The motion specifically calls for approving and authorizing its debtors to close stores, approve procedures for store-closing sales, and approve “modifications to certain customer programs.”

Those programs include the debtors’ — Conn’s — return policy and acceptance of gift certificates, the filing said.

Conn’s announced June 26 that it received a delinquency notification from Nasdaq regarding its failure to file Form 10-Q for the results from its first fiscal quarter of 2024, which ended April 30. Amid filing delays, the furniture, appliances and electronics retailer, which operates Conn’s HomePlus stores, was seeking refinancing and considering bankruptcy, Bloomberg reported July 1.

Conn’s Inc. web sales by year

Prior to the filing, Conn’s had been growing its online sales for the past five years. For its fiscal year 2024, which ended Jan. 31, its consolidated revenue declined 7.8% year over year to $1.2 billion. The company attributed that drop to a 9.1% decline in total sales and a 3.6% reduction in finance charges and other revenues.

Conn’s bankruptcy

Conn’s continues to operate and manage its properties during the bankruptcy proceedings. The company currently has about 3,800 full-time and 150 part-time employees, according to the filing. It operates 553 retail stores and 22 distribution centers across 15 states, the filing detailed.

Among the pending authorizations requested in the filing, the Conn’s bankruptcy would include “the sale or disposition of the Store Closing Assets free and clear of all liens, clams, and encumbrances.”

Conn’s Inc. is No. 568 in the Top 1000 Database. The Top 1000 ranks North America’s largest online retailers by annual web sales. Within the database, Conn’s falls under the Consumer Electronics category. It also sells furniture and mattresses, home appliances, home office products, accessories, and “seasonal items from leading global brands,” the filing said.

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The changes were detailed by Etsy CEO Josh Silverman in company blog and video announcements. In the announcements, he laid out specific criteria that products will need to meet to be listed on Etsy’s marketplace.

Etsy total gross merchandise value (GMV) by year

Etsy is No. 20 in Digital Commerce 360’s Global Online Marketplaces Database. The database ranks the 100 largest such marketplaces by third-party gross merchandise value (GMV). Digital Commerce 360 projects Etsy’s total total GMV in 2024 will reach $11.94 billion.

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New Etsy policies

“The common thread that weaves through all of the creative goods allowed on Etsy is human imagination and involvement,” Silverman stated in his message. “We are, and will remain, the marketplace for original items from real people. To reinforce what we stand for, so that everyone who comes to Etsy sees why we are different and what makes us so special, we’ve reorganized our policies into new Creativity Standards.”

Silverman framed the standards as “clarifying what is allowed on Etsy, not changing it.” Also, he said that Etsy is “not allowing new items that were prohibited before.” Specifically, the standards stipulate that anything sellers list on Etsy will need to be one of the following:

• Made by a seller
• Designed by a seller
• Sourced by a seller
• Handpicked by a seller

In addition, Etsy will add item details to its listing pages, including labels corresponding with those standards:

• Made by ShopName
• Designed by ShopName
• Sourced by ShopName
• Handpicked by ShopName

Why Etsy introduced its creative creative standards

Silverman underscored Etsy’s “mission to keep commerce human” in updating its policies.

“I have incredible conviction that these updates position Etsy to lean even more deeply into what sets us apart in today’s ecommerce landscape: original items from real people,” he said.

To explain the decision, Silverman compared sculptors’ chisels and painters’ paintbrushes to modern digital tools, including 3D-printing techniques and generative artificial intelligence, referring to “human imagination and involvement” as the “common thread that weaves through all of the creative goods allowed on Etsy.”

Ultimately, he assessed that tools do not define what Etsy sellers can list. Instead, he noted how Etsy will prioritize the role of each product’s human creator. In doing so, Etsy will emphasize the need to define human work from individual makers.

Moreover, the CEO characterized feedback from Etsy’s sellers who indicated that “search can feel like a ‘black box.'” As a result, Etsy moved to respond by adding the new listing details. He said the fields relate to “specific factors that signal a high-quality listing on Etsy,” which Etsy in turn expects to boost visibility and sales.

