This Week In Ecommerce

Ecom Nation
  • 0.0 (0)
  • Business
  • Updated Weekly

🎙️ This Week in Ecommerce is your weekly download on the headlines shaping Australian retail. Hosted by industry legend Mal Chia and rising star Alex Ross, each episode dives into the biggest stories—from billion-dollar deals to platform updates, policy shifts, and consumer trends. Sharp insights, no fluff, and plenty of honest takes. New episodes every Wednesday. Powered by Ecom Nation.

  1. 2d ago

    Skipping Black Friday Is Marketing Too

    Episode 158 is Wednesday 21 October, and everyone is flat out getting ready for Black Friday. Alex has another LinkedIn Live on Friday, and Mal is heading to a black-tie Halloween party next week in a tux and a Phantom of the Opera mask. Ecom Nation is also up for a Meta agency award next week, so fingers crossed. The big one this week is LSKD firing the starting gun on Black Friday. It's going up to 70% off storewide from 27 October, a full month early, and warning shoppers to expect 15-day shipping delays. Mal and Alex weigh that against the brands opting out altogether, ask whether skipping Black Friday is just another kind of marketing, and talk about why Mal is bracing for a January hangover. Stax relaunches on 6 November under new CEO Anna Cheng, and is turning about 13,000 unfulfilled orders into dollar-for-dollar store credit.The ACCC has taken Kmart to the Federal Court, alleging its OXX nail glue caused burns from 2017 without a warning on the pack, and that its Anko watches failed button battery standards.Fewer Australians are doing Halloween this year (18%, down from 21%), but total spend is up 2% to $510M and spend per person is up 13.6%.China's economy grew 4.5% last quarter on a 36% jump in September exports, while retail sales grew just 1.1%.LSKD starts its "biggest sale ever" a month before Black Friday, while Slappas, Citizen Wolf and others skip it.Bellroy opens its first store after 16 years, with New York and Kuala Lumpur to follow, and Mal explains why he walked away from an $800 backpack he couldn't see.

  2. Oct 13

    Kmart Pulled Its Smart Glasses. Shoppers Are Pushing Back

    Episode 157 is Tuesday 13 October, and Alex has to remind Mal to say the date, after listeners asked for it. Inside Retail's Top 50 People in E-Commerce nominations close the day this goes out, so get yours in. And a shout-out to Andrew Pearce and Hello Sarnie, the Adelaide sandwich shop Mal put on Uber Eats back in 2016, which has just opened its first store outside South Australia, in North Sydney. The big one this week is Kmart and Big W pulling their $89 smart glasses after the privacy regulator opened an investigation. Mal and Alex talk about why shoppers are pushing back on tech: UK venues are banning Meta glasses, people are asking what their Ring doorbells record, and record and DVD sales are coming back. And half of shoppers say they think less of a brand that uses AI-made ads. The surcharge ban is two weeks old, "service fees" are showing up at the counter, and the ACCC says a card surcharge under a different name is still illegal.Uniqlo's Southeast Asia, India and Australia business grew 30.7% to A$7.3B, and it barely ever discounts.ASOS was breached through its Snowflake data platform and its shares fell 10%, while 52% of Australian small businesses say they don't think they're a target.Prime Big Deal Days pushed US online spend to $9.86B in two days, and Lowe's will start Black Friday on 29 October.Kmart and Big W pull their smart glasses as the OAIC investigates, even as Meta's glasses sales have tripled to more than 7 million pairs.Bond-Eye has launched swimwear made from 45% Australian merino with no nylon or polyester, and Australia hasn't required fibre-content labels since 2019.Stax's liquidators put the shortfall at about $23M, against the $10M reported, with $1.4M of customer pre-orders booked as revenue.

