The SEC filing shows that Instacart’s plan “includes a reduction of approximately 250 employees, representing approximately 7% of the company’s global workforce as of January 31, 2024, with most of these reductions expected to occur by March 31, 2024.”

Instacart layoffs and executive-level changes

Instacart estimates the restructuring plan will cost $19 million to $24 million in non-recurring charges, according to the SEC filing. That’s predominantly tied to “cash expenditures for employee transition and severance payments and employee benefits.” Although Instacart will have to incur expenses this year due to accounting rules, it said $17 million to $22 million of the expenses will affect cash flow in the future.

In the same filing, Instacart noted that chief operating officer Asha Sharma informed the company of her decision to resign, effective March 1. Instacart said in the filing that it does not plan to hire or appoint a new COO “at this time.”

CEO Fidji Simo said in a Feb. 13 earnings call with investors that its chief technology officer (Varouj Chitilian) and chief architect (JJ Zhuang) are also departing the company. Simo said the company is “taking the opportunity to streamline my management team and create more autonomous teams with all the levers they need to execute on our critical initiatives.”

She added that the company will look for a new CTO. As with the COO role, though, it does not expect to backfill the chief architect position, she said.

Instacart Q4 results

Simo said on the call that Instacart fulfillment speed improved in Q4, adding that the fill rate increased for the sixth consecutive quarter. Fill rate is the percentage of customer orders that a business can ship right away, without any backorders, stockouts, or missed sales.

Instacart grew orders 5% year over year in Q4 to reach 70.1 million. Gross transaction volume (GTV) also increased year over year, up 7% to $7.89 billion. Instacart also announced $803 million in total Q4 revenue. That’s a 6% year-over-year increase that represents 10.2% of GTV.

Instacart transaction revenue grew 6% year over year to reach $560 million. That represents 7.1% of GTV for the quarter.

Instacart 2023 full-year results

For the full year, Instacart grew orders to 269.2 million, a 3% year-over-year increase. Instacart GTV grew 5% over 2022 to reach $30.32 billion.

Meanwhile, Instacart total revenue in 2023 grew 19% year over year, reaching $3.04 billion. That represents 10% of GTV. Transaction revenue represented 7.2% of GTV, as it grew 20% year over year to reach $2.17 billion.

Recent Instacart announcements

Instacart will partner with grocery chain Hy-Vee to offer same-day delivery, Hy-Vee announced days before Instacart’s earnings call. Hy-Vee will benefit from the nearly 600,000 shoppers in Instacart’s network that can pick up, pack and deliver orders, Instacart said.

Meanwhile, Instacart announced it will be available for Whole Foods deliveries in select parts of Canada.

“Our mission at Instacart is to create a world where everyone has access to the food they love, and working with beloved retailers like Whole Foods Market helps us make that mission a reality,” Chris Rogers, chief business officer at Instacart, had said in a released statement.

Do you rank in our database?

Submit your data and we’ll see where you fit in our next ranking update.

Sign up

Stay on top of the latest developments in the ecommerce industry. Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 Retail News. Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Be the first to know when Digital Commerce 360 publishes news content.

The post Instacart announces layoffs, revenue growth on same day appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

Layoffs are part of a multi-year plan to rebuild profit margins in 2025 and 2026, Estee Lauder said. 

“We are focused on strategically leveraging our strengths to accelerate our return to more sustainable profitable growth while elevating our consumer activations and increasing our operating agility,” chief financial officer Tracey Travis said. “The restructuring program is designed to right-size and streamline select areas within our organization, which unfortunately necessitates us making the difficult decision of an expected net reduction in positions globally of 3% to 5%.”

Estee Lauder ranks No. 43 in the Top 1000, Digital Commerce 360’s database of the largest North American e-retailers by online sales. 

Wayfair (No. 10 in the Top 1000), Amazon (No.1), Macy’s (No. 17) and Levi Strauss (No. 191) all also announced recent layoffs.

What were Estee Lauder’s financial results?

Estee Lauder reported net sales declined 7% to $4.28 billion in its second fiscal quarter ended Dec. 31.

