A weekly podcast with the latest e-commerce news and events. Episode 339 is all the interesting things happening in Commerce that are NOT agentic commerce.
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In this episode of the Jason & Scot Show, Jason and Scot spend much of the conversation trying to avoid one topic they usually discuss (Agentic Commerce). They also talk briefly about Jason’s recent trip to Italy, Scot’s recent travel, and Jason’s son seeing his first Star Wars movie in theaters and getting his first phone on the same day.
Scot describes recent trips to Google I/O and Google Marketing Live, including interviews with Google executives and his sense that Google has a renewed customer focus. Jason and Scot also revisit earlier comments about Google’s position in the market and say the company now looks like a leader in the area they are referring to without naming it.
A major part of the episode is a discussion of U.S. Department of Commerce retail data. Jason says core retail growth from January through May is 4.9% year to date, versus 4% for all of last year, and that after inflation the numbers are close to normal organic growth. He notes strong performance in sporting goods, electronics, and non-store sales, while furniture, car dealerships, and grocery are weaker.
They also cover Amazon news, especially the upcoming Prime Day dates in June and the decision to keep the event four days long. Jason says the shift earlier in the year affects quarterly comparisons, and they discuss how Prime Day has changed from a one-day hardware event into a broader sale tied more to everyday essentials and summer goods. They also mention a Blue Origin launch failure tied to Project Leo.
The conversation turns to TikTok Shop, which Jason calls one of the most important commerce stories in the U.S. this year. He says TikTok has 100 million daily U.S. users and that TikTok Shop sold $9 billion in its first year, about $15 billion in its second, and could reach roughly $23 to $24 billion this year. He says the platform is broadening discovery and changing how brands approach marketing.
Jason and Scot also discuss Shein, Everlane’s acquisition by Shein, and the end of de minimis treatment in the U.S. and Europe. Jason says de minimis helped Chinese direct-to-consumer companies start by letting them avoid duties on small parcels, but that the major players adapted after the rule changed.
The episode closes with a quick review of recent earnings, including Target, Walmart, TJ Maxx, Victoria’s Secret, Coach, Ralph Lauren, and Lululemon. Jason says the retail market is increasingly a story of winners and losers, with value-oriented retailers and some rebuilt heritage brands doing well, while others are under more pressure.
Episode 339 of the Jason & Scot Show was recorded on Wednesday, June 18th, 2026
Join your hosts Jason “Retailgeek” Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of ReFiBuy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.
Transcript
Jason:
[0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scott Show. This is episode 339, being recorded on Wednesday, June 17th. I’m your host, Jason Retail Geek Goldberg, and as usual, I’m here with your co-host, Scott Wingo.
Scot:
[0:38] Hey, Jason, and welcome back, Jason and Scott Show listeners. Jason, it’s been a minute. The last time we chatted, we went over the Amazon earnings. Where in the world have you been since then?
Jason:
[0:50] I have been numerous places, but before we get into it, I feel like I should tell the listeners that I’ve thrown down a challenge for today’s episode.
Scot:
[0:58] Yeah, under much duress.
Jason:
[1:00] Yes.
Scot:
[1:01] Go ahead.
Jason:
[1:01] You know, so I was actually in Italy on holiday last week. I’ve been with, you know, clients pretty much every week for the last six or seven weeks. And everywhere I go, people are asking for more episodes, more podcasts, more Jason and Scott show. And you know i constantly have to say you know i really want to but scott only talks about agentic and i’m getting kind of sick of it, um and so that’s possible i know i know uh well i think i think our mutual friend jason delray gave you like a new title right are you the.
Scot:
[1:33] Yeah yeah he called me an agentic commerce maximalist i don’t i wasn’t sure if he was throwing shade i took it as a compliment though so i.
Jason:
[1:40] Updated my.
Scot:
[1:40] Linkedin to include that that wordsmithing.
Jason:
[1:44] Yes i do know So generously gave me. I, yeah, I don’t think he meant it as a compliment, but I know he was really happy when you, when you put it on your profile.
Scot:
[1:53] It’s a badge of honor.
Jason:
[1:55] Yeah. So my challenge for today’s episode is we’re going to do a whole podcast, without talking about that topic.
Scot:
[2:05] Okay.
Jason:
[2:05] Do you think you can make it?
Scot:
[2:07] I can do it, but I need an exception for the trip report because it’s kind of fair.
Jason:
[2:12] Okay.
Scot:
[2:13] Or we could cut the trip report.
Jason:
[2:15] No, no, no. People are dying to know. I feel like for a while, I was the only one out and about, and you were busy building empires in Raleigh. So I think people are excited to hear that you’re out amongst the people again.
Scot:
[2:29] Yeah.
Jason:
[2:30] So I definitely think we should cover that. I want to mention one non non work related thing because I know that it aligns with all your interests. My son, Steven, it was the greatest day of his life on Sunday because we we saw his first Star Wars movie in the theaters. We finally got to see Mandalorian. And then afterwards, we went to the AT&T store and he got his first phone.
Scot:
[2:52] So, whoa, that’s a that’s a double header right there.
