It’s No. 1 in the Top 1000, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest North American online retailers. Amazon is also No. 3 in Digital Commerce 360’s Global Online Marketplaces Database, which ranks the 100 largest such marketplaces by 2023 third-party GMV.

“We already have made these investments, technologies,” Witcher said, speaking from Amazon’s perspective. “How do we create incremental revenue by applying those sunk costs to new opportunities for others to take advantage of those costs where we can benefit in a financial way? This has been part of Amazon’s strategy for quite a while.”

Andy Jassy, Amazon’s CEO, spoke about different SaaS initiatives on a recent earnings call with investors for its fiscal third quarter ended Sept. 30, 2023.

Amazon’s fastest-growing sectors are ads and seller services, said James Risley, research data manager and senior analyst at Digital Commerce 360.

It shows that “while Amazon’s online stores are still growing well, its third-party sellers are the real growth leaders for the company,” Risley said. “Online stores only grew 2.0% in the first half of the year, though, and grew 7.0% in Q3, so the momentum is strong for first-party sales as Amazon potentially shifts its focus ahead of government pressure and a more savvy consumer who prefers direct relationships with sellers.”

Supply Chain by Amazon changes the fulfillment game

Two key Amazon software-as-a-service programs Jassy addressed were Supply Chain by Amazon and a growing generative AI initiative. New Amazon generative AI technology gives merchants the ability to create web pages and product imagery “with nearly endless flexibility,” calling it, along with Supply Chain by Amazon and AWS “the democratization of technology.”

Jassy said the company has seen “very positive early response from sellers to Supply Chain by Amazon.”

Supply Chain by Amazon is a fully automated set of services in which the mass merchant handles:

• Inventory pickup
• Shipping
• Customs clearance
• Ground transportation
• Inventory storage
• Replenishment

Amazon has been making “huge investments” in supply chain for more than a decade, Witcher said. The idea was that Amazon would eventually reach scale and those investments would pay off, he added.

“I think you’re starting to see that now, particularly because they’re starting to outsource delivery as a service,” Witcher said.

Amazon already has the infrastructure in place, so these are sunk costs, he said.

Amazon software as a service (SaaS) can change the game for third-party sellers

“Generative AI developments should be given more weight than Amazon let on,” Witcher said. “Using this innovative technology really gives Amazon the operational efficiencies in inventory planning and route planning that they need to realize the ROI of all these investments they made in supply chain.”

Witcher said AWS was the proof of concept that Amazon can create incremental revenue from its existing services and offerings. He said Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) “clearly” works for a lot of sellers.

“Now, Amazon’s removing the pain points of being a small-business seller,” Witcher said. “Nobody gets into the retail business saying, ‘I can’t wait to build web pages’ or do photoshoots. That’s not why they get into selling products. They want to sell products. Amazon understands this, and so they’re using this in a way to make it easier for third-party sellers to have that Amazon relationship and make more reasons to say why they should have the Amazon relationship. I think that’s really what this comes right down to.”

Generative AI technology and the Amazon ecosystem

Witcher said Amazon understands that mom-and-pop shops and small companies don’t necessarily have the time or skill set to generate web pages and product imagery.

“The ability to use generative AI just helps those sellers,” Witcher said. “There’s a compounding effect to this, which is: The easier it is for me to build websites, the easier it is for me to upload product pages. Then, it’s easier for me to sell on Amazon. Well, if I’m already selling on Amazon, then it’s easier for me to give Amazon my supply chain, pay for them to do my supply chain, pay for them to have Amazon Pay on my website. It just bakes you deeper into the ecosystem of Amazon as you start to find value in the things Amazon offers.”

He added that this is “certainly a differentiator” for Amazon compared with other marketplaces. However, he said, he expects other retailers to follow suit.

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It’s the kind of broad-based growth projections that launched the mid-1990s ecommerce pioneer with a bevy of entrepreneurial sellers.

Michelle Warvel, vice president of product and seller experience, eBay Inc.

No wonder, then, eBay is out to prod ongoing growth with an array of new selling tools for today’s generation of sellers, including fast-growing small and midsized businesses that cater to what eBay calls “enthusiast buyers” of unique items ranging from sneakers and baseball trading cards to luxury handbags.

“We’re really focused on, how do we meet the needs of these enthusiast buyers,” says Michelle Warvel, vice president of product, seller experience. She notes that such buyers account for about 70% of eBay’s annual gross merchandise volume sold on its marketplace.

“We’re thinking about our sellers’ experiences: how do we build tools for our sellers so that when they list a sneaker, or they list a luxury handbag, we’re giving them the right guidance so that they are meeting their buyers where they are.”

The new eBay toolset covers:

• AI-generated content in “magical listings,” which eBay says has resulted in longer, more detailed product descriptions designed to help sellers move more unusual items.
• Automated online offers that sellers send to customers through eBay’s M2M messaging platform to alert shoppers to lower prices or other product offers designed to spark sales in otherwise inactive or “stale” product listings.
• Managing “shoppable posts” on multiple social channels like Instagram and Facebook.”
• eBay Live interactive livestream selling, which eBay says has gained traction with sellers and buyers since it launched in May.

