Albert Nahmad, founder, chairman and CEO, Watsco Inc.

The company said quarterly revenue rose 6.8% year over year. That’s up to a record $2.139 billion for the second quarter ended June 30. And ecommerce grew at nearly twice that rate, at 13%, to $770.16 million.

In Q2, Watsco ecommerce sales accounted for 38% of total sales. Watsco is well-known as a prominent online distributor in the highly fragmented, $64 billion North American HVAC and refrigeration products industry.

“A cornerstone of Watsco’s growth strategy is the acquisition of long-standing, family-owned businesses,” Nahmad said on the Q2 earnings call. He noted that, since its founding in 1989, Watsco has completed 69 acquisitions, “achieving industry-leading scale and preserving many wonderful business legacies into future generations.”

Nahmad added, “Over the last five years, Watsco has acquired eight businesses that today generate approximately $1 billion in annual sales.”

Watsco’s entrepreneurial spirit and ecommerce sales focus

The company’s growth strategy relies heavily on continuing the entrepreneurial spirit of acquired companies, whose executives typically remain to lead their operations.

“Simply put, Watsco’s entrepreneurial culture, which empowers local leaders to make local decisions, continues to perform well,” Nahmad said on the earnings call today.

He noted that Watsco’s long-running strategy of investing in digital commerce technology “continues to have an impact” on financial performance.

“Greater adoption and use of our platforms by a growing number of contractors has produced growth and market share gain,” he added.

Watsco is a Miami-based company that other HVAC suppliers have said they emulate for its digital commerce strategy. It also noted other developments related to its “digital ecosystem of technologies” configured to “transform the customer experience and transform how our industry operates.”

Watsco’s digital ecosystem

The digital ecosystem includes:

• OnCallAir
• Watsco’s HVAC Pro+ Mobile Apps
• Watsco’s product information management (PIM) system

OnCallAir is Watsco’s ecommerce sales platform that lets HVAC contractors digitally engage with homeowners and sell them products and services. It compiled approximately $1.4 billion in gross merchandise value for the 12-month period that ended June 30.

For the six months ended June 30, contractors used OnCallAir to present quotes to about 160,000 households. That’s an 18% year-over-year increase. It also generated a 27% increase in GMV to $743 million.

Watsco’s HVAC Pro+ Mobile Apps provide contractors and their customers with real-time access to ecommerce activity. They also include such information as product specifications, inventory availability, systemwide product matchups, and technical support. For the 12 months until June 30, the number of HVAC Pro+ Mobile Apps users grew 12% to approximately 60,000.

Watsco’s product information management (PIM) system is a repository of rich product data. It provides data on over 1.5 million SKUs to more than 375,000 contractors and technicians who visit or connect digitally with one of its nearly 700 physical locations across the United States, Canada and Latin America.

Watsco is updating its technology systems to “optimize the launch of new GWP (Global Warming Potential) A2L” refrigeration systems designed to be more efficient and sustainable to reduce the adverse effect of refrigerants on climate change.

Though it accounted for 38% of total Q2 sales companywide, Watsco ecommerce sales exceeded 60% in some regions.

Watsco’s pitch to would-be partners: ‘Come to Miami to see us’

In his earnings call remarks, Nahmad, forever on the lookout for acquisitions, said, “Our proven culture, customer-focused technologies, scale and access to capital provide unique advantages and opportunities.” He added to anyone listening: “If you have an interest in learning more, please come to Miami and see us. We are transforming an industry, and we would enjoy telling you about it.”

Here’s last quarter’s update on Watsco ecommerce sales.

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

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John Carte, CEO, Relevant Industrial

Relevant Industrial designed and launched the B2B ecommerce site “as a testament to our commitment to innovation and customer-centricity, CEO John Carte says. “We are excited to offer our customers an easier, faster, and more efficient way to access the high-quality products and solutions they need to succeed in their operations.”