Skin care made up the largest portion of sales, accounting for $2.17 billion in the quarter. That was a decline of 10% from $2.43 billion in the year-ago period. Makeup sales also declined, down 8% year over year to $1.17 billion. Fragrance sales grew slightly to $737 million from $734 million. Meanwhile, hair care sales declined 5% to $173 million.

The retailer attributed much of the sales decline to waning demand in China.

“This decline was primarily driven by the slowdown of overall prestige beauty in mainland China,” CEO Fabrizio Freda said in a statement. Online sales in China also declined, with worse than expected performance on Double 11 Day, also known as Singles Day, on Tmall. Tmall is an Alibaba-owned marketplace. Tmall is No. 2 in the Global Online Marketplaces Database, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest such marketplaces by gross merchandise value. Brick-and-mortar sales increased in China, but they were more than offset by the online decline.

Net sales in the Asia Pacific region fell 7% year over year, and the retailer lost some market share there, Freda said. Net sales in the Americas declined 1%. That was driven by decreasing demand in North America, partially offset by growth in South America. In Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, net sales declined 14% in the period. Part of the decline is due to rightsizing inventory levels, Estee Lauder chief financial officer Tracey Travis said, with 2% attributable to “business disruptions in Israel and other parts of the Middle East.”

Estee Lauder earnings

For the fiscal second quarter ended Dec. 31, 2023, Estee Lauder reported:

• Net sales declined 7% to $4.28 billion.
• Gross profit declined 8% to $3.13 billion.

For the six months ended Dec. 31, 2023, Estee Lauder reported:

• Net sales declined 9% to $7.80 billion.
• Gross profit declined 12% to $5.57 billion.

Percentage changes may not align exactly with dollar figures due to rounding. Check back for more earnings reports. 

Do you rank in our database?

Submit your data with this quick survey and we’ll see where you fit in our next ranking update.

Sign up

Stay on top of the latest developments in the ecommerce industry. Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 Retail News. Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Be the first to know when Digital Commerce 360 publishes news content.

The post Estee Lauder announces layoffs in Q2 earnings appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

Based on that and more, Deloitte identified three reasons it thinks “the price-focused era is likely over”:

1. Consumers are less willing and able to pay.
2. Retailers may have had enough of price increases.
3. Higher prices created new competition from unexpected substitutes.

Deloitte “analyzed a worldwide set of the largest 100 public consumer product companies by revenue, drawn from S&P Capital IQ and filtered for industry definitional fit,” according to its report. That excludes high-end luxury, tobacco and conglomerates with less than 50% of revenue from consumer products. It then “used a five-year composite percentile index of both top-line growth and efficient use of assets (measured in return on assets) to assess relative success.” Deloitte said it also conducted a global survey of 250 consumer products executives spanning food and beverage, household goods, personal care and apparel.

What’s changing for consumer product companies and their pricing in 2024?

To start, higher prices have already forced some consumers to become more selective with their purchases, Deloitte found. Industry executives Deloitte surveyed identified that two of the three most significant consumer challenges for 2024 are that consumers have been divided into “have and have-nots” and that consumers have become less willing to pay higher prices.

“Few executives thought they could continue to raise prices without materially decreasing consumer demand,” Deloitte researchers wrote in the report.

But it’s not just the consumers. The retailers that buy from consumer product companies have “let significant price increases pass through with some sympathy” as inflation spiked in 2023, according to Deloitte. “But that leniency could have been a once-in-a-generation (relatively) free pass. Four in 10 executives in our survey agree that retailers would push back on any meaningful price increases in 2024.”

So many items’ prices have increased that consumers might be “looking to fulfill old needs in new ways,” the authors speculated. For example, consumers might opt for a delivered pizza from a restaurant if it’s as cheap or cheaper than one from their local grocery stores’ grocery aisle.

Deloitte asked which of the following three aspects would receive the most emphasis in executives’ strategies this year:

• Shift the mix to more profitable products and pack sizes (62% selected this)
• Increase unit volume (36%)
• Raise prices (2%)

What does profitability look like in 2024?