EBay notes that its new slate of sellers’ tools each serves a distinct purpose but share a common strategy of engaging buyers who want more exciting interactions, such as conversing with a seller through an eBay Live live-streamed sales event.

Ebay ranks No. 6 in Digital Commerce 360’s new 2023 Global Online Marketplaces Report. The Global Online Marketplaces Database ranks the 100 largest such marketplaces by 2023 third-party GMV.

Thinking about ‘the future of ecommerce’

“EBay Live is a new platform that we just launched for our sellers, and that’s allowed them to reach a whole new audience … that Gen Z consumer who loves to watch live shopping and gets to chat directly with the seller,” Warvel says. “It’s just been a really interesting way to think about kind of the future of commerce.”

Jamie Iaonnone, president and CEO, eBay Inc.

Jamie Iannone, eBay’s president and CEO, said on a recent second-quarter earnings call that eBay is basing its ongoing growth strategy on “the three pillars of relevant experience, scalable solutions, and magical innovation.”

EBay’s plans follow recent mixed results in its marketplace activity.

For the second quarter ended June 30, the company reported a 5% year-over-year increase in revenue to $2.5 billion but a 12% drop in gross merchandise volume to $18.2 billion. For the full year 2022, revenue fell 6% to $9.8 billion, as GMV declined 15% to $73.9 billion.

Investment analysts raised the importance of new Q2  earnings call when Michael Morton, an analyst with Moffett Nathanson, asked: “Are you having some effectiveness in converting the millennials and Gen Z, who have maybe grown up in a different era of interacting with marketplaces?

Iannone responded that, besides introducing new brands popular with younger adults, eBay was seeing a notable response to the recently launched eBay Live. He noted that eBay did “over 300” eBay Live commerce events within the first couple of months.

“Sellers and buyers are getting really engaged in that,” he said. “And so that opportunity for us is to drive that customer lifetime value for a buyer as well as attract those new buyers on the platform.”

EBay makes a schedule of upcoming eBay Live events available in the eBay Live Hub.

Using AI to engage customers

Warvel says that eBay is also reaching into its long ecommerce history to provide sellers with extensive customer demand data, now enhanced with AI, for more effective product listings.

“EBay knows what buyers want; we know what types of things that a sneakerhead, for example, wants to understand about the condition of the shoe before they purchase,” she says.

But eBay will continue to work with AI and sellers — Warvel notes that many sellers have AI experience — to improve how the most valuable product attributes appear in site search and product listings.

“Optimizing and being dynamic in the listing based on the item that they’re selling is something that we’re working on the magical listing flow,” she says.

In a recent survey of 4,334 eBay sellers in the United States, the UK, Germany, Canada, Japan and Australia, eBay found that 68% of respondents expect their eBay business to grow over the next five years and that 55% expect their overall business to grow over the next 12 months. EBay conducted the survey in association with global insights and advisory consultancy GlobeScan.

Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. paul@digitalcommerce360.com.

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“We want to meet the consumer where they are, and they prefer digital experiences — but it’s also really good for our business,” Glaser says. “We get so much more data to inform our future plans and marketing choices from a performance marketing perspective.”

General Mills can be more flexible by offering digital promotions, Glaser says. This includes incentivizing the consumer to take action when they’re most likely to convert.

“How do we build those relationships with consumers?” asks Glaser.

One way General Mills is building incentives for customers is through the Fetch rewards mobile app. Consumers download the Fetch app and create an account. They take photos of their grocery shopping receipts from in-store or online shopping and upload them to the app.

Consumers earn points they can redeem for gift cards. Eligible receipts that have at least one participating brand may receive at least 35 points. Each dollar is worth one point. 1,000 Fetch rewards points are worth $1, for example, and consumers need to reach 3,000 points in order to redeem for gift cards at stores including Starbucks, Macy’s, Amazon, Nordstrom Rack and Home Depot as well as for Visa cards. Fetch charges participating retailers like General Mills a referral fee.

Brand loyalty: What it is and how to build it

There is a lot of data exchanged between Fetch and General Mills, Glaser says.

“We get a ton of data from the Fetch partnership — about 62 million lines of data per day,” he says.

That data feeds into the brand’s customer data platform (CDP), which is a software platform that collects first-party data from multiple sources to help brands create targeted and personalized marketing campaigns.

“Loyalty programs are something that the consumer packaged goods (CPG) space isn’t necessarily ubiquitous — it’s something not all CPGs have nailed,” Glaser says. “We wanted to be intentional. What does that look like? How does it come to life?”

In March 2023, General Mills said it had added 2 million customers to its Good Rewards loyalty program with Fetch within the first six months of launch.

Consumer engagement experience

Fetch has about 18 million monthly active users, with 6 million of those using the app every day, says Robin Wheeler, the chief revenue officer at Fetch. In April 2023, the rewards app said it had surpassed $152 billion in annual gross merchandise value (GMV) across U.S. in-store and online retail sales.

“Fetch isn’t your traditional kind of shopping app,” Wheeler says. “It’s a consumer engagement experience.”

A larger portion of consumers are Millennials and Gen Z, Wheeler says.

“The younger generation is definitely coming to Fetch and I think a lot of that is tied to the experiences they’re seeing on social media,” Wheeler says.

