Selling on Giants: The eCommerce Marketplace Show is dedicated to empowering entrepreneurs and businesses with the insights, strategies, and best practices needed to succeed across major eCommerce platforms such as Amazon, Walmart, Shopify, and WooCommerce. Our podcast covers a broad spectrum of eCommerce topics, including product sourcing, inventory management, pricing, advertising, customer service, and fulfillment. We focus on the latest trends and developments within the industry, featuring interviews with experts, successful sellers, and thought leaders who offer valuable insights and actionable tips. Our mission is to be a comprehensive resource for anyone looking to build a successful online business on these leading eCommerce marketplaces.
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Most sellers think competition is the problem. But what if too many options, too many SKUs, and too many competitors are actually the system working?
In this episode of Selling on Giants, Mr. Will breaks down why crowded marketplaces are not always a warning sign. In many cases, competition is proof that demand already exists, and the brands that know how to read that demand can turn a noisy category into a source of intelligence.
The episode starts with the famous story of Boris Yeltsin walking into a regular grocery store in Houston in 1989 and being shaken by what he saw. Fully stocked shelves. Endless product choices. Multiple brands, flavors, pack sizes, and price points. It was not luxury that made the store powerful. It was normal abundance.
That grocery store represented something bigger than food. It showed the strength of a system where millions of small decisions from businesses and consumers created more variety, more feedback, and better outcomes than one central plan ever could.
That same idea applies directly to Amazon, Walmart, Target, and modern marketplace strategy.
Amazon is not just a marketplace. It is a real-time feedback loop. Sellers launch products, customers click or do not click, ads test demand, listings convert or fail, reviews build or stall, competitors respond, prices shift, and the algorithm reallocates visibility based on what the market is telling it.
In this episode, we cover:
Why competition is not just a threat, but useful market intelligence
How crowded categories reveal demand, price points, review gaps, and customer objections
Why Amazon rewards brands that test, learn, adapt, and double down
How too much internal planning can delay the feedback sellers need most
Why every SKU, click, conversion, and failed campaign can become useful data
The difference between random chaos and structured experimentation
How brands can use marketplace signals to improve listings, pricing, creative, and ad strategy
Why trying to outsmart the market is usually weaker than building a system that learns
How BellaVix helps brands create feedback loops across listings, ads, pricing, promotions, and merchandising
Why choice wins because choice creates learning
This episode is for Amazon sellers, ecommerce founders, brand operators, and marketplace teams that feel stuck in crowded categories and are trying to decide whether the opportunity is still worth pursuing.
The answer is not always to pull back. Sometimes the better answer is to study the category more closely.
Competitors show you what customers already buy. Reviews show you what customers care about. Pricing shows you what the market accepts. Creative shows you what messages are being tested. Search results show you where demand already exists.
The brands that scale are not always the ones with the cleanest plan before launch. They are often the ones that create better feedback loops, test with discipline, and respond faster than everyone else.
At BellaVix, we help brands turn marketplace complexity into clear operating plans. That means structured testing across listings, pricing, ads, creative, promotions, and merchandising, with real performance data guiding what gets scaled and what gets cut.
BellaVix has helped brands sell over five hundred million dollars on Amazon and is a Verified Ad Partner, but the real work is helping brands stop guessing from a boardroom and start learning from the market.
The key question: Are you using a crowded category as an excuse, or are you using it as a source of intelligence?
Subscribe to Selling on Giants for weekly operator-level breakdowns on Amazon, Walmart, retail media, marketplace strategy, AI commerce, eCommerce growth, and what actually changes for brands responsible for profitability.
Ozempic Comes for Halloween, Walmart Booms & AI Shoppers Spend More
Ozempic is influencing the Halloween aisle while Walmart and AI reshape how consumers discover, buy, and receive products.
In this August 25th episode of Selling on Giants, Mr. Will breaks down why Hershey is expanding beyond traditional candy as GLP-1 medications reshape consumer snacking, how Walmart is building a complete marketplace flywheel, and why AI-referred shoppers are becoming some of the most valuable visitors in eCommerce.