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Buyers will be able to link their Venmo accounts to their eBay accounts. In doing so, they won’t have to enter their Venmo details for each purchase, eBay said. They will also have the choice to share the payment in their Venmo feeds.

“Known for its popularity among Gen Z and Millennials, buyers can enjoy the simplicity of paying for purchases with their Venmo balance, or their bank account, debit card, or credit card linked to their Venmo account,” eBay said in a press release.

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

Of those 100 marketplaces, three (excluding eBay) already accept Venmo as a payment method — all of them based in the United States. Before eBay, the largest online marketplace to accept Venmo was Poshmark (No. 33).

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American Express out, Venmo in at eBay

“By integrating Venmo, a platform already embraced by more than 90 million highly engaged users, eBay taps into the modern and mobile-first consumer,” the online marketplace said in the press release. It added, “Given that over 60% of eBay volume comes from mobile devices, Venmo’s mobile platform is ideal for digitally savvy shoppers looking for a simple and fast checkout process.”

It said 28% of Venmo’s users are Gen Z and Millennials within the 18 to 29 age bracket. That demographic, it said, is renowned for its tech-savviness.

Citing “unacceptably high fees American Express charges for processing credit card transactions,” eBay explained in a June 5 press release that it would discontinue its acceptance of the credit card beginning Aug. 17.

“At a time when payment processing costs should be declining because of technological advancements, investments in fraud capabilities and customer protections by merchants like eBay, credit card transaction fees continue to rise unabated because of a lack of meaningful competition,” eBay noted.

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A big reason U.S. consumers and businesses are getting most of their packaging on time and undamaged can be traced to increased competition between UPS and FedEx to dominate the ecommerce logistics market, according to Parcel Monitor. Parcel Monitor said it uses data from more than 1.5 million monthly active users, 1,078 global carriers and 63,000 shipping routes for its report metrics.

“In line with the surge in ecommerce, leading logistics carriers like FedEx, USPS, and UPS have enhanced parcel delivery times through optimized routes, infrastructure upgrades, and advanced package tracking technologies,” Parcel Monitor says.

In the first quarter of 2024, FedEx and UPS implemented improvements in their average transit times to 2.08 days and 2.22 days, respectively, Parcel Monitor says. But the U.S. Postal Service faces an average transit time increase to 2.55 days “despite their recent efforts to reduce it,” according to Parcel Monitor.

“U.S. carriers are becoming increasingly adept at managing packages, reducing the incidence of issues that can erode consumer trust,” Parcel Monitor says.

In 2023:

• The issue ratio decreased by 3.6% year-over-year (YoY) to 6.4%.
• The on-time delivery ratio remained stable at 98%.
• The first-attempt delivery success rate improved by 12.2% to 97%.
• Average domestic transit times decreased by 24% to 2.56 days.

Specific transit times for leading U.S. carriers in 2023 include:

• LaserShip (1.44 days)
• OnTrac (1.47 days)
• FedEx (2.15 days)
• USPS (2.26 days)
• UPS (2.35 days)

On-time delivery rates in the fourth quarter of 2023 include:

• UPS (98.5%)
• LaserShip (89.8%)
• USPS (87.1%)
• OnTrac (83.1%)
• FedEx (67.8%)

“In an era where the immediacy of ecommerce transactions demands rapid, reliable logistics, the U.S. has become a battleground for legacy giants striving to dominate the marketplace,” says Parcel Monitor.

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Shopify is an ecommerce platform developer and service provider. Joyy is a video-based social media platform that trades on NASDAQ.

The suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York alleges that Shopline Commerce Pte. Ltd. and Shopline US Inc. created a copycat version of Dawn, Shopify’s computer program that enables the creation of customizable storefront templates.

“Shopify merchants can use Dawn to quickly launch a compelling online presence or to design their unique store,” Shopify says in its lawsuit. “It is the product of many thousands of hours of creative effort by Shopify employees and the investment of many millions of dollars and Dawn is protected by copyrights registered in the United States.”

