FordDirect, a joint venture the vehicle maker has with its dealers for marketing and technology initiatives, is rolling out a new ecommerce system.

Called The Shops, the ecommerce platform will provide Ford and Lincoln dealers and resellers with tools and features that enable them to link to pre-approved service vendors. Vendors can then help with tasks such as customer lead generation, warranty authorization and credit pre-approval, among others.

Specific vendors on FordDirect’s ecommerce platform include:

• Better Car People, a comprehensive business development platform.
• ComplyAuto, a dealership compliance software platform for privacy, security, safety/human resources, and finance and insurance.
• OfferLogix, a credit pre-qualification service.
• Velocity Automotive, reconditioning management software.
• Volie, automotive call center software.
• WarrCloud, a warranty processing technology platform.
• Work Truck Solutions, commercial truck and van digital marketing and inventory merchandising tools.

According to FordDirect CEO Dean Stoneley, dealerships face an increasing demand for day-to-day resources, including meeting customer expectations, complying with regulations, managing employees, updating technology, and planning sales events. The auto industry in all its parts and aspects now transforms through technology, which makes dealers more challenged than ever to stay current while meeting their business goals. The Shops is now open to help Ford dealers and Lincoln retailers find the best vendors in the market for all of their needs.

Disney announced the launch of a beta program for its first shoppable ads. Consumers will be able to make purchases through the new Gateway Shop in Hulu while maintaining their viewing experience, according to Disney’s press release.

According to Jamie Power, senior vice president of addressable sales at Disney Advertising, with the most scale in streaming and the strongest audience signal through the company’s foundational data and ad tech stack, Disney is uniquely enabled to power dynamic ad experiences that connect consumer interest and intent to the purchase — straight from the stream.

Viewers will see personalized advertisements for products that are sent to phones through push notifications or email. Over the next few months, Disney will grow the interactive shopping features in streaming, Disney says.

The beta test will initially be available exclusively on Hulu, which Disney now owns, with plans to add Disney+ in the future, digitalcommerce360.com reports.

Disney named Unilever as one of the advertisers included in the initial beta test. The media company is searching for other retailers and consumer packaged goods companies to advertise, Ad Age reported.

Gateway Shop is an expansion of Gateway Go, launched on Hulu in 2020. The earlier feature gave viewers the option to get more information on an advertisement sent to their phone through push notifications, email, or a code. Since then, more than 200 advertisers across categories have signed on.

The goal is to help audiences connect with the brands they love with the least amount of friction, without disrupting the content they’re streaming.

Amazon, Walmart, and Home Depot are all experimenting with shoppable TV, too. Amazon tested shoppable ads during the first-ever Black Friday NFL game it streamed this year. Walmart inked a deal with NBCUniversal in November to place shoppable ads on the streaming platform Peacock. The ads gave consumers the chance to buy Walmart items featured in select Bravo shows. And Home Depot released a branded content series with Vizio in 2023.

57% of ad agency professionals believe shoppable video content is the next frontier of retail media, according to an April 2023 poll from Insider Intelligence.

Retailers are bracing for a surge in holiday returns after a record-breaking Cyber 5, starting on Thanksgiving and ending on Cyber Monday. Software provider Salesforce has forecast a “tsunami of returns” for the second year in a row as consumers have become more picky about what to leave behind from holiday shopping. The firm’s forecasts are based on an analysis of the activity of 1.5 billion consumers in 64 countries, www.digitalcommerce360.com reports.

Salesforce says the rate of online purchases that were returned doubled the week following Cyber 5 and has remained high ever since. The company predicts more than $131 billion in holiday purchases will be returned.

That figure encompasses returns of purchases made globally in November and December 2023. It is based on returns patterns in dollars and percentages from the 2022 holidays and the rest of 2023, Salesforce says.

Return rates will likely rise as high as 20% for a few weeks after the holidays into 2024 as people return gifts, says Rob Garf, vice president and general manager of retail and consumer goods at Salesforce. In 2022, global returns grew to 13% of total orders in the holiday period, an increase of 63% year over year.

