Future Commerce

As ChatGPT pulls back on native in-app checkout, malls becomemainstream again. Is agentic commerce ready for primetime, or are consumers seeking more analog experiences? PLUS: Dick's Sporting Goods' loyalty loop that turns steps into spending power, and a dystopian new platform that rents out humans for AI agents that can't operate in the physical world. Everything old is new again. Granny’s Favor...

Phillip and Brian get deep on a week when everything felt a little unhinged: Shopify's AI sidekick started building custom apps, Iran allegedly took out AWS data centers mid-Claude-outage, and the McDonald's CEO went mega-viral just days after Phillip prophesied it. Underneath the chaos, a throughline emerges: the things we've used to measure value (view counts, credit card rewards, third-party ap...

We’re live and poolside at the close of eTail Palm Springs. This year’s conference brought less theory and more proof, from agentic platforms doing actual operational work to the quiet rise of go-to-market tooling among merchants. One thing is clear: AI stopped talking and started shipping. Brian and Phillip break down the sessions, hallway conversations, and briefings that mattered most, and dive...

Jonathan Cohen, CMO of Onyx Global Group (Pure Daily Care & Aquasonic), joins Phillip and Alicia to trace the arc from Amazon-first launches to TikTok Shop dominance. This week, we unpack the unmeasurable and explore what it actually means to cede your marketing playbook to a creator economy that doesn't need your permission. Control Is Overrated, Anyway Key Takeaways Creators are the new CMOs. Br...

In just one year, Daily Harvest was acquired by Chobani, dropped its subscription requirement, and launched a campaign calling out the wellness hype machine. CEO Ricky Silver joins us to talk about the facts in an industry dominated by fiction. Selling Food, Not Fiction Key takeaways: The wellness hype machine is exhausting consumers. Daily Harvest's "Eat Food, Not Fiction" is its counter-punch. S...

Most Super Bowl ads failed before they aired. Dr. Marcus Collins explains why. We break down the Super Bowl as a cultural spectacle: the ads, the Bad Bunny halftime show, and the Levi's strategy that no one is talking about. Key takeaways: Why Marcus felt bad for every marketer who ran a Super Bowl ad this year The Lay's ad was beautiful. Marcus saw a father handing his daughter a lifetime of debt...

LIVE from Manifest 2026: Shipium CEO Jason Murray reveals why AI transformation isn't about making old processes faster but fundamentally rethinking workflows. From turning three-day analytics tasks into minutes with Orca to exploring adjacent areas such as auditing and consulting, Phillip, Brian, and Jason unpack how domain-specific AI creates competitive moats in an era when traditional advantag...

Join us at SoCom 2026 , the Social Commerce Conference. February 26 in Venice Beach and save 20% with code FCSC2026 Damon Berger, Head of Consumer Digital Engagement at Gap Inc., joins the show to share the strategy behind the brand's comeback. He unpacks the playbook for rebuilding an iconic brand, why it worked for Barbie, and why creator capital is the new north star. Plus, he reveals how Gap m...

Andrew McLuhan (The McLuhan Institute) and Paulo Ferreira (co-founder, Baroes Brand Publishing) join us to dissect the seismic shift from persuasion to publication. As institutions crumble and audiences demand transparency, brands are discovering they don't need platforms—they need publishing strategies. From Brazil's brand publishing revolution to venture capital as the ultimate gamble, this conv...

Theory meets tarmac. Sushmitha "Sushi" Radhakrishnan runs finance and operations at Birddogs, the men's apparel brand born from a Shark Tank moment that's now selling through Dick's Sporting Goods. She breaks down what cash flow actually looks like when summer—not holidays—is your Super Bowl, tariffs hit mid-growth, and every trend cycle could make or break a season. Key takeaways: Seasonal brands...

The old retail calendar is dead. Between TikTok virality, celebrity sightings, and ChatGPT-powered discovery, brands face a new reality: commerce runs on culture’s clock. Nicole Thomas (Brex) and Anand Mehta (Melio) break down how this shift from predictable peaks to perpetual possibility demands radical financial agility. Key takeaways: Retail shifted from twice-yearly peaks to monthly cultural s...

Cash flow isn't just spreadsheets—it's survival. In an era of tariffs, currency swings, and supply chain whiplash, small businesses face a paradox: grow fast while everything shifts beneath you. Corinne Boonstra (Brex) and Aharon Naveen (Melio) unpack how payment independence becomes the ultimate competitive advantage. Key takeaways: Tariff volatility forces brands to message consumers directly ab...

