Come At Me PacSun Everything and everyone is all about the metaverse right now. Brian is starting to think that the “metaverse is just the internet now.” Maybe it is, hence why some think NFTs, crypto, and bitcoin are part of the metaverse as well. When we think about DTC we have to remember what the entailed vision was: “to disrupt the existing industry or category with a product that is equal to or better than the existing products that are available and make them more affordable and get them ...
Apr 06, 2022•42 min•Ep. 247
A Lesson in Complex Systems Peter is the manager of Strategic Partnerships at BigCommerce and works to help solve the pain points of tax and cross-border “Tax is one of the more complex issues that merchants have to work through when it comes to cross-border commerce.” -Peter Localization, offering the correct payment gateways, and fraud management are just a few things that will help make a seamless experience for your customers Shipping can be a big problem when it comes to cross-border. You n...
Mar 25, 2022•30 min
Launching the Crawl, Walk, Run As companies scale their operations into new markets, it's important to have the people, partners, and processes to scale efficiently. “We need technology to help us manage exceeding our own capacities and limits.” -Phillip It’s about the relationships on the other side and how we relate to them, in order to make all things come together and bring product to the hands of the person trying to order from us. “Once you've launched that crawl, walk, run process, if you...
Mar 24, 2022•40 min
The Rosetta Stone of eCommerce Craig Reed is the GM of Cross-Border at Avalara and has watched the industry develop over the last 20 years. He’s truly one of the godfathers of cross-border eCommerce. An HS code is the code that an individual country expects you to give them to tell them what you're importing. This is important because all the other rules and restrictions flow from HS codes. Craig likes to label HS codes as “The Rosetta Stone of eCommerce.” The way we think about goods is differe...
Mar 23, 2022•47 min
Have a More Holistic Global View of the World Kent Allen is the Co-Founder of GELF, who has been in the ecosystem and helping lead the conversation of cross-border for 25 years “We've got to realize that the very nature of digital commerce is cross-border.” -Kent In the last few years we’ve seen a boom in eCommerce, which has inherently led to a boom in cross-border The monkey paw of cross-border is having to be extremely specific when manifesting things in the eCommerce world Cross-border eComm...
Mar 22, 2022•46 min
It Takes an Ecosystem to Grow Internationally Jason Nyhus is the SVP of Global Sales at Digital River, focusing on helping brands go global “The honest reality of today is a lot different than it was a decade ago. If you make any product, you are inherently global overnight.”- Jason Just because you’re able to take people’s money, doesn't mean you will be able to fulfill the brands promise. You have to make sure that you will still be able to deliver an on-par experience. You have to be able to ...
Mar 21, 2022•37 min
The Super Bowel Movement We admit, we were talking s**t about Tushy on a recent Senses email, only because our team was very intrigued by the Super Bowel campaign, and of course this prompted conversation between our teams and here we are, dropping poop jokes on the show TUSHY is the modern bidet brand that washes your butt clean after you poop. “Make something that you would be curious to click on. It changes the way you make art and the way you create and do things. It truly is all about authe...
Mar 11, 2022•48 min•Ep. 246
Everything is Better in Person Everyone is still suffering through the turmoil of work from home life, job transitions, not knowing how to interact with customers, and so much more but Etail West was able to provide a way for everyone to relate and be in person again for the first time in a long time. “The struggles that any company has to build out culture, whether it's in-person or even more challenging when it's remote, those challenges are no different than when you're trying to build a rela...
Mar 04, 2022•47 min•Ep. 245
What Even is Arbitrage? Phillip’s new definition of arbitrage: an untapped source of potential; a source of growth that's under leveraged or as yet undiscovered. “The real arbitrage opportunity is hard work. Everybody wants a shortcut, and everybody wants the one weird trick.” - Philllip We’re stuck in a e-commerce industry diet fad phase. Everyone is searching for the one weird trick, but there is no weird trick, its just an endurance race of hard work. “Work hard and keep working longer than y...
Feb 25, 2022•45 min•Ep. 244
The Evolution of Future Commerce Today we’re talking about the future of Future Commerce, going in depth on all our deep and dreamy stuff we got going on! “Commerce is relationship, identity, and connection between people. As we see changes in the way that people relate, commerce is affected and vice versa. As commerce changes, the way that people relate is changed.” - Brian Because everyone has the ability to change, we at Future Commerce want to grow and adapt with the change, commence Casting...