Jason:
[2:56] Yeah, it’s a lot.
Scot:
[2:56] That’s a lot to process.
Jason:
[2:58] Yeah.
Scot:
[2:59] Yeah. We went to Midnight Madness. So there was a 10 p.m. showing the night before on a Thursday. And one of my favorite things to do is friends have younger kids that are kind of your son’s age. And we got a bunch of we had like 20 people there. And it was fun to watch little kids kind of relive a little bit of the magic. And they loved it. So people, a lot of adults don’t care for it, but they, you know, you have to remember, even when Star Wars came out, the target age was kind of like seven to 12 or something like that.
Jason:
[3:30] So, yeah, I want to say, well, I was sitting in the theater. I was having a lot of flashbacks to like seeing Star Wars Episode four in the theaters with my father when I was very close to Stephen’s age.
Scot:
[3:43] Yeah.
Jason:
[3:44] And the impact it had on me. And so I was, I was seeing, I was experiencing a lot of the day through that lens.
Scot:
[3:52] It’s kind of good they don’t have the music because that’s like what really gets me going so yeah yeah that uh the the 20th century fox thing and then right into the yeah that’s the steep.
Jason:
[4:04] Yeah and you know fun fact there was like a publicist commercial in the in the the pre-trail uh pre-real.
Scot:
[4:11] Oh yeah which one.
Jason:
[4:13] We sponsor like a a creative director young talent.
Scot:
[4:17] Contest that uh But the young lines. That’s in Chicago.
Jason:
[4:21] Yeah, probably.
Scot:
[4:22] Probably very local. We’re not a hip enough metro.
Jason:
[4:26] There’s no creative people in Raleigh. So, yeah. Not true. Not true.
Scot:
[4:30] Hillbillies won’t understand this.
Jason:
[4:31] A lot of talented people in Raleigh. Just not on this podcast.
Scot:
[4:36] This is how you end up getting a lot of weird emails. Yeah. You’re still, remember the time you’d called retail media networks mid?
Jason:
[4:44] Yeah.
Scot:
[4:45] She still posts. I saw another thing go by. I didn’t read it.
Jason:
[4:48] Yeah.
Scot:
[4:49] I saw something else.
Jason:
[4:50] Yes. I feel. Yes. Andrew and Curie are both still very offended. I love you both.
Scot:
[4:57] Don’t go to con and be alone with them. I dark alley.
Jason:
[5:00] Yeah. Con is like in a couple of weeks, I worked for a giant advertising agency with like 120,000 coworkers. I think I’m the only one that’s never been to con of all 120,000.
Scot:
[5:13] You mean that giant stack of badges sitting there?
Jason:
[5:15] No, no compass French ones. I desperately want to go to Cannes, just not the week that all my co-workers are there.
Scot:
[5:23] Yeah, pick the week before or after.
Jason:
[5:25] Yes, yes, because I understand that that region knows how to ferment grapes.
Scot:
[5:29] Yeah, yeah. Did you have any trips? You’ve been doing all the vacationing, so those don’t count.
Jason:
[5:35] Yeah, yeah. I have not done a lot of public gigs lately. I have been doing a lot of private stuff with clients, which is awesome. I get to learn tons of stuff. It’s super fun to see everyone, but not a lot of stuff that I can really, share with our listeners but i know you have scott where have you been.
Scot:
[5:54] Yeah it reminded me over on the other, podcast called retail gentic we cross-posted we put it on the jason scott show audio but we put the video over on the youtube channel and despite all this effort to create compelling content i just recorded you at nrf and it’s the number one video so there you go, that sitting at 1,800 views. So that was your NRF keynote. Crushed it.
Jason:
[6:18] Yeah, yeah.
Scot:
[6:18] There’s a few more of those.
Jason:
[6:20] Yeah, I have unfortunately had to change that talk every week since then because of the pace of change in our.
Scot:
[6:28] Yeah, yeah, it’s hard.
Jason:
[6:30] I very much would like to have written it for NRF and then done it a hundred times this year for different clients. But I feel like I have to write at least pieces of it anew every single time.
Scot:
[6:39] Yeah, so I did, I got an invite to go to Google I.O. and Google Marketing Live. So that was fun to see all their big announcements and do a little some interviews with some of the folks at Google. So their PR people were very nice. And, you know, like, who do you want to talk to? And I was like, Sundar. And they’re like, well, learn as an entrepreneur, aim high. And then like you’re. But I get to interview this guy, Nick Fox, who’s like number two to Sundar. And, you know, basically everything but AI reports to this guy. And that was really interesting to hear how he thinks about stuff.
Jason:
[7:15] I watched that interview, of course, and I feel like reading between the lines, he was a huge Scott fanboy.
Scot:
[7:20] I don’t know if he even knew who I was. It’s like, I don’t know. I don’t think he was a fanboy. He was very nice. He was very good with interviewers. Let’s just say that. He was trying to butter me up. But I was.
Jason:
[7:31] Probably not the first interview he did that day.
