Home Depot sales fall 3% YoY / Amazon Fresh's Recurring Reservations / Big Lots acquires Hearthsong inventory

Plus, Wish rolls out trade-in program in Europe

Inside Ecommerce For February 28, 2024

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Today's top headlines include: Home Depot's Q4 sales fall 3%. Amazon Fresh rolls out Recurring Reservations feature. Big Lots acquires Hearthsong inventory amid push for "extreme value" sourcing. Thanks for reading! Gregory p/Gregory_Bridgman

1 Home Depot's sales fell 3% YoY in Q4. The home improvement retailer said its business was affected by rising interest rates and falling lumber prices. More: Home Depot posted revenue of $34.79B, beating the $34.64B expected by analysts. Earnings per share stood at $2.82, surpassing analysts' expectations of $2.77 per share. Q4 net income declined to $2.80B from $3.36B a year earlier. Home Depot seeks to overcome "e-commerce unfriendly" products with a robust omnichannel strategy.

2 Amazon Fresh rolled out a Recurring Reservations feature in over 1,300 U.S. towns and cities. The e-commerce giant is using its omnichannel capabilities to enhance its grocery business. More: Recurring Reservations allow customers to choose pickup and delivery times up to a week in advance. Shoppers can use Amazon's Repeat Items feature to have their favorite items automatically placed in their carts. Customers can add or remove items at any point before a gig worker starts picking their products.  Amazon started revamping its grocery business last year by refreshing stores and expanding online access.

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3 Big Lots acquired inventory worth over $22M from toy company Hearthsong. The retailer seeks to boost its off-price and "extreme value" sourcing amid efforts to cut expenses.  More: The inventory will allow Big Lots to offer 500 new SKUs. It plans to start selling the products in April at prices of 50% to 70% off. Big Lots appointed Seth Marks last year as its first senior vice president of extreme value sourcing. The inventory acquisition shows that the "extreme value sourcing team" is delivering on its promise to "own closeouts" and bring value to customers, Marks said. E-commerce sales accounted for 6% of Big Lots' business in fiscal 2022.

4 Wish owner ContextLogic is partnering with Remarketed to offer European trade-in services. Booming re-commerce demand in Europe helped Amazon build a second-hand business in the region worth over $1B.  More: The program allows shoppers to trade in used devices for money and offers free shipping. Customers will not be required to spend on Wish's online marketplace. Remarketed will value the products instantaneously based on their age and condition. The program will begin in the Netherlands next month and then expand to other countries.

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5 What the numbers say: The EU's fashion and beauty consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce market will be worth $23.2B (€21.4B) by 2026, up from $16.4B (€15.1B) in 2022, according to CBCommerce Europe. Re-commerce marketplaces in Europe are expanding at 20 times the rate of the wider retail market, according to Cross-Border Commerce Europe. The business network estimates that re-commerce will comprise 14% of the EU retail market in 2025, up from 10% in 2021.

6 China's state enterprises and foreign sovereign wealth funds own stakes in over 12 of Alibaba's business units. The information was revealed in response to "certain comments from the staff of the SEC," Alibaba said. More: China's state-owned enterprises owned stock in six of Alibaba's direct sales businesses.  Five of the stakes were under 10% and the sixth was under 30%. Beijing-backed entities last year acquired small stakes, called "golden shares," in China's large tech firms. The stakes disclosed by Alibaba are in addition to the "golden shares," owned by such entities.

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Gregory Bridgman Writer / Editor Gregory Bridgman is a politics and e-commerce researcher with a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. He also holds a Master of Science from University College London and a Bachelor's degree from the University of Cape Town.  Feel free to follow him on Twitter or drop him an email at gregory@inside.com. This newsletter was edited by Eduardo Garcia

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