Fashion
FMCG giant Unilever continues to invest in ways to sell its ice cream brands Ben & Jerry's and Magnum directly to consumers. To this end, it is setting up a logistics network of around a thousand locations. The multinational also wants to explore the possibility of delivery by drone.
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Property
JD.com has its eye on the port of Zeebrugge as a springboard to Europe. The Chinese e-commerce player, which mainly focuses on logistics, visited the port together with Flemish prime minister Jan Jambon.
Food
Walmart subsidiary Asda will roll out a pickup service in the UK within an hour of ordering and set up a test with Kellogg’s and Unilever.
General
German trade union Verdi has called on the workers at the Amazon distribution centre in Bad Hersfeld to go on strike in the last few days before Christmas. The trade union wants better pay and working conditions for the workers there.
Ahold Delhaize is investing 480 million dollars (430 million euros) in its supply chain on the American East Coast. The Belgo-Dutch retailer wants to move towards a fully integrated self-distribution system, thereby saving nearly 100 million euros in costs each year.
Black Friday has a new spin-off: ‘Make up your mind Monday', the day which sees the most returns from bargain hunters who regret their decisions. It signals a major problem, as returns in the holiday season cost retailers several billions.
Swedish fashion retailer H&M has started offering home deliveries by bike. The chain's Dutch customers are the very first to have the choice of having their orders delivered by bicycle courier.
Ikea has taken a minority stake in Optoro, an American start-up that develops software aimed at making returns more efficient. The investment fits in with the objective of the Swedish retailer to be a circular company by 2030.
Forget FedEx or UPS: Amazon is the world's largest logistics company. As a result of this focus, Amazon is also the quickest parcel delivery company in the United States.
Dutch online supermarket Picnic has raised 250 million euros to build an automated distribution centre, that should be able to provide 150,000 families with groceries every week.
From 2021, postal tariffs for letters and parcels from abroad will increase, as each country will then be able to set its own prices for distribution. This will have serious consequences for orders placed with cheap Chinese web shops.
By 2040, Amazon wants to be completely carbon neutral. This is the promise made by CEO Jeff Bezos in a new climate commitment, motivated by employee actions. A huge fleet of electric cars would boost this objective by 2021.
British retailers angrily responds to Boris Johnson's promise that there would be no shortage of food after a no deal brexit. They point out that they can not indefinitely stockpile supplies every time a deadline day gets near.
Veepee, Belgium's largest flash sale platform, has outperformed the general e-commerce market for years - despite refusing free shipping and returns. This deliberate strategy now seems to work for them, rather than them being punished for it.
Amazon has launched a new programme to donate unsold goods to charity. The company has been attacked for systematically destroying such goods up till now.
Amazon's new return policy in the United States allows customers to drop their products without package or labels in thousands of sales points, nationwide and free of charge.