Scot:
[7:33] No. That’s really neat to see. I’ve interacted with Google a lot over the decades, and there’s really a new energy there. And then they’re very customer oriented, more so than any time I remember in the past, which I think is pretty cool for a company that big to still think a lot about the customer.
Jason:
[7:53] Yeah. If I could allow us to take a slight victory lap, I’m remembering a podcast we did late last year talking about the topic that shall not be named. And we were we were ranking the progress that the different players made. And at the time, there was a lot of buzz about the the usual suspects.
Scot:
[8:14] And I think you’re having a hard time.
Jason:
[8:17] I’m doing. No, no, I’m going to make it. I’m going to make it. And I think you and I made the point that, well, those are all interesting. It would be a mistake to sleep on Google because, you know, we felt like they had a lot of endemic advantages that they only needed, you know, to deploy in the right area. And I think since then, they have, in fact, deployed a lot of them. And, you know, I think, you know, today are certainly looked at as the market leader in the topic that shall not be named.
Scot:
[8:48] Yeah. And then it was interesting. I did a New York trip, and it was like two different Wall Street folks invited me. So John Blackledge, who I know you know, and then Colin Sebastian, really good friend of the show. And I won’t say the topic, but you can guess what I spoke about. And but what was really.
Jason:
[9:04] Was that car washes?
Scot:
[9:06] It was not. It was close, but not quite in there. And what was really interesting is the hallway conversation. So I’m pretty well known in Wall Street because of the same store sales data I used to put out at Channel Wizard. Yeah. I don’t, Rick Watson puts out a lot of content around Shopify. There’s a bull and bear case on Shopify and everyone was really wondering about Shopify. It was like the weirdest thing. I never get asked about Shopify, but that was like what everyone wanted to know. I thought you’d find that interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Everyone’s very worried that, so what’s happened is Visa invested in Lovable. Aiden bought a big loyalty program. So all the payment people, PayPal imploded. So there’s a lot of activity at the payment level that we haven’t seen probably for 20 years, aside from like, you know, buy now, pay later or something like that. And it’s freaking everyone out that all these new entities are kind of, you know, they have potential to infringe on what Shopify has had a pretty much lock on for a long time. So it’s really interesting to see. I don’t know how much of it’s real or not, but it’s enough worry that it’s been pretty muted on the stock. I haven’t looked at it lately, but one of the reasons they were concerned was, the stock’s been underperforming and everyone kind of pegs it to this challenge, the topic that we can’t name.
Jason:
[10:33] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think they’re always interesting because I have great admiration and respect for Shopify. I feel like they’ve been hugely disruptive in our industry. When I started, agencies like mine made a fortune installing all these like huge on-prem e-commerce platforms. And I would argue Shopify has like completely obliterated, that whole industry, like both the platform providers, but also the SIs that turned all those wrenches and do all those things because it’s now way easier and lower risk and faster to stand up a very serviceable platform. So I think they’re a great executor, comma, I get annoyed how many people want to talk about them as a benchmark for the e-commerce industry and a competitor, a direct competitor to Amazon, because I feel like it’s apples and oranges.
Scot:
[11:28] Yeah. And then as I talk to these people and unpack their concerns, some of it goes back to the CEO of BigCommerce, which is now called Commerce, which is infinitely confusing.
Jason:
[11:39] That should be illegal.
Scot:
[11:40] Yeah.
Jason:
[11:40] It’s like the hotel in Las Vegas that called themselves the hotel.
Scot:
[11:44] Yeah. They finally fixed that, but I know that costs so many who’s on first things and then it’s next to the bar. Like everything in that hotel was cutely named that way, which was not cute. Anyway, he basically said, I think it was the last earnings call, that they don’t have any new logos because no one’s re-platforming because no one thinks there’ll be websites, which was not a great thing. I don’t think he thought through the ramifications of saying that. So that didn’t go well. But that really freaked everybody out all across the map. So that’s just like an interesting trend thing that I haven’t seen written about much.
Jason:
[12:22] Yeah, yeah, I agree. It’s almost like there’s other topics that have everyone’s attention.
Scot:
[12:27] Yeah. All right. So we’re going to ignore that. We’re going to go on the no AI program here. Let’s jump into you were very excited to do the show today because this morning, I know you were up bright and early, the Department of Commerce data came out. So give us give us an update. What was revealed in today’s data drop?
Jason:
[12:44] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So quick reminder, refresher, the US Department of Commerce, the US Census Bureau, does a survey every month. They compel a bunch of retailers to submit forms saying how much stuff they sold, and they aggregate all that data. And we follow that data as one of our kind of best indicators. And so the data is a month in arrears, which means the data that came out this morning tells us May. So we now have January through May of 2026 data. And it’s broken out by category. We could talk about the categories, but the top level that I pay the most attention to is what we call core retail. So that’s all the retail categories except restaurants, car dealerships, and gas stations. And so core retail January through May of this year is 4.9%. To put it in perspective, core retail was up all of last year, 4%.
