October 27th, 2025: Commercetools CEO is out, Bigcommerce partners with Paypal, Will the new Ulta Beauty marketplace cook? And Shopify and Lovable Integration Shows a Fire and Motion Strategy
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It’s October 27, 2025 and this is the Watson Weekly - your essential eCommerce Digest!
Today on our show:
Commercetools CEO is out, so what’s next?
Bigcommerce partners with Paypal to improve monetization
Will the new Ulta Beauty marketplace cook?
Shopify and Lovable Integration Shows a Fire and Motion Strategy
- 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….
commercetools CEO out, so what's next?
It's safe to say since COVID expired, commercetools has had a tough run of news.
When a long-time key (most people would say THE key) player exits and the replacements are generally not from the world of commerce, the result is not good, but cause or effect?
Since the exit of Kelly Goetsch, you have:
* fired Chief Revenue Officer
* departed CFO
* incoming and then fired (?) CEO Andrew Burton
But what of the move?
* I think it was likely a smart move by the company, and likely coming for several months. As soon as you know someone is not the person, better to move fast than slow.
* Reports are out there that the Board Chairman was already quite involved in the business (if they were not, wouldn't they be doing a CEO search? ) which of course itself is a warning sign for Mr. Burton, even though it likely makes the transition a heck of a lot smoother.
* What about Dirk? Clearly has his blessing, but no interest in coming back as CEO to "founder mode"?
As far as the traditional strategy for the company:
* Can't go too high because you start running into SAP and Oracle (yes crazily still a thing)
* Can't go really too low either because there aren't many deals Shopify or Salesforce isn't also in. Used to be if commercetools and Shopify were in the same deal, one of them was in the wrong deal. That hasn't been true for about 3 years now.
The entire re-platform market is fossilized as someone said once that people would rather gnaw their arm off than, well, you know... replatform. (so this can't be helping either)
So now what? The Fraser's Group recent news offers a clue. (of course this news Andrew is quoted in just last week, whooops. Sounds like this happened fast!?)
... drum roll ...
Agentic. (duh)
I read the release carefully and it appears to be primarily just getting Fraser's into ChatGPT Instant Checkout.
Ok great, but do I need a premium enterprise platform to do that? Probably not. Really just a channel enablement tool. Not to mention you can't charge a platform premium for what will be essentially a free service.
What's next?
* Layoffs or some additional exodus are almost always a given in a situation like this, as when Board members get a much closer look at things, no cuts are large enough.
* Cost cutting also has a way of helping profitability in the short-term which can also help find a buyer.
* Agentic seems to be the new default strategy (fact - check out the homepage - and recent Fraser's news).
And of course, I have a list of questions:
* Agentic, but agentic what?
* What about headless?
* Who knew being a C-Suite executive at a platform was so hazardous to your health? Does Big/Commerce have the most stable executive team in commerce technology now? Asking for a friend.
* More than fair statement to say the company needs to get acquired, is Paypal in the market after the recent Shopware investment? Asking for a different friend.
>> closer
[References:]
Our Second Story
BigCommerce Partners With PayPal To Improve Monetization
Is it now BigPay vs ShopPay?
Actually no. Bigcommerce announced an optional new service called Bigcommerce Payments which attempts to make things easier for its merchants to transact and do business. It's not really about checkout, mostly.
What is BigCommerce Payments?
It's a new service which integrates a number of standard Paypal functions directly into the BigCommerce UI.
This is not for the .. err.. bigger BigCommerce merchants. How do I know that? The Paypal exec quoted in the release is from "Small Business & Financial Services". So, not Enterprise.
Also the bigger brands don't need a payment system integrated into their commerce dashboard, except for the reason we generally know - it's harder than hell to use Paypal's dashboard. So from this point of view, logging into BigCommerce should feel like a dream comparatively relative to Paypal's maze of identity verification, challenge questions, and support requests.
On the good side:
* Big/Commerce needs to improve its monetization relative to Shop. What SaaS companies have called "attach rate %". Meaning, for every dollar of GMV what is the attach rate of other services that contribute to revenue.
Historically Shopify has seen its revenue to GMV ratio at about 3%.
And BigCommerce while its never really released GMV (of which there are probably two reasons for this - one is lesser scale, and two is all those B2B accounts for which GMV is either slippery or irrelevant) is well known to have mainly a single monetization method -- SaaS. A little merchant services revenue never hurt no one. (Shopify's revenue is 74% merchant services). So there is a lot of room to "run" here.
On the cynical side:
* The prominent mention of Paypal Buy Now Pay Later in this release means that this is probably one of the biggest goals of Paypal in this deal. a huge sell job for that service into BigCommerce and the 5% back on PP BNPL in Q4 means that BigCommerce is going to be pocketing some coin when consumers pay for that thing later.
All told, the playbook for monetizing a platform via payments is out there, and BigCommerce has a long way to go to maximize it.
