The V Spot eCommerce Nearly news

#ecommerce Welcome to The V Spot. Your home for the ecommerce nearly news. This week in ecommerce, a lot happened… but not to me.#Amazon and Walmart are fighting over grocery delivery speeds. It’s like Formula 1, but the cars have turnips in the trunk. #Shopify wants you to sell globally. I’m still trying to sell locally like, to my neighbour. #Google is grading stores with AI. If my shop gets a C-, do I have to go to summer school? #Temu is still advertising everywhere. I saw an ad for Temu in my dream. I woke up holding a $4 Bluetooth speaker. #Klarna says it can now shop “based on your mood.” Great I hope it likes me better than I like myself.

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Amazon & Walmart – Grocery Delivery Wars (PYMNTS.com). Amazon and Walmart are racing to get you lettuce faster. I don’t care who wins just don’t put my bananas in the same bag as the frozen chicken.

Allbirds, Glossier & Other DTC Brands – AI Ad Spend (Retail Brew) DTC brands are spending big on AI ads. We’ve made machines good at selling socks. Now, can they match them?

Smart Packaging Market : Avery Dennison, Sealed Air (GlobeNewswire) Your product’s box can now tell you the humidity in your fridge. Awesome. Still can’t tell me where my missing sock went.

Retail Dive :Brick-and-Mortar vs. Digital (Retail Dive) People still like stores. Probably because websites don’t give out free cheese samples. There, I've cracked it Jack Stratten

ShipBob, DHL: Fulfillment Focus (Retail Tech Innovation Hub) Ecommerce lives and dies on fulfillment. Which is why my last order looked like it survived a tornado. Guess where I got that?

Google: AI Store Review Cards (Reddit / Chrome Dev Update) Google will write reviews for your store. Finally, criticism without human warmth. Just like ... (insert your own fav person here).

Target, Amazon – Back-to-School Online Shift (eMarketer via Retail Daily) Kids buy school supplies online now. Which means they’ll still forget their homework, but at least it arrived in two days.

So this week: Amazon and Walmart raced, DTC brands gambled on AI, boxes got smart, brick-and-mortar stayed stubborn, Google taught robots to gossip, and Target sold kids pencils without seeing their parents’ car once.
Retail’s not dead, it’s just getting better at being strange.

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