Jason:
[13:46] So we’re actually year to date growing a bit faster than we grew last year. But of course, one of the things we always worry about in the recent era is inflation. There’s always inflation in the numbers that have been inflation for as long as there’s been commerce. But around the pandemic, we had this extraordinary inflation, much higher than usual inflation. And so I had to learn how to do all the math to take the inflation out of the numbers. And so last year’s 4% core growth was actually only 3.2% of real growth.
Jason:
[14:24] And this year to date’s 4.9% growth would actually be 3.8% real growth. So I would call all those numbers kind of, within the band of normal, expected, organic growth. Like it neither indicates, a slowdown in any way, nor does it show a unusual acceleration. But when you double click on that, things change quite a bit. Like the categories that are winners and losers are, you know, pretty profound.
Jason:
[15:03] If you go just, you know, based on the nominal numbers, the numbers without adjusting for inflation, it’s been a terrible year for furniture. It’s down 3% versus these same months last year. Car dealerships have been flat. Grocery is down less, is up less than a percent. So those categories did really poorly.
Jason:
[15:24] Sporting goods, which has struggled for a long time, is doing really well. It’s up 9%. percent electronics which have been like the worst category since the pandemic by far is up six percent year to date and an interesting fact electronics is about the only category that has de-inflation.
Jason:
[15:43] So if you’re just for inflation electronics grow like even faster, at like 7.3 percent and so but of course the the fastest growing category, is normally e-commerce and And unknowingly, we don’t have e-commerce in the monthly data. We get e-commerce in quarterly data. And so we have this surrogate for e-commerce that we call non-store sales, which is kind of e-commerce and a few other things. And that category, non-store sales, grew 10%. So that’s at the very top. Normally, it’s the top. This year, it got surpassed by a category that we don’t talk about very much, which is gas. And of course the reason gas is up is entirely because of inflation right so gas grew people spent 13 more on gas this year january through may of this year than they did last year if you just for inflation uh people bought two percent uh less gas than they did, the year before so so none of that is is like, organic increased demand it’s just having to pay more for the same gas And, of course, that’s $100 billion that American families spent on their car that they then couldn’t spend on some discretionary purchase.
Scot:
[17:00] Cool. So takeaways, kind of flat when you take out inflation. Is that kind of- Yeah.
Jason:
[17:07] Yeah. And so to me, the big, it’s-
Jason:
[17:12] It’s kind of usual, I guess, is what I would call it. Like the industry always grows and it’s growing at the industry average. And so whenever you talk about a specific retailer, which we’ll probably do a bit later, what you don’t want to talk about their growth, their absolute growth. You want to talk about how they did versus that usual growth. They’re like, are they better or worse than that, that 4%? And so that’s all normal. I would say traditionally retail grows about 4%. And for most of our careers, Scott, e-commerce has grown like 15 percent. Last year, it’s slowed down the last couple of years. And so last year, e-commerce finished the year only up 5.4 percent.
Jason:
[17:56] And so that’s by far the slowest rate of e-commerce growth we’ve ever had. And so I’ve been very curious to see what happens this year. Is that the law of large numbers and e-commerce is just kind of hitting its natural plateau and it’s going to start growing at close to the same rate as retail? Or is this an impact of the unusual growth we had during the pandemic and so you’re just comping against some really high growth and we’re going to go back to growth again? And so we now have one quarter data, Q1, of e-commerce growth, and we saw a pretty significant uptick. We saw e-commerce grew in Q1 9.7%, so almost doubling. So that’s encouraging.
Scot:
[18:45] If only we had like an innovative new technology that would kind of really accelerate e-commerce.
Jason:
[18:49] Yeah, but then we’d have to have a whole argument about whether that technology is e-commerce or a competitor to e-commerce or part of e-commerce.
Scot:
[18:57] Yeah.
Jason:
[18:58] Yeah.
Scot:
[18:59] It’s a hallucination.
Jason:
[19:00] You’d need all kinds of definitions. And yeah, ultimately, you decide it’s just mid and a hallucination.
Scot:
[19:06] Amid hallucinations. Well, it wouldn’t be the Jason Scott show without a little non-AI.
Jason:
[19:19] Amazon News. Your margin is their opportunity.
Scot:
[19:27] That’s right. A little bit of Amazon news has been quiet outside of a certain topic we can’t really go into. But the big news is Prime Day is right around the corner. It’s a week away from when we’re recording this, so June 23 to 26. So, Jason, why’d they move this up? This has been previously in July, right?
Jason:
[19:46] Yeah, I think mostly because they wanted to annoy analysts. So now no one’s going to be able to talk about comps because normally Prime Day, the last couple of years has been in Q3. And so this earlier date means it’s in Q2. So it’s going to screw all the quarterly comps for the foreseeable future. I don’t know exactly why they landed on this day. It’s a super complicated thing to pick the date for this sale now because it’s such a global phenomenon that people forget about. It actually isn’t. It’s these dates in about 90% of Amazon’s market, but it’s other dates in a few other markets. And so, you know, this is a little early. This is kind of the traditional time when they first launched it. Originally, people forget, but Prime Day was originally intended to be Amazon’s birthday celebration.
