Business

An ecommerce site is a business. Our Management & Finance category addresses online payments, funding needs, employee issues, merchant profiles, key metrics, multichannel and omnichannel strategies, cross-border analyses, inventory management, accounting topics, sales taxes, and much more.

Business
2020 Holiday Sales Wrap-up

January 14, 2021 • Marcia Kaplan

Challenged by a pandemic and an unstable economy, online and brick-and-mortar retailers scrambled to salvage the 2020 holiday shopping season. Most merchants started offering discounts much earlier than in previous years to accommodate the changed shopping dynamics. This is my third consecutive holiday sales wrap-up, following installments in 2018 and 2019.
Business
Bloomreach CEO: Future of Retail Is Marketplaces, Brands

January 13, 2021 • Armando Roggio

Raj De Datta, CEO and co-founder at Bloomreach, said it succinctly, "The future of retail is marketplaces which require scale. But, the future of retail is also brands. The industry is seeing an explosion of small brands setting up shop online."
Business > Merchant Voice
Local consumers are your next online customers

January 12, 2021 • Richard Stubbings

In normal years, January and February is the time to review the just-completed holiday sales and look for ways to improve. But not much is normal about the last three months. Instead, look ahead. What if you had mainly local customers?
Payments
What Merchants Should Know about ISOs

January 10, 2021 • Mike Eckler

The pandemic-induced shift to online and contactless payments has been a boon for credit card providers and their sales agents. The industry depends on those agents, called "independent sales organizations." In this post, I will examine the role of ISOs.
Business
Entrepreneur’s Hair Products Empower Black Women

January 8, 2021 • Eric Bandholz

In 2012 Vivian Kaye was a successful wedding decorator. But she had a problem. The climate in Toronto, Canada, was brutal on her hair. Kaye's solution was hair extensions, which were easy and attractive. Fast forward to 2021, and KinkyCurlyYaki, Kaye's company, sells hair extensions, wigs, and more.
Cross-border Selling
China Is Dominating Ecommerce

January 3, 2021 • Marcia Kaplan

In China, a drab gray Mao suit was once the required attire for men and women. No longer. The country is poised to become the largest luxury apparel market worldwide by 2025. With a 2020 population of 1.4 billion and a flourishing middle class with an appetite for foreign luxury goods, China is dominating ecommerce.
Business
2020 Top 25: Our Most Popular Posts of the Year

December 31, 2020 • Kerry Murdock

Contributor Marcia Kaplan emailed me in early February 2020. She described a sickness in China that appeared to be impacting global trade. She called it a virus and suggested that we address it. "Coronavirus Disrupting the Global Economy, Including Ecommerce," Marcia's piece, made our annual top 25 list — articles published during the year with the most page views. It was the first of dozens of Covid-related stories.
Business
5 Retail Insights from a Covid Christmas

December 30, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Holiday consumer spending offers insights into the retail industry, including ecommerce's continued growth, consumer spending, and customer relationships. 2020 has been extraordinary — the pandemic, natural disasters, and a divisive U.S. election. What follows are five insights from the 2020 Christmas season.
Business > Merchant Voice
Serious changes are coming to the E.U. VAT

December 24, 2020 • Richard Stubbings

As I write this in mid-December, there is no Brexit trade agreement between the U.K. and the E.U. Businesses in the U.K. have no idea what will happen on January 1, when the U.K. formally exits from the E.U. However, the real problem for U.K. and other merchants will be adjusting to changes in the E.U.'s value-added tax.
Amazon & Marketplaces
Amazon Marketplace Sellers Are Attractive Acquisition Targets

December 20, 2020 • Marcia Kaplan

Buyouts of Amazon marketplace sellers are booming. Aggregators are scooping up successful small sellers and creating large and lucrative portfolio companies. The acquisitions are mostly fueled by angel, venture capital, and private equity funding.
Business
Entrepreneur’s Page-builder Tools Attract Outside Equity, 100 Employees

December 18, 2020 • Eric Bandholz

Finbarr Taylor moved to the U.S. nine years ago with a goal. "I moved from Scotland to Silicon Valley with the express intent of starting a tech company," he told me. Taylor's tech company is Shogun, which provides innovative page-builder tools that enhance ecommerce sites. He is co-founder and CEO.
Amazon & Marketplaces
Understanding Amazon’s ‘Brand Health’ Initiative

December 17, 2020 • Phil Masiello

Amazon's new A10 search algorithm ranks organic results, in part, on the "health" of a brand. In this post, I'll address the Amazon Brand Health initiative, its key metrics, and its effects on marketplace sellers.
Payments
Does Buy Now, Pay Later Threaten Credit Card Issuers?