Fetch rewards: adding brands

Fetch shares its general merchandise value scanned daily, Wheeler says. Fetch employees also track potential opportunities.

“We’re reading the trades and keeping up to speed on industries,” she says. “If we’re seeing national brands start to compete with a certain brand of deodorant, for example, our primary goal is to focus on where we’re seeing a lot of activity where we’re not currently rewarding consumers. Because that’s low hanging fruit.”

The company uses this information as it attempts to build relationships with other brands.

“There are plenty of big companies we haven’t started working with, and we need to be there,” she says.

This includes providing carousel information displayed at the top of the app that consumers see when they open it. Whether the promotion is about back to school or another busy shopping period, brands also want to include their offers and create more consumer awareness.

Fetch also has daily spin feature where consumers can obtain a daily reward.

Brands use influencers to reach new customers

This includes learning about the app from social media influencers, Wheeler says.

Fetch can share with brands what consumers are spending based on the receipts they upload to the app. Brands can target consumers, whether they’re loyal customers or “competitive buyers, which you have a to work a little bit harder for,” Wheeler says.

Fetch works with influencer agencies to source talent, Wheeler says. The company monitors influencer content and when it finds the right fit, it reaches out with affiliate links.

While the majority of Fetch receipts are in-store, Wheeler says online receipt uploads are growing.

“We have integrations with Amazon and Walmart,” Wheeler says. “We also have emailed receipts. If we have your email integrated and you order from DoorDash, we’re able to scan and pick up that receipt. So emailed receipts are definitely growing.”

Consumers can connect their Fetch account to their email, Amazon and Walmart accounts to earn Fetch rewards.

Fetch social

• 61% of Fetch monthly active users engaged with social features during July, up from 24% in January.
• Daily Reward launched in December 2022. Consumers have played daily rewards over 222 million plays since then.
• People who engage with social features/in-app games are more likely to scan receipts every day and have retention rates around 4-5 points higher than cohorts that don’t engage with these features.

Fetch eReceipts

• On average in 2023, about 10% of all receipts submitted to Fetch were eReceipts.
• About 29% of Fetch users who scan receipts also submit eReceipts.
• Top retailers include Walmart, Target, Sam’s Club, Walgreens, McDonald’s, Starbucks.

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The tool allows J’evar’s jewelry designers to input information about the product’s materials and specifications, and the generative AI will produce an image of that product. The tool saves the brand weeks of manual design time on products, says Amish Shah, founder and CEO of the direct-to-consumer brand of jewelry featuring lab-grown diamonds.

J’evar began using its jewelry product AI generator last year in 2022. The retailer feeds metrics and images into a knowledge bank — or a database of text, images and metrics for materials that include the weight of gold and silver, among other key details — for the generator to refer to before it produces an image. Shah jokingly refers to it as “JevarGPT 1.0” and “AI for Jewelry 1.0,” the former a reference to OpenAI consortium’s ChatGPT.

For example, Shah says if he wanted to make a bangle, he could input a text prompt to the generative AI, specifying how much the weight of gold should be for that piece, how thin or wide it should be and what design style he would like. He can even ask it to produce 50 iterations from that single prompt. In return, the generative AI will output complete designs, some of which might be ready to turn into tangible products. Other product designs the AI outputs require J’evar designers to modify the design until it can be producible.

Shah says one key reason J’evar can’t produce all the designs is because of the inability to cut diamonds into the shape the AI generates. But even this ability is coming soon with new machinery, he says.

Exploring generative AI for design

“You’re looking at optimization, efficiency, speed — which is of course going to lead to cost reduction in the longer term,” Shah says about using generative AI. “But importantly, from an output perspective, we’re looking at precision and a higher level of creativity.”

In the past few years, developers have trained artificial intelligence to do more than analyze data and tell its users what to make of the data. They’ve trained AI to generate writing, images, videos and sounds. This is called generative AI, and online retailers have already begun to design new products and produce new variations of existing products — and do so quickly. With generative AI, retailers can create and test multiple product ideas in just minutes, much faster than the weeks or months it might take to design now. Online retailers, including J’evar and Auricle Technology, are learning how to use generative AI to assist their product designers, making the process more efficient. But because generative AI is still new, it has limitations on what it can do.

J’evar uses its own generative AI technology to help its human designers speed up the creative process.

Gen AI’s value outshines its current limitations

While generative AI is excellent for learning and processing massive amounts of data, it is not yet at a point that it can understand movement through space, says Brendan Witcher, vice president and principal analyst at research firm Forrester. It doesn’t think about engineering and structural elements or physical viability yet, he says. Although generative AI is not at that point yet, he says, that doesn’t mean it can’t be eventually.

“You want to design a shoe. Great,” Witcher says. “Well, a shoe’s a shoe until you put it on and have to run in it, then it falls apart on you because you didn’t think about the physics of how movement happens.

“The big question is when do we bridge the gap between the work that needs to be put into generative AI to understand the movement through physical space that objects need to go through often, and the commercial viability of doing that.”

Informed assessments

However, even with its current limitations, Witcher says generative AI’s value comes from the assessments it already has learned to make. He says people do their jobs based on the knowledge they receive in their training, and “AI kind of works like that too.” But generative AI “takes it to the next step” and looks at more data than humans can process, and then make assessments about what the best subsequent steps are. It can also come up with ideas humans couldn’t or wouldn’t think of because the human mind doesn’t process information the way artificial intelligence tools can, he says.

