2023-01-12. Retail Futures: The Circus Comes to Town

Rich. I went to Walgreens the other day.

Oh,

And you have to page someone now to get the shampoo. I don't think it's just because of shoplifting. Like it's just, everything's sort of

locked down weird.

And then you know, you or you go to Best Buy and you're like, I'll get a USB cable. And they're like, no, you will get accessories for your Pixel 25.

Yeah. You know what it feels like big box stores and Bo and, and like, you know, franchise retail. It feels like you're walking into a w.

It does. It's the back. It's the back. Like you're walking into the back where they keep all the

stuff, where they keep all

and there's no actual stuff. Like browsing isn't fun anymore. There's no, there's no laptops to look at. Right. There's like three giant ecosystems and platforms and they're selling you peripherals.

A lot of it is sort of waypoint to pick up the stuff that you bought online, like, Hey, it's near you. You can go get it in three hours or something like

that and there's clothes, et cetera, et cetera. But you know what I'm noticing at just big box retail, which we have in New York City. People don't think of New York City that way, but like a lot of the stores are

here, best Buy

we're here, we're here buying it

Lowe's,

It makes less and less sense.

for.

have two thoughts on this. I wanna talk 'em through with you and just get your thoughts. So one is, do we just have enough stuff like there's no DVD player to buy. I have a phone and then I have a watch that talks to my phone and I have a computer that's a super computer and I don't seem to need a lot more.

more, I mean, obviously you. Obviously you don't to be in absolute distress cuz you forgot your phone at home. Whereas we are old enough to remember when there was no distress for walking out without a communication device is crazy. Right? So no, we don't need all this stuff. We don't need iterations of the stuff or, or, um, you know, the, we don't need cases and special things to attach to our stuff. But that's, I think you're asking the wrong question.

Well, first of all, The youth of today will never know the experience of seeing a major upgrade to something like it I mean, the difference between like Windows three and Windows 95 was miraculous.

It was like, it was like a, it was like a holiday. It was insane. They

the Rolling Stones play. There was a

search on YouTube. There's people like just rampaging computer stores to get boxes of Windows 95. it's wild,

So those, everything is incremental now in those giant ecosystems. I think I was looking for an experience I used to have a long time ago where I'd go to a store and kind of check out the store and then maybe pick up something that I was looking for while also getting my bearings around like what's going on at Best Buy these days,

The shopping experience was something that you also looked forward to, not just the actual thing you bought. Sometimes you just say, I'm gonna go peruse. When I was a kid, I didn't have money for the mall. I had money for like a juice at the mall, but I didn't have money for like the record store or the bookstore or, uh, the games store, GameStop. Uh, but I'd go because it was, it was, I could go look at stuff and just check 'em out. Right. And that was fun. Um, that is, Kind of gone.

you're into, he.

I am.

You love headphones?

I do.

Tell me just a little bit about headphones. Let's get it outta your system. What, what makes headphones special to you?

you? I, I bought headphones for convenience, mostly like, wow, no wires. Wow. I can talk on the phone on them. Sure. And then I'm gonna blame a shop that is actually one of the, one of the cooler commerce institutions in New York City. It's called Adorama

Oh, I love Arama. 18th Street.

18th Street. And I'm gonna pitch something else, A site called slick deals.net.

I wasn't expecting that.

It's slick deals on net essentially bumps up like deals and they had these $600 ims, uh, in ear monitors, essentially earbuds,

headphones with wires that go in your ears, but not over your

Correct. For $200. Okay. I was like, okay, I can, I can, I wanna check these

It's a bargain. You, you couldn't afford not to buy them?

I couldn't afford not to buy them. I went and bought them and it opened up a whole world for me.

So you were using like apple AirPods with your phone

I was using Bluetooth. Okay. Which deteriorates the quality of sound I was using. Uh, Spotify, which does not have lossless audio. And I was like, this sounds great. I hear music in my ears and it's pretty good. It's better than the old headphones I had. And then I put these things in and I think I threw on like John Coltrane. Sure. And I could hear the bartender making the cocktail.

subtlety, you were just tuned for it and it was exciting and you were like, this music is much more stimulating than before.

