Your Weekly DTC Industry Roundup
Another week in ecommerce, and AI just declared war on Amazon …
While everyone's been obsessing over Meta ads and TikTok bans, OpenAI quietly rolled out a feature that could completely reshape how people shop online. We're talking about buying stuff directly inside ChatGPT conversations without ever touching Google or Amazon.
Meanwhile, DTC performance data shows brands are finally pulling back from the discount death spiral, and guess what? Revenue is actually growing faster without slashing prices every five minutes.
Here's everything that happened:
- OpenAI launches in-chat shopping that bypasses Google and Amazon entirely
- DTC revenue jumps +5.47% as brands ease up on discount wars
- Shopify integrates with ChatGPT for over 1 million merchants
- Consumer sentiment recovers from record lows, signaling spending appetite is back
Time to connect some dots …
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AI Commerce
OpenAI Just Broke Online Shopping
ChatGPT users can now buy products without leaving the conversation.
This is big news …
OpenAI just launched "Instant Checkout" for ChatGPT users, letting people buy from Etsy (and soon over 1 million Shopify stores) without ever leaving the chat interface.
Think about what this means.
Instead of Googling "best running shoes," getting buried in SEO spam, then hunting through Amazon reviews … consumers can just ask ChatGPT for recommendations and buy on the spot.
The AI surfaces products, shows comparisons, handles payments through Apple Pay or Stripe, and completes the entire transaction.
No browser tabs. No search result rabbit holes. No Amazon detours.
OpenAI says results are "organic and unsponsored, ranked purely on relevance." Sure, for now. But once this scales, they'll control product discovery for millions of shoppers.
Google and Amazon have dominated retail discovery for decades. If shopping moves to conversational AI, those gatekeepers just lost their monopoly.
The question isn't IF this disrupts ecommerce. It's how fast your products become discoverable to AI recommendation engines.
Read more details
Market Performance
Consumer Spending Appetite Officially Back From the Dead
Purchase intent rebounds to pre-crisis levels after brutal Q1.
Here's what nobody saw coming …
It's not just that revenue is up +5.47%. It's WHY it's up that matters.
Consumer purchase sentiment just hit its highest levels in almost two years. Remember January when a record percentage of people said they preferred saving over spending? That number has completely flipped.
The "wait and see" mentality that crushed Q1 performance is officially over. People aren't just buying again … they're buying WITHOUT needing to be bribed with discounts.
Think about that for a second. After months of brands slashing prices just to move inventory, consumers are suddenly willing to pay closer to full price.
New customer acquisition costs are up +5.99%, but new customer revenue is growing +2.92%. That means people are actually showing up ready to spend, not just bargain hunting.
This isn't a temporary holiday bump or some weird economic blip. Future purchase sentiment has recovered to levels we haven't seen since before all the recession panic started.
This means that the customers who disappeared during the economic freakout? They're back. And they brought their wallets.
Read full details
AI Commerce
Shopify Just Gave Every Merchant a Personal AI Employee
Sidekick automates everything from product photos to email campaigns
While everyone's debating whether AI will replace copywriters …
Shopify just handed their 1 million+ merchants an AI assistant that does the work of an entire marketing team.
Meet Sidekick - their new AI that handles everything from generating product images to writing email campaigns to analyzing sales data. It's like having a business consultant, photographer, and copywriter all rolled into one.
The product photo tool alone is insane. Upload one image and Sidekick can instantly place your product on different backgrounds, remove backgrounds, or create lifestyle shots. No more paying photographers hundreds of dollars for basic product photography.
But it gets better. The AI writes email campaigns optimized for your specific store data, crafts product descriptions with SEO keywords, and even handles customer service chats in your brand voice.
This isn't some half-baked ChatGPT wrapper. Sidekick knows your store inside and out - your products, sales history, customer behavior, everything. So when it makes recommendations or creates content, it's actually relevant.
The best part? It's free for all Shopify merchants right now.
If you're still manually writing product descriptions and hiring freelancers for basic creative work … you're about to look really expensive compared to your competitors.
See for yourself here
Podcast
Do New Customers Need to Be First-Order-Profitable during BFCM?
You can’t just “optimize” your way through Q4.
In this episode, Richard, Tony, and Luke tackle two real questions from DTC Hotline listeners:
- What should you prioritize when your new customer file is shrinking—short-term profitability or long-term growth?
- How should brands structure creative, offers, and remarketing campaigns heading into BFCM?
The conversation covers hard trade-offs between short-term EBITDA targets and multi-year growth horizons, plus what kinds of investments (media, product, or brand) actually move the needle.
You’ll also hear sharp takes on Q4 strategy—from when to launch holiday creative, to stacking Black Friday vs. Cyber Monday offers, to why simplicity often beats complexity.
Watch now
Final Thoughts
What This Means For You
We just watched AI completely rewrite the rules of commerce in a single week.
OpenAI didn't just launch a shopping feature. They declared war on the entire discovery ecosystem that Google and Amazon built their empires on. When consumers can ask ChatGPT "what should I buy?" and complete the purchase without leaving the conversation … SEO rankings and Amazon listings become irrelevant overnight.
Meanwhile, Shopify handed every merchant the tools that used to cost thousands in freelancer fees. Product photography, email campaigns, customer service … all automated. While you're debating whether to hire help, your competitors are cranking out professional content for free.
And that consumer spending comeback? It proves what we've been saying all along. The discount wars were never about economic necessity. They were about brands with weak positioning trying to buy their way to relevance.
Customers will pay full price for products they actually want. They always have.
Here's what separates the winners from the losers in this new landscape:
The losers are still fighting yesterday's wars … optimizing for Google rankings that might not matter next year and slashing prices because they can't figure out how to create real value.
The winners are building systems that work regardless of which platform controls discovery. They're creating products worth buying at any price and using AI to scale what actually works.
While everyone else is trying to predict which dominoes will fall next …
Smart operators are positioning themselves to profit from the chaos either way.
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