Jason:
[20:37] And what is, I find also a little interesting, annoying, is that for the second year in a row, it is four days. So originally, it was a one-day sale. It crept up to two days. Last year, for the first time, it crept up to four days. And a bunch of people were, you know, speculating, well, what’s it going to be? Are they going to go back to two days? Are you going to keep it four days? And, of course, you and I, like, there’s nothing I was more confident in that Amazon was not going to shorten the number of days. Because the one thing Amazon cares more than anything about is reporting better comps than last year. And so they, yeah, once, once you have a comp for four days, you can never go shorter than four days.
Scot:
[21:19] No, absolutely not. Do you think this is a play aside from making it hard to compare year over year? Is this a play for just kind of the earlier you can get the wallet, the better kind of thing, or is there something? Yeah, I think this one, my mind was always the back to school and is there.
Jason:
[21:35] Like something changing and they are still trying to call it the back the start of back to school season and they’re they’re saying you know back to school season is starting earlier right like which is, is a little bit of a stretch i do think the nature of this sale has changed a lot over history right like you know originally the sale was one p only right because they didn’t invite the three people to provide to participate and And, you know, for many years, they had 3P deals in the sale, but the primary sellers that like four of the top 10 bestsellers every year would be Amazon Hardware. So there’s, you know, kind of the optimal time to offer those things. You know, then you’re you’re impacted by when you release new hardware. All of these things come into effect. Well, Amazon, you know, while nobody’s looking, is very rapidly shifting from kind of a consumer electronics retailer to a everyday essentials retailer. And, you know, so suddenly you want to be selling all those summer goods that people are consuming, all those picnic supplies, all the, you know, summer food items. And so it just changes where the sweet spot target is for having the sale.
Scot:
[22:55] Yeah, I did notice that once they changed it, everyone else followed Stu. So they’re definitely kind of proving that they’re setting the tone of this whole thing.
Jason:
[23:03] Yeah, yeah. I think that’s always been a thing. It was kind of ironic in the, you know, maybe no one responded to the first Prime Day, but by the second Prime Day, a lot of other big retailers were celebrating Amazon’s birthday as well. Yeah.
Scot:
[23:13] Yeah. They all would change the name, obviously, but it was awkward.
Jason:
[23:18] Yeah. One other thing that’s going to be interesting to me, I think there was an era when there were some really extreme deals that encouraged incremental purchases and that there was a manageable number of deals. I would now, you know, the Amazon catalog has expanded like unimaginably in the last 10 years. And the amount of deals on these prime days have expanded even faster. And so I actually think there’s a huge signal to noise problem now. There’s a bunch of, A, mediocre deals that are not exceptional. And there’s too many deals for any human to go hunting for deals, right? Right. And so, you know, it’s almost like consumers are going to need some kind of new technology that didn’t exist very long ago that they can use to both, measure the deals and find out if they are, in fact, really good deals or not. And also to, you know, find the deals that are uniquely relevant to the Wingo household amongst the, you know, tens of millions of products that will be on sale.
Scot:
[24:29] Yeah, kind of like a hyper personalization technique.
Jason:
[24:31] Exactly.
Scot:
[24:32] Too bad it doesn’t exist.
Jason:
[24:33] Yeah. So, you know, there might be some other podcast that talks a lot about technology that could do that. But I have a feeling that that’s going to be the primary difference about this Prime Day than any others is the front door to the deals is probably going to change to some kind of new technology like that.
Scot:
[24:51] Yeah the other the kind of sad amazon news was they had a a blue origin ship that was going to carry some of the low earth or the l project leo had a very cataclysmic, what do they call it rapid unplanned rapid disassembly yeah rapid rud rudded rapid unplanned disassembly yeah yes had a red event, it was pretty epic because it took out like the whole launch pad and it’s like we’re going to be quite expensive to it’s going to set it back at least a year i think but so that’s kind of a bummer Yeah.
Jason:
[25:21] That was a huge bummer. We had a lot of fun in our household for the Artemis launch. And so, you know, there’s a lot of excitement. And so that’s a pretty meaningful setback. So that was a bummer.
Scot:
[25:32] Yeah other thing that caught my eye i wanted to chat with you about is tiktok shops is kind of they’re kind of the the tortoise and the hare they’re just sitting there growing their gmv like crazy and, because they don’t have those two magic letters that are vowels they are not really getting a lot of attention but i saw e-marketer said that by 2026 they’re seeing it get up way, well above 23 billion in GMV in the U.S., which is pretty material.
Jason:
[26:00] Yeah, this is, I would argue, the most important story in commerce in the U.S. this year, right, is, Kind of quick, quick recap, like obviously they’re, you know, a phenomenal social network that has a ton of attention. There’s now 100 million Americans that go there every day and they spend on average 54 minutes a day on it. Right. So so the platform has taken their attention, everybody’s attention. Three years ago, they said, not only are we going to hold your attention, but we’re going to sell you stuff while you’re here. Right. So they launched a marketplace within the social media platform called TikTok Shop. And of course, you know, heretofore, lots of social networks had tried to do commerce and it never worked. Right. And so there was some speculation that that’s a, you know, Eastern thing that works in Asia, but doesn’t work here. Well, in the first year, TikTok shops sold nine billion dollars worth of stuff, which made them the fastest growing retailer in the history of mankind. The second year, they sold like 15 billion in the US. And yeah, this eMarketer article said, hey, this year they’re on track to sell like 23 or 24 billion. So we talked before about how the industry is having average growth, but I would really argue it’s a bifurcated industry. There’s a handful of retailers, Amazon, Walmart, TikTok shop that are growing way faster than the industry average. And then there’s a bunch of traditional retailers that are really struggling to find growth.
