Future Commerce

The $100 PumpkinBrian 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 a hit with downturn challenges“The businesses that go all-in on investing in the right things right now instead of pulling back are actually going to do even better.” -BrianWhat we’re seeing is the echo chamber doing exactly what it’s good at, which is creating a narrative around something that is just a venture-backed industry problem.Associated Links:How to Market in a DownturnInsiders #104: The eCom Brain DrainDownload VISIONS 2022 NOW!Subscribe to Insiders and Senses to read more of our hot takes!Listen to our other episodes of Future CommerceCheck out Decoded, our newest limited seriesHave 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!

High Complexity, Low CommodityOnline 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 tweaksSoftware 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 requires developers to build, test, refine, and iterate. This is the best-case scenario for a developer in eCommerce.eCommerce platforms have become increasingly prescriptive in UI and UX as customers have become “used to” certain purchasing patternsEcommerce needs to become more complex in certain industry verticals. Specific sectors such as automotive, food, furniture, manufacturing, and pharmaceuticals all have sophisticated requirements, complicated purchase paths, long consideration times, unique regulatory requirements, or other challenges that make them a poor fit for off-the-shelf software, but a great fit for developer innovation.A shopper’s identity in high-commodity environments is tied to the retailer. You’re not a grocery shopper, you’re a Walmart shopper or a Target shopper. However, in high-complexity environments, the identity of the shopper is found in the brand of the product itself. You’re not a car driver, you’re a Tesla driver.Associated Links:Learn more about Boris Lokschin and SprykerCheck out Excite 2022, Spryker’s eCommerce Conference in June

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 modelsKiri’s proposal for the two methods is to get back to the basics of the marketing funnel, “the idea is to identify your objective, and then which part of the marketing funnel you are going to focus on given that objective, and then execute for ad types and targeting options within that stage of the funnel.” - KiriWe are currently living in a world where brand is performance and performance can also be brand“There are a lot of constructs organizationally within these companies that make it very challenging because of the silos. The real goal of each team might be they're working against each other because the metrics and what they're focused on don't really align.” - KiriIt can be profitable for brands to launch in retail media, but there are always downsides. Such as: not having a good enough story to compete against other brands, not being on brand, and convincing advertisers it will be worthwhileAssociated Links:Learn more about Kiri Masters and Bobsled MarketingKiri’s most recent report, Retail Media AllocationInstacart for CMOsListen to previous episodes with Kiri!BONUS: Voice Commerce: The Future is HereEpisode 125: Amazon: Equal Opportunity Addiction Episode 148: Uncharted Territory: Amazon and COVID-19Episode 197: Instacart for CMOs: The Four-Sided MarketplaceSubscribe to Kiri’s podcast: ECommerce BrainTrustStay tuned for VISIONS 2022…coming soon!Subscribe to Insiders and Senses to read more of our hot takes! Listen to our other episodes of Future CommerceCheck out Decoded, our newest limited seriesHave any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

You’re Either Alive or DeadJeremy 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 “If you look at a brand and take away the fluff, they’re taking the same exact product or assortment they have in every season, applying a new coat of paint on it, and a new story on it, and selling the same thing 365 days per year for ten years in a row.” -JeremyItalic no longer seeks consumers like H.EN.R.Y, the consumer they now aim to sell to is Julia, a customer in their late 20s-early 30s, familiar with shopping online and is looking to graduate and take a step up from the everyday DTC brands to a more premium product“It's not just about growth. It's about knowing who your buyer is.” -Brian“The only two things that are constant in start-ups are you're either alive or you're dead. And as long as you're alive, you're still kicking.”In our newest report coming out soon, Visions, one of the emerging themes is Profitability of Distraction, and we may be entering an era where folks are becoming less distracted. But for brands, their direct focus is zoning in on one thing: what is the most profitable? Could brands begin to widen their focus on multiple areas?Associated Links:Learn more about Jeremy Cai and Italic!Alex Geifeld’s LinkedIn PostStay tuned for VISIONS 2022…coming soon!Subscribe to Insiders and Senses to read more of our hot takes! Listen to our other episodes of Future CommerceCheck out Decoded, our newest limited seriesHave any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

Adapting to Customer BehaviorsWe 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 be much more of a change as they learn new rules, regulations and customer contexts.It seems as though Snapchat and TikTok are forming the new generation of consumer who have a bigger desire to participate in social trends, creating more commerce opportunities.Very little window shopping & impulse purchase happens in traditional eCommerce contexts. Impulse purchases are not frictionless in this context. Perhaps this is something that social commerce offers that traditional eCommerce does not?Tech companies have become very good at creating the illusion of an impulse purchase. However, our online impulse purchases aren’t really all that impulsive. It’s actually hyper-personalization and targeting algorithms.Millennials are  “digital natives,” but Gen Z’s are “social natives” and this affects how each demographic participates in commerce. Are we creating “metaverse natives” in the youngest generation as they participate in commerce on platforms such as Roblox?Boris sees a rise in what he calls “fluent transactions,” which are more immediate and less interruptive transactions that don’t disrupt a person’s day. Shopping is no longer an event.Platform wars aren’t simply PHP vs Java. It’s the number of channels that you’re acquiring customers from competitors.Associated Links:Learn more about Boris Lokschin and Spryker!Check out Excite 2022, Spryker’s eCommerce Conference in JuneHave any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