“We can’t absorb that much data and extract from it an idea. It’s just impossible for us,” Witcher says. “It shouldn’t be lost that just developing an image of something that you wouldn’t be able to think of because you weren’t trained to think that way has huge possibilities.”

Witcher says generative AI’s value extends beyond production speed to unique creations.

“A lot of people talk about generating imagery with AI, but what to me is most important is the ability to do it over and over and over again until you get something you like,” Witcher says.

Will generative AI replace human designers?

Generative AI is not here to replace humans in the design phase, Shah says. Especially not in the jewelry industry.

“Human intelligence supersedes artificial intelligence, at least I can say that for jewelry,” Shah says.

Generative AI is more like an assistant to human designer, Shah says. It’s not the technology that’s telling designers when a piece has been finalized. It’s a human making that decision, Shah says. Just like Adobe and Corel are graphics software tools for designers, generative AI is a design tool, not a human replacement, he says.

“Once we get the initial output, it is then modified to be producible,” Shah says.

Forrester’s Witcher agrees that AI should be used as a tool and not a replacement for creative individuals.

“If all the people learn how to do things on generative AI, then no one learns how to do it beyond generative AI,” Witcher says. “Over time, you start weeding out the expertise from the low-level individuals and nobody becomes a high-level individual.”

Witcher adds that the majority of AI use isn’t leaving artificial intelligence “to its own devices.”

“It’s more assisted intelligence — the AI standing for assisted intelligence — where we’re using it to be more productive in our own jobs that we currently do today,” Witcher says.

J’evar uses generative AI to speed up the design process

Traditionally, Shah says, jewelry design is a long process that can take a few weeks or even more than a month. In the case of commissioned designs, J’evar designers would first have to understand what kind of product a customer wants before going into iterations. In the example of designing a bangle, the designers would have to first determine if a customer wanted a wide cuff or something they could stack, something lightweight or heavy, thick or thin, if they wanted diamonds or gemstones, and so on.

Then, the designers would do initial mockups to ensure they understood the customer’s request correctly. This process would typically be one to three weeks of showing designs to the customer and sketching accordingly, Shah says.

In one case, Shah says he and his team had gone through 55 variations before a customer said, “I love it.” After that, his team would then go to computer-aided design (CAD). From there, it would go to rendering.

“By using AI, we are able to take that process down to pretty much hours and in some cases, literally within minutes,” Shah says.

Moreover, when working manually, the designer has to move every single diamond into place, making sure they are in the correct position. AI speeds up that process, Shah says. In milliseconds, the generative AI processor can move diamonds and gemstones, raise or lower gold weight, or change the width or thickness.

“It’s almost like putting a thousand designers and the type of work they would have done into the knowledge bank and then letting the system do a combination from those thousand designs to give you back results,” he says.

J’evar fed years’ worth of jewelry data into its generative AI platform. The platform produces images that human designers then adjust in the design phase.

Developing a custom generative AI processor

Shah says his family’s 90-year history in the jewelry business gives him an advantage over others in developing custom generative AI technology for J’evar.

“It sounds complex, but you have to keep in mind: We’re in the business,” Shah says. “We’re in the jewelry business, so the core bank or the core information that’s required is sitting with us. It’s not something I have to go outside and source.”

J’evar feeds text and imagery into its generative AI to teach it what to output. When inputting prompts, J’evar designers primarily use text to generate an image.

“That knowledge bank is sitting there,” Shah says. “Now, it’s all about organizing it and feeding it into the system in a format that can then be analyzed and the GPUs can run and start combining things and getting them back to you.”

Iterations at scale

Sometimes, what generative AI produces needs less human modification than others. For example, Auricle Technology uses generative AI tools to swap out logos and colors on its different products.

Auricle Technology founder William Cooksey says he created his electronics accessory brand out of necessity. He uses Apple AirPods for long hours most days, and the hard plastic begins to hurt his ears after a while. That led him to create AirPod skins made from silicone that are softer and anchor better into his ears.

When his manufacturer sent back prototypes, it printed Auricle’s logo on them. That led Cooksey to realize the importance of branding and how he can “pivot and get into the licensing game.”

The direct-to-consumer brand launched in 2021 now creates customized merchandise including AirPod skins, AirPod charging case skins, phone cases, wireless chargers and mouse pads. And through licensing agreements, it prints these products with logos for more than 90 teams in Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League and Major League Soccer, as well as about 130 college teams.

Rather than have a designer manually change the colors and logos for each team, the brand has integrated generative AI into its design process, Cooksey says.

Unlike J’evar, however, Auricle does not have the budget nor the in-house capacity to develop an all-new generative AI engine. Its business model is also different, focusing on customization rather than new product development.

New technology, but make it affordable

Cooksey instead works with Goals Media Group to use generative AI into its product iterations. Goals uses technology Microsoft for Startups provides, says Goals founder and CEO Aubrey Flynn. This means it receives access to Microsoft’s resources, including technology and tech experts, among other benefits. Microsoft has announced it would invest $10 billion into OpenAI — the company behind text-based generative AI brand ChatGPT and image-based DALL-E.