In another side of Commerce (see what I did there), Walmart followed Amazon's playbook and used it to lead itself to growth. Could BigCommerce play the Walmart in this market? That would be the upside play.
>> closer
[References:]
Our Third Story
Will The New Ulta Beauty Marketplace Cook?
There are some categories that are just harder to do with marketplaces - beauty, toys, luxury, baby come to mind. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but the risks are higher. Anything you put in or on your body or give to your kids has a much higher standard than your normal marketplace item.
However the promise is still real:
* increased assortment (over 100 new brands)
* fresher items
* more sales
Likely this also focuses on range expansion from existing brands too.
This is the lens I look through when I think about what Ulta Beauty is doing in its new UB Marketplace. Right near the top of the press release, safety is paramount.
The first element of ensuring safety is gating the marketplace, which is mentioned in the release.
"Thoughtfully curated" and "marketplace" don't always go together to create business impact (due to scale) but we will see how this plays out over time. Sometimes these things work out, and sometimes, well... companies lose focus on their curated marketplace (Target+ I am still looking at you).
Vertical marketplaces have huge advantages in that they can promise deep assortment and benefits to buyers who are often looking for freshness. The theory of greater assortment that is easier to add than a typical item you need to allocate cash to is also seductive. Expect to see more continue to test this approach and use it as the foundation of future digital revenue streams.
>> closer
[References:]
[PAUSE]
And Our Last Story
Shopify and Lovable Integration Shows a Fire and Motion Strategy
Early in my career I was always a huge fan of Joel Spolsky, founder of so many tools in the Internet era, and a prolific blogger, he was just one of those must-reads if you were a developer back in the day. And proof that good content lives nearly forever.
He wrote a blog post in 2002 called "Fire and Motion" which described how Microsoft did strategy when it was in "peak Microsoft" mode -- essentially do something, force the competition to react, and then keep moving, do something else, repeat. Competition becomes focus on chasing your tail rather than where the market and customers are going. Meanwhile, you're learning before other people.
It feels to me this is a lot of Shopify's approach to AI. With lovable x Shopify, people are puzzling over who the target user is and if the workflow makes any sense since it only works on new stores. As if the technology can't evolve? Heck the agents are probably already rewriting it :)
For lovable it makes sense because lovable wants you to build anything with it, and Shopify just means "commerce" for a lot of people. Particularly entrepreneurs.
For Shopify it makes sense because of the fire and motion thing. Competition need to look up and think - oh crap, I was thinking about Claude, or ChatGPT, but what about lovable, Windsurf, do I need to pay attention to those too? What if they become the gateway for SIs, agencies, and other developers going forward?
So, yeah, fire and motion. It works. But learning works too. In the world we are in, we simply don't know which tools will catch on. I would be interested to know what percentage of lovable apps included commerce as a component. But instead of just guessing, you could just try it out. Build an MCP server and tie it into lovable.
Frankly with an MCP server, I'm not sure what they did was likely all that difficult even. As several people have pointed out, it's probably easier to build a fresh new store than modify an existing store. But it doesn't mean that's where it needs to end. But either way, they did it, and now they'll get feedback on it.
Overall, feels like something one developer might have done in a hackathon even.
And either way, you don't have to believe it's the best move ever to understand its use. Especially if your competition then has to wonder and copy it. Which... who do you think has more resources?
Sometimes that's enough. And the questions. Competitors will have questions, and questions create doubt. That's not a terrible byproduct either
[References:]
It’s That Time Friends, for our Investor Minute. We have 5 items on the menu today.
First
Oway Raises $4M to Build a Decentralized Marketplace for Freight
Oway, a less-than-truckload long-haul freight marketplace that connects shippers and carriers, has raised a $4 million seed round.
Second
Keurig Dr Pepper to Acquire JDE Peet's and Separate into Two Independent Companies
Keurig Dr Pepper announced that it will acquire JDE Peet's in an all-cash transaction with a total equity purchase price of $18.4 billion (15.7 billion Euros). Keurig Dr Pepper will split its beverage and coffee units as two separate, U.S.-listed companies at the earliest opportunity.
Third
Attio Raises $52M in Series B Funding to Reinvent CRM for the AI Era
Atto, a customer relationship management (CRM) platform, announced that it has raised $52 million in a Series B funding round, which will be used to scale its engineering team and accelerate product development.
Fourth
India's Wipro to Buy Harman's Digital Transformation Solutions Unit for $375M
India's Wipro announced that it would acquire the Digital Transformation Solutions (DTS) business unit from Harman, a Samsung company, for $375 million to accelerate its engineering research & development (ER&D) services.
AND FINALLY …
Accenture Song Acquires Superdigital as Marketing Shifts to Social-First
Accenture Song, the marketing services division of consultancy Accenture, has announced the acquisition of Superdigital, a social and influencer agency, for an undisclosed amount.
[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.....
[PAUSE]
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.
