Future Commerce

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Mike Beckham, CEO and Co-Founder of Simple Modern, shares how he built a team centered around generosity and making a difference. They discuss the impact of Kim K's marketing genius, the importance of strategy over tactics, and the power of culture and purpose in building a great team.

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This season on "Decoded," presented by BigCommerce, we'll delve into the intricate processes behind successful brands. Discover how they conceptualize and debut new products, set their objectives, make pivotal decisions, and foster seamless collaboration across their teams to breathe life into a new product.Our guest on our 5th episode of Decoded Season 2 is none other than Brian Schmitt. He is the Co-Founder at surefoot, which is a conversion rate optimization testing company. He has 20 years of experience in delivering optimization. And by his account, testing hasn't really changed all that much in these 20 years, and maybe the shopping cart and the nature of the shopping cart really haven't changed all that much either. “Lies, damn lies, and statistics."{00:08:02} - “A lot of those sites just don't have the traffic to support testing in the proper way. And they're making decisions then on bad data, and that's where people get frustrated with A/B testing.” - Brian{00:09:05} - “There are opportunities for a timer to actually improve conversion rate, but I would say, in general, no, a timer is a bad thing, creating a dark pattern of false urgency for your customer, and they trust you less over time.” - Brian{00:24:49} - “We've certainly had clients where the longer that quiz is, the more bought in the customer becomes by the end of the quiz because they really feel like it's been optimized to them and what products they're seeing. And if you make that too short, too easy, and you have too broad of answers at the end, people don't believe to quiz, and so they're less likely to trust the answers that come out at the end of it.” - Brian{00:33:34} - “I think the practice of optimization is not a specific treatment of a website. It is the practice of trying things and measuring the difference, of the new thing versus the old thing. That is it.” - Brian{00:40:52} - “The leaders that excel in businesses that are generational, like the Nordstroms of the world, that can continue to stay culturally relevant over time, they have high conviction and high intuition because they are in tune both with what the brand delivers and what their customer expects of the brand, and that has to come through in the eCommerce channel today more than ever before.” - Phillip{00:41:95} - “If they haven't really dug in and detailed out customer desire, behavior, life stage, priorities and if they're not really able to articulate that, the rest of the whole thing is gonna be garbage. You've got to get to a pretty significant and specific level of detail to develop product. And if you're not able to develop that level or have that level of knowledge, your product isn't gonna be good enough because you don't even understand what you're going up against.” - Loretta SoffeAssociated Links:Learn more about Brian Schmitt and surefootGrab your copy of The Multiplayer Brand hereHave you checked out our YouTube channel yet?Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce worldListen to our other episodes of Future CommerceHave any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

"Everything's dopamine-centric" and today we explore how the industry of logistics and eCommerce are no different. PLUS: Kris Gösser join us to discuss the rise and fall of Convoy. Listen now!We Need More Daring{00:17:03} - “Everything's very dopamine-centric. And it is, it is preying on your like, "I'm going to gamble a little bit. I'm going to spend a little money and see if this is worth it." And sometimes the thing that is worth having spent the time is the dopamine and not the product that you got at the end.” - Phillip{00:28:34} - “I think Shein is the most multiplayer brand because they only produce the things that customers tell them they want. Their just in time manufacturing, their operating model is specifically designed in the same way that software engineering created an operating model around scrum and sprints where you have an agile process that allows you to only make a certain set of features at a time and only focus on those and then move on to the next thing. This is a new operating model for a certain type of a retail business that is fundamentally multiplayer.” - Phillip{00:30:55} - “Overcorrection in design breeds a lot of innovation and copycats come along and then that becomes the trend. And that is, I think, what we're seeing, and what we hope to see actually in a lot of design, especially in website design.” - Phillip{00:44:20} - “Tech-enabled logistics was a fun party while the party was happening. But really this is a story of the fed. And when rates were increased and you saw every industry from banking to telecoms to consumer electronics to whatever, whatever, whatever, that impact is so foundational and central that it shook through every system out there.” - Kris{00:47:37} - “The capital costs just didn't have enough time to pay off. Basically you have all this heavy investment in tech and then when the market's cratered and the market wasn't there anymore, they had all these high costs.” - Brian{00:54:23} - “What's going to happen is you're going to see this kind of knock on effect of the innovations Convoy had, the innovations Flexport has had, the innovations 3PLs are doing, whether it's Shipium or other companies that are software-centric are now going to be able to help improve the industry with a lot of their ideas, a lot of their concepts and just in general help achieve maybe over the next five years, the impact on the industry that a lot of the tech-enabled logistics companies are trying to do.” - Kris{01:03:53} - If someone's not looking at the business holistically, or at least with a modern lens of how technology is actually going to affect the business at every touch point, then it's going to get really hard to focus on the things that will make a meaningful difference.” - BrianAssociated Links:Live stream video mayhem mentioned at 24:24FC Insiders #113: BrinkmanshipGrab your copy of The Multiplayer Brand for just $20 with free shipping in the U.S.Have you checked out our YouTube channel yet?Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce worldListen to our other episodes of Future CommerceHave any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

