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Struggling online retailer Wayfair on Friday said it will slash around 1,650 employees — or 13% of its global workforce of roughly 14,000 — just weeks after its billionaire CEO caused a stir by saying workers should log longer hours. Niraj Shah, the boss of the Boston-based furniture-selling e-commerce site, said the company needed to cut costs — its third round of layoffs since summer of 2022 –after going “overboard” on hiring during the pandemic.

Black Friday e-commerce spending popped 7.5% from a year earlier, reaching a record $9.8 billion in the U.S., according to an Adobe Analytics report, a further indication that price-conscious consumers want to spend on the best deals and are hunting for those deals online.

It was just about week ago that we highlighted a mysterious trend that was sweeping the U.S.: citizens were receiving unsolicited packages of seeds, with return addresses from China, for apparently no reason at all. Now, the U.S. has started to identify "14 types of plants" that the seeds belonged to, revealing a “mix of ornamental, fruit and vegetable, herb and weed species,” according to the NY Times. Cabbage, hibiscus, lavender, mint, morning glory, mustard, rose, rosemary and sage have all been identified. Osama El-Lissy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service said: “This...

LONDON — A battle to find space powering the ultrafast grocery delivery boom is pushing up rents in parts of London’s commercial property sector. Companies like Getir, Gorillas and Zapp, which promise to ship essential goods to people’s doors in a matter of minutes, have swept across the U.K. capital this year. Such services rely on so-called “dark stores,” small warehouses used to prepare online grocery orders for delivery. Similar to dark kitchens in the world of food delivery, these facilities don’t serve customers in-store.... ...In West London, prime rents for small industrial units of about 20,000 square feet rose...

Why did so many Americans receive strange packages they didn’t think they’d ordered?Sid miller, the Texas agriculture commissioner, sat atop his stallion Smokey and faced the camera. It was Saturday, August 1, 2020. Miller had a message to share. “Good morning, patriots,” Miller began, raising the coiled lasso in his right hand by way of greeting. “I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired of all these surprises coming out of China. First it was the Chinese virus, then we had the murder hornets, then we had to close the embassy in Houston because of espionage … Now we’ve...

Our Nation’s history is defined by discovery, ingenuity, and innovation. Americans are known for their resourcefulness and ability to find solutions to a wide range of challenges, including the development of technologies that advance our security, health, and prosperity. This resourcefulness has been a driving force of economic growth and human development since the founding of our Nation, and our future depends on the continued protection of our intellectual property. On World Intellectual Property Day, we renew our resolve to protect and secure the works and innovations of American artists, inventors, and other creators who continually push the boundaries of...

Need more proof that Amazon is big? It came this week. Amazon's U.S. workforce topped 500,000 for the first time, up 43% from the year before and more than triple what it was five years ago, the company said Friday. It gained 150,000 workers last year, more than the size of Apple's entire workforce. When it reported its quarterly performance Thursday, Amazon revealed that another 150 million people had become members of its Prime service, which offers faster shipping and other perks. On Friday, even while the Dow tumbled 600 points, Amazon shares soared passed $2,000 apiece, doubling in price...

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows: Section 1. Policy. E-commerce, including transactions involving smaller express-carrier or international mail packages, is being exploited by traffickers to introduce contraband into the United States, and by foreign exporters and United States importers to avoid applicable customs duties, taxes, and fees. It is the policy of the United States Government to protect consumers, intellectual property rights holders, businesses, and workers from counterfeit goods, narcotics (including synthetic opioids such as fentanyl), and other contraband now...

Gett Clean, a manufacturer of cleaning products, protects its margins and improves marketing through Alibaba.com, Gett Clean co-founder Evan Gettinger said at B2B Next 2019 today. Alibaba.com may not always be the first marketplace suppliers in the United States consider for building sales, but one supplier finding success selling through Alibaba is Gett Clean, a manufacturer of cleaning products. As a start-up, Gett Clean realized that a marketplace had to be part of its business model if it was to successfully compete against larger suppliers, as it lacked the resources and sales staff to achieve a global reach. What drew...

Overstock CEO Partick Byrne resigned from the e-commerce company Thursday after making controversial comments about his role in the “deep state.” Shares of Overstock popped as much as 17% after being halted for the news. Shares were up about 9% in the afternoon. “In July I came forward to a small set of journalists regarding my involvement in certain government matters. Doing so was not my first choice, but I was reminded of the damage done to our nation for three years and felt my duty as a citizen precluded me from staying silent any longer,” Byrne said in a...