Relevant says the new ecommerce provides such features as detailed product information, real-time inventory updates, and streamlined ordering processes. Relevant didn’t immediately return a request for information about the site’s technology infrastructure, but according to BuiltWith.com, it runs on the Magento ecommerce platform.

“The ecommerce platform is designed to cater to the unique needs of our industrial customers, featuring advanced search capabilities, intuitive navigation, and personalized account management tools,” Relevant says. “Customers can easily and purchase products from top brands, track their orders, and manage their accounts all in one place.”

Online Shop Relevant Assistant

Relevant distributes products from such brands as Honeywell, Parker and Ingersoll-Rand, plus Relevant-owned brands including 505 Industrial Supply, Rawson & Industrial Controls and J&W Instruments. Among its customer-oriented features is a drop-down “Shop Relevant Assistant” interactive menu, which prompts customers to click for information on such topics as pricing, product lead time, creating an online account and looking up past orders.

In addition to self-service features for buyers, the new site also supports Relevant’s sales team, the company says.

“Our sales team is thrilled about the launch of the new ecommerce platform,” says John Butts, senior vice president of sales. “This platform not only enhances our ability to serve our customers more effectively but also provides us with valuable insights into customer preferences and purchasing behaviors, allowing us to tailor our offerings and services to better meet their needs.”

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

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Last December, the company launched Swag.Space as a “white-label” platform that lets promotional product distributors develop online product catalogs and manage production, inventory, orders, distribution and storage. Swag.Space runs on technology and infrastructure developed by Swag.com, the custom-product ecommerce platform Custom Ink acquired in 2021. Through its integration with the Shopify ecommerce platform, Swag.Space lets client distributors offer their customers “the ability to launch company stores.”

David Doctorow, recently named CEO of Custom Ink.

Now, the customized swag company wants to take its digital strategy to the next level with a new CEO steeped in ecommerce-growth experience.

The company has named David Doctorow, who most recently was the CEO of real estate company Realtor.com, as the top executive to succeed co-founder and CEO Marc Katz, who will remain as chairman of the board. Doctorow will take over the reins and join the board next month.

Marc Kattz, chairman, Custom Ink

“Leading Custom Ink and working with such great people has been an amazing 25-year experience,” Katz said in a statement announcing Doctorow’s appointment. “We’ve undertaken major changes since the pandemic to refocus on our digital roots, and now it’s time for a new CEO to lead us to new heights. David is a proven leader with an impressive track record building digital businesses.”

At Realtor.com, Doctorow was CEO between 2020 and 2023 and “led the business to record revenue, profit and customer satisfaction,” Custom Ink says in its statement. In addition, it notes that, prior to Realtor, Doctorow led growth in eBay’s customer acquisition and retention efforts as head of global growth and, as chief marketing and strategy officer of online travel services company Expedia, “helped double” sales and profits.

At Custom Ink, Doctorow says he sees “tremendous potential for further growth” as the personalized products company continues to develop its digital offerings.

Custom Ink is supported financially by Great Hill Partners, its primary growth equity backer.

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

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“You see the pictures online, you like the location, but oftentimes we show up to terrible beds and missing pots and pans,” she says.

Ashley Ching, founder and CEO, Inhaven

Ching, a veteran of product sourcing, merchandising and ecommerce, figured there must be a better way to manage the growing U.S. vacation rental business, which, according to research firm AirDNA, totals approximately 1.5 million rental units in the U.S. market.

In September 2022, she founded and became CEO of Inhaven, an online B2B company she launched to raise the operational standards of the short-term vacation rental industry. Ching brought to Inhaven her experience in product sourcing, merchandising and managing brand standards at Tiffany & Co. and in ecommerce at The Home Depot housewares brand The Company Store.

Inhaven deployed a customized a B2B ecommerce site at Inhaven.com on the BigCommerce platform, which it designed to make it easier for property managers and their buyers in the complex vacation rental industry to find and purchase quality products ranging from beds, linens and pillows to bathroom supplies, kitchen utensils and tableware.