Deloitte found that in the past few years, volume suffered from higher prices and reduced advertising and promotion. Some companies faced supply and production constraints that made promotional spending unproductive, it said. But now, about seven in 10 (72%) executives said they must increase their unit volume to meet their 2024 performance goals, according to the consumer products industry report.

“Additionally, six in 10 executives in our survey recently made a significant expansion in their production capacity,” Deloitte said. “Companies that expanded production capacity likely will have additional incentive to do what it takes to keep volumes high to spread that cost.”

Deloitte said it expects “the pendulum to swing back to more spending on marketing” in 2024. More than two-thirds (68%) of executives surveyed said their companies will increase advertising and marketing spending as a percentage of revenue. Meanwhile, 64% will do more promotional spending. Two-thirds of executives (66%) plan to emphasize their company’s existing core brands in their marketing over new brand introductions. Deloitte refers to this as a tool to maintain pricing power.

“It’s worth noting that some analysts think companies may panic about volume and promote too much. We don’t share that concern,” Deloitte said. “Forward-thinking companies will show restraint and manage their volume goals with finesse.”

Many consumer product companies became more aware of the need for revenue growth management (RGM), Deloitte said. It added that RGM capabilities can include, among others:

• Price setting in the context of competitors on the shelf
• Targeted promotion strategies
• White-space expansion
• Changes to the price-pack architecture
• Retailer profitability management
• Consumer perception shaping around categories

Do you rank in our database?

Submit your data and we’ll see where you fit in our next ranking update.

Sign up

Stay on top of the latest developments in the ecommerce industry. Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 Retail News. Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Be the first to know when Digital Commerce 360 publishes news content.

The post Deloitte: Consumer product companies may lose pricing power in 2024 appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

In North America, 45 of the Top 1000 online retailers use Shopify as their ecommerce platform. The Top 1000 is Digital Commerce 360’s database of the largest online retailers in the region by annual web sales. In 2022, those 45 online retailers combined for more than $8.29 billion in web sales. Retail clients include Fashion Nova (No. 115), Figs Inc. (No. 173), Nine West (No. 252) and Steve Madden Ltd. (No. 262).

These are the most important updates Shopify released in its Winter ‘24 Edition.

Shopify conversion updates

Shopify said it improved how it lists products with the biggest update to its product model in more than a decade. Now, products that come in multiple variations can be purchased under a single product listing. The updated model also reduces the time and effort that go into creating new product listings, Shopify said. The product page can now automatically categorize listings by features like color and size, eliminating the need to categorize them manually. Customers can also find products based on these attributes, it said.

The checkout page also got an update, Shopify said. The platform streamlined the checkout experience, reducing three pages to just one that customers must interact with. That cut buyer completion time by an average of four seconds, it said. Shopify added 14 new APIs and 90 new apps retailers can use to customize their checkout pages. The new apps allow for features including loyalty programs, post-purchase surveys, order tracking and other customizable content.

Shopify released a new semantic search tool using artificial intelligence (AI), too. The storefront search feature uses AI to surface results consumers are more likely to buy from, rather than exactly the keywords they searched, Shopify said.

Shopify channel updates

Shopify said some of its new updates were designed to make it easy for retailers to expand into new marketplaces and social channels. One such update is point-of-sale ship from store. Retailers will be able to select a store as the fulfillment location for an order through Shopify, so staff can pack and ship the order directly from the location. In-store fulfillment can increase efficiency, reduce warehouse load, and minimize shipping costs, Shopify said.

The platform also released Markets Pro to U.S. customers. The product bundle is designed to make selling internationally easier for U.S. retailers as a hub for help on global taxes, international shipping labels, customs, and more.

New marketing releases

Shopify says Shopify Audiences will “help you find more customers, lower customer acquisition costs (CAC), and improve return on ad spend (ROAS).” The app gives retailers the ability to target consumers on social platforms like Meta, Snapchat and TikTok. Then, Shopify uses machine learning (ML) to improve advertising targeting. This edition of Shopify Audiences includes benchmarks for measuring results against similar retailers and industries, Shopify said.