  3. Oct 9

    AI Is Making Too Many Ads

    Episode 156 is Wednesday 7 October, and Mal is recording from a booth at WeWork Pitt Street in Sydney, still getting going after the long weekend. Alex spent hers at a packed Bunnings, photographing products and asking Claude which one to buy instead of finding a sales assistant. Mal's mother-in-law is doing the same with Gemini. Every shopper now does their research with an AI first, and that changes what a store is for. The big one this week is Marley Spoon. The meal-kit company says demand for its GLP-1 Support range has almost tripled since May, and the range is now around 6.5% of revenue. Mal and Alex talk about the GLP-1 customer as a new kind of shopper: they eat less, want more protein and need a whole new wardrobe. They also look at which categories should be building for that customer now. Frasers vs Accent turns into a board fight, and shareholders finally get their say at the AGM on 20 November.TikTok will now run your ads outside TikTok, across nearly 400,000 apps, mostly mobile games. Mal is sceptical, because Meta's Audience Network never performed.Nike's revenue is down 4%, China is down 26% for a ninth straight quarter, and there's another restructure. The performance range is growing while Dunks, Air Force Ones and Jordans fall, and cheaper Chinese brands are coming for the running market.Three closures: Valley Eyewear drew seven offers after an owners' dispute, Suboo had over a third of its $655k debt with Shopify and Wayflyer, and TVSN shuts after 30 years.Marley Spoon's GLP-1 Support range has almost tripled since May and is now around 6.5% of revenue.Country Road Group is pulling about a third of its concessions out of David Jones. Department store research says more than half of menswear is bought by women.AI is making more ads than anyone can watch, so now machines pick which ones we see. Mal argues for podcasts, digital out-of-home and brand campaigns you control.

  4. Sep 30

    Rates Just Hit 4.6%. Black Friday Is Going to Be Huge

    Episode 155 is Wednesday 30 September, the last day of Q3. Adelaide can't decide if it's summer, and Mal is recording in shorts. The warm snap is pulling summer buying forward. A couple of Mal's clients are selling picnic gear at full price, without discounting. That's a nice counterpoint to last week's "nobody pays full price" story. The big one this week is the Reserve Bank lifting the cash rate to 4.6%. That's the highest in 15 years, and it lands eight weeks before Black Friday. Mal makes the contrarian call: squeezed shoppers will save up and spend big in the sales, so November could be huge, with a hangover in January and February. Alex covers gift edits and event wear. They both talk about a two-speed Christmas, where people with a mortgage cut back and outright owners keep spending. QBD says manga is its fastest-growing book category. The licensing lesson is to look for the fandoms nobody's tapped yet (Alex had to Google what manga is).Vinnies has started selling on eBay Live, beginning with a signed Roosters jersey from $1. Apparently 40% of Australians want to shop by livestream. Mal is not one of them.New research says shoppers barely notice when packs get smaller but do react when prices go up. Would you rather pay the same for less?The RBA takes rates to 4.6% just before Black Friday. Deloitte has retail growth slowing from 2.8% to 1.5%, and it's a two-speed Christmas.Glassons posts a 50% profit jump on the back of Australia, while Cue sits in receivership with Myer, Brand Collective and Oroton circling.Eye-Patch Gate: Fenty, Glow Recipe, Huda Beauty and Vitamasques all launched the same "innovative" eye-patch dispenser within days of each other. Your manufacturer might already be your competitor.

  5. Sep 24

    60% of Shoppers Won't Pay Full Price. We Trained Them.

    Episode 154 opens with the date, because you asked for it: Thursday 24 September. Mal is just back from eTail in Melbourne, where day one was all AI and day two was loyalty. R.M. Williams and Oz Hair & Beauty both argued that loyalty shouldn't mean handing out credits and killing your margin. Mal then admits he's a Qantas Platinum lifer with 1.8 million points. The big one this week is KPMG's Retail Health Index. Six in ten Australian shoppers no longer buy at full price, and the index is expected to stay negative until the end of 2027. Mal and Alex talk about how retailers trained shoppers to wait for sales, and what to do about it. That includes keeping clearance stock out of your site search and product recommendations, giving customers a reason to buy at the start of summer, and running bundles and edits instead of yet another made-up sale. Coles put milk up 20c "for the farmers", stopped paying the farmers, and only took 10c back off.Meta's Muse AI agent lands in WhatsApp. Amazon blocks it, and Shopify switches on agentic checkout for every store.Premier Retail: Peter Alexander keeps growing on licensing and loyalty, while Smiggle drops $34M and closes 13% of its stores.KPMG's Retail Health Index: 60% of shoppers won't pay full price, costs keep rising, and the sale calendar keeps growing (Golden Week sales, anyone?).Larry Kestelman's Brand Collective buys Glue Store, The Dom and Running Bare. Is it a smart play or a clearance channel?KMD Brands posts a NZ$414M statutory loss that's mostly a Rip Curl write-down, while every brand in the group grew.