Inhaven also has deployed the Zoho CRM application to manage things such as customer application forms and Klaviyo for email marketing.

One of Inhaven’s primary goals is also to establish product standards among the thousands of vacation rental property management companies, who handle about 40% of the U.S. vacation rental market of 1.5 million units, Ching says.

“The challenge that we have in the vacation rental industry today is that there are 25,000 property management companies … 25,000 companies doing things in different ways.”

She asserts that, just as the hospitality industry set higher bed standards decades ago for economy as well luxury hotels, the vacation rental industry needs to follow suit.

Working with suppliers to furnish “Masterpieces”

Ching says Inhaven works with suppliers to provide products that meet quality standards in four levels, from basic (or “Canvas”) to high-end (or “Masterpiece”). It organizes them with images, pricing and other product details on Inhaven.com to simplify how buyers can choose the ones that fit their market and pricing strategy. Buyers for property managers can see which products meet their companies’ purchasing policies.

Inhaven.com has API connections to suppliers to update product details in real time and forward custom orders to vendors for drop-shipping. It works with about 200 brands, including Gibson Home and Martha Stewart.

Ching says Inhaven also uses the Flxpoint drop-ship platform, which “helps us maintain current inventory and supports our order workflows to and from our manufacturers.” It also uses Aftership to track order fulfillment once a manufacturer ships to a customer.

Inhaven is privately funded and doesn’t release revenue figures. But Ching notes that it has been growing steadily since launching in 2022 and now serves buyers for about 55,000 rental units.

“We’ve been doubling sales every quarter since then,” she says.

Going forward, Ching says she hopes to expand on Inhaven’s product standards strategy by working with online travel agencies and rental listing services to identify vacation properties that meet particular Inhaven standards.

“We’re focused on people looking for vacation homes managed by teams committed to these standards, and making it easy for them to find these homes,” she says, adding, “There’s nothing like that in the vacation rental industry.”

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

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Having one-to-one fan engagement on Funko.com “has been super successful and incredibly important” to the retailer, Smiley told Digital Commerce 360 at the Salesforce Connections 2024 conference in Chicago. Funko leverages that engagement when new releases appear in its product drops.

“Product drops are obviously a giant part of our strategy, especially on the DTC side,” he said, adding that Funko also benefits from an updated technology stack that can accommodate those sales.

Funko has grown its DTC sales via its “Pop! Yourself” figures. | Image credit: Funko

Funko began its DTC sales in 2017, Smiley said. He estimates that today, a quarter of Funko sales are DTC, and the current trend indicates that’s only growing.

Its previous platform provider, which Smiley did not name, was “falling down” during product drops. The site’s previous platform couldn’t handle the traffic it currently does, and bots would buy all the product, he said. That became the discourse about Funko DTC sales on social channels, he added.

Smiley said Funko has “completely flipped that narrative” about its site since switching to Salesforce as its platform. At some points, Smiley said, Funko now does 12,000 orders a minute on the same product.

In North America, 76 of the top 2000 online retailers use Salesforce as their ecommerce platform, according to Digital Commerce 360 data. In 2022, those 76 online retailers combined for more than $116.97 billion in web sales.

Funko DTC sales on the rise

Before Funko began offering product drops on its own website, its sales strategy was largely tied to large retailers like Walmart, Target and Hot Topic. Each large retailer would sell exclusive Funko figures. Other parts of its strategy, Smiley said, included leaning into its base of anime fans as well as the Star Wars, Marvel and Disney franchises.

And whereas these figures capture specific fandoms, Funko has also grown its DTC sales via its “Pop! Yourself” figures. The figures are customized so consumers can have Funko figures that look like them.

“We had it in our brick-and-mortar stores but put it online last year and that has gone gangbuster,” Smiley said. “Super popular, super giftable. During the holidays, we could not keep up with demand. We’re continuing to see that trend through Valentine’s and Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, graduation.”