The platform also announced it will rebrand Shop Cash as Shop Campaigns. The customer acquisition tool will add new estimates and analytics in this update, Shopify said.

Business operations updates

Shopify said it’s using AI on several new releases to simplify retailers’ business operations under the banner “Shopify Magic.” 

Media Editor uses generative AI to create instant product images for free, Shopify said. The editor tool can create professional-looking images and enhance low-resolution files into high-quality media assets, it said.

Sidekick, meanwhile, will be “the world’s most useful AI-enabled assistant for commerce,” Shopify said. “It allows you to use AI to increase productivity, improve workflows, make smarter decisions, and spend less time on operational tasks.” The tool is in an early access rollout with select retailers. Shopify did not share when results will be available, or when other customers will get access to it. It previously demoed Sidekick answering retailer questions, such as “How do I set up a discount for my holiday sale?”

Do you rank in our database?

Submit your data and we’ll see where you fit in our next ranking update.

Sign up

Stay on top of the latest developments in the ecommerce industry. Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 Retail News. Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Be the first to know when Digital Commerce 360 publishes news content.

The post Shopify releases new features across marketing, conversion and operations appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

Macy’s ranks No. 17 in the 2023 Digital Commerce 360 Top 1000. The Top 1000 is a ranking of North America’s leading retailers by online sales. Amazon ranks No. 1, and Wayfair ranks No. 10.

Macy’s cuts corporate staff

Macy’s will lay off 2,350 members of its corporate staff, The Wall Street Journal reported. That’s 13% of its corporate staff, and 3.5% of its overall workforce, excluding seasonal workers. Their last day will be Jan. 26.

“As we prepare to deploy a new strategy to meet the needs of an everchanging consumer and marketplace, we made the difficult decision to reduce our workforce by 3.5% to become a more streamlined company,” Macy’s said in a statement. Following the layoffs, Macy’s will add automation to its supply chain and outsource some roles, according to a memo viewed by The WSJ. 

The retailer will also close five Macy’s locations in California, Hawaii, Virginia and Florida. 

It has not yet reported holiday sales results. Macy’s reported net sales declined 7% to $5 billion in its fiscal third quarter ended Oct. 28. Digital sales and brick-and-mortar sales declined at the same rate. Macy’s online marketplace is growing, with GMV (gross merchandise volume) up 22% over Q2, the retailer said.

The average customer “continues to be under pressure and discerning about how they spend in discretionary categories we offer,” president Tony Spring told investors. Spring is poised to take over as CEO in February.

Wayfair pursues another round of layoffs

Wayfair will cut 1,650 workers, it announced Friday. That’s 13% of its total workforce and 19% of corporate workers. 

“The changes announced today reflect a return to our core principles on resource allocation, such as getting fit on spans and layers as well as focusing on our highest priorities. As a result, we’re reducing team sizes across the organization, as well as reducing seniority in certain roles that we plan to rebuild with modified leveling over the course of this year,” CEO Niraj Shah said in a press release. The layoffs are expected to save about $280 million annually, Wayfair said.

The news comes weeks after Shah announced the online furniture retailer had become profitable again. At the time, he sent a memo to workers encouraging frugality and long hours.

“Working long hours, being responsive, blending work and life, is not anything to shy away from,” he wrote. “There is not a lot of history of laziness being rewarded with success.”

Wayfair previously laid off 1,750 employees in 2023 and 900 in 2022.

Amazon layoffs hit Buy with Prime 

Amazon announced plans to lay off about 5% of its Buy with Prime unit on Thursday. That amounts to just over 30 workers, Reuters reported.

Buy with Prime gives retailers access to Amazon’s fulfillment and logistics network and payments system for products not listed on Amazon. In the week preceding the layoffs, Amazon announced a new integration for the service for Salesforce clients.

“Buy with Prime is a top priority for Amazon, with strong adoption from merchants and positive feedback from customers, and we will continue investing significant resources in Buy with Prime to build on that momentum. We’re grateful to these employees for their contributions, and we’re focused on supporting them in their next steps,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

Amazon also laid off 500 workers at streaming platform Twitch and hundreds of employees at Prime Video earlier in January.

