Court hears harrowing details from deaths of poison seller’s victims
Kenneth Law pleaded guilty to 14 counts of aiding suicide during a hearing in Ontario on Friday. Source link
All posts tagged: sellers
Record Share Of Home Sellers Cut Listing Prices In February: Report
A record share of home sellers cut their listing prices in February as competition for homebuyers necessitated steep price reductions, an April 9 report by real estate platform Redfin said. About 34.2 percent of sellers reduced their listing prices in February, up from 31.5 percent in the same month a year earlier, according to Redfin’s analysis of MLS data. That was the highest February share since the firm began tracking MLS records in 2012. The sellers who cut their listing prices reduced them by an average of $40,915, said Redfin. That amounts to a 7.3 percent cut, the highest for any February since 2023. Final sales prices could include further reductions due to negotiations on such items as closing costs, contingency fees, and other contractual stipulations. “Price cuts are on the rise because it’s a buyer’s market,” said Redfin data journalist Lily Katz and senior economist Yingqi Xu. “There are hundreds of thousands more home sellers in the market than buyers because buyers have been spooked by high mortgage rates, high prices and economic uncertainty. …
AI is changing how small online sellers decide what to make
For small entrepreneurs in the US, deciding what to sell and where to make it has traditionally been a slow, labor-intensive process that can take months. Now that work is increasingly being done by AI tools like Accio, which help connect businesses with manufacturers in countries including China and India. Business owners and e-commerce experts told MIT Technology Review that these AI tools are making sourcing more accessible and significantly shortening the time it takes to go from product idea to launch. McClary, 51, who runs his business from his Illinois living room, has sold products ranging from leather conditioner to camping lights, including one rechargeable lantern that brought in half a million dollars. Like many small online merchants, he built his business by being extremely scrappy—spotting demand for a product, tweaking existing designs, finding a factory, doing modest marketing, and getting the goods in front of customers fast. This time, though, he began by telling Accio about the flashlight’s original design, production cost, and profit margin. Then Accio suggested several changes, making it smaller …
Amazon hits sellers with ‘fuel surcharge’ as Iran war roils global energy markets
The war in Iran has hammered global oil markets, with gas prices in the U.S. spiking significantly. Amid the rise in transportation costs, Amazon has instituted a new 3.5% fuel surcharge for sellers that use its distribution network. The policy has the potential to inflict significant new costs on the untold merchants that rely on the e-commerce giant to sell their products. Amazon told TechCrunch that the surcharge would be in place for the foreseeable future, although the company said it will continue to evaluate a potential policy shift as market conditions evolve. The news was originally reported by Bloomberg. “Elevated costs in fuel and logistics have increased the cost of operating across the industry,” a spokesperson said. “We have absorbed these increases so far, but similar to other major carriers, when costs remain elevated we implement temporary surcharges to partially recover these costs.” The spokesperson added that the surcharge was “meaningfully lower than surcharges applied by other major carriers.” The new policy will take effect on April 17 and will impact sellers who use …