The world’s most recognizable brands employ artists and storytellers to preserve their legacy.  Today, on Episode 2 of the second season of VISIONS, we're going live to the VISIONS Summit, recorded in June of 2023, in Chicago, and we'll listen in to our special guest, José Cabaço, the former Global Creative and Storytelling Director of Adidas and Orchid Bertelsen, the COO of Common Thread Collective and former Head of Innovation at Nestle Foods. Two experts who discuss the very real challenges we face in an ever more artificial world.Artificial Ignorance{00:03:25} “It's easy to get into the fandom business, but it's really, really hard to be genuinely adopted by the culture that you're trying to be a part of, engage with, promote to the benefit not just of your brand, but that culture that you're putting the spotlight on. I think there are very few brands that do it nicely.” - José Cabaço{00:07:07} “Oh, innovation happens. It happens because you listen, you collaborate. The outcome, the data conversion of that is product that then betters your performance, becomes desirable beyond the function it was created for.” - José Cabaço{00:18:28} “It absolutely takes courage from a brand to very meaningfully and intentionally open up a platform and use a very iconic product that they have that has a lot of history, a lot of legacy.” - Orchid Bertelson{00:19:52} “You already mentioned the notion that if it's generated in AI, it's not property of anyone or a brand can claim the property of it or the ownership of it. Kind of. Because, for example, if you look at these two brands and you see the amount of archives that they have of their own products, if that is their prompt, that is theirs still.” - José Cabaço{00:23:35} “The line is very clear. You either are willing to be led in a conversation that you decided to engage with a certain culture, or you're not.” - José CabaçoGuestsOrchid Bertelson, Chief Operating Officer and Common Thread CollectiveJosé Cabaço, Artist and Global Creative Director and Head Storyteller at brands like Hurley, Nike, and AdidasHave any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

We love a good chart, and every year, Gartner provides us with one that gets a *lot* of buzz. In this episode, Aaron Sheehan joins Phillip to unpack and unlock the mysteries and myths of the Magic Quadrant and ways it can benefit those having a look and those who have been placed on it. Why is context so important in understanding this and other reports, and why doesn’t anyone talk about The Critical Capabilities report that comes out simultaneously? Listen now to this insightful discussion!Smoke-Filled Rooms{00:17:05} - “These methodologies get a little calcified probably over time, but that's by at some level design. They're not meant to be sort of continually updated because they're meant to be a point of comparison year over year.” - Aaron{00:18:36} - “If Gartner or Forrester or whoever had a completeness of vision rubric, let's say they understand every single vendor's vision, their roadmap, and where they are on their progression of the roadmap, then in reality, every point on this quadrant, at least on the Gartner Magic Quadrant, is not relative to each other, but relative to their product roadmap.” - Phillip{00:26:37} - “It's not about movement within a fixed scale, it's that the scale is constantly moving in both directions and your velocity as a business and your total addressable market as a business determine where you stay on that stretching canvas.” - Phillip{00:26:56} - “Like a lot of human endeavor, the analyst reports are an attempt to impose a scientific rigor on what is often a somewhat emotional set of judgment calls.” - Aaron{00:38:00} - “It probably hurts you not to show up and participate in the RFI because you lose the chance to present your vision and your roadmap and cast yourself in the best light to the analysts. So that's a good thing for you to do if you are wanting to rank well.” - Aaron{00:57:57} - “The more specific context you can bring into your graphic, the better, the more useful your two-dimensional graphic probably is because that context is the actual third dimension in that 3D visualization that I was advocating for at the beginning. It's the context that helps you interpret the graphic.” - AaronAssociated Links:The long-form breakdown of the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Commerce Platforms — from Cocktails and Commerce by Brian WalkerThe 2021-2023 comparison chart of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Commerce Platforms by Slava Kravchuk, CEO of AtwixGrab your copy of The Multiplayer Brand for just $20 with free shipping in the U.S.Have you checked out our YouTube channel yet?Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce worldListen to our other episodes of Future CommerceHave any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

