The Chinese app bought air time for three commercials during the game and two after. Super Bowl advertising is some of the most expensive of the year. For Super Bowl LVIII, advertisers paid between $6.5 million and $7 million for a 30-second commercial, CNN reported. Individual rates vary, however, depending on when an ad airs during the game and if an individual advertiser purchases multiple commercial spots. A Temu spokesperson declined to comment on how much the retailer spent.

Temu’s Super Bowl commercial featured the tagline “Shop like a billionaire.” In it, the animated protagonist buys a variety of household and apparel products priced under $10. The purchases are a sampling of the low-cost products Temu has become known for. The retailer also partnered with San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey to promote $5 million in coupons and credits on Instagram ahead of the game, and an additional $10 million during the game, the spokesperson said.

Pinduoduo owns Temu, which launched in 2022 and isn’t yet reflected in Digital Commerce 360 rankings of the largest online retailers. Pinduoduo operates an app-only marketplace for Chinese consumers. Because it doesn’t operate an ecommerce website, it is not included in Digital Commerce 360’s Asia Database.

Rise of Temu and its Super Bowl ad buys

Temu first gained the spotlight one year ago during the Super Bowl in 2023. 

Last year, the retailer bought two Super Bowl commercials, its first introduction to many U.S. consumers. PDD had launched Temu just a few months earlier, in September 2022.

“Through the largest stage possible, we want to share with our consumers that they can shop with a sense of freedom because of the price we offer,” PDD said in a statement at the time.

That strategy seems to be working. Temu was the most downloaded app in the U.S. in 2023, and the eighth-most downloaded app in the world, according to analytics firm Sensor Tower. The retailer reached 51 million monthly active users in January, a nearly 300% year-over-year increase.

In May, Temu surpassed rival Shein’s monthly U.S. sales for the first time. In September, a report from Earnest Analytics found that Temu is taking market share from Dollar General and Dollar Tree. Temu is now the No. 4 most-visited retail website in the U.S., behind only Amazon, Walmart, and eBay, The Wall Street Journal reported based on Insider Intelligence research.

Shein Group Ltd. is No. 36 in the Asia Database. Dollar General ranks No. 725 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 Walmart ranks No. 2.

Temu’s ad strategy

Temu is spending heavily on advertising, prioritizing customer acquisition. The retailer outspent all advertisers except Amazon on Facebook in Q4 of 2023, Sensor Tower said. Temu grew its ad spending on Facebook 318%, and spending on Instagram grew 101%  year over year in the quarter, the firm said. 

J.P. Morgan estimates Temu will spend $3 billion on marketing in 2024.

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The tech company calls the wearable device a “revolutionary spatial computer that seamlessly blends digital content with the physical world.” It’s Apple’s first entry into a new product category since it launched the Apple Watch in 2014. The Vision Pro retails for $3,499. MacRumors reported Apple sold 200,000 of the devices ahead of the launch.

Apple ranks No. 3 in the Top 1000, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest North American online retailers.

These are the top retailers that have announced plans to use the Vision Pro so far.

Lowe’s

Lowe’s announced the Lowe’s Style Studio, which allows consumers to use the Vision Pro to visualize kitchen designs. Vision Pro owners can download the app on the App Store, where they’ll be met with an immersive 3D kitchen. Then, they can choose from preset designs created by stylists, or create custom designs from their own selections of materials, fixtures, and appliances available at Lowe’s. There are nearly 80 billion possible combinations, the retailer said.

“Lowe’s Style Studio immerses our customers in a cutting-edge design experience enabled by spatial computing that will make home improvement easier than ever. I’m proud of our team for creating a powerful, immersive experience for Apple Vision Pro customers,” Seemantini Godbole,  executive vice president, chief digital and information officer, said in a statement.

Lowe’s Style Studio has nearly 80 billion possible combinations, the retailer said.

Lowe’s Style Studio was built by Lowe’s Innovation Labs. That’s the team behind augmented reality measurement tool Measure Your Space and generative AI home improvement recommendation tool Lowe’s Product Expert.

Lowe’s ranks No. 12 in the Top 1000.

