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Bose is set to close 119 physical stores in a bid to drive its business online in certain regions of the globe. This means that Bose owned stores across Europe, North America, Australia and Japan will be affected. However, 130 stores will remain open for business across the United Arab Emirates and some parts of Asia where e-commerce hasn’t had a significant impact on sales.

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Despite the closure of Bose’s high street stores, its products will still be available to purchase in stores such as MediaMarkt or Coolblue, which is convenient for traditional shoppers. Especially if they want to test the audio of the equipment before they buy.

Amazon has opened its new office located in Manchester, which will create 600 jobs in the city. The new property will encompass a new 90,000sq ft office in the city’s Northern Quarter, which opens today. Amazon’s UK country manager Doug Gurr said, “Manchester offers an incredible talent pool, a thriving hub of fast-growing UK tech start-ups and is a centre of academic and intellectual excellence”.

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Overall, Amazon now employs 6000 people in the Greater Manchester region across three of its fulfilment centres, sorting sites, and three delivery centres.

Google has acquired Pointy, a start-up company that supports brick and mortar stores showcase their products online. Pointy has been a partner of Google for years, for the search engine’s “See what’s in store” that appears on business profiles on Google search. There are two ways that retailers can use this feature; they can either plug a small box into their barcode scanner or install the app on their POS system. After which, the products will directly appear on the “See what’s in Store” segment that surfaces when a user is looking at a specific retailer.

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Google introduced the feature in June 2018 when it enabled POS or inventory data providers such as Cayan Pointy, Linx and yReceipts to provide sales and inventor data on behalf of retailers. Which allowed physical retailers to showcase their local inventory in Google’s search knowledge panel.

In October, J&P reported that Amazon was discussing plans to transform their Netherlands-based platform into a complete online web store which features many product categories. The full web store is now officially launching and Amazon.nl is open for E-commerce merchants to register their business and start selling products to Dutch customers. The Vice President of EU Expansion at Amazon, Alex Ootes, has said “We are pleased to bring the opportunity for Dutch businesses, small and large, to sign up to sell on Amazon.nl and reach a bigger audience, both at home and abroad.”

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Amazon Netherlands’ full online marketplace opening up for business registrations is an excellent opportunity for E-commerce companies trading across Europe. As one of the fastest-growing E-commerce markets in Europe with a value of €25 billion, online businesses need get on board and register their business on Amazon.nl via their Amazon Services portal.

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has been accused of forcing users of its online platform if they sign up to sell on competitive online marketplace Pinduoduo’s platform. The Financial Times reported that merchants had been informed by Alibaba to “erxuanyl” (Pick one of the two), adding that unless sellers shut down their Pinduoduo sites, shoppers would no longer have access to products on its Tmall platform.

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The Galanz Group, which specializes in microwaves reported that Alibaba started diverting traffic away from its Tmall store and removed its top-selling product after their president Liang Zhaoxian visited Pinduoduo’s headquarter and signed a co-operation agreement.