Naughty or Nice? — Q3 2022 E-commerce Review — Part 1

Kevin LaBuz
7 min readNov 20, 2022

The e-commerce industry is having a Groundhog Day moment. Third quarter results were much like the second and first: slowing growth and cutting costs. Below, a look at key themes and trends from third quarter e-commerce results.

I Got You, Babe

It’s Groundhog Day for e-commerce. Like the first and second quarters, the post-pandemic e-commerce penetration reversion to the mean ( this chart, once again) continues to dominate industry trends. Consumers have more options for where to spend — online or offline, goods or services — and tighter budgets as nagging inflation increases the price of essentials like food and gas. As a kicker, the strengthening US dollar is pressuring top-lines for companies with international sales, knocking a few percentage points off of reported growth rates.

With the exceptions of Amazon and Shopify, e-commerce firms either decelerated (Poshmark, The RealReal, ThredUp), declined outright (eBay, Wayfair), or did both (Etsy, Farfetch). It’s not all rainbows and unicorns for Amazon and Shopify either. Amazon’s growth benefited from shifting Prime Day to the third quarter in 2022 from the second quarter in 2021, while Shopify’s GMV includes brick-and-mortar sales, which are outpacing e-commerce.

Source: Company financial reports. Notes: Amazon Online Stores includes only first-party e-commerce. Amazon doesn’t explicitly break out third-party e-commerce growth.

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Kevin LaBuz

Head of IR & Corporate Development at 1stDibs. Previously finance at Etsy, Indeed, and internet equity research at Deutsche Bank. Find me on Twitter @kjlabuz.