Cooksey says his lead designer and Flynn determined generative AI was the way to go from designing products with one team logo to hundreds “in a short period of time without breaking the bank.”

Auricle also uses Goals and its generative AI offerings to develop marketing materials like images for social media that highlight products from different teams at different stadiums. The generative AI creates an image complete with Auricle branding, the team’s branding, and any copy it needs.

“Being a small business, not having a lot of capital, it’s really exciting me that we can still come up with quality images without breaking our budget,” Cooksey says.

“When you deal with those leagues, they want you to be able to launch all the teams at the same time,” Cooksey says. “I just wouldn’t have been able to afford to do that.”

Generative AI’s impact on metrics

Goals has about 650 clients and nearly half are online retailers, Flynn says.

Flynn says that social media marketing creatives that generative AI produced can increase consumer interactions with the ad by more than 35% compared with that brand’s normal creative, according to data from its clients.

This includes creatives entirely generated through AI, visuals that already existed that AI has augmented, and copy that generative AI has helped develop for those types of visuals.

“I’ve seen AI-powered creative outperform to the extent where cost per click on a certain product may have been 30%-40% less expensive based on some of the guidance from AI on the copy and the imagery,” he says.

He adds that brands like Auricle — which lack access to capital, resources, infrastructure and more that large brands have — need to adopt technology like generative AI early on because it’s less expensive than some alternatives like hiring designers or manufacturers from the start.

Early results are insightful, but ‘is this just another buzzword?’

Shah, Cooksey, Witcher and Flynn all expressed the same idea: It may be early, but the application of generative AI in product development is promising.

While some may say generative AI is another buzzword, Witcher says what separates this technology from other tech fads is that companies are already allowing individuals in their organizations to play with, understand and experiment with generative AI.

“They’re almost crowd-sourcing proof of concept,” Witcher says. “It’s a unique characteristic to generative AI that it’s so easy to do and work with that almost anybody can do it.”

Although results are limited in some ways and sometimes imperfect, online retailers are using generative AI imaging to design new products essentially from scratch, customize existing products and develop marketing content. They can develop multiple iterations of these images at once or continue iterating on the same image multiple times until they’re satisfied with how the image looks. They can then take the design that generative AI produces and tweak it manually, saving them the time of doing each iteration manually — and saving them the creative energy it takes just to design a new product iteration.

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Shah launched J’evar, a direct-to-consumer brand, in February. Before that, he learned from years of experience through ALTR, which he founded in 2016 and sells through retailers like Borsheims and Michaels Jewelers. Shah and his team developed an in-house generative AI tool that mocks up designs for new pieces of jewelry. To teach the tool, his team used data from ALTR and 90 years’ worth of jewelry from his grandfather’s business.

J’evar uses diamonds ALTR grows. ALTR grows those diamonds with energy from a solar farm with a capacity of 10 megawatts. It generates 35 to 40 kilowatts of energy each day.

The megawatt is the standard term of measurement for bulk electricity, according to EcoWatch, an environmental news outlet.

“A megawatt measures power on a large scale,” according to EcoWatch. “So one megawatt can power a lot more than one household.”

“We grow our own diamonds, we cut and polish them, we design jewelry, we manufacture the jewelry, and we bring it to the consumer. We use recycled gold for making our jewelry — recycled metals, so gold and silver,” Shah said.

With generative AI-driven design, J’evar achieves a level of precision that Shah says dramatically reduces material waste and boosts the retailer’s sustainability goals. Shah said he expects a 10% to 20% reduction in energy consumption and wasted materials in the jewelry industry because of generative AI.

“Sustainability is actually core to us,” Shah said. “We’ve made sustainability as a part of our DNA rather than a marketing buzzword.”

It all starts on a (solar) farm

Shah’s brands run on electricity from a solar farm in Surat, a city in Gujarat, India. It currently generates 10 megawatts of solar energy, and Shah says he plans to scale that up to 17 megawatts. To put that into perspective, the Solar Energy Industries Association calculates that on average, 1 megawatt of solar power generates enough electricity to power 173 U.S. homes.

The energy is then transmitted through the power grid into J’evar diamond-growing facilities with help from the local government.

“In order to grow diamonds, the single largest raw material is energy,” Shah said. “They’re very high energy consumption. You are basically using solar energy to power the systems.”

And in terms of carbon neutrality for the diamond growth, Shah said, the facility is audited for climate neutrality based on the United Nations greenhouse gas protocol. The protocol holds corporations, organizations, cities and countries to different standards.

Shah said J’evar offices and facilities are both audited for all its energy consumption, from shipping packages to employees traveling and various other factors.

‘JevarGPT’ and generative AI for jewelry design

J’evar’s generative AI tool allows its human jewelry designers to input information about a product’s materials and specifications, and the generative AI will produce an image of that product. The generative AI tool saves J’evar weeks of manual design time on products, Shah said. 

J’evar began using its jewelry product AI generator last year in 2022. The retailer feed metrics and images into a knowledge bank — or a database of text, images and metrics for materials that include the weight of gold and silver, among other key details — for the generator to refer to before it produces an image. Shah jokingly refers to it as “JevarGPT 1.0” and “AI for Jewelry 1.0.” The former is a reference to OpenAI consortium’s ChatGPT.  