Why is Hershey expanding beyond traditional Halloween candy?
Hershey is adding popcorn, cheese puffs, pretzels, and other savory snacks to its Halloween assortment as consumers become more health conscious and GLP-1 medications influence appetite, portion size, and snacking behavior. Chocolate remains the preferred Halloween treat, but Hershey sees an opportunity to serve the entire occasion instead of defending a narrow definition of the candy category.
The company’s zero-sugar candy, mint, and gum business grew more than 4 times between 2020 and 2025. Hershey is also using AI to shorten product development by roughly 3 months and identify changes such as the rise of trunk-or-treat events. Ozempic is shorthand for a much wider GLP-1 trend, and the immediate retail effect is not the disappearance of candy. It is a shift in portions, formats, ingredients, and occasions.
Why is Walmart Marketplace growing so quickly?
Walmart is connecting marketplace assortment, fulfillment, stores, shopper data, and advertising into one reinforcing system. Walmart’s global eCommerce business grew 23% in the second quarter, while Walmart eCommerce in the U.S. grew 24%. Walmart Marketplace net sales increased more than 50%, Walmart Connect grew 43%, and store-fulfilled delivery increased 40%.
Nearly half of Walmart’s marketplace volume now flows through Walmart Fulfillment Services. Marketplace expands product selection, Walmart Fulfillment Services improves delivery, more transactions create better shopper data, and Walmart Connect turns that data into advertising revenue. That revenue helps Walmart continue investing in price, technology, and fulfillment.
Marketing vs. Finance: The eCommerce Growth Problem
In this episode of Selling on Giants, Will Haire sits down with Gavin Trippe of P1 Commerce to reveal one of the biggest problems facing growing eCommerce brands: the disconnect between marketing and finance.
When CMOs and CFOs operate from different playbooks, brands can end up scaling the wrong channels, misreading attribution, and wasting marketing dollars without understanding what is actually driving incremental growth.
Gavin shares how brands can build a measurement system that connects marketing performance to real financial outcomes—and why omnichannel growth across Amazon, DTC, retail, and owned channels requires a very different way of thinking about marketing spend.
In this episode, we discuss:
• Why marketing and finance teams often disagree on what’s actually driving growth • The hidden cost of misalignment between CMOs and CFOs • Why traditional attribution is becoming harder to trust • How brands can build a shared growth model across marketing and finance • The difference between channel performance and true business impact • How incrementality, MMM, and forecasting can improve decision-making • Why eCommerce brands need to measure total omnichannel growth—not just DTC revenue • Where brands are wasting money because of poor measurement • How AI could change attribution, forecasting, and marketing measurement
The big takeaway: If you can't confidently answer what is incremental, you can't confidently scale.
🎧 Subscribe to Selling on Giants for more conversations with eCommerce operators, marketplace experts, and industry leaders shaping the future of Amazon, Walmart, DTC, and omnichannel commerce.
TikTok Shop Passes Target Online & Taylor Swift Shows How Fast Culture Becomes Commerce
This week on Selling on Giants, the biggest eCommerce story starts somewhere unexpected: Taylor Swift.
Bridal brands are already preparing products around the expected look of Swift’s wedding dress before most consumers have even seen it. That is a perfect example of how modern demand gets created. Culture creates attention, social media amplifies it, AI helps shoppers narrow their choices, and marketplaces compete to capture the transaction.
At the same time, TikTok Shop is proving that social commerce is becoming much more than impulse buying.
In this episode, Mr. Will covers:
The Taylor Swift effect on eCommerce demand
Brands are reacting to a cultural moment before traditional search demand fully forms. The lesson for sellers is not to chase every trend, but to connect social listening, Google Trends, marketplace search data, inventory, and merchandising so the business can recognize real demand early.
TikTok Shop passes major retailers in online spending
Consumer Edge data reviewed by Business Insider estimates TikTok Shop represented roughly two percent of U.S. online retail spending in July, putting it ahead of Target, Costco, and Home Depot online within that dataset.
Repeat purchasing is also increasing, while shoppers over thirty five represent one of TikTok Shop’s fastest-growing customer groups.
