This week in eCommerce, the machines were issued shopping trolleys and a permission slip, and the humans were reminded, at some expense, that filling a car now costs a third more than it did a year ago.
Google rolled out Universal Cart across Search and Gemini: one basket that holds items from Walmart, Wayfair, Ulta and assorted Shopify merchants, watches their prices, and checks out from several at once. American Express published a framework for AI agents to prove a shopper actually approved the purchase, which is the sort of paperwork one only needs after the robot has bought something. September inflation came in at 3.7 percent, gasoline is up 34 percent on the year, and Ahold Delhaize spent at least three days with Stop & Shop, Food Lion and both Giants offline after a cyberattack, refunding the online orders it couldn't fill.
There is more. There is, in this mortal coil, always more. Onward, into this publication that retains all the necessary elements needed to be called DTC News.
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How to Position Your Brand & Products: 5 Ways to Win Against “Better”
A great many businesses have now bought AI, which is not the same as adopting it, in roughly the way that owning a rowing machine is not the same as fitness. Licences are issued, a generic training session is held, and the team returns to its spreadsheets with the faint air of people who have been told something.
Paul Boag argues this is digital transformation all over again: the technology is the easy bit, the people are the expensive bit. Staff get more work in the same hours, no extra pay, and a reasonable suspicion about why leadership is so excited.
Inside:
Aim AI at the tasks people hate, not at a higher quota
Start with the enthusiasts, not the holdouts
Make failure safe (staff have been reprimanded for using too many tokens weeks after being told to adopt AI)
Swap the governance binder for a few principles
Treat shadow AI as a map of where your tools fall short
(The personal ChatGPT account on someone’s phone is, it turns out, a strategy document.)
In partnership with Levanta
One brand hit their 4x ROAS target all Q4.
What they didn’t realize? 22% of those "wins" were losing money on every order.
Every holiday season, brands hit record sales and still come out with thinner margins — because acquisition costs climb, discounts creep, and fulfillment gets messy the moment volume spikes.
Here's the number that should worry you: stockouts cost brands 140% more than baseline on Black Friday, and 248% more on Cyber Monday. That's not a traffic problem. That's a margin problem hiding inside a revenue win.
Levanta pulled together the real levers 9 e-commerce leaders are using right now to protect margin before Q4 peaks. No predictions, no "do more with less" fluff. Just the plays that are actually working.
Inside, you'll find out how to:
Stop discounting products nobody's comparing (and recover 6–10% margin doing it)
Catch stockouts before they cost you Buy Box or lost sales
Structure creator and affiliate payouts around lifetime value, not first-order math
Get the full playbook — free.
Quick Shots
Taylor Holiday I usually eat at chipotle 3-5 times a week.
Ron | e-comm owner & operator DR demon mindset but white hat offer, quality products and CX is the optimal way to play this game for most people.
Barry Hott I've audited hundreds of accounts in the last year alone. The single most common mistake I see, across budgets big and small:
Olivia Kory THE YOUTUBE MASTHEAD FOR META
Peter Quadrel Disable This Meta Setting Before November
Here for the Memes
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Best from LinkedIn
Bonobos started in 2007 with one mission: fix men's pants. Then in 2012, the online brand did something unexpected. It opened stores.
Guideshops. Walk in, get fitted by a Guide, and have it shipped home. Bonobos was blending online and in-store before most brands were even thinking that way.
Today there are 48 Guideshops across the U.S. And today, Bonobos.com is on Shopify.
Now every part of that experience connects.
Your sizes are saved, so your Guide knows your fit the moment you walk in, and so does the website.
Recommended SaaS & Services
The least glamorous part of BFCM? Auditing campaigns, checking deliverability, digging through automations and working out which segments are actually worth hitting. Omnisend just made that job wildly faster: connect it to ChatGPT or Claude and ask. It can pull the data, find the gaps and help build the fixes before Q4 chaos hits.
BoxFort Commerce helps clothing & high-sku brands scale with efficient Shopify fulfillment. Unlike the Bobs & Monks of logistics, we ship hundreds of thousands of orders for 3 of our own clothing and jewelry brands, so it’s imperative that our processes are built around saving money & consistency. Learn more here.
Stuck between an overpaid $80K/Year US hire and an inexperienced $5/Hour VA? Tidal helps you hire experienced, execution talent globally that outperforms US hires, at a fraction of the cost. Built by operators focused on hiring better talent, not just cheaper talent. Get started with a free payroll audit today --> www.hiretidal.com
Ask your email guy which flow tests won last week. He stares at you blankly, there’s your answer. Zee.Media runs Email Flow CRO for $5M to $20M Shopify brands. Every week your flows get tested on revenue per recipient, and every winner stays in the account permanently. Get a free Revenue Leak Audit. Worst case, you find out your flows are fine --> zee.media
Stat Attack
So that was the week. Google built a cart that follows you between retailers, Amex built a receipt for intentions, and Ahold Delhaize briefly offered shoppers at five American grocery chains the original, fully offline experience. Amazon's holiday peak fees also started on the 15th, at about 32 cents more per unit plus a 3.5 percent fuel surcharge. Plan accordingly.
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They’re reaching 7, 8 and 9 figure merchants.
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