This Week In Ecommerce

EOFY is in full swing, Mal's recording from yet another airport — Perth this time, en route to a Singapore keynote — and the retail news is ramping as fast as the sales calendar. This week is a tale of two retails: brands hitting the wall, and brands quietly cleaning up by doing the exact opposite.

The headline act is a streetwear bloodbath. Trapstar and Geedup — two scarcity-drop darlings on opposite sides of the world — both tipped into administration in the same week, and the post-mortem lands on one culprit: the drop model is a working-capital trap, and the moment your gear is on every kid on the block, you stop being special. Around it: a collapse, a comeback, a viral data scandal, and a value-brand land grab.

• Barbeques Galore — creditors knock back the rescue deal, 59 company-owned stores wind up by month's end, and the gift-card "two-for-one" sting tells you everything about the exit.
• Okanui — the hibiscus-print boardies are booming, proof that Aussie 70s/80s retro heritage is a moat Temu can't knock off (and yes, Oscar Piastri's Lego figure picked floral boardies and thongs).
• Click Frenzy — returns 18 June under the Leibovich brothers, with Australia Post footing the bill for the first 500 retailers, and Mal's "go short, go hard" advice for the EOFY scrum.
• Coles × Palantir — the two-year-old deal goes viral on TikTok again, and we're not buying the "nothing to see here" on what a CIA-and-ICE contractor does with your flybuys data.
• Trapstar + Geedup — the deep dive: scarcity, over-saturation, directors drawing down the working capital, and the difference between a 100-year business and a get-in-get-out play.
• Kmart's Anko — squares up to IKEA with its first standalone K Home store as the squeezed middle keeps losing ground to both ends.

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The week the funnel finally collapsed. New data shows that when Google serves an AI Overview, only 1% of users click through — down from 15–20% on a standard SERP. People are discovering brands on ChatGPT and Claude, then arriving directly via branded search, if they arrive at all. Traffic isn't dying. Attribution is.

Two retail failures landed in the same 48 hours and both told the same story. Stateside Sports went into voluntary administration, weighed down by 31 stores and licensing fees on US sports merchandise. OzGoods Depot called in liquidators owing $2.5m, with the top three creditors being Meta, Microsoft Advertising and Shopify Capital — a creditor list that is its own diagnosis. Meanwhile Kogan reported gross sales up 13% to $876m, Mighty Ape trimmed its losses, and LVLY did the opposite of every other brand by pulling humans back into customer service and lifting NPS from 58 to 76 in a year.

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• Online retail share has barely moved — Mandala/Inside Retail estimate online shopping saves households around $1,400/year, but online retail is stuck at ~12% of total, up roughly 1% in three years. Omnichannel isn't a buzzword, it's the actual ceiling.
• Stateside Sports enters voluntary administration — 31 stores, a major warehouse, and licensing fees on every unit. The cost stack on licensed retail is brutal at scale.
• OzGoods Depot calls in liquidators owing $2.5m — top three creditors: Meta, Microsoft Advertising, and Shopify Capital. If your debt sheet is paid acquisition and revenue-based finance, the model is the problem.
• Kogan reports gross sales up 13% to $876m, gross profit up 11%, EBITDA up 8.6% — the marketplace flywheel is paying off, and Mighty Ape's loss is shrinking the same way Iconic's eventually did after a decade.
• ACCC takes federal court action against Amazon over 41 unicorn backpacks failing battery warning rules — the first real litmus test for the new platform liability laws. If Amazon wins, the floodgates open.
• Google AI Overviews are killing click-through — 1% versus the 15–20% you'd see on a normal SERP. The research, discovery and intent stages are now collapsing into a single AI conversation, and your traffic metrics will not tell you what's happening.
• Article (Redbubble) narrows its losses to -1.1% from -9.3%, gross profit up 10.2% — print-on-demand and personalisation are accelerating, but the margin stack (artist + print + fulfilment + ads) is what makes the model so hard to run.
• LVLY lifts NPS from 58 to 76 in a year by going the opposite direction on AI — real-time delivery updates, live chat with real humans, and a care team empowered to fix issues without escalations.

The week the market said "thanks for staying focused." Guzman & Gomez quietly closed its eight Chicago stores and the share price jumped 20%. Skin Candy pulled off the first properly successful retail ASX listing of the year. And Alo Yoga planted a flag directly opposite Lululemon at Chatswood Chase — a brand move with a price tag and a clear message.

The deep dive everyone needs to sit with: Amazon's new Rufus + Alexa agentic shopping assistant is live in the US, and Mal's been using it. It is, in his words, "weirdly like the future." Meanwhile Shopify has quietly opted every store into its agentic storefront — so if you haven't started optimising your product feed for LLM discovery, you're already behind. We close on the AI layoffs wave (Meta, Microsoft, Intuit, Upwork all swinging the axe) and what Klarna's quiet customer-service backflip tells us about where the real line sits.