Phillip and Brian discuss current events and news in the eCommerce space, Phillip reveals how he likes long walks with ChatGPT, and what if Brian was right all along about AI Butlers? What limitations will be needed as products like Rewind become more adopted? What constraints to context will these types of technologies overcome? And how much should brands strive to meet the moment? Listen now for all of this and more!FaceTiming with ScarJo{00:11:42} - “We talked a lot about body data early on and even for many years and those biometric markers and things like that. I see our collection of data about ourselves, our specific bodies being the next frontier for how we're going to interact with technology. But along with that, we're also going to be collecting data on our minds.” - Brian{00:23:03} - “Algorithmic segmentation is only constrained to that known person who picked up a cookie and is browsing around the internet, but it doesn't have context of everything else happening in their life. Maybe Rewind and other products in the future, like Meta's live streaming technology, will give eCommerce context and be able to adapt the experience to what your present moment is, not what it presumes it to be, or someone else's behavior.” - Phillip{00:26:56} - “An additional layer of context may be that these ambient devices, this ambient computing is happening, and that's where I think there is an opportunity for commerce because the thing that was promised to us with Alexa that never really happened was it's all there, we already have ambient devices, we're just not using them because they're not literally on our person.” - Phillip{00:33:37} - “Really what's happening right now is the wave of nostalgia is meeting at the same time that millennials really, really are hitting peak Costco membership years. And Costco has done an incredible job of continuing to make that membership worth its money with the types of products that they're putting in their store.” - Brian{00:45:33} - “Brands and people who constantly try to change just to meet the moment often lose something along the way. And brands that don't change at all can miss out on opportunities. But sometimes that authenticity comes back around.” - BrianAssociated Links:Get in on our Muses Mail and join us at Art Basel in DecemberGrab your copy of The Multiplayer Brand hereHave you checked out our YouTube channel yet?Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce worldListen to our other episodes of Future CommerceHave any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

This week we dive into competitive intelligence: what are your rivals up to, and how does it affect you as a brand leader? Josh Wilson, CEO of Particl, reveals how observing competitors and smartly leveraging that data can distinguish you from the rest. PLUS: A brand review of Popsmith, and we rehash the concept of DISloyalty. Listen now!Biggest Month Ever{00:14:38} - “{Competitive intelligence} is harder and easier in multiple ways now. Your next competitor can come from anywhere. Where I feel like historically there were capital requirements and technology kind of barriers of entry that prevented that. But then on the flip side, the shift to online gives you kind of a great pulse on signals and what everyone else is doing. It's great for brands just to be thinking about and to have a strategy around.” - Josh{00:17:26} - “It's essentially impossible to block bots without blocking customers unless you put everything through a lock behind kind of a login portal. I would focus more on how can you use it to your benefit.” - Josh{00:25:20} - “What we'll do is we ingest our customer's data and we will look at the products they're selling and the product types. And with that, we've been able to guide customers towards product types that we feel better overlap with their business, make more sense for their customers to buy, and kind of a natural progression of the business.” - Josh{00:28:40} - “We saw pink start selling like crazy. And then we had brands that were kind of the major capturers of that, like a SKIMS, for example. They basically took all the pink products, put them in a collection for Barbie, and those products sold off the shelves. Now, the thing is, those products actually hadn't been selling very well before. It was a very clever way to use existing inventory, package it slightly differently, and sell it.” - Josh{00:32:11} - “Like my Co-Founder says, "The opportunity of a lifetime comes once a month." So it's important to stay current and up to date. It's important to not read yesterday's newspaper. That's why we think you need data for what's going on right now, not a week ago or whatever. By that point, it's too old.” - Josh{00:34:45} - “Brands can move the needle with very small changes, as well as they can ensure that they're not just discounting and lighting good money on fire, good margin. It's actually less about vertically looking at the brand down and from a data and correlation perspective, it's actually more about looking sideways at the product type because the customers are comparing your leggings to someone else's leggings to someone else's leggings. They're not comparing your product to your t-shirt or your leggings to your t-shirt to etcetera.” - JoshAssociated Links:Learn more about Josh Wilson and ParticlGet in on our Muses Mail and join us at Art Basel in DecemberGrab your copy of The Multiplayer Brand hereHave you checked out our YouTube channel yet?Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce worldListen to our other episodes of Future CommerceHave any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

