Future Commerce

According to Allen Nance email has transcended from a communication platform to a global source of identity for consumers the world over. The CMO of Emarsys sits down with us to talk about how this communication medium has a globally accepted protocol which may unlock the key to identity in a social and mobile commerce future. Listen now! Show Notes About Allen Nance (an "Email OG") Allen Nance was person in his family to graduate high school. He then attended Georgia Institute of Technology. After graduating, Allen founded one of the first ESP's (Email Service Providers) WhatCounts. After selling that company in 2010, he moved on to investing in ecommerce and marketing technology. When Emarsys entered the US market a few years ago, he met the founders and really loved their team and their platform. He joined their team shortly after. Is email dead? Every few months, someone releases an article declaring, "EMAIL IS DEAD!" Nance says "Ignore those." It is one of only global ubiquitous communication platforms that has ever existed on earth. It will continue to be a dominant channel. Email is the social security number of the internet, our digital ID. Email is the start of an omnichannel experience Don't think about email as a single channel. Email the single most valuable first party data identifier we have. This is essential for tying together Facebook Advertising, Google Display Network, mobile, and web experience. Email will endure because it is our greatest identifier online. "Not so fast" said the Asian market In Asia, SMS is the standard identifier online. Despite this, email remains the dominant channel in commerce. Mobile commerce is not growing at the same rate as mobile traffic In general, mobile traffic is increasing while web traffic is decreasing. But in commerce, mobile is only seeing this same exponential growth when it is in native interactions, like Uber or Apple Pay. As retailers define mobile first experience for commerce, email can move from a traffic channel to a transaction platform. In the future, email is the destination, not the journey Most marketers use email to send traffic to a destination, but in the future, email can become a destination for transaction, where purchases are made in the email itself. This future is dependant on advances in content personalization and security. Unleashing the "The Creative Renaissance" On the technology side of marketing, providers must develop their tools so that marketers only to develop strategy, develop content, and develop a creative experience. If software can become more industry specific and intelligent, the extra time spent on CSV files, dragging and dropping, and building campaigns, can be used to fuel creative work of marketers. No more empty software Too much software is "empty," leaving marketers to configure many touchpoints that could be automated. Often you buy a power point presentation, but you receive a piece of empty software. Software companies need to utilize data to give retailers a head start. Emarsys updates over 100 million data points per day. Their goal is to use this vast amount of consumer data to create better solutions, not just empty software. Allen Nance's near-term recommendations for marketers and merchants Understand that data is the single most valuable asset you have. People talk a lot about AI, but AI is not like Febreze. You can't spray AI on crappy data to make it smell good. It's better to have good data than a lot of data. Evaluate how you are using email as the digital identifier of your omnichannel strategy. How do I use email across point of sale, mobile, Facebook advertising, and Google Display Network? What Allen is most excited about for the future The divergence of the gap between mobile growth and mobile commerce. This is a huge opportunity for companies that think about this challenge. First party data is going to become the most valuable thing that marketers have. The idea of a "data collective" will become more prevalent where a multitude of retailers will share their digital data with each other. Individualized pricing. Industries can use personalized data to custom cater pricing on a large scale. Bring your voice to the conversation Have you experience empty software? What are you doing with your first party data?

