Shopify launches Product Network 🏪

It’s not just beginning to look like Christmas anymore 🎄; it’s here, wrapping paper, email promos, and all 🥳.

Merry Christmas, ecom fam! 🎁 Welcome to a cozy holiday edition of The Ecom Press 🗞️!

In today’s issue, Shopify rolls out a new Product Network to help you cross-sell like a pro, TikTok Shop joins the gifting game with digital gift cards, and Alexa+ is quietly shaping up to be a sales channel worth watching. 

Let’s unwrap it all, shall we? 🎉

In a rush? Here's the juice🤭:

🏪 Shopify launches Product Network for cross‑store selling.

💳 TikTok Shop debuts digital gift cards.

🤖Alexa+ becomes new sales channel for services.

🚀 Ecom strategies: What to do differently in 2026 🧠

⚡️Worthy Mentions

🏪 Shopify launches Product Network for cross‑store selling.

Shopify is expanding how merchants grow without adding inventory. Its newly launched Product Network lets stores recommend and sell products from other Shopify merchants directly on their own storefronts, earning commission while keeping the customer relationship intact.

Here’s the lowdown ⬇️:

🛍️ Turn product gaps into conversions: When shoppers search for items you don’t carry, Product Network fills the gap with relevant recommendations instead of letting them leave your store.

🤝 Sell more without stocking more: You don’t source, store, ship, or manage returns. Partner merchants handle fulfillment, while you earn commission on completed purchases.

🎯 Control where products appear: Merchants choose placements across search, collections, thank‑you pages, order status pages, emails, and more. Competitors or categories can be excluded entirely.

📊 Powered by shopper data: Recommendations are personalized using insights from hundreds of millions of Shopify shoppers, improving relevance and conversion rates.

📈 Built into Shop Campaigns: Commissions can be paid out as cash or ad credits. Those credits can fuel Shop Campaigns, Shopify’s performance-based ad product, helping offset acquisition costs.

Why it matters 🤔

Instead of guessing what to stock next, Product Network lets stores respond to customer intent in real time. You can leverage inventories from other stores without risks, supply chain complexity, or customer support overhead. So instead of directly competing for attention, merchants can benefit from shared demand. 

💳 TikTok Shop debuts digital gift cards.

TikTok Shop has launched digital gift cards in a bid to compete with ecommerce giants. With the gift cards, users can now send funds, ranging from $10 to $500, to friends and family directly through the app. The cards are available only in the U.S. for now and arrive via email with animated designs for various occasions.

Here are the deets ⬇️: 

🎁 Personalized Gifting: Users can choose from a variety of animated templates for birthdays, thank-you notes, and weddings. More personalization options, including video messages and interactive unboxing, are coming in 2026.

🇺🇸 U.S.-Only for Now: Gift cards are limited to the U.S. market, and recipients must have a TikTok account to redeem them. Value is added to their TikTok Balance instantly.

📈 Strategic Holiday Timing: The feature launched during peak holiday shopping season, following $500M in U.S. sales over Black Friday weekend, to boost TikTok’s foothold as a commerce player.

🛒 Challenging Amazon and eBay: This gift card push aligns TikTok Shop more directly with traditional ecom giants, aiming to shift perception from a trend-based impulse buy platform to a full-fledged ecommerce marketplace.

Why it matters 🤷‍♂️

By tying gift cards to TikTok Balance and requiring a TikTok account for redemption, the platform nudges recipients to shop and stay within its app. For brands, that means more captive, purchase-ready audiences. The longer users engage, the more chances there are for product discovery, loyalty, and repeat sales, all without leaving the feed.

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🤖 Alexa+ becomes new sales channel for services.

Amazon is upgrading Alexa+ by announcing four major integrations (Expedia, Yelp, Angi, and Square) that will let users book a wide range of services through voice commands, from hotel rooms to hair appointments. This marks a key step in bringing agentic shopping to service-based commerce.