TikTok Shop is increasingly behaving like a real marketplace where catalog quality, reviews, pricing, promotions, inventory, fulfillment, paid media, and search optimization matter alongside creators.
Europe’s new packaging compliance rules
The European Union’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation became generally applicable on August twelfth.
For brands selling packaged products into Europe, packaging is becoming a market-access issue involving producer registration, extended producer responsibility, labeling, documentation, and potentially authorized representatives.
Amazon Ads Move Into Creator Content & TikTok Shop Is Becoming a $50B Marketplace
This week’s Selling on Giants News and Updates focuses on the systems underneath eCommerce growth as brands move deeper into Q4 planning.
Amazon is changing how seller financing interacts with marketplace rights, Sponsored Products are expanding into creator content, Item Highlights are officially live, and AI-generated people now carry new disclosure requirements. Walmart is pushing further into connected TV and seller search intelligence, while TikTok Shop continues evolving from a social-commerce experiment into a real marketplace.
At the same time, tariff changes and refund uncertainty are making Q4 profitability harder to forecast even when inventory is already in place.
In this episode, Mr. Will covers:
Amazon’s updated Business Solutions Agreement: Beginning August twenty fourth, Amazon’s agreement adds new language prohibiting sellers from assigning or pledging rights or obligations under the BSA. This does not mean sellers cannot borrow money. It does mean brands using financing tied specifically to Amazon disbursements or marketplace proceeds should review those agreements before Q4 inventory is fully financed.
Sponsored Products expand into creator content: Amazon Sponsored Products can now appear in content from members of the Amazon Influencer Program. Existing bids, targeting, and budgets can extend into these off-Amazon placements, which means brands may see a different traffic mix without creating new campaigns. Sellers should monitor off-Amazon spend, CPC, conversion rate, ACoS, ROAS, inferred search terms, and which ASINs perform best in creator-driven environments.
Amazon Item Highlights are officially live: Amazon’s new title structure now splits two hundred searchable characters into a seventy five character Item Name and one hundred twenty five character Item Highlights field. Amazon says both fields contribute to search and neither receives greater ranking priority. The real opportunity is cleaner merchandising, not keyword stuffing.
AI-generated people now require disclosure metadata: Amazon is adding compliance requirements for photorealistic AI-generated people used in product images, videos, and A+ Content. Brands using synthetic models should add AI disclosure checks to their creative QA process before uploading Q4 assets.
Amazon 3D Models Explained: Will They Become a Requirement for Sellers? | Ganesh Singh
Amazon is investing heavily in interactive 3D product models, and this shift could change how brands compete on the marketplace.
In this episode of Selling on Giants, Will Haire sits down with Ganesh Singh, Co-Founder and COO of 3Dimages.ai, to discuss why Amazon is prioritizing 3D content, which products benefit the most, and whether creating 3D assets is actually worth the investment.
You'll learn how 3D models help customers better understand products, improve conversion rates, reduce uncertainty before purchase, and create reusable assets for Amazon Ads, Brand Stores, and external marketing.
In this episode:
- Why Amazon is investing in 3D product models - How 3D differs from images and video - Which products benefit the most from 3D - The impact on conversion rates and customer confidence - Common mistakes brands make with 3D implementation - How to evaluate the ROI of 3D assets - The future of AR, AI, and immersive shopping on Amazon - Why 3D could become a standard part of every competitive listing
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to Like, Subscribe, and share it with someone looking to stay ahead on Amazon.
Most ecommerce brands do not lose because Amazon gets harder. They lose because the operator behind the business becomes the bottleneck.
In this episode of Selling on Giants, Mr. Will breaks down the founder discipline required to scale on Amazon, Walmart, Target, and other marketplaces without letting ego, overcommitment, or emotional decision-making take over the business.
Using Napoleon’s idea that the most permanent victories are the ones we win over ourselves, this episode looks at what really holds marketplace brands back. It is not always competition. It is not always ad costs. It is not always the algorithm. Many times, the issue is the founder’s inability to say no, delegate, protect the team, and build systems that can operate without them being involved in every decision.