With its acceleration of Prime shipping from two days to one, Amazon established a new normal. Soon after, Walmart and Target came out with their own super-speedy shipping options. Why it matters: Flying, trucking and delivering millions of packages a day comes with a cost — as shoppers demand faster and faster speed, there has been a sharp environmental impact. The big picture: Consumers have gotten hooked on speed — and the efficiencies that e-commerce injected into retail are getting erased because now there are more deliveries of smaller numbers of packages. With this trend, emissions have grown: The annual...

Following news of Amazon’s plans to reduce Prime shipping down to one day, the company this morning announced an expansion of its Delivery Service Partner program, which now includes a new incentive that encourages existing Amazon employees to start their own package delivery company. The partner program, first announced last year, includes access to Amazon’s delivery technology, hands-on training, and a suite of other discounts for assets and services like vehicle leasing and insurance. For employees, it now includes a $10,000 incentive, too. The retailer says it will fund the startup costs up to $10,000 as well as the equivalent...

Amazon Quits China Market — Another U.S. E-commerce Giant Failing in China IndustryShaw WanApril 22, 2019 6 min read　 Amazon will close its domestic e-commerce marketplace business in China, effective from July 18. The company will keep running other business sections in China, including Amazon Web Services, Kindle e-books, and cross-border operations. The exit marked an end of the company’s 15 years of journey into the China market for their rigid localization in business strategy and management. SEE ALSO: Amazon to Exit China This Week “We are notifying sellers we will no longer operate a marketplace on Amazon.cn (the Chinese-language...

See the link. All references to the Kindle Books have been removed; the notice from Amazon to the publisher is interesting too. Someone at Amazon *appears* to,have wiped the publisher clean off their databases.

To build a big line of exclusive products on its site, Amazon.com Inc. is pushing other brand manufacturers to do most of the work. The online retail giant is asking consumer-goods companies to create brands exclusively for Amazon after finding that developing them on its own is too costly and time-consuming, according to people familiar with the strategy. Equal sweeteners and nutrition brand GNC are among the first to launch products through an accelerator program Amazon launched last year to outsource the work. Mattress maker Tuft & Needle also recently created a new brand called Nod exclusively for Amazon. Amazon’s...

....Author, entrepreneur and NYU business professor Scott Galloway has emerged as one of Amazon’s fiercest critics. At last month’s Recode Code Commerce, Galloway gave a 45-minute talk on the future of retail that savaged Amazon and warned of the threats the company poses not just economically but philosophically and morally. “I believe our society is effectively going through this very uncomfortable transition that is bad for our youth, bad for America and bad for the planet where we no longer worship at the altar of character and kindness,” he said. “We worship at the altar of innovators and billionaires.” In...

Over the last few days we’ve seen the big tech companies make sweeping decisions about Alex Jones and Infowars. Apple took them off its podcast app; Facebook banned Jones and his associated pages; YouTube also banned the conspiracy theorist. Now it seems Amazon may have made a few changes, too. The ecommerce giant has long been known for its refusal to take a political stand about, well, anything. For instance, activists for years have lobbied it to stop advertising on Breitbart to no avail. Similarly, people have called for Amazon to stop selling Infowars/Alex Jones products, which the company seems...

Walmart’s ongoing battle with Amazon for the retail crown is expanding well beyond retail, and it’s forcing one of the largest companies in the world to reexamine its DNA. In the last six months alone, Walmart has partnered with scores of tech firms to better compete with Amazon and make progress in markets that may become pivotal years down the line. It’s also begun rethinking how it views itself: a traditional big-box retail giant that now hopes it can be nimble enough to compete with one of technology’s most powerful players. Following its purchase of Jet.com to advance its e-commerce...

Amazon's policy prohibits the sale of racist and 'hatred-glorifying' goods, but a couple of watchdog groups recently found Nazi and white supremacist products sold on the platform. Those products include jewelry adorned with Nazi swastikas and even a children's book normalizing racist beliefs written by George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party. Now the company has told Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison in a letter that it has already reviewed and removed those listings. Amazon said that it has also permanently blocked the sellers who violated its policies and has put a restriction on the goods the watchdogs found...

Dead malls are popping up all over the states, particularly in the Midwest, where economic decline has sped up the "going out of business" process. This map, put together by a Dead Malls Enthusiasts Facebook group, shows that well. As Americans are faced with multiple shopping options and more stores are leaving malls, it should be interesting to see if malls and mall culture will survive. What you are about to see is what happens when malls are abandoned. It's apocalyptic and really, really creepy....