Happy Sunday,
Here’s a quick roundup of last week’s news :
Chart of the week 📈
The eCommerce growth story - this and more eCom stats in this Forbes article.
🆕 Benchmark of the week 🎯
Introducing a new category — benchmarks for Amazon brand activity across thousand of products. Powered by Xapix - for custom insights reach out.
Conversion Rates - a critical measure of success for product listings. Yet, stark differences exist across category and day of the week. Here’s a look at the baby, pet supplies and health & household categories for thousands of products on Amazon.com;
Funding Craze💰
Threecolts announces a $90M to build out its toolkit for third parties selling on marketplaces like Amazon - with participation of Crossbeam Venture Partners, General Global Capital, Stratos and CoVenture. It claims to cover 22,000 customers generating more than $30 billion in gross merchandise sales. [Techcrunch]
Movers & Shakers 🙌
EU: GoNorth’s Q4 Interim Report is a tale of a quickly growing aggregator - and it’s reporting gives an inside scoop into its evolution. From $7,000 in the bank in Jan 2021 to a Q4 2022 with $6.6M in sales, $5.3M in operating cash flow, and $920k Adj EBITDA. As a sidenote - the company sees Amazon’s fee and inventory stock limitations as the top risk for the business in Q4. [Go North]
US: Cincy Brands - with 2 acquisitions to date - “aims to be the Anti-Amazon Aggregator” [Multichannel Merchant]
Strategy 📈
“Amazon Briefing: 1P vendors are increasingly scrutinizing chargebacks and other fees” [Modern Retail]
“E-commerce entrepreneurs who are earning money selling socks and wallets on Amazon share their top strategies, including how to find a product to sell and how to get ranked higher” [Business Insider]
“Shopify Earnings, Shopify Audiences, The Shop App” [Stratechery]
“Retail, search and Amazon’s $40bn ‘advertising’ business” [Ben Evans]
🇨🇳 China’s importance, not only as a supplier but also as a seller keeps growing - this article outlines the concepts at play: “Made, sold, and marketed by China” [Marketplace Pulse]
“TikTok enters the search ad market, challenging Google and Microsoft” [Search Engine Land]
“Chinese fast-fashion giant Shein set to raise $2.7b, eyes US IPO later this year: Sources” [Strait Times]
Events 🎤
Prosper Show, Mar 13-15, Las Vegas, NV
Shoptalk, Mar 26-29, Las Vegas, NV
Seller Sessions Live, May 13, London, UK
Make this week count 🙌
Christian