New Ecommerce Tools: September 5, 2024

Every week we publish a rundown of new products from companies offering services to ecommerce and omnichannel merchants. This installment includes updates on holiday selling, recommerce platforms, AI-powered sales assistants, payments, search optimization, and last-mile delivery management.

Got an ecommerce product release? Email releases@practicalecommerce.com.

New Tools for Merchants: September 5, 2024

Walmart expands Marketplace with premium products, collectibles, preowned items. Walmart is growing its Marketplace assortment by adding premium beauty and expanding its range of collectibles and pre-owned merchandise. “Resold at Walmart” is the company’s new digital destination for pre-owned items. In the Collector shop, sellers can now enable preorders to build customer anticipation for drops, with pre-owned conditions for collectibles under Resold at Walmart. Eligible sellers can take advantage of 0% commission fees for collectibles through October 31.

Onfleet partners with Shopify to enhance shopping and delivery experience. Onfleet, a last-mile delivery management platform, and Shopify have announced a partnership. The integration will streamline order processing for merchants by creating Onfleet delivery tasks automatically from Shopify fulfillment orders. Shopify merchants have visibility into real-time delivery status, including confirmation that a delivery is scheduled, when it left the store, and when it arrived at the customer.

BigCommerce enhances platform with AI tools powered by Google. BigCommerce has partnered with Google to develop AI-powered tools for brands. BigAI Product Recommendations, powered by Google AI, enable brands to offer real-time personalized recommendations. With the release of BigAI Copywriter, marketers can optimize existing product descriptions or create search-engine-optimized descriptions with brand language and tone. BigAI predictive analytics offer insights into the future lifetime value of new shoppers, and BigCommerce customers soon will be able to send custom quote proposal emails powered by generative AI.

Carbon6 acquires the Junglytics AI-powered platform for Amazon sellers. Carbon6, a platform for Amazon businesses, has announced its acquisition of Junglytics, an AI-powered business intelligence product to enhance data-driven decision-making for sellers. This acquisition strengthens Carbon6’s capabilities by integrating Junglytics’ AI technology with Carbon6’s data platform. The Junglytics platform and AI assistant provide real-time data analysis and actionable insights through a conversational interface, simplifying how sellers interact with Amazon’s marketplace. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Reboxed launches circularity-as-a-service recommerce platform for brands. Circular economy startup Reboxed has announced the launch of ReboxedOS for consumer electronics recommerce. ReboxedOS is a circularity-as-a-service solution that allows businesses to integrate resale, trade-in, and recycling programs without building their own infrastructure. Launched initially as a direct-to-consumer marketplace for tech, Reboxed created a suite of services to help brands and retailers turn reuse into revenue.

Amazon invests $20 million in India-based BNPL firm Axio. India-based buy-now-pay-later firm Axio has received a $20 million equity investment from Amazon’s Smbhav Venture Fund. Formed from a merger of Capital Float, Walnut, and Walnut369, Axio enables ecommerce storefronts to embed credit financing and money management tools at the checkout. Axio, which claims 9 million credit customers and 3,000 merchants, provides the backbone for pay-later services for Amazon in India, offering shoppers payment installments of 3 to 12 months.

Rep AI raises $8.2 million for AI sales concierge. Rep AI, creator of the AI Concierge sales assistance platform, has raised $8.2 million, led by Osage Venture Partners. The investment will fuel further development of the company’s ecommerce sales tool. Leveraging behavioral AI and large language models, Rep AI enables online merchants to provide personalized sales assistance at scale. Rep AI’s technology deploys behavioral AI to analyze each shopper’s browsing patterns, proactively offering help and providing tailored product specifications and personalized recommendations.

Google updates tools for retailers this holiday season. At its recent Think Retail virtual event, Google released updates for the holidays. Users of the new Merchant Center can soon explore shopping trends and popular shopping queries, ranked by popularity and organized by topic and product. Google says it will add two generative AI insights features to the Merchant Center: (i) insight summaries at the top of the analytics tab for product performance and (ii) a tool that translates user requests into custom reports with performance data.

Etsy introduces search visibility page favoring low-cost shipping. Etsy has announced a “search visibility page” in Shop Manager, offering more insights about how merchants appear in search along with recommended actions to help improve search performance. In addition, starting October 1, Etsy will factor U.S. domestic shipping prices into search for U.S. listings, excluding certain categories and items shipped from outside the U.S.

Ikea launches second-hand marketplace. Ikea is launching a second-hand online marketplace so that customers can sell to each other. Ikea Preowned is up and running in Madrid and Oslo. The company plans to roll out the site globally by December. The seller puts up listings on Ikea Preowned, and Ikea’s algorithms generate the item’s details, including measurements and the original retail price.

PayJunction expands payment capabilities with text-to-pay. PayJunction, a tech-focused payments company, has added text-to-pay capabilities to its no-code payments integration, virtual terminal, and API. According to the company, the feature enables businesses to implement text-to-pay into current invoicing workflows, allowing them to accept customer payments via SMS without handling cardholder information.