EP265 - News and Listener Questions Amazon News Amazon acquisition of MGM DC attorney general sues Amazon on antitrust grounds Amazon limited FBA access Amazon addressing review fraud Amazon Prime Day likely June 21 and 22 Other News Perch (from Episode 252) raises $775M Walmart testing a new livestream format Fedex struggling with late deliveries and adding higher surchages Retail Q1 Earnings Ulta – US Comps up 65.9% (up 7% from 2YA) Costco – US Comps up 18.2%, e-commerce up 41.2% Dollar General – US Comps down 4.6%; (up 17.1% from 2YA) Best Buy – US Comps up 37.9%, e-commerce up 7.6% (online revenue was 33.2% versus 42.2% last year) Burlington – Comps up 20% (shutdown e-commerce Q1 2020) Gap – Comps up 28% (up 13% vs 2YA). Digital up 82% vs 2 YA.  Digital now 40% of total sales. Episode 265 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday May 27, 2021. Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 265 being recorded on Thursday May 27th 2021 I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I’m here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:41] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners, Jason before we jump into some juicy news and we got a couple listener questions I wanted to send a big congrats to Chris Bell if that name is familiar to listeners he is the CEO of perch one of those quote unquote F be a Amazon Seller roll up companies and he was here on a pisode 252. Jason: [1:07] Yeah I heard him he did a small raise this week did you you get the details of that at all. Scot: [1:15] I did and you know in the The Venture Capital World which I am. I guess involved in to some degree you have your seed round and you’re a around and your B and your C so they just did there are around and what’s kind of special about it is usually you’ll do something like you know maybe couple hundred thousand to a cup small millions in a seed round and Silicon Valley they the seeds are pretty large the you’ll do an AR around maybe five to ten million and a be around 20 to 30 or 40 Etc they are around they did 775 million so so it’s they proclaimed their the fastest company to achieve profitable unicorn status unicorn says means you have a billion-dollar valuation and then they said they have been profitable since Inception which is interesting because, if you. [2:14] Keep it so that then what that means is they’re probably just going out and using all this Capital to acquire profitable companies and therefore as an entity from an ebitda perspective there there there’s an accounting trick where they’re profitable but the the the Goodwill of those Acquisitions is kind of below the line then it’s the largest series a Ever Raised by a consumer goods company by a factor of over four so I think the previous record was something like a hundred hundred and twenty-five so yeah that is a crazy rays and you know I think we’ve previously talked about I think it’s 3 billion in the US and five globally raised for these types of companies and and this obviously text about another billion on there and then I think a song article that this cause other people to reload their War chest as well so it’s it’s a very active segment and it’s exciting to see / qu as a friend of the show really really start to scale up. Jason: [3:13] Yeah yeah I had two immediate thoughts number one clearly it’s an advantage to get on the Jason and Scot show before doing your raised because it seems like there’s about a four x multiple you get just for being on the show. And no. Scot: [3:28] Yeah that was in the footnotes of the press release. Jason: [3:30] Yeah and number two it’s going to be ugly when they show up on Shark Tank and try to do an up round because mr. wonderful is going