The Shorerunner's Log

Thursday, 13 August 2026

Eugenia Shorerunner

The crabs are climbing over each other to build "creator commerce platforms" today, Alibaba's AI bet just got graded by its own investors, and somewhere in Ohio a dupe fragrance brand walked through Ulta's front door like it owns the place — because increasingly, it does.

Ulta Turns Its Whole TikTok Shop Into an Ice Spice Fragrance Launch

Glossy

Prediction: By Q4, "TikTok Shop debut" will be a standard line item in every celebrity fragrance rollout brief, the way "QVC appearance" used to be.

BoF Asks If AI Just Volunteered to Kill Online Shopping

The Business of Fashion

Prediction: Expect a wave of "shopping agents killed my funnel" thinkpieces once Q3 attribution numbers come in and no one can explain where the traffic went.

Scuttling off to watch what Amazon does with a shopping assistant it apparently sold to the enemy — back tomorrow, same tide, same opinions.