In North America, 117 of the Top 1000 online retailers use Shopify as their ecommerce platform. The Top 1000 is Digital Commerce 360’s database of the largest online retailers in the region by annual web sales. In 2023, those 117 online retailers combined for more than $9.72 billion in web sales.

Shopify sues Shopline

Shopify alleges that Shopline copied Dawn and is now distributing what it calls “a thinly disguised knockoff” called Seed.

“Shopline’s derivative of Dawn still carries damning evidence of Shopline’s wholesale copying,” Shopify says in its suit. “The file structure and layout, file names, function names, lines of code and even icon codes from Shopify’s original can still be found in Seed. The ‘Shopify’ name still appears in the code of various versions of Seed that Shopline is distributing. And Shopify has found a Chinese webpage hosted by Joyy bearing the title: “Seed Theme” that still carries headers reading ‘dawn-test.’”

Digital Commerce 360 reached out for comment to JOYY but has yet to receive a response.

“We’ve taken aggressive legal action against Shopline to uphold the integrity of Shopify’s products,” a Shopify spokesperson said in a statement. “We will continue to fiercely defend our intellectual property from bad faith actors.”

The Shopify lawsuit contends that Shopline violated Shopify’s copyright both in the U.S. and globally.

“To create Seed, Shopline started by making an unauthorized copy of Dawn, translated that unauthorized copy into a different programming language, and then made cosmetic changes to the Dawn code,” the lawsuit says. “From the highest level of overarching organization to the smallest level of individual lines of code, the evidence of Shopline’s copying is overwhelming. The organization of Seed’s directory layout matches Dawn’s layout, using the same names and same labels, and has identical contents for the code. That would not be if the programs were independently developed.”

In its action, Shopify is asking the court for a cease decision and unspecified statutory damages and legal fees. The district court has not scheduled preliminary dates for a hearing.

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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released a statement in late February calling the proposed Kroger-Albertsons merger “anticompetitive” and suing to block the $24.6 billion acquisition.

The revised divestiture package Kroger and Albertsons put together expands both the number of stores the companies plan to sell and non-store assets. This will better “enable C&S to operate competitively following the completion of the proposed merger,” the companies said in an April 22 statement.

“We have reached an agreement with C&S for an updated divestiture package that maintains Kroger’s commitments to customers, associates and communities, addresses concerns raised by regulators, and will further ensure that C&S can successfully operate the divested stores as they are operated today,” said Rodney McMullen, Kroger’s chairman and CEO, in the statement. “Importantly, the updated divestiture plan continues to ensure no stores will close as a result of the merger and that all frontline associates will remain employed, all existing collective bargaining agreements will continue, and associates will continue to receive industry-leading health care and pension benefits alongside bargained-for wages. Our proposed merger with Albertsons will bring lower prices and more choices to more customers and secure the long-term future of unionized grocery jobs.”

And if the Kroger-Albertsons merger closes, C&S will pay Kroger an all-cash consideration of approximately $2.9 billion.

Kroger ranks No. 6 in the Top 1000, Digital Commerce 360’s database of North America’s leading retailers by online sales. Furthermore, Kroger is first in the Top 1000’s Food/Beverage category. Albertsons ranks No. 24. C&S currently does not rank in the Top 1000.

Why did the FTC sue to block the Kroger-Albertsons merger?

The two grocery retailers first proposed the deal in 2022. Kroger was slated to buy Albertsons at the time, pending regulatory approval. The merger would allow the chains to create a “premier omnichannel food retailer,” Kroger said in a statement at the time. Together, the retailers would operate more than 5,000 stores across 48 states, with nearly 700,000 employees.

The suit came two days before the FTC’s Feb. 28 deadline. That’s when an agreement between the grocery retailers and the FTC not to close the deal would have expired.

The FTC’s argument is that the merger would harm consumers, as the retailers directly compete in pricing, hours, product offerings and other factors.

“If the merger takes place, grocery prices will increase, and Kroger and Albertsons’ incentive to improve product quality and customer service will decrease, further harming customers,” the FTC said in the same press release.

