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Happy Monday! Kroger's digital sales rose 20%, but its second profitable ecommerce quarter still includes retail media. Fast delivery is growing; advertising may be the margin layer carrying it.
News
1️⃣ Kroger makes ads carry delivery
2️⃣ Rent the Runway cuts side bets
3️⃣ Shopify gives payout currency control
Insights
4️⃣ Amazon Fresh finds produce growth
5️⃣ Czech marketplaces defy gravity
6️⃣ AI search becomes shelf space
LET’S ENTER THE MAZE!
1️⃣ News
The Maze: Kroger’s adjusted digital sales rose 20%, but its second profitable ecommerce quarter includes retail media. The delivery engine has an advertising fuel tank.
Kroger’s core sales grew only 0.2%, while ecommerce added 20% more new customers and pushed harder into sub-hour delivery.
Kroger Precision Marketing profit grew 24%, using purchase data and closed-loop measurement across store and online transactions.
No standalone ecommerce margin is disclosed, so the result proves a profitable combined system—not that picking and delivery pay for themselves.
Why it matters: Fast grocery delivery may not need to pay for itself alone. Retailers with loyalty data and ad demand can turn the same digital order into two profit pools.
2️⃣ News
The Maze: Rent the Runway paused marketplace and advertising pilots on September 11, sending resources back to its core rental and resale offers as Paige Thomas becomes CEO.
The March marketplace tested shoes, beauty and basics with loyal subscribers, but is paused until it can integrate with rental.
On-site ads were paused to protect the premium experience, while revenue rose 20.8% to $97.7 million and ending active subscribers fell 3.8%.
Core discovery experiments continue, including outfit generation and virtual try-on, showing that the filter is strategic fit rather than experimentation itself.
Why it matters: New revenue lines only help when they reinforce the core customer loop. Operators should test attach rate, margin, retention and integration cost.
3️⃣ News
The Maze: Shopify now lets eligible Australian and French merchants route sales into matching currency accounts, reducing forced conversion but not payout fees.
Australia gets 13 currencies; France gets 18, although French access remains an early-access rollout.
Advanced and Plus stores add one bank account per supported currency; unmatched payments fall back to the default account and conversion.
Non-domestic payouts still cost 1.5% on Advanced and 1% on Plus in Shopify's published global-region fee table.
Why it matters: Shopify is turning payout currency into a treasury setting. Merchants gain control only when avoided FX costs beat the fee and account complexity.
4️⃣ Insight
The Maze: Amazon Fresh is showing its sharpest growth in the aisle everyone thought was hardest to digitize: herbs, vegetables, eggs, dairy and fruit.
Fresh Herbs leads at +475% YoY, but only $848K per month, which makes it a fast-growing early shelf rather than a mature category.
Fresh Vegetables already hits $19.0M per month at +428% YoY, while Fresh Fruits reaches $19.4M at +262% YoY in the SmartScout data.
Eggs, milk and yogurt show the bigger signal: Amazon is pulling repeat grocery staples into marketplace-style discovery.
Why it matters: Fresh food can be a growth wedge for Amazon sellers, but not a lazy one. Perishability turns poor inventory and fulfillment into instant margin damage.
5️⃣ Insight
The Maze: ATOM INC's Czech marketplace comparison makes the local fight awkward for global giants: Temu surges, Allegro compounds, and Amazon shrinks.
Temu reaches EUR 568M in 2025, up +103% from 2023, while Allegro climbs to EUR 380M and stays the strongest regional counterweight.
Kaufland Marketplace grows +117% from a small base, showing how a retailer with trust, sellers, and logistics can turn infrastructure into marketplace momentum.
Amazon falls from EUR 65M to EUR 25M, and Shein drops from EUR 328M in 2024 to EUR 180M in 2025 despite remaining up versus 2023.
Why it matters: Czech ecommerce shows the marketplace rule Europe keeps teaching: traffic can buy awareness, but local execution decides who converts it.
6️⃣ Insight
The Maze: EMARKETER forecasts AI search rising from 34.0% of US internet users in 2026 to 45.3% by 2030. GEO is becoming shelf discipline.
Search leads every visible generative AI function in the forecast, ahead of text creation, work use, shopping, image generation, and health.
Shopping is lower but still climbs from inferred ~25.6% to ~33.9%, covering third-party AI tools and retailer assistants like Rufus.
Assistant recommendations can move users into brand search, owned sites, and retailer pages while last-click analytics misses the exposure.
Why it matters: Brands cannot wait for perfect GEO attribution. The new work is clean product data, credible sources, and content models can cite accurately.
🗞️ Quick hits
Everything else you should know
🛍️ Discovery gets new machinery
YouTube launched its Shopping affiliate program in the Netherlands with Bol as the first major retail partner, giving eligible creators product tags across videos, Shorts and livestreams while Bol gains a commission-based discovery channel.
Salesforce released six business agents and piloted Hunter, a longer-running system designed to preserve goals across weeks, moving agent deployment from chat sessions toward governed operational workflows.
🏢 Control stays private
Automattic confirmed Matt Mullenweg is again chairman and CEO with board support, reversing the earlier plan for CFO Mark Davies to lead and reopening governance questions across the WordPress and WooCommerce ecosystem.
Sam Altman said OpenAI will not go public in 2026, keeping public financing off this year's timetable without withdrawing its confidential filing or committing to a 2027 listing.
🔐 Trust and returns leak value
Revolut confirmed fraudulent requests from a legitimate government email domain exposed identity records for a limited number of customers, showing why payment providers must verify authority rather than trust the sender domain alone.
ReBound Returns and Advanced Supply Chain found 12% of returned items generate no value and only 9% of surveyed UK and European retailers resell more than half at full price, putting reverse-logistics decisions directly against recovered margin.
THAT’S IT FOR TODAY!
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