13 November 2015
At SparkOptimus, we try to highlight the most important news and background stories in digital, e-commerce and retail. Here is our selection of last week’s news:
We have seen many highs and lows in the past week. Alibaba’s Singles Day was again a big success, breaking all former records with $14.3 billion in sales, 54% higher than last year. Zalando is close to reaching a stunning €3 billion revenue for full 2015 with almost 10,000 employees. The high adoption rate of mobile devices is easily visible in their website statistics; with 59% of visits coming from mobile, against 43% last year. Amazon announced today that it will expand its grocery delivery options to U.K. customers with the launch of Amazon Pantry. To promote the service aimed at prime members, Amazon discounted the prime membership temporarily with 25%.
Not all singles are spending money on singles day. Some are taking the opportunity to make some money by selling the stuff their ex left, after – what we presume has to be – a bad break up. The original investors in Square must have had the same bad break up feelings with their precious company. Square was once Silicon Valley’s sweetheart, but now seems to let investors down as the IPO valuation is 30% below what earlier investors paid. The valuation of the app with self-erasing pictures, Snapchat, has also taken plunge. Prominent investor Fidelity marks down their investment in Snapchat with 25%. Is this the end of enormous (over)valuations in techland? Like our friend Alanis Morisette showed us all on ‘The Late Late Show’, times really are changing.