"Voice is dead", Hema launches experiential grocery, cast your votes with the blockchain! Also - which online mattress retailer is opening 200 stores in the USA? One guess, and it rhymes with "blasper". Listen now! Show notes Phillip's wife received a package from Care/Of Vitamins and it had someone else's pills in it (!!!!) When new companies enter the pharmaceutical and health space, how can we trust that they are being diligent in their quality assurance? RIP Voice Shopping? The Information have said only 2% of Echo users have ordered using their voices and 90% of that 2% (AKA .18%) didn't use it again. Are there future applications for voice in commerce, though? Brian theorizes there could there be in-context purchasing opportunities in audio/visual media. Voice is still growing in popularity 40% of adults use voice searches each day. In most cases still, voice compliments screen. We are long way from seeing voice as its own "channel." It can compliment existing channels, though. The problem with the voice assistants today (other than the fact that they might just be FBI listening devices with PR) Amazon, company with the best position for commerce releases a voice assistant. No one uses it for commerce. It has great hardware and technology. Most people use it for music. It's awful for web search, though. Google, the company in the best position for web search releases a voice assistant, but it lacks the commerce capability. Apple, the company with the best position for music, releases the worst voice assistant, and even its speaker is lackluster. China brings innovation in the grocery business Hema Market is like Amazon Go, but on steroids. Hem Market is backed by Alibaba. At the cashless grocery store, every item has a barcode customers can scan to trace the product's origin, delivery, and nutritional information. On your way out the door, you can pay using your smartphone or visit a face scanner that links you to your Alipay account. Smell you later, basic pencils In the back to school market, there are new products popping up like guided creative journals and scented pencils. These new innovations are driving significant profit over traditional options. This aligns with a larger pattern of creating luxury upgrades on commodity-type products. Consumers are more willing to supplement the mundane with something unique and new. As the economy improves, luxury purchases are increasing on low end goods. This could be why aspirational luxury brands are struggling. Phillip sites the luxury brand, whose name he could not recall, that burned all their extra stock to increase demand. IT'S BURBERRY, PHIL! Tracking inflation with the... kale index? Wages have risen, but prices has not. Base prices will likely follow. Is there a cleaner-eating, non-GMO, certified organic, locally-owned version of the Big Mac index for our present time? Casper is going "clicks to bricks" Casper is opening 200 stores in the United States. Mattress stores across the country are closing, what makes Casper different? Casper has built a recognizable brand and has a competitive price point. This is the result of the VC rapid-growth mentality. Now that they've saturated web sales, brick and mortar follows. Care/of ships wrong products Voice? Ded. 2% of echo users ever bought, 90% never use it again ACTUAL SOURCE Unnamed sources = who cares? Hema grocery concept store Blockchain voting via VOATZ - West Va. Bad Idea? or WORST IDEA EVER? New product categories arise in back to school sales Casper to open 200 stores Clicks to Bricks Couple charged with Amazon fraud scheme

Sucharita Kodali of Forrester Research joins us to talk about the unfortunate demise of Toys 'R Us and her new book, "Toys 'R Bust: Reasons One of the Country’s Most Revered Retailers Collapsed". Show Notes About Sucharita Kodali Sucharita is a retail analyst at Forrester Research with a focus on online retail and technology. She once worked at Toys"R"Us and is writing a book called "Toys R Bust" chronicling the rise and fall of the retail giant. Half the pay and a third of the productivity The Container Store theorizes that one great employee is worth three good ones, so they choose to pay 50-100% higher wages for their salespeople. Because of seasonal hiring and low pay at Toys"R"Us, there were low quality employees that were poorly trained and unmotivated. In a grocery setting, this results in errors like zucchinis in the cucumber pile. Many employees at Toys"R"Us were trained singularly and were unable to fill gaps and needs as challenges arose. Rewriting the fall of Toys"R"Us Sucharita counters the notion that private equity ruined Toys"R"Us. They had been in a tailspin for years before private equity entered the equation. Toys"R"Us struggled to compete against a certain Seattle behemoth. After their deal with Amazon severed, Toys"R"Us moved to GSI's platform. Writing a more perfect Toys"R"Us Could they have adopted a more customer-centric experience like Bonobos or Warby Parker? Could a more boutique shopping experience integrated with ecommerce fulfillment have worked? Despite a large array of interesting products in the toy market, Toys"R"Us received 50% of its inventory from just 20 vendors. Amazon Prime Day It was shocking to see an outage on Amazon's site, let alone on Prime Day. There were more sign-ups on Prime than on any other day prior. Amazon seems to play by its own rules. Despite a bad first impression, they still had a huge day of sales and signups. This says a lot about their brand trust. Speaking of Trust... Is Amazon at risk of being affected by anti-trust laws? Europe is cracking down. Will this reach the US? Marketplaces are incredibly easy to sell and there is not a lot of recourse or quality control right now. Many third-party sellers make false claims or deliver counterfeit product. Legislation could affect this soon. Magento, an Adobe Company Adobe is a major force in the digital world, but they lacked ecommerce presence. Adobe's acquisition of Magento expands their reach much further.

