eBay Cuts 1,000 Jobs in Its Second Layoff Round This Year, Salesforce Agrees to Buy Braze for $5.66 Billion
5 min read · October 23, 2026 · Covering October 22 · 10 stories from 7 sources
Yesterday in ecommerce: eBay cut 1,000 jobs in its second layoff round this year, Salesforce agreed to buy Braze for $5.66 billion to beef up its marketing AI, and Walmart opened its site to outside AI shopping agents with new guardrails. 10 stories, about 4 minutes.
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eBay cuts 1,000 jobs in its second layoff round this year
eBay confirmed cutting more than 1,000 roles, about 9% of its global workforce, affecting every region it operates in. It's the second cut this year after about 800 roles went in February. A spokesperson said the move aligns teams with "top strategic priorities." The timing is odd: Q2 revenue rose 15% to $3.1 billion and net income jumped over 50%, helped by collectibles, C2C and refurbished sales plus the Depop acquisition.
For your store:eBay is cutting staff even while its core categories grow. If a marketplace partner trims headcount, expect slower support response times and plan your own escalation paths accordingly.
Salesforce will pay Braze shareholders $47.50 a share in cash, about 58% above its prior closing price, to acquire the customer-engagement platform. Braze serves roughly 2,770 brands, including Instacart and Urban Outfitters, and its BrazeAI product personalizes messages across apps, email and web. Salesforce plans to fold it into Marketing Cloud and Agentforce. CEO Bill Magnuson will stay on and keep Braze operating under its own name, with the deal closing in fiscal 2028.
For your store:Expect your email and app marketing tools to lean harder into AI-personalized send-timing and content over the next year, as platform consolidation accelerates.
Walmart opens up to outside AI shopping agents, with guardrails
Walmart will launch "Agent Profiles" within about a month, letting shoppers set up a separate profile for an AI agent and either approve each purchase or set a spending cap. It's also building "Agent Gateway," a beta using the Model Context Protocol so agents can shop without seeing a customer's card details or full purchase history. Walmart EVP Tracy Poulliot said, "It's really not just about technology for technology's sake."
For your store:Walmart is choosing openness where Amazon has tried blocking outside agents like Perplexity's. If you sell on Walmart Marketplace, check your product data is agent-ready ahead of the rollout.
Amazon says more than 40,000 German small and medium businesses sold over 20 billion euros through its marketplace in 2025, the first time it has disclosed the combined figure. Of that, 5.9 billion euros came from cross-border sales, mostly to France, Austria, Italy, the US and Spain. German sellers moved over 750 million products, about 1,400 per minute, though cross-border growth slowed and total seller numbers slipped back toward 2021 levels.
For your store:Cross-border growth is cooling even as overall sales rise. Don't assume exporting via a marketplace gets easier each year; budget time to actively manage each new market.
David's Bridal plans to spin off its Pearl AI platform
David's Bridal signed a nonbinding letter of intent with a SPAC to take its AI wedding planner Pearl public, valuing it at $350 million with $75 million in new private investment. Pearl would eventually also own David's Bridal's brand and IP, while stores operate as usual. CEO Kelly Cook is expected to lead Pearl, which 90% of US brides reportedly already engage with.
For your store:David's Bridal rebuilt Pearl into a saleable asset after moving to Shopify. A genuinely useful AI tool you build for customers may be worth more spun out than buried in your main site.
Amazon's third-party sellers outgrew its own retail during Prime Big Deal Days
During Amazon UK's Prime Big Deal Days (October 4-10), third-party seller sales grew 27.5% year over year to £667.7 million, versus 13.9% growth for Amazon's own first-party retail, per Venture Forge data on 1.6 million products. First-party's share of event sales fell from 39.4% to 36.7%, even while cutting prices harder. Venture Forge's Andy Banks said the winners were "already selling their own stock, with control over their price, availability and deals."
For your store:If you sell as a third-party seller on Amazon, this is evidence that owning your own stock and pricing beats chasing the deepest discount during peak events.
L'Oreal posts a 7.7% sales jump on skincare and fragrance
L'Oreal's Q3 sales rose 7.7% to $39.6 billion, with its SAPMENA-SSA region up 21% and North Asia up 14.1%. Professional products grew 19.1% and dermatological beauty 15.7%. CEO Nicolas Hieronimus credited La Roche-Posay, CeraVe and SkinCeuticals for double-digit skincare growth, plus fragrance lines from Prada, YSL and Giorgio Armani. He said, "We significantly outperformed the market across the vast majority of our categories, divisions and regions."
For your store:Dermatology-backed skincare and niche fragrance are outselling mass beauty right now. If you carry beauty, lean your holiday merchandising toward ingredient-led, credible products over generic gift sets.
Target turns its revamped Soho store into a curation playground
Target finished a near year-long redesign of its Soho, New York store into a two-floor, curation-led space with a selfie photo station and a beauty section built for shoppers to film content. About 70,000 people pass the corner daily, split evenly between locals and tourists. VP Gigi Guerra called it "a style and design playground," with ideas meant to migrate elsewhere, as Target faces boycott pressure and complaints about understocked shelves.
For your store:You don't need a flagship store to borrow the idea: a single spot built for customers' own photos and video can turn ordinary visits into free social content.
Bank-backed wallet Paze says it's beating its 2026 targets
Paze, the digital wallet owned by seven major US banks, says it's on track to exceed its 2026 transaction goal by four times after a year-long revamp fixed low conversion and approval rates. It has added about 220 million cards and is now focused on signing the 100 largest US merchants. GM Serge Elkiner said the early product "was not ready for prime time," and claimed Paze hit the highest approval rate of any wallet at some merchants.
For your store:A bank-backed wallet with high approval rates could cut failed payments at checkout. Worth evaluating alongside Apple Pay and PayPal next year.
UK pressure builds to tax online retail harder ahead of the Budget
Former Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane is urging the UK to tax online retail more heavily and rebalance toward physical stores, with a crackdown on marketplaces like Amazon and eBay expected in the Autumn Budget on October 28. He said, "The balance of tax incentives are strongly skewed towards the digital over the physical." UK online sales have nearly tripled in a decade, now around 30% of retail sales.
For your store:If you sell into the UK, watch the October 28 Budget closely. A new sales levy could land with little lead time, so have a pricing contingency ready.
The Daily Checkout is a daily summary written by KonvertiQ. Every story links to its original source, where you will find full reporting and context. Covered today: Digital Commerce 360, Ecommerce News Europe, Glossy, Internet Retailing, Payments Dive, Retail Dive, Tamebay (ChannelX).