📦 The Order : Weekly Roundup - The Ambr Group & Autopilot
Issue #112
Happy Sunday,
Here’s a quick roundup of last week’s news :
Sneak peak: A new era of profitability for brands - powered by AI
Here’s a quick preview of a new generation of AI-powered tooling for Amazon merchants. More details coming soon, but you can stay tuned here or on Linkedin.
Chart of the week 📈
Amazon published its annual Small Business Empowerment Report this week with key stats from 2022:
Movers & Shakers 💪
US: Aggregator consolidation continues - along with a new equity raise (amount undisclosed): “Suma and D1 Brands Complete First US-based Merger of Amazon Aggregators” [PR Newswire]
Strategy 📈
“Retail ad prices for Walmart and Amazon have dipped while prices at Kroger and Instacart shot way up. Here's what advertisers are paying today.” [Business Insider]
“Retail Giants Vs. US Economy: Walmart, Amazon Triumph As Target, Home Depot, And Lowe's Stumble” [Forbes]
“Chinese shopping apps are taking over the world” [Marketplace Pulse]
Outpacing Amazon and Flipkart in India? “Bernstein pegs Reliance as India’s eventual e-commerce kingpin” [Techcrunch]
“Alibaba Gets Better of Amazon: US Ecommerce Giant Prepares To Shut China App Store Amid Rivalry and Regulatory Headwinds” [Yahoo]
Google experiments with the future of search & discovery: “Introducing a new era of AI-powered ads with Google” [Google]
AI-curated Top News 🤖
👋 ChatGPT & Bing are back to 📦 The Order
Amazon is discontinuing its legacy Marketplace Web Service (MWS) API program. Sellers who have built tools using this program to interface with the marketplace have until August 31st to adapt to the discontinuation of the program to avoid disruption to their business automation. From August 31st, sellers must migrate from MWS to SP-API or replace their app with a third-party app for Merchant Fulfillment, Orders, and Reports API sections. All other remaining MWS API sections will be discontinued from April 1, 2024 [eCommerce Bytes]
Small, independent businesses now account for a bulk of Amazon's eCommerce sales. Amazon’s annual U.S. Small Business Empowerment Report shows that 60% of sales on Amazon’s stores come from independent sellers, most of which are small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). These sellers sold 4.1 billion products last year, with sellers in rural areas seeing more than 40% year-over-year sales growth [Pymnts]
Amazon's recent earnings report shows that third-party sellers and subscription lines of business have helped drive revenues even as eCommerce slows in growth. The company's third-party seller services saw a 20% gain to $29.8 billion [Pymnts]
UPS is making changes that may affect the delivery of items to customers in rural areas. The carrier is cutting costs by ceasing delivery to some rural neighborhoods as often as before. This could potentially slow down delivery times for online sellers shipping to these areas. However, Amazon has been making efforts to fill this gap by decentralizing its fulfillment network and establishing over 30 warehouses in rural and 'super rural' areas [eCommerce Bytes]
Events 🎤
European Seller Conference, June 8-9, Prague, Czech Republic
World Ecommerce Forum, June 8-10, Istanbul, Turkey
Amazon Selling Partner API DevSummit, July 25-26, Seattle, US
Make this week count 🙌
Christian