Mr. Will shares a personal story from the early days of BellaVix, including what happened when saying yes to the wrong scope caused a client relationship to break down. A beauty brand was performing well on Amazon, but when the client asked BellaVix to take over social media, the decision to say yes created execution issues, weakened confidence, and eventually cost the relationship.
That lesson became part of a bigger leadership shift: the goal is not to be the hero in every part of the business. The goal is to build a team, create systems, and lead with enough discipline that the company can scale beyond the founder’s personal capacity.
In this episode, we cover:
Why founders often become the biggest bottleneck in their own business
How saying yes to the wrong opportunities creates hidden costs
Why team trust breaks before the business breaks
How poor boundaries show up as stress, burnout, and bad decisions
Why discipline beats constantly changing strategy
How emotional decisions around A-Costs, Tacos, and Row-Az create inconsistency
Why boring, repeatable execution wins in ecommerce
How BellaVix helps brands turn marketplace complexity into clear operating plans
Amazon’s Ad Tax, Seller Financing & Walmart Ad Controls
Amazon’s marketplace keeps growing, but advertising is growing even faster.
This week on Selling on Giants, Will Haire breaks down what Amazon’s latest earnings reveal about the rising cost of visibility and how agentic shopping is changing product discovery.
You’ll also learn:
Why Amazon’s August 24 Business Solutions Agreement update deserves immediate review
What the Nike and Lululemon lawsuits mean for strikethrough and reference pricing
How Walmart Connect’s new negative keywords can reduce wasted ad spend
How Walmart Virtual Packs create multipacks without separate physical inventory
Why Walmart sellers need to check Late Shipment Rate and lag-time settings
What the Federal Reserve’s divided rate decision means for Q4 inventory and financing
The common thread is simple: marketplace growth now depends on connecting advertising, pricing, inventory, financing, and compliance before peak season exposes the gaps.
Follow Selling on Giants for weekly operator-level breakdowns on Amazon, Walmart, retail media, AI commerce, marketplace strategy, and what platform updates actually mean for sellers.
Subscribe to Selling on Giants for weekly insights that go beyond headlines and focus on what actually impacts your business.
The Jevons Paradox: Why Amazon Keeps Getting Harder Even When the Tools Get Better
Amazon has become more efficient for sellers. Products can launch faster, listings can be optimized faster, ads can be automated, and content can be generated almost instantly. But when everyone gets access to those same efficiencies, the baseline moves.
How Jevons Paradox applies to eCommerce
Jevons Paradox originally explained why more efficient coal usage led to more coal consumption, not less. The same principle applies to Amazon. Better tools bring in more sellers, more listings, more ads, more capital, and more competition.
Why progress does not always feel like progress
Your conversion rate may improve. Your listings may get cleaner. Your creative may perform better. Your campaigns may become more efficient. But if the entire category is improving around you, those gains get absorbed into the new competitive baseline.
Why Amazon can feel like Sisyphus pushing the rock uphill
You optimize, improve performance, lower A-Costs, clean up your catalog, and gain ground. Then the market adjusts. Competitors enter, costs rise, Amazon changes rules, reviews shift, and you have to start pushing again. That does not mean something is broken. That is the game.
Why efficiency alone is not an advantage anymore
When everyone has better data, automation, AI tools, and reporting, optimization becomes table stakes. The advantage moves higher into strategy, positioning, creative, offer clarity, margin discipline, audience building, and brand durability.
What Amazon ads reveal about the broader marketplace
Advertising is the clearest example because CPCs, ROAS, DSP, T A-Costs, and lower funnel efficiency show the pressure quickly. But the lesson is bigger than ads. This is about how Amazon, marketplaces, and eCommerce systems mature over time.
eCommerce News Update: New Tariffs, Amazon Seller Rights, TikTok Shop Plus, and AI Shopping
This week’s Selling on Giants News and Updates examines how new tariffs, marketplace regulation, artificial intelligence, fulfillment costs, and platform loyalty programs are reshaping eCommerce heading into Q4.