Feb 18, 2022•52 min•Ep. 243
Crossborder, Spotify, and The Truths of Modern Living “A lot of growth in retail and eCommerce is trying to sell you things that really nobody actually needs.” - Phillip Behavioral purchasing modes help explain personal shopping habits and the need to stock up on a product one really likes. We all have behavioral purchasing modes, even though each individual might go about it differently. Step by Step Season 7 Preview: The future of many brands is to go cross-border. But American brands cannot e...
Feb 11, 2022•42 min•Ep. 242
A Pop-Up Amazon Go? Overall, health safety was top of mind for everyone “The safety protocols and the vaccine protocols worked very well for this event, and I think it proves we can have large scale events even if they're lightly attended.” - Phillip The shining star of NRF ‘22 was the innovative Amazon Go Pop Up Store on the main floor, providing attendees with convenient snacks and needs. Maybe they should consider hosting it a different weekend? Not MLK weekend… “Prior to the 90s, there was t...
Jan 28, 2022•58 min•Ep. 241
“Every Company Will Be a Crypto Company” Mags is someone who is thinking about the future of the startup ecosystem. She’s passionate about why and how people spend their time, money, and attention “The reality is people will always have needs, they will always buy things and services to fulfill those needs. New brands will still be launching.” -Mags The journey of NFTs is still early. In many ways they’re very similar to DTC brands as its become easy to launch, and the early movers have made a l...
Jan 21, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 240
Connecting Acquisition Back to Subscription Hawaii Volcanic Beverages is a purpose-driven ultra-premium alkaline water and active lifestyle brand based in Hawaii. Ordergroove helps innovative brands enable Relationship Commerce with successful subscription, predictive reorder, and membership experiences. “Water brands have a tremendous opportunity in really high, densely populated metropolitan areas…no one wants to lug around a case of water in the subway, walk up 10 flights of stairs to their a...
Jan 14, 2022•40 min•Ep. 239
Living Rent-Free in our Brains The drop culture and the hype culture have created a much shorter attention span. “We trample over each other to get the goods we want.” -Phillip Guided commerce has an emotional and personal impact when you do it in person, in such a way that it never lands the same when you’re doing it from a questionnaire. “Those sorts of sensory moments in commerce are often overlooked, but those are the things that actually make customer experience.” -Phillip “Ee-commerce is d...
Jan 12, 2022•53 min•Ep. 238
Predicting the Ecom, DTC, and Tech winners and losers of 2022 It’s a new year and spoiler alert…Brian still loves Costco. He’s actually banking that it becomes the biggest retail winner of 2022, whereas Phillip is rooting for GAP Brands (Old Navy, Banana Republic, Atheta) Will Amazon come out as the biggest retail loser of 2022? Possibly. Everyone is feeling the effect of disinformation and it doesn’t seem to be getting better Could beauty brands be leading the way in DTC this year? Phillip and ...
Jan 07, 2022•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 237
Phillip and Brian join Ingrid on Infinite Shelf to chat about the best highlights throughout the season thus far. Tune in now!
Dec 31, 2021•40 min•Ep. 236
"This is Not Van Gogh" Today we're reviewing the best of the podcast in 2021, but instead of Branded resale enables you to have a better understanding of how things are being bought and sold and how your brand is having a life after you’re done “The most sustainable product in the world is the one that already exists.” -Adam “Brands are actually a new kind of canvas. They are a piece of art to some degree.” -Phillip We live in a world full of existential crises, but it's kind of fun. Sometimes o...
Dec 24, 2021•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 235
The First Ever Future Commerce Draft Every person has a blind spot, and your mind fills that gap. But what are we missing? “We resort to hard data or often like quantifiable knowledge instead of gathering true, in the moment insight from people from their perspective, that first person perspective, which is really, really hard to validate.” -Brian Experience is different from every moment to every moment. We often don’t pay attention to the data that is related to our narrative. “I believe wha...
Dec 17, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 234
The Way We’re Shopping Has Changed Forever When looking at Black Friday/Cyber Monday recaps, retail analysts and reporters drew a little bit of a flat line Brands are seeing underwhelming sales growth on Amazon's Black Friday. “In general, performance for many brands was somewhat muted compared with the bumper 2020 sale event. A considerable factor could be that it appears that shoppers did not flock to Black Friday deals as eagerly this year.”- Kiri Masters, Forbes “More and more of these types...