Kroger, Albertsons propose updated divestiture plan with C&S

The updated Kroger and Albertsons divestiture package increased the total store count to 579. That’s 144 more than the previous package’s proposed 413 stores.

The divestiture plan already included selling stores under the QFC, Mariano’s and Carrs brands to C&S. In the amended divestiture plan, Kroger and Albertsons would also sell some stores under the Haggen banner to C&S. The Haggen stores that remain under Kroger ownership “will be re-bannered into one of the retained Kroger or Albertsons Cos. banners following the close of the transaction with C&S.”

Additionally, under the amended agreement, C&S will license the Albertsons banner in California and Wyoming. It will also license the Safeway banner in Arizona and Colorado. In those four states, Kroger would re-banner the Albertsons and Safeway stores it retains after the merger closes. Kroger will also maintain the Albertsons and Safeway banners in the remaining states.

The number of stores contained in the divestiture plan by geography is as follows:

• Washington: 124 Albertsons Cos. and Kroger stores
• Arizona: 101 Albertsons Cos. stores
• Colorado: 91 Albertsons Cos. stores
• California: 63 Albertsons Cos. stores
• Oregon: 62 Albertsons Cos. and Kroger stores
• Illinois: 35 Albertsons Cos. and Kroger stores
• Texas/Louisiana: 30 Albertsons Cos. stores
• Arkansas: 18 Albertsons Cos. stores
• Nevada: 16 Albertsons Cos. stores
• Montana/Utah/Wyoming: 11 Albertsons Cos. stores
• Idaho: 10 Albertsons Cos. stores
• New Mexico: 9 Albertsons Cos. stores
• DC/Maryland/Virginia/Delaware: 9 Harris Teeter stores

Kroger will sell the above stores (regardless of banner) to C&S following the closing of the merger with Albertsons Cos.

“We are confident this expanded divestiture package will provide the stores, supporting assets and expert operators needed to ensure these stores continue to successfully serve their communities for many generations to come,” said Eric Winn, CEO of C&S, in the statement.

Non-store assets in the divestiture plan

The updated divestiture package includes increased distribution capacity, the statement said. It also includes one dairy facility. All fuel centers and pharmacies associated with the divested stores will remain with the stores and continue to operate, Kroger said.

The updated agreement maintains the sale of private-label brands:

• Debi Lilly Design
• Primo Taglio
• Open Nature
• ReadyMeals
• Waterfront Bistro

Kroger will sell all these brands to C&S, and it is adding “access to” the Signature and O Organics private-label brands.

Kroger to suspend delivery in parts of Texas, Florida

The grocery chain said it will stop offering grocery delivery in certain Texas and Florida locations beginning May 26.

Kroger announced that it opened a 60,000-square-foot automated fulfillment center in Opa-locka, Florida, in early 2023 to support ecommerce deliveries in South Florida. That followed investments from Kroger in other fulfillment centers in areas it didn’t have physical locations, including a 350,000-square-foot fulfillment center in Dallas — serving Austin, San Antonio and Oklahoma City  — which opened in 2023.

The three closures will not impact Kroger’s other automated fulfillment centers, a spokesperson previously told Digital Commerce 360.

“Kroger remains committed to growing its e-commerce offerings, delivering fresh food to more communities across the U.S.,” the statement continued.

Mary Meisenzahl contributed to this report.

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Buybuy Baby currently operates 11 physical stores, all in the northeast region in the United States. Raina Khumush, director of marketing and digital at Buybuy Baby, told Digital Commerce 360 that the retailer is pleased with its performance thus far. She said it has proven that customer loyalty to the brand “is huge.”

“The customer response has been really strong to both the digital side of the business and the store side of the business,” Khumush said. “We’re essentially doubling every month.” She did not attach a dollar amount to the growth.

Khumush added that Buybuy Baby’s current team includes members who worked with the brand before the relaunch, others who had experience in the baby industry, and brand-new team members.

“The brand itself has tons of heritage and goodwill, and it has this great legacy,” Khumush said. “We’ve really brought that forward into the new business, but we are also rebuilding, re-envisioning, reimagining this business, and we’re building a new business model as well.”

