Goodbye 2024 - Yearly eCom Wrap-up

Hey there 👋

Hope you’ve had a wonderful Christmas & your holiday cheer is still going strong! ❄️

With the new year coming up, it’s time for us to look back on 2024 — it’s was awesome for DTC & eCom, and we’re here to give you only the most important news..  

The biggest trends, shifts in consumer behaviour, and all the stats that skyrocketed!

We wish you a Happy New Year, and without further ado, let’s get into our yearly wrap-up 🔥

1. The TikTok Ban (or bid?) 🚫

In April, Biden signed a bill forcing TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell their stakes — and if they don’t, it’ll be banned nation-wide in the US..

And then TikTok made it clear that they’re not selling, even though the app may be banned as soon as January 19th, in less than a month.

Next, the Canadian government decided to ban TikTok locally because of security concerns — which was mostly a joke since only the offices were shut down, while the app was still completely operational in Canada.

In a desperate attempt to save the platform — former owner of the LA Dodgers, billionaire Frank McCourt is looking to outright buy TikTok for $20 billion USD. He’s already spoken with over 60 elected officials, and even Donald Trump’s transition team to make his case for this deal.

At least there’s a mogul trying to save the app, and let’s be honest here — if TikTok goes down even just in the US, the global impact will be severe for thousands of eCom businesses and not only 😬 

Following Donald Trump’s presidency and Frank’s bid, we’ll just have to wait and see whether TikTok survives or falls..

2. Amazon’s Budget Marketplace — Haul 📦️ 

Amazon’s competing with Temu, Shein, and AliExpress with it’s new DTC marketplace, dubbed "Haul”

Haul features ultra-low prices, with items like sneakers for $9.98 and phone cases for $2.99. Orders over $25 get free shipping, and the larger your cart, the bigger your discount. This marketplace operates separately from Amazon itself, with it’s own standalone mobile-only section to avoid losing profit from their main app.

Also, just like Temu, Haul uses the de minimis provision, exempting items <$800 from duties, allowing cost savings, but with slower delivery (we’ll touch on de minimis a tad later in this post).

On paper, Haul looks like a great answer to Temu & Shein, but shoppers actually dislike it for the cheap, low-quality items that take 2 weeks to deliver.

We’ll need more raw data to really judge the performance of the marketplace, but as of now, it’s lackluster 🤷‍♂️ 

Stay tuned for more exciting updates from Ecommerce & Unicorns! Subscribe now:

3. Temu Opens To US & EU Sellers 💵 

Yup, this is the reason why Amazon’s Haul became a thing — Temu allowed all US & EU sellers to join its marketplace, without any invite codes required.

Sellers can ship from US & EU warehouses for fast delivery (as quick as one business day), and these are pretty cool conditions, enough to attract Amazon merchants to mix their presence up a bit.

The process for signing up takes only 10 minutes, with Temu taking about 1 business day to either approve or reject your account.

Aside from all the Temu memes, it’s presence is huge, with over 167 million monthly visits and an estimated annual revenue of $54 billion in 2024 😮 

P.S — We covered the top updates from Shopify Editions Winter ‘25, so that you can crush this holiday season & go strong into 2025 🔥 

4. De Minimis Loophole Crackdown 😅 

Things are getting trickier for Haul, Temu, Shein and other marketplaces “abusing” the whole de minimis trade loophole, allowing packages under $800 to enter the US tariff-free.

The Biden administration is proposing a new rule that would prevent products subject to US-China tariffs from benefiting from the de minimis exemption, which would seriously reduce the number of low-value shipments entering the United States.

The White House is also seeking to require more detailed data on de minimis shipments, like tariff classification numbers and the identity of the person claiming the exemption.

Looks like the goal is to reduce the risk of illegal, unsafe, and unfairly traded products entering the US, specifically from Chinese retailers, but ultimately this’ll increase costs for eCom brands and consumers, and may even lead companies to shift away from manufacturing in China 🤔 

5. TikTok, Pinterest & Amazon Working Together? 🤝 

Amazon partnered with TikTok & Pinterest to make it super convenient to shop directly from social media apps without leaving the platforms in hopes to boost revenue.

