This Week In Ecommerce

Episode 150 — and Mal's flying solo this week with Alex over in New Zealand, so the proper 150th milestone celebration is on hold until next week. In the meantime, it's a big one: seven stories, four quickies and three deep dives, built almost entirely around Australia's reporting season and one theme underneath all of it — who's actually disciplined enough to make hard calls, and who's just getting lucky.

We open with the messiest story of the week: Valley Eyewear, the celebrity sunglasses brand worn by Chris Hemsworth and Margot Robbie, has gone into liquidation — not because the market turned on them, but because its own co-founders took each other to the Federal Court. From there it's a run through Adore Beauty and Temple & Webster's very different record years, a hot-topic detour into the Tate brothers' court filings and what they reveal about the AU 'ecom millionaire' course industry, before three deep dives on Step One, City Chic, and Kogan — three very different companies all leaning on the same thing right now: operational discipline.

• Valley Eyewear's celebrity-worn sunglasses brand has gone into liquidation via a Federal Court order filed by its own co-founders against their business partner.
• Adore Beauty posted record $207.3 million revenue but saw underlying EBITDA nearly halve to $3.8 million, the deliberate cost of doubling its store network to 20 locations.
• Temple & Webster's underlying EBITDA jumped 28% to a new record, helped by a $3 million AI-automation saving in H2 alone and exclusive products now over half of revenue.
• Court filings in the Tate brothers' US extradition case reveal their signature luxury lifestyle was largely rented or paid promotion, and Mal draws the parallel to AU 'ecom millionaire' course marketing.
• Step One swung to a $6.4 million loss as it deliberately walked away from deep discounting, protected by a debt-free balance sheet with $25.8 million in cash.
• City Chic's underlying EBITDA nearly doubled as ANZ growth offset a forced 42% pullback from the US market, alongside a quiet shift of its Amazon business to a marketplace model.
• Kogan's core business grew 16% on AI-driven margin gains, while Mighty Ape finally returned to positive EBITDA after an 18-month operational clean-up following its botched 2024 platform migration.

Mal's calling in from a Bali sunrise mid-reset before Q4 hits — squirrels, banana trees, the lot — while Alex is back in Adelaide mopping up after cars got swept down a creek in the weekend's flash floods. The news doesn't take a holiday though, and this week's two deep dives bookend the AU retail distress cycle from both ends: Proud Poppy filed for voluntary administration one week ago, still insisting it's "business as usual," while Stax — which collapsed back in June — has just been bought out of receivership by the Pushas founders in an IP-only deal that leaves every pre-collapse customer order unfulfilled and unpaid.

• The RBA held the cash rate at 4.35% for the third time this year, and Mal reckons there's still another hike in it before Christmas.
• Frasers' hostile bid for Accent Group got messier, with a board resignation landing in the middle of an active ASIC insider trading probe.
• Playboy's Q2 results confirmed Honey Birdette is the standout of the portfolio — comps up 15%, gross margin up to 65.1%, and US stores hitting $1,500 a square foot.
• Proud Poppy entered voluntary administration one week ago, and the hosts flag the now-familiar pattern of over-expanded store footprints catching up with founders.
• Stax has been rescued out of receivership by the Pushas founders — but only the IP, not the liabilities or the unfulfilled orders.
• Brett Blundy's Lovisa tried to trademark rival brand HARLI + HARPA in the US to block its expansion — and lost.

This week Mal's flying solo — Alex is out, so it's just opinions, no pushback. It's a mixed bag: a couple of quick cost-and-consequence stories, then three deep dives that all circle the same question in different ways — what happens when a business chases the top line instead of the bottom one.

The most interesting one might be the last: Mal goes deep on Australia Post's "brilliantly Australian" pitch to retailers, and finds a pretty awkward contradiction sitting inside AusPost's own data.

• Liquidators reveal Stax's real debt load is $24 million, three times what the company itself disclosed — plus an unconfirmed rumour that a buyer may already be locked in.
• Australia's fuel excise reprieve ends on 3 August, pushing petrol back toward 194c/L and adding both a freight-cost and a consumer-confidence problem for retailers.
• A new 12.5% US tariff on Australian imports is officially about "modern slavery" — practically, it's just more margin pressure for brands selling into America.
• Barbeques Galore's collapse and sale to ACOM International lays out, in forensic detail, what a private equity dividend recap actually does to a business.
• Country Road Group and Michael Hill both chose margin discipline over top-line growth this reporting season — and the market rewarded both of them for it.
• Mal takes on Australia Post's "ecosystem" keynote and finds it sitting awkwardly next to AusPost's own numbers on marketplace share and discount-addicted shoppers.