Do you rank in our databases?

Submit your data and we’ll see where you fit in our next ranking update.

Sign up

Stay on top of the latest developments in the ecommerce industry. Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 Retail News. Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Be the first to know when Digital Commerce 360 publishes news content.

The post Amazon, Wayfair, Macy’s cut jobs appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

In a phone interview with Digital Commerce 360, Gerbig reflected on the lessons he learned taking Pink Lily from a bootstrapped ecommerce site with a team of two to a company with 300 employees and $120 million in annual revenue. With 15,000 products in its inventory, the company found new paths to its customers, thanks to its early focus on nascent social media trends.

The Pink Lily Boutique is No. 836 in the Digital Commerce 360 Top 1000, a ranking of North America’s leading retailers by online sales.

Coming out of 2023, Gerbig cited a “really solid holiday season, comparable to last year,” but he is also looking ahead. From merchandising to ecommerce platform changes and staffing, he shared what he believes Pink Lily got right early on, as well as where his attention will be in 2024.

What sold well in the 2023 holiday season?

Asked what has been selling the best on Pink Lilly of late, Gerbig credited its mainstays.

“Basics and athleisure, and loungewear continues to be a top seller for us,” he noted. These standards have long made up the staples in Pink Lily’s colorful online catalog. But it has invested in new technology along the way.

“We have an in-house design team that creates a lot of our graphic tees and graphic sweatshirts,” Gerbig explained. “We just invested in a large DTG — direct-to-garment — printing machine that can print, you know, 900 shirts an hour with various designs.”

That machine replaced an old screen-printing process for the online retailer. The time and labor to build each screen and change out designs became too intensive. So they brought in a larger machine to apply new designs on demand. Those graphics include simple callouts to coffee, emotions and locations on cozy t-shirts and sweatshirts. The Pink Lily site currently shows about 100 options, according to Gerbig. He credits remote work with driving demand.

“As more people just work from home and more people want to wear comfortable clothes, I mean, yoga pants, workout pants, hoodies, just your basic casual stuff continues to be a pretty solid performer,” he explained.

Gerbig on growing Pink Lily’s team to 300 staff

Remote work has played a role for Pink Lily’s growth internally, as well. The company is located in Bowling Green, Kentucky, which is where the Gerbigs studied together at Western Kentucky University before starting Pink Lily. Gerbig believes staying in the area was the right call, though he acknowledged that attracting top talent to relocate can be a challenge.

“It’s not exactly a giant digital talent hub, you know, like if I was in Dallas or L.A. or Atlanta — or even Nashville for that matter,” said Gerbig. “But the good thing is we have a lot of remote jobs.”

As much as 25% of Pink Lily’s staff is remote, according to Gerbig. That number would likely be higher, he said, if it weren’t for the onsite needs at the warehouse that come with managing inventory and shipping orders. Still, opening up to remote hires has allowed him to fill out departments for non-warehouse positions.

“Otherwise, I think we might have struggled a bit,” he admitted. “But the fact that we can make these guys remote — we have a lot of remote staff now — a lot of remote employees and everything seems to work out just fine.”

Testing out physical retail

As Pink Lily’s staffing expanded from in-person to remote-heavy, the online retailer also piloted a physical retail presence for its sales. That flagship store was set — like the company — in Bowling Green, and it’s something that Gerbig is contemplating in the coming year.

“The majority of our sales are online,” he stated. “But I know a lot of companies do have a strong retail strategy and strong retail presence, and that’s the conversation that’s come up recently. So we’re paying attention to a few things, and we might look a little bit deeper into that — maybe later on in 2024.”

Like other retailers, Gerbig is watching what happens with macro trends in the economy and consumer habits. Signals on those fronts are likely to influence the company’s next steps.

“We’re paying a lot of attention to the economy and the markets and competition, just some of the ideas floating around about what to do with retail stores,” he explained. “Are customers going back to more retail, or are they shifting to more ecommerce?”

AI and ecommerce tech

As an ecommerce brand, Gerbig is also paying attention to Pink Lily’s tech stack. That extends to their ecommerce platform, as well as emerging uses for artificial intelligence.