Retailers largely corrected more generous return policies after the large increase last year to preserve profit margins, says Garf, adding that experts see retailers oversteering and negatively impacting customer service and experience. The returns experience must be easy, clear, and reasonable, or retailers risk brand loyalty and repeat purchases. He points out that a positive return process can be the first step in a new shopping process for a consumer. Meanwhile, a poor experience can make it the last time a consumer interacts with the retailer.

Returns can be a costly problem for retailers. Companies pay an average of $26.50 to process $100 in returned merchandise, The Wall Street Journal reported in May. In 2022, about 16.5% of retail purchases were returned, totaling about $816 billion, according to the National Retail Federation.

Rates are even higher for apparel, averaging 24.4% between April 2022 and March 2023, according to Coresight Research. That translates to about $38 billion in returned apparel in 2023, or the equivalent of all U.S. Cyber 5 spending this year.

The cost of processing a return of a specific item varies based on several factors, according to reverse logistics firm Optoro. For example, some apparel pieces may be out of style or out of season by the time the return is processed and cannot be sold for full price.

Wishing You a Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year from Your Friends at HG Alliance.

Udaan, a Bangalore-based B2B marketplace used by more than 25,000 sellers and over 3 million retailers sourcing goods ranging from fruits and vegetables to apparel and electronics, has raised $340 million in funding to drive further growth.

The company said this week it will use the funding to strengthen customer experience and market penetration, forge strategic vendor partnerships, and reinforce supply-chain and credit capabilities.

The Series E financing round was led by London-based global investment manager M&G Plc. with the participation of existing investors Lightspeed and DST Global.  This latest round brings Udaan’s total funding to $2 billion, according to Crunchbase.

Vaibhav Gupta, Udaan’s CEO, says the recent funding will help his company prepare for an initial public offering of stock in the next 12-18 months, it strengthens their balance sheet and fully funds their business plan.

Gupta co-founded Udaan in 2016 with Amod Malviya and Sujeeta Kumar. All three are former executives of India-based online marketplace company Flipkart.

Redseer Strategy Consultants, an India-based research and consulting firm, has noted that Udaan is the most well-known and preferred B2B marketplace platform by retailers looking to purchase goods online from suppliers.

Redseer projects India’s total B2B ecommerce will reach total gross merchandise value of between $90 billion and $100 billion by 2030.

Other research foresees far more growth. Bessemer Venture Partners, for example, predicts that, by 2030, B2B ecommerce in India will reach $200 billion.

The ecommerce platform’s Shop Pay checkout option facilitated $12 billion in GMV in the quarter.

Shopify Inc. has reported total revenue grew 25% to $1.7 billion in its fiscal third quarter ended Sept. 30.

Meanwhile, gross merchandise volume (GMV), the total value of merchants’ products across Shopify’s systems, increased 22% to $55 billion. Gross profit also grew 36% to $901 million.

45 retailers in the Top 1000 use Shopify for a combined $8.30 billion in web sales annually. The Top 1000 is Digital Commerce 360’s database of leading ecommerce retailers in North America.

In the Next 1000, 74 merchants used Shopify in 2022 and accounted for $1.05 billion in web sales. The Next 1000 ranks the largest retailers after the Top 1000 (1,001 to 2,000) by web sales.

In an earnings call with investors Shopify president Harley Finkelstein talked about the important role of artificial intelligence for a present-day business. The company has integrated Shopify Magic, a suite of free AI-enabled features across its products and workflows, and merchants are already finding success with unblocking productivity and creativity. Shopify Magic enables personalized pages and content generation, it can help craft an About Us page in a merchant’s brand voice or tone.

Finkelstein also mentioned that the company had launched a new one-page checkout in September. In its first two months it has sped up buyer completion time by an average of four seconds.

In the quarter, Shop Pay facilitated $12 billion in GMV, which is a 50% year-over-year increase. Since launching in 2017, it has facilitated a cumulative $110 billion in sales.

Finkelstein also said Shopify Checkout has helped its merchant base through Checkout Extensibility, which launched in 2022. Since launch, Shopify has exponentially expanded its suite of APIs, components and capabilities. It has also seen more than 400 checkout apps in the Shopify App Store that support Checkout Extensibility.

