In the southwest suburbs of Chicago, the affluent village of Orland Park will soon become the testing ground for Amazon’s latest attempt to develop a successful brick-and-mortar store—a goal that has so far confounded the reigning e-commerce giant, which just last week announced plans to shutter all of its Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh locations.

What exactly is being proposed remains uncertain, however, as the company said the still-unnamed retail project is a “new concept” still under development. And while the village board has already approved a 230,000-square-foot building at the site, the experimental nature of the project—as well as Amazon’s dubious track record with physical stores—has left some residents worried about what kind of facility is coming into their community.

“I was mayor for eight years. I’ve never seen a project that has this much opposition,” Keith Pekau, former mayor of Orland Park, told Retail Brew. The biggest concern among residents he’s spoken with, Pekau added, is that the project’s proposed location is part of a corridor zoned for retailers and restaurants, while this project appears to be a “warehouse.”

Keep reading here.—AV

PayPal’s acquisition of Cymbio, a platform linking merchants’s product catalogs to AI shopping assistants, is a clear signal that online shopping is moving past standard e-commerce websites.

It’s a big move in the world of fintech and agentic AI with PayPal making moves to spruce up its agentic commerce capabilities. Agentic commerce is hard to ignore right now as tech companies like Google make massive investments in making agent-assisted shopping mainstream.

“Acquiring Cymbio’s technology and team will enhance our agentic commerce capabilities and accelerate the expansion to more of our merchants,” Michelle Gill, EVP and general manager of small business and financial services at PayPal, said in a statement. “By making their product catalogs discoverable on AI surfaces, merchants can increase sales while expanding product choice to the millions of consumers shopping on AI platforms today.”

Keep reading here.—VC

Remember a few years ago when the pandemic messed up freight schedules, and everyone ended up with a lot more inventory than they needed?

Well, call it déjà vu, but inventory—specifically how much of it is on hand and how quickly companies can get through it—will likely be top of mind for retail CFOs again in 2026.

One supply chain expert predicted that inventories are likely to remain low across retailers this year, because they aggressively pulled stocks forward ahead of tariffs in 2025.

CFOs who wish to win the supply chain game this year will need to be focused on “dynamic inventories,” Zac Rogers, an associate professor of supply chain management at Colorado State University, told CFO Brew.

Keep reading here on CFO Brew.—DL

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