The expected tariff relief did not arrive. Amazon and Walmart sellers are facing new landed-cost calculations, Congress is proposing stronger protections for suspended marketplace sellers, TikTok is testing its own Prime-style membership, and AI assistants are moving closer to selecting products and completing transactions.
For marketplace operators, the platforms are becoming more powerful, but they are also facing greater scrutiny over pricing, seller enforcement, advertising automation, and control of the customer relationship.
In this episode, Mr. Will covers:
New tariffs and Q4 landed costs
The temporary ten percent import surcharge expired, but new Section 301 tariffs of ten percent or twelve and a half percent took effect across imports from sixty trading partners.
Brands need to review country of origin, HTS classifications, product exemptions, customs entry dates, and the effect of higher duties on contribution margin before approving Q4 purchase orders, pricing, or promotions.
New tariffs on certain Canadian imports
Covered Canadian products are scheduled to face an additional fifty percent duty beginning August nineteenth. This does not apply to every Canadian product, but it reinforces that North American sourcing is not automatically protected from trade disruption.
The Online Sellers Bill of Rights
Proposed federal legislation would establish new standards for how dominant marketplaces notify, investigate, suspend, and withhold funds or inventory from third-party sellers.
The bill is not yet law, but it signals that seller suspensions, frozen funds, automated appeals, and marketplace due process are becoming national policy issues.
What does delayed back-to-school shopping signal for the holidays?
National Retail Federation data shows that shoppers had completed only about 44% of their back-to-school lists by early August, compared with 23% in early July. Consumers are beginning their research, but many are waiting longer to finish purchases as they spread spending across paychecks, wait for promotions, or delay decisions until they know exactly what is required.
Brands may see early traffic without matching conversion, assume demand is weak, and cut advertising or increase discounts too soon. If purchases arrive within a shorter window, advertising costs rise, inventory tightens, and there is little time to recover. Holiday planning needs to account for a longer research period followed by a more compressed conversion window.
Why are Amazon drones and Home Depot’s 3-hour delivery important?
Amazon plans to expand Prime Air drone delivery from 11 locations to nearly 500 cities and towns by the end of the year. More than 60% of the products customers frequently purchase from Amazon meet the basic size and weight requirements, with delivery available in as little as 30 minutes. Home Depot is also rolling out 3-hour delivery nationwide by using more more than 2,000 stores as local fulfillment hubs.
The larger trend is the move from planned convenience to immediate problem solving. A product is now competing against the fastest way the customer can solve the problem. Two-day delivery once felt remarkable. In more categories, it is beginning to feel slow.
Are shoppers coming from AI tools actually buying?
Yes. Adobe Analytics found that traffic arriving at U.S. retail websites from AI tools increased 62% year over year in July. Compared with October 2024, AI referral traffic increased more than 1,200%.
The quality of that traffic is the bigger story. AI-referred shoppers generated 53% more revenue per visit and converted at a rate 60% higher than other website traffic. This was the 11th consecutive month that AI traffic outperformed other traffic on conversion. These shoppers also stayed longer, bounced less often, and added products to their carts more frequently.
AI tools are completing part of the research before the shopper reaches the retailer. A customer can describe a need, compare options, narrow the decision, and then click through with stronger purchase intent. Traditional search often provides a list of possible answers. AI increasingly attempts to recommend one answer, which makes the selected position more valuable and may make second place less visible.
How can brands prepare for AI-driven product discovery?
The first step is not publishing hundreds of generic articles written by AI. It is making product information easy for people and machines to understand. Specifications, ingredients, compatibility, sizing, pricing, availability, use cases, customer questions, and policies need to be accurate and consistent across the brand’s website and marketplace content.
Adobe found that 39% of the retail homepages in its broader sample were not fully machine readable. Brands can begin testing by asking several AI assistants to recommend products in their category. They should document whether the brand appears, whether the information is accurate, which competitors receive the recommendation, and which sources the AI appears to trust. AI discovery is not replacing Amazon, Google, or retail media overnight, but waiting for perfect attribution gives competitors time to establish authority first.
How are tariffs changing eCommerce pricing decisions?