I'm giving you a long-winded answer, but it opened up a whole different relationship with music for me actually.

now talk me through, and I, I'm using you with headphones, but I have things like this now too.

Like, yeah.

Okay. Now where do you go?

I ended up, look, let's get one thing out of the way. I can afford expensive things. Sure. I'm not gonna apologize

No, let's

I didn't steal the money.

at this point, if people are interacting with us and still listening to us talk on a podcast

Yeah.

Then they know that we can afford expensive things. Yes. So there we are. Okay.

then so I did some research and then when you do research online, you end up in these corners. You end up in these sort of subcultures. That are discreet and tangible and real, and there are personalities in them, and these are not personalities you're gonna, they're not getting stopped in the street. It's like, it's what I call the, you know, the tens of thousands of views. YouTube.

So they're not on the Today Show.

not on the Today Show, but they're respected and they're considered experts, and they don't, they don't give everything five stars. In fact, they're, some of them are just salty and hate everything. So when they tell you something is good, you trust. and I said, you know what, I'm gonna go get great hardware to listen to music. I care enough about music that I'm gonna go do that, but,

right? Because this is This is always part of it, right? You bought the thing and now you have to buy things for the thing.

Yes. You

just listen on headphones because you know the really good ones require a little bit more power, so you gotta get headphones, amplifiers

It took me at like a couple of weeks to just understand that. Parts that I thought, okay, I gotta get an amplifier. They're like, yeah, but that's not enough. You need a, a DAK or digital to analog converter, and you can get those in one device, but then you're not separating the heart electronics enough and you might hear a hiss, and I'm like, whoa. All right. Everybody calm down. I would always go from your insane and ridiculous to, of course I need

to, of course. So so let me, let me, let me keep driving you for a little bit so we don't just talk about headphones cuz here's the larger point. What are the platform you're reading on websites? Google

YouTube channels? Um, uh, there's a, the forum for high-end audio called Head five.org, and it's an old school forum, but it is. Where everybody is, like the, the manufacturers and the, and the producers of this hardware know they have to go there to tell people what's going on. It's that big,

I gotta tell you, and look, we're talking about, you know, you said earlier, We ha we kind of have the time and flexibility here, but everyone I know who gets into anything doesn't have to be that expensive, has these communities. Can be gardening, can be, um, knitting, can be, I had a friend who got really into Japanese, um, wood tools and there's a whole eBay community and there's

Sim racing rigs. I was gonna say gaming, but gaming is like film now. It's too big. Right,

No.

But like specific things like flight simulation or sim racing, which is like these rigs that make you feel like you're driving a car in your house. Um, many marriages have been ruined with some racing rigs. Yeah. These, these are corners of the

So there's another thing too, and I actually wanna point out the money parts in because my, these friends I know might not have had that much money, but once you buy, one of the things, if they're high value, they hold their value pretty.

They do, they do. There's always resale markets for weird stuff.

right. And so like, so actually what happens is you end up owning three or four of the things, but if you wanna get rid of them, you sell one or two and then you go buy a new one. And that, that's sort of,

you're touching on something Paul, which is. The journey to the purchase. The purchase is oftentimes, sometimes great, cuz you're like, wow, this is as good as I thought it was gonna be. But it's the journey to the thing. And the truth is, eventually you don't, the value of the thing is diminished and you want to go on other

There are studies that the emotional release, when you get something you really want comes right before you open the box.

Of course it's

here. I got it, I'm gonna open it now. Now I will be happy. Right? So now again, let me keep fast forwarding. So you also, there's another thing you love, you love watch.

you

have the same dynamic. You own a couple, but you like to learn and read about.

