November 17th, 2025: Same-Day Facilities Key to Amazon's New Powerful Grocery Strategy, Walmart CEO Steps Down, TheRealReal Records Record GMV During Earnings, and Google Releases AI Shopping Updates
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It’s November 17, 2025 and this is the Watson Weekly - your essential eCommerce Digest!
Today on our show:
Same-Day Facilities Key to Amazon's New Powerful Grocery Strategy
Walmart CEO Doug McMillion Steps Down
TheRealReal Records Record GMV During Earnings
Google Releases Some AI Shopping Updates
- 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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BUT FIRST in our shopping cart full of news….
Same-Day Facilities Key to Amazon's New Powerful Grocery Strategy
After about a year of going underground and not drawing too much attention to its retrenchment in the grocery category, it's clear to me what happened. Amazon went back to basics and focused on "what makes Amazon, Amazon." In other words, the flywheel.
Gone are the days where you are hearing about a nationwide physical footprint rollout, essentially learning grocery from scratch within Amazon through an endless series of hires with ultimately questionable results.
In a world where I've lost count of the number of Amazon grocery and convenience store strategy shifts, Amazon has quietly put together a string of wins in grocery.
Let's start with the scoreboard to Walmart:
Amazon in their last earnings report said they have over $100 billion of gross merchandising sales in the last 12 months from grocery (even excluding Whole Foods). Walmart might be what, 3x this number? (ChatGPT's best guess given available figures)
Here's what I see that has been different since Tony Hoggett exited stage left.
* Seemingly abandoning most of their new Amazon Fresh/Grocery formats.
* Expanding what is available at Whole Foods both in-store and delivery/ship from store using both micro-fulfillment and same-day facilities.
* Unifying its cart and supply chain into one, allowing perishables and traditional shelf-stable Amazon grocery selection to appear in one cart
* Focus on same-day facilities to drive grocery adoption - speed = frequency = sales. This is the Amazon playbook.
* Perishables are now coming from same-day faciltiies.
So how many same-day facilities are there? Same-day grocery now serves over 1,000 cities. But by the end of the year, same-day facilities will serve 2,300 cities.
Although Walmart has about 4,500 stores, guess how many cities Walmart serves? About 2,600.
According to reports, there are about 100k SKUs in a typical Amazon same-day facility, and obviously much more than grocery since they are designed to serve all Amazon, but it's a start. (Walmart Supercenters have ~140k SKUs, but a lot of grocery)
Amazon scale could still yet disrupt online grocery, given enough time and patience. Physical retail will remain dominant for a long time, but a lot does depend on how long online grocery will keep outpacing physical grocery growth by 3-5x a year (depending on which estimate you read).
Owning a big chunk of the industry's growth is not a bad strategy whoever you are. And Amazon's own playbook could accelerate the trend. Just by executing the basics. Delivering faster, creating more habits, expand selection and same-day facilities. Repeat
>> closer
[References:]
Our Second Story
Walmart CEO Doug McMillon Steps Down
In a story that broke just while I was sitting down to record, Walmart’s CEO Doug McMillon has stepped down from his role as CEO of Walmart, effective January 2026, to be succeeded by John Furner, the current President of Walmart US.
Walmart has a tremendous executive model for succession, and it usually goes something like this. My friend Gireesh was actually the one to call it out to me.
You become head of Sams US. Then you go to Walmart International. Then you run Walmart US, then you become the Walmart CEO. It’s a very General Motors / Jack Welch style approach to management. Which seems to have turned out well.
Let me give you a feeling for Doug’s history. He comes into CEO in 2014, and Walmart eCommerce is not really a thing, probably less than one-third of Amazon’s eCommerce growth.
In 2016, he makes a bold move to buy Jet.com for $3.4Billion and puts Marc Lore over all Walmart eCommerce strategy to give Walmart a kick in the pants. Walmart Marketplace exists now, but it is very small and has less than 20,000 sellers.
Marc Lore is given wide latitude since he’s supposed to be the expert. And the acquisition is widely criticized but looks prescient in the backdrop. And that 3B is a high number seems quaint in our AI era of multi-trillion dollar valuations.
During this era, Walmart’s eCommerce grows much faster, and Walmart starts to be seen as a credible #2 to Amazon.
Yet…
Walmart also at Lore’s direction acquires ModCloth, Moosejaw, Bonobos, Shoes.com, Bare Necessities, and Eloquii. Mostly to add new supply to Walmart.
Problem is, many of these are failing companies. So there’s that.
By the time it gets to 2019 and 2020, the party is over and Jet and the gang, start to overstay their welcome. Most of these are either divested or shut down, with Marc Lore himself finally leaving in 2021. From there, the rest is really history.