For example, Shah said if he wanted to make a bangle, he could input a text prompt to the generative AI, specifying how much the weight of gold should be for that piece, how thin or wide it should be and what design style he would like. He can even ask it to produce 50 iterations from that single prompt. In return, the generative AI will output complete designs, some of which might be ready to turn into tangible products. Other product designs the AI outputs require J’evar designers to modify the design until it can be producible.

J’evar fed years’ worth of jewelry data into its generative AI platform. The platform produces images that human designers then adjust in the design phase.

Technological advances

Shah said J’evar can’t produce all its AI’s designs yet. A key reason is because of the inability to cut diamonds into the shape the AI generates. But even this ability is coming soon with new machinery, he said.

“You’re looking at optimization, efficiency, speed — which is of course going to lead to cost reduction in the longer term — but importantly, from an output perspective, we’re looking at precision and a higher level of creativity,” Shah said about using generative AI.

J’evar marries generative AI and sustainability

In the case of J’evar, generative AI can determine exact material amounts before creating an item, helping with sustainability by limiting waste.

“If we are able to predict the exact amount of gold we’re going to need, what the design is going to be, how much cubic millimeters of gold, the wastage will go down dramatically because you know exactly what you’re looking to produce. More importantly, the level of precision from a point of engineering will go much higher,” Shah said. “The amount of gold that is used will be very precise. How and what is printed in terms of the level of resolution will go higher, ultimately lowering the amount of wastage.

“Gold wastage will go low, but yes, that means the speed will go up, which means the energy requirements will go down. The material wastage from wax to silicon to machine usage, everything will go down. From a sustainability perspective, AI is going to have a direct impact on sustainability or improving the reduction of wastage.”

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Since deploying a new ecommerce platform nearly a year ago, the company has increased total sales by 30%. The percentage of orders placed online has grown from zero to about 40%, says Ryan Nesbitt, co-founder and chief financial officer.

Doc Lane’s new ecommerce site runs on the BigCommerce B2B Edition ecommerce platform and features an upgraded buyer’s portal. It has made it easier for the pharmacy supplier to showcase its full range of products while also making it easier for buyers to find what they need, place orders and pay online, he says.

“Customers didn’t really know the full extent of Doc Lane’s capabilities,” Nesbitt says. “And that’s where digital commerce comes in.”

Doc Lane’s builds its brand and grows commerce online

On the ecommerce site, DocLanes.com/equine, customers can learn that the company provides both branded and “compounded medications.” The latter is a form of made-to-order medications that vets may not easily find elsewhere.

The site also provides a better overall customer experience. Nesbitt says it includes the ability to:

• More easily set up customer accounts
• Find and order specific products
• Place reorders
• View order history

Now, Doc Lane’s is also expecting a continued increase in the percentage of customer accounts paying their invoices online through the newly released BigCommerce B2B Edition Invoice Portal. The invoice portal is designed to let customers view their invoices online and click them to process payments. It also reconciles payments with enterprise resource planning systems (ERPs) and lets customers pay invoices for orders placed either online or offline.

In addition to simplifying the invoice-paying process for customers, Doc Lane’s also expects the invoice portal to improve its cash flow.

“Over 60% of Doc Lane’s Veterinary Pharmacy customers pay orders on terms,” Nesbitt says. “Many of our customers wait to send us a paper check after they receive their billing statement at the end of each month, which is like adding an additional 1-2 weeks to their 30-day terms.”

Lance Owide, B2B general manager at BigCommerce, describes the invoice portal’s abilities as “transforming a traditionally disconnected process into a seamless centralized hub where buyers can manage offline and online transactions from one ecommerce backend.”

Other companies using the BigCommerce B2B Edition include B2B brands The Beer Bat, Tectran, USCutter and United Aqua Group.

Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. paul@digitalcommerce360.com.

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Headless commerce solutions enable them to decouple the front- and back-end of their platforms to overcome their platform’s limitations.

Decoupling the front- and back-ends of a platform allows sellers to independently develop and deploy customer-facing experiences on the front-end without disrupting back-end processes or website performance. In comparison, adding new customer experiences to traditional platform architectures can require updates to the front- and back-end systems. This can turn even small projects into large undertakings.

In need of a way to personalize products within its catalog online, home furnishings and decor seller and retailer Aplusrstore.com turned to headless ecommerce platform provider B2storefront.com to deliver a better user experience.

Headless commerce can improve the user experience

At the heart of Aplusrstore.com’s decision to adopt headless ecommerce was the need to overcome the limitations of its Shopify platform when it comes to listing product variations. The Shopify platform limits each product in Aplustore.com’s online catalog to 100 variations, such as:

• Type of materials
• Style
• Color
• Configuration
• Accessories

With more than 2,000 furniture collections and 6,000 SKUs in its catalog, Aplusrstore.com could quickly exceed the limit of 100 variations per product.

“With furniture, it’s very easy hit a platform’s limits on product variants because you can have multiple parameters and options for a single piece of furniture,” says Anton Komarow, founder and chief executive for B2storefront.com. “A headless architecture allows sellers to tackle those limits as well as increase page loading speeds.”