Show Notes About Monika Kochhar Monika Kochhar is the co-founder of Smartgift, a gifting platform that is working to solve the complexity of shopping for others. About Smartgift Consumer brands use Smartgift's platform to let gift recipients customize their gifts or swap them for other gifts of their choice from comparably priced recommendations. Gift senders pay for the item after the recipient has made their pick. A deeper look into the "Science of Gifting" Smartgift is taking rich qualitative and quantitative data to map out human behavior in gifting and shopping for others. By better understanding human behavior in gifting, they can make this process much easier for shoppers. A function built into Smartgift called the Intelligence Swapping Mechanism learns semantically over time and maps out buying preferences such as color, fit, and size. This helps shoppers easily buy the perfect gift for an occasion for a particular person. Smartgift hopes that over time analyzing gifting data will close the gap between what a gift shopper gives and what the recipient ultimately picks on their platform. Is tech changing people or empowering people? More specifically, are the way people gift or are gifting patterns affecting the way tech is created? Monika mentions that ecommerce only accounts for less than 10% of all shopping which points to the fact that we are still in the early stages of online shopping and what it could be in the future. The more technology begins to evolve and grow, the more we'll see changing mindsets and the more shoppers will use ecommerce as a way to shop for themselves and others. Amazon's Prime Day is an example of technology changing the way customers shop by encouraging people to shop online in large numbers for no other reason except that Amazon declared Prime Day a national holiday. Maybe the ability to purchase anything instantly has changed customers' impulse buying habits. One area in which technology is going to change based on the user is in the end-to-end giving journey. There is going to be a deeper need to get the gift right. For too long, the receiver experience has been an afterthought in retail. Monika believes in using data mapping to build a better shopping experience that places equal emphasis on the gifter and the recipient. Maybe the process starts with voice and ends with an augmented reality visceral experience of opening a gift. The recipient still has a choice on the physical gift after opening a digital version of the original gift sent by the gifter. How will Aunt Brenda feel when she finds out you didn't like the polka dot sweater she picked? How does the gift-giver feel in having their gift idea being replaced by the recipient. Does this diminish the satisfaction of the giver? Smartgift has found that, for the gifter, the joy comes in the expression of gift-giving and also in not having the guilt of giving something less thoughtful, like a gift card. Through Smartgift, happiness has been maximized on both ends of gift-giving; for the recipient and the sender. As long as gift-givers are allowed to express themselves thoughtfully in gifting, they are still happy if the recipient decides on something different. Is there room for personalization within smart giving? Gifters have started to express personalization in gift-giving through special notes and selecting digital gift wrapping. Gifters want to participate in the delight of gift-giving digitally so that it doesn't just feel like some sort of emotionless transaction. Thank you notes on the recipients side is an area of personalization that happens in smart gifting that has provided a wealth of data which helps us understand how recipients feels about a product or brand. How Smartgift can help users give back. Smartgift allows recipients the choice of sending cookies back to the gifter as a thank you gift after receiving flowers from the sender. Smartgift sees an opportunity to use in-kind gifting as a way to encourage recipients to get involved with giving back where the recipient is given the option to give to a charitable cause of the sender's choice as a thank you. In the future, Smartgift would like to partner with charities to make giving back more accessible to on their platform. Our best practices around conversion rate optimization might be misguided Our efforts are focused to one persona, the buyer, or the person purchasing for themselves. Smartgift is focused on a different persona, someone who is purchasing for someone else. Ecommerce has evolved to create a great shopping experience and now we're at a point where we can dive deeper into the metadata and what else is happening within the shopping journey. We can now work toward answering questions such as, "Why are they shopping?" and "Are they shopping for someone else?"

