Food
Online sales are detrimental to the business model of physical stores. That is the conclusion of financial specialist Marshoek, who however claims that supermarkets just have to go through with it.
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Fashion
Move over, Black Friday! This week, Belgium launches its own national e-commerce event as Jack & Jones, Kiabi, La Redoute, Sarenza, Tape à l'Oeil and Veritas organise the first Belgian Friday.
DIY
An expansion into Wallonia and France beckons for Belgian paint web shop deverfwebshop.be and its new counterpart boutiquepeinture.fr. Moreover, the company is looking for a new financial partner to help with this move.
German online retailer Zalando saw its first quarter profit completely wiped away: last year's 5.1 million euro net profit turned into a 15 million euro loss. Turnover grew 22 %, investments being the cause for both.
General
Despite Amazon’s attractive offer, Indian online retailer Flipkart has chosen for Walmart and (remarkably), Google owner Alphabet as the new owners of 75 % of Flipkart’s shares. The deal is said to be worth 15 billion dollar.
Chinese retail group Alibaba has published better-than-expected quarterly results: turnover went through the roof, but its profit is under pressure because of increased investments.
Ocado has reached an exclusive agreement with Swedish supermarket chain ICA to build its online grocery business. It is the third international partnership for the British online retailer, after collaborations with Groupe Casino and Sobeys.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has yet another reason to pop open a bottle of champagne: his company brushed aside analysts’ expectations and increased its turnover 43 % to 51 billion dollar (42 billion euro). Net profit even doubled to 1.63 billion dollar.
American fashion chain American Apparel relaunched its international web shop this week. Dutch and Belgian fans can visit the brand again, after it shut down its physical stores last year.
m-Tail
From now on, Amazon delivers orders to the trunk of your car. The retail and technology giant has given its Prime subscribers access to get packaged delivered to the trunk of their car, without any additional costs. The service is currently limited to the United States.
Ecommerce giant Amazon surpassed the 100 million Prime subscriber mark, just one of the many milestones CEO Jeff Bezos mentioned in his annual shareholder briefing.
The French e-commerce market has seemingly opened up a new area of competition: Carrefour and E.Leclerc have both opened so-called “drives piéton”, pick-up locations for pedestrians in urban centers.
H&M subsidiary Monki will collaborate with ‘influencers’: the fashion label will launch a global program for social media figures, who can earn money if they sell clothing.
Picnic Germany is highly ambitious: the Dutch online supermarket targets profit in North Rhine Westphalia within six months. Picnic is also expanding its delivery service in the Netherlands, to Noord Brabant.
Electronics
It seems a lost fight to compete with web shops, but not every retailer is simply throwing in the towel. A German household appliance seller has found an original way to entice customers.
Adidas wants to focus more in online sales and that is why it will shut down a large number of stores worldwide.