New U.S. tariffs of 50% took effect on roughly $20 billion in Canadian exports, and Canada announced dollar-for-dollar retaliation beginning September 8th. Brands importing Canadian products or components may face higher landed costs, while brands selling into Canada may need another pricing adjustment. Exposure depends on product classification and current treatment.
Major retailers may also be operating with different economics. Walmart recognized nearly $2.9 billion in tariff refunds during the quarter. Target recognized almost $1 billion, and Ross received roughly $250 million. These one-time benefits can give a retailer room to promote inventory while a brand’s next replacement order still arrives at a higher cost. Matching a competitor’s price without understanding why it can afford the promotion is how brands win the sale and lose the business. Price the next unit, not the last unit.
What do K Pop Demon Hunters and Labubu teach eCommerce brands?
The Christian metal band Demon Hunter sued Netflix and a concert promoter over the name as the K Pop Demon Hunters franchise expands into live events and merchandise. Netflix disputes the allegations, and no court has ruled that infringement occurred. For operators, the lesson is that Amazon Brand Registry protects rights a brand already owns. It does not provide trademark clearance or determine whether a name is safe as the brand expands into new products, categories, events, or merchandise. Success makes intellectual property conflicts more expensive, so brands need to understand their rights before the viral moment.
Pop Mart offers the other side of viral growth. The Monsters family, which includes Labubu, generated more than 4 billion yuan during the first half of the year, but its share of company revenue declined from nearly 35% to 26%. Twinkle Twinkle revenue increased more than 580%, and 6 Pop Mart franchises each generated more than 1 billion yuan.
The strategic win is not simply creating one viral character. Pop Mart is using the attention, cash flow, and customer acquisition from Labubu to build a portfolio that does not depend entirely on Labubu. Durable companies turn a cultural moment into distribution, customer relationships, new products, and repeatable growth. Virality is rented. A portfolio is owned.
What is the common thread across this week’s retail news?
Commerce is becoming more compressed. Consumers research earlier and buy later, retailers deliver faster, and AI shortens product discovery. Tariffs, health trends, and pop culture are also forcing faster decisions.
The answer is not simply to move faster. Brands need an operation that moves quickly without losing control of inventory, margin, compliance, or advertising.
Follow Selling on Giants for weekly operator-level coverage of Amazon, Walmart, TikTok Shop, AI commerce, retail media, tariffs, marketplace strategy, and the changes actually affecting eCommerce operators.
Subscribe to Selling on Giants for weekly insights that go beyond headlines and focus on what actually impacts your business.
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New Canadian tariffs take effect
Beginning August nineteenth, specified Canadian imports face an additional fifty percent tariff, including certain products that qualify under USMCA.
Sellers sourcing from Canada need to verify HTS classifications, exclusions, customs-entry dates, and actual landed-cost exposure rather than reacting to the headline rate.
The de minimis door stays closed
A federal trade court upheld the administration’s authority to suspend the de minimis tariff exemption in the case before it.
Cross-border sellers should stop building long-term forecasts around a return to the old duty-free low-value parcel model.
Country-of-origin enforcement gets tougher
The White House is increasing scrutiny of potential tariff transshipment and country-of-origin claims.
Brands that shifted manufacturing from China into Vietnam, Mexico, India, or other markets need documentation showing where meaningful manufacturing and substantial transformation actually occur.
Walmart keeps building its fulfillment network
Walmart is evaluating a roughly one point five million square foot fulfillment facility in New York.
The building itself is only proposed, but the strategy matters. Walmart continues investing in the physical infrastructure needed to make WFS and Walmart Marketplace more competitive with Amazon.
Consumers are warming up to AI purchasing
New consumer research suggests shoppers are increasingly comfortable allowing AI agents to recommend products and, under certain conditions, make purchases.
That changes the role of product data. Titles, attributes, specifications, compatibility, pricing, availability, reviews, and return policies increasingly help determine whether an AI system understands and recommends a product.
The bigger takeaway:
eCommerce is becoming more cultural at the top of the funnel and more operational underneath it.
Attention can create demand overnight, but brands still need clean product data, compliant packaging, accurate landed costs, strong inventory placement, and reliable fulfillment to turn that attention into profitable growth.