The Buybuy Baby relaunch began just before the Cyber 5 sales period in November 2023, reviving the brand’s retail presence.

What happened to Buybuy Baby?

Buybuy Baby was part of Bed Bath & Beyond, which went bankrupt in April 2023. Overstock then acquired Bed Bath & Beyond’s intellectual property for $21.5 million in June 2023. Court documents show that in July, a buyer named Mark Srour-Serure, the owner of Dream on Me Industries, acquired Buybuy Baby’s trademark and digital assets for $15.5 million. New Jersey-based Dream on Me was one of Buybuy Baby’s former vendors.

The acquisition gave Dream on Me the rights to Buybuy Baby’s intellectual property, which encompassed:

• Its digital properties, including first-party data that Buybuy Baby collected. This consists of customer names, addresses, phone and fax numbers, email addresses and other identifiers. It also includes web browser cookies and other browser- or device-specific identifiers, according to the court documents.
• Mobile platform. This includes Buybuy Baby’s applications on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
• Advertising and marketing materials, samples, artwork, photography, images, videos and more.
• Business data and business internet properties.

In August, Overstock relaunched the Bed Bath & Beyond ecommerce website and later changed its name to operate under Beyond, Inc. Since then, Overstock relaunched its own website, distinguishing itself from Bed Bath & Beyond’s ecommerce site. On the other end, Buybuy Baby relaunched its website Nov. 18.

“When the brand was acquired, what was acquired was essentially just the IP,” Khumush said. “There was really no other assets that were acquired along with that. The website had to be completely rebuilt, starting from scratch. In that sense, there wasn’t necessarily an option not to do so.”

Beyond Inc. is No. 63 in the Top 1000. The database is Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest North American online retailers. Bed Bath & Beyond ranked No. 47 prior to its bankruptcy.

Buybuy Baby born again

The Buybuy Baby relaunch came in the middle of the holiday season, less than a week before the Cyber 5 period — the five days from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday.

“Our focus was really about getting retail ready, getting to know our customers again, either inviting existing customers back or getting to know new customers that were coming into the brand, and trying out some different marketing tactics,” Khumush said.

Buybuy Baby is still establishing new baselines for its digital marketing metrics, Khumush said.

“We do have some of the previous data, so we are using that to some extent to understand what’s happened in the past, but we definitely are taking a fresh approach, trying to look at everything with new, fresh perspective, and we’re also in a phase right now where I would say we’re testing a lot of different things,” Khumush said. “Our goal is to continue to do that: test, monitor, and then optimize all the different types of marketing channels that are available to us, and so we can ultimately get to the goal of having this optimal marketing mix. Right now, we’re still very much in this test-and-learn phase.”

Khumush said Buybuy Baby’s current team acquired the brand’s previous email lists, but email is a tricky part of the brand’s new-customer-acquisition approach.

“Our business is interesting because it is a business that requires a significant amount of new-customer acquisition,” Khumush said. “Obviously, people are in the prenatal and postnatal stage of life for only a finite amount of time.”

Even with an existing email list, she said, Buybuy Baby is still trying different approaches to see what resonates with its audience, including segmenting based on shopping behavior.

Buybuy Baby relaunch is a social experience

Khumush said Buybuy Baby is “heavily” using social media — Instagram and Facebook in particular. The brand also wants to grow on TikTok and Pinterest.

The retailer has committed to doing one large in-store event per month for the foreseeable future, she said, and it will livestream those events, mostly via Instagram.

“What we think that will allow us to do is reach a broader audience,” Khumush said. “Obviously, because our stores are so concentrated right now in the northeast, we don’t want to forget the fact that we have all of these fans and customers nationwide who do want to still engage and participate in these events, but they can’t be there physically. We’re trying to test ways to see how we can create a digital experience for them, where they can feel like they’re still a part of it, but they don’t necessarily have to be physically there in the store.”

She added that Buybuy Baby has seen “really good return” on its Instagram advertising. She also said the retailer has leaned into Instagram more than any other social media platform over the last few months. And influencer marketing has been a large part of that.