“We’re paying attention, but we haven’t quite dived into the full AI, yet,” he said.

Currently, he likes solutions for automating some responses in customer service.

“Those have been helpful for us —  to not have to staff so many full-time customer service reps considering the same questions: ‘Hey, what’s my tracking number? When does this restock? What’s my order number?’ — things like that that can easily be answered by a machine or a robot,” he cited as examples. “Those have been helpful.”

Beyond those use cases, he is hopeful that better AI-powered options will emerge for fit recommendations.

“[The technology is] still kind of young, and it’s not perfect yet, so we haven’t started using it, but we are paying attention because one of the main drawbacks of being an online business is you can’t try to clothes on,” he said. “People have different body sizes, different shapes, things fit differently. So the ability to kind of do that digital try-on will be very, very helpful once the technology is proven.”

Pink Lily’s ecommerce platform

Pink Lily uses Shopify, which has been its ecommerce platform since 2020, according to Gerbig. After initially starting with Volusion, moving to BigCommerce, then eventually making the move to Shopify, he seemed confident that it’s the right fit for the time being.

“There’s a lot of add-ons, a lot of apps, a lot of different plugins that work,” he said, calling the overall user experience “great.” He also values Shop Pay, and the checkout session speed that Pink Lily is able to achieve as a result.

“I don’t know if it’s Shopify specifically, but just the app partners that they have,” he explained. Gerbig cited inventory control, customer service, restock alerts and website heat maps of customer activity as features he values.

“I think I don’t see any reason why we wouldn’t have Shopify,” he stated. “It’s been good to us.”

Pink Lily’s social media strategy

One area where Pink Lily proved itself early on was on social media, where Tori spearheaded its presence. Over 10 years, platforms have changed and opportunities have shifted, but Gerbig noted how the company has learned and evolved along the way.

“We’ve learned that if you’re the first one to a trend and utilize that trend to its maximum potential, you can really grow it,” he said. In the early years, that meant using social media posts to organically grow traffic. Later, that shifted to paid strategies.

“So once social media organic posting kind of died out a little bit, we jumped on the paid ads bandwagon,” Gerbig recounted. “We really pushed paid ads, Google ads, Facebook ads, YouTube ads, pretty heavily back in I would say 2016-2017, before the whole world caught on and before it got extremely flooded.”

That was followed by prioritizing influencer marketing in 2017-2018, when Gerbig said Pink Lily “put 60%-70% of our marketing budget on influencers.” Now, the company has a holistic marketing approach, which he said encompasses “social, paid ads, email, influencer” and notably in 2024: TikTok.

“We do a lot of text alerts, so we have this holistic marketing approach where we have, you know, eight to 10 different channels and make sure that we kind of spread the budget across different areas,” he said. “But if we see that one is performing well or if there’s something new and up and coming, we’re quick to shift and throw a few more dollars of budget at the channel, and to see what happens.”

Potential on TikTok

TikTok alone represents one of Pink Lily’s priorities in the coming year. Against the backdrop of the company’s historical successes on social media, Gerbig specifically sees the ByteDance-owned platform as having “the biggest potential.”

“TikTok is huge, TikTok Live, TikTok Shop, and then just organic,” he noted. “We’ve posted on TikTok a lot more and put a few more eyeballs on that category as we try to tweak our campaign strategy. Because, you know, what you do on TikTok needs to be a little bit different than what you do on Facebook, also a little bit different than what you do on Instagram because [there are] different algorithms, different customers, different eyeballs and different chances to go viral on each platform.”

Other retailers have shown new interest in TikTok as well. Both Newegg and Peloton have recently expanded their presence there, and a Morning Consult report in 2023 showed that it played a growing role in driving holiday purchases.

What has worked so far

10 years after launching Pink Lily, Gerbig spoke confidently about the lessons learned and analytics-driven approaches that helped grow its sales and size from the business’ lean years to where they are now.

“We didn’t have money,” he said. “We had a very small amount of capital that we put into a printer and a small amount of inventory. So I had to focus on being cash-flow positive from day one and being profitable.”