Mal and Alex are back this week still hoarse from two big days on the podcast stage at Online Retailer and the ORIAS — congrats to The Iconic on a first-time Online Retailer of the Year win, and to Ben Hare for taking out industry recognition. From there it's a genuinely wide-ranging one: a AI-authenticity reckoning hitting everything from guitar strings to chart-topping AI covers, a Shopify platform shift that's quietly displacing freelance dev work, and a healthy dose of FY27 dread.

The story with the most teeth this week is Kogan, who an ABC News investigation found has been running a second site, Exclusive Brands, selling identical products at a median $100 more than Kogan.com — inflating the "was" price it then discounts against. Kogan denies wrongdoing, but with the ACCC increasingly active on misleading price comparisons, Mal and Alex dig into where legitimate multi-brand pricing ends and where this starts.

• BCF's giveaway-only Fisho's Onesie has entries closing this Friday, and it's a masterclass in high-shareability, low-budget campaign design.
• Shopify's Horizon theme rebuild is being optimised for its Sidekick AI assistant first and humans second — 20% of merchants are already using it, racking up 25 million edits.
• D'Addario is fending off accusations its new string-demo video used AI-generated music, part of a bigger reckoning playing out across Spotify's AI-track purge and Australia's AI-covered #1 single.
• Kogan's alleged self-comparison pricing model is under scrutiny, with former ACCC chair Rod Sims flagging it as a case worth investigating.
• Mal shares how his own clients are handling price rises with upfront comms and subscriber grandfathering — the opposite play to Kogan's.
• Myer's full-year update shows underlying growth barely moved once the Apparel Brands acquisition is stripped out, against a backdrop of consumer confidence down roughly 20 points.
• Bricks-and-mortar preference has swung hard, from 41% to 68% of shoppers, as buyers chase the trust and tactility online can't offer.
• Virtual try-on tech is fast becoming table stakes for online eyewear, and Alex is on the hunt for an Australian Warby Parker equivalent.
• FY27 is shaping up heavier — CGT changes, tax hikes and a US tariff rise from 10% to 12.5% are all on operators' radars.
• A respectful shout-out to Jackie and the Black Milk team, who've had to move onshore manufacturing to China, affecting 15 local jobs.
• Mal's heading to eTail next, Alex is off to Auckland for the Unified Commerce Assembly in a month.

It's bloody freezing, we're one week out from Online Retailer in Sydney (expect an impromptu Qantas Lounge recording), and before the conference chaos kicks off we've got a genuinely grim week of retail to unpack — three collapses, a national outage and a $40m loss.

The Stax saga got worse, and it's the one to read twice: customers who "bought" during the late-June pre-sale weren't paying for stock on a shelf — they were funding product that was never made, and now they're getting neither the goods nor a refund, with founders Don and Matilda pointing them to their banks for a chargeback. It's a masterclass in torching a brand on the way out. We get into that, plus who (if anyone) buys what's left.

• Prime's Australian distributor collapses with ~$85k in the bank and millions owed — the inevitable end of a hype brand that never converted the queues into a repeat purchase.
• Stax's pre-sale buyers are left with no product, no refund and a "talk to your bank" — and that trust doesn't come back under new ownership.
• A four-hour Telstra outage knocked out payments nationwide, and the real lesson is single-vendor reliance plus a crisis-comms scorecard (Telstra fronted it fast; Optus's ghost still lingers).
• Retail spending is actually up — but only because over-65s lifted spend 14% year-on-year while younger cohorts contract, and most brands are still aiming at the shrinking half.
• Adairs is prepping investors for a $40m loss that's really a Focus on Furniture write-down, not an operating collapse — the core brand's EBIT still grew 15%, and the squeezed middle of furniture is where the pain sits.
• City Chic retreats from the US as unit economics and tariffs bite, while Uniqlo books a fifth straight record year — two opposite answers to "should you go global?".