Here’s the scoop 🍨:

🛎️ Book hotels with Alexa: Thanks to Expedia, customers can now search and book hotels using natural voice commands. Alexa understands price points, amenities, and preferences, helping users find lodging fast, hands-free.

🔧 Home repairs made easier: Integrations with Angi and Yelp bring thousands of licensed service pros to Alexa+. From plumbing to pest control, users can request quotes and book directly with local businesses.

💇‍♀️ Beauty and wellness bookings via Square: Square’s network of salons, barbershops, and spas will be accessible through Alexa+, allowing users to view availability, book, and manage appointments without ever picking up a phone.

🔁 From search to checkout, entirely by voice: Alexa+ can now handle the full customer journey, making service bookings as frictionless as ordering a product.

Why it matters 🤨

If you’re offering services or local experiences, it’s a heads-up to prepare for AI-driven discovery and bookings. Alexa+ could soon be sending leads your way if your services are plugged into platforms like Square or Yelp. As agentic tools gain traction, visibility across these networks might be as important as ad spend.

🛎️ The Ecom Press Insider

Ecom Fact: Agentic AI is expected to drive 25% of U.S. ecommerce by 2030, according to Bain & Co. The firm points to Salesforce data showing autonomous agents already influenced an estimated $3 billion in U.S. Black Friday sales.

💡 Takeaway: If a quarter of ecommerce is going to be AI-directed by 2030, the real race is making your catalog legible and accessible to agents. In 2026, think structured product data, answerable FAQs, and inventory that integrates cleanly into agentic commerce systems. 

🚀 Ecom strategies: What to do differently in 2026 🧠

The end of the year is always noisy with checklists, review docs, “what worked and what didn’t” templates flying everywhere. But here’s the thing: sometimes what you really need isn’t another audit. It’s a reality check and a few smart, gutsy moves that help you step into the new year a little more focused, a little more free.

So here’s what we’d be doing right now if we were in your shoes👇

🔄 Declutter your tech stack: Still paying for 14 apps when you only use 6? Audit your tools now. Kill the ones that don’t integrate, slow your store, or duplicate features. Fewer tools = faster workflows and fewer bugs mid-sale.

🧪 Line up one experiment for January: Not five. Not a “strategy refresh.” Just one bold test. Something slightly out of your comfort zone, a new traffic source, an AI-generated landing page, influencer UGC. Pick it, commit, ship it before February hits.

🧹 Tidy up your backend: No one wants to start the year with chaos in their collections. Now’s a great time to clean up tags, fix alt-text, rename weird SKUs, and make sure your PDPs don’t look like they were made in a rush back in 2022. AI tools and algorithms are getting pickier, don’t give them a reason to skip you.

📊 Look at what didn’t sell: Everyone talks about bestsellers. But the gold is in the slow movers. What flopped? Why? Wrong keywords? Bad timing? Maybe the price point’s off. Find those gaps and you’ve already got a Q1 content or promo idea ready to test.

💭 Ask a weird question at your next team chat: Try this: “If we could only sell ONE product next year, which would it be?” Or “What’s a crazy idea we’ve never pitched because we thought it wouldn’t get approved?” You’ll be surprised how quickly it reveals what really matters, and what might be holding you back.

2026 will reward boldness, clarity, and teams that actually know what’s in their backend folders. So sharpen, simplify, and swing at something brave.

⚡️Worthy Mentions

• Amazon in talks for massive $10 billion stake in OpenAI.

• Temu unveils app letting Shopify sellers list on its marketplace.

• TikTok ownership agreement secured, ban officially avoided.

• Instacart pays $60 million to resolve FTC deceptive billing case.

• Global holiday ecommerce sales top $1 trillion by mid-December.

Wrapping up…

2025 gave us a little bit of everything: AI buzz, surprise bans, big-time platform updates, and a whole lot of feature drops.

But if there was one thing that defined the year? Agentic commerce definitely stole the spotlight 👀

Here’s to smarter stores, braver experiments, and unexpected wins in 2026. Until then, rest up, recharge, and enjoy the holidays. We'll catch you in the next one! 🥂✨