Buybuy Baby influencers and new initiatives

Influencer partners have livestreamed the retailer’s in-store events as well.

“We also had an influencer do a run-through of our website,” Khumush said. “How to go onto our website, what to expect when you come to our website, how to shop our website. We’re seeing that content is resonating really well with the audiences. Those are the kinds of things we also want to continue to do. Tap into that influencer base to continue to promote store events, new product launches, new services that we may be launching now or in the future.

In addition to using influencer marketing and hosting in-store events, Buybuy Baby has launched a consultation service that customers can sign up for through the retailer’s website. Buybuy Baby is offering free, 60-minute consultations to expecting and new parents.

“They can make an appointment to come into one of our 11 stores and work with an expert to guide them through either creating a registry, how to choose the best stroller or car seat for your baby, how to design the perfect nursery from the crib to the glider to the bedding to any of the decor,” Khumush said. “They can give advice on breastfeeding or bottle feeding and really any other topic that a new or expecting parent might be interested in learning more about.”

The consultations are currently only available at the retailer’s physical stores, but Khumush said the retailer is looking to make virtual consultations available in the future.

“We definitely have other services and things up our sleeves that we want to launch this year,” Khumush said.

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“The AI revolution is about data, trust and customer experience,” said Rob Garf, general manager of retail and consumer goods at Salesforce, in the report.

“Looking at artificial intelligence in isolation, without understanding these elements as a package, will hurt a retailer’s ability to build loyalty and improve customer relationships,” he added. “This research we’re announcing today aims to help retailers better understand the need for a unified data strategy, the practical applications of generative AI and how that can be used to enhance the experience for both shoppers and associates.”

Salesforce provides technology services to retailers in the Digital Commerce 360 Top 1000, including to 69 retailers as an ecommerce platform, 56 for web hosting and cloud services, and 55 for its content delivery network. The Top 1000 is Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest online retailers in North America by sales.

AI usage

Survey results revealed that retailers are willing to experiment with AI. 93% of surveyed retailers said they’re already using generative AI in some capacity for personalization. That includes creating personalized email copy and product recommendations.

81% of retailers in the survey said they have a dedicated AI budget. On average, about 50% of the total AI budget goes toward generative AI, they said. 

Retailers were most likely to say they plan to use generative AI for customer service, marketing, and store operations purposes. Customer service was the most popular use case. Retailers said they want to use AI to send personalized automated messages to customers more quickly than human customer service workers would be able to. 

Digital shopping assistants were the next most popular use case among retailers, the report found. Retailers want to use generative AI to make these assistants conversational and easy to use to help customers find the right products.

Generative AI strategy issues

Despite the willingness to embrace generative AI, retailers are still working out issues in using data to make the technology as effective as possible. Many retailers are struggling to unify their data in a way that gives a comprehensive view of customers, the report said.

Just 17% of survey respondents said they have a complete, single view of their customers and that they’re harnessing data effectively. That’s a problem because generative AI is only as useful as the data it works with, Garf said. Incomplete data can lead to ineffective or inaccurate outputs, Salesforce said. It could also lead to biased results, the report said.

49% of retailers in the survey said they’re either in the preliminary stages, or considering creating complete customer data profiles. 67% of retailers said they can fully capture customer data, but only 39% are fully able to clean it. 42% said they can fully harmonize the data. 

Once they do have data, actually using it also poses a problem. 40% of retailers said they are struggling to use the data to make decisions. 47% said they’re facing problems making it accessible. 

Complying with ethical standards

Retailers are working to comply with ethical and security standards, they told Salesforce in the survey. That’s especially important because just 13% of customers completely trust companies to use AI ethically, and 63% are concerned about bias with the technology, according to Salesforce data.

50% of surveyed retailers said they have the ability to fully comply with security standards and data-privacy regulations. Half of retailers said prejudiced results from generative AI were a concern. 38% cited hallucinations and 35% cited toxicity as other risks from using the tool. 62% of retailers reported that they have guidelines to address transparency, data security and privacy in their generative AI use.

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However, a new survey of 165 retail organizations from market research firm First Insight reveals that CEOs do not always see eye to eye on how AI will impact different technology applications and business strategies on a line-item basis.

