Future Commerce

What does it take to build a brand that stands out as a Hero? How does the Hero’s story inspire us and bring about positive impact in the world around us? Listen now as Ju Rhyu shares with Phillip some of her Hero’s journey in building Hero Cosmetics!Standout Success{00:02:47} Ju knew that acne care is an emotional and sensitive area of the market, and she wanted the name of the product and of the brand to be positive and connect emotionally with consumers who needed the solution the product would provide{00:05:25} “When we started, even though we started on Amazon, I always knew this business would be an omnichannel business because when you have a pimple emergency, two day free shipping is great, but nothing sometimes is as good as being able to walk into a store and pick up a product that same day.” - Ju{00:06:00} Hero’s first in-store launch went so well that it went nationwide pretty quickly, and then two years later was in Target where one SKU became a mulit-million dollar SKU within one year{00:11:00} “I definitely have the philosophy that I'll always do what's right for the business. And if I'm no longer the right person, then I will gladly step aside and make room for a real professional.” - Ju{00:13:34} “I’m constantly amazed at people who are at the highest levels of success or fame or however we hold them, when asked about who their heroes are, they pull out a Tom Rinks or a Scott Norton who has never been mentioned on Twitter, not once. I think that that's really interesting.” - PhillipAssociated Links: Learn more about Ju Rhyu and Hero CosmeticsCheck out other Future Commerce podcastsSubscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more of what we are witnessing in the commerce world!Have 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!

Any business comes with risks, and there are many legal issues around advertising that can become major if a brand doesn’t have arms around what those are and how to avoid them. From differing terms of agreement to the variety of laws per state, there is a good deal to navigate, and it takes an expert to wade through. How do you realistically have a thriving enterprise or a business with these kinds of encumbrances? Listen now to our conversation with Robert Freund and his take on this changing environment and how it affects all of us! Applying Old Laws to New Situations{00:08:05} The rules of disclosure, that were never really clear before, are undergoing scrutiny and clarification from the FTC for situations such as an influencer receiving product and then creating content about it and other examples that can really determine strategy{00:13:22} “The FTC's rule is that the disclosure has to be clear and conspicuous, which effectively means your audience can't miss it.” - Robert{00:16:45} “These old laws and rulings that are not effectively law become a tangled web that we have woven because of the heavy commercialization of the way that content has emerged.” - Phillip{00:18:21} “There's always that sort of lag time between what the law says, what courts tell us the law means and what marketers are out there doing.” - Robert{00:25:08} Legal problems, whether legitimate or not, have always been a part of running a business, but the time frame for encountering a legal problem is business is much shorter now{00:30:58} As advertisers get more creative and competitors get more daring, there will continue to be more pushback from the FTC and more lawsuits filed against business owners that can even look back as much as three or four years, so it’s important to not fall prey to using those tactics to justify staying competitive{00:38:05} Legal entanglements and risk associated with them influence the way businesses are built and also where they are being built now, which actually changes the way we think about global commerce and global eCommerce, and that’s not necessarily a good thing{00:49:58} “As you go to try and do something more and further that stands out, of course, the top influencers are pushing legal boundaries. That's probably how they got there in the first place.” - BrianAssociated Links:Learn more about Robert FreundFind out more about The Visions Summit at RICE 2023 and make plans to meet us there!Have you checked out our YouTube channel yet?Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more of what we are witnessing in the commerce world! Listen 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!

Joy Howard's Early Majority is defying conventional eCommerce norms by building in public with their community. In this episode, learn about Joy's ethos for redefining brands with a “punk rock ethos,” the challenges of creating a unique online experience, and how Early Majority’s mission to redefine the good life is resonating with customers seeking a more meaningful, eco-conscious lifestyle. Listen now!Street to Summit: Culture is What Makes Brands{00:05:12} Why do so many outdoor brands make cool stuff for men and then have a women’s line that is pretty lame? There are cool outdoor women who want cool outdoor apparel, too{00:09:17} Building in public is a slower way to grow a brand, but Joy views the enjoyable pace as a foundation for longevity{00:11:53} “As soon as you decide that you're going to build community, you automatically have to have humility and you automatically have to submit to where everybody else wants to go too. Not in a herd or sheep-like way, but in a way that's deeply collaborative and mindful and listening.” - Joy{00:18:19} The aesthetic of the brand helps to tell the story of who Early Majority is as a community-centered brand that sells apparel, and it so many ways, there is a distinctively different story being told{00:25:44} The new counter-culture is actually looking for the right kinds of limitations and boundaries and structure{00:31:22} Having a membership program within the brand was one very intentional way of addressing economic equality and providing accessibility for more people to be able to enjoy the product{00:37:30} “Probably the scariest thing about everything that I've done so far and what really is against the grain is having that little bit of friction in the funnel up front.” - Joy{00:42:21} The future of commerce is more cooperative, more supportive, and more offline, where people are able to find their community and their place in commerce in life-giving ways.Associated Links:Learn more about Joy Howard and Early Majority.Find out more about The Visions Summit at RICE 2023 and make plans to meet us there!Have you checked out our YouTube channel yet?Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more of what we are witnessing in the commerce world!Listen 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!

