Vinny O’Brien says e-commerce conversion rates have hovered around 3% for twenty years. He puts that to Darin Lynch at Shoptoberfest, and Darin’s answer is that a lot of B2B companies are measuring success in the wrong place.

Darin started Irish Titan 22 years ago. He sorts commerce history into rough eras. He calls the early one Neanderthal commerce, when sites were difficult for merchants to build and for customers to use. Then came a long stretch shaped by platforms and search engines, more trustworthy but still built around the merchant and the tech. Now a buyer can describe what they want to ChatGPT, Claude or a brand’s own agent and get to a product.

His case is that a B2B manufacturer or distributor shouldn’t judge commerce by how many orders go through its commerce platform’s checkout. Plenty of those orders come in through punch out or the ERP, and more will happen inside AI agents. He breaks agentic commerce into data enrichment, discovery and checkout, and wants a separate success metric for each.

He also talks about the Iowa farm his dad built up from 40 acres, and why he thinks Shopware’s US timing hurt it during the COVID rush. Darin is a Shopware agency partner who has emceed this event for the last two years, so weigh his view that Shopware has the best community of any platform with that in mind.

Vinny also asks about vocabulary. Every event defines agentic commerce differently, and merchants are left to sort it out themselves. Darin agrees and thinks the agencies that get through this period will help set standards, though he didn’t say how that would happen or who would lead it.

#watsonweekly #shopware #irishtitan #ecommerce #agenticcommerce #b2bcommerce

UPS has now shed almost all of its Amazon volume. The 18-month wind-down took out about two million pieces a day and roughly $4.5 billion in expenses, leaving UPS with a smaller network that earns more per package but has less volume to set prices with. Rick looks at who held the leverage in that split, and whether a UPS focused on healthcare logistics is turning into a specialty carrier.

BJ’s Wholesale Club plans to cut about 20% of its products over the next couple of years, taking older clubs from around 7,500 items to 6,000 or 6,500. The last time BJ’s tried this, sales fell and it added items back. Lululemon and Under Armour have made similar cuts, as has Dollar General.

On October 8 the U.S. Court of International Trade certified a class of importers who paid IEEPA tariffs between February 2025 and February 2026 and haven’t filed their own suits. The court estimates about $30 billion in refunds would otherwise stay with the government, and its order says most of the importers who haven’t used Customs’ CAPE refund system are small. If you sell online and imported anything in that window, call your customs broker this week.

Albertsons is asking Kroger for between $8 billion and $9.3 billion over their collapsed 2022 merger, against a $600 million termination fee in the contract. The trial in Delaware began October 19.

On October 29 Rick hosts Agentic Island, a two-hour virtual summit on agentic commerce sponsored by Shopware. It includes a fireside chat with Shopware co-founder Stefan Hamann and sessions with agencies that help brands prepare for AI shopping agents. It starts at 9 a.m. Pacific. Register here: [link]

Investor minute

• Confido raised a $55 million Series B
• Marlo raised $5 million in seed funding
• Ultra Robotics raised a $50 million Series A
• Stord secured a $400 million credit facility led by Citi
• The Knot acquired Zola for an undisclosed price

Rick thinks Starbucks has lost its way. Jess thinks Brian Niccol’s turnaround is working, and she points to four straight quarters of growth.

Niccol has put handwritten Sharpie names back on cups and is spending $1.2 billion to make stores more comfortable. Rick says a better seat means nothing when you wait 25 minutes for burnt coffee. Jess says consistency matters more than quality, and that cake pops and pink drinks keep parents and Gen Alpha coming back.

Rick asks whether Starbucks should accept being the McDonald’s of coffee or go upscale with Starbucks Reserve. He also floats a Yum Brands-style parent company that buys other chains. Jess wonders if it needs a Krispy Kreme to take on Dunkin’. Rick calls Niccol’s six-point strategy a zero-point plan.

He thinks the board could push Niccol out before they cover Starbucks again.

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