I’ve yet to see any mention of how eBay plans to use AI. But ad spend? That’s the hill they’re dying on.”

While competitors like Amazon and Walmart build fortress-like AI ecosystems, eBay hands over its crown jewels (read: data) to third parties like Perplexity, hoping nobody notices the silence.

We asked: Can eBay come back?

And we answered: Sure, if Yahoo did.

This isn’t just a requiem for eBay, it’s a warning for any company that confuses shareholder value with customer value, or that thinks maintaining the status quo is a strategy.

You can be the tortoise in a race… but not if you keep selling your shell for parts.

🚨 The Ostrich Report: Episode 3 is out now! 🚨
🎙️ Starring: Two ecommerce nerds with more opinions than hair—Me and Hendrik Laubscher.

This week we tackle checks notes … whatever we felt like talking about for 25 minutes before running out of coffee and credibility.

✨ What’s inside? ✨

• Lukewarm takes on TikTok Shop

• Audible sighs about Amazon

• Some borderline slander (lawyers, let’s chat)

• And a moment of silence for our career prospects

📉 We are now 3 episodes deep and dangerously close to becoming LinkedIn’s version of Wayne’s World—but with worse lighting and more ecommerce charts.

But wait… Episode 4 is our love letter to eBay.
Our first ecommerce crush. The original garage sale of the internet. The reason we still sort our socks by “Buy It Now.”
💔 She ghosted us for years… but we’re ready to talk.

🧾 We’re also now actively (and shamelessly) looking for sponsors.
Do you sell a B2B SaaS product that automates literally anything?
Do you have a newsletter with fewer subscribers than us?
Do you own a fax machine and want to see it on camera?
We’ll partner with you. Just DM us before our parents make us get real jobs.

👇 Watch Episode 3 below and subscribe before we get shadowbanned by Shopify:

#TheOstrichReport #ecommerce #marketplaces #eBay #sponsorusplz #B2Bdesperation

• Why marketplaces are multiplying faster than AI bros on LinkedIn

• The real reason brands cry in the shower after selling on Amazon

• What the hell is going on in cross-border trade (and who’s profiting from the chaos)

• And how Shopify*, *Shein*, and *Temu might secretly be roommates in a very weird sitcom

Expect sarcasm. Expect strong opinions. Expect at least one tech reference no one fully understands. And if you're in the ecommerce game and NOT watching this? You're basically doing business blindfolded in a minefield.🎬 Watch, comment, like, and subscribe – or don’t. We’re not your mum.#TheOstrichReport #EcommerceUnfiltered #MarketplaceMayhem #GlobalTradeTea #PilotEpisode #SarcasmIncluded