Funko’s collectibles, which feature characters from licensed media properties

In addition to Funko.com, Funko also operates Loungefly.com (accessible from the main Funko website), FunkoEurope.com and MondoShop.com. But the former accounts for “the bulk of” Funko DTC sales, he said.

Not including the Pop! Yourself figures, Funko has created and sold 32,155 unique figures and counting, Smiley said.

First-party shopper data

As a result of its Pop! Yourself figures, Funko saw “massive growth” in its fourth-quarter DTC sales in 2023, Smiley said.

“We were not necessarily a Q4 brand like many other retailers were because of our conventions,” Smiley said. “Summer was always our biggest season. The holidays started to — maybe by and large because of Pop! Yourself — become a competitive time of the year compared to the conventions as well.”

Because the Pop! Yourself figures come directly from Funko, it benefits from acquiring first-party shopper data.

Smiley said there’s “no real good way to” track Funko customers who aren’t buying DTC. Instead, the retailers like Walmart and Target that make the sale will give less-specific sales data to Funko.

“They won’t give you personalized [data] because those are their shoppers,” Smiley said. “They’ll give you the aggregate on how products are selling through, but they won’t give you any personal data.”

One way Funko plans to work around that is by rolling out an improved “verified” program.

“Basically, it’d be like a QR code on the boxes that you can scan and it’ll tell you where you bought it and register your product,” Smiley said. “Right now, we talk about those drops we’ve done for other retailers and it’s just kind of a sticker. This will allow a little bit more tracking and that sort of thing. We’ll use that as a funnel to get people into the site.”

Bots and product drops

Among the biggest product drops Funko has done was a figure of now-retired NFL player Jason Kelce. There was a moment in the 2023 playoffs when was in the stands for his brother, Travis. Jason ripped off his shirt and was flexing in the stands. Funko “had that to market within a week,” Smiley said.

“It was a preorder drop, so we were able to capture the moment, design it, and get it out on the site for preorder capability within the week,” Smiley said. “They weren’t delivered within that week, but they were able to be purchased at that time.”

Smiley said the fastest he has seen a Funko figure sell out was in a minute, at a Comic Con event. Funko would reveal the product the day before, and it would sell out nearly instantly upon being dropped.

And those sold-out Funko figures are prime targets for resale.

“We’re constantly working to remove the bots from our system because the bots are the flippers, essentially,” Smiley said, adding that it takes “a lot of time and effort. It’s multifaceted. It’s partnering with Salesforce. We use Cloudflare for a lot of that security. It’s just refining and refining and refining these rules, and it’s a delicate balance because if you go too hard, you could be limiting real shoppers.”

That refining includes looking for bad actors, partially by identifying IP traffic and how many times bots are “trying to hit the site.”

At the same time, he said, Funko doesn’t want to “make it a super cumbersome experience where you have to identify all the traffic lights on the thing and do 10 steps to prove you’re a real shopper.” By that point, products might be sold out.

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Omnia calls itself the largest and most experienced purchasing organization for public and private sector procurement. Now, it has some of the biggest distributors of maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) selling on its platform, Opus.

Public procurement suppliers appearing on the Opus ecommerce platform

Now, distributors selling on Opus include:

• ODP Business Solutions (formerly Office Depot Business Solutions), a distributor of office supplies, furniture, technology, cleaning and breakroom products and services.
• Global Industrial Co., national distributor of industrial and MRO products.
• Grainger, a broad-line distributor of MRO products and services including technical support and inventory management.
• Lawson, a distributor of industrial, commercial, institutional and government MRO products and services.
• MSC Industrial Supply, a distributor of a broad range of metalworking and MRO solutions.
• Pocket Nurse, a supplier of medical education supplies. It serves customers in nursing programs, emergency medical system (EMS) training, pharmacy technology and physical therapy.
• Quill, an online retailer of office supplies for organizations. Its products include paper, ink, toner, cleaning and breakroom supplies, furniture, technology and custom printing.
• Safeware, a distributor of specialty products for the protection of law enforcement agencies, fire departments, rescue operators, hazmat teams and government entities.