Show Notes We're turning two! After 7 years and 2 billion dollars Magic Leap created... Snap Spectacles? Magic Leap is a U.S. startup company that is working on a head-mounted virtual retinal display, called Magic Leap One, which superimposes 3D computer-generated imagery over real-world objects, by "projecting a digital light field into the user's eye", involving technologies potentially suited to applications in augmented reality and computer vision. After 7 years of funding and almost 2 billion dollars, Magic Leap shows off new Magic Leap One. The general reaction of the Magic Leap One has been disappointment. Magic Leap has partnered with several companies, including AT&T as a carrier partner for their wireless, who Phil asserts is the "worst carrier" in the US. They are "sort of definitely shipping"? We hear this every three months, so who knows when we'll actually have it. How has Build-A-Bear outlasted Toys-R-Us? Almost too good to be true "pay your age promotion" from Build-A-Bear seems bigger than any iPhone release, with lines of people wrapping around malls. Creative promotion, fun experience, a product that people build themselves and that lasts a long time. Innovative toy brands like Funko that have experiential retail or take a more storied approach to engage with customers tend to do better than those who don't. Build-A-Bear has more licensed products than not. Customers can further customize products they already know and love. Our modern mythology is influenced heavily by storytelling through movies, comic books, etc. (see Super Heroes: A Modern Mythology by Richard Reynolds) and these tie into the retail experience for fanbases. Build-A-Bear, but for adults Consortium is a NYC pop-up clothing shop that allows customers to customize their products much like Build-A-Bear but instead with fashion. Brands like Coach, Consortium, and even Nike are capitalizing on customers needs to have an affiliation with luxury goods. They have in-store offers in certain stores where personalized items can be made to order and the customer can take them home in a matter of minutes. The Nike Kicks Lounge in Omotesando, Tokyo sells blank shoes that customers can commission local artists to paint a design on them. They then dry the paint and the customer can take them home in about 20-30 minutes. Doing this adds a deeper meaning to the product by having a long-lasting piece of art that is connected to your community. This could play into different products that are longer lasting such as jackets, coats, and bags. AR in customization AR has become a powerful tool in customized products. Brands have been utilizing AR to allow customers to see products in their home. Amazon has also been pushing their AR functionality, which is already built into their app. Starbucks Innovation - The Grown Up Sippy Cup The inception of the Starbucks "sippy cups" started with nitro cold brew and now that the iconic green straws are leaving, the sippy cups are the future. What produces more backwash: straw or sippy cup? Dunkin Donuts bragged that they are getting rid of styrofoam by 2020. It's time for companies to make changes like this, even if it hurts their "brand". It's a positive example of companies that are saying, "it's not worth it". Adidas has partnered with Parley to create a running shoe that is made from 95% recycled materials. Yes, it's a good and positive message, but it could also spur some innovation and create new jobs and technologies. In 2023 we'll be styrofoam free and Jeff Bezos will be colonizing the moon trying to prove his rocket is bigger than Elon Musk's. It's the space race of the 60's but for Lex Luthor types. Full Circle The future consistently hasn't been delivering as quickly as we all hoped it would. Ex: Magic Leap We're in a sweet spot where there is too much technology in commerce to take advantage of. So much so that the advancement of technology in retail and commerce won't happen until we capitalize on what's here already. This show will become "Future Iterations of Things We've Already Been Talking About for a Long Time Commerce" One thing that hasn't changed is that consumers want a personalized experience. Now retailers are being challenged to have deeper meanings and stories for their products.