In addition to that, Shopify announced a partnership with Amazon during the quarter, giving merchants the choice to offer Buy with Prime directly within their Shopify Checkout. Finkelstein said the app will release in Shopify’s app ecosystem in the coming weeks.

Walmart Inc. announced Aug. 17 that U.S. online sales grew 24% for the fiscal 2024 second quarter ended July 28, 2023. International ecommerce sales grew 26%.

Comparable in-store sales grew more modestly, up 6.4%, excluding fuel over the same period. That’s above analyst expectations of 4.1% growth.

Total revenue grew too, by 5.7% to $161.6 billion.

Net revenue was up 6.6% for the first half of fiscal 2024 compared to the six month period last year, Walmart said. Revenue for the first half of the year reached $313.9 billion.

Online sales remain one of the fastest-growing areas of Walmart’s business. They grew about four times as quickly as comparable in-store sales in the same period. That’s on top of 27% year-over-year growth in Q1. More than 50% of digital orders are fulfilled by stores, Walmart said.

According to Walmart, pickup and delivery services drove the growth, similar to the retailer’s statement in Q1.

John David Rainey, chief financial officer, said in the call that the company liked the trends in ecommerce. Customers are increasingly counting on Walmart for convenience, and they’re visiting the  company’s app and sites more often.

Weekly active digital users grew 20% in the quarter.

Walmart is planning further online sales growth. The retailer plans to “densify their inventory at the first mile, make the middle mile as efficient as possible and then shorten the last mile”.

Sam’s Club, Walmart’s membership-based warehouse chain, reported ecommerce sales grew 18% in the quarter driven by curbside orders. Net sales, meanwhile, declined slightly, down 0.3%. Income from memberships grew 7%, Walmart said.

Walmart+, the retailer’s membership program in competition with Amazon Prime, also had “consistent growth,” the retailer said, noting the success of Walmart Plus Week in July without revealing more. The sales event drove record customer acquisition, Walmart said.

Walmart gained market share in grocery, while general merchandise sales declined “modestly.”

Consumers are purchasing more cooking tools to focus on cooking at home. They’re also buying more necessities and focusing on lower-priced items and brands.

Following the successful quarter, Walmart announced increases to its outlook for the rest of fiscal 2024. The retailer increased its forecast for consolidated net sales, with a forecasted increase of 4.0-4.5% for the full year, compared to 3.5% at the end of Q1 in May. Walmart also raised expectations for its consolidated operating income, from 4.0%-4.5% to 7.0%-7.5%.

For the second quarter ended July 28, 2023, Walmart reported:

• Total revenue grew 5.7% to $161.6 billion.

• Walmart U.S. ecommerce sales grew 24%.

• Consolidated net income increased 56.5% to $8.1 billion.

For the first half of the fiscal 2024 ended July 28, Walmart reported:

• Total revenue grew 6.6% to $313.9 billion.

• Consolidated net income grew 37.2% to $9.9 billion.

Spot rates for shipping containers jumped by the most in more than two years, which means that a 16-month slump in ocean-freight costs that helped ease the sting of goods inflation is over.

The Drewry World Container Index composite increased 11.8% to $1,761 for a 40-foot container. That’s the fourth straight advance and biggest week-on-week percentage gain since June 2021. The composite had fallen in 15 of the 16 months through June. It reflects short-term rates across eight trade routes connecting Asia, Europe and the U.S.

The costs for shipping from Shanghai to Los Angeles reached $2,322 per 40-foot container unit. That’s an 11.3% increase from the previous week and fifth straight increase, according to Drewry. From Shanghai to Rotterdam, the rate jumped 25% to $1,620, the most since January 2021.

Shipping rates jumped tenfold to record highs during the height of the pandemic. Consumers had shouldered household expenses and COVID-19 led to a blockage of logistics networks.

Since then, container shipping costs have returned to levels reached before the health crisis, which has recently declined due to bloated inventories and low consumer spending.