J. Crew

J. Crew also announced an app for the Apple Vision Pro with immersive shopping company Obsess. The app will serve as a virtual closet for J. Crew customers, who can view a curated selection of apparel. The Vision Pro has the ability to let consumers see texture at a higher magnification than on other platforms, the retailer said. With hand and eye movements, app users can mix and match pieces to create outfits and see them on a virtual mannequin.

Consumers can mix and match outfits from J. Crew’s catalog.

“The ability to create outfit combinations for different occasions interactively and at a life-size scale in the J. Crew Virtual Closet app is a novel ecommerce utility. In addition, the ability for a J. Crew stylist to style outfits remotely with a customer via SharePlay is the most advanced form of digital clienteling available today,” CEO and founder of Obsess Neha Singh said in a statement.

Consumers can book style consultations beginning in February.

J. Crew ranks No. 85 in the Top 1000.

E.l.f. Cosmetics

E.l.f.’s Vision Pro app is called “your best e.l.f.” Consumers can shop for e.l.f. products within the app and check out with Apple Pay. Users are invited to “Glow inside three unique sensory experiences inspired by our holy grail products.” The three experiences are based on Camo Cove, Big Mood and Halo Glow, all available for purchase within the app. In each setting, users can take part in “relaxing activities” including guided meditation and paint-by-numbers, the retailer said.

“Partnering with Obsess to launch one of the first beauty shopping apps for Apple Vision Pro is an evolution for our brand, which has always been digitally led. We are champions for innovation and new technology platforms. The decision to launch on Apple Vision Pro is not only natural for us; it is critical to continue to meet our community — and entertain them — wherever they are,” Ekta Chopra, e.l.f. chief digital officer, said in a statement.

E.l.f. Ranks No. 951 in the Top 1000.

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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?”

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“TikTok is a great way to get Newegg in front of people who have not shopped from Newegg before,” director of Newegg studios Drew Roder said.

With the marketplace poised to take on a bigger role in ecommerce in 2024, other retailers are considering whether to join and how to best leverage it.

Newegg is No. 57 in the Top 1000. The Top 1000 database is Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest North American online retailers by web sales. 

The rise of TikTok Shop

TikTok Shop launched in the U.S. in September 2023 with more than 200,000 sellers and 100,000 creators sharing products through its affiliate program, a spokesperson said. 

TikTok Shop is accessible through shoppable videos fed to users through the “for you” page. Creators can tag products in videos and live feeds that viewers can purchase directly within the app. TikTok users can buy products recommended by influencers and creators on the app, who make commissions based on sales they’ve promoted. It also has a “Shop” tab set up more like a traditional ecommerce website, and it offers a fulfillment service, too.

The ByteDance-owned marketplace hasn’t publicly released any total sales figures. In November alone, 5 million new customers made purchases through TikTok Shop during the marketplace’s holiday promotions, TikTok said. During that time, users made 262,000 shoppable short-form videos using Black Friday and Cyber Monday hashtags, leading to 2.51 billion views. Shoppable livestreams drove 22.8 billion views during that period.

TikTok has potential to continue playing a large role in shopping decisions, especially for younger female consumers. It has 150 million U.S. users.

“TikTok users have proven themselves to be voracious consumers,” Ellyn Briggs, brands analyst at Morning Consult, previously told Digital Commerce 360.

TikTok is essentially a shopping guide for consumers who are already primed to spend more than the average person, both in stores and online, Briggs says. It’s also a form of brand discovery for Gen Z, a group more likely to say it is open to purchasing from new brands than any other generation, at 77% based on the Morning Consult data.

Newegg’s experience on TikTok Shop

To grow its foothold, TikTok Shop launched in the U.S. with appealing terms for retailers. It offered free listing and zero commission to retailers who initially joined. Newegg was one of the early adopters, in part because of its positive history with live shopping.

Newegg was already generating millions in dollars in live shopping through TikTok and other streaming platforms before the launch of TikTok Shop, Roder said. The benefit of TikTok shop is that it compresses the purchase experiences, removing roadblocks from a potential customer’s journey.

“Someone can see a product introduced to them by the company that sells it and they don’t even have to go to another website. They can go from awareness to action, the whole funnel, in 30 seconds,” he said.

Gaming products, including controllers, are top sellers for Newegg on TikTok Shop.

Newegg’s top-selling products on TikTok have been gaming related, producer Ben Tibbels said. The retailer is best known for selling computer components, but TikTok Shop customers skew younger and toward gaming items, he said. Gaming controllers and other tools for co-op games have been very popular, he said.

