Shifting Gears for the Second Half of the Year

We’ve officially crossed into the second half of the year, and if the first six months are any indication, the pace of change in the e-commerce landscape isn’t slowing down anytime soon. 

Looking back at H1, the structural changes across the retail sector have been fascinating. The market continues to confirm a major shift in consumer habits, where shoppers are moving fluidly across native brand sites, dominant global marketplaces, and rising challenger apps. 

In fact, I recently came across a fantastic LinkedIn post by Teresa Sperti at Arktic Fox that perfectly highlights this structural evolution. The metrics from their analysis are an eye-opener: right now, 1 in every 4 dollars spent online in Australia is going through a marketplace. 

The data she shared shows the massive scale local and global players are commanding across AU retail: 

• Amazon is leading the charge, pulling in ~$7.1B in sales with 16.8M monthly visits. 
• Challengers like Temu (~$3B sales, 18.2M visits) and Shein (~$1.9B sales, 6.9M visits) are capturing huge chunks of attention. 
• Local mainstays are holding strong too, with Kogan.com hitting ~$0.93B in gross sales (5M visits) and THE ICONIC at ~$0.89B in net sales (8.2M visits). 
• Meanwhile, eBay continues to be a staple channel with a massive 13M monthly visits. 

What does this mean for H2? 

As we head deeper into the back half of the year, we’re rapidly approaching the major golden quarter peak events (Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas). Because consumers are increasingly marketplace-first and waiting specifically for these promotional windows to spend, the pressure on backend retail infrastructure is going to intensify dramatically. Winning in H2 won’t just be about having a great product; it will be about data execution. 

If your inventory updates are lagging, if your promotional pricing fails to sync across Amazon, eBay, Kogan, and THE ICONIC simultaneously, or if your product image formatting rejects a channel’s dynamic upload guidelines, you will silently lose sales to automated competitors during those high-velocity peaks. The brands finding success right now are the ones focused on closing their “execution gaps” – taking the manual friction out of multi-channel data so their systems can self-optimize in real-time. 

Speaking of connecting and talking strategy for the months ahead, one of my favorite weeks of the year is just around the corner. The team and I are headed to Online Retailer in Sydney on July 22–23 at the ICC. 

It’s always a fantastic opportunity to step away from our screens, catch up with our partners, and look at the real-world tech driving the industry forward. 

This year, we’re doing things a bit differently at our space. If you’re going to be walking the expo floor, please come by and say hello to the CrescoData team at Booth H110. 

We’ve set up a full Boba tea station right at the booth, so you can escape the chaotic expo aisles, take a breather, and choose your favorite Boba flavor on us while we catch up. Whether you want to talk about complex marketplace mapping or simply need a midday sugar hit, we’d love to see you there. 

If you want to ensure we carve out some dedicated time to sit down and look at your channel architecture together before the peak season hits, feel free to reach out directly to book a time. Otherwise, just pop by the booth! 

See you in Sydney! 

Book a time with our team to explore how you can scale across marketplaces with confidence.