After expanding and continuing to experiment with tech, merchandizing and social strategy, he expects to keep those core values in place in 2024.

“Our expectations are to keep doing what we’re doing,” Gerbig stated.

As for what ultimately made the difference in Pink Lily’s growth trajectory, Gerbig points to the early combination of skills that he and Tori brought to the table.

“I think we lucked out when we decided to divide and conquer the roles of running the business, so it just so happens that she is an expert in sales and marketing,” he explained. “And it just so happens that my fields were in finance and operations and business strategy.”

Do you rank in our databases?

Submit your data and we’ll see where you fit in our next ranking update.

Sign up

Stay on top of the latest developments in the ecommerce industry. Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 Retail News. Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Be the first to know when Digital Commerce 360 publishes news content.

The post Chris Gerbig, Pink Lily’s president and co-founder, shares 10 years of ecommerce learnings appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

The ecommerce retailer sells automotive parts through CarID.com, TruckID.com and CamperID.com. Parts ID is No. 479 in  Top 1000. The Digital Commerce 360 database ranks North America’s leading online retailers by their web sales.

Parts ID went public in 2020 through a special purpose acquisitions company (SPAC), Legacy Acquisition Corp.

Why did Parts ID file for bankruptcy?

Parts ID’s bankruptcy is due in part to challenging elements in the economy, according to the retailer’s filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

“Recent economic conditions have caused fluctuations in business and consumer confidence, which has impacted spending on automotive parts and accessories,” CEO Lev Peker said in the filing. “These economic conditions include supply chain challenges, an inflationary environment, overall economic uncertainty and the potential for economic slowdown or recession, which have impacted consumer confidence and spending.”

As of the filing, Parts ID lists $55 million in debts and $18.7 million in assets. 

Will Parts ID shut down?

The Cranbury, N.J.-based auto parts retailer plans to continue operating normally with the bankruptcy in motion, the filing states. In the meantime, Parts ID will negotiate a repayment plan for its debt. The ecommerce company outlined a restructuring plan for the debt in the filing, which it says has support from vendors and lenders who hold the debt.

Bankruptcy proceedings

Investment firm Fifth Star committed to financing for Parts ID through the bankruptcy, the filing shows. Fifth Star will provide up to $32 million for payments to vendors and creditors. The firm is also a likely top bidder in a future sale process, The Wall Street Journal reported.

“After years of financial challenges due to the global impact of COVID-19 and an uncertain economy, the Plan Restructuring will position the recapitalized Debtors to execute on its strategic initiatives and deliver on the promise of its proprietary digital commerce platform while prioritizing the Debtors’ commitment to Vendors, the filing says of the proposed plan.

Do you rank in our database?

Submit your data with this quick survey and we’ll see where you fit in our next ranking update.

Sign up

Stay on top of the latest developments in the ecommerce industry. Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 Retail News. Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Be the first to know when Digital Commerce 360 publishes news content.

The post Parts ID files for bankruptcy appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

New Grainger ecommerce executive

Grainger has hired Cecelia Myers, who has joined the company as vice president, group product manager.

Cecelia Myers

In this role, she will be responsible for leading Grainger’s strategy to custom build technology capabilities, the company says. The technologies are aimed at improving the customer and team member experience, Grainger says.

Prior to Grainger, Myers worked as vice president, digital, at CDW. She led its digital channel and oversaw product management, digital integrations, demand generation and product design. Prior to CDW, she held roles in product and user experience at Groupon, leading initiatives such as automating customer support, implementing artificial intelligence (AI ) programs and launching Groupon’s photo/video studio. She also co-founded CakeStyle, an online women’s styling business.

Myers will be based in the Chicago office and reports to Grainger chief product officer Brian Walker.

Sign up

Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 B2B News, published 4x/week. It covers technology and business trends in the growing B2B ecommerce industry. Contact Mark Brohan, vice president of B2B and Market Research Development, at mark@digitalcommerce360.com and follow him on Twitter @markbrohan.