“Nearly 5,000 government agencies and nonprofits are using Opus to modernize their procurement process and more easily access the benefits of cooperative contracts,” said Todd Abner, CEO at Omnia Partners. “The user-friendly experience and functionality of our platform is solving the staffing constraints and high demands being placed on buying organizations. They are able to get the products and services they need at industry-leading prices quickly, while still adhering to their compliance requirements.”

What the new distributors will bring to Opus

As a result, the new additions will bring more than 4 million SKUs in more than 90 categories for Opus. For the ecommerce platform and its public procurement customers, those categories include:

• Maintenance, repair and operations.
• Protective safety equipment for law enforcement and first responders.
• Office supplies and medical education supplies.

In total, Opus users have access to products from approximately 300 suppliers, according to Omnia Partners.

“Adding these category-leading suppliers is a major step forward in the value Opus delivers to customers,” says Denise Woodside, executive vice president of operations and digital strategy at Omnia Partners. “Our world-class supplier partners are committed to helping us move the industry forward with the same modern technology and buying experience that we all enjoy in our personal lives.”

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Piyush Chaudhari, CEO, Salsify

Piyush Chaudhari, a former CEO of global brand services firm SGS & Co., is the new top executive of product experience management company Salsify.

He succeeds Jason Purcell, a Salsify co-founder who has been the company’s CEO for the past 12 years and will remain as a board member and company advisor. “I am personally excited about the vision, energy, and experience Piyush will bring to power the next decade of accelerating growth for Salsify and our customers,” Purcell said in the company’s announcement of Chaudhari’s appointment as CEO.

Chaudhari is joining Salsify at a time when the company is  rolling out new technology products designed to improve how companies can manage and syndicate branded product descriptions and images to attract online customers and boost conversion rates.

Last year, Salsify invested $38 million in production innovation across several areas, including AI and automation, to enhance its product experience management technology for engaging and converting online buyers with helpful digital product content across multiple channels. And in this year’s first quarter, Salsify announced the general availability of Salsify PXM Advance, the newest version of its Product Experience Management platform.

“But in truth we have only scratched the surface of the business impact and global scale that Salsify is capable of,” Chaudhari said in a statement announcing his new position.

He added, “I am humbled and thrilled to assume leadership towards the next phase of growth that Salsify’s Board and entire team of Salsifarians are ready to invest in.”

Jason Purcell, co-founder and former CEO, Salsify

The company says it’s in good financial condition to invest in its growth. “Purcell leaves the company in the best financial shape of its history,” Salsify said in a statement. “It is growing, profitable, and holds over $300 million in cash and no debt.”

Chaudhari most recently was CEO of SGS & Co., which provides brands with advertising services across more than 30 countries. Prior to SGS, he was president, Americas and global strategy, at IRI (now known as Circana), which provides companies data on consumer demand to foster sales growth. Chaudhari has also held senior executive positions at Aon Hewitt, a provider of human capital and management consulting services. In addition, he has worked at Aon Consulting, Motorola and IBM, according to his LinkedIn page.

Salsify works with thousands of brand manufacturers, distributors and retailers worldwide to develop technology designed to help companies produce and share product content that wins over online buyers.

The company’s clients include brand manufacturers Mars, L’Oreal, Coca-Cola, Bosch, McCormick, Kenvue, Danone and ASICS; and such retailers and distributors as Albertsons, Carrefour, Metro, Glass Warehouse and DoorDash.

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

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There, Salesforce announced AI, Data Cloud and Commerce Cloud features and updates for its clients — one of which is Hästens. The 172-year-old bedding brand sells in close to 50 markets around the world, and the United States is its largest, Aschberger said. The two spoke about customer experience, retention, and the Salesforce products Hästens uses.