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• Guzman & Gomez pulls out of the US — eight Chicago stores shuttered, share price up 20%, and the market just rewarded focus over a vanity expansion.
• 2,000 Rebel Sport managers launch a class action — Super Retail Group in the firing line again over unpaid pre/post-shift hours and through-break work.
• Heaps Normal's Marrickville Health Club named one of the top 10 global retail experiences alongside Zara, Rolex and Erewhon — four months after opening.
• Alo Yoga's first AU sanctuary opens at Chatswood Chase, literally opposite Lululemon, with four more sites locked in by year-end.
• Amazon's new agentic shopping assistant merges Rufus and Alexa — Mal road-tested it in the US and it changes the discovery game, while Shopify quietly opted every store into its agentic storefront.
• Skin Candy's ASX debut — the first genuinely successful retail listing of the year at $245m cap, up 5% on day one, proving the service + product hybrid model still pulls capital.
• The AI layoff wave hits 200k+ globally — Meta, Cloudflare, Upwork, Microsoft and Intuit all cut deep, but Klarna's quiet rehiring of customer service staff says the limits are real.

Mal's back on home soil — briefly — and Alex is dodging the Adelaide rain. Episode 137 lands in a week the ACCC has had its biggest enforcement win in a decade, and the rest of the retail and ecom news has decided to fall in line: discount discipline, brand portfolio pruning, platform consolidation, and the cleanest live test yet of whether the AU consumer is genuinely pulling back, or just buying differently.

The headline this week is Coles — the Federal Court has officially ruled the Down Down program misled customers, and the implications travel well beyond the supermarket aisle. Every AU operator running was/now pricing should be auditing this week. We get into what the ruling actually says, how it changes BFCM planning, and the Klaviyo flow risk most operators haven't thought about. Plus: Country Road Group's five-brand Shopify migration and what it signals about platform monopoly risk, Temple & Webster's 30% earnings miss after choosing margin over volume, and Birkenstock launching nail polish (yes, really).

- Officeworks doubles down on permanent price cuts — round two, and specialty retailers competing in their space are running out of road

- LVMH offloads Marc Jacobs for up to US$1bn as Bernard Arnault declares 2026 "won't be simple" and luxury's biggest house starts pruning- Birkenstock launches its first colour cosmetics with five nail polish shades matched to its sandals — "here for the foot"

- Federal budget allocates $67.7m to the ACCC with Shein and Temu explicitly named in the crosshairs- Coles loses the Down Down case — what the ruling means for your was/now pricing, Klaviyo flows, and BFCM 2026 planning

- Country Road Group consolidates five brands onto Shopify, following Brand Collective's 19-brand move — and Mal's contrarian read on the platform homogenisation risk

- Temple & Webster takes a 30% earnings hit after pivoting to margin optimisation, and the market punishes the share price ~80% off its August peak

The streak's broken — first missed week in three years, courtesy of Retail Fest swallowing the calendar whole. Mal and Alex are back on the mics with a full debrief on the Gold Coast event, the WhatsApp party, and the Pink Flamingo carnage. Plus the Simon Beard reel that turned a vague "the conference was rubbish" critique into a soft pitch for One Life Club — and why that whole move just didn't sit right.

The headline story this week is Gabi and Hezi Leibovich pulling Click Frenzy out of liquidation only weeks after Grant Arnott shut it down. The brothers are bullish, Mal isn't — the model has problems the Iran war didn't cause. Plus Super Retail's 13% share crunch, the AU retail "perfect storm" tightening, and an anonymous whistleblower letter accusing Harvey Norman buyers of taking kickbacks.

• The Retail Fest debrief, the WhatsApp crew shoutouts, and the Simon Beard reel that didn't land — including the One Life Club plug that took the gas out of it
• Super Retail Group shares down 13% as BCF LFL drops 3.3% on the back of an Easter weekend that got killed by fuel prices
• Universal Store sells off 3% on a perfectly good update — what it says about the youth fashion wallet
• Meta launches Hatch agentic AI plus Instagram in-app checkout, and Mal's meeting Mark Zuckerberg in a few days
• Gabby and Hezi Leibovich buy Click Frenzy and Power Retail out of liquidation — Mal's taking the underdog on this one
• The AU retail perfect storm gets worse: CommBank flags inflation hitting 5.4% by mid-year, Australia Post hikes 19%, big retailers offloading inventory
• An anonymous letter alleges Harvey Norman buyers took cash, trips and entertainment from vendors — and what brand owners should do about it regardless of whether the claims stick

Alex is back from iMedia (a touch fresher than Sunday morning suggested) and the lineup is loaded: Meta has officially overtaken Google in ad revenue, China has blocked the Manus AI deal that Meta was building its entire creative platform around, and Lululemon has poached its new CEO from Nike. Plus a quietly significant Aussie consolidation story that Mal cannot stop saying "just makes sense" about.

