Welcome to the Moast newsletter. We spend the week collecting news, trends, and other content that we think would be interesting to e-commerce founders and CMOs. Our goal is to provide value without sounding like a promo for our app. Helpful wether you use Moast or not.

The AI labs are fighting in public again. Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman published an essay arguing that Anthropic trains Claude to treat its own consciousness as an open question, which he says could make advanced AI impossible to control. Anthropic's position is that the uncertainty is honest. Either way, the tools we all now run our businesses on are being shaped by this argument.

Here's what caught our attention in the world of e-commerce this week 👇

1/ DTC Headlines

Retail sales jumped 1.2% in August, the biggest gain since March

-> Total sales hit $773.9B, up 6% year over year and well past the 0.8% forecast.

-> Nonstore retailers rose 2.6%, reversing July's pullback.

-> Economists raised Q3 GDP estimates on the back of it. Shoppers are still spending.

See the full August retail numbers →

Consumer prices are up 30% since 2019

-> That's roughly 2.5 times the total price growth of the entire 2012 to 2019 period.

-> Beef is up 98% since 2012, rent 74%, dining out 69%, car insurance 124%.

-> Headline inflation has cooled to 3.4%, but the compounding is what shoppers actually feel.

See what got more expensive →

Mbappe left Nike for On after nearly 20 years

-> The Swiss brand signed him as a global ambassador and is entering soccer, a category Nike and Adidas have long owned.

-> Thierry Henry joins as director of football, and Barcelona's Sydney Schertenleib moves into product development.

-> The deal includes equity. Another defection in a rough year for Nike.

Inside On's move into soccer →

Beyond Yoga opened a New York pop-up in one of its biggest e-commerce markets

-> The 2,300 square foot shop runs through January with exclusive merchandise and activations.

-> It follows a weeklong 2024 pop-up that performed well enough to justify a longer run.

-> Let your own order data pick the location. That's the whole playbook.

How Beyond Yoga picked New York →

Target's new AI tools are built around discovery and reviews

-> Photo Search lets shoppers upload an image to find matching products. Review Insights groups feedback into themes.

-> Target says Review Insights is already lifting conversion and add-to-carts.

-> Buy Again and Continue Shopping round out the suite. Social proof, summarized by machine.

See Target's AI shopping suite →

US e-commerce just grew double digits for the first time in five years

-> Q2 online sales hit $329.5B, up 12.4% year over year, the best quarter since 2021.

-> E-commerce grew about 2.3 times faster than total retail.

-> Online is now 23.5% of US retail sales. The post-pandemic cooldown is over.

Read the Q2 e-commerce data →

Toys R Us is opening 120 stores, some of them content studios

-> The holiday expansion takes it from 40 to 160 standalone US stores, its biggest since the 2017 bankruptcy.

-> Select locations get Creator Studios, spaces where influencers and brands film content and host launches.

-> Five pilot studios open this month. Retail space designed as a production set.

Inside the Toys R Us expansion →

2/ Shopify

ChatGPT Ads are now live inside the Shopify admin

-> A free app lets merchants create, run, and track ChatGPT campaigns without leaving Shopify.

-> OpenAI pulls products straight from Shopify Catalog, so there's no feed to build.

-> US merchants now, other ChatGPT Ads markets starting September 23. Shopify is OpenAI's first commerce partner.

How ChatGPT Ads for Shopify works →

3/ What We Found Interesting

Delivery apps quietly became retail's same-day infrastructure

-> DoorDash now serves 44 of the top 100 US retailers. Instacart reaches 2,200 banners and nearly 100,000 stores.

-> The model turns existing stores into distributed warehouses instead of building fulfillment centers.

-> The tradeoff: a cut of every order, and less control over pricing and the customer experience.

How the delivery backbone got built →

Your product photos might be lying to your customers

-> Our new piece looks at the gap between polished studio shots and what actually arrives in the box.

-> That gap shows up later as returns, bad reviews, and customers who don't come back.

-> Real customer video closes it. Here's what to fix first.

Read the full piece →

4/ What We Found Helpful

Teens trust AI recommendations more than their friends

-> 31% of teens trust AI product picks over a friend's, and 23% over their parents', per Mastercard's 26,000-person survey.

-> 27% would let a fully AI-run assistant shop for them. Only 16% of their parents would.

-> Your next customers trust the machine. Be what the machine recommends.

Read the generational AI data →

Meta's Creator Marketing Hub is live, and Q4 is the time to use it

-> Creator discovery, messaging, approvals, and partnership ads now sit in one place, with one-click ad creation.

-> Facebook creators join the Creator Marketplace API, and Instagram Live ads go live September 29.

-> 45% of consumer purchases are influenced by creator recommendations. Build your list before the calendar locks.

See what to do before the holidays →