This season on VISIONS will explore the content of VISIONS: Volume IV by Future Commerce. VISIONS is an audio-visual Annual Trends report that examines the changes in culture and commerce and their impacts on the technology industry that serves them. VISIONS: Volume IV took place over three months, from April to June 2023, bookended by two events.Today we go live to the first of those events at the Celeste Bartos Theater at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, where we'll speak with a panel of modern culture reporters, foresight analysts, and media creators and ask them the question, “Where is the counterculture?”Trends are Change{00:04:11} “What we have right now is a lot of interesting niche subcommunities with their own cultures and then countercultures to those. And I think the result of that is it's very hard to know what's trending because trends really exist within these sort of niche subcultures and microspheres. And then by the time they exit, they're no longer a trend, they're more like a trend discourse.” - Daisy Alioto{00:06:47} “You can't really talk about counterculture without talking about the capitalization of it all. You can capitalize on these weird trends, whether it's something like Dimes Square, and then you see a year later, the entire Marc Jacobs campaign for a massive fashion brand is these characters. So is that really counterculture if that's cool now?” - Emily Sundberg{00:09:00} “Sometimes I do get bummed about the lack of existence of new things, and that's why we're going so hard on fashion history because everything feels really referential. But also there's something fun about new combinations and seeing a couch where there's a guy from the White Lotus on it, but there's also a girl that you saw at a party last week.” - Alexi Alario{00:11:26} “Is there counterculture or subculture or monoculture? It's completely dependent upon the sample size in which we're looking at. And for the most part, I think it behooves us to really broaden our aperture of really understanding what's most important to the most amount of people, because if we have to select too small of a sample size, we're just speaking to ourselves and really ignoring the masses.” - Matt Klein{00:16:14} “When we're talking about nostalgia and memory as some of the strongest mechanisms for marketing and the relationship that nostalgia and memory have to certain mediums, like the type of film or camera you were using when you first encountered something or the type of car you were driving when you first encountered something, it's very hard to package that in an authentic way, but if you can, that becomes the brand moat. And that's the thing that allows you to excel past all of your competitors.” - Daisy Alioto{00:24:02} “The thing about de-influencing is, yes, there's a little bit of stoicism of screw it, don't buy this thing, but it's still a form of influencing.” - Matt Klein{00:28:42} “Daisy Alioto: it's also important to remember that, for every counterculture movement, the response to it will be part of the cycle of the next culture, even if it's happening in this very fragmented way now.” - Daisy Alioto{00:35:34} “Nothing gets better without criticism. So I feel like it's okay that everyone is a critic as long as I think it creates a heightened awareness. And especially with algorithms. If you're not a critic, you're just going to let them like run over you.” - Alexi AlarioGuestsDaisy Alioto, CEO and Co-Founder of DirtEmily Sundberg, Writer, Creative Strategist, and Publisher at Feed Me SubstackAlexi Alario, Co-Host of the Nymphet Alumni PodcastMatt Klein, Cultural Theorist and Publisher of ZineHave any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!