Follow Selling on Giants for weekly operator-level coverage of Amazon, Walmart, TikTok Shop, AI commerce, retail media, tariffs, marketplace strategy, and the changes actually affecting eCommerce operators.
Subscribe to Selling on Giants for weekly insights that go beyond headlines and focus on what actually impacts your business.
Walmart completes its Vibe.co acquisition: Walmart officially closed its acquisition of Vibe.co, bringing a self-service connected TV platform into the Walmart Connect ecosystem. If Walmart successfully combines self-service CTV buying with shopper data and closed-loop sales measurement, streaming TV could become much more accessible to mid-market marketplace brands.
Walmart Search Insights gets more useful: Walmart’s Search Insights tools help sellers diagnose exactly where performance is breaking down across impressions, clicks, add-to-cart activity, and sales. The lesson is simple: not every low-sales listing needs more advertising. Sellers need to determine whether the real problem is discoverability, click-through, conversion, pricing, reviews, content, or fulfillment.
Walmart shipping APIs are changing: Walmart deprecated older Simplified Shipping Settings API endpoints and is moving to SSS two point oh. Sellers using third-party software, agencies, or internal development teams should confirm migration plans before Q4.
TikTok Shop keeps growing: Third-party estimates suggest TikTok Shop generated more than fifty billion dollars in global GMV during the first half of twenty twenty six, with the United States becoming its largest national market. The most important signal is that the Shop tab reportedly generated more attributed GMV than video or livestream commerce. TikTok Shop is increasingly behaving like a traditional marketplace where catalog quality, reviews, pricing, merchandising, inventory, and fulfillment matter alongside creator content.
Q4 inventory may be ready, but margins are not: Retailers pulled holiday inventory forward, but tariff exposure, potential Section two thirty two expansions, and ongoing refund processing mean landed-cost assumptions are still moving.. Brands need to separate the cost of inventory already in the warehouse from the cost of replenishing that same inventory today.
The bigger takeaway:
The second half of twenty twenty six is becoming less about chasing more traffic and more about strengthening the systems underneath growth.
Review financing agreements. Watch where Amazon ads are spending. Clean up Item Highlights. Add AI creative compliance to the workflow. Confirm Walmart integrations. Treat TikTok like a marketplace if shoppers are using it like one. And rebuild Q4 margin models using current landed costs, not assumptions from three months ago.
Follow Selling on Giants for weekly operator-level breakdowns on Amazon, Walmart, retail media, AI commerce, marketplace strategy, and what platform updates actually mean for sellers.
Subscribe to Selling on Giants for weekly insights that go beyond headlines and focus on what actually impacts your business.
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Why most sellers do not lose to competition, but to inconsistency
The leadership mindset needed to scale without becoming the ceiling
This episode is for ecommerce founders, Amazon sellers, brand operators, and marketplace teams that want to grow but feel stuck in the same cycle: reacting to every performance dip, chasing every new tactic, saying yes too often, and carrying too much of the business personally.
The market is harder today. Fees are higher. Ads are more expensive. Competition is real. Platform rules keep changing. But some brands are still growing because they operate with discipline. They know what matters. They review the data. They improve listings. They test creative. They allocate budget with purpose. They do not panic every time the numbers move.
The brands that scale are not always the flashiest. They are usually the most consistent.
At BellaVix, we do not chase hacks. We build systems. We help brands create clear KPIs, structured weekly reviews, stronger conversion strategies, better budget allocation, and team ownership across Amazon and Walmart marketplace operations. BellaVix has helped brands sell over five hundred million dollars on Amazon and is a Verified Ad Partner, but the real value is helping teams turn complexity into execution.
If your brand is growing but feels heavy, this episode is a reminder that the next stage of scale may not require another tactic. It may require a better operating rhythm, stronger boundaries, and a founder willing to stop being the bottleneck.
The question is simple: Are you building a business that scales, or one that depends on how you feel that day?
Subscribe to Selling on Giants for weekly operator-level breakdowns on Amazon, Walmart, retail media, marketplace strategy, AI commerce, eCommerce growth, and what actually changes for brands responsible for profitability.