"FREAKING PRIVACY? HOW DOES IT WORK?" We dig into the privacy impacts of advancements in facial recognition software and how it has vast impacts on Global Commerce. PLUS: Brian has a huge announcement! Listen now! Show Notes Brian said "Sayonara" to Amazon. Now he's allowed to say Amazon. Amazon! Amazon! Amazon! Pills Prime Amazon acquired online pharmacy PillPack If your health food and supplements from Whole Foods don't work, now you can get your pills from Amazon too. This will likely play into whatever power move Berkshire Hathaway, Amazon, and JP Morgan Chase are working on in healthcare. In the future, are pharmacists just glorified phone operators? Will physical pharmacies pivot and use their pickup windows for other purposes? What will move into your local Toys"R"Us? What will happen to our other shuttered retail spaces as ecommerce expands. How will digital native brands utilizing these vacant spaces? Capital One Cafe AKA How hard is trying to hard? Capital One is opening locations that double as coffee shops. Don't want facial recognition used on you? Become a juggalo. Facial recognition is ineffective in identifying people wearing juggalo makeup Whoop Whoop 2018 is kinda like Enemy of the State with Will Smith and Gene Hackman Except it's real life. All our favorite electronics may or may not be watching us and recording our every move. Amazon is piloting selling facial recognition to law enforcement. Speaking of Insane Clown Posse... Noveto is designing sound technology that beams sound directly to your ears, and your ears alone. Seriously. In the near future: You're walking through a store with no employees looking for an HDMI cable and you suddenly hear "Hi, can I help you find something?" How much do the tech giants really know about me? Facebook and the likes have extensive "profiles" with tremendous amounts of data about their users. Facial recognition can bind this digital information with the real world. GDPR Lite California has passed its own digital privacy law, similar to GDPR. This could have a large domino effect for internet retail. In the future, we might see service companies dedicated to manage privacy adherence for companies.

LIVE from IRCE 2018! The Supreme Court of the United States is about to make a decision in a landmark case which may affect how sales tax nexus is calculated for merchants in all 50 states. Dave Pelton, Product Line Leader at Vertex, breaks down how this decision could affect retail and how - regardless of the outcome - online merchants may be impacted going forward. Show notes LIVE from IRCE 2018 with Dave Pelton, Vertex Hi Dave Dave Pelton is the Product Line Leader at Vertex. Vertex is the leading and most-trusted provider of comprehensive, integrated tax technology solutions, having helped 10000+ businesses since 1978. They have services companies such as Amazon, Apple, Best Buy, and Target. Recently, within the last 5 years, they have moved into the ecommerce space. They have brought all of their knowledge from the high demands of bigger brands down to the mid-market at the right price point and service level. Taxes aren't the sexiest thing to talk about at a meet-and-greet cocktail party, but anybody who sells anything is a potential customer for Vertex. A lot of times businesses don't think about how they do their taxes as integral to their business, especially if they have them done in-house. It's very difficult for a company to make the switch to a tax provider. If a company is only in a small number of states, they opt to just put in the rules and rates themselves because it's not that big of a job. It's when a company starts getting into a larger number of states where things get messy because sales tax is different in every state. States crying foul States realize that by 2020, 40% of all sales will be online. That is a massive amount of revenue that they lose if they aren't collecting sales tax. To collect sales tax, the states must have a nexus. Nexus, also called "sufficient physical presence," is a legal term that refers to the requirement for companies doing business in a state to collect and pay tax on sales in that state. A lot of ecommerce business try and stay out of nexus so that they don't have to pay sales tax, causing the states to cry foul. The Supreme Court, after not seeing Congress act on this, is currently hearing a case that could change the rule of nexus from not whether you have physical presence but whether you are actually selling into a state. The case Wayfair vs South Dakota. In January the Court decided to hear the case and in order for them to do that, 4 out of the 5 justices had to say, "yeah, I think it's worthwhile to talk about this." Choose your own hypothetical adventure What happens if the Supreme Court decides if the rule stays the same? If it stays the same, the states will continue to go after the customers that aren't paying sales tax. What happens if the Supreme Court decides to create some federal standard by which we have to transact through? The Court doesn't want to be too