Hey it’s Cam from the Platter team. This week was one of those rare ones where everybody had something to announce. Shopify dropped some massive features, OpenAI unveiled GPT-5, and the US–China tariffs got another 90-day pause. We’ve got all of that, plus why now’s the perfect time to prep your Q4 PR strategy.

In this issue

🛍️ Shopify launches Checkout Kit, Catalog, and Universal Cart
📰 5 reasons holiday PR = more traffic & sales (w/ Wolf Craft)
💹 US–China tariff extension buys 90 days
🤖 Meta’s superintelligence manifesto
🧠 ChatGPT5 is here
👔 Store spotlight: Ministry of Supply
🔥 Sauna in the city

STORY OF THE WEEK

Shopify launches Checkout Kit, Catalog, and Universal Cart

Shopify just dropped three features that could change how—and where—people shop from your store:

• Checkout Kit: Embed Shopify checkout directly into apps, sites, or AI chatbots. Already live in Microsoft Copilot.

• Shopify Catalog: A blazing-fast global product search across millions of Shopify merchants.

• Universal Cart: Let customers shop from multiple stores and check out in one cart.

Tobi Lütke says, “With these, you can build seamless embedded commerce experiences quickly, starting with all the best products by the best merchants in the world instead of having to sign them all up individually. No need to build a complex new checkout, or dealing with regulatory marketplace rules.“

Merchants can do a ton with these new feature, here are just a few examples:

• Building niche marketplaces pulling from Shopify’s merchant network

• Shopping directly inside an AI chat or messenger app

• Using AI voice assistants like Siri or Alexa to shop on your behalf

• Embedded shopping in business apps

The reach that these three new features bring Shopify merchants are pretty spectacular and will make it very difficult for merchants who want to tap into multiple "non-Amazon channels" to avoid Shopify moving forward.

No other platform is this close to making embedded commerce truly plug-and-play. If you’ve ever dreamed of selling outside your store without hacking together APIs, this is the time.

Read more.

PARTNER SPOTLIGHT

5 reasons holiday PR = more traffic & sales

This week’s content comes from our friends at Wolf Craft, an à la carte PR shop that helps brands land high-impact press without paying thousands a month for retainer PR. After 15 years securing gift guide features for Wolf PR clients, they’ve set out to teach ecommerce brands how to pitch holiday press themselves. Five years later, they’ve helped hundreds of businesses land meaningful coverage on their own.

This week, they’re breaking down why gift guides are still the best media opportunity of the year for product businesses. With Q4 right around the corner, now is the time to prep.

Spoiler: you’re invited to join their free gift guide PR workshop. 

Is PR your next business growth lever?

If we asked why you want press, what would you say? Most folks would simply say, “Sales.” Which can be a good answer, but it’s a fairly incomplete answer. And it leaves a lot of impact on the table.

You’re not alone if you don't fully understand how PR works. You know media attention is “good”, but you may not know all the ways press can impact your company.

Media placements can:

• Increase traffic

• Amplify brand awareness

• Build trust and credibility

• Improve SEO ranking

• Reduce paid ad spend

• Drive up sales

The best press opportunity for ecommerce brands

If the list above sounds great, you’d probably like to know where to start. Meet holiday gift guides.

Holiday gift guides are product round-ups all about (surprise!) gifts.

From October through December, magazines, blogs, and newspapers publish a huge range of gift-giving round-ups like:

• The Best Gifts for Chefs by NY Times the Strategist

• Thoughtful Gifts for the Sister-in-Law Who Has Everything by Well+Good

• Best Luxury Gifts For Men by Forbes

• Unique New York Gifts by Town & Country

• The Best Gifts for Foodies by Real Simple

Let’s dive into why gift guides are the best media opportunity of the year for eCommerce brands.

#1: More Opportunities to Get Featured

Holiday gift guides are unlike any other kind of product PR. Once a year, publications that typically don’t publish shopping round-ups, open their pages for product coverage.

You can find gift guides in titles you normally wouldn’t be able to work with. This vastly increases your PR opportunities.

Here’s an example: men’s magazines don’t typically feature home goods, beauty products, or jewelry. However, during the holidays men are looking for gifts for their wives, girlfriends, mothers, and daughters. In order for a men’s magazine to give their readers tips on what to purchase for the “women in their life”, they feature products for women.

That’s 76 PR opportunities to get your product in front of a totally new audience. And this isn’t their only gift guide

Consumer publications that feature products year-round, like Real Simple, publish dozens of gift guides on everything from gifts for parents, for cocktail lovers, for twenty-somethings, for plant parents, for people who love beauty products, for pet owners….and that’s just a start.

