Again! A scammer is impersonating us by email.
If it's from a Gmail address, it's not us; do not reply.
Our emails will always come from aeolidia.com.
|
Hi Reader,
Let's talk about how out of control running a business in 2026 will feel. For example, this latest insane thing that Amazon is doing, where they scrape your product listings, list your products on their site, and have bots go through your checkout to buy them for Amazon shoppers. We'll also talk about Shopify's agentic storefronts (AI catalogs).
Sometimes these products are out of stock, and in every case, none of these people have had a chance to browse your store, so you may be seeing standalone orders for small items, such as a $3 pen or a single greeting card.
Amazon describes its Buy For Me or Shop Direct "experiment" in an FAQ, including instructions on how to opt out of this nonconsensual program. This article on Amazon's site goes into more detail.
Our friend Ilana Davis says,
"I personally wouldn’t make any changes from a Google perspective [trying to block the Amazon bot] as that could block you from showing up in places you want to be.
My recommendation is to email that contact [
branddirect@amazon.com] and opt out. Then also ask where exactly the data comes from, which may give clues on how to change things if needed."
Why should this bother you? So many reasons, which Angie Chua has been covering here on Instagram. Among the many reasons to be angry are that Amazon is anonymizing the customer emails, which deprives you of the ability to communicate with your customer. You can look for these bot orders by seeing if any of your customer emails match this pattern: example@buyforme.amazon
As our friend Quintin says,
"Amazon will benefit from the data gathered from the performance of product sales, which builds its data capital without any benefit or reward for the business owners they are forcing the data from (Technofeudalism). And as the owner of the store says, when products do well on Amazon, Amazon-branded duplicates emerge.
Amazon wants to tighten its stranglehold on commerce. It wants to edge out any competition, extract value from its partners for itself, and cannibalise merchants on its platform. This is simply how Amazon has always behaved as a matter of course."
As our friend Angie Chua says,
"If this was such a "benefit to small business" as Amazon has commented, why secretly force thousands of brands into this program without their consent or knowledge? Why not reach out them?"
Angie is researching a class action lawsuit with an attorney, and you can help her with this by filling out her Google Form if Amazon's bot is ordering from you.
Next Week's Topic: Shopify's Agentic Storefronts
As Shopify rolls out a different AI shopping tool, merchants are starting to receive emails notifying them that their store will automatically have this new channel enabled by default (instructions are provided to disable it). Even though this announcement and Amazon's "Buy For Me" debacle happened so close together, be careful not to confuse these two programs. They serve very different purposes. All site owners are subject to having their content consumed by AI with no control over how it is represented, a situation Amazon made all too clear. But the new protocol introduced with Agentic Storefronts gives Shopify merchants a unique ability to control some aspects of how their products are represented in AI searches while maintaining ownership of the customer relationship. However, there is a lot of nuance to this new development and we will explore the pros and cons in depth in next week's newsletter.
P.S. On a lighter note, I'm excited to teach at the Jewelry Business Forum on January 20th. I have five complimentary tickets available for the event. Reply to this email if you’d like one!