  6. Sep 15

    Proud Poppy's Comeback, Cue's Collapse, and the RBA's Surcharge Ban: TWIE 153

    Black Friday prep is well underway, and this week opened with something you don't get often on this show — genuinely good news. Tara McKeon has won back control of Proud Poppy after creditors voted to keep her running the business rather than winding it up, a real vote of confidence from the people she owes money to. But the story every operator listening needs to act on is the RBA's card surcharge ban — from October 1st, surcharges are banned outright across eftpos, Mastercard and Visa, paired with cuts to interchange fees. That's just fifteen days' notice for a change the RBA claims will save businesses and consumers up to $1.8 billion a year, though the real story is who actually recoups the cost. Tara McKeon has regained control of Proud Poppy after creditors approved a Deed of Company Arrangement rather than winding the business up.Ralph Lauren posted another quarter of margin expansion by selling fewer units at full price, adding 1.5 million new direct-to-consumer customers in the process.Frasers Group has demanded Accent Group chair Lawrence Myers resign immediately, drawing a line in the sand at the end of September.Cue Clothing has entered administration just 18 months after Hilco Capital bought it, despite narrowing losses and growing sales.Card surcharges are banned outright from October 1st, and the RBA's promised savings may not reach consumers the way it's being framed.A new category of "dopamine sites" lets people simulate the entire online shopping experience — cart, checkout and all — without ever placing a real order.Culture Kings turned the NFL's first regular-season game in Australia into a 635% sales week without ever officially sponsoring the event.

  7. Sep 9

    Gen Z Isn't Broke, They're Just Not Buying Houses

    Alex is back in the hot seat after two solo weeks, and it's a lean, sharp episode: five stories, no filler, in and out in twenty-odd minutes. The headline number this week belongs to Shein, whose Hong Kong debut shed $5 billion in value in five trading days — the second-worst opening week of its size on the exchange, behind only Baidu — and Mal and Alex dig into whether that's ultra-fast-fashion cracking or just Shein specifically wearing the regulatory target on its back. Aje is reportedly courting private equity and family offices to fund its next growth phase, fresh off a Lara Worthington denim collab.A credit-card-sized e-reader called the Xteink is quietly showing up Big Tech, and you can buy it on Temu, TikTok Shop and Amazon.Coles has ended its three-year Palantir partnership after a GetUp campaign topped 85,000 signatures — and its "wasn't surveillance" line raised more questions than it settled.Gen Z's financial stress is real, but the wallet's moved toward toys, charms and travel rather than vanishing altogether.Shein's Hong Kong IPO lost $5 billion in its first week, and Mal's not convinced one bad week makes an IPO.

  8. Sep 1

    Ooshies, AI Music Bans and a Golf Brand's Worst Week: TWIE 151

    Solo week. Alex is off carving up the slopes in New Zealand (allegedly back next week — you said that last week too), which means it's just Mal, a jam-packed lineup, and a moment to mark a brutal 48 hours for pop culture that took Dolly Parton, Tim Curry and Peter Cullen within days of each other. The story everyone's already talking about: Woolworths' Ooshies giveaway added an estimated 1.5–2 percentage points to their sales growth in the first eight weeks of FY27, and dented Coles hard enough that a month of sales growth visibly slowed — all from a rubber toy clipped onto a $30 spend. Australia's music charts body ARIA has banned wholly AI-generated tracks from charts and ARIA Awards from 31 August, forcing a "substantially human-made" test after an AI-assisted Madonna cover cracked the top five.A 90-year-old Mitre 10 franchise in Jimboomba, Queensland has won a Federal Court costs order clearing the way to sue Bunnings over a store opening next door.Meta has agreed to pay up to $18 billion to settle a teen-safety case with 47 US states, with almost a third of that payment contingent on YouTube and TikTok matching its restrictions.Woolworths' Disney Ooshies promotion shifted genuine shopping behaviour — 39% of adults and 64% of parents with kids under 18 changed where they shopped to chase them — while raising real questions about plastic waste dressed up as recycling.Golf brand Callaway split from creator group Good Good within a day of a co-branded ad backlash, in what's shaping up as one of the cleanest brand safety case studies of the year.

See All (163)

Trailer

About

🎙️ This Week in Ecommerce is your weekly download on the headlines shaping Australian retail. Hosted by industry legend Mal Chia and rising star Alex Ross, each episode dives into the biggest stories—from billion-dollar deals to platform updates, policy shifts, and consumer trends. Sharp insights, no fluff, and plenty of honest takes. New episodes every Wednesday. Powered by Ecom Nation.

Information

  • Creator
    Ecom Nation
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    163
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Ecom Nation
  • Show Website
    This Week In Ecommerce

You Might Also Like