Using an application program interface from B2storefront.com, Aplustore.com expanded the number of attributes that can be assigned to each product in its catalog without affecting website performance, such as page load times. The payoff was a higher rate of customer engagement, Komarow says.

Understanding the functionality

In addition, B2storefront used its APIs to expand the functionality of Aplustore.com’s shopping cart. It now better accommodates B2B buyers’ needs.

Once a buyer places an item in his cart, he then can attach other forms such as:

• A purchase order
• Shipping notes
• The billing date.

These all automatically go to the seller’s CRM application. That APIs populate that information in a PDF within the CRM. The information is visible to the buyer through the seller’s platform. In addition, buyers can also create a request for a quote on Aplustore.com’s website.

“Headless ecommerce is a gateway to more features within an ecommerce platform without having to buy more apps,” says Komarow. “Headless allows sellers to stick with the platform they like, but not be limited to the features and functionality the platform provides.”

The ability of headless ecommerce to overcome the limitations of a platform’s features extends to future upgrades. For example, a seller that uses a site search app from a third-party can implement upgrades to the app from the app creator. The seller can do so even if the platform provider has not yet released a version that supports those features, and vice versa.

“This is a plus for stitching together apps, because not all platform dynamics are equal,” Komarow says. “With APIs, you put new features from one platform into another without waiting for the platform provider to support a new feature from a third-party app [integrated into the platform].”

Upgrading features

As part of its move to headless ecommerce, Aplusrstore.com upgraded its site search capabilities by implementing Algolia’s advanced search functionality. The enhancements now flag out-of-stock items within Aplusrstore.com’s catalog in search results. Sellers can also fine tune their search results based on phrases buyers enter into the search engine, search terms or both. As a result, buyers can find the product they want quicker.

“Product discovery through site search can be an issuer for sellers with a lot of SKUs in their catalog,” Komarow says. “Because Algolia has an integration to Shopify, we can implement Algolia’s advanced search capabilities, even if Shopify has integrated them into its platform.”

Another feature Aplusrstore.com’s website added to its website is the creation of a customized “thank you” page. This is part of the merchant’s transition to headless commerce. It enhances the B2B buyer’s journey, redirecting buyers upon completion of checkout. Having the ability to customize the “thank you” page has helped Aplusrstore.com overcome the inability to customize the checkout page in Shopify platform.

The customized Thank You page features such vital information as order confirmation and the ability for buyers to track order status, information that is necessarily available on the checkout page. “Developers are limited to what they can do with Shopify’s checkout page, means checkout is not always a customizable part of the customer journey, and that can be a problem if a seller’s webstore is customized for buyers, but the checkout page is not,” says Komarow.

It’s only getting better

Future enhancements B2storefront.com headless solution include developing API’s that allow sellers to embed links to products, videos, and images in customer emails that, when clicked, redirect the buyer to a product page or ad campaign for a specific product.

“Headless ecommerce is being marketed as a silver bullet for increasing page load times, which it does. But in reality, it does a lot more than that,” Komarow says. “Headless improves the customer experience by overcoming platform limitations by making it easier to upgrade the customer experience.”

Peter Lucas is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy.

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There are currently over 26.5 million ecommerce sites operating worldwide. Between 2019 and 2023, the number of ecommerce sites worldwide grew from 9.2 million to 26.5 million, says research from Markinblog.com, a digital marketing and sales services provider.

With nearly 14 million ecommerce sites, the U.S. now accounts for about 53% of all websites, far more than any other country. In comparison, the number two and three countries, the United Kingdom and Brazil, have 1.24 million and 730,000 ecommerce sites, respectively.

“The significant rise in ecommerce can largely be attributed to the COVID 19 pandemic, which led to a 204% year-on-year growth in ecommerce sites in 2021 alone, taking the number from 9.7 million to an impressive 19.8 million,” says Markinblog.com. “The United States is the leading country in ecommerce, with 13,982,500 sites, significantly outpacing the other countries. This indicates the highly digitalized nature of its economy and the significant role of online shopping in consumer behavior.”

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“We’ve seen our customers pass down clothing within family and friends and from generation to generation,” she says.

The brand also noticed it was popular on other resale platforms. Hanna Andersson wanted to offer its own peer-to-peer reseller marketplace. It wanted a “seamless integration,” Carter says. The brand turned to Archive. The software platform allows brands to customize its own secondhand marketplace website.

It’s a move that other retailers are making, with $177 billion in secondhand global sales in 2022, according to ThredUp’s 2023 resale report. Resale continues to grow, as the report projects the secondhand industry will nearly double to $351 billion in global sales by 2027. The same data predicts resale goods will account for 10% of all clothing in 2024.

Since launching Hanna-Me-Downs, resellers have listed more than 55,000 items on the website.

Hanna-Me-Downs is an online resale marketplace

Hanna-Me-Downs launched in February 2023. Sales for the resale store were four times higher during the first month than expected. The average seller sells about 10 items. Sellers receive cash or Hanna Andersson gift cards. They receive 125% of the value of their sale price if they choose store credit.

Cash recipients receive 70% of the sale price. Hanna Andersson and Archive declined to disclose how the remaining 30% is split between Archive and the brand. Archive charges a monthly software-as-a-service fee and a percentage of sales.