A cool partnership, but users will have to link their TikTok or Pinterest accounts to their Amazon account, and only then will they be able to buy items directly from Amazon while still in either app.

Here's an example when everything is synced up right:

The linked accounts will allow US users to see real-time pricing, Prime eligibility, delivery estimates and product details.

A pretty bold move from Amazon, but unless they make this whole account-linking thing a seamless experience, 2-click buying won’t be profitable 😅 

6. AI Actually Impacting eCom 🤖 

Just when we all thought we were safe from the bots — Perplexity, an AI company backed by Jeff Bezos & Tobi Lutke, launched an e-commerce shopping tool called “Shop Like A Pro”.

Available in the US only, this AI pulls prices and specs and compares them, lets you search visually through a carousel, analyses real pros and cons from reviews, and you can even checkout within the app.

Perplexity also has a merchant program, so you can share the specs of your products and increase the likelihood of your brand being “recommended”.

It’s pretty wild that the fate of our products will be decided by AI, but having another marketing channel to compete in is pretty neat — we wrote an entire post on “Shop Like A Pro” in case you want to learn more about it 😉

But Perplexity isn’t the only competitor in AI eCom search, Google Shopping got an AI makeover, powered by their Gemini model.

It’s pretty much the same Google Shopping we all know, but with more accurate descriptions, a “For You”-esque shopping feed, and tools for finding the best deals — not bad, Google 👀

7. FTC Adopts “Click to Cancel” Rule ❌ 

The FTC adopted a “click to cancel” rule, which requires businesses to make it as easy as possible to cancel a subscription.

The new rules for sellers are as follows:

1️⃣ Avoid misrepresenting important details when marketing products or services with a negative option feature

2️⃣ Clearly disclose key terms before collecting a consumer’s payment information

3️⃣ Obtain the consumer’s clear consent before charging for a negative option feature

4️⃣ Provide an easy way for consumers to cancel and stop charges immediately

A great and much needed change, unsubscribing shouldn’t take 15 clicks and confirmations 🔥

8. Amazon’s Workforce Going Down 👷 

As of December 19th, around 10,000 Amazon workers went on strike, forming lines in cities like NY, Atlanta, San Francisco and Southern California — dubbed “Teamsters”.

The workers were advocating for better wages, improved benefits, and enhanced workplace safety during the critical holiday shopping season. Amazon quickly claimed the workers were “misleading the public”.

The strike itself lasted up until Christmas Eve, and affected around 200 Amazon facilities across the US (but of course Amazon claimed their operations were unaffected).

Whether it was the right thing for Teamsters to do or not, the impact of the strike was pretty huge — about 48% of Amazon’s corporate workforce are applying for new jobs, with 68% saying they are “somewhat likely” or “very likely” to leave Amazon within the next year.

Maybe Amazon can learn a lesson or two from this? 😬 

9. 2024’s Holiday Statistics 💹 

Almost each metric is up from last year, let’s look at them one by one:

BFCM Stats (from Shopify):

1️⃣ $11.5 billion in global sales from merchants, a 24% increase in sales from 2023

2️⃣ Average cart price was $108.56 ($109.70 on a constant currency basis)

3️⃣ 58% YoY increase in sales made via Shop Pay

Holiday Season (as per Queue-it):

1️⃣ 64% of Cyber Five Traffic came from mobile

2️⃣ Holiday Season traffic increased 12% YoY

3️⃣ Traffic on Small Business Saturday & Cyber Sunday grew 20% YoY

The Bank of America recently held a survey that showed 75% of consumers say they’d prefer to get a gift card this year, up 13% from 2023.

Finally, as per Statista, TikTok Shop saw a 226% YoY growth this holiday season 🤯 

And that’s a wrap on 2024! 🥳 🎉 

Thank you for letting us be a part of your eCom journey this year! We hope 2024 was fruitful for your brand, and I can’t wait to see what 2025 brings! 🎄 🤶 

We wish you a joyful New Years — here’s to 2025! 🥂

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Daniil from ECORN