1. China tech crackdown: E-commerce and online advertising to contend with weak spending in 2022, UBS analyst says. Regulatory pressure and weak economic growth is expected to continue to create uncertainty for internet businesses for another year. – Read More on SCMP

2. Four Elements of a Successful Brand Refresh: To successfully reinvent your brand, you must rethink your approach to product, story, culture, and customer. Brand rebounds often seem simple, logical, and inevitable, but few revival attempts are successful, and in the uncommon event that they do succeed, they usually take years or decades to yield significant results. – Read More on HBR

3. Covid E-Commerce Boom Sees U.S. Retailers Hunt for Warehouses: E-commerce sales surged to a record 15.7% of  total U.S. retail receipts in mid-2020, and while they’ve come slightly off that peak as shoppers return to brick-and-mortar stores, they remain elevated, Commerce Department data shows. – Read More on Bloomberg

4. RETRO READ: What Does an In-Store Sale Really Entail in an Omnichannel Retail World? “The push to include online sales in lease agreements has loomed for some time,” but it is “swiftly accelerating” now as brands are being forced to embrace an omnichannel retail model – and fast – in order to stay afloat. – Read More on TFL

5. Global digital sales topped $1 trillion during 2021 holidays: Luxury handbags, home furniture, fastest growing categories online, highest year-over-year growth in handbags, specifically 45% online sales increased there. Home furniture and general footwear, that’s what trailed closely behind. – Read More on Yahoo Finance

6. Alibaba’s Tsai-Backed Africa E-Commerce Firm Gets Funds to Grow: An Africa-focused e-commerce platform backed by Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd. co-founder Joe Tsai, has raised $6.2 million to expand into more markets and products. – Read More on Bloomberg