Matson Inc., a Honolulu-based container carrier providing an express service from China to the U.S. and charging a premium for the faster route, earlier this week said retailers are continuing to manage inventories carefully amid weaker demand.

Matson CEO Matt Cox said in the August 1 statement that in the absence of an economic hard landing in the U.S., they continue to expect trade dynamics to gradually improve through the end of the year as the transpacific marketplace transitions to a more normalized level of consumer demand and retail inventories stocking levels.

Last week, closely held French carrier CMA CGM SA laid out a gloomy outlook for the industry, especially on more established trade lanes. CMA CGM Chief Finance Officer Ramon Fernandez told reporters that East-West shipping routes are under more pressure and dropping faster than the North-South trade, which remains pretty dynamic.

Copenhagen-based A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S, the world’s No. 2 container carrier, is scheduled to release an interim report on Aug. 4 for its second quarter results, according to www.digitalcommerce360.com.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) proposed new “click to cancel” rule could make canceling subscriptions much easier for consumers. It would apply to any retailers that sell products or services with subscriptions, automatic renewals, or similar systems.

The rule would require companies to offer an easy way to cancel subscriptions and recurring memberships.

• The ruling would ban requiring consumers to call to cancel subscriptions that they’d signed up for online.
• Retailers would also be required to give more information about subscription beginning and end dates and how to cancel.
• Retailers would also need to send annual reminders to customers for subscriptions that don’t involve physical goods.

Subscriptions have long been promising territory for ecommerce retailers hoping to build a returning customer base. The global subscription box market reached $26.9 billion in 2022, according to Expert Market Research. The firm expects the subscription box market to reach $74.2 billion by 2028.

The legality of automatic subscription renewals can be difficult to navigate, according to lawyer Robert Freund, who focuses on ecommerce.

Subscriptions and cancellations are governed by many laws across the U.S. The 2010 Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (ROSCA) requires retailers to provide “simple mechanisms for a consumer to stop recurring charges.” In 2021, The Federal Trade Commission issued a statement warning companies about employing “illegal dark patterns” to keep customers from canceling memberships.

The federal law is somewhat vague, and many states have adopted their own, stricter laws. The combination of federal laws, FTC enforcement, and differing state laws is difficult to comply with.

Retailers open themselves to friendly fraud when they automatically renew subscriptions or make them difficult to cancel, according to Chargebacks911, a risk management software provider that helps retailers in billing disputes.

The company’s CEO Monica Eaton told Digital Commerce 360 that a tedious cancellation process could push customers to file a chargeback, or file a complaint with entities like the FTC even if the retailer is fully compliant and following all payment processing guidelines that govern their merchant account.

Customers who forget to cancel a free trial or don’t recognize a recurring subscription charge on their bank statement can file a dispute with their bank. Retailers may then have to pay additional chargeback fees, or pay to fight the charges. Too many chargeback requests can lead to a retailer losing processing capabilities.

A new ranking of 25 top B2B marketplaces notes that they have raised a combined total of more than $2.1 billion in funding.

The European B2B marketplace market is growing at a rapid rate and continuing to attract bigger amounts of investment money, says a new research report, the Europe B2B Marketplaces Top 25 Ranking 2023, from Applico Inc. It shows that 25 marketplaces in the ranking have raised more than $2.1 billion over time. 85% of the money is flowing into marketplaces in building materials, retail, and food products.

According to the report, investors in the U.S. have followed a similar path with building materials, food products, B2B marketplaces accounting for over 40% of capital raised across leading digital B2B marketplaces in the U.S.

A rising new area of investment is marketplaces focused on industrial machinery for contract manufacturing, where successful businesses in the U.S. have attracted $475 million of capital. There are a few marketplaces in Europe that have similar business models and capabilities.

Examples of B2B marketplace operators targeting Europe for growth include Amazon Business and Xometry. Amazon Business is improving logistics operations in Europe to make it more attractive for corporate-account customers to make bulk purchases of supplies ranging from desks and IT equipment to paper and printer ink. That provides Amazon the opportunity to reap higher margins compared with small-order retail consumer sales.

Because businesses buy in larger quantities, the fulfillment economics are more advantageous, Amazon told Reuters.