Headline story: Meta is forecasted to clock $244 billion in ad revenue this year vs Google's $239 billion — first time it's ever happened, and it's a reflection of Meta's creative-first, low-complexity positioning playing better with operators than Google's targeting-heavy legacy. We get into what it means for AU brand budgets, why founders keep telling us they trust Meta more, and the surprise CCP move that just torpedoed Meta's $2B AI bet.

• The rise of the value-seeking customer: Two Broke Chicks, refurbished tech, free alterations at Uniqlo, lifetime warranty at Nudie — when 8 in 10 shoppers are hunting deals, brands need a perceived-value playbook that isn't just discounting.
• Koala's broken IPO: Listed at $3.40, popped to $3.88, now sitting at $3.10 — 30 days in and already a sub-list-price story. The wider question: is the public market dream over for AU retail?
• Treasury Wines re-merges Penfolds: A 40% Chinese New Year sales pop, and TWE is folding its flagship back into the portfolio. Smart consolidation or a P&L masking play?
• Meta vs Google: Meta tipped to overtake Google in ad revenue for the first time ever — plus the Manus AI acquisition just got blocked by the CCP.
• Heidi O'Neill goes from Nike to Lululemon: A 26-year Nike veteran takes the Lulu top job in September. Mouse story in heaven, or more of the same?
• Edible Blooms acquires three hamper brands: Kelly and the team consolidating Dessert Boxes, Gift Baskets, and Hampers.com.au into a single 700+ SKU marketplace in a category Shopify says is growing 43% YoY.

In a week where Allbirds rebranded as an AI company and somehow the stock went up 582% in a single day, we're asking the most important question for any operator: who actually owns the brand when you scale? Alex is back from the dead, iMedia and Retail Fest are around the corner, and the lineup is genuinely loaded — three deep dives across founder vision, the AU brand quietly hitting $10M in under twelve months, and Wesfarmers' very-cleverly-disguised loyalty chess move.

Headline story: Fear of God just eliminated its CEO role to bring Jerry Lorenzo back into daily operations, while Nike sits at an 8-year low under Elliot Hill's slow-burn turnaround. Two brands, opposite ends of the lifecycle, same disease — and we get into what AU founders should actually do at the $50M-plus mark when the operator hire is tempting but the brand essence is fragile.

• Allbirds → NewBird AI: Sustainable footwear pioneer becomes a GPU-as-a-service play. Stock up 582%, then down 36% the next day. The zombie shell era of public markets is here.
• Woolies' ACCC defence + the rise of pawn shops: Woolies is blaming suppliers for the "Prices Dropped" mess while AU consumers are increasingly pawning their stuff to make ends meet — and op shops are jam-packed.
• Decjuba launches sleepwear: A 30-piece permanent range timed neatly into Mother's Day, sitting in the white space Peter Alexander doesn't quite serve.
• Bunnings' weekend dog hoodie drop: Mal missed it. Alex didn't. Bunnings continues its masterclass in turning product drops into earned brand moments.
• Bouf — Booth, Bouf, "boofhead": $10M in under 12 months, Indy Clinton as a co-founder rather than ambassador, five SKUs, expanding into men. The York St Brands holding-co playbook unpacked.
• OnePass goes free for 6 months: Wesfarmers wraps an Amazon-defence loyalty acquisition campaign in cost-of-living relief paper. Read the strategic intent, not the press release.

Alex is out sick this week, so Mal’s flying solo — which means the takes are unfiltered and the tangents are entirely his fault. Five stories this episode spanning a landmark US antitrust verdict, a celebrated Australian DTC brand heading to market, Instagram finally arriving late to the social commerce party, and two quickies on what happens when platforms change the rules and consumers start stockpiling baked beans.

This is a big week. The Live Nation verdict dropped yesterday — a federal jury found the concert giant guilty of operating an illegal monopoly, and the implications stretch well beyond live music into how we all think about platform dependency and vertical integration. If you build your business on infrastructure you don’t own, this one’s worth your full attention.

• Etsy bans all fur products from 11 August — why activist-driven platform policy changes are a channel risk every marketplace seller needs to account for.

• Panic buying hits Australian supermarkets amid Iran jitters — what demand volatility events reveal about inventory planning assumptions.

• Live Nation found guilty of operating an illegal monopoly — breaking down the verdict, the potential breakup, and why the Ticketmaster tax is a warning shot for every operator building on platforms they don’t control.