Walmart refocuses on its core. Really scales the marketplaces, adds on advertising, fulfillment and other digital revenue streams and then scales them all.
As far as I’m concerned, Doug McMillon as CEO of Walmart hit it out the park. Revenue went up 50% during his tenure, and the stock price went up 400% as well. Viewed through this lens, it’s easy to excuse a $3B acquisition price with what is now a 800B market cap company in Walmart, on a trajectory to clear a trillion dollars in market power very soon here.
[References:]
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Our Third Story
TheRealReal Records Record GMV During Earnings
It looks like we are back to post-pandemic again. Consumers pulling back, and that is affecting The Real Real, but in a positive way. GMV is up 20% year over year.
Basically the message is clear, people keep trading down and The Real Real is benefiting, including its stock price. The worry somewhat is the holiday season, but I don’t see a reason that transactions will be down. It is possible we could see slightly depressed average order values this holiday season, but that also seems like something we have been witnessing all year too.
[References:]
https://www.pymnts.com/earnings/2025/the-realreal-reports-record-gmv-as-luxury-resale-demand-surges/
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And Our Last Story
Google Releases Some AI Shopping Updates
In an update that left me a little underwhelmed, Google has released some AI shopping updates this week. Here’s what was announced.
First, the launched an AI tool which will help you click and call stores on your behalf and then return the results to you.
Second, Google seems to have added an AI followup mode onto Google Shopping which lets you use conversational search to narrow down what you are looking for.
Third, Google reported that there will be sponsored listings in search results. Yippee. Just what I was waiting for from the incumbent.
Look, can I rant for a second? No one answers the phone anymore Google. I swear I can’t get anyone in the United States to answer the phone. Certainly not at a business. And when I am in any business in person, I just watch as the phone rings and no one even knows or cares how to answer it. This first feature seems useless in the extreme.
Also, Google Shopping is not going to be winning Google any awards anytime soon. Sponsored listings? Seems like a world without enshittified results lasted about 5 minutes.
All told, I see Google suffering from a severe case of innovator’s dilemma. OpenAI has, well, an opening here. And they are going to keep driving through it. It may take time, but it feels to me like Google is not meeting the moment.
The bigger question is, will it matter at all. Distribution is still the most important thing on the Internet because it’s built on network effects. And while OpenAI is pretty decent, it’s not going to replace Google for everything because Google is so damn fast at producing results for a lot of things. And they have a ton of proprietary datasets that OpenAI simply does not have. Google Maps is a great example of this. And uh, hello Android and Chrome. Despite popular reports, the browser wars are not (I repeat NOT) heating up. Last I checked, Chrome still has 70% marketshare.
Very early innings but the average user simply does not ever switch something core like a browser.
While that doesn’t mean people can’t just use it to access ChatGPT, it also means that Google isn’t going anywhere for a while either — especially if they finally get smart and start to disrupt themselves.
[References:]
https://www.theverge.com/news/819431/google-shopping-ai-gemini-agentic-checkout-calling
It’s That Time Friends, for our Investor Minute. We have 5 items on the menu today.
First
E-commerce Reseller Pattern Seeks $321.4M in IPO
Amazon brand accelerator, also known as a reseller Pattern, priced its shares at $13 to $15 each, valuing the company at $2.64 billion. The company plans to raise approximately $321.4 million in funding, of which half will be given to investors.
Second
VF Corporation Sells Dickies to BlueStar Alliance for $600M
VF Corporation sold workwear and streetwear brand Dickies for $600 million in cash to global brand management firm Bluestar Alliance. VF Corporation continues to sell underperforming apparel brands to pay down debt.
Link: https://www.retaildive.com/news/vf-corp-sells-dickies-bluestar-alliance/760092/
Third
Bed Bath & Beyond Closes Kirkland's Home Acquisition
Bed Bath & Beyond completed its $10 million acquisition of Kirkland’s Home trade name and brand assets from The Brand House Collective. Bed Bath & Beyond is expanding Kirkland’s Home into the wholesale sector for the first time.
Link: https://www.retaildive.com/news/bed-bath-beyond-closes-kirklands-home-acquisition/760103/
Fourth
Jumpmind Announces Strategic Investment from Lone View Capital
Retail technology platform Jumpmind announced that it has received a strategic investment from private equity firm Lone View Capital, which acquired a controlling stake for an undisclosed price.
AND FINALLY …
Envive AI Raises $15M Series A to Power Self-Improving Agents for Agentic Commerce
Seattle-based Envive AI, which builds AI agents for retailers, has announced it has raised $15 million in Series A funding.
[PAUSE]
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.
