Amazon Fashion launched a virtual try-on experience for shoe shopping Thursday. The interactive Virtual Try-On Shoes mobile experience uses augmented reality to help customers visualize how they will look wearing a pair of shoes in varying colors and angles, it said. Participating brands include New Balance, adidas, Reebok, Puma, Superga, Lacoste, Asics and Saucony. Shoppers click a virtual try-on button in the Amazon mobile app, point their smartphone's camera at their feet and images of the shoes are superimposed over the shoes they’re wearing. We found mixed results in a brief audition of the AR technology. While viewing Reebok sneakers, we found white shoes to look natural, while a black version of the same shoe looked artificial. A different black version of the same shoe style effectively showed alternating fabric and leather textures. A pink version looked cartoonish. Digital artifacts appeared in most renderings, showing as jagged lines between our jeans and the start of the shoe. A glitch on an adidas shoe presented the left shoe in white, the right shoe in gray. We noticed our iPhone was warm after a few minutes of taxing processor usage.

GameStop launched a digital asset wallet to allow gamers and others to store, send, receive and use cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) across decentralized apps without having to leave their web browsers, the retailer said Monday. The GameStop Wallet is a “self-custodial” Ethereum wallet, said the company. Its extension can be downloaded from the Chrome Web Store, which will also enable transactions on GameStop’s NFT marketplace, due to launch before the end of July.

Ingram Micro previewed its digital experience platform at 2022 Cloud Summit in Miami last week. Ingram Micro Xvantage comprises proprietary engines that use AI and machine learning to create a differentiated learning, partnering and buying experience for channel partners, the company said Thursday. The platform will reduce complexity in ordering, it said.

Walmart+ membership may have declined in the quarter ended April 30, emailed Consumer Intelligence Research Partners Wednesday, saying growth “slowed considerably” after the holiday quarter ending in January. The $98 annual membership grew quickly in its first months, reaching nearly 8 million U.S. members at the end of January 2021, said CIRP, saying the premium service generated a “significant share” of Walmart revenue growth in 2020 and the first fiscal quarter of 2021. At the end of April, the research firm estimated Walmart+ had 24% of Walmart.com customers, or 11 million members, down from 11.5 million in the January quarter, with CIRP attributing strong membership numbers to Walmart.com customers using a free trial or monthly membership ($12.95) to take advantage of free shipping and other member benefits for holiday shopping; some members then let a trial lapse or didn't renew a monthly membership, it said. Walmart+ performance depends in part on the retailer’s e-commerce performance, including online traffic and shopping patterns, and as customers began returning to stores post-COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, “Walmart.com slowed down considerably thereafter,” CIRP said. An Amazon spokesperson emailed Wednesday: "We’re not going to share numbers with Walmart+ but we’re excited about the momentum we have and the future ahead of us."

Canadian eBay e-commerce sellers will be able to access FedEx shipping services directly through the proprietary eBay Labels printing platform in a “technology enhancement” that builds on the existing eBay-FedEx collaboration, said the companies Monday. The eBay Labels program automatically prefills the shipping information required on a label, and FedEx tracking numbers are automatically added, they said. FedEx projects the U.S. domestic market will hit 100 million packages a day by year-end, four years earlier than previous forecasts. It estimates 96% of the volume will come from e-commerce. Canada is following a similar growth trajectory, it said.

Online prices for electronics fell 5.2% year on year in April, the lowest for the category in the past 12 months, Adobe said Wednesday. The average annual electronics price decline from 2015-2109 was 9%. Overall, online prices rose 2.9% year over year in April, down from the record 3.6% increase in March, showing “early signs” of slowing e-commerce price increases, said the analytics firm. The cost of borrowing and economic uncertainty is rising for consumers, and “we are beginning to see the early impact on both online inflation and spend,” said Patrick Brown, Adobe vice president-growth marketing and insights. April online consumer spending grew 4.5% to $77.8 billion, down from $83.08 spent in March, Adobe said.

Shopify’s Loop Returns announced a service with Happy Returns by PayPal. Loop merchants will be able to offer box-free, label-free return drop-off at over 5,000 locations in the U.S., the companies said Wednesday. Aggregating and shipping returns in reusable totes cuts costs and supports sustainability, the companies said. Happy Returns gives merchants options for returns, including home pickup, the ability to donate items and item consolidation. Of the $1.05 trillion in U.S. retail sales last year, about $218 billion's worth was returned, they said, citing National Retail Federation data.

Amazon extolled its worker benefits in a Wednesday blog post, a month after the first Amazon union was formed at a Staten Island, New York, warehouse (see 2204010050). A second unionization attempt at another Staten Island facility failed last week (see 2205020053). Amazon blogged that just 23% of working Americans have access to paid parental leave, spotlighting an Amazon employee who praised the company for its benefits, including 20 weeks of fully paid leave for birthing mothers. The company offers six weeks of fully paid leave to supporting parents and adoptive parents, said the post. The company’s Leave Share program helps parents ramp back up after being out and pays for its employees’ spouses who don’t work for the company to take time off, it said.

Workers at the LDJ5 Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York, voted against joining the Amazon Labor Union Monday, reported the National Labor Relations Board. Another Staten Island facility, JFK8, voted to unionize last month in a 2,654-2,131 vote, becoming Amazon Labor Union (ALU), Amazon’s first. On Monday, 618 employees at LDJ5 voted against joining the union, 380 for. Out of 1,633 eligible voters, 998 votes were cast, two were void. ALU President Christian Smalls tweeted Monday: “Despite today's outcome I’m proud of the worker/organizers of LDJ5,” saying “they had a tougher challenge after our victory at JFK8." Smalls vowed to continue to organize.

UPS is unfazed about Amazon’s Buy With Prime initiative and any possibility it could erode the revenue UPS draws from small and medium businesses, said CEO Carol Tome on a Q1 earnings call Tuesday. Buy With Prime, announced last week (2204210036), enables Prime members to buy directly from third-party merchants’ online stores with free shipping and other Prime perks. UPS has “a very good relationship with Amazon,” said Tome. “As it relates to their latest announcement, we see that as a very clever marketing play by Amazon, but just putting an Amazon Prime badge on a SMB website, if the website even exists, doesn’t put that much risk to us, we believe.”