Phia’s founders on how AI is changing online shopping
Phia founders, Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, are building an AI assistant that aims to help you shop, and save.
Online Shopping
Adobe predicts AI-assisted online shopping to grow 520% during the 2025 U.S. holiday season
AI-assisted online shopping is still booming, new U.S. holiday e-commerce forecast shows.
Shein is opening its first physical stores
Shein has announced plans to open its first physical locations in France this November, even as the country works on legislation to regulate the fast-fashion industry, as reported by Euronews and Reuters. The online retailer, which manufactures most of its ultra-cheap clothing in China, will open locations inside department stores across Dijon, Grenoble, Reims, Limoges, […]
TikTok is tagging videos from Gaza with TikTok Shop products
In a video from a Turkish broadcaster, a Palestinian woman walks among the rubble, wailing. “Where are my three daughters, my husband, and my cousin?” She went out to get flour, she says, and came back to find her home collapsed, her family apparently trapped inside. Hit pause on the clip and something strange happens: […]
The tariff apocalypse is here
As President Donald Trump’s August 29th deadline for new tariffs rolled around, the first thing that I thought of was 2026 planners. In July, Trump signed an executive order essentially killing a little-known but highly consequential trade rule, which meant that purchases coming from abroad – like $100 in planners and accessories – could enter […]
TikTok Shop, Amazon, and other marketplaces hosted antisemitic T-shirts
Some TikTok users have reported seeing a troubling product in the last few days: T-shirts for sale on TikTok Shop that are an antisemitic parody of the Jaws movie poster. In the image printed on the shirts, the shark has been transformed into a human nose, the swimmer at the surface of the water is […]
Online shopping is full of copycats
Let’s be real: the internet is full of a lot of the same stuff. From derivative content on social media to websites that all look the same, what was once a portal to new worlds and experiences has been feeling a bit dry recently, like I’ve seen all this stuff before. And now, even the […]
The controversial legal tactic The Trump Organization is using to take down fake merch
Unauthorized merch promoting Donald Trump – from hats and mugs to signs and T-shirts – is everywhere online. Go to a Trump rally or other MAGA political event and you’re bound to find people hawking their DIY Trump wares. The Trump Organization apparently isn’t too pleased. A lawsuit filed last week claims online sellers on […]
Temu users face a ‘high risk’ of finding illegal products, EU says
Temu users in the European Union are at “high risk” of coming across illegal products while shopping on the platform, as reported earlier by The Financial Times. Preliminary findings from the European Commission’s investigation into the platform uncovered baby toys, small electronics, and other items on Temu considered counterfeit, unsafe, or “non-compliant.” Last year, the […]
A-lister antics and Schedule A shenanigans
Summer blockbusters like the new Superman and Jurassic World movies may be doing great at the box office, but promoting them is more complicated than ever. The old celebrity playbook of magazine profiles, TV chat shows, and press junkets isn’t enough in an era of audience fragmentation. Publicists now have to strategize which podcasts to […]