burdensome on companies, but also wants to make sure that states receive their fair share. Is there any middle ground? One way or the other, it will be more/less burdensome for companies, and limit/increase sales tax revenue for states. Ok, so why Wayfair? Wayfair was picked for this case possibly because they have a smaller amount of nexus and because they sell large items in which sales tax can become significant. Bigger companies (like Amazon) might have seen this coming and have decided to comply to a certain degree. At one point, Amazon did have nexus in a small number of states but then started to move warehouses into more and more states for faster delivery. This gave them more and more physical nexus as well as the biggest target on their back. At the end of the day, whether companies have large or small nexus, everyone will be affected by the Court's ruling of Wayfair vs South Dakota. How would this affect the global economy, Dave? It will affect companies in other countries that are trying to sell their products to the US. Those international countries may even decide to tighten up their system and make sure they are getting dollars for every sale that's made in the US. This will affect everyone in the next year or two, so it's better to know all about it now and be prepared whether you're going to take that burden on yourself or not. Hey merchants Most businesses want to be acquired in the future. If you haven't taken care of your collection and remittance, the acquiring company will typically take an escrow out of the amount that they pay you, saying, "maybe you didn't get audited, but we're going to get audited". Companies need to think about other important reasons why they might want to collect and remit.

Community-building is powering everything from product innovation to commerce platforms. In this episode we dive into how to build a community and how to do it with authenticity. Plus: how did Kanye West's Yeezy brand shape the entire footwear industry in just 5 years? Show Notes Main Takeaways: Phillip realizes that some content ages better than others. Retail renaissance will always be relevant. How does community impact the world around us? Adidas vs Nike: Battle of the User Experience: Adidas cracks the Global Top 100 Brands 2018 list. Nike remains on the list at #29. According to Phillip, Nike is setting the stage for where footwear should be but is Adidas's app changing the buyer experience? Phillip almost buys Adidas after Nike sneaker sells out in 31 minutes. Adidas app seems to allow for a unique user experience, while Nike just seems like a responsive website. Does Adidas's unique approach to customer engagement mean they will pull ahead of Nike? Does Brian love Kanye like Kanye loves Kanye? Kanye's "Yeezy" changed the footwear game forever. Yeezy's used to be a luxury product, but production is ramping up to over a million pairs for the upcoming sneaker. Kanye West's ability to be a content creator and foster community is unparalleled in the sneaker industry. Yeezy is the brand other brands love to copy. Brian is definitely a Kanye West fan. Social Platforms and Communities: Reddit becomes the third most-used website behind Amazon and Youtube. Reddit surged ahead and surpassed Facebook. Facebook users seem to be all about engaging with Facebook and known social contacts. Reddit users create distinct communities and engage in community-based conversation. Commerce works in a similar structure to Reddit in terms of engagement: sharing experiences and sharing ideas. Magento is a great example of a "commerce-based community." Beyond the $$: Community Building is Helping Companies Grow: Early adopters of the web self-organized into enthusiastic communities like dial-up BBS. Phillip realizes he may, in fact, be older than Brian. Former Payless shoe rep built XO communications by installing dial-up services in Payless stores and is successful because he focuses on community rather than company building. Throughout the 90's and early 2000's, companies like Microsoft and Google follow this path as well. Everything comes down to community building: where products are sourced, how they are made, and the ethics of the process. Community Building Basics: Don't try to control the conversation or the message. Tell a story as a brand that fosters conversation. Let users engage in the conversation, and listen to feedback. Always be open to change and adaptation. Examples of Community Builders: King of Pops and Bitter Southerner: King of Pops makes popsicles popular by setting up shop at every music festival in Atlanta in 2018. King of Pops create community and conversation at their popsicles stands. The Bitter Southerner an online opinion magazine gives a voice to opinionated southerners sick of being caricatures, with related apparel. Wearing Bitter Southerner apparel opens up conversations about real "southern values", and allows for community building. The future of branding is all about having conversations. Retail tech is moving fast, and Future Commerce is moving faster.