How do you find out what your customers are afraid of and what they already want? What has it been like for Aaron to go from being the long form guy at previous companies to now creating short form content? How does our personal story fit into the larger narrative and why is that powerful to consider? Listen in now to the discussion with Aaron Orendorff and hear this and more! The Story Within The Story{00:06:31} Good writing that is a mix of good content, emotion, storytelling, and enough of the right juice to get eyes on it works, even when you are not exactly the expert on the subject{00:08:58} The tension between knowing a little bit about a lot and being willing to take risks and be open to learn makes it hurt less when you are actually proven wrong{00:18:18} Three levels of Aaron’s strategy for Future Commerce: Originality with accessibility, capturing the demand, and cleaning up the technical side of things{00:25:41} After six years of experimentation at Future Commerce, we feel more than ever that our content is worth discovering{00:43:19}  Have you ChatGPT’d yourself? I mean, we have a draw to be known and to do something that has meaning{00:47:16} Writing incredibly compelling content is exciting, being found and generating traffic is even more exciting, and it’s also critical{00:51:12} “The place to always invest is what's the voice, what's the value, what's the creative angle, what's the thing that we can do in a way that no one else can? You build a back catalog of just day in, day out, put in the reps, you've then amassed this war chest, and then it just becomes so much easier to actually get this out into the world now that I have something worth sharing.” - Aaron OrendorffAssociated Links:Learn more about Aaron Orendorff and RecartFind out more about The Visions Summit at RICE 2023 and make plans to meet us there!Have you checked out our YouTube channel yet?Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more of what we are witnessing in the commerce world! Listen 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 guys sit down and hear from Kiri Masters about her newest report, Fit For Purpose: 23 Next-gen DSP Metrics That Measure What Matter, and the incredible insights found within. As always, Kiri provides interesting ways to look at important metrics like only she can. Listen in now and hear more! The Gorilla in the Room{00:05:13} Kiri found that her clients needed to take a step back and understand what was happening at each stage of the buyer journey based on a better set of metrics that, as her new report is called, are fit for purpose. They really fit for each stage rather than metrics that don't give the full picture{00:09:41} Metrics such as Competitor Audience Acquisition and Review Page View Rate are original metrics discovered by Kiri and her team and are indicators that shed light on whether or not specific campaigns are working for a brand{00:18:51} Whatever used to happen on the brand side with technology is now something that can happen inside of platforms that are actually commerce platforms, but they're actually valuable marketing tools unto themselves now for understanding not just your consumer, but potentially conquesting others, which reorients how we think about Amazon{00:21:16} “All the typical non-retail advertisers are looking to Amazon as well because they have a lot of data about who we are, how we act, and what our interests are.” - Kiri{00:24:58}  With all of these channels and with the complexity of Amazon's DSP that perhaps arbitrage does need a little bit of an update because the definition of what arbitrage means might need a little bit of an update{00:31:11} “We had the paid media wave, the social media wave, and now we're in the retail media wave, and each successive wave had a shorter and shorter ramp up time to be something meaningful. And the ramp up to retail media spend has been the shortest of all.” - Kiri{00:34:34} Are retail media networks overhyped and are these distractions when everyone and their mother is trying to build one right now?Associated Links:Check out Fit For Purpose: 23 Next-gen DSP Metrics That Measure What Matter from Kiri Masters and AcadiaFind out more about The Visions Summit at RICE 2023 and make plans to meet us there!Have you checked out our YouTube channel yet?Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more of what we are witnessing in the commerce world! Listen 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 way that we buy is changing dramatically. Folks make less concerted purchases of a higher order value based on this really brief calculus of what kind of a product it is, where you are in your need for that product. Over the past seven years of doing this show, we’ve seen how much attention has been fractured. Parasocial relationships are entertainment mixed in with social media mixed in with commerce. Listen in now as Phillip and Brian discuss these ideas and more! Entertaining Relationships{00:03:26} Le Creuset has a new colorway, and their paper bag reveal video led to an interesting discussion on why cookware is a leading edge category in DTC{00:13:39} San Fran is back on the map with tech innovation, according to folks in AI, and it’s funny how chat style interfaces are reminiscent of the discourse we had about conversational commerce six years ago on Future Commerce{00:21:19} Is faking it the only way to get the American audience to buy into live-stream shopping? Why is this a problem?{00:24:25} But wait, would live-stream shopping work? Maybe for cookware?{00:32:45}  “If you look at most of the recent jumps into culture from brands, it's really to just get people to look their way for a minute. We're already in the attention economy.” - Brian{00:40:21} “If it wasn't for the Apple iTunes end-user license agreement, we wouldn't have a paradigm for consent.” - Phillip{00:54:41} Retail sales in-store are still by and large the majority of how people shop, and there is still a lot of room for growth in eCommerce and digital shoppingAssociated Links:Find out more about The Visions Summit at RICE 2023 and make plans to meet us there!Have you checked out our YouTube channel yet?Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more of what we are witnessing in the commerce world!Listen 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!