Dozens of gift guides mean hundreds of potential feature spots for your product. Your odds increase with each additional gift guide.

A quick “holiday gift guide + publication name + year” search will reveal many guides from years past.

#2: The Most Straightforward Type of Product PR

PR can be hard and a lot of work.

Between figuring out what story you want to tell and what outlets would actually tell it, it can feel overwhelming and mysterious.

That’s what’s so great about holiday gift guides. There’s a set formula and the timing is the same every year. Plus, there’s no complicated messaging or story angle strategy.

To quickly determine if a gift guide is a good opportunity for what you sell, check:

• Price point. Is your product within the range of what’s featured?

• Sales platforms. Do you see items sold on brand’s websites? Or only Amazon links?

• Gift receiver. Are your products for women, foodies, pet lovers, etc?

#3: High Intent Traffic

Gift guides don’t just drive traffic—they drive motivated traffic. The people clicking on these roundups aren’t aimlessly browsing; they’re actively looking for something to buy.

They’re searching for “best gifts for dads who cook” or “gifts under $50 for coworkers” because they need to make a purchase.

When you get your product into a gift-giving roundup that aligns with your ideal client, you’re not just building brand awareness, you’re capturing people at the moment they’re ready to buy.

#4: No Pay to Play

Holiday gift guide placements ARE NOT ADVERTISEMENTS. They’re what’s called “Earned Editorial.”

While it sounds like you’re buying media coverage, Earned Editorial actually means that you are getting placed in a publication based solely on merit.

Editors decide to feature your product when they genuinely believe it’s a good fit for their audience. You do not pay for inclusion. Its placement is earned, making it Earned Editorial coverage.

That’s great news because with a little training, you can land these kinds of features yourself, for free.

#5: Press Opportunities All Year Long

Holiday gift guides are just the beginning. The editors who work on these also write product roundups all year, think:

• Valentine’s Day

• Mother’s Day

• Back to School

• Summer Entertaining

• and many, many more

Holiday placements aren't just one-time wins. When you get these features you’re also starting a relationship with an editor who regularly covers products.

Pitching gift guides teaches you how to get into product roundups, giving you a playbook you can reuse for year-round media wins.

See what it takes to land gift guide press

If you’d like to learn more about holiday media features, and what it takes to land these coveted placements—think photography, affiliate links, price point, and more—we invite you to join our free Holiday Gift Guide PR Workshop.

In our live workshop, you’ll get proven strategies that we've used to secure hundreds of media features for our clients. These placements include top consumer publications like, Real Simple, Martha Stewart, the New Yorker, Wired, the Strategist, Oprah online, and more.

The workshop also includes an open Q&A so you can bring all your product PR questions and get answers from a publicist with 20 years of experience.

Register for Wolf Craft’s free gift guide PR workshop here

STORE OF THE WEEK

Ministry of Supply

Ministry of Supply is an apparel brand that blends fashion and science to make “climate-controlled” clothing. Think wrinkle-resistant dress shirts, temperature-regulating polos, and machine-washable suiting.

Why we absolutely love this store:

• Elegant and minimal aesthetic to match the ethos of their product

• Simple mega menu that filters shoppers towards popular collections and products

• Great PDP with feature/benefit callouts in their media gallery and a sticky CTA

Curious what other stores Platter has designed and built? Check out our Showcase for the latest stores.

OTHER NEWS THIS WEEK

• ChatGPT5 launches – OpenAI rolled out the long-awaited GPT-5 with upgraded reasoning, multimodal input/output, and better coding capabilities. Read more

• US/China tariff deadline extended 90 days – The Trump administration has delayed the next round of tariffs on Chinese imports, giving both sides more time to negotiate. Markets reacted positively, but uncertainty remains heading into the holiday season for brands sourcing from China. Read more

• Meta goes big on AI – Mark Zuckerberg announced a push toward artificial super intelligence, aiming to build “AGI that benefits everyone.” Open source is the goal, but critics question whether Meta can maintain safety while scaling. Read more

EVENT OF THE WEEK

Early Bird Sauna (Aug 21st)

Wellness, networking, and carbs. We’re teaming up with Skio, Sourcerie, and Rivo to host a rooftop sauna and cold plunge in Nolita. Coffee and bagels included.

📍 When: Aug 21, 8 AM
📍 Where: Nolita rooftop, NYC
📍 Who: Brand founders, operators, and decision makers in ecom

RSVP now, spots are filling up fast.