Future Commerce

The $100 Pumpkin Brian believes that no matter if there's an economic downturn, people will always make room for food and beverage in their budget, “People don't want to come down on food and bev, they'll forgo other things.” Smaller stores like Erewhon might not face challenges in the downturn due to the loyalty of those going after food and bev, but Whole Foods which is not up-market, might take...

High Complexity, Low Commodity Online experiences have become more commoditized over time; low and no-code platforms have displaced the need for a “developer,” and instead require feature configurations and tweaks Software development thrives where experiences have high complexity. High complexity often means that there are no de facto “standards” or best practices that need to be employed. This r...

What if everyone is sick of drinking champagne?  Retail media is a direct channel to the shopper. It’s an attractive audience for brands to reach shoppers, and it's becoming really profitable  Brands are currently using two methods to allocate retail media, which makes it very limited, and its harder to get ahead of trends when using one of the two models Kiri’s proposal for the two methods is to...

You’re Either Alive or Dead Jeremy Cai is the founder of Italic, a leading marketplace that offers the highest quality products at the lowest prices by connecting consumers straight to top manufacturers. People are continuing to buy more online than ever before, and Jeremy thinks it will only continue to grow. With the heightened demand for Amazon, brands will continue to seek out online consumers...

Adapting to Customer Behaviors We used to only have one marketplace: Amazon. But social media is becoming a marketplace on its own. The good news: for developers, as we standardize API’s and as more companies go headless, social media commerce platforms won’t feel like something completely new, just another property for brands. The bad news: for product, sales and marketing teams, this shift will...

A Boom to the Creator Economy? Counterfactuals give us a what-if thinking. It’s thinking through scenarios that haven’t happened, but what if they did? They help us analyze our past performance “Counterfactual analysis makes up a lot of like our cause-effect thinking when we're thinking about how to apply a situation in a new context because nothing is ever the same and the pace of change is happe...

As Promiscuous as a Gibbon Brian led a whole track on IRCE and helped cover tracks on personalizing your digital economy, Gen Z being underbanked, using data to fuel personalized experiences, finding opportunities in micro-segments, and more! “It's interesting how many folks from traditional design backgrounds actually wind up in eCommerce and then they get into the side of the business where it's...

The in-Direct to Consumer era Websites are homogenous and lacking inspiration. If you remove the navigation bar, most websites are indistinguishable Shopify’s stock is down 75% from its all-time high. While the tech sector experiences pain and economic concerns loom, many brands will need to invest in experience “What do consumers care about? Fast, cheap, and free. Shopify turned a business buyer,...

A Natural Evolution of eCommerce Boris defines composable commerce as there being advantages of being the best of suite of world. You can now select the best search that fits the best for your business, and your business might be very different from someone else's business. Like everything, composable commerce has its pros and cons. It can look shiny, but it has its challenges “You can't just turn...

The Sacraments of Commerce DTC Theory: anything that can be disintermediated eventually will be disintermediated With the presence of The Fascination, it could be proof that DTC is still relevant or a sign of the downfall to come  “We're still at the beginning of the creator economy in many ways, there's a lot more opportunity for those that come to the table with interesting products and interest...

One-Click Buy…Say What? Recently Amazon has made a push around their one-click purchase button, "Buy with Prime” Amazon is now comfortable with trying to take an existing model and system and extend that beyond their own channel “The interesting play here is the comfortability of expanding channels.” -Kris  The thing that differentiates checkout at the end of the day is the Prime-like experience i...

The Metaverse: Innovation or Skinnovation? The metaverse we’re building right now is not the metaverse we’ll all end up using…if we end up using the metaverse at all. Don’t worry about what competitors and enterprises are doing in the metaverse, worry instead about how you should break into this new world. “The current Web3 and metaverse implementation that we see today feels like small teams of d...

Serendipitous Experiences RICE's (the Retail Innovation Conference and Expo) goal is to stay true to their roots and put a new and fun spin on the event and expo space RICE is working to reframe the way content is performed for the show, hitting reset on who is given a platform, and making the learning experiences as focused and tailored as possible “We want this place to be a place where conversa...