Newegg customers were quick to adapt

Tibbels noted the relative ease with which TikTok users were willing to make purchases through the marketplace even as it was new.

“I don’t think that there was a hesitancy,” he said. “TikTok did some really attractive first-time buyer coupons and offers, and it very quickly became a strong place for people to shop.”

That was especially advantageous in Q4 of 2023 around the holidays, as consumers were drawn to TikTok-subsidized deals on the app.

The tech retailer’s TikTok Shop sales don’t rely solely on new customer discounts, though. 

“We still see repeat customers,” Roder said. “A lot of folks tune back in for specific hosts. They develop that emotional connection that isn’t always just with a product but it is also with their hosts.”

Newegg also takes requests from customers on item categories to bring into its TikTok Shop, he added. In other words, “engagement is the name of the game on TikTok,” he said. Newegg has a team dedicated to affiliate marketing, and it’s not unusual for employees to spend hours a day on the phone with creators discussing strategy and answering their questions. The strength of TikTok sales depends on the strength of their relationship with their audience, Roder said.

Other retailers’ TikTok Shop results vary

As a technology retailer, Newegg has to stay on top of emerging platforms like TikTok Shop, Roder said. Other retailers have found more mixed results. 

NightCap, the scrunchie designed to prevent spiked drinks, no longer sells on TikTok Shop. 

“In the beginning, TikTok Shop was great for us,” CEO and cofounder Shirah Benarde said.

At first, the app pushed NightCap’s videos out, and they regularly went viral. Then, as the marketplace became more saturated, views took a nosedive, she said. NightCap’s account would be flagged for violating rules like mentioning the word “website” or “Amazon,” she said. The account would be banned for 24 to 48 hours at a time after these instances. Ultimately, selling on TikTok Shop wasn’t viable for NightCap, which is focusing on its direct-to-consumer website and Amazon sales now, she said.

Meanwhile, Vera Bradley is taking a more cautious approach to TikTok Shop. The accessories retailer benefits from TikTok without directly needing to post, thanks to organic traffic from creators, chief marketing officer Alison Hiatt told Digital Commerce 360.

Videos with the “#VeraBradley” hashtag have 105 million views to date on the platform, leading to better brand awareness. It also works directly with influencers on posts.

“Most brands have to work with influencers in some form or fashion. I think it’ll continue to be a strong trend,” she said.

Joining TikTok Shop is one of Vera Bradley’s priorities for 2024.

“We know more and more people are discovering brands and interacting with their favorite brands” on TikTok, she said. “So why not just make it an easy experience if they find something that they want to buy via TikTok Shop?”

Vera Bradley ranks No. 277 in the Top 1000.

Where will TikTok Shop go in 2024?

TikTok reportedly has big plans to grow its ecommerce reach in the U.S. this year. A Bloomberg report found that TikTok aims to grow U.S. ecommerce sales to $17.5 billion in 2024. Even more videos could become shoppable, as the social media app is testing a feature that identifies and links products in any posts, not just those from influencers. TikTok previously confirmed it was using artificial intelligence (AI) to scan videos for products and suggest similar items available for purchase through its marketplace. 

Retailers will have to grapple with higher costs as TikTok’s initial promotions to attract sellers expire. The marketplace announced referral fees will increase to 6% in April, then grow again to 8% in July. 

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Schneider Electric became the victim of a ransomware attack on Jan. 17, it said. The company is a manufacturer and distributor of digital automation and energy management products and services for homes, buildings, data centers and various other industries

Schneider generates annual revenue of about $37 billion and has operations in 100 countries. The company says hackers breached the sustainability business division. As a result, operations will be offline until resuming on Jan. 31.

Schneider Electric ransomware attack

“From a recovery standpoint, Sustainability Business is performing remediation steps to ensure that business platforms will be restored to a secure environment,” the company says. “Teams are currently evaluating the operational capabilities of impacted systems with the expectation that access will resume in the next two business days.”

Schneider provided limited information on the data breach. It did, however, say the breach impacted some unidentified business records. “From a containment standpoint, as Sustainability Business is an autonomous entity operating its isolated network infrastructure, no other entity within the Schneider Electric group has been affected,” the company says. “From an impact assessment standpoint, the on-going investigation shows that data have been accessed. As more information becomes available, the Sustainability Business division of Schneider Electric will continue the dialogue directly with its impacted customers and will continue to provide information and assistance as relevant,” Schneider Electric also said.