Main Takeaways: Adobe moves to acquire Magento Commerce, an e-commerce platform with a massive community. Netflix manages to beat out everyone in a battle of the best content. If users agree to pay for social media, would Facebook ever change its ad-based model? Social media advertising may of turned Phillip into a sneakerhead. America's Second-Hand Economy: A Tale as Old as Time. Phillip and Brian celebrate landing in the for "second-hand commerce." Second-hand commerce is not a new concept, even beyond the modern sharing economy, and online secondhand retailers like Poshmark and eBay. Garage sales, where people could purchase previously owned items have always been a popular form of second-hand commerce. In fact entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk has lauded garage sales as a great way for people to find valuable items to re-sell for profit. The only entity that would probably care about statistics on garage sales is the IRS. And only to be able to collect back taxes on vintage video games being resold. Adobe and Magento: An Acquisition Made in Community Commerce Heaven: Adobe acquires Magento Commerce an  open-source e-commerce platform for 1.6 B. Considering Magneto' loyal community base, and growth it seems like this was a high-value buy. Magento posted sales of 170MM in 2017 and has done a lot to move upmarket. Adobe is kind of the master of enterprise level market, and has managed to get their product into every arena including business analytics, data storage, and consumer creative. This is the fifth straight episode about Magento, is this a Future Commerce record? Should Shopify be fearful of this acquisition? Shopify stock was down 4.2% at market close on the day that Adobe made this announcement. Perhaps Shopify should be afraid, Adobe could actually use Magento to compete with Shopify in their own market class. This deal is also indicative that e-commerce is not only not dead it may be what Phillip termed a "boom town". Also there is still tons of room for retailers to go and sell, because the retail apocalypse is still not a thing. Netflix Rises by Changing the Face of Content Forever: Netflix as of this episode has surpassed all other to be the largest peer to peer content provider. It only lasted a few hours, but they beat out Disney, a company with almost one hundred years of content production. Netflix offers users commercial free(and ad-free) content, and really has something for everyone, from cooking shows to comedy. Phillip recommends a comedy special on Netflix called "Jay Acaster Repertoire"   Because of paid-platforms like Netflix content is able to evolve beyond just the traditional advertiser based systems, and it will be interesting to watch what this "freedom of the screen" will produce. Is Premium Social Media the Future of Online Socialization? Will Facebook abandon their ad-based model in favor of a paid subscription model, and how would users react? If social media sites did start charging users (or offered premium accounts), it would follow the evolution of content, which through platforms like Netflix and Hulu have moved beyond being dependent on advertisers. Having social media sites dependent on user fees (at least in part) could lead to Facebook becoming a lot more user focused, instead of advertiser focused. This could mean more security and privacy. Advertising on Social Media: Have Consumers Lost Their Agency to Ads? How do advertisers market to consumers through social media in a way that can best serve their needs? Phillip gives some credit to social media advertising for turning him into a stylish sneakerhead. Advertisers offer what looks like a sweetheart deal to consumers: give us your data, and we will help you build your best self. Is this too good to be true? Phillip questions whether there is choice involved: are users being suckered into buying things they like but don't need? The short answer to this is that no one really knows. Want to know how Facebook targets ads to users?  Facebook uses 98 personal data points to make ads as relevant as possible. Data privacy is not a thing, and Facebook users should be aware of that. Or is targeted advertising actually offering a better quality of life in exchange for personal data? Also: due to privacy concerns, Twitter is offering users the ability to turn data sharing off which can lead to different problem. Since Twitter like Facebook is heavily dependent on ads, Twitter users would still have to deal with ads, but it would be much broader. Brian says that he would much prefer relevant ads. So the question remains: How much of what we buy is because of ads that are specifically targeted to our data? GDPR may affect Facebook and Twitter's ability to use targeted advertising or push ads onto their EU customers. Recent lawsuits that have hit Facebook and Google (to the tune of $8.8B) may lead to sweeping enforcement. These companies will want to move quickly to avoid further litigation. Retail Tech is moving fast and Future Commerce is moving faster. Go over to Futurecommerce.fm and give us your feedback! We love to hear from our listeners!