Bells and Whistles At Best If you’re not familiar with the eCommerce Marketing School podcast, they post five times a week, with 5-10 minute episodes taking a customer story sharing some of their tactics, what's working, what's not, and then a handful of interviews as well with operators who are in the trenches working on new tactics for growth Some businesses start because people have a product,...

Living in a Headless World  Bryan Mahoney is back today to talk about recent news at Chord such as launching Chord Commerce Hub “We see Chord Commerce Hub as the mission control for business users.” -Bryan If you’re trying to be efficient, you’re doing it wrong. The right way is oftentimes the hard way. “The core tenant of headless for me, is taking a first-principles approach to building. It's no...

Boundaries Cause us to Thrive On March 21st, the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC), issued proposed climate-related disclosures. The rules were proposed for publicly traded companies that report to the SEC. The SEC is proposing these rules to protect investors because they felt that the current rules did not adequately protect investors when it comes to climate-related risks. “The SEC wanted...

Come At Me PacSun Everything and everyone is all about the metaverse right now. Brian is starting to think that the “metaverse is just the internet now.” Maybe it is, hence why some think NFTs, crypto, and bitcoin are part of the metaverse as well. When we think about DTC we have to remember what the entailed vision was: “to disrupt the existing industry or category with a product that is equal to...

A Lesson in Complex Systems  Peter is the manager of Strategic Partnerships at BigCommerce and works to help solve the pain points of tax and cross-border  “Tax is one of the more complex issues that merchants have to work through when it comes to cross-border commerce.” -Peter Localization, offering the correct payment gateways, and fraud management are just a few things that will help make a sea...

Launching the Crawl, Walk, Run As companies scale their operations into new markets, it's important to have the people, partners, and processes to scale efficiently. “We need technology to help us manage exceeding our own capacities and limits.” -Phillip It’s about the relationships on the other side and how we relate to them, in order to make all things come together and bring product to the hand...

The Rosetta Stone of eCommerce Craig Reed is the GM of Cross-Border at Avalara and has watched the industry develop over the last 20 years. He’s truly one of the godfathers of cross-border eCommerce. An HS code is the code that an individual country expects you to give them to tell them what you're importing. This is important because all the other rules and restrictions flow from HS codes. Craig...

Have a More Holistic Global View of the World Kent Allen is the Co-Founder of GELF, who has been in the ecosystem and helping lead the conversation of cross-border for 25 years “We've got to realize that the very nature of digital commerce is cross-border.” -Kent In the last few years we’ve seen a boom in eCommerce, which has inherently led to a boom in cross-border The monkey paw of cross-border...

It Takes an Ecosystem to Grow Internationally Jason Nyhus is the SVP of Global Sales at Digital River, focusing on helping brands go global “The honest reality of today is a lot different than it was a decade ago. If you make any product, you are inherently global overnight.”- Jason Just because you’re able to take people’s money, doesn't mean you will be able to fulfill the brands promise. You ha...

The Super Bowel Movement We admit, we were talking s**t about Tushy on a recent Senses email, only because our team was very intrigued by the Super Bowel campaign, and of course this prompted conversation between our teams and here we are, dropping poop jokes on the show TUSHY is the modern bidet brand that washes your butt clean after you poop. “Make something that you would be curious to click o...

Everything is Better in Person Everyone is still suffering through the turmoil of work from home life, job transitions, not knowing how to interact with customers, and so much more but Etail West was able to provide a way for everyone to relate and be in person again for the first time in a long time. “The struggles that any company has to build out culture, whether it's in-person or even more cha...

What Even is Arbitrage? Phillip’s new definition of arbitrage: an untapped source of potential; a source of growth that's under leveraged or as yet undiscovered. “The real arbitrage opportunity is hard work. Everybody wants a shortcut, and everybody wants the one weird trick.” - Philllip We’re stuck in a e-commerce industry diet fad phase. Everyone is searching for the one weird trick, but there i...