Future Commerce

By Phillip Jackson, Brian LangeSociety & Culture Business Entrepreneurship Philosophy Marketing

Future Commerce episodes

February 26, 2021 Non-Fungible Podcast: NBA Top Shot, Fractional Ownership, and Meta Mortgages
Dapper Labs gets a $2B valuation so it's high time we break down NFTs and relate it back to themes from our Vision report. Listen now! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com
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advertising.
47 min
February 19, 2021“Adorkable” Brands, Blands, and CARLY (feat. Ben Schott, Bloomberg)
What Are Blands? What are Dazzle Brands? What are Adorkables?
“Blands are the identikit army of disruptive direct to consumer startups.” - Ben Schott
Blands are DTC brands that all have a neutral and friendly aesthetic, who claim to be unique, but are all the same in terms of their identikit formula, business model, and tone of voice.
In WWI, a british artist created a new form of Marine camouflage called Dazzle Painting, which didn’t aim to make anything hidden, but to make it difficult to target.
Ben correlates this to brands that distract consumers: persuading consumers that bad is good (potato chips), that good is bad (margarine), or bad is bad (Death Cigarettes).
“Adorkables are a growing gang of disruptive brands that definitely target Gen Z with a jarring, visual aesthetic and authentic emotional appeal.” - Ben Schott
“While Blands seduce millenials with an ever receding notion of self-actualization, Adorkables double down on Gen Z’s internal conflict between self-consciousness and self-promotion.” - Ben Schott
Punks and Posers of Gen Z
Ben theorizes that big brands will absorb the culture of Gen Z brands: “That’s exactly what big brands do. They look for the marginal edge trends and they devour them.”
In much of the way that punk rock killed disco deliberately, Ben wonders how much Gen Z is faking its aesthetic - because Gen Z brands are naturally ‘rebellious,’ but are run by the establishment.
There’s a dissonance between the target market of CARLY (Can’t Afford Real Life Yet) brands and the actual price point of those brands - which moreso matches HENRY (High Earner Not Rich Yet) brands.
Gen Z has a link with impermanence - renting, subscription services vs. buying products directly, etc. This impermanence “changes your attitude towards saving, towards money… [it becomes] about experiences… That instant surge gratification you get from consumption, that then leaves you empty. By that stage, it’s time to consume again.” - Ben Schott
On a positive note: “Experiences are very important. It’s not just pure consumption, but it’s about living in the moment.” - Ben Schott
Links
Find Ben Schott on Bloomberg!
Read Ben’s recent article, “Generation Z, You’re Adorkable,” on Bloomberg.

If you have any comments or questions about this episode, you can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels. We love hearing from our listeners!

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51 min
February 12, 2021“The Most Sustainable Product is One That Already Exists” feat. Adam Siegel, Founder of Recurate
Adam Siegel, founder of Recurate, joins the show to chat about how Recurate is promoting retained sustainability through peer to peer resale.
The Birth of Recurate and Branded Resale
Adam spent over eight years at RILA, the Retail Industry Leaders Association, leading their sustainability and ethical production program and eventually leading the association's first innovation and emerging technology function, now known as RILA’s Retail Innovation Center.
Coming from his background in sustainability, Adam wanted to start something of his own and noticed the theme of circular economies—particularly the rental economy and the resale economy.
“There are some other niche communities that have grown up like Stock X and Grailed and GOAT that have proven that second-hand products in some cases even have more value than first-hand products.” - Adam Siegel
Adam noticed that once products were bought directly from a brand, the brand lost track of consumers through resale. Recurate started what they call “branded resale,” which brings the benefits of resale directly back to the brands that originally made those products.
Benefit to All: Buyer, Seller, and Brand
Buyers/Consumers of products are able to directly see their purchase history through their brand and are able to directly re-sell that item back to the brand they originally bought it from.
This avoids third-party marketplaces that don’t know much about the item and relists the item for sale with original imagery, description, materials, etc.
“Consumers are looking for higher quality items that retain their value over time.” - Adam Siegel
Brands benefit by accessing data of their product after it’s out of the marketplace: data like how long their consumers hold their product, how many uses they’re getting, resale value, and more.
How Recurate Works
Recurate is a scalable model because it is relatively low-cost.
Items are directly sent back from the consumer to their original brand, not to Recurate.
In order to keep the peer-to-peer quality uniform, Recurate’s first checkbox is to link consumers with their brands only via their direct purchase history with that brand and product.
The next step is withholding payment to that seller until the item is delivered and the brand confirms the condition of the item.
Brands can implement their own options, but so far, brands have given 100% of the sale price to sellers if they choose in-store credit or 70-80% if the seller wants cash.
Apparel has been the focus of Recurate so far, but they have had early adopters in luxury footwear, denim, handbags, travel gear, outdoor gear, and sporting gear, and they are interested in expanding to kids toys and consumer electronics.
Brands like REI, Patagonia, and Eileen Fisher already care about sustainability, circularity, and long-lasting products as brands. Recurate is trying to create a new model of brand resale that is more cost-effective and scalable for other businesses.
Final Thoughts
“There are certainly negative ways that you can groom people in this world, especially in consumerism. Why not encourage and incentivize people to do something that’s actually really good for the world? I think that using Recurate as a platform on which to build consumer and customer loyalty, and maybe even lifetime value, with something that’s inherently better for the planet… I love that.” - Adam Siegel
Adam’s hope is that this will minimize discounting of new products because brands more closely understand the demand for products, first-hand and second-hand: “Our hope is that [Recurate] affects more than just the resale market itself, but the broader buying patterns of retailers and brands.”
Links
Check our our Vision 2021 report, which features Recurate!
Find Recurate on their website.