December 14, 2020 • Mike Eckler

Capital One recently announced that it will ban the use of its credit cards to fund buy-now-pay-later transactions. According to a Capital One spokesperson, BNPL transactions “can be risky for customers and the banks that serve them.” In this article, I will examine Capital One’s claim.
Business
Gym Owner Shifts to Online Weight Training (and Thrives)

December 11, 2020 • Eric Bandholz

Perhaps no industry has been more disrupted by the internet than education. Online training is booming — from 1-hour courses to college degrees. Take Barbell Logic, for example. It provides one-on-one strength and conditioning training, entirely web-based.
Payments
Visa Wants to Buy Plaid. U.S. Sues

December 10, 2020 • Mike Eckler

In January 2020, Visa announced it was acquiring Plaid for $5.3 billion. Before long, the U.S. Department of Justice began scrutinizing the transaction, resulting in the filing of an antitrust lawsuit to stop it. In this article, I will describe Plaid and explain why the Department of Justice is attempting to block the deal.
Payments
The Long-term Effect of Buy Now, Pay Later

December 9, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Point-of-sale financing services such as Klarna and Affirm make it easy for online shoppers to buy now and pay later. These financial tech companies have the ability to reduce checkout friction and please customers, but they may affect ecommerce in other, perhaps unexpected, ways.
Business
Agency CEO: Adopt an ‘Abundance Mentality’

December 4, 2020 • Eric Bandholz

Online selling is increasingly competitive, forcing merchants to selfish and shortsighted decisions. That's according to Corey Blake, CEO of MWI, a digital marketing agency. "When we have a scarcity outlook with short-sightedness," he told me, "We're scraping and clawing to keep it all. A better approach is an abundance mentality."
Business
Sales Report: 2020 Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday

December 2, 2020 • Marcia Kaplan

The challenges of this unique holiday shopping season have made omnichannel commerce a necessity. With several states closing non-essential brick-and-mortar stores and others severely limiting the number of shoppers allowed inside, consumers embraced online shopping with gusto during Cyber Week — Thanksgiving Day to Cyber Monday — with a big surge in mobile ordering.
Business
November 2020 Top 10: Our Most Popular Posts

December 1, 2020 • PEC Staff

Our mission since 2005 is to publish independent content to help ecommerce merchants. What follows are the 10 most popular articles that we published in November 2020. Articles from early ...
Business > Merchant Voice
‘Shop local’ applies to ecommerce businesses, too

November 30, 2020 • Richard Stubbings

The pandemic has altered the behavior of consumers, moving from in-person shopping to online. We have experienced it here in the U.K. Online ordering has increased significantly.
Business
Kuru, a DTC Shoe Brand, Solves a Pain

November 27, 2020 • Eric Bandholz

Selling shoes online is notoriously competitive. Zappos, Amazon, big-box retailers — all are vying for a share of the consumer footwear market. Nonetheless, Sean McGinnis's employer, Kuru, an independent shoe company, is thriving.
Business
Managing Projects with Gantt Charts

November 24, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Gantt charts have been around for more than 100 years, but these visual project management tools are still among the best ways to manage deadlines, keeping them on time and on budget.
B2B
5 B2B Ecommerce Trends for 2021

November 23, 2020 • Armando Roggio

B2B ecommerce was already growing rapidly when the global pandemic struck in early 2020, accelerating the wholesale industry's digital transformation. And while it would be possible to list many industry shifts for the coming year, five trends could be especially disruptive.
Business
Beardbrand’s Technology Stack: Platforms, Apps, Services

November 20, 2020 • Eric Bandholz

An ecommerce company is a collection of platforms, apps, and service providers. That's certainly the case with Beardbrand, the company I launched in 2012. James Wilson is Beardbrand's growth marketing manager. I asked James to describe our technology stack, hoping that the decisions we've made (good and bad) can help other merchants.
Business
During Covid, Ecommerce Founders Can Invigorate Their Companies

November 19, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Entrepreneur-lead businesses can become unwieldy as they grow. To survive, founders often must embrace a management system and delegate responsibilities. "An entrepreneur slips and falls off the edge of a cliff. On his way down, he manages to grab onto the end of a vine," wrote Gino Wickman, in his book, "Traction."
B2B
B2B Merchants: Harness Data to Pivot, Adapt

November 19, 2020 • Lori McDonald

I'm hearing the word "pivot" from B2B merchants. Manufacturers and distributors are pivoting to keep up with the pace of change. The pandemic-induced change is especially challenging because of the unknown afterward, post-Covid.
Cross-border Selling
Alibaba’s 2020 Singles Day Breaks Record, Attracts Luxury Brands

November 15, 2020 • Marcia Kaplan

Alibaba's Singles Day is typically a 24-hour event on Nov. 11. This year, however, Singles Day ran for nearly two weeks, from Nov. 1 through Nov. 11. Gross merchandise volume during that period, according to Alibaba, was $74.1 billion. This compares with $38 billion in a 24-hour period on 11.11 in 2019.
Business
ABF Creative, a Podcast Network, Is ‘More Than a Business’

November 13, 2020 • Eric Bandholz

The mission of Anthony Frasier's company, ABF Creative, is to broadcast voices and stories from the African American community. He launched the company in 2016 from his hometown of Newark, New Jersey, having founded a tech conference and authored a book. To Frasier, ABF is much more than a business.
Payments
U.S. vs. Google: How the Antitrust Lawsuit Impacts Merchants

November 10, 2020 • Mike Eckler

On October 20, the U.S. Department of Justice and 11 states filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google. In this article, I’ll provide an overview of the case. Throughout, I’ll concentrate on what means for merchants.
Business
Google Tables Can Help with Projects, Products, Support

November 9, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Thanks to a new service from Google, small and mid-sized merchants may have a new option for lightweight project management, help desk ticket tracking, and similar tasks. Google Tables blends some of the features and capabilities of a structured database with a simple spreadsheet.