ISSUE W32 · AUGUST 2026
A single ranked list of the week's top articles with sharp insights for retail, luxury, and AI intelligence.
Gorilla Commerce launched its Gorilla Grip bath mats in over 2,600 Walmart stores after two years of selling on Walmart's third-party marketplace.
Read full article →—Girard-Perregaux introduced the Laureato Fifty with an 18K rose-gold dial, featuring the in-house GP4800 automatic movement and a 39mm stainless steel case.
—The rose-gold dial version is priced at €22,700, slightly less expensive than the blue enamel-dialed model priced at €24,000.
—Omilia secured $67 million in a Series B funding round led by Expedition Growth Capital to expand its customer support platform and build self-learning agents.
—The company increased its annual recurring revenue tenfold to $60 million since its previous $20 million raise in 2020 and currently serves clients like Capital One and Taco Bell.
—The report shows streaming services underperform on customer relationship attributes like loyalty rewards, transparent data policies, and problem resolution compared to other industries.
—Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro emphasized leveraging Disney+ as a hub connecting streaming, sports, parks, and merchandise to deepen fan relationships amid increasing competition.
—Former Spotify engineers Sidd Motwani, Ian Anderson, and Shivaditya Sinha launched Malachyte to bring AI-driven real-time shopping recommendations to e-commerce. The startup raised $10 million in seed funding to expand distribution and hire product and commercial leaders. Malachyte's platform, developed since 2024, has been live with Fun.com since fall 2025 and is available to Shopify merchants and larger retailers via API integration.
—Sidd Motwani, Ian Anderson, and Shivaditya Sinha spent years building the behavioral intelligence infrastructure behind Spotify’s recommendation engine
