Where Walmart beats Amazon

🏪 Physical stores: Walmart has 4700 US stores and 90% of the population lives within 10 miles from one. It’s also experimenting on having drone deliveries and automated fulfillment centers because they’re so close to buyers.

🛒 Grocery: Walmart could control 27% of grocery ecommerce while Amazon might only go for 18.5% and this trend would be difficult to reverse according to Insider Intelligence. They also make better use of their groceries: after ordering, robots go to the items and deliver it to an employee for sorting.

TikTok wants to invest in Tokopedia just to revive its shop

⚖️ The ban: In the middle of 2023, Indonesia banned social media buying because of data privacy concerns and the fact that it threatened local merchants and missed out on almost 113 million users.

🛍️ Loophole: For its new strategy, TikTok wants GoTo’s Tokopedia, an ecommerce platform with 120 million users monthly. It’s most likely to be a joint venture and could mean forming a new ecommerce platform together.

❓️ On the table: Getting the deal means going around the ban all together, but the deal itself has not been finalized and could still fail.

Uber for parcels: Relay raises $10M in the UK

🚗 The problem: In Europe, roads are inefficient and affect delivery time. Having large sorting centers also makes the whole thing more expensive.

📦️ Meet Relay: Instead of big sorting centers, Relay uses pit stops and couriers to save costs. They also find the right couriers for each route and put all the deliveries and returns together in one trip. It’s similar to what Asia does, but is something that Europe lacks. They already attracted retailers like JD Sports and THG.