Since February, 90% of sellers have chosen a credit option, Carter says. Since launching Hanna-Me-Downs, customers have spent more than 200% of their credit value on Hanna Andersson’s main direct to consumer website.

Reselling online

Carter says the retailer has acquired new customers through its resale site. The retailer offers apparel items like children’s baby zip sleeper in organic cotton. This item retails for $42.00 but costs about $13.00 to $20.00 on the resale site.

Archive asks sellers to describe any defects or problems with items they plan to resell on the Hanna-Me-Downs resale store.

Archive built a condition-grading tool for sellers to indicate if there are any flaws with clear descriptions.

While most items indicate that the condition is “excellent with no major issues,” other items with more flaws are priced accordingly. A Circle Pocket Dress in French Terry retailed for $50.00 but was priced as $10.00 on the resale website because “item has a minor stain.”

The goal is to be as transparent as possible. This dress is noted by the seller to have a “minor stain” and is priced at $10.

It’s important to be transparent about the condition of items, says Emily Gittins, CEO and co-founder of Archive. Archive “owns” the customer service portion of the resale site, she says.

“We take on the technological development and customer service burden of managing the marketplace,” Gittins says. Most brands are able to launch their reseller website within a couple of months, she says.

How resale fashion works through Archive

Brands provide Archive with product data. Sellers enter the style ID of an item found on the care label. Sellers can input the SKU from the garment they purchased. In some cases, if there is no tag, the seller can name the item by searching.

The seller is then prompted to answer questions about the item’s condition. This includes whether it’s been worn, is missing buttons or has broken zippers. Sellers are then asked to upload photos of the actual item they plan to sell.

The software’s pricing algorithm takes into consideration the demand for an item and the condition. Online resellers can also adjust the price if it’s an item they will only sell for a certain price, Gittins says.

‘Second Hand September’

In efforts to promote donating, reusing and rewearing clothing items, Archive is working with brands like  M.M.LaFleur, DVF (Diane Von Furstenberg), Faherty and ba&sh, among others to encourage customers to upload items to the retailers’ resale sites during Second Hand September.

Hanna Andersson Corp. ranks No. 477 in the Top 1000, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of North America’s online retailers by web sales.

“Since September marks both New York Fashion Week and back-to-school, most fashion brands focus on newness during the month,” Gittins said in a statement. “That makes September the perfect time for forward-thinking brands to establish a new narrative by spotlighting their resale offerings.”

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The online marketplace announced two new features, Buy with Prime Assist, and Buy with Prime Cart.

Buy with Prime Assist allows sellers to offer Amazon customer support for no additional charge. The service gives customers access to a chat feature with Amazon customer service representatives who can answer questions about shipping, current orders and returns. 

Buy with Prime Cart is another feature designed to make off-site purchasing experiences more like the experience on Amazon.com. Previously, Buy with Prime functioned similarly to Amazon’s Buy Now feature, Peter Larsen, Amazon vice president of Buy with Prime and multi-channel fulfillment, said in a blog post. Now, customers can buy multiple items at once, like a traditional online cart, he said.

What is Buy with Prime?

Amazon first launched the tool in April 2022. It allowed retailers to sell products also listed on Amazon from their own websites. Customers checked out using Amazon’s payment system and received orders using the ecommerce giant’s fulfillment network.

Retailers pay Amazon a fee to use the service, which Amazon has not disclosed.

There were about 167 million Prime Members who were eligible to check out using Buy with Prime as of March 2023, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, a Chicago firm that tracks Prime members via consumer surveys.

Why is Amazon expanding Buy with Prime now?

Amazon relies heavily on third-party sellers on its marketplace, which ranks No. 3 in the Global Online Marketplaces Database, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the top 100 online marketplaces. A majority (63.7%) of GMV in 2022 came from third-party sellers, a figure that’s increasing year over year. 

“As Amazon loses some of its position as the search engine for shopping, it is using other tactics to gain intelligence and maintain market share,” Digital Commerce 360 senior analyst James Risley says.

“Shopify is definitely a threat in terms of providing an alternative for sellers,” Risley says. “More than half of sales on Amazon are from third-party sellers, and if they turn to Shopify instead of Amazon or favor their own Shopify site, Amazon loses out.”

Notably, Amazon recently allowed Shopify merchants to offer Buy with Prime on their Shopify websites.

“Amazon partnering with Shopify is really a test for both of them. Shopify can use the Amazon payment options as a way to make it easier for merchants to get out of the strict Amazon.com ecosystem while not abandoning all of its benefits. Amazon gets to pull a potential competitor a little closer and keep it from threatening its position too much,” Risley says.

Amazon promises seller benefits

The online marketplace shared new data indicating that sellers who use Buy with Prime are better positioned than those that don’t.

Three out of four Buy with Prime purchasers, on average, are new customers to the brand, Amazon said. The tool also led to a 25% increase in conversion, on average, the online marketplace said. 

Other tools from Amazon also have positive impacts on sales. Retailers who added reviews from Amazon to their websites saw an average of 38% in conversion growth. Merchants using Buy with Prime cart reported 15% increase in units sold, on average, after adding the feature. 

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