In North America, 76 of the Top 2000 online retailers use Salesforce as their ecommerce platform, according to Digital Commerce 360 data. In 2022, those 76 online retailers combined for more than $116.97 billion in web sales.

How Hästens addresses customer experience

Customer experience (CX) starts with product discovery, Aschberger said.

Because Hästens beds sell at higher price points than its competitors, Aschberger said, the brand has to make sure it gets customer experience right.

“If I say let’s go outside to the garage and let me show you my car, that’s fine,” Aschberger explained. “If I say come to my home — look at my bed. Experience my bed. It gets a bit weird.”

Garf said he often hears from retailers that personalization plays a key role in customer experience. Store-based retailers have the luxury of associates knowing their customers, Garf said. That differentiates the physical from the digital customer experience even though the retailer has access to purchase history in both scenarios.

Also because of the beds’ high price points, Aschberger said Hästens often closes a store for a couple hours to focus on the one client coming in for a potential sale. Hästens’ goal, he said, is to bring consumers to its stores so they can fully experience the beds and customize one based on a consumer’s preferences and needs. He compares that to other luxury product sales, including product drops that lead to long lines.

“I wonder sometimes what the luxury experience is when you have to queue one hour in the rain outside to be allowed to buy a handbag for $10,000,” Aschberger said.

Repeat buyers and customer retention

Hästens bridges the physical and digital experience gaps by using technology to speed up order configuration. A process that used to take a half hour now takes about 90 seconds, Aschberger said.

“When you say, ‘How do you bring this into a digital world?’ If it’s just a reorder, fine,” Aschberger said. “That’s easy — to do the technology, payment link. You can spend half a million with us in less than 90 seconds if you desire to do so, know exactly what you want and you have the configuration already ready.”

About 40% to 45% of Hästens customers are recurring buyers, he said. Often, these are individuals who bought a second or third home, he added. Because they already have a bed they’re happy with, they just order the same product again.

He said although consumers “can just click” to buy a Hästens bed. But because the retailer’s goal is to drive customers to a store, it has to implement technology further to meet customers’ needs. As a result, Hästens is working to add photorealistic renderings of its designs.

“That is something that gets important in that price segment when you work with interior designers and architects and real estate developers,” he said. “When you have these high-end renderings, from an experience point of view, then having some lousy polygons that shouldn’t present the bed — they don’t cut it.”

What Salesforce technology does Hästens use?

Hästens uses Salesforce’s Commerce, Marketing, Service and Loyalty cloud offerings, Aschberger said. Everything comes together, he added. The data integration is meant to help those who sell Hästens products in physical stores, he said. Hastens uses Salesforce’s Data Cloud to enable that integration between different modules.

“We have a lot of independent resellers,” Aschberger said. “They need information, they need training. It needs to be easy for them to make transactions.”

At the same time the store associates need to plug data into their systems. For Hästens, which has celebrities who buy from it and seek anonymity during their purchase, it’s key that Salesforce helps maintain customers’ data privacy. It comes down to making information available “at the right time, at the right confidentiality level,” he said.

That information requires safeguards. And because Hästens collects a slew of customer data — which can include details like body weight for its bed tests — information such as addresses must be kept confidential.

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In 2021 IBM filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware. It alleged that ecommerce technology on Rakuten’s shopping website and mobile apps for providing cash-back offers infringed its patents. IBM says it tried to negotiate a license with Rakuten for six years without success, according to Reuters.

In the complaint, IBM says that it partnered with others to launch Prodigy. Prodigy was one of the first ecommerce services before Rakuten was founded in 1997. According to the complaint, Rakuten “took those prior innovations made by IBM and others to create and run its new business.” It also used more of IBM’s innovations as it developed, according to LawStreetMedia.com.

U.S. District judge Gregory Williams said in an oral order that he was “pleased to hear that the parties have reached an agreement to settle this case,” says Reuters.

The lawsuit had been set to go to trial on June 24. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed in detail in the court filing.