Main Takeaways: The sharing economy is helping regular people lead their best lives. Real-sized model diversity is actually becoming a reality with big brands In 2018 retail pretty much runs our lives Levi Jean jackets + Google enabled tech= less impressive than expected The Retail Apocalypse is as likely as a Zombie Apocalypse The Sharing Economy: Aspirational Luxury Goes Mainstream: The sharing economy is now allowing consumers unprecedented access to products and services, with a much lower price tag. And companies have sprung up around this concept, services people now use without a second thought like Uber and Airbnb. JetBlue has a private jet company that allows users to share a private jet for less. "Is this all just manufactured scarcity? Subscription Models Allow Users to Upgrade Their Lives: On Retail Dive CEO of Rent the Runway Jennifer Hyman talks about how the company fits into the "the sharing economy." , Most people, know Rent the Runway as the place where we can all rent clothes we couldn't otherwise afford. Something all retail enthusiasts will be excited to hear; Hyman says that her entire closet is in "the cloud." Volvo's subscription service: Care by Volvo is pretty epic, and is indicative of a societal need to upgrade regularly. Mercedes Benz is also offering a subscription model, so maybe "subscription leasing" is the future of car-commerce. Phillip and Brian discuss whether a similar model could be used in fashion, so basically StitchFix, Letote for mid-price style, and Stitch fix offering a lux option if you want to feel fancy. Diversity of Size: Finally, a Priority For Retailers? Bonobos (a popular men's retailer) is finally "sizing up" to address diversity of size, and is adding to the sizes it offers its customers. Bonobos new campaign 172 different men of diverse backgrounds and body types, is meant to put on display the retailer's dedication to offering options to men of all shapes and sizes. Nike has been utilizing diversity of both size and color in their ads, so at least they are doing something right these days. If more retailers emphasize addressing the sizing needs of their customers, then they can open their brands up to much more significant market space. Levi's "Jacquard" is the Palm Pilot of Tech-Enabled Clothes: Phillip goes on a fun field trip to Levi's flagship store in Chicago to check out the "Jacquard." While the Jacquard has a super cool name, it's actual tech is basic. The jacket allows the wearer to know when they get a text or call, through a vibrating cuff. One major letdown? The Jacquard doesn't even have a headphone jack. The Levi-Google jacket collab also seems to be made of a burlap material which pretty much defeats the purpose of a jean jacket. The Retail Apocalypse: More of a Supply Chain Apocalypse: The retail apocalypse is not a thing, so maybe there is another reason that so many brands are going out of business. Many of the brands that are going out of business are poorly run and aren't adaptive enough. Also, Brian makes the point that there are just cheaper and more efficient ways of doing business in 2018. Indochino is expanding its brick and mortar presence, CEO Drew Green is attaching Indochino's success to its understanding of "the lifetime value of a customer" And how a visit to a showroom can turn into obtaining a repeat online customer. Dying malls are trying to keep themselves afloat by allowing churches and religious organization. Also, dead malls are so eerie that people are touring them. Maybe tourists are hoping to witness a couple of ghosts of retail's past. Go over to Futurecommerce.fm and give us your feedback! We love to hear from our listeners! Retail Tech is moving fast, and Future Commerce is moving faster.