The post Grainger adds on another ecommerce executive appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

Fastenal Co. has named Anthony Broersma as its executive vice president-operations. Digital sales at Fastenal accounted for 57% of total sales for the third quarter, up from just under 50% a year ago.

In his new role as Fastenal head of ecommerce, Broersma will oversee supply chain, compliance, supplier development, content, property management, ecommerce, supply to fulfillment distribution, and logistics operations for Fastenal.

Fastenal head of ecommerce

He is a long-term company employee. Broersma previously served as senior Vice President-Operations from June 2022 to October. From February 2021 to June 2022, Broersma was vice president of procurement and supply chain.

Before that, from February 2016 to February 2021, Broersma served as vice president of international operations, leading all global operations.

Broersma has a specialty in international operations. From December 2012 to February 2016, he served as the regional vice president for continental Europe locations, while living in the Czech Republic. Broersma worked as the director of Asian operations from February 2011 to December 2012, while living in Shanghai, China.

From December 2007 to February 2011, he was employed as the regional operations manager of Fastenal distribution center in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Broersma joined the Company in 2003 and served in various roles of increasing responsibility within Fastenal’s branch locations. As the head of global digital commerce, he will oversee diverse operations.

Fastenal defines its digital footprint as the combined total of sales processed through ecommerce and Fastenal Managed Inventory programs. Those include FastStock, FastBin, and FastVend vending machines, which use digital technology to record transactions and reorder stock.

The company includes under ecommerce sales transactions on Fastenal.com. It also includes those through EDI and other types of technical integrations between Fastenal and its customers. Ecommerce transactions grew 41.3% in the third quarter to $452.25 million, or 24.5% of total sales.

Sign up

Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 B2B News, published 4x/week. It covers technology and business trends in the growing B2B ecommerce industry. Contact Mark Brohan, senior vice president of B2B and Market Research, at mark@digitalcommerce360.com. Follow him on Twitter @markbrohan. Follow us on LinkedIn and be the first to know when we publish Digital Commerce 360 B2B News content.

The post A big distributor names a new head of ecommerce appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

PFSweb Inc. has been acquired in a deal valued at $181 million by GXO Logistics Inc.

PFSweb provides business-to-business and direct-to-consumer order fulfillment and customer service for ecommerce. GXO is a global contract logistics company that manages outsourced supply chains and warehousing. The company generates about $13.3 billion in annual revenue. It’s acquiring PFSweb for its expertise and client base in ecommerce shipping and fulfillment.

GXO acquires PFSweb

“PFS is an ideal acquisition for GXO (because) it enhances our exposure to new high-growth verticals in North America and adds important capabilities to our offerings,” says GXO CEO Malcolm Wilson. “Over the past 25 years, the PFS team has established a successful track record in both direct to consumer and B2B channels, and they’ve built a rock-solid reputation with many of the world’s most iconic brands by deploying an order fulfillment platform that rivals the largest enterprise 3PL providers in the industry.”

Headquartered in Irving, TX, PFSweb offers diverse ecommerce services including, among others:

• Order fulfillment
• Order management
• Customer service
• Payment services
• Fraud prevention

PFSweb provides services to about 100 retailers and manufacturers. Last year, it generated revenue of about $295 million.

Customers include:

• L’Oréal USA
• Champion
• Pandora
• Shiseido Americas
• Kendra Scott
• The United States Mint

“GXO’s industry leadership, global scale and significant capital resources make their platform a strong strategic partner for PFS,” says PFSweb CEO Mike Willoughby. “In joining GXO, we can deliver our proven, branded order fulfillment and support services to an expanded base of premier clients, as well as further enhance GXO’s global fulfillment network. The GXO team shares our commitment to top-quality client relationships and execution, and we look forward to our future together.”

Sign up

Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 B2B News, published 4x/week. It covers technology and business trends in the growing B2B ecommerce industry. Contact Mark Brohan, senior vice president of B2B and Market Research, at mark@digitalcommerce360.com. Follow him on Twitter @markbrohan. Follow us on LinkedIn and be the first to know when we publish Digital Commerce 360 B2B News content.

The post A veteran ecommerce fulfillment vendor has new owners appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.