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 happening faster and faster.” -BrianThe concern that many have right now is where do customer place their loyalty? Will they be more experimental or less experimental? They're going to go to the things that they know and return to defaultsThere is a demand for growth and demand for goods right now that's being pent up. The demand is there, but it's not being metIn a downturn, more money is necessary for all areas of life, causing people to look for another job, side gig, and ways to bring in that extra income. With everything increasing, there will be a people supply as well, which in hand would lead to a boom in the creator economy Associated Links:Insiders #123: A Marketer's Guide to the Multiverse of MadnessStocking up and Seeking Out, RightpointStay tuned for VISIONS 2022…coming soon!Subscribe to Insiders and Senses to read more of our hot takes! Listen to our other episodes of Future CommerceCheck out Decoded, our newest limited seriesHave any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

As Promiscuous as a GibbonBrian 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 just talking about how do we apply design, how do we apply design to this sort of what is no longer a Wild West but more of like a Mild West of design aesthetic?” -PhillipThere isn’t much brand loyalty left. Shoppers are promiscuous now, and feeding them information is the way to win. The number one way for your brand to fail is by being narcissistic“If you are overly narcissistic about your brand, that's going to cause you problems in the age of the promiscuous shopper.” -BrianPhillip led two panels, “What's Hot in DTC: VC investors Weigh In” and another one with the founders of Stix and Couplet CoffeeThe show was back in much fuller force than last year, the content was amazing, and filled with fresh voicesA lot of the upcoming messaging revolving around eCommerce is going to shift away from experiential and growth into cost-cutting modeAssociated Links:Younger Consumers Embracing Mobile Wallets, Pymnts.comThe Persuadables - A Viant Study ReviewStocking up and Seeking Out, RightpointLive at Future StoresInsiders #110: Spirit Guide: Making Me a NA Beverage BelieverStay tuned for VISIONS 2022…coming soon!Subscribe to Insiders and Senses to read more of our hot takes! Listen to our other episodes of Future CommerceCheck out Decoded, our newest limited seriesHave any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

The in-Direct to Consumer eraWebsites are homogenous and lacking inspiration. If you remove the navigation bar, most websites are indistinguishableShopify’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 business operator, into a consumer; they want fast, cheap, and free. No wonder eCom is so uninspired.” — PhillipAssociated Links:Shopify down 75% from highStay tuned for VISIONS 2022…coming soon!Subscribe to Insiders and Senses to read more of our hot takes! Listen to our other episodes of Future CommerceTune into Infinite Shelf Season 2!Check out Decoded, our newest limited seriesHave any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

A Natural Evolution of eCommerceBoris 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 on or off composable commerce. You need to have the underlying infrastructure.” -BorisThere is not a direct way for an organization to shift to composable commerce, but taking the change allows for the ability to experiment and fail, or to be successful“This could become a natural evolution of eCommerce becoming no longer just a channel for incremental growth that sits underneath I.T. or marketing, but an independent channel where it has its own category and means of operation.” -PhillipAssociated Links:Learn more about Boris Lokschin and Spryker!Check out Excite 2022, Spryker’s eCommerce Conference in JuneHave any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

The Sacraments of CommerceDTC Theory: anything that can be disintermediated eventually will be disintermediatedWith 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 interesting ideas to find ways to scale their brand.” -BrianProduct-first is the new model, whereas marketing used to be first. Distribution is now the second component when it comes to the continued rise of DTC“There's going to be a new brand of retailers that arises. Retailers that hit key markets with shared spaces and offer in-store experiences for a product that has just won over won over people because of its uses or quality.” -BrianWe think there is a huge opportunity for local shopping, it’s just going to require some strategyIf you're dipping your toe into a lot of different channels, that's a great way to catch the ones that are going to be the winnersAssociated Links:Catch us at #RICE22 next week! Use our promo code: RICE50P07 for 50%! Capitalizing on Momentum by RightpointStackCommerce Acquires The FascinationIshani Gujral episodeStay tuned for VISIONS 2022…coming soon!Subscribe to Insiders and Senses to read more of our hot takes! Listen to our other episodes of Future CommerceTune into Infinite Shelf Season 2!Check out Decoded, our newest limited seriesHave any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!