“The strategic disconnect discovered between retail CEOs and their management teams points to a severe knowledge gap within enterprise-level retailers that will impede future growth and profitability,” First Insight says. “CEOs and their teams will need to transform their organizations into more agile, data-driven businesses by leveraging AI’s vast potential not simply to cut costs, but also to win at innovation.”

Key findings about AI in retail

• More than half of respondents are leveraging AI in some capacity across their businesses today.
• While more than half of respondents are familiar with AI in retail and believe it is used for both internal and external-facing functions, too many respondents are still unfamiliar with both.
• More than half of CEOs of enterprise-level businesses believe that the role of AI-based technology is fundamental to the future of retail.
• Generative AI for personalized marketing and recommendation engines was selected as the top application holding the most promise for retail over the next 5 years.

“AI in Retail will continue to gain importance and traction for customer experience, predictive analytics, and cost savings,” the report says. “CEOs and their teams need to understand the various benefits AI can bring to their businesses, after which they can agree on the strategy that best serves their businesses and customers. There is no “one size fits all” AI implementation strategy.”

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The SEC filing shows that Instacart’s plan “includes a reduction of approximately 250 employees, representing approximately 7% of the company’s global workforce as of January 31, 2024, with most of these reductions expected to occur by March 31, 2024.”

Instacart layoffs and executive-level changes

Instacart estimates the restructuring plan will cost $19 million to $24 million in non-recurring charges, according to the SEC filing. That’s predominantly tied to “cash expenditures for employee transition and severance payments and employee benefits.” Although Instacart will have to incur expenses this year due to accounting rules, it said $17 million to $22 million of the expenses will affect cash flow in the future.

In the same filing, Instacart noted that chief operating officer Asha Sharma informed the company of her decision to resign, effective March 1. Instacart said in the filing that it does not plan to hire or appoint a new COO “at this time.”

CEO Fidji Simo said in a Feb. 13 earnings call with investors that its chief technology officer (Varouj Chitilian) and chief architect (JJ Zhuang) are also departing the company. Simo said the company is “taking the opportunity to streamline my management team and create more autonomous teams with all the levers they need to execute on our critical initiatives.”

She added that the company will look for a new CTO. As with the COO role, though, it does not expect to backfill the chief architect position, she said.

Instacart Q4 results

Simo said on the call that Instacart fulfillment speed improved in Q4, adding that the fill rate increased for the sixth consecutive quarter. Fill rate is the percentage of customer orders that a business can ship right away, without any backorders, stockouts, or missed sales.

Instacart grew orders 5% year over year in Q4 to reach 70.1 million. Gross transaction volume (GTV) also increased year over year, up 7% to $7.89 billion. Instacart also announced $803 million in total Q4 revenue. That’s a 6% year-over-year increase that represents 10.2% of GTV.

Instacart transaction revenue grew 6% year over year to reach $560 million. That represents 7.1% of GTV for the quarter.

Instacart 2023 full-year results

For the full year, Instacart grew orders to 269.2 million, a 3% year-over-year increase. Instacart GTV grew 5% over 2022 to reach $30.32 billion.

Meanwhile, Instacart total revenue in 2023 grew 19% year over year, reaching $3.04 billion. That represents 10% of GTV. Transaction revenue represented 7.2% of GTV, as it grew 20% year over year to reach $2.17 billion.

Recent Instacart announcements

Instacart will partner with grocery chain Hy-Vee to offer same-day delivery, Hy-Vee announced days before Instacart’s earnings call. Hy-Vee will benefit from the nearly 600,000 shoppers in Instacart’s network that can pick up, pack and deliver orders, Instacart said.

Meanwhile, Instacart announced it will be available for Whole Foods deliveries in select parts of Canada.

“Our mission at Instacart is to create a world where everyone has access to the food they love, and working with beloved retailers like Whole Foods Market helps us make that mission a reality,” Chris Rogers, chief business officer at Instacart, had said in a released statement.

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The post Instacart announces layoffs, revenue growth on same day appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.