What do you do when there is an area in public affairs with either fast change or major conflict happening? You send in the sophisticated research team Mark Drapeau leads and find out what is going on and why. Listen in now to our conversation with Mark as he shares insights from years of research and also more about their newest report called Maximum Impact: How Digital Ads Level the Playing Field for U.S. Small Businesses!Data, Digital, and Disruption{00:05:45} “We want people to be armed with the best data points to tell a great narrative.” - Mark Drapeau{00:11:38} Every single thing could be seen as a threat or an opportunity depending on where you sit and how you react to it.{00:17:13} How does sports gambling and gaming effect other areas of the economy and why would that trade off be interesting and necessary piece of data to look into?{00:27:18} “Digital tools are a force multiplier for businesses trying to sell.” - Mark Drapeau{00:36:35}  Across all small-medium sized businesses, about 67% of the overall ad budget is digital and that includes social media, video search, and other kinds of digital advertising. For small businesses with less than ten employees, it's 74%.{00:41:39} “We write in a very broad way and don't go too deep on anything. And then we frequently kind of follow up with shorter in-depth pieces that dive deeper into something that we're very interested in.” - Mark Drapeau{00:36:35} There are many interesting data points through the years from the studies RXN and DCI have conducted, and a very common thread they’ve noticed is that it is very difficult to separate the person from the business when it comes to decision making.Associated Links:Find out more about The Visions Summit at RICE 2023 and make plans to meet us there!Read Mark’s Op-Ed on  Why Are Lawmakers Attacking Digital Ads?Check out the new report from DCI Maximum Impact: How Digital Ads Level the Playing Field for U.S. Small BusinessesLearn more about Mark Drapeau, RXN Group, and Data Catalyst InstituteHave you checked out our YouTube channel yet?Get your copy of Archetypes, our newly published 240-page journal. Check it out at ArchetypesJournal.comSubscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more of what we are witnessing in the commerce world!Listen 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!