I, and I don't own like, Glittery, like status

No, no.

you won't recognize the

you got into were ones that actually are pretty relatively affordable, but made by very small companies, craftsmen, a couple people. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna share experience and look, I'm, I'm, it'll sound like I'm putting you on this spot. I have this exact same relationship now with like music equipment. I love gear and synthesizers and stuff like that. So, but pause for a sec. Here we go. You say, let's go to this little watch event. And we go and we take the train in.

yeah. 4,000 square feet.

four and lots of little tables with people selling their very small limited run. Exactly spoke and, and these are people trying to essentially make a middle class life out of their absolute love for watch crafts, right? So they've become the producers and that that's another part of it. You make your own equipment. Um, I cannot describe how crowded it was. It was one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life. You are happy.

I was happy, but I actually had. Watchmakers. I wanted to go see and then I was ready to leave cuz it was, it was

I lasted about five minutes and then I went out and just watched people make weird deals about watches in the front because I felt I would have like a post covid heart attack just being there.

yeah. Why? Why did you feel like you needed to immediately turn around and leave?

It wasn't for me. You couldn't get towards the tables. And actually what

happened, it was mobbed.

gotta tell you, you walk in and there is a whole system of knowledge and symbols and information that is getting shot into your brain, and I can't parse or understand it.

You felt like an uber novice, like you were

confused. Everyone's just like, and, and it's like, it is loud. It is hot. It is a lot of men and everyone is like grabbing at the tables and you can't get within four feet of them, and it's just like, check, check out the movement on this, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's, nobody's yelling. It's, it's all very like, just,

It was very intense. Uh, I, I, I will say, I, I, I think I have a couple of theories as to why it was, I was shocked at how crowded it was. I thought it was gonna be this sort of really niche thing where where wouldn't be that many people. I was shocked, and I think there were a couple of reasons for it. The first is the pandemic. Like, we're coming, we can't, it was, I think they had postponed the fair, the watch fair for like a couple years, or one year

Just built up cravings.

built up cravings. Right. But I think there's another reason, and the other reason is that I think the mass consumption spaces are such a grind, and so in some cases toxic, but generally not toxic. Usually the word I like to use is tiring. Everything is so, um, shallow, and I don't mean shallow negatively. I like a 12 second Tik TikTok video, but there's not much to it. There's nothing to build on. Right. But oftentimes adversarial. Right.

How much money do you think you, you have a better business brain than I do. How much money do you think went through that 4,000 square foot watch fair that day or in the, it was, it was there for a weekend.

There were no, like, it wasn't the fair that had Rolex, right? So that you didn't have the five, $8,000 watches there. You had, you know, it probably capped out at a couple thousand. You had some outliers and whatnot. Probably hundreds of thousands of dollars, like nothing crazy. Um, but I think, I think more importantly, Uh, and I happen to know the, the organizer of this event, we haven't mentioned what it is.

and there you go. See, that to me is where we're headed, right? You've got all these commerce experiences that we thought were going to be like a little bit, a little bit physical, a little bit online. You'll go get your USB cable, you'll go get your, your things for your phone. And I guess that's real. Like Best Buy still exists, but for the most part, I think people order a lot of stuff online.

Yes.

And then there are these things that people love.

love. Yes. And what they find very often, uh, is communities that are, that validate that. It's good to find out. You're not the only one who's crazy enough to be into that thing.

Yeah.

very good to hear that you aren't off, you know, alone on the island. Right? Um, but more importantly, they're not. They're typically, um, places where you feel like you could always learn a little more, which feels good. Um,

it's also very validating to see all the other people.

It's validating to see

you're, you're not the only one. Is there a big headphone fair?

There is. There is. It's coming in February. I bought you a ticket,

All right. We're going. That's fine. No, I mean, I enjoy observing these things. I now know to be prepared that if I go into the headphone fair, it will be intense. Intense, right. And

Part of me loves to observe the culture

Of course. That's the fun of it. And

there I wear the outsider hat, but then if somebody asks me a question, I'm actually pretty knowledgeable at this

Well, you're pr you're proud of your knowledge, right?

