Since I won’t talk to you again until next Monday, I wanted to take this time to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you have a wonderful time with family and friends this Thursday and that you get to enjoy a long leisurely weekend (or a madhouse shopping extravaganza — your call).

This year I’m incredibly thankful that my family and close friends have survived the COVID pandemic and remain healthy. I’m lucky to have experienced no major losses in my life due to COVID and am incredibly appreciative of that and I realize how lucky I am to be writing that.

Beyond that, I’m thankful this year that my business Ideas Focused is busier than it’s ever been as small businesses are embracing online technology more than ever before. I’m thankful to launch that Capital Cities book I told you about a few weeks ago with my community of travel creators. I’m thankful for my lovely girlfriend in Ecuador who’s patient with me when I go back to USA for “a few weeks” and end up buying an investment property and staying away for several months to fix it up.

And of course, I’m thankful for you, my Shopifreaks readers, for your support of this newsletter which I launched less than a year ago in Jan 2021. I hope you love the newsletter and the new podcast!

What are you thankful for this year? Hit reply and let me know! I love hearing from you each week.

And now, it’s my pleasure to bring you this week’s 44th edition of Shopifreaks. This week I cover: 

1. Is Shopify becoming a bit more like Amazon — but without the unified customer support?

2. fabric introduces fabric Marketplace

3. Amazon to stop accepting Visa credit cards issued in the UK

4. Amazon employees in 20 countries going on strike on Black Friday

5. Is Macy’s going to split up its online / offline businesses?

6. Consumer payment apps to report transactions larger than $600 to the IRS starting next year

Plus 8 stories and 13 seed round & acquisitions of interest. 

If you like this podcast be sure to subscribe to the weekly newsletter at www.shopifreaks.com

We’re just 9 days away from Black Friday. As a consumer and/or merchant — are you ready? Do the shopping events even matter to you or do you tend to avoid the crowds?

When I was in high school, I worked at Circuit City and later Best Buy (after they effectively put Circuit City out of business). I remember the night before Black Friday events, having to retag products in the store. While computers and TVs were marked down, all their accessories were marked up! I remember retagging a $24.99 HDMI cable with a $49.99 price tag. An early lesson in life about the unscrupulous profit maximizing tactics of big box retailers. So be careful out there!

Personally, I usually stay away from the shopping events. I’m not a big shopper in general, given that I’ve lived remotely out of a backpack and duffle bag for the past decade. But this year I just bought an investment property in Waynesville, NC, and for the first time in many years, I have a lot of things to buy. Washers, dryers, dishwashers, (yes, multiple — it’s a triplex). The timing of this acquisition is perfect for the shopping events, so I’ll be out there deal shopping with the rest of the world. Wish me luck.

And now, it’s my pleasure to bring you this week’s 43rd edition of Shopifreaks. This week I cover: 

-Shopify and Ledger’s class action lawsuit dismissed by California court

-$72 billion spent on e-commerce in October, but 2 billion out-of-stock messages

-Black Friday is back this year, Shopify predicts

-Cart.com is going headless

-SHOP hit an all time high

-Plus 7 seed rounds and acquisitions of interest

If you like this podcast be sure to subscribe to the weekly newsletter at www.shopifreaks.com

Holiday shopping is already kicking off around the world this year. Consumers are getting an early start to avoid the digital crowds and purchase their gifts before supply chain issues deplete shelves and fulfillment centers. This year the early birds will truly get the worm, and the rest of us — well… we’ll be celebrating Christmas in early 2022.

My travel community and I just launched a hardcover coffee table book a few days ago called Capital Cities: A Journey Around The World Through 118 Capital Cities. The book is a collaboration between myself and 68 professional travel bloggers and photographers around the world that showcases 118 capital cities from every continent, including Antarctica!

The book is truly a work of art, and we’re excited to bring it to print. However, as much as we would have loved to have this book available for sale and in Amazon’s warehouses for the holiday season, we also ran into some of the same supply chain issues that small business owners around the country are facing this year. We decided that rather than over promise and under deliver in regards to a delivery date, that we’d offer a discounted pre-sale for the holiday season and ship the books in April 2022. Like many small businesses and independent publishers this year, we’re making due with what’s available to us right now.

If you love to travel, please check out our book below, and use promo code SHOPIFREAKS for 10% off if you’d like to pick up a copy.

Check it out: https://travelislife.org/shop/capital-cities-book/

In this week's edition of the Shopifreaks podcast I cover:

Enjoy this podcast? Subscribe to my weekly newsletter at www.shopifreaks.com

We don’t always get it right the first time in life. Sometimes breakups happen and we get back together. Other times we change our name hoping for a fresh start. That being said — I like the name “Shopifreaks” and I’m keeping it! Not the case for everyone this week though… 

In this week's edition of the Shopifreaks podcast I cover: 

Enjoy this podcast? Subscribe to my weekly newsletter at www.shopifreaks.com

Greg Yagan joins me to talk about Amazon's upcoming POS system, the Shopify + Yotpo deal, the Apple / Epic decision, and what to expect with shipping this holiday season.