Digital Commerce 360

A.P. Moller-Maersk has begun managing the North American distribution network for consumer brand manufacturer Puma. Puma and Maersk said their “partnership has expanded well beyond ocean shipping.” Maersk is now operating more than 2 million square feet of Puma’s distribution network, including automated warehouses in Arizona, California and Indiana.

Adobe has released its forecast for the 2026 holiday shopping season, projecting that online sales in the last two months of the year will reach $275.1 billion. It said it based its forecast on more than 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites, 100 million SKUs and 18 product categories. The company refers to the holiday shopping season as Nov. 1 through Dec. 31. The projection indicates that online holiday-season sales in 2026 would increase 6.7% year over year.

The electrical supplies and services distributor Rexel announced that it plans to acquire the specialty wire and cable distributor GCG in a deal that could bolster revenue for the new parent company. Rexel, which is headquartered in France, valued GCG at $1.4 billion in the transaction, according to a Rexel press release. The company has made previous acquisitions in recent years, spanning Europe and North America.

Tractor Supply has opened a distribution center in Nampa, Idaho, the retailer’s 11th such facility. The distribution center is 865,000 square feet, and the retailer said it will bring 500 full-time jobs to the region. It features additional acreage for future expansion, according to the retailer, as well as 80 truck docks that it said it has optimized for inbound and outbound traffic flow. The new Tractor Supply distribution center will support 123 stores across nine states in its first year.

TD Synnex Corp. reported record revenue of $21.6 billion for its fiscal Q3 ended Aug. 31. That was a 37.7% increase in revenue year over year and above the high end of its own outlook. Non-GAAP gross billings reached $31.8 billion, up 40% year over year. The results continued a streak of record quarters for the IT distributor, which has now reported record billings in each of the last several quarters as artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure spending has accelerated across its customer base.

Stitch Fix returned to revenue growth in fiscal 2026, marking a milestone in the online styling retailer’s turnaround effort. Customers spent more, while the company also pointed to growing adoption of its Vision AI tool. For its fiscal 2026 ended Aug. 1, Stitch Fix generated $1.35 billion in net revenue, up 6.4% from $1.27 billion a year earlier. Its net loss narrowed to $12.6 million from $28.8 million in fiscal 2025.

Essendant has sold its Boardwalk, Gen, and Windsoft private-label janitorial and facility supply brands to ORS Nasco, the latest move in the Deerfield, Illinois-based distributor’s ongoing retreat from the office products and facilities supplies market. The divestiture comes as Essendant faces a lawsuit from TD Synnex, which alleges the former stopped making payments owed under an earlier legal settlement.

Best Buy is pushing artificial intelligence (AI) into areas of its operations in 2026, and its leadership team has described wider ambitions for how Best Buy will use AI to achieve near-term objectives. In March, while speaking at the UBS Global Consumer and Retail Conference, Best Buy CEO Corie Barry called AI “a huge enabler of growth,” as well as for “good employee experiences.” At the time, she was addressing AI tools as internal resources for solving team members’ own problems.

Lowe’s said it has become the first home improvement retailer to offer drone delivery for online orders, working with Alphabet’s Wing and DoorDash on deliveries. The newest fulfillment method delivers select home improvement products directly to Lowe’s DIY and Pro customers in as fast as 20 minutes, the retailer said. Its drone delivery pilot is now live at Lowe’s store in Matthews, North Carolina, and it adds to the retailer’s same-day fulfillment options.

JD Sports has deployed Algolia as the retailer’s governing intelligence layer on which to build its agentic commerce strategy. Announced Sept. 22, the companies seek to enable product discovery and shopping through agentic artificial intelligence (AI) platforms. JD Sports initially implemented Algolia into its tech stack in 2024. Since then, JD Sports said: Revenue from search has increased 22%. Search click-through rates have increased 7.65%.