• al.ive body — the skincare brand built by The Block twins Alisa and Lysandra Fraser — is heading to market, and it’s a masterclass in building an exit-ready DTC business without venture capital.

• Instagram finally launches shoppable affiliate links for Reels — nearly 15 years after affiliate marketing became standard, and why the creator economy’s real problem is still measurement, not features.

Mal's back from Japan — and the news this week is anything but zen. Allbirds just sold for $39 million after hitting a $4.1 billion valuation, Sabo Skirt has taken 16 retailers to court for design theft including Kmart and Shein, and the US cost stack is getting uglier by the week.

This episode, we cover what Allbirds' spectacular collapse really tells us about the DTC hype cycle, why Sabo's legal fight matters for every fashion brand in Australia, and what the Amazon FBA fuel surcharge and the First Sale loophole threat mean for operators selling into the US market. Plus: AusPost acquires same-day delivery platform Rendr, Click Frenzy and Power Retail enter liquidation (blame the Iran war — we call BS), and junior pay rates in retail are about to be abolished.

• AusPost acquires same-day delivery platform Rendr, expanding same-day coverage to 90% of the Australian population
• Click Frenzy and Power Retail enter liquidation — the Iran war gets the blame, but the model was already broken
• Junior pay rates in retail abolished for workers 18+, with rises of up to 42% phased in through to 2030
• ACCC hands down Australia's first financial penalty for undisclosed influencer marketing — the Photobook Shop case
• Allbirds sells for $39M — a 99% wipeout from its $4.1B peak, and what it really means for DTC brand building
• Sabo Skirt takes 16 retailers to court over design copying, including Kmart and a Shein that apparently didn't get the memo after their 2024 settlement
• Amazon FBA adds a 3.5% fuel surcharge from April 17 — and don't expect them to ever take it off — plus the First Sale tariff loophole under threat in the US Congress

• AusPost acquires same-day delivery platform Rendr, expanding same-day coverage to 90% of the Australian population
• Click Frenzy and Power Retail enter liquidation — the Iran war gets the blame, but the model was already broken
• Junior pay rates in retail abolished for workers 18+, with rises of up to 42% phased in through to 2030
• ACCC hands down Australia's first financial penalty for undisclosed influencer marketing — the Photobook Shop case
• Allbirds sells for $39M — a 99% wipeout from its $4.1B peak, and what it really means for DTC brand building
• Sabo Skirt takes 16 retailers to court over design copying, including Kmart and a Shein that apparently didn't get the memo after their 2024 settlement
• Amazon FBA adds a 3.5% fuel surcharge from April 17 — and don't expect them to ever take it off — plus the First Sale tariff loophole under threat in the US Congress

Mal's recording from a stairwell in Osaka — because Japan doesn't open cafes before 10am and that's the quietest spot in the building.

Easter crept up on everyone this year — except Cadbury, who had their shrinkflation strategy ready to go for the second year running. We also dig into the ACCC finally fining a retailer for undisclosed influencer reviews (and why the penalty might actually be too small to matter), the AusPost fuel surcharge hike hitting 30,000 contract customers from April 23, and KMD Brands — Kathmandu, Rip Curl, Oboz — entering a voluntary trading suspension as a recapitalisation hangs in the balance.

Topics:

• Easter egg shrinkflation — Cadbury's hollow egg packs are smaller and more expensive for the second consecutive year, down from 408g to 340g since 2024 while the price jumped from $12.50 to $18. Cocoa wholesale prices have actually fallen. CHOICE is doing the forensic work so consumers don't have to.
• ACCC fines PhotobookShop — $39,600 in penalties for 107 undisclosed influencer reviews and selectively editing negative comments out of a published review. Mal makes the case the fine is too small to be a real deterrent.
• AusPost fuel surcharge hike — contract customers face a jump from 4.8% to 12% from April 23. Time to revisit your free shipping threshold and unit economics before it hits the P&L.
• KMD Brands trading suspension — the owner of Kathmandu, Rip Curl and Oboz enters voluntary ASX suspension while a Goldman Sachs-led recapitalisation is finalised. Half-year results delayed indefinitely.
• GAP returns to Australia via Myer — the third attempt, this time through local operator Fashionata across 27 Myer stores. Six consecutive quarters of global growth, cultural traction with a new generation, and Myer continuing its aggressive brand refresh strategy. Mal raises the anti-Americanism wildcard.
• Big Tech's very bad week — Meta hit with a $375M verdict in New Mexico, YouTube and Meta liable in California, and Australia's eSafety commissioner investigating five platforms for non-compliance with the under-16 social media ban. What this means for your channel mix, why diversification isn't optional anymore, and ChatGPT ads landing in Australia.