The type of cyber hack used against Schneider was a cactus ransomware, according to trade publication Bleeping Computer. Cactus is a ransomware group that began targeting major companies starting in March 2023. Cactus generally leverages virtual private network devices to gain initial access, according to research firm Avertium and Kroll.

B2B manufacturers previously named cybersecurity as a top priority for 2024 in a survey from consulting firm BDO.

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“PayPal is on a mission to revolutionize commerce, globally, and today we are starting the next chapter,” Alex Chriss, president and CEO of PayPal, said in a statement. “With nearly 400 million consumer accounts, and 35 million merchant accounts, PayPal handles transactions for about a quarter of the world’s ecommerce transactions each year, but more importantly, shoppers trust PayPal to power their payments.”

PayPal provides payment processing services to 147 merchants in the Top 1000. The database is Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of North America’s online retailers by web sales. It also provides payment security services to 21 of the Top 1000.

2024 Ecommerce Platforms Report

Analysis of the top ecommerce platforms being used today in both B2C and B2B. Includes a list of the leading platform vendors, an analysis of where companies have invested, the latest trends in platform technology, and an in-depth look at where AI matters most.

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PayPal’s new tools

PayPal introduced six of the new features available to its customers.

1. New checkout

   PayPal “massively accelerated the checkout process” by removing friction like password prompts and slow response times. Customers will be able to log in with their face or fingerprints and check out twice as fast. It will also use AI to “get smarter and faster over time,” PayPal says.

2. Fastlane by PayPal

   Consumers can save their payment and shipping information with Fastlane and checkout with just one tap, PayPal says. They won’t have to remember a username and password or share credit card information with every business. Fastlane recognized 70% of consumers and accelerated checkout by nearly 40% in a pilot with select BigCommerce customers.

3. PayPal smart receipts

   Consumers who make purchases using PayPal will receive a receipt with order information and tracking details. It will also use AI to predict what that customer might want to buy next from that business. Retailers using smart receipts can share a personalized recommendation and a cashback offer all within the receipt.

4. PayPal advanced offers platform

   PayPal says it will give business clients the ability to advertise to consumers based on the specific products they’ve purchased around the internet, not just based on their browsing history. The platform will use AI to organize and analyze data from billions of dollars in online purchases. 

5. Updated PayPal app

   The company is updating its mobile app with a new service called CashPass. CashPass will give consumers access to personalized cash-back offers generated by PayPal using AI. This feature will launch in March with offers from Walmart (No. 2 in the Top 1000), Best Buy (No. 7), eBay, McDonald’s, Priceline, Ticketmaster, and Uber.

6. Venmo business profiles

   Venmo, the payment app owned by PayPal, will roll out new enhanced Venmo business profiles. The new profiles will help consumers discover small businesses, PayPal says. Consumers will be able to subscribe to business profiles, and businesses can offer promotions to customers through the app.

PayPal’s CEO on new features

“PayPal is introducing six new innovations that will not only solve real customer pain points, but we believe will change the world of payments and commerce,” Chriss said. “From new solutions for merchants to speed up checkout and personalize offers, to a new consumer app that will give our loyal customers more reasons to shop with PayPal, to the next generation of Venmo designed to be the growth platform for local small businesses, PayPal has always brought the future of money to our consumers and merchants and today marks the next revolution.”

Chriss became PayPal’s CEO in September. 

“We do not think investors will view any of them as groundbreaking new information, but instead initiatives they would have expected the company to already be working on,” BTIG analyst Andrew Harte said in a research note, Reuters reported.

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Its brands are available on five connected websites, and PRADCO is also a distributor for other brands, too. Trent Welbern, graphic design manager at PRADCO, works in the fishing division, where PRADCO sells items from its 20 fishing brands online through LureNet.com.

Welbern said PRADCO is “constantly adding brands on the fishing side,” and that requires efficient technology. He and his team use software from headless commerce provider Fastr — formerly known as Zmags — to help manage website updates for their many brands.

What is headless commerce?