In North America, 18 online retailers in the Top 1000 use IBM for order management services. Those 18 retailers generated more than $90.56 billion in web sales in 2022. The Top 1000 is Digital Commerce 360’s database of the region’s largest online retailers, ranked by their annual web sales.

IBM, AI and sustainability

IBM recently released a study of 20,000 consumers across 26 countries showing that more than half would like to use:

• Artificial intelligence (59%)
• Augmented or virtual reality (55%)
• Bots or virtual assistants (55%)

Meanwhile, just 9% of those consumers said they’re satisfied with their in-store shopping experiences. However, that figure is slightly higher at 14% for ecommerce experiences.

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At the same time, Salesforce has been expanding its artificial intelligence (AI) suite and its corresponding large language models (LLMs). CEO Marc Benioff said in an earnings call with investors that web users create “hundreds of petabytes of data” each day that AI models can use for training and generating output. One petabyte is the same as 1 million gigabytes, which is also the same as 1,000 terabytes.

Benioff said Salesforce is now managing more than 250 petabytes of data for its customers. That will “be absolutely critical as they move into artificial intelligence,” he said.

“The one thing that every enterprise needs to make AI work is their customer data, as well as the metadata that describes the data, which provides the attributes and context the AI models need to generate accurate, relevant output,” Benioff said. “And customer data and metadata are the new gold for these enterprises.”

He said that growth in Salesforce data is giving momentum to Data Cloud, and that “it’s the first step to becoming an AI enterprise.”

In North America, 76 of the top 2000 online retailers use Salesforce as their ecommerce platform, according to Digital Commerce 360 data. In 2023, those 76 online retailers combined for more than $136.077 billion in web sales.

Salesforce had cut 10% of its staff in January 2023. The job cuts cost the company $1.4 billion to $2.1 billion. As much as $1 billion of that came in its fiscal fourth quarter.

AI continues to guide Salesforce revenue growth in Q1

The 11% growth rate matches the rate at which Salesforce revenue increased in its fiscal Q4 2024. Of its $9.13 billion in total revenue during Q1, Salesforce brought in $8.59 billion from subscriptions and support. That’s a 12% year-over-year increase.

Although revenue grew at the same rate in the last two quarters and exceeded $9 billion, this marked the second time since Q1 of fiscal 2021 that Salesforce revenue did not grow quarter over quarter. Gross profit grew to $6.91 billion in Q1 2024, from $6.12 billion in the year-ago period.

Chief financial officer Amy Weaver said revenue was at the lower end of Salesforce’s previous guidance because of “continuing pressures on professional services, some license revenue volatility and the continued measured buying environment.”

In the Americas, she said, Salesforce revenue grew 11% year over year. In Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), it grew 10%. In Asia-Pacific, it grew 14%. Weaver added that from an industry perspective, the public sector and financial services both performed well. She said retail and consumer goods “were more constrained.”

Benioff said Data Cloud was included in a quarter of Salesforce’s $1 million-plus deals in Q1. Additionally, Salesforce added more than 1,000 Data Cloud customers for the second straight quarter.

Einstein — Salesforce’s platform that allows users to connect their data, customer relationship management and more using artificial intelligence — is generating hundreds of billions of predictions per day, he said. That’s trillions per week, he added.

Salesforce Connections 2024

Salesforce recently announced new AI, Data Cloud and Commerce Cloud features at its Connections 2024 conference at McCormick Place in Chicago in late May. At the conference, president and chief marketing officer Ariel Kelman showed Salesforce’s new features during the main keynote. He highlighted the software company’s generative AI-powered copilots, including specific ones for merchants and marketers. Salesforce also announced Commerce Cloud updates for checkout, headless commerce, composable commerce and digital engagement.

Percentage changes may not align exactly with dollar figures due to rounding. Check back for more earnings reports. Here’s last quarter’s update.

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The post Salesforce revenue grows in fiscal Q1 behind AI push appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.