Jason:
[27:30] And what, so I think it’s super interesting how fast and how big TikTok shop is. I continue to visit brands every week and, you know, they all want to talk about the topic you want to talk about, Scott. And I’m like, that’s a super important topic. And when I’m retired, it’ll, you know, it’ll probably go down as the most important thing that happened during my career. But if you’re worried about making your numbers this year, we should stop talking about that and start talking about TikTok shops right now.
Scot:
[27:56] Yes, that’s up 48% year on year, which is, you know, you just went through the e-commerce numbers. That’s like 10x the growth of e-commerce, which is pretty amazing. So they’re taking share from somebody.
Jason:
[28:06] Yeah, they’re the fourth largest e-commerce site in the world.
Scot:
[28:09] Yeah, where’s it coming from?
Jason:
[28:11] Target. No, I’m being a little sarcastic. But some like so a, I think more than like really hitting one retailer in particular, what it’s doing is it’s consuming most of the growth so that organic growth is going to a disproportionately small handful of retailers and it is going to tick tock shop.
Jason:
[28:36] TikTok is in this like group of this triumvirate of brands I talk about a lot, Team Ushian and TikTok Shop. But of the three, the thing that’s unique about TikTok Shop is they are selling a lot of branded merchandise, right? So this is not all inexpensive, direct to consumer from China stuff. A lot of it is global brands selling on the platform.
Jason:
[29:00] And it’s a much broader assortment of categories than people realize. Health and beauty is right at the top and fashion is, of course, very big, but they’re selling steaks, they’re selling food, they’re selling pet food, they’re selling all sorts of things that people don’t realize on the platform. And to be honest, as big a number as that is, let’s say they sell $24 billion this year, I would actually argue that that is the tip of the spear. Because for every dollar they collect on their platform, I would argue they’re generating $4 of incremental purchases, right? That someone didn’t know they needed something, they discovered it in their 54 minutes of doom scrolling on TikTok, and then they walk into Walmart or they jump onto Amazon and buy it. or they buy it from a creator right on TikTok. But the big trend here is this thing that was the most important source of leads in my entire career is this thing we called SIS, saw in store. You went to that store to get Oreos for Stephen’s lunch, and there on the shelf next to the Oreos were the Coca-Cola flavored Oreos, right? And did you take them home? And that discovery, while it still happens in store, it happens way less because you are way more likely to have discovered the new products you’re going to spend your discretionary budget on on TikTok before you ever walked into a store.
Scot:
[30:27] Interesting. I think to do our listeners service, this should be the first app you install on your son’s new phone to make sure he has unfettered access 24-7.
Jason:
[30:37] We have a lot of problems managing screen time and TikTok is not one yet. Twitch and YouTube are a lot bigger problem for us at the moment, but I’m sure my days are numbered on that one too. Thanks for the suggestion.
Scot:
[30:51] Absolutely. Happy to help.
Jason:
[30:53] I would say one other kind of interesting difference, like in the old days, you bought attention on these platforms, right? Like you buy an ad on Facebook, right? Or you buy an ad on Google. And then there was this idea of influencer marketing and influencer meant like Rinaldo or Kim Kardashian and these huge celebrities and you paid them a fortune to make content that say your product is good. None of that works on TikTok. You cannot buy your way to success or you can spend your way to success, but the spending pattern is wildly different. What works on TikTok are small creators that have limited reach, but that there’s a huge number of them. And you can’t pay them to create inauthentic content and expect it to work.
Jason:
[31:39] So the main kind of top of funnel strategy for TikTok shop is sampling. What you have to do is send free product to a huge number of very small creators, and get them to receive your product for free and talk about it on TikTok. And what you’re hoping is enough of them talk about it and get affiliate fees for selling stuff on TikTok shop that the slightly better creators than those will see it and they’ll want to make content. And then we’ll call those tier four creators. And then the tier three creators see it. And then the tier two. And then you actually don’t make any money on TikTok until the tier one creators, who are still relatively small micro influencers, are creating their version of content about your product. So it’s this whole different funnel that people are having to learn. And it’s a completely different kind of marketing process than we’re used to on marketplaces or e-commerce sites.
Scot:
[32:32] Yeah, it’s pretty personality driven.
Jason:
[32:36] Yeah, absolutely.
Scot:
[32:37] One thing we hadn’t covered yet that I thought was interesting because we covered them when they were born was Everlane has been acquired by Sheehan, which just made everyone very salty. The whole idea of a very clean, purposeful, everything is good being acquired by Sheehan, who probably has an opposite view of the world, fast fashion versus permanent, high quality fashion. Why would Sheehan buy that if it’s so misaligned?
