2PM - Returns Season and Real Circularity

Holiday season means 🔺 returns. Their approach to sizing goes beyond outdated methods to enhance the shopping experience, reduce inconvenient returns and empower shoppers to make their best sizing decisions - eliminating the frustrations of fit. You can learn more here. 

Strategy: Can't reduce returns? Encourage them. In a world increasingly conscious of its consumption footprint, the need for sustainability in retail has never been more pronounced.

Since its inception in 1902, Goodwill Industries has stood as a bastion of communal thrift and charity, where gently used items find new life in the hands of appreciative consumers. Known for its sprawling network of thrift stores, this nonprofit giant has long championed the cause of reducing waste and enabling job opportunities for those in need.

Fast forward to the digital age, and Goodwill, under the innovative leadership of Matt Kaness as the CEO of GoodwillFinds.com, is poised to translate its century-old mission into the lexicon of eCommerce, at a time when circularity is within the mission scope of every major brand.

Goodwill tries to figure out online commerce

Resale / NY Times: Goodwill is made up of 154 independently run organizations that have their own chief executives and control the inventory that is donated to stores in their regions. More than 100 of them use an e-commerce auction site called ShopGoodwill.com, which was started in 1999. Other locations have offloaded some of their donations on eBay.

EBay launches consignment offering for luxury fashion sellers

Resale / BoF: The platform, which powers peer-to-peer transactions of everything from toys and TVs to industrial equipment and handbags, is launching a new fashion consignment service that will connect users with expert sellers to list and sell pre-owned pieces on their behalf.

Luxury resale platforms are relying on consignment

Resale / Glossy: Both eBay and Rebag have launched consignment models on their respective platforms in the last month. Consignment differs from the original selling models of both platforms. EBay is primarily a peer-to-peer marketplace, where sellers sell directly to buyers and use eBay to host the listing.

The rise of resale-as-a-service

Resale / Fibre2Fashion: The fashion industry is becoming increasingly aware of its negative environmental impact. A staggering 87 per cent of materials used in clothing production ultimately end up in landfills or incinerators, with less than one per cent being recycled into new products.

The DTC Power List, sponsored by Bold Metrics. All categories of the list have been updated with major movement throughout the list.  We've updated the "previous" column to better illustrate positive (+) and negative (-) movement. Brands coming this week: Indi+Ash, Merz B. Schwanen, Haus (readded), Greyson Clothiers, and Graza. We will be reporting on weekly trends based on the data tracked as well.

800+ Brands Measured

Shein poaches TikTok's top U.S. logistics exec

Growth Markets / The Information: Shein has hired TikTok owner ByteDance's top U.S. logistics executive, Wei "Andy" Huang, to lead its fulfillment and logistics operations. The hiring is a big win for the China-founded fast-fashion giant as it tries to edge out TikTok in the online shopping arena. The hiring is also a sign of ...

An eCommerce marketplace to spur growth in Latin America

Growth Markets / MIT: The company offers tens of thousands of products on its website and uses its own fulfillment centers in Guatemala and Costa Rica to provide fast deliveries to every corner of both countries. The goal is to offer a convenient, more affordable shopping experience, and by pursuing that goal, Pacifiko’s impact in the region has gone far beyond convenience for consumers.

PYMNTS' provider ranking of shopping apps

Data / PYMNTS: This exclusive service of PYMNTS is updated monthly, and ranks Shopping Apps using a proprietary combination of publicly available information plus app usage data to which we have access.

The future of shopping

A) A.I. / The Mozilla Blog: While technologies come and go, in shopping there is an underlying attribute that is fundamental to any transaction on the internet: trust. It’s the cornerstone of successful e-commerce — promising safe transactions, consumer confidence and authenticity. With the speed of innovation and the importance of trust in mind, what does the future of shopping look like?

IAC warns regulators generative AI could wreck the web

B) A.I. / Axios: IAC, one of the word's largest internet holding companies, has submitted comments to the U.S. Copyright Office warning that unless the government protects copyrighted material from being used by generative AI, "the creation and publication of high-quality original content will wither and die."

Shopify by the numbers

eCommerce / PYMNTS: Merchant Solutions revenue also grew, reaching $1.2 billion. Gross payments volume (GPV) was $32.8 billion, constituting 58% of the GMV processed during the quarter. Subscription Solutions revenue grew, with monthly recurring revenue (MRR) hitting $141 million, marking a 32% year-over-year increase. Gross profit increased to $901 million, with a gross margin of 52.6%.  

Amazon sells all 'Black Friday' football ads

Retail Media / Variety: The new Black Friday event represents an experiment not just for Amazon, but for the NFL itself. For years, the league has backed a Thanksgiving afternoon game, shown for many years on NBC. The game was baked into the recent 11-year deal Amazon and the NFL struck that gave the digital titan sole rights to “Thursday Night Football.”

Member Brief 🔐: The death of logistics unicorns like Convoy and the trials of Flexport are emblematic of the broader challenges and opportunities within the logistics sector. They offer critical insights into the delicate balance between technological innovation, market dynamics, and organizational culture.