ECOMMERCE: And we both assumed I was mostly right that Amazon Fashion hadn’t exactly set the world on fire. From Kevin’s more recent story on Amazon’s push into CPG: For Amazon, this isn't just another hole in which to plunge a tentacle, it offers a higher-margin opportunity in older, yet still huge markets where retail margins have thinned.

ECOMMERCE: But, Swisher asked, in the larger picture beyond individual merchants, how do big retailers compete? “I don’t think you can,” Lütke says. Amazon’s every move now sets the pace for the industry, he pointed out, using its introduction of a plan to eventually use drones for delivery as an example of where it made a move that was widely copied. Amazon does drones, we all have drones. 

ECOMMERCE: Durant’s interest in Postmates dates back about two years, when Kleiman turned him on to it. The service operates in 21 of the 28 cities with NBA teams, and Durant began using it to order food when he was in Oklahoma City or on the road. While in San Francisco for the Super Bowl, Durant happened to drive by the Postmates office.

ECOMMERCE: Deals to on-demand startups dropped to 55 in Q2’16, down from 66 the prior quarter, but maintaining the sector’s streak of 50+ deals for the seventh-consecutive quarter. Funding dollars grew more than 3.5x from Q1’16, driven by Uber’s $3.5B private equity round and Didi Chuxing’s $1B Series F financing from Apple. 

ECOMMERCE: Burberry announced several initiatives to further grow its revenue and improve its efficiency. One of the goals to achieve this is an improved focus on ecommerce. A relaunch of its ecommerce website Burberry.com, with improved content and functionality, is scheduled to be launched in the Autumn. 

BRAND: The UFC champion appears with flowing hair and a sparkly low-cut dress, standing in the middle of a film set. "Here's the thing about being perfect," Rousey begins as she sashays dramatically off-set. "Perfect never gets truly tested." As she builds on this manifesto, she begins to remove the trappings of glamour— "Perfect never gets a shot at redemption."

ADTECH: It was a marketer's dream, except for one important thing -- no one cared. Engagement rates were abysmal. The seemingly small friction point of downloading an app, and scanning, tapping or searching, turned out to be not worth the effort to get a discount on your morning coffee. And yet, somehow, a location-based game featuring characters created over 20 years ago has gained worldwide attention in a matter of days and already surpassed Twitter in daily users.

BRAND: Of all American cities that have at least three major sports franchises, Cleveland was, until June 19, the only one that had failed to win a championship in the past 50 years. Along with the Cavaliers’ long-awaited title came Believeland’s first ticker tape parade in a generation—something you cannot put a price on, especially in a city that’s largely seen the manufacturing jobs that once defined opportunity in northeastern Ohio disappear.

DATA: DWRE was likely the best eCommerce Cloud asset for CRM: There are not many enterprise class e-commerce assets built on a Cloud platform. Many legacy products are meant for on-premise deployments, and some of the Cloud alternatives target the lower-end of the market. This scarcity may have driven the multiple higher as indicated by the deal history described in SEC filings. DWRE’s ~350 mid-market and enterprise customers operate ~1,600 e-commerce sites.

BRAND: The attitudes and behaviors of millennials that befuddle brands are only more apparent in Generation Z, a study by experiential retail marketing firm Interactions reveals. Gen Z consumers’ budgets are weighted toward the experiential rather than the material, and they are constantly connected to technology. Similar tendencies in today’s consumers are challenging brands to reorganize marketing strategy.

ECOMMERCE: Ambush Board, which had 2015 web sales of about $7 million, but it also racked up approximately $40,000 in chargebacks in the 12 months before it changed fraud prevention service providers in April, says Eric Elliott, Ambush Board Co.’s co-founder, general manager and director of e-commerce. Since switching to fraud prevention service NoFraud, there have been zero chargebacks.

BRAND: At the heart of every public relations professional is a great storyteller. After all, their job is to intrigue and inform others about their brand. To that effect, some of these professionals weighed in on how brands themselves can better tell stories. There is an ever-growing number of companies trying to connect with potential consumers, so making sure that your brand cuts through the noise is important.