Vinny O Brien covers the week's retail and eCommerce news: Amazon launched AI assistant Rufus, Etsy hired Drew Barrymore as Chief Gifting Officer, Adidas cleared Yeezy inventory, and Meta's Reality Labs posted another loss. Peter Thiel backed enhanced games for athletes.
Welcome to the VSpot, your home for the early news of all things e-com, tech, and retail. Today marks the opening of the Six Nations Rugby Tournament and is the first Friday after Dry January. Make it count. Watch out for a link at the end of the show to bring you to a secret drinks reception that we're having next Friday night. We're bringing back the virtual happy hour. Join us and have some fun, or join us and have very little fun. First up, it's earnings week, and after a tumultuous call— thanks, Rick— Amazon unveiled their new AI assistant, aptly named Rufus. Rhymes with— The way they came up with the name was in typical Amazon fashion, with execs bringing their 6-page memo citing reasons for choosing the name. It is apparent to us now that they went to name the, the, uh, AI tool after the movie Bill and Ted. Time will tell, will this be an excellent adventure or a bogus journey? Next up, Etsy getting cutesy. Only months after letting 11% of their staff go, Etsy were delighted to announce this week that Drew Barrymore was taking over in a role known as You guessed it, CGO— Chief Gifting Officer. Gives you the warm and fuzzies, doesn't it? Next up, hear ye, hear ye, Adidas firesale on all Yeezy products starting sooner than you might think. Get them while they're no longer hot. When asked for a comment, a spokesperson said, no comment. But what doesn't kill us makes us harder, better, faster, stronger. Story 4: UK adult retailer has teamed up with Deliveroo for a 'to your door' service for Valentine's Day. In describing the service, they are borderline reckless with some of the GDPR info you wouldn't want to associate with an adult website. We now know that if you live in Brighton, Manchester, Canning Town, or Vauxhall in London, where the service is actively targeting and promoting, you are more likely to be purchasing sexual wellness products. What a time to be alive. And yes, John, we're looking at you. Story 5: Peter Thiel this week decided he wanted to out-crazy old work buddy Elon Musk. Thiel announced he's backing for the enhanced games, an Olympics where all the athletes would be actively encouraged to dope out in the open, unlike the regular Olympics who prefer doping is done systematically but behind closed doors. Final story this week, Mark Zuckerberg had a slap-kiss-slap week. First up was the meeting with the US Senate Blood is on your hands is what Zuck was told. By Thursday, blood had been turned to gold as the share price increased after a stellar December performance. Zuck said to the market, we are keeping things lean from here on in. Meta's Reality Lab didn't get the memo whilst they reported a $4.65 billion loss against sales of $1 billion. Not ones for short-term thinking, the team running the division pointed to their $42 billion loss since 2020. We will keep it going, Dave Ives. Thanks for watching, folks. And with hockey ball just around the corner, it was great to see the humble Beckhams back in action ordering food from Uber Eats. Food they're probably never even going to eat. Thanks for watching the VSpot. There's your 6 minutes you're not going to get back this week. Stay tuned next week where we will be announcing our happy hour. It's going to be on at 9 PM GMT next Friday night, or 4 PM Eastern time if that's your gig. I think that's 1 PM on Pacific. So watch out for the link if you want to get it in advance. Please DM me. You've been watching the VSpot.
Where is the consumer now? Reagan took to the field for the V Spot news .. #ecomm #ecommerce
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