When German e-commerce expert Stefan Wenzel took the stage of the K5 conference last week to show a satellite photo of the Atacama Desert — where unsold fashion goes to die — you could hear a pin drop.

His thesis: Sales-led commerce is broken, the numbers have proven it for years, and the industry has simply chosen not to look.

Ingrid and Valerie were there in the stage hall, and they have thoughts.

In this episode, we talk about the K5 theses that actually hurt: why endless growth targets have turned into margin pressure, dead stock and return chaos; why “Made in China” may no longer mean cheap copy, but faster, better and smarter; and why Europe should be very careful before confusing resignation with strategy.

We also ask whether authenticity is really the last human advantage in an AI-heavy commerce world — or just the next buzzword everyone will put into a LinkedIn post.

And then there is the topic that was glaringly missing from the big stage: recommerce. Second-hand, refurbished, circular models — one of the most European AND growing commerce stories out there. So why was everyone only talking about AI?

A sweaty, sharp and slightly uncomfortable debrief after Germany's most relevant e-commerce conference about broken growth logic, Chinese speed, European blind spots and the things the industry still prefers not to see.

Amazon lost 50% of its Czech e-commerce revenue. Not once — twice, in two consecutive years. That's the data point that triggered this conversation. But the more interesting story isn't Amazon's decline. It's what that decline reveals about a region that Western e-commerce still fundamentally misreads.

David Cikanek is a Prague-based marketplace expert who has spent years helping brands navigate Amazon and the broader CEE landscape. In this episode, he pushes back hard on one of the most persistent myths in European e-commerce: that Central and Eastern Europe is one market with one strategy. It isn't. The Czech Republic spends per capita are comparable to the Netherlands. Poland has Allegro — a genuine platform giant with 30%+ market share. Romania had eMAG, once called the Amazon of the East, now quietly retreating while a Turkish challenger backed by Chinese money closes in. Hungary is behind the rest of the region in terms of online penetration. These are not variations on a theme. They are different markets.

We also get into why Temu is winning the region while Shein is losing, why Kaufland's marketplace expansion raises more questions than it answers amongst the locals, and why TikTok Shop is more likely to be an upper-funnel discovery tool than a structural threat.

This episode is for anyone who has ever looked at CEE on a map and thought: same region, same playbook. Spoiler: it isn't.

📊 The CZ marketplace data chart referenced in this episode: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7470062455113691137/

The EU fined Temu €200M, France hit Shein with another penalty. Is this the turning point many in European e-commerce have been waiting for? In this episode, Ingrid and Valerie go through the most important marketplace news of the last few weeks. Their take on regulation: it works – slowly, but for real. The first genuine DSA enforcement actions against Temu and Shein are a clear signal. Amazon dominates two news blocks: Prime Day this year runs from 23 to 26 June – earlier and longer than ever before. And with Amazon Supply Chain Services, Amazon is opening its entire logistics network to every industry for the first time. Meanwhile, the AI shopping race is already running: structured product data is your advantage now – for AI agents and human customers alike. Also: JD.com is eyeing the UK's Very Group after the Ceconomy deal was put on hold, Otto is opening to Polish sellers, and eBay is making a clear recommerce statement in its fee structure.

Note to Agentic Commerce:

AI shopping is moving so fast that even a dedicated news block barely scratches the surface. For the fuller picture, we published a deep-dive analysis on marketplace-universe.com. https://marketplace-universe.com/when-buyer-is-algorithm-what-brands-need-to-know-about-agentic-commerce/