Headless commerce is a type of ecommerce website structure that effectually separates the front end of a website (the user experience) with the back end of a website (the content management system where administrators typically make changes). In doing so, it allows brands to work on the front ends of their websites without going through web developers and IT teams, which often requires filing a service ticket.

In the case of PRADCO’s LureNet, it also allows designers like Welbern to create ecommerce pages without relying on web developers.

Headless commerce meets generative AI

Fastr offers headless commerce technology, which it refers to as Fastr Frontend. The option “allows non-developers to control every aspect of their ecommerce site without dependence on developers,” the company says.

Welbern has been using Fastr technology for three years. He said it has helped with efficiency as far as “not having to bog down IT” when PRADCO acquires brands. “It gives us a tool to work on the website,” he explained.

“All of our top-performing pages on LureNet, Fastr has had a part in that,” Welbern said.

In addition, Fastr has added generative AI to its technology suite, building on OpenAI’s GPT-4. Fastr Frontend, now implementing generative AI to its headless commerce technology, allows Welbern and his team to make more changes to LureNet’s website than before.

Welbern can type in what he wants in an ecommerce page, and Fastr AI will use that prompt to generate an entirely new web page. That could include specific images LureNet has selected, fonts that suit its branding guidelines and more.

“All of our top-performing pages on LureNet, Fastr has had a part in that — whether it be our custom lures section, our new brand, Bank & Creek, which is one of our subscription services, and some of our custom soft plastics. All those have been created using Fastr,” Welbern said. “They’re our top-performing pages.”

Can generative AI build web pages?

Ryan Breen, chief technology officer at Fastr, said ecommerce merchants and brands can set up asset libraries as a foundation. This means inputting fonts, images and logos for the generative AI to use. From there, the user would go to the Experience Canvas that Fastr provides and write a prompt with directions on how the generative AI should build the page.

Breen said every brand has its own style of what an H1 field should look like on its website, acceptable colors to use, and sets of images that suit its style. For example, when he tests FastrAI, he likes to have the generative AI include emojis in the copy it produces.

“I typically say, ‘go nuts,’ and it knows what I mean,” Breen said. 

Upon entering a prompt, the user sees the generative AI populate the web page in real time. It will pause intermittently to check in with the user about its progress, asking if the page looks good and if the user wants the generative AI copilot to proceed.

Breen added that users can reuse a prompt and the copilot will still ” trigger a really thoughtful, interesting, ‘I can’t believe it’s not a human’ type of feeling. It was disorienting at first, but every time you’re interacting with it, it’s going to say I have a different idea.”

Breen said Fastr’s team taught the generative AI tool “everything about what an asset means.” That includes what an experience means, how to create designs on a canvas, and where to put text and images.

How does generative AI build web pages?

“Content creation velocity and output can soar,” Fastr said in a statement. That provides “greater opportunities for experimentation to determine what content works best at driving conversions.”

At the National Retail Federation’s Big Show in New York City this week, ecommerce platform provider Salesforce announced its own generative AI technology to build web pages. Salesforce debuted Page Designer, which is in its pilot stage. The tool allows online retailers to build web pages through text prompts. Retailers can customize the design or specify that it mirrors existing branded web pages.

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Eventually, Uber acquired Drizly in 2021 for $1.1 billion. At the time, it was Uber’s second-biggest acquisition to date behind its $2.65 billion Postmates deal. That same year, though, Uber also acquired the Chile-based grocery-delivery service Cornershop for $1.4 billion. In addition, Uber subsidiary Uber Freight went on to acquire Transplace for $2.25 billion.

Cornershop will also shut down as a part of the latest round of changes at Uber, CNN reported.

Uber’s reasoning behind shutting down Drizly

Monday’s news that Drizly would be shuttered was first reported by Axios, which quoted a statement from Uber’s senior leadership. The company indicated a desire to focus its efforts behind Uber Eats.

“After three years of Drizly operating independently within the Uber family, we’ve decided to close the business and focus on our core Uber Eats strategy of helping consumers get almost anything — from food to groceries to alcohol — all on a single app,” Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, senior vice president of delivery at Uber, told Axios, according to the report.

Gore-Coty called Drizly an “original industry pioneer” in the delivery space for alcoholic beverages.

Drizly’s time under Uber

Uber allowed Drizly to operate as its own brand and app following the acquisition. The service notably used a different approach from Uber Eats, which hires contract delivery workers. Instead, Drizly provided a system for participating liquor stores to fulfill their own incoming orders.