Dec 03, 2021•32 min•Ep. 233
Becoming a Gift Influencer Drips vs. Drops? Drips all the way. Businesses should be providing drips to their customers, constant communication. Whereas drops are the seasonality of pushing your customer. “I love the always-on drip culture. I do still think there's excitement and like sexiness to a big drop. But you have to make sure that those drops are super, super necessary in the moment, like hitting exactly where they need to hit and then using the drips throughout the year to prepare for th...
Nov 26, 2021•50 min•Ep. 232
Smart Contracts are the New Covenants “All this stuff is stuff that's been out that we've been talking about for quite some time, but it's actually finding its way into the mainstream now and that's really exciting.” -Brian The future is fractional ownership and we are seeing it happen right now with an autonomous organization potentially fractionally owning the governance of us all being able to acquire a copy of the Constitution of the United States of America. “There's an ecom brain drain ris...
Nov 19, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 231
Approaching Dork Mode No Best Practices is a blog and a newsletter on a mission to help marketers think more like operators and make sure that what they're working on is contributing in a meaningful way to the bottom line. “There are three different ways of approaching marketing. One where you start and things are completely instinctual and gut driven, and then, “I'm making data driven decisions," and then there's the "Well, there actually are some kind of guiding principles that can explain wha...
Nov 12, 2021•47 min•Ep. 230
Superseding Customer Relationships "Relationship supersedes brand" is a phrase that we've often said on the podcast, but Phillip is calling this into question. A transaction doesn’t have to be an exchange of goods or monetary. It can be influence, it can be power dynamics, it’s identity exchange. “What often is overlooked is the employee experience in delivering service and support. It's never been more important than it is today.” -Phillip Getting customer service right during post purchase is ...
Nov 05, 2021•54 min•Ep. 229
Having Conversations That Don’t Exist in Other Places Welcome to Infinite Shelf, a human-centric show designed to help explore what it takes to make brands, products and services hit the right recipe of connection, relevance, emotional attachment, and, of course, profitability. Phillip and Brian of Future Commerce join Ingrid to welcome Infinite Shelf to the network The three play a game of “Get off my Lawn,” where INgrid has the guys guess what different TikTok lingo means. “When we talk about ...
Nov 03, 2021•40 min
Our Inability to Predict Demand The National Retail Federation predicts a whopping 10.5% increase in holiday spending this year. Maybe supply chain issues are overblown? Moselle is on a mission to provide e-commerce businesses with everything they need to create stable and scalable supply chains. The Beer Distribution Game is really just supply chain 101. If you have shortages or additional lead time in this game, you'll basically run into supply-demand issues. A lot of what's happening now is o...
Oct 29, 2021•31 min•Ep. 228
Building a New Type of Relationship “For the future of commerce to thrive, brands must be able to own those direct relationships with their customers.” -Rosa In recent news, Yotpo and Shopify have joined in a platform partnership to help accelerate Yotpo’s growth and ultimately empower merchants to grow their relationships with consumers. “It’s never been more important than now to truly understand your customer. This partnership with Shopify allows us to grow that relationship and loyalty with ...
Oct 22, 2021•46 min•Ep. 227
The Modernity of Site Search We recount Brian’s visit to Aime Leon Dore’s flagship store in Soho, talk about the store design, the need for physical retail for “anchoring” the ultimate vision of a brand. We contrast the store design of ALD with another Soho shopping experience: Shinola. The future of digital requires having a physical experience. Brian’s ALD experience will likely drive future digital purchases. We’re in a brave new world of being introduced to brands. Price doesn’t matter anymo...
Oct 15, 2021•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 226
Being an Informed Consumer Requires Recognizing Disinformation Searching the web can be a bit confusing these days with the addition of third party sellers, in a recent Washington Post article, the author stated “These days navigating Amazon, Walmart and Google's maze of third party sellers or judging hip looking social media ads requires the same kind of skills as identifying misinformation and conspiracy theories.” Phillip thinks this is the quote of the year. Mainstream media is coming to att...
Oct 08, 2021•57 min•Ep. 225
“If only there were a way to sample new products... in a warehouse of some sort?” If you’re not an influencer or active on social media, how can you sample a product as a consumer? How cool would it be if there was a way to get into a warehouse with every product available for sample! “We need the raw, realistic community members, not influencers, sharing the content and saying, "these are my thoughts and this is how much better it is.’’ The people need to hear that. “-Kendall As consumers we of...
Oct 01, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 224
