Greetings from the Retailist team! As we look ahead to 2024 the e-commerce, retail, and Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) world shows no signs of slowing down. We've seen a range of key news, developing trends, and unique stories from the world of retail over the last week. Dive in to explore the top stories:

Retailist 2024 Power Player Awards 

🔥 Application opportunities will soon open for the Retailist 2024 Power Player Awards! Sign up to be notified and find details on submission requirements here.

New from Retailist

Exploring Cutting-Edge Customer Experience Trends For 2024

In 2024 and beyond, brands will continue to leverage more and more data for tailoring all experiences, delivering more personalized recommendations that enhance the overall customer journey and make things easier and more convenient for the consumer.

Have an exclusive scoop on a retail story? Click here to email our team.

In the news: Top headlines this week

Forget Walmart, Amazon may finally have a true retail rival.
FedEx is gearing up to potentially compete with Amazon, which currently holds a significant advantage over its competitors due to its expansive infrastructure. This infrastructure encompasses warehouses, distribution centers, and a robust delivery fleet. The extensive setup creates a considerable barrier to entry for new players, posing a challenge for companies such as Shopify and Target to directly compete. Even well-established competitors like Walmart have found it necessary to invest billions in order to approach the scale achieved by Amazon. [The Street]

Unilever's US, European market share slips as private label booms. Unilever, the maker of Dove soap and Ben & Jerry's ice cream, faced challenges in defending its grocery store market share in the fourth quarter of 2022 across Europe and the United States. The company experienced a decline in market share in various categories, such as ice cream, mayonnaise, and laundry detergent, attributed to private label competition and price hikes in response to rising input costs. Investors and analysts have expressed concerns about Unilever's shrinking market share, while data indicates a recent easing of price hikes, with Unilever increasing prices by only 5.8% in the third quarter of 2023. Unilever's full-year earnings are set to be reported on February 8. [Reuters]

Klarna adds subscription plan. Klarna, with 37 million U.S. customers, is expanding its monthly plan nationwide after a successful six-month pilot in Utah. The plan, which aims to diversify Klarna's offerings beyond Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL), allows customers to avoid service fees when using a Klarna virtual one-time card at retailers outside the company's network. Klarna's move reflects a broader trend among BNPL firms, such as Afterpay and Affirm, to explore additional revenue streams amid slower growth and challenging economic conditions. [Payments Dive]

7 reasons why everyone’s confused about shrink and theft. The National Retail Federation (NRF) has retracted a key claim about the impact of organized retail crime, leading to a lack of reliable data on the issue. Despite acknowledging the challenges in gathering accurate data, the NRF itself reported that theft and shrink rates remained fairly steady in 2022, with retailers collectively experiencing $112 billion in total inventory loss, including theft from outside sources like shoplifting, burglary, break-ins, robbery, credit card fraud, and organized retail crime. [Retail Dive]

Sure, why not? Now there's a 'Stanley cup' for babies. Fisher-Price has introduced a new toddler toy resembling a Stanley cup, called the "Laugh & Learn Wake Up & Learn Coffee Mug." Priced at $9.99, the toy features buttons that light up and plays songs, sounds, and learning phrases introducing the alphabet, counting, and colors. While not an official partnership with Stanley, the cup is inspired by the iconic design and is expected to be available on Amazon soon. [Business Insider]

Apple’s Electric Car Project Titan Is Coming to Fruition. Apple's electric car project, known as Titan, has undergone a strategic shift from a fully autonomous vehicle to a more conventional electric car design with basic driver-assistance features. The revised plan aims to launch a Level 2+ system, similar to Tesla's Autopilot, by 2028, stepping back from the initial goal of achieving Level 4 or Level 5 autonomy. Despite internal skepticism about the car's profitability, Apple is determined to differentiate its electric vehicle with a sleek design, robust safety systems, and a unique user interface, targeting a price range of around $100,000. [Retail Wire]

Chipotle is going after Gen Z workers with new perks like help with paying off student debt. Chipotle is enhancing its worker benefits to attract Gen Z employees and plans to hire 19,000 new workers. The company is offering a new perk that helps employees save for retirement while paying off student loans, providing a 401(k) match of up to 4% of their salary for eligible workers making student loan payments. Chipotle's move is part of a broader initiative, introducing four new benefits, including a Visa card by Cred.ai, to cater to its Gen Z workforce, which constitutes over 73% of its 110,000 employees. [Business Insider] 

Amer Sports eyes $8.7B valuation in IPO. Amer Sports, the owner of brands like Wilson and Arc’teryx, is aiming to raise up to $1.8 billion in its initial public offering (IPO). The company plans to offer 100 million shares at a price between $16 and $18 per share, potentially indicating a valuation of $8.7 billion. Amer Sports has granted underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to 15 million additional shares, and the IPO is led by joint book-running managers Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Securities, J.P. Morgan, and Morgan Stanley, among others. [Retail Dive] 

Walmart Closes Its Store No. 8 Experiment. In 2016, Walmart acquired Jet.com for $3.3 billion, primarily to bring on board Marc Lore, an experienced online entrepreneur, and accelerate Walmart's digital transformation. The acquisition led to the creation of Store No. 8, an innovation hub working on disruptive retail technologies. However, Walmart has recently decided to close Store No. 8, dispersing innovation efforts across the company, with Scott Eckert, the executive VP who led Store No. 8, also leaving the company. [Retail Wire]

Job Board: This week’s Top Openings in DTC, RetailTech, and more

Want to submit a role to our talent board? Email [email protected].

• Senior Manager, Global Sales Operations (Greater Denver Area) Cin 7 - more here

• Lead Software Engineer, Data Pipeline (Boston, MA - Hybrid) Klaviyo - more here

• Director of Consumer Insights (Charlotte, NC - Hybrid) Peapod Digital Labs - more here

• Global Sourcing Manager (Seattle, WA) Remitly - more here

• Senior Product Manager, Generative AI (Cambridge - Hybrid) CarGurus - more here

• Principal Scientist Chocolate Product Development (Hershey, PA) The Hershey Company - more here

✈️ Upcoming Industry Events

• Smart Retail Expo – February 2024

• eCommerce Berlin Expo – February 2024

• EuroShop – February 2024

• Natural Products Expo West - March 2024

• ShopTalk - March 2024

• World Retail Congress 2024 – April 2024

ABOUT RETAILIST

Retailist Magazine is an outlet focused on modern commerce as it relates to digital innovation. The publication examines our culture’s ever-evolving relationship with marketing, commerce and traditional retail. Our goal is to connect our audience to quality content and award programs for retail brands to tell their story of innovation.

These experts stand at the helm of their niche in retail and provide readers with real-time, trending insights to ensure you remain on the bleeding edge of commerce innovation. Contributing thought leaders include C-suite executives from Hubspot, Wix, Printful, Global-e, Zapaygo, TradeGala, Birdie, Inurface Media, and more.