At the end of 2023, Drizly ranked No. 40 in the Global Online Marketplaces Database, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the top 100 online marketplaces.

FTC action against Drizly

Drizly ran into problems when a cybersecurity incident from 2018 came to light. According to the original complaint, insufficient security at the company resulted in “a malicious actor” gaining access to Drizly’s customer files, “comprising more than 2.5 million records.” The hack ultimately led to an order from the Federal Trade Commission that placed limits on the types of customer data that Drizly could continue to collect and retain.

Drizly’s partners and customers

As of Monday, Drizly’s website still stated that it partnered with “thousands of retailers in more than 1,400 cities” and that its service was available to more than 100 million customers in the U.S. and Canada.

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“Companies that leverage their customers’ data effectively to build trusted, connected commerce experiences will see stronger customer loyalty and profitability,” Jujhar Singh, executive vice president and general manager of Salesforce Customer 360 Applications and Industries, said in a statement. “Every business must focus on driving efficiency and growth with new integrated and AI-powered innovations that enable a faster path to purchase and greater customer satisfaction.”

Salesforce provides technology services to retailers in the Digital Commerce 360 Top 1000, including to 69 retailers as an ecommerce platform, 55 for content delivery network, and 56 for web hosting and cloud services. The Top 1000 is Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest online retailers in North America by sales.

Salesforce generative AI tools for productivity

Salesforce’s newest AI releases are all intended to give retailers ways to use the emerging technology in relatively low-risk ways, says Michael Affronti, general manager of the Commerce Cloud. Retailer clients tell Salesforce they want to use generative AI, but they’re nervous about implementation and maintaining privacy protections. That’s why the products in this release from Salesforce are focused directly on improving productivity as an easy way for retailers to test the waters, Affronti says. 

As part of the new rollout, Salesforce debuted Page Designer, a tool that allows retailers to build web pages through text prompts. Retailers can customize the design or specify that it mirrors existing branded web pages. For now, Page Designer is in the pilot stage, though Salesforce already claims to be seeing results among early users. During pilot testing, the tool has increased designer productivity 10%-30%, Affronti says. 

Generative AI tools to increase conversion

In another new launch, the Return Insights Tool gives retailers insights based on returns data. It uses generative AI to look for patterns in the data, then gives retailers suggested changes to product display pages that could minimize future returns. It also monitors reviews and reasons for returns to give those retailers specific ways to address issues causing frequent returns. Return Insight is available now, according to Salesforce.

Salesforce also detailed a new inventory management tool. The Inventory Insights tool gives retailers almost real-time access to information about their inventory and insights based on it. Insights based on the data can help in anticipating future demand and advising customer service workers on specific product recommendations when upselling to customers during service requests.

Other new insights from the announced offerings will be based on shopper data delivered through a feature called Customer and Product Insights. For example, the Commerce Cloud and Data Cloud will tell retailers the top product bundles customers buy, and the most engaged customers’ demographics, which can be leveraged to make strategic decisions. Inventory Insights and Customer and Product Insights will be available in summer 2024, Salesforce said.

What did Salesforce release for consumers?

Salesforce also announced Einstein Copilot for Shoppers. The generative AI assistant will have conversations with consumers through ecommerce stores or messaging apps and make product recommendations. Einstein Copilot takes into account a particular consumer’s preferences, location, purchase history, and other factors to make an appropriate recommendation. The consumer can then complete the purchase within the conversation.

Salesforce says Einstein Copilot for Shoppers will be available in summer 2024. The software company isn’t releasing specific results from the pilot test yet, but Copilot has adoption equal to or greater than traditional chatbots in tests, Affronti says. 

Other Salesforce releases

Salesforce announced its new releases on the first day of the National Retail Federation’s Big Show in New York City.

Prior to these latest generative AI features, Salesforce announced a new integration with Amazon’s Buy with Prime. Buy with Prime allows consumers to check out using Amazon’s payment systems and receive orders using Amazon’s fulfillment network from a website other than Amazon.com. Retailers using Salesforce Commerce Cloud will have access to Buy with Prime later in 2024, the companies said. 

See the other NRF stories Digital Commerce 360 is following here.

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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.”

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