E-commerce in 2024 had one underlying theme: China.
This year highlighted that the best known Chinese way of doing e-commerce, aka selling cheap and inexpensive items online, is here to stay.
The rise of Chinese-linked marketplaces like Temu and Shein showed up in the volume of delivery packages received from these platforms, so much so that there is no room for other industries on international cargo flights. Shein and Temu together shipped roughly 600,000 packages to the US every day, Reuters reported at the beginning of 2024.
As the year progressed, the US escalated its crackdown on the trade rule (de minimus) that helps Shein and Temu easily import goods to the US. In September, the White House used its executive authority to tighten regulations against “increased abuse” of the de minimis exemption, and proposed stringent rules on the entry of low-value shipments into the US.
Another China marker dropped when Amazon opened its own discounted store, Haul, in November, in a likely bid to compete more aggressively with these Chinese rivals. In a brutal take on Haul, The Atlantic wrote that, “Amazon’s entry into the market officially makes it mainstream.”
The way Juozas Kaziukėnas, founder and CEO of Marketplace Pulse, sees it, “You’re either competing with China [or] you’re sourcing from China [or] you’re dealing with upcoming tariffs on Chinese goods, or you’re competing with Chinese platforms.”
In November, president-elect Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that he plans to impose an additional 10% tariff on goods coming to the US from China. This could potentially make importing goods from China more costly for e-commerce platforms that have supply chains in the region. Trump’s tariffs could ultimately result in higher prices for US shoppers.
Separately, another, relatively new e-commerce platform with ties to China, TikTok Shop, made its presence felt online this year. TikTok Shop clocked more than $100 million in sales during the recently concluded Black Friday sales in the US. Total online spending across platforms on Black Friday rose 10.2% YoY to $10.8 billion, Adobe data showed.
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Users shopping on TikTok Shop jumped more than 165% compared to the same time last year, TikTok said in a company blog post. However, these figures should be viewed within the context of a small user base—the platform only formally launched in the US in September 2023.
Walmart’s e-commerce moves: In other news, the topic of artificial intelligence (AI) dominated retail headlines in 2024. For instance, Walmart made a big splash about how the retailer is using generative AI to reinvent its e-commerce game.
In October, the country’s largest retailer went all out—with the release of chatbots to online shopping activations on gaming platform Roblox, to the launch of its first virtual reality shopping platform called Walmart Realm—to expand its channels and touchpoints for online shopping.
During Black Friday, Walmart claimed its online marketplace business saw the “highest sales day ever” and “set a single day conversion rate record” between Nov. 25 to Dec. 2. Walmart did not share specific dates of the record setting days.
Shopify’s “big” performance: Shopify made waves in the world of tech and e-commerce, as the company that builds e-commerce stores continued to add big names to its list of clients.
In Q3, Shopify onboarded larger brands including Reebok and Off-White, and the company said Victoria’s Secret will soon start using its popular checkout experience Shop Pay.
Shopify even managed to ruffle some feathers with rival Salesforce, which offers similar software services to power the backend of retailers’ websites, by reportedly pursuing some of its clients. Brands like Casper and Toys R Us have switched to Shopify to run their e-commerce stores, Bloomberg reported.
“Q3 was an exceptional quarter in terms of new enterprise-level brands coming to Shopify,” Shopify President Harley Finkelstein said.
At a high level, Finkelstein said, “enterprise is not a short-term play. It is a massive opportunity to build for the long term, and we are positioning ourselves well to continue to capitalize on it today and in the future.”