CEO of Optimove, Pini Yakuel, returns to explore the roots of positionless thinking and how AI pushes us to visionary methods over specialization. We explore how breaking departmental siloes unlocks 88% faster campaign cycles, and why a refreshed mindset will be your strongest tool in 2026. Key takeaways: Positionless marketing drove 88% campaign efficiency gains in 2025 AI accelerates range; huma...

Get ad-free episodes and bonus content, including the full recording of this podcast, by joining Future Commerce+ at futurecommerce.com/plus 🆕 Access to our newest analysis feature for members, Field Notes , our retail space analysis briefing. Featuring brands like Swatch, Printemps, and Skims. Access to our new Word of Mouth Index with Fairing, a brand new member benefit Save 15% on Future Comme...

Fresh from the Javits Center, Phillip, Brian, and Alicia unpack NRF 2026's dominant themes, from AI's omnipresence to its curiously low adoption among the very professionals championing it. The conversation moves beyond technology theater to explore what truly drives commerce: cultural connection, intentional brand heritage, and multiplayer engagement that treats customers as collaborators rather...

The future of commerce hinges on agility, but most brands remain stuck at spreadsheet speed. Louis Camassa, Director of Product Management at Rithum, breaks down findings from the 2026 Commerce Readiness Index and reveals why data quality, inventory latency, and algorithmic visibility matter more than channel expansion. We’re uncovering the infrastructure bottlenecks threatening AI's potential, an...

Shipping frozen premium meats and prepared meals requires precise logistics that most marketplaces aren't built to handle. But Denys Gorbatiuk saw an opportunity where others saw impossible complexity. Grumpy Butcher became Temu's first frozen food seller and proved that operational excellence can break down expansion barriers and create a competitive advantage. Within five weeks, Temu accounted f...

Jessica De Gennaro didn't know what a succulent was when she launched Shop Succulents. But she knew how to solve operational challenges, work agilely, and move product quickly on marketplaces. She tapped into the pandemic’s succulent boom and built a multi-marketplace operation shipping hundreds of thousands of live plants every year. But how do you scale across regions when you’re shipping succul...

After being laid off in 2014, Toyiah Marquis turned her passion for patches into a thriving business built on cultural representation and authentic connection. Patch Party Club started as an in-store experience and single-product experiment on Temu. But it quickly evolved into a scalable business model that now reaches audiences Toyiah never expected to serve. How do you transform personal passion...

The Future Commerce team reflects on their favorite podcast moments from a year of extraordinary conversations. From haunted dolls and architectural rhizomes to debates about capitalism and idealism, these episodes challenged conventional wisdom about how brands influence culture and why efficiency alone won't save us. (Feat. Rory Sutherland, Dami Lee, Andrew McLuhan, Nick Susi, Kunle Campbell, An...

The brands that will thrive in the next era of commerce understand that context drives everything, from platform choice to storytelling and trust formation. As a result, success hinges on a brand’s ability to serve customers across multiple contexts rather than controlling single experiences. For the season finale, Commerce CEO Travis Hess joins Phillip and Lindsay to explore what it means when "t...

Phillip and Brian forecast the year ahead, from Walmart becoming America's healthcare provider to prediction markets reshaping news, autonomous vehicles hitting critical mass, and the consumerization of everything. 2026 brings economic correction, political realignment, and consumers seizing control from institutions. Our Vision: Walmart will emerge as America's front-line health system through ac...

In their ninth year of annual predictions, Philip and Brian revisit bold calls made in late 2024 that proved remarkably prescient. From mega-brand consolidation and Costco's international dominance to Google's stunning comeback and the rise of Anthropic, they dissect what they got right (most of it), what they got wrong (GameStop stands stubborn), and why being months ahead of conversations about...

In an era where consumers gather inspiration everywhere else, branded eCommerce sites face an existential crisis: prove your utility or become irrelevant. This episode examines how consumer expectations have shifted toward "get me what I want, when and how I want it," with 58% finding returns the most frustrating aspect of online shopping. We dissect why guest checkout remains a universal pain poi...

As retail sheds its four walls, technology must follow. Jason James (CIO, Aptos) and Nikki Baird (VP of Strategy & Product, Aptos) join us to explore how brands like New Balance deploy 90+ registers at the NYC Marathon—then dismantle them just as quickly. The conversation reveals how point-of-sale systems built on next-generation databases enable everything from parking lot pop-ups to van-based fi...