Why brands need to build for durability
The question is not how to make Amazon easier. The better question is how to keep winning as Amazon gets more competitive. That requires stronger systems, better margins, clearer positioning, stronger creative, and the discipline to think beyond short-term efficiency.
The bigger takeaway:
Amazon did not get harder because the tools got worse.
Amazon got more efficient, and more people showed up.
That means the next advantage does not come from using the same tools as everyone else. It comes from building a brand that can survive when everyone else becomes more efficient too.
The edge is not in surface-level optimization. It is in durability.
Follow Selling on Giants for operator-level breakdowns on Amazon strategy, marketplace growth, retail media, eCommerce leadership, advertising, AI commerce, and what it really takes to build a brand that holds up as the market gets more competitive.
Subscribe to Selling on Giants for weekly insights that go beyond headlines and focus on what actually impacts your business.
Amazon marketplace enforcement scrutiny
A Senate inquiry is reportedly examining allegations that intermediaries offered to bribe Amazon employees to reverse suspensions or provide marketplace advantages.
The allegations remain under investigation, but sellers should avoid anyone promising guaranteed reinstatement through internal Amazon contacts.
Amazon pricing and channel conflict
California’s ongoing case against Amazon raises questions about how Amazon’s pricing policies may influence prices across Walmart, Target, direct-to-consumer websites, and other retail channels.
Brands need centralized pricing governance because one discount can affect Featured Offer visibility, Vendor Central negotiations, wholesale relationships, and margin across every channel.
Amazon Business reaches sixty billion dollars
Amazon Business now generates sixty billion dollars in annualized gross sales and serves more than eleven million organizations.
Sellers should review business-only pricing, quantity discounts, recurring orders, bulk fulfillment, pallet delivery, and product content designed specifically for commercial buyers.
Amazon Ads expands automation
Amazon introduced new Brand Plus and Performance Plus features involving first-party audiences, AMC data, audio inventory, Prime Video signals, and automated Streaming TV buying.
The opportunity is stronger campaign optimization. The risk is allowing Amazon’s systems to make more decisions without understanding where budgets are being spent.
TikTok Shop Plus tests a Prime-style membership
TikTok is testing a paid U.S. membership that may include free shipping, coupons, and product discounts.
The unresolved seller question is who funds those benefits. Brands need to understand the effect on shipping costs, commissions, discounts, returns, and contribution margin before participating.
Facebook Marketplace launches a seller app
Meta introduced Seller, a dedicated application for frequent Facebook Marketplace sellers. The app includes bulk listings, inventory management, buyer messages, performance reporting, relisting, and AI-assisted listing creation.
FedEx announces holiday demand surcharges
FedEx released its 2026 peak-season fees, including increased charges for residential deliveries, expedited services, additional handling, oversized packages, and Ground Economy shipments.
DTC and merchant-fulfilled sellers should model Q4 shipping costs now rather than discovering in November that holiday orders are no longer profitable.
Shein feels the impact of tariff changes
Shein reported declining U.S. revenue and a quarterly loss as the end of duty-free de minimis treatment increased costs.
The company remains a major global competitor, but its results show that ultra-low-cost cross-border retail is losing part of its structural advantage.
Microsoft Copilot moves toward eCommerce checkout
A new agentic-commerce integration from ESW is designed to support product discovery, checkout, and payment through Microsoft Copilot.
AI shopping is moving from answering product questions toward becoming a transaction channel. Product titles, specifications, compatibility, availability, pricing, and structured catalog data will increasingly determine which products AI systems recommend.
The bigger takeaway:
Profitable growth is becoming more operationally demanding.
Brands need to understand landed cost, protect seller accounts, centralize pricing, monitor advertising automation, model holiday fulfillment expenses, and improve product data for both traditional search and AI-assisted shopping.
Follow Selling on Giants for weekly operator-level breakdowns on Amazon, Walmart, retail media, AI commerce, marketplace strategy, and what platform updates actually mean for sellers.
Subscribe to Selling on Giants for weekly insights that go beyond headlines and focus on what actually impacts your business.
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