We're on the other side of EOFY and into the thick of H2 — and Australian retail served up one of its messiest weeks in a while. Two heritage-adjacent brands hit crisis on the very same day, a resale platform war escalated, and a two-year-old takeover saga added another wrinkle, all while Myer and T2 quietly proved that some operators are still finding real growth in this market.

The standout story is the Betts and Stax double: on the same day, Betts entered a managed restructure — closing 20 of its remaining 35 stores and pivoting hard to online — while Stax entered receivership and is now in a rushed fire sale, reportedly triggered by a disgruntled major creditor. One is a 134-year-old retailer trying to right-size before it's too late; the other is a five-year-old DTC brand that's been unprofitable for three-plus years and is now drowning in unfulfilled pre-orders and refund complaints. Same week, same headlines, very different stories underneath.

• Country Road Group made MD Helen Wright redundant after just 18 months, splitting the role into a Chief Product Officer and a GM of Apparel & Accessories (Shani Delargy) — a structural signal, not just a personnel change.
• Myer added 25,000 products to its marketplace, with marketplace sales up 41% in FY25 and 80% of marketplace shoppers also buying Myer's own stock.
• T2 turned 30 with EBIT up 20% year-on-year, proof that retail theatre and premium packaging can still win in the most commoditised category imaginable.
• US Prime Day pushed online spend to $26.4bn (+9.3% YoY) with BNPL up 9.5%, while adult women drove real growth in the toy category — Lego, plush toys and collector cards, not just kids' stuff.
• Betts entered a managed restructure (20 of 35 stores closing) and Stax entered receivership on the same day, with Stax now in a fast-tracked fire sale after years of unprofitability.
• Depop is scrapping its 10% AU seller fee from 22 July after Vinted's zero-fee Australian launch — a genuine seller win, or a defensive land-grab to lock in supply before the competitive dust settles.
• The Accent Group takeover saga rolled on, with Frasers selling its Malaysian Sports Direct business to MAP Active to fund its $0.65-a-share bid for Accent, which the company's independent board committee has rejected as undervalued.

Heading to Online Retailer in a couple of weeks? Check the show notes for the TWIEVIP code for a free expo floor pass.

End of financial year is done and — despite the sale noise — the market actually went backwards in real terms, with Roy Morgan tipping EOFY growth of just 1.9%, under CPI. Mal's on the road in Sydney (yet another hotel), Alex is dodging a South Australian thunderstorm, and between the World Cup and NBA free agency it's basically Christmas in Mal's world. Plenty to get through.

The spine of this week: community is the last real moat — and the tax office is quietly pulling the rug out from under brands that forgot it. Hyrox is a billion-dollar cult with near-zero acquisition cost, while Stax and Geedup — two former Young Rich List darlings — have collapsed inside a fortnight, with the ATO increasingly the trigger. Plus a new boss at David Jones, a COO move at Adore Beauty, an Uber Eats campaign we loved, and a Made-in-Australia marketplace worth watching.

• EOFY reality check — Roy Morgan tipped EOFY sales growth at just 1.9% (below CPI), and while some brands cleared stock brilliantly, the 80%-off-for-three-weeks crowd waved a red flag on margin.
• Discovery is the new battleground — timings were all over the place (Click Frenzy's comeback, early vs late-June sales), and getting onto a curated list like Two Broke Chicks' EOFY round-up is earned-media gold.
• David Jones' new CEO — Erica Berchtold (ex-The Iconic, ex-Mosaic) becomes DJ's first female CEO, replacing Scott Fyfe, with PE owner Anchorage Capital unlikely to be patient as pre-tax losses widen to $95.5m on sales of ~$2bn.
• Adore Beauty's new COO — Jasmine Russell joins from gifting brand Lvly as Adore leans further into its store rollout and omnichannel growth.
• Uber Eats "bags" the city — giant Uber Eats bags wrapped around rival brands' billboards (GYG, Maccas, KFC, Hungry Jack's, Petbarn) — a masterclass in leaning on a distinctive brand asset rather than making Meta and Google do all the lifting.
• Made in Australia marketplace — Haroon Sheikh's new platform lists only verified Australian-made brands and competes on founder storytelling over price, with the real test being whether that goodwill converts at a viable cost of acquisition.
• Hyrox's billion-dollar cult — LVMH-backed L Catterton is reportedly in talks to take a major stake in Hyrox at a valuation as high as ~$1bn, buying not a sport but a cashed-up, referral-driven community with almost no paid acquisition.
• The AU brand reckoning — Stax entered receivership on 24 June across all four entities (12 stores down to two, permanently 50% off) and Geedup into liquidation, with Mal's "gym test" and a failure to renew the brand as the cautionary tale.
• The ATO is the silent assassin — insolvencies are up sharply YoY (retail and hospo leading), the ATO is now a leading creditor and far less willing to negotiate payment plans, so budget for tax like a household bill — buy the Hyundai, not the Lambo.
• See us at Online Retailer (22–23 July) — all-access passes are nearly gone, but free expo-floor passes are available (https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.onlineretailer.com/en-gb/register.html?cat%3DRetailer%26ct%3DU2FsdGVkX18zizAT%252FPRxllJH9%252FV5p%2B%2BH4EYAQXzu%2BZFrIUBftFov4nFdHg365ESU%26utm_source%3DMalChia%26utm_medium%3DPartner%26utm_campaign%3DMarComms&source=gmail&ust=1782853352122000&sa=E); Mal's hosting the NORA podcast stage. Use code: TWIEVIP

