e-commerce & social media

The e-retailer, which has had trouble getting some apparel manufacturers to sell to it wholesale, is now selling apparel for women, men and kids under its own brands. Here’s a close look at these Amazon brands and their prospects.

Amazon.com Inc. over the last eight months rolled out a series of Amazon-owned private-label apparel brands. The lines follow through on plans previously hinted at by Amazon executives, and represent a way for Amazon to become a bigger force in apparel, a segment where it’s been limited by the reluctance of some higher-end fashion brands to sell to Amazon.

KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst Edward Yruma identified the brands in a research note released earlier this week based on his research. Amazon has not commented or confirmed the brands directly, but Internet Retailer located trademark applications filed by Amazon Technologies Inc. for six of the seven brands dating to March 2015. Amazon did not respond to inquiries....

Via Jeff Domansky

The company is testing a dormant menu option that appears to hint that commerce services will be coming soon.

... This is the latest in a stream of hints that Twitter is preparing a foray into commerce. Back in June,Re/Code spotted a “buy now” button that began appearing in tweets with links to retail siteFancy. The same publication previously got its hands on documents that appeared to show commerce plans, while Twitter has been rumored to be working on a deal with payments provider Stripe for some time.

At this point it isn’t entirely clear what Twitter has planned, but the “payment and shipping” option – which appears to be where users would manage their payment methods and enter their delivery address – clearly ties in with other clues....

Via Jeff Domansky