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Bear with me. Rant incoming.

It's tough out there for some sectors of retail. We know that. This week alone brought tough news for teams at David Jones, BlackMilk and (not strictly retail but you geddit) Canva. But what puts the pepper in my pringles are the keyboard vultures who are so quick to pounce on a collapse, a layoff announcement or a negative AFR headline.

Often these people have no skin in the game, have had their own failed businesses and aren't offering any solutions. It's purely ego-driven, engagement bait for a LinkedIn platform that rewards sensation and mediocre takes.

Let's celebrate those that are doing it well. Let's check in privately with those who might be doing it tough. Let's actually share real experiences that offer ways forward, not just throw fuel on the fire. Other than that, I hope you've all had a beautiful week! 🤣

CHEERS, BUSHY

P.S. Make sure you register so you can join me live next Thursday with Shopify on our BFCM readiness webinar. James Johnson, potentially the smartest and sexiest man in ecommerce, will unpack the data on how they think customers will shop this peak. And CSM To The Stars, Toby Cumpstay, will give us a live walkthrough of the Shopify features to help you get the most out of peak. It's going to be AWESOME. Register to get access.

01

TikTok have just quietly released a standalone, dedicated TikTok Shop app. It looks a lot like Shopify's Shop app. It's available in Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines. These are markets where TikTok Shop has run inside the main app since 2022. The standalone app gives you a personalised feed of products, app-only deals, order tracking and secure payments, all within the app. You can also get live streams and short videos to see the product in action but video isn't the main thing. There's only one 5-star rating on it so far. Very early.

Another quietly launched app, also spotted by Matt Navarra, is Meta's Style Sketch. It links to your Instagram account to identify your style and the clothes you already wear, helping you put together new outfits for the week or an upcoming trip. It'll even try them on a model matched to your body shape. It doesn't look like there's a shopping feature on it yet… but come on. Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand only for now.

02

I wrote about it two weeks ago, and it's still going on in different forms. I've spent even more time with retailers in the last few days trying to assess ecommerce app breaches. HeyApps.dev has become my go-to resource for understanding what is being removed from the Shopify App Store.

In the past week alone, Shiprocket, Gorgias and Triple Whale have been removed from the App Store. These aren't small apps working with small businesses. I've spoken to some of the app teams and they are taking it very seriously. It's not overly public as they are working directly with customers that might be impacted.

Delisted doesn't automatically mean breached. It can mean an app is tightening its security. Sometimes it means it's been breached. Either way, all we want is proactive communication.

On one hand, it's great that Shopify is delisting quickly. On the other hand, it's scary, going into peak, that we've had so much disruption within the verified app ecosystem.

From supermarket fridges in Europe getting hacked (won't somebody think of the Mövenpick!!) to our own Nick Scali and Oz Hair and Beauty, through to ASOS in the UK, no one is immune. Be alert, a little alarmed and consider burning it all to the ground to live on a farm and sell potatoes that you grew with your own bare hands.

03

It was only a matter of time until the rodents of the robotic world, the footpath delivery robots, made their way to Australia. This week DoorDash launched Australia's first footpath delivery robots with Serve Robotics on the Gold Coast, trialling them with Gnocchi Gnocchi Brothers in Southport. If the Italians weren't upset enough about a chain making their gnocchi, wait till you see what they do to these robots on a footpath. Still, they're better than most things you will find on footpaths on the Gold Coast.

Meanwhile, in the US, DoorDash has announced its acquisition of grocery delivery service Instacart for a lazy US$17 billion. We've seen the on-demand delivery services consolidate over the last few years. With deep pockets like these, could this be a sign that DoorDash is going to be the winner in on-demand delivery?

04

Somehow Clarity continues to be an insanely innovative hub for ecommerce within Microsoft's dreary sweatbox. And it's really cool.

This week they announced three new features that essentially give you an in-house analyst. For free. They've released Agentic Analytics, which records and measures what AI agents do on your site, including the percentage of AI agent traffic. Weekly AI agent sessions across Clarity sites nearly doubled in three weeks, to almost 2 million.

They've also introduced Brand Agents, which help your products show up in Copilot and Bing and add an AI assistant to your own site.

But the most interesting thing was the ability to Ask Clarity. If you've got a hunch or a theory and want to test it against real customer behaviour, it won't just spit out statistics. It will give you screen recordings to prove or disprove your theories. It's in closed beta for retailers, with a waitlist. Give them the Nobel Peace Prize already.

05

Interesting announcement here with Google Merchant Centre adding a question-and-answer attribute, which allows advertisers to submit 30 product-specific Q&As per product. It's designed to support guided back-and-forth research in conversational shopping, including Google's AI Mode. What is interesting is that our product data feeds are starting to include content, not just attributes. I can't wait for the looks on our bright-eyed content teams' faces when we give them product feeds to optimise.

While we're here, in case you missed it, Shopify have retired the standalone Knowledge Base app and moved it within Sales Channels > Agentic > Knowledge Base. The old app stops working on 15 January 2027, and if you had more than 1,000 facts in it, they didn't come across. If you haven't filled out your shop details in here, now's the time to do it. We've got a really interesting episode coming up around all things product data with Feedonomics and City Beach on Wednesday 18 November. Keep an eye out for that one.

ATC PLAYBOOK #680

Modibodi cut its affiliate commission from 14% to 6% and revenue almost tripled.

Affiliate is one of the few channels that can get more profitable as it grows. But you can't grow a programme that just gives away commission for customers that you would get anyway.

Annabel Gray is VP of APAC at Silverbean. She opened their Sydney office in 2019 and has spent 15 years in affiliate on both the brand and agency side with Virgin Australia, Modibodi and MJ Bale. Her mission is making sure brands stop getting ripped off in this channel.

Today, we dive into some great tips in the Add To Cart archive around how to set up your affiliate programme to be profitable from the start.

Examples from this Playbook

💸 Annabel from Silverbean says cashback only earns its commission when it changes what someone does. If you turn it on and leave it, you're just paying a toll on sales that were already coming.

🚲 Rainer from BikesOnline moved the coupon partners into their own programme. If someone else introduced the customer, the introducer gets paid, not the coupon site.

📚 Steffen, formerly of Booktopia, pays partners more for a new customer than a returning one. He calls that table stakes.

👟 Roger, formerly of Brand Collective, says to make it worth the partner's while. Let them put their own spin on your content and lean into their niche communities.