Alex is back from the dead, Mal's discovered the Riverside sound-effects board, and the World Cup has well and truly taken over the Cheer household — but underneath the banter this is a big one. It's the episode where AI stopped nibbling at the edges of ecommerce and started eating the actual buying journey: discovery, the checkout, and the ad auction, all at once.

The headline: Google has switched on agentic commerce in Australia — we're the first market in the region — letting shoppers buy straight out of Search, AI Mode and Gemini, with Kogan, Bunnings, Adore Beauty, Petbarn and The Iconic first in the door. The cart is moving into the model, and if your product feed isn't clean you simply won't exist. From there it's ChatGPT ads, the death of growth-at-all-costs DTC, and why the smartest money this year is getting off Meta and Google.

• Google agentic commerce lands in Australia — the checkout moves into Search, AI Mode and Gemini, and clean structured product data becomes the price of entry.
• New York's world-first "synthetic performer" law forces AI-actor disclosure on any ad reaching the state — and the ACCC's $138k HiSmile fine proves the same honesty crackdown is already here at home.
• A pack of TikTok-native activewear challengers is out-creating the incumbents on speed — a lesson for Australia's crowded field of Stax, P.E Nation, Muscle Nation and Nimble.
• Ads have arrived in ChatGPT off the back of OpenAI's eye-watering $39bn loss — and the early-adopter window looks a lot like the early days of Meta.
• Pure-play DTC's growth-at-all-costs model is dead: Dôen, La Ligne and Cinq à Sept grew to nine figures and stayed profitable by being deliberate, while Everlane, Glossier and Allbirds sold for scraps.
• Paramount's US-only CTV deck is really a case for diversification — get off the small screen, use the surfaces nobody's touching, and remember the 95:5 rule: you're ignoring 95% of your market chasing ROAS.

Solo show from a gate at Sydney Airport — Alex is out sick, and the week didn't slow down to match. Regulation, reputation and the biggest float in history, all at once.

🎟️ Online Retailer 2026 — 50 listener passes, plus free expo passes. First in, first served. Use code TWIEPodcast (link below).

This week:

• The EU "withdrawal button" (live 19 June) — if a customer can buy in one click, they now have to cancel in one click. Applies to any Aussie brand selling into the EU; penalties up to 4% of regional sales. Check Shopify's comms now.
• Grill'd in the Federal Court — the ACCC alleges only ~4% of 5M "Tree Day Tuesday" burgers actually triggered the promised tree-planting donation. Cause marketing you can't back up is now a legal risk, not just a trust one.
• Lincraft closes all ~60 stores, going online-only — but craft is a touch-and-feel category, so this reads more like a managed exit than a pivot.
• Drop Shop reinvents the bottle shop — Dan Sims' konbini-style store sorts wine by occasion and budget, not grape. Clever, but a feature not a moat. If it works, Dan Murphy's copies it.
• Nike's first global gym deal (The Yard) — two months after shutting its own gyms, Nike rents presence in 100+ rooms full of its exact customer. Build vs partner, done right.
• SpaceX floats at ~$1.8T — the biggest IPO ever, and because your super tracks the indices, you probably just helped make Elon a trillionaire.