Fourteen years ago, when Shopify president Harley Finkelstein first joined the e-commerce platform, he was the only non-engineer. Now, he said the company powers 10% of all US e-commerce, and its partners include Glossier and Béis Travel—the two brands Finkelstein spoke with for a keynote session about retail disruption of NRF last week. Retail Brew caught up with Finkelstein at the show to discuss highlights from the session and what’s next for Shopify.

You said at the end of the panel “the future of retail is everywhere.” Can you talk more about what you mean by that?

At this point, even the largest retailers are beginning to stop talking about this concept of channel conflict, which, if you go back five years, in the word cloud of [the] earnings call from a lot of the biggest retailers, you hear this two-channel conflict and online is hurting offline and social media commerce is going to really hurt our bottom line in our wholesale business. And that’s over, I don’t think anyone cares about what channel a product is being sold in. But if you think about a really modern brand, like Alo or Theory, both brands are built on Shopify. And from Day 1, they both have stores, they also have wholesale, they sell on hotel boutiques, they sell on social media…they’re channel agnostic. All they want is to be able to get in front of as many customers as they can, on whatever surface area that is most convenient to that particular consumer.

Keep reading here.—EC

From discovery to purchase, something has disrupted the shopping journey—or, shall we say, someone. LTK reports that trust in creators has surged more than 20%, redefining the consumer purchase journey.

And consumers are interacting with creators and their content now more than ever. While creator-guided shopping has become the new norm, creators aren’t just influencing purchase decisions—creators are now integral to a brand’s overall full-funnel marketing strategy.

LTK reports the latest consumer shopping data and creator trends from its national study in the Creator Journey™ 2024 report. Check out the full report to learn more about:

• how the rise of creator trust transforms the consumer journey
• the increased value of creator content
• LTK’s 360 creator marketing strategies

Get the full report.

Here’s a sign that all is not simpatico between retailers and their customers: When it comes to returns, industry insiders are defining which common practices by consumers are “fraud,” which are “abuse,” and which are “unfavorable.”

Loop, a returns management software company that works with retailers, has released a report that not only categorizes shoppers’ sub-optimal return behaviors, but also—thanks to a survey of 1,000 online US shoppers—reveals their scope.

In all, 39% of respondents said that either they or someone they knew had participated in one of the three types of negative returns behaviors.

As for the gradations, here’s how Loop categorized the behaviors, from least to most onerous.

Keep reading here.—AAN

EBay, that old warhorse of online retailing, is planning to cut 1,000 jobs, or 9% of its workforce, to lower costs in the face of a “challenging macroeconomic environment,” according to a blog post from CEO Jamie Iannone.

Despite delivering “solid results” in the last quarter, the company said costs need to come down, and that means cutting jobs and streamlining operations.

“While we are making progress against our strategy, our overall headcount and expenses have outpaced the growth of our business,” Iannone wrote. “To address this, we’re implementing organizational changes that align and consolidate certain teams to improve the end-to-end experience, and better meet the needs of our customers around the world.”

The announcement comes as eBay struggles to find its footing in a post-pandemic economy.

Keep reading here.—AV