In this episode, we dive into some of the best moments of the last year and a half of Future Commerce as it pertains to Web3. Tune in now! Giving Consumers Control Over Their Identity “Like everything else with new technology, the technology's awesome, but until you find creative people to use it in really interesting ways, it doesn't do a whole lot.” – Michael Janiak Mags is someone who is thinking about the future of the startup ecosystem. She’s passionate about why and how people spend their ...
Aug 24, 2022•39 min•Ep. 268
Vibe Shift, Say What? Brian is live from Etail East, covering what’s going on, how it went, and how far conference season has come since last year. We’re not talking about data anymore… we’re talking about vibes. We talk about them in The Senses , but the vibe shift is different for everything. “The funniest thing about this idea of vibe shift is that everyone is having a really hard time defining what it is and where we're going.” – Brian In the wise words of Brian Lange, “you can’t have a vibe...
Aug 19, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 267
“Digital is gaining the experiences we’ve had all along IRL” — today we sit down with Seyi Taylor to chat about the online experiences we take for granted, the actual capabilities of web3, and how commerce gives us emotional resonance. Tune in now! “Third-Party Cookies Be Damned” The ability to have control is attractive to brands, and that's one thing web3-based loyalty platforms provide, which creates incentives for merchants and brands to be more experimental. Regarding whether web3 is anythi...
Aug 12, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 266
We live in a world that doesn’t work all the way. Is the amount of automation and machine learning and AI and even robotics that we're implementing in the world, displacing people's jobs and having a human impact? Show Notes “It's creating some dynamics where a much smaller number of people can drive outcomes with a much larger number of dollars. If we're not really effective at promoting financial literacy and asking some big questions about what's different looking 20 years ahead from what the...
Jul 29, 2022•52 min
Today, Philip and Brian welcome back Kendall Dickieson to chat about the creator economy, how TikTok is changing the way for brands, digital pruning, and how creation affects community. Tune in now! Balancing the Why The Creator economy has begun to shift the DTC space and change the landscape, but there is still proof in the pudding. “Platforms like TikTok have exposed the true analytics for the most part, but there's still things on the back end that we don't really know unless we ask the crea...
Jul 29, 2022•51 min•Ep. 265
In this episode, we call into question some of the factors that have led to the decline of DTC and how pent-up frustration with products that cost more without delivering on their promise will soon be a vestige of a bygone era. Listen now! Revisiting DTC Groupthink and Brand Criticism “The Uncorkening” is a latent criticism that was stymied by the loudest voices in an ecosystem who didn’t feel that they had permission to speak up, has now been unleashed DTC models (particularly VC-backed IPO exi...
Jul 27, 2022•22 min•Ep. 264
Phillip and Brian sit down to chat about GROW NY, YouTube Shopping, Instagram Local, and all the things in between. Listen now!
Jul 25, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 263
Live from the Visions Summit in West Palm Beach, FL, the conversation in this episode is around what we call Brand Romanticism. We’ve seen such an amazing proliferation of brand. There's more choice than ever before. Some say that brands are our canvas and the products are these new pieces of art that are being brought to the world. Are brands artists and our products their canvas? Show Notes Are some brands fooling themselves thinking of their role as one of art when really their product is mor...
Jul 22, 2022•50 min
What makes people happy? Are brands capable of instilling happiness? In today's episode, we go live to the Visions Summit in West Palm Beach, Florida, to engage in a frank conversation about what motivates a consumer, and what power we truly have in fulfilling their needs and desires. Listen now. Show Notes Are we able to make customers happy? Is that our job? Brands may have given themselves a role in society that nobody asked them to fulfill. There’s a value system change taking place where mo...
Jul 15, 2022•1 hr 1 min
Joining the show today is Brandon Martinez, Founder of SNKRHUD. We discuss the dynamic of digital goods and NFTs during a downturn in the market, and how physical events and identities are becoming the norm in what was once thought to be an anonymous and online-only fandom. Listen now! The End of the Good Times “Hype alone isn’t enough to build an enduring brand or community.” There has to be a non-monetary reason that people are engaged in community — for sneakerheads this is the love of the cu...
Jul 11, 2022•48 min•Ep. 262
How did we get here? The story of how Visions the content property was born, and what the intent is behind it. Our goal is to broaden the conversation to art, philosophy, spirituality, and culture — and from those vantage-points, begin to understand their effects on Commerce. “Most eCom content focuses on the how or the what. We wanted to zero in on the ‘why’ a consumer thinks or behaves the way that they do.” — Phillip “We need a reason why… to give us the framework that we need to learn and to...
Jul 08, 2022•33 min
Today founder of Checkout Promotions, Gil Greenberg, is joining the show. We recap Shopify Editions, the transformation of the Shop App, the overcrowding of the developer ecosystem, and how to thrive as an app developer in eCom. Listen now! Like Never Before “You're starting to see a lot of developers that actually want to run businesses for their apps and employing fundamentals to do so.”-Gil Greenberg “There’s a world where Shopify didn’t IPO 6 or 7 years ago, and my theory is that part of S...