Jason:
[33:05] Yeah, well, it’s almost impossible that Sheehan acquired Everlane because in every survey, every done, U.S. Consumers care about purpose-driven brands and missions. And of course, Everlane is the ultimate mission-driven, purpose-driven brand. And Sheehan, many people view as the antithesis of that, right? So it’s utterly impossible then that Everlane totally failed and got acquired, at a discount rate and that Sheehan is wildly successful and had tons of capital to buy them. I don’t know if listeners can hear the sarcasm in my voice. But yeah, you talked about all the people that were salty, no one more salty than the founders of Everlane who had sort of already were uninvolved in the company but shocked to see this acquisition.
Scot:
[33:56] I think you want to vouch to start a new company to re-resurrect the idea of Everlane.
Jason:
[34:00] Yeah, yeah. And I hope they’re successful. I wish them nothing but the best. But I tend to be kind of a centralist here. Like, you know, I sort of don’t believe the Everlanes of the world are quite as good as, you know, everyone would like to believe they are. Like, apparel is bad for the earth. Like, organic cotton is awful for the earth and uses, you know, an overwhelming amount of water.
Jason:
[34:25] There really is no such thing as like green clothes. And I would actually argue there’s some things about Sheehan’s model that are much greener than any apparel company before them. For example, they perfectly match supply to demand. So they don’t have to dispose of or discount any products because they know exactly what consumers want when they make it. And they know they have a consumer for everything they make, which is actually much better for the earth. So I don’t think any of these companies are as good as their PR. I don’t think any of them are quite as bad as their PR. But Shein is another one of these hugely disruptive companies. We talked about Shein, TikTok, and Timu. You know, when TikTok became the fastest growing retailer in history, they did it by surpassing a recently set record by Shein. And, you know, Shein is now much larger than most of the traditional U.S. Apparel resellers that have been trying to grow super hard for tons of years. And, you know, Shein was a wedding dress manufacturer in China that in five years sells way more clothes than, you know, almost any of the U.S.-based apparel brands that we could mention. So they say what you want about them. They have figured out what the American consumer wants to buy and they are offering it and they’re making a lot of money doing that. And I want to say they’re now in…
Jason:
[35:48] I’m going to stall so that I can find a semi-accurate number, but I want to say they are…
Jason:
[35:56] Trending towards $25 billion just in apparel sales in the U.S. This year, last year. Last year. So they’ll sell more clothes last year than TikTok shop will sell all products this year.
Scot:
[36:09] That’s crazy. That’s a lot of she-ing.
Jason:
[36:13] Yeah. And so they obviously, you know, they very famously and visibly put Forever 21 out of business. I’m not sure they were the direct cause of Everlane’s demise, but it’s somewhat interesting and, superficially ironic that Everlane, whose core purpose was transparency, which I really liked, like they put the bill of materials right on their product detail pages, you know got acquired by by you know a company that you know people rightly criticized for their lack of transparency.
Scot:
[36:41] Yeah that’s crazy so that was interesting to watch uh unfold everyone was angry, yeah the another thing that kind of ties to this china retailer, marketplace is i saw the eu is getting rid of de minimis they had 150 euro de minimis there and that reminded me that we had talked a bit about it that that ended in the u.s at some point last year and you, you thought that would be pretty bad for the team moves of the world and and that type of thing because that played out or did the always innovative chinese merchants figure out a way around this through some some loophole.
Jason:
[37:18] Yeah the so a i would slightly characterize it differently it never occurred to me that that i i always felt like that the elimination of de minimis would not slow these companies down because they all did grow. So, well, let me start one step earlier. For people that don’t know what de minimis is, when you import goods into the United States, you have to pay an import tax, a duty on those imports. But we do not have an unlimited amount of inspectors to look at every box that comes into the U.S. and collect those taxes on every box. And so, for our own convenience, the customs department said, you know what? If someone sends a small number of goods in a small parcel into the U.S. And it has a commercial value of less than $15, we’re not going to collect the taxes. And then over time, $15 became $60 and $60 became $240. And these Chinese companies said, ah, instead of sending a container of garments to the U.S., I’ll send a bunch of packages that are less than $240. And then I essentially will not have to pay import duties on any of those garments and I’ll pay more in shipping but I’ll pay way less in taxes and so I would argue all these direct-to-consumer from China companies.
Jason:
[38:32] Were able to jumpstart their business because of De Minimis. But when we canceled De Minimis, it was already too late. Those companies were now very large and had lots of means to import products in the country in a lot of ways, and they’re perfectly capable of paying taxes. What eliminating De Minimis likely did in the US, it made it way less likely that there’ll be a new wave of competitors to these companies. Essentially, these companies walked up a ladder, and then we burnt down the ladder so no one else could walk up it. So that’s what I think happened. And did it require these companies to change their business model? It did. They were all big enough and well-resourced enough to successfully do that. So they all started shipping containers of goods to the U.S. Instead of small packages. They all started buying all the U.S. 3PLs and storing goods in the U.S. And so a sort of unintended ramification is you can buy goods from most of these companies and get it delivered in one to three days instead of the one to two weeks that, you were getting the goods when they were availing themselves of de minimis. So that’s how it played out in the US. All of these companies had a business disruption the day it happened and they all recovered pretty quickly. And we’ve already talked about how fast Gn is still growing and how fast TikTok Shop is still growing.
