June 23rd, 2025: Saks Global Still Sounds in Trouble, Facebook Says eCommerce is Great for Other People, Jassy’s AI Memo Was a Snoozefest, and Amazon Extending Prime Day Doesn’t Give me Warm Fuzzies
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It’s June 23, 2025 and this is the Watson Weekly - your essential eCommerce Digest!
Today on our show:
Saks Global Still Sounds in Trouble
Facebook Says eCommerce is Great -- For Other People
Jassy’s AI Memo Was a Snoozefest, In a Good Way
Amazon Extending Prime Day Doesn’t Give me Warm Fuzzies
- and finally, The Investor Minute which contains 5 items this week from the world of venture capital, acquisitions, and IPOs.
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To hear new episodes of the show every Monday morning, subscribe now at rmwcommerce.com/watsonweekly and wherever you get your podcasts.
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[PAUSE]
BUT FIRST in our shopping cart full of news….
Saks Global Still Sounds in Trouble
Saks Global Getting Assurances, Which Definitely Means Trouble Not Over
I've often found that the greatest public assurances often come at a time right before the company is in the greatest trouble.
After all, if a company was just fine, the company wouldn't need to say anything. Its customers and results would do all the talking. In recent analyst reports before and after a BMO Capital meeting:
* $350M in funding just in time to place Christmas orders? What would the company's Christmas be like without this financing?
* What was the terms on this financing?
* What happens if said inventory doesn't sell through like expected?
Even in good times, most retailers are only two bad quarters of inventory buys away from a bankruptcy. Saks is teetering.
Furthermore, executives are expressing "confidence in their liquidity". Again, you don't need to express confidence in your liquidity, if, you know... you have confidence in your liquidity.
Hendrik Laubscher put it one way in his recent newsletter: what would happen to luxury if Saks goes out of business? I might put it another way -- what happens if Saks stays alive and this is as good as it gets?
>> closer
[References:]
Our Second Story
Facebook Says eCommerce is Great -- For Other People
In the last few weeks, Facebook did what it inevitably does every few years: give up on embedded checkout on its own website.
Facebook Shops and Instagram Shops die in June, like this month! RIP. Frankly, they were always terrible. Nevertheless, they persisted.
In fact, Facebook used to get upset with you when you drove traffic off to the site. No more, I guess?
Let's review the pitch:
* Conversion rate on websites is 2% globally, Meta said.
* If we can just convert just a small fraction by keeping people on site, we will be rich!
Of course, the skeptics had a different idea:
People don't go there to buy, we said.
Once you get addicted to advertising revenue, everything else feels like second-class margins, we said.
Well, again, we were right and they were wrong.
Commerce is a discipline and a skill which is extremely difficult to learn for advertising-based platforms. Commerce is ultimately logistics, and it's not easily to communicate trust without a demonstrated ability to deliver.
TikTok Shop luckily comes from a commerce-oriented parent company: Bytedance/Douyin. And so their capabilities and investments come more from experience than random experimentation.
The Global LLMs will have similar things to prove when advertising gets into the mix, which ... Rufus has already started selling ads. So, it's happening.
Ultimately, SaaS and subscriptions are a great model now fro ChatGPT, but still limiting.
People enjoy free.
And ads always seem to end up running everything - from a business model point of view. Much more to be written here, but... it's hard to bet against :)
>> closer
[References:]
Our Third Story
Jassy's AI Memo Was a Snoozefest, In a Good Way
If you have been watching Amazon for more than 5 minutes, you could have written Jassy's note for him to be honest. Instead, what we got coming out of it was a lot of hot takes like:
"Amazon doesn't want employees"
"The note was a revolution!"
Neither of which feel right to me. Here's what I heard out of the note:
* Amazon AI Press Puffery
* Documenting what is actually already going on.
* Continuing the trendline in straightforward ways.
First things, first. All CEO notes are PR. All of them. So there was a lot of that in here. If you've heard Andy blather on about AI during earnings calls the last two years, there wasn't a ton new in this note tbh.
To contrast, Jeff never even attended earnings calls and commissioned the "World's Worst Slide Decks" to support them -- just to reinforce how irrelevant they were in his mind to taking care of customers.
His notes about employees I thought were pretty tame. He has been speaking for years now about getting teams smaller, and this is just another excuse in my mind to continue on the same crusade: smaller teams get more done faster than bigger teams. If you've ever been in a large meeting, you understand that each person you add to a meeting decreases its value exponentially.
I think a lot of people missed that he also mentioned there would be more people doing other kinds of jobs. So there's that.
