Time of disruption = Time of creation! E-commerce news by Nabil

• A toilet paper shortage (yes, still trying to understand why?)
• An explosion of bread making machines online sales (yes, people are baking like crazy)
• Cooperation between Google & Apple (yes, that was one of the surprise of the week)
• Walmart app download beating Amazon by 20%

And some more news from last week…

• Top fastest growing & declining categories in E-commerce
• What’s selling on eBay
• Amazon halts its shipping service for 3^rd party
• Pinterest push into Ecommerce
• iFood merges with Delivery Hero’s Domicilios.com
• Bringg raises 30M
• Wayfair stock soars!

 Top 100 Fastest-Growing & Declining Categories in E-commerce

 One of my favourite content this week is the list of growing and declining e-commerce categories! Some of these are obvious, some less.

Bread machines at +652% (surprising), Weight training +307% (obvious), I let you have a look and make your call on the surprises you see in this list. Here some of the key takeaways:

• Surge in-home fitness products including weight training equipment, fitness accessories and yoga equipment as gyms and workout studios are forced to close. Due to the increase in at-home workouts, the gym bag category and many outdoor sport categories such as baseball & softball and track & field are in decline.
• Implementation of work-from-home policy is driving demand for computer monitors, keyboards & mice, and office chairs up as employees look to create a temporary home office.
• Most travels have been halted, causing declines in the luggage & suitcases, briefcase, and camera categories.
• Formal apparel categories including Bridal and Men’s Suits are in decline as many couples are forced to cancel or delay their weddings.

Check out the list of growing and declining e-commerce categories HERE.

What’s Trending Right Now on eBay

You can also find the most popular items sold on ebay. Puzzles at +1395%, people are definitely looking at entertainment activities for them and their kids!!

HERE is the list of the most popular items on eBay.

 Walmart Grocery app sees record downloads amid COVID-19, surpasses Amazon by 20%

You don’t read often that Walmart is beating Amazon at anything but this time, the story is different. A new report from App Annie shows that Walmart Grocery gained the No. 1 downloaded shopping app in the U.S. last week, topping Amazon by 20%.

Walmart Grocery’s average daily downloads were up 460% over January, as of April 5. That indicates a surge of brand-new customers to Walmart Grocery who may have never placed an online grocery order.

Read THIS article on how Walmart was beating Amazon.

 Amazon halts its shipping service that competed with UPS and FedEx

This is a clear sign of the explosion of volume within Amazon in this time of Pandemic and the need to prioritize its own merchants, customers and volume! The move follows a mid-March announcement which stated that Amazon will only receive essential items in its warehouses from third-party merchants. Launched in June last year, Amazon Shipping is a service the company offers businesses to deliver non-Amazon packages. It uses excess capacity in its fulfilment network to offer prices that are often lower than UPS or FedEx. I think we will see some very strong growth number when Amazon report their next quarter.

Need a deeper insight? Read THIS article by CNN.

Pinterest adds new ‘Shop’ tabs connected to in-stock inventory, style guides and more

Pinterest introduced shopping features yesterday to convert Zoom Prom vision boards to purchases. Pinterest users can now buy from Search! A new “Shop” tab within search function will display in-stock inventory at retailers related to the query. Pinterest will also generate shopping suggestions based on pinned images. Time for Pinterest to push into e-commerce and leverage its huge number of users.

Check out THIS review by Techcrunch!

iFood merges with Delivery Hero’s Domicilios.com to challenge Rappi in Colombia

Latin America’s leading legacy food delivery company iFood and Delivery Hero-owned Domicilios.com are merging in a bid to take on the food startup Rappi on its home turf. The war on delivery is definitely on in Latin Americas with Rappi, Uber eats, Didi (all backed by Softbank by the way) and the newly created merger of Ifood and Domicilios.com.

Read more about the merge HERE.

StartUp of the week: Bringg

While online sales are growing and this is here to stay, startup like Bringg which helps companies build and run delivery operations are well positioned to continue to grow with this trend. The company raised another 30M for the company in order to grow and specifically serve the huge ongoing opportunity related to COVID19.

Very exciting times for startups in the delivery space (as long as they are not burning cash like crazy)!!

Read more about Bringg HERE.

Stock of the week: Wayfair

Wayfair shares soared almost 42% after the online furniture company said business was booming while people work from home. This week, I purchased furnitures on Ikea.com and Wayfair.com and I can surely say that the customer experience, delivery experience is way better on Wayfair, I will buy again for sure on their website and most likely will start putting some cash on this stock!

Learn more about Wayfair HERE.

 Are businesses becoming omni-channel or omni-supply?

This week, we saw two very interesting announcements which are showing a possible interesting shift optimizing existing infrastructure of businesses into other activities.

#PaneraBread (fast casual #restaurants) started selling groceries as their restaurant transactions plunged 42%!

#HEB (#supermarket #chain) started to sell local restaurant prepared food. With foodservice sector hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, H-E-B is helping by selling local restaurants meals in its stores.

We can expect to see many shifts of companies in #hospitality, #restaurant & #retail adjusting to #COVID19 impact!