Jason:
[39:49] And Timu is as well. We’re now seeing Europe run the same play for largely the same reasons. And there’s kind of a funny one, or not funny, depending on how you want to look at it, In France, France is the home of some of the most oldest historic luxury department stores in the world. And Shein, essentially, they’re all distressed because department stores are not a good business anymore. And Shein essentially like invested in one of the famous French department stores to keep them afloat. And the brand still exists, but the stores are essentially franchisees. And so Shein bought a bunch of the franchisees. And so all these luxury French department stores are now selling Shein apparel, in these famous stores, these BHV Marsal’s stores. And this was a huge affront to a lot of people in France. And so now you’re seeing Europe, you know, kind of explicitly change the import laws to try to slow down Shein. And I don’t think it’ll be any more successful in in europe than it was here in the u.s.
Scot:
[40:58] Yeah time check we’re we’re kind of close to the end do you want to do a little lightning round.
Jason:
[41:05] Sure sure sure.
Scot:
[41:07] So I just took some notes of some interesting earnings that came out since we had the Amazon report. And it’s kind of a tale of two cities. So you mentioned Target. They actually had a pretty good quarter up 5.6. That was their first positive quarter in five quarters, which is pretty wild. Walmart had a decent quarter up seven, but they kind of cautioned that they were seeing some softness in Q2. So that kind of was a meh reaction by Wall Street. TJ Maxx had their best profitability beat since August of 2021. And the biggest surprise was Victoria’s Secret really took off with 13% growth. A lot of people, I think, attributed that to GLP ones, giving people confidence to go back into that brand. I haven’t yet, but maybe you have. And then Walmart reported probably the biggest news was their e-commerce grew 20% year over year, and they made a statement that it is profitable. So that was a 15-year journey to get there, but they are now a profitable operation. So I thought that was interesting. What are your hot takes on those?
Jason:
[42:14] Yeah. Yeah. I think that kind of winners and losers is the way to think about this whole market. And again, if the industry is growing at four to 5%, like what you want to see is, are your comp sales faster than four or 5%, right? So Walmart is the second largest retailer in the United States of America, they’re growing at 7%. So that means they’re wildly winning, right? You know, Amazon is tied with or slightly ahead of Walmart at this point as the largest retailer in the US. And they might be growing, depending on how you count, as much as 11%. So they’re wildly winning.
Jason:
[42:50] I’m a fan of Target. I’m rooting for them. I’m thrilled they had a good quarter. I think it’s too early to declare victory for Target. What you have to remember is, you know, when you have five consecutive down quarters, you’re now comping against soft numbers, right? So, you know, I hope they are investing a lot in stores.
Jason:
[43:09] They’re, you know, trying to fix a bunch of the fundamentals and they are getting better results. I think it’s too early to declare victory. And I still worry that Target’s product mix is not favorable for the macroeconomic climate. Like a lot of the Walmarts and Amazons are winning by selling everyday essentials and food. Target is not very successful at selling food. The other retailers that are kind of universally winning are a lot of these really good value-oriented retailers. And TJ Maxx is kind of the best example of that. So they’re doing great. And then there’s some apparel and American heritage brands that are having really lovely, surprising turnaround stories. And so I would look at like Victoria’s Secret is one of those. I don’t think it’s merely a GLP one thing. I think they have a completely new management team and kind of reposition the brand and it’s resonating with their target market. I think Coach had kind of lost their way and they’ve kind of recreated the brand and launched new products and new avenues to market and they’re having phenomenal growth. So I think there’s some great stories of of re-emerging heritage brands, Ralph Lauren is, I think had maybe their best quarter ever this quarter. So, some of those guys are doing really well. Some of the guys we’re used to talking about growing really well, like a Lululemon is, you know, probably, you know, kind of lost some of their mojo. So, there’s winners and losers out there.
Scot:
[44:30] Interesting. Well, I think we have used all of our listeners, Tom.
Jason:
[44:36] Yeah. So hopefully, and I’m going to admit defeat, you made it all the way through without talking about that other topic that will not be named.
Scot:
[44:44] So there was a struggle. My tongue is bleeding right now. You can’t see the visuals.
Jason:
[44:48] Well done. If you want, feel free to go lay down a couple of Retail Jantic episodes right after while I go take a nap.
Scot:
[44:56] I may have to. I’m kind of wound up now.
Jason:
[44:58] Yeah. That is an interesting topic and there is a lot of news there as well so i i hope our listeners are following following all hopefully you know for our our next episode which is going to come sooner than people expect hopefully we’ll we’ll have a little bit of a blend of of uh, all the industry news including that stuff.
Scot:
[45:18] And until next time.
Jason:
[45:19] Happy commercing.