Still, while there is broad worry that AI is going to be net negative to the new generation of college grads, I do think that is based on extremely misguided assumptions:
* existing big corporate execs are safe
* big corporate execs will cut staff
* AI will do a lot of things mid and lower-tier employees are doing today
Instead, the statement I feel is necessary is more like:
The next generation of employees are the only ones who can imagine the workplace of the future. Full stop. And VC and other long-term investors who aren't thinking about next quarter earnings will help enable this transition.
[References:]
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7341799308943409152/
[PAUSE]
And Our Last Story
Amazon Extending Prime Day Doesn’t Give me Warm Fuzzies
Since the first Prime Day in 2015, which you know was actually a Prime Day. Single day. Amazon slowly added hours to Prime Day so that by 2022 it was two days. Another day in 2023.
Now here we stand at 4 days.
Will it matter? Most consumers think no. In fact, people just expect that everything is always discounted on Amazon now.
Can I rant for a minute?
Across the Internet, everything is so damn promotional right now, that this seems to be the way of things. What happened to brand and service as selling tools? Those are table stakes in this economy. Amazon is telling us that if the consumer is going to buy, they need the proper motivation.
If you thought you could really build your brand on Amazon, think again. Instead, what you are really doing is using it as a catchment for your social and other earned marketing efforts. Which does gain you new customers. Of course, not always the highest quality customers since they are often promotional, but customers nonetheless.
And there is that pesky component of owning your brand on Amazon. Imagine you were a brand manufacturer, and your product was in every mall in America but you had no control over how it was presented?
That would be a ridiculous idea right? Well, even the biggest companies like Nike until recently thought that was a good idea. And still in pockets you see brands that come up with ideas like - our Amazon business is not important, and so on and so forth.
I do feel that there is an alternative playbook developing, however.
Instead of bidding yourself to the top of Amazon listings indefinitely, just get your product there. Focus more on building your content capabilities on social channels with influencers, and capture the sale on both Amazon and your website. You shouldn’t care where your customer shops, and we all know there is plenty of reason to shop on Amazon. Namely: returns, refunds, trust, and date definite almost guaranteed shipping. Which most brands don’t even bother to offer on their own websites.
At any rate back to our story. The fourth day is going to be a marginal bump and Amazon seems to be playing a game of diminishing returns here
[References:]
https://viral-launch.com/blog/amazon-news-updates/the-complete-history-of-amazon-prime-day/
It’s That Time Friends, for our Investor Minute. We have 5 items on the menu today.
First
Techmates Group (TMG) has Joined Zaelab
Zaelab and TMG have merged to create a leading B2B enterprise transformation consultancy, combining expertise in B2B commerce and digital strategy. The new company is named Zaelab. Transaction details were not disclosed.
Second
Michaels Acquires JOANN's Intellectual Property and Private Label Brands
The Michaels Companies has announced that it has acquired the intellectual property of craft retailer JOANN and the Big Twist private label for an undisclosed amount. Michaels did not acquire any JOANN locations and has not disclosed whether it will use the JOANN logo and trademarks.
Link: https://www.retaildive.com/news/michaels-acquires-joann-ip-private-labels/749927/
Third
Freight Data Automation Platform Kargo Raises $18.4M
Industrial artificial intelligence and computer vision platform Kargo.ai announced that it has raised $18.4 million, which will be invested in product development and marketing. Kargo utilizes hardware to scan data found within warehouses, automating freight data capture and verification.
Fourth
L'Oréal Groupe to Acquire a Majority Stake in Medik8
'Oréal Groupe announced that it has acquired a majority stake in Medik8, a premium science-backed skincare brand for a reported $1.1 billion. A European private equity fund Inflexion will retain a minority stake. L'Oréal strengthens its Luxe portfolio with a brand that has global growth potential.
Link: https://www.loreal.com/en/press-release/group/loreal-groupe-to-acquire-a-majority-stake-in-medik8/
AND FINALLY …
German Car Parts Retailer Autodoc Plans German IPO
German online car parts retailer Autodoc plans to list on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange through a secondary share offering. The company founders and Apollo Global Management are selling secondary shares, which will not generate new equity capital.
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Did you know that RMW Commerce has another podcast? Check out The Watson Weekend for an unfiltered and lively eCommerce chat each week with me, Rick Watson, my co-host Jess Lesesky, and an array of interesting guests and topics. All focused on eCommerce. You can find the Watson Weekend by searching for it on iTunes, Spotify, or Youtube.
That’s all for this week! Till next time Watsonians.....
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Hi, I’m Rick Watson, CEO and Founder of RMW Commerce Consulting and host of the Watson Weekly podcast - your essential eCommerce Digest.
To hear new episodes of the show every Monday morning, subscribe now at rmwcommerce.com/watsonweekly and wherever you get your podcasts.
