The V Spot Retail and eCommerce Weekly News Friday Week 35

I don't care if Monday's blue, Tuesday's gray, and Wednesday too. Thursday, I don't care about you. It's Friday, here's your news. Welcome to the VSpot. It is week 35. Happy Hour returns tonight, and I am excited. Can't you tell? This is the week where TikTok influencers finally spoke up about the lost income they're suffering as a result of the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike. Tough times indeed when original creators cannot make any money from the absence of the work of the third-party counterparts. Story 1 this week: Mm, boop! Shopify shares jumped 10% yesterday as they announced they reached an agreement with Amazon to funnel people into the Amazon logistics money pit under the guise of a Buy with Prime app. Proper legit. BigCommerce made a similar announcement in January this year. Did you forget? Next up, Michael Burry has caused a bit of a stir in recent weeks having gone and shorted the market. The Scion Capital owner has pulled a move similar to the one he did in 2008, signaling the downfall of the financial market, but like then, nobody is taking him seriously. But we are. Anyone who's played by Christian Bale in a movie has got to be taken seriously. Why do we go here? This has got nothing to do with e-commerce, but it's an interesting segue into us looking at a story we saw this week about credit card delinquencies. In the— —credit card delinquencies are reported to be at a 10-year high. This bodes poorly for customers who want to go and spend money they don't have over the coming holiday season. What are they going to do? We know, jump to the unregulated buy now pay later products. Everyone's a winner. Story 3, more BNPL news for you. Swedish giant Klarna this week announced that they had reduced their loss in the first half of this year and actually turned a profit in one of those months. Commenting on the performance, CEO Slemmi Jäckowski said that it was a business model that they were confident would see them through tough times. Hmm. Further into the commentary, they actually cited that it was core optimization processes that they had taken— layoffs— that had led to their ability to turn a profit. Nothing though about aged losses. Next up, Gap. In surprise news this week, Gap reported revenues of $3.55 billion. We were shocked too. Final story. This week in the UK, Fraser's Group increased their shareholding in Boohoo to over 9%. This is on the back of a number of recent investments they've made right across their portfolio. Many are asking, what is their strategy? And we think we have unlocked the key to it. Looking at their investment portfolio, we think they are taking what's known as the Sesame Street approach. Looking through the list, we see companies AO.com, ASOS, Boohoo, Currys, Debenhams, Everlast, and the list goes on and on. When we looked through it forensically, we discovered that they're missing an O, a P, and an R. So if you know any good investment opportunities for Fraser's Group, please drop a line to them and make them for the attention of Big Bird or Elmo. That's a wrap, folks. It's been week 35. Thanks for stopping by the VSpot. We're off to powder our nose and get ready for eCommerce Global Happy Hour, which is happening again tonight for the winter, starting at 9 PM GMT, 4 PM Eastern Standard Time, or whatever time zone you're having yourself. We'll be drinking strong Belgian beer. What's your tipple?