Jul 01, 2022•55 min•Ep. 261
Keeping up with the Jonses isn’t just for your neighbors next door, it’s everywhere in eCommerce businesses. Companies buy software based on what they see others in their industry purchasing. Formal RFP processes create a lengthy and expensive buying process, so eCommerce companies are more open today than ever before to the idea of composable commerce. In Episode 5 of Decoded, Phillip & Boris discuss how to purchase digital software well and some key considerations in decision making. Liste...
Jun 28, 2022•25 min
TikTok creator Neil Shankar joins the show today to chat about the algorithm, how brands are playing the game, power stances in commerce, and our recent Visions 2022 report. Listen now! Playing the Game Neil Shankar is a TikTok content creator, producing content on what's new with consumer brands “Getting the algorithm to like you is sometimes about playing the game of TikTok, for instance, speaking the language of TikTok and engaging with TikTok creators. You don't need to be like dancing in fr...
Jun 24, 2022•43 min•Ep. 260
The $100 Pumpkin Brian 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 righ...
Jun 17, 2022•35 min•Ep. 259
High Complexity, Low Commodity Online 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 tweaks Software 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 develop...
Jun 15, 2022•27 min
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 models Kiri’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 whic...
Jun 10, 2022•40 min•Ep. 258
You’re Either Alive or Dead Jeremy 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 assortmen...
Jun 03, 2022•50 min•Ep. 257
Adapting to Customer Behaviors We 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 tho...
May 31, 2022•33 min
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.” -Brian The concern that many have right now is where do customer place thei...
May 27, 2022•49 min•Ep. 256
As Promiscuous as a Gibbon Brian 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...
May 20, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 255
The in-Direct to Consumer era Websites are homogenous and lacking inspiration. If you remove the navigation bar, most websites are indistinguishable Shopify’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 uninspi...
May 13, 2022•48 min•Ep. 254
A Natural Evolution of eCommerce Boris 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.” -Boris There is not...
May 10, 2022•30 min
The Sacraments of Commerce DTC Theory: anything that can be disintermediated eventually will be disintermediated With 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.” -Brian Product-first is the new model, whereas marketin...
May 06, 2022•57 min•Ep. 253
One-Click Buy…Say What? Recently Amazon has made a push around their one-click purchase button, "Buy with Prime” Amazon is now comfortable with trying to take an existing model and system and extend that beyond their own channel “The interesting play here is the comfortability of expanding channels.” -Kris The thing that differentiates checkout at the end of the day is the Prime-like experience in that customers get their order quickly and with potentially free shipping “Amazon is going to marke...
Apr 29, 2022•48 min•Ep. 252
The Metaverse: Innovation or Skinnovation? The metaverse we’re building right now is not the metaverse we’ll all end up using…if we end up using the metaverse at all. Don’t worry about what competitors and enterprises are doing in the metaverse, worry instead about how you should break into this new world. “The current Web3 and metaverse implementation that we see today feels like small teams of developers who have created something really unique and they're going direct to their own consumer. A...
Apr 26, 2022•23 min
Serendipitous Experiences RICE's (the Retail Innovation Conference and Expo) goal is to stay true to their roots and put a new and fun spin on the event and expo space RICE is working to reframe the way content is performed for the show, hitting reset on who is given a platform, and making the learning experiences as focused and tailored as possible “We want this place to be a place where conversations happen and ideas get sparked.” -Alicia One of the goals for RICE is to bring together passiona...
Apr 22, 2022•47 min•Ep. 251
Bells and Whistles At Best If you’re not familiar with the eCommerce Marketing School podcast, they post five times a week, with 5-10 minute episodes taking a customer story sharing some of their tactics, what's working, what's not, and then a handful of interviews as well with operators who are in the trenches working on new tactics for growth Some businesses start because people have a product, and on the flip side, people have a skillset and find ways to apply it, with this…people are finding...
Apr 20, 2022•37 min•Ep. 250
Living in a Headless World Bryan Mahoney is back today to talk about recent news at Chord such as launching Chord Commerce Hub “We see Chord Commerce Hub as the mission control for business users.” -Bryan If you’re trying to be efficient, you’re doing it wrong. The right way is oftentimes the hard way. “The core tenant of headless for me, is taking a first-principles approach to building. It's not the technology behind it. It's that it obviates you to have to build, starting with no assumptions ...
Apr 15, 2022•51 min•Ep. 249
Boundaries Cause us to Thrive On March 21st, the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC), issued proposed climate-related disclosures. The rules were proposed for publicly traded companies that report to the SEC. The SEC is proposing these rules to protect investors because they felt that the current rules did not adequately protect investors when it comes to climate-related risks. “The SEC wanted to bring less fragmentation into the way that you report and how they report.” -Gaida SustainaBase p...
Apr 08, 2022•30 min•Ep. 248