Is it possible to find a gap in the market and find your own creative ways to authentically fill it? What are some ways to leverage social media interaction in ways that really build loyal, longterm relationships with your customers? Listen in to hear Adam Simone share the journey Leaf Shave has been on and where they’re headed next! “And then Doja Cat Shaved Her Eyebrows”{00:05:18} When two engineers get together and are grumpy about a hole in the market, you get a pretty cool little piece of machinery that is safe to put on your skin and shave with{00:11:18} Adam loves to engage with customers on social, and after customers asked and asked for a specific product to be developed by Leaf, they finally were able to deliver and launched it recently{00:17:05} It’s easy to use gimmicks to amp up the metrics of an ad or a technique, but it’s important to look at what actually worked and why it did to make sure we don’t get stuck using those gimmicks{00:22:07} “Stop chasing the views, stop chasing virality, and just focus on educating. And that has been my recipe,” because that is what drives noticeable impact{00:26:19} When you do something differently, you naturally have to explain and educate your audience, which is a point that is often overlooked{00:30:36} Why Adam has basically shaved every part of his body and how that has helped the company is so many ways{00:36:35} Adam shares about two interesting moments, one with Mr Beast and another with Doja Cat’s eyebrows, and which one actually drove more impact to their business{00:40:55} Adam and his team have big plans for more incredible innovation-driven products that will be branching out and launching in the near future (and beyond)Associated Links:Find out more about The Visions Summit at RICE 2023 and make plans to meet us there!Learn more about Adam Simone and Leaf Shave.Have you checked out our YouTube channel yet?Get your copy of Archetypes, our newly published 240-page journal. Check it out at ArchetypesJournal.comSubscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more of what we are witnessing in the commerce world!Listen 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!

What role do reviews have in building a business and how can they aid in building community? What is the value of print versus in-person events and the typical stream of digital content? Listen in to hear what Natalie Sportelli as she tells us about the future of commerce.“The Trustworthiness of Tone”{00:07:42} “What really sets us apart is creating a Yelp equivalent of trusting other people's experiences with brands to help inform your own.” - Natalie{00:12:46} There is really interesting psychology behind why people like to write reviews, whether it be to help the brands or to help other people like perhaps reviews have helped them{00:16:04} Natalie finds the most interesting reviews to be the three-star reviews that start with phrases such as, “I really wanted to like this, but…” because they offer more insight and also can bring more understanding to the whole of the experience{00:18:28} “The role of reviews will only become more important as companies continue to think about building with consumers, community formation, and then creating a product that is actually innovative and is going to stand out and break out in the market.” - Natalie{00:24:52} At the end of the day, a person responsible for content wants to create content that people really want{00:27:50} Printed content has a unique ability to continue to engage with your audience for a longer period of time and in ways that build more depth in the relationship, and there is a lot more for brands to discover in their use of printed content over just digital content{00:29:44} “What we do on the Internet is not just ephemeral, it's also asynchronous. Asynchronous communication requires a level of attention and detail that leaves a gap between you and the person that you're communicating with, and doing things in person allows us to help eliminate some of that gap and be human together.” - BrianAssociated Links:Find out more about The Visions Summit at RICE 2023 and make plans to meet us there!Learn more about Natalie Sportelli and Thingtesting.Have you checked out our YouTube channel yet?Get your copy of Archetypes, our newly published 240-page journal. Check it out at ArchetypesJournal.comSubscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more of what we are witnessing in the commerce world!Listen 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!

Today we cover the absence of a modern media format war and the reemergence of convergence devices. PLUS: What is the key to building a better future for your brand? According to Peter Karpas, CEO at Bold Commerce, it's the "customer trifecta": great products, quality customer flow, and thoughtful customer journeys. Listen now!The Commerce Quilt{00:03:28} The digital natives are becoming the analog curious, and it’s now a sustainable business model to sell analog formats to a new audience{00:09:48} “eCommerce itself is its own convergence device in that it's the natural intersection of all of these things like logistics, payment, and catalog.” - Phillip{00:27:28} Bold Commerce is a stepping stone to create a revenue impact that heads towards the composable world. Brands can integrate Bold and solve common checkout problems{00:33:35} “Any word that you have to explain what it means is not a good marketing word.” - Peter Karpas{00:35:11} “We would be better if we all realized that there is a skill and a trade that is as old as humanity itself to acquire and that's really just understanding human needs and desires and trying to bring those things together.” - Phillip{00:36:45} Good communication is customer-focused{00:43:14} Improving your checkout conversion numbers even by 1 or 2 points can have a massive impact on your bottom line, but you need the right checkout solutions to be able to achieve thatThanks to WB Research and eTail Palm Springs for making this interview possible. eTail is one of our favorite retail and eCommerce industry events. Plans are already underway for their Boston show, happening in August. Get more information and register right over here.Associated Links:Meet us at The Visions Summit at RICE 2023 in June!Learn more about Peter Karpas and Bold CommerceHave you checked out our YouTube channel yet?Get your copy of Archetypes, our newly published 240-page journal. Check it out at ArchetypesJournal.comSubscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more of what we are witnessing in the commerce world!Listen 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!