The internet people talk about town squares and communities on the internet. That ship has sailed. It is mass media in a classic sense, and everyone is trying to get 10 seconds in that could somehow tip to millions of

Twitter is like a TV network. It's like NBC in the eighties.

like a TV network. And so what's happened is the real communities, capital C on the internet are in these places because the scale isn't such that you win by yelling at someone else or you win by views. There are experts in these. In these communities that are happy, that others want to talk to them about it and are not seeking out the dopamine hit of likes and views or whatever else. And I think that's the scale we can function at as humans. We don't, we can't build communities.

to frame society,

trying to frame society.

So, so let's give Zdi and Ford advisors. Okay. Something's changing out there. It definitely feels like retail and craft and community are aligning. It feels like instead of going to the store, you might buy a lot of stuff online and then wait till the circus comes to town and then you'll buy the, you'll go check out the things you love. What should people do? How do you get ready for this world? What do you do?

No, I, I don't know if you have to get ready for anything. Here's our advice in this week's episode of Z and Ford Advisors. Find your community. It's healthy, it's nurturing. It's not to look, I'm not saying go find your community in some like wackadoo conspiracy theory forum. 'em, go find something where you feel constructive and useful and can be additive and where people wanna help you learn. It's healthy, it's normal. It is.

I find it. So I've been getting really into synths and studying music theory and all kinds of stuff, and it's really great to have something utterly aspirational that where there are just people who are so much better at it than me in every way. Like, well, you don't think you could make a better watch?

watch? no.

These people are making the better watch. And that's a joy.

It's a joy. And you know what, um, if you don't give humans. The job, they use those extra cycles to be at each other's throats. Now everyone's got the job, whether it be making a better headphone or how to optimize this or how to make a great watch or how to garden better and get a better like, um, yield or whatever it may be by doing, giving them that to do, we can park all the other shit that comes out of

of us. So is what we're actually saying, that the path to happiness through the web and through the internet is not simply going into a big room with everybody and debating and figuring it all out, but rather giving yourself a job to do a thing, to learn a task, and then finding a community that is also aligned around that.

that. That's a beautiful thing. That sounds really pleasant. It

actually is a beautiful thing. I feel that I've said this a million times, but it's never been as apparent to me.

Yeah, I, I, I visited, I want to close it with a little anecdote. I visited. They do this thing called First Fridays at my, at my kids' school,

Mm-hmm.

and the first Friday the parents can hang with the

Brooklyn Public School. Normal place. Yeah.

Went to the school and all the tables, all the kids' desks are in circles. Each circle. Is a wedge, like a pizza slice of a desk, and there's six kids in circles. And I, I thought back to how I went to school and it was rows of desks and you weren't next to anyone

Oh, your, your last name is Zdi. You didn't have a chance. You're just all the way in

in the corner if it's alphabetical. But more importantly, there was space between us. I was in a grid. and I wasn't connecting with anyone else. And meanwhile, I come to my kids' class and these clusters of kids are together in these little, just architecturally arranged communities in a way, effectively. And they drift from one to the other, but they're, they're facing each other. They're talking to each other. And that's how I, that's how I, what I think of when I think of these communities.

it is so wild cuz I, we both have kids in public school is so wild how much better their educational experiences than ours.

I mean, they should have just beaten us with a stick. When we went to school, we would've been better

you and I went to school like animals in a.

depend. Yes. Um, get out there, find the thing you care about. There's a community that's ready to welcome you. This has been one of the more positive podcasts we've

Well, notice I, I drove this one,

Fair enough. If you've got I topic ideas, questions, or need advice on just about anything except medical, I can

Yeah, let's not do that. Don't do

Hit us up. [email protected]. Check us out on in. Well, how can people, uh, listen to the podcast? Paul, what's your podcast App of choice?

The web

Fair

I like browsers. Uh,

We're in all the usual

places. Gianni ford.com We're, we're getting all those transcripts done and trued up and, uh, just we're, we're gonna keep rolling.

Yep. Have a lovely week.

Bye.