The week’s almost over, but you’ll regret tuning out this early!
Tomorrow we’re launching an exciting new series, designed to help you survive (and win) the Q4 holiday chaos.
Spoiler: exclusive seller tool discounts await. 😉
- Claim your FREE pass to your next big business move! 🎯
- Shoppers aren’t splurging this holiday season 📉
- Amazons AI upgrade can help run your business 🤖
- FBA’s new rules won’t break you with these tips 🪨
- Get Looped In and take the chaos out of ecommerce accounting ✉️
- We’ll link your newsletter for FREE. Send your applications here. 🤝
TRENDING TOPIC
The holidays are coming in hot with lights, lattes, and a whole lot of cautious spending.
According to Retail Dive, U.S. retail sales this November–December are expected to top $975 billion, a 4% bump from last year. That’s still growth, but below the 10-year holiday average of 5.2%.
🛍️ Stores shine, ecommerce eases up
Bain & Company’s holiday outlook shows a tale of two channels:
- In-store sales: up 2.75% YoY
- Apparel, accessories, general merch, and health/personal care: each set to climb more than 5%
- Non-store (including ecommerce): up 7%—healthy, but slower than the 9–10% gains of the past two years
- And yet, non-store will still power half of this season’s total growth
💸 Cautious wallets, bigger bargain hunts
Financial strain is shaping holiday behavior, even as higher wages give some shoppers breathing room. The result? A tug-of-war spending mindset:
- 82% plan to cut back on essentials like groceries just to afford gifts
- Credit card delinquencies (90+ days) are up 3%, highest since 2011, led by under-30s
- Gen Z is spending down 25% after last year’s 37% surge
- Expect 10% more shoppers on Black Friday & Cyber Monday, leaning on AI tools to sniff out the best deals
🧠 Just cooling off
For ecommerce sellers, the math is simple: cautious shoppers need convincing. That means offering deeper discounts that truly feel like savings and giving flexible payment options to make big-ticket buys less painful.
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BITES OF THE WEEK
- Collectible Chaos: Toy collectible sellers may come to eBay after Amazon updated its Toys & Games policies.
- Superpowered Shipping: Temu partnered with Packlink to give E.U.-based sellers the best automated shipping tool.
- Driven Deliveries: Target is speeding up its delivery expansion plans to close the gap with Walmart and Amazon.
- Updated for Transparency: Google Merchant Center pricing updates clarify how import and export costs should be handled.
BIG IDEA
Seller Assistant just got a serious AI upgrade
Amazon unveiled a turbocharged Seller Assistant, now supercharged with agentic AI. Instead of just answering questions, it can plan, predict, and even execute tasks, but only with the seller’s green light.
🤖 What the new Seller Assistant can do
Your dashboard helper just leveled up into a hands-on, all-in-one business partner. Here's the lineup:
- Smarter inventory moves: Flags slow sellers, suggests pricing or removals, and builds shipping plans from demand data.
- Account health that watches itself: Catches violations, risks, or slipping metrics and fixes them early.
- Compliance without the headache: Reviews documents, finds missing certifications, and guides market rules.
- Ads in hours, not weeks: Creative Studio turns product info into Sponsored Ads in hours, not weeks.
- Growth planning on autopilot: Spots sales patterns, new opportunities, and prepares seasonal launches.
🎁 Amazon’s holiday gift to sellers
With peak season around the corner, Seller Assistant’s upgrade feels like perfect timing. It’s moving from reactive support to a 24/7 business consultant, giving sellers more time to focus on innovation while the AI keeps the engine running.
ACTIONABLE ADVICE
5 ways to stay flexible under FBA’s new rules
Admit it, you weren’t exactly thrilled when Amazon rolled out its 2025 FBA updates.
Stricter product title rules, tighter storage limits, higher fees, and reworked reimbursement calculations don’t make for a fun mix. But according to Global Trade Magazine, sellers can stay resilient if they play smart.
Here are five ways to keep your fulfillment strategy on track:
- Keep your IPI score in the green. Clear out stale items, push products with promos or ads, and avoid overstuffing storage. 💚
- Tip: A healthy IPI means fewer headaches.
- Track sales velocity. Losing the Buy Box, bad reviews, or hidden listing glitches can stall sales, and drag down your IPI.
- Tip: Catching dips on conversion, traffic, and units sold early makes recovery quicker.
- Spread your bets with multiplatform listings. Amazon’s Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF) can boost sell-through by letting you sell across platforms. 🖥️
- Tip: Returns may be trickier, but wider reach keeps inventory moving.
- Be picky with your 3PL partners. If you’re going hybrid, use FBA for fast movers and third-party logistics for slower sellers, but make sure to vet those 3PLs.
- Tip: Look for proven experience, financial stability, solid tech, and responsive teams.
- Build tight supplier relationships.Suppliers who trust you deliver faster and more reliably. Share forecasts, communicate openly, and reward strong performance.
- Tip: Aligning timelines in contracts keeps bottlenecks from disrupting your flow. 🤝
Amazon’s 2025 FBA playbook is tougher, but not unbeatable. Sellers who diversify and adapt fast will be the ones still winning when the next curveball comes.