If you have any comments or questions about this episode, you can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels. We love hearing from our listeners!

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48 min
February 05, 2021The [Broken] Circle of LIfe
Jeff Bezos Steps Down & Starting Small
When Tim Cook took over at Apple, nobody knew who Tim Cook was and now he’s a household name. Andy Jassy will experience the same.
Jeff Bezos started small with Amazon—by selling books. Marc Lore started small with Diapers.com—by selling a diaper. Now he’s building “a city of the future.” We have a new Insiders piece about this.
Lean Luxe put out an email recently that mentioned Monocle’s “Digital Decency Manifesto” which was a better take of our Late Stage Retail where we toyed with the idea of a ‘consumer’s Bill of Rights.” This article also mentioned an Air Mail article about self documentaries.
These “Me-Documentaries” started small—with Facebook and documenting our lives in a deeper way. Brian finds this both narcissistic and compelling: “I expect that we’re all headed towards having our own documentaries at some point.”
StoryCorps has created kiosks to dive into stories with family members. Someone created a tech service that sends prompts to someone in order to compile a book that helps them to tell their story.
Post-Truth Society
This documenting of life can lead to narcissism, but it could also lead to untruth—for example, making an AI chat bot from communications with a lost loved one to be able to cope with their loss.
“Effectively, you can memorialize someone in such a way that even death itself can be post-truth.” - Phillip Jackson
In our new report, Vision 2021, we discuss some of these topics of post-truth: digital dysmorphia, the selfie industrial complex, and other trends in the future of consumerism.
GameStop, the New Occupy Wall Street, and the Dark Before the Dawn
Linking back to our Vision report, GameStop became a brand as performance art. “It wasn’t the brands themselves that were doing it, but they became the performance art because we made them so.” - Brian Lange
This feeds into our new culture of cynicism where we’re not actually reckoning with real issues and problems. What happened with GameStop stocks, AMC stocks, and others is a cynical rebellion.
People often fret over automation and technical innovation posing a threat in the job market, but we’re watching this take place digitally during this pandemic. A lot of retail is being consolidated into more powerful hands. GameStop, for example, is a retailer of products that are now increasingly going digital and subscription-based.
This is all leading to a consolidation, an oligarchy/oligopoly of brands, which we talk about in our “Changing of the Guard” Insiders piece.
On a positive note: in times of adversity, real innovation happens. The next Amazon, Google, Apple, is being born during this time. All of the tools needed are easily available for this to happen.
Links
Check out Insiders #071: “The Changing of the Guard Signals a Coming Post-Innovation Age”
Check out Lean Luxe’s newsletter and it’s mention of Monocle’s “Digital Decency Manifesto” and Air Mail’s article: “Me-Documentaries are the New Status Symbol.”
Check out our new report, Vision 2021, and sign up for our newsletter to be the first to be notified of new reports!

If you have any comments or questions about this episode, you can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels. We love hearing from our listeners!

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51 min
February 01, 2021 10 Trends. 70 Pages. 1 Future. Vision is here.
Our newest report is out now. You don't have to predict the future, we've already done it for you. Get it today at https://futurecommerce.fm/vision

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3 min
January 22, 2021ShopShops Liyia Wu: “We’re Enabling a Generating of Prolific Creators”
Liyia Wu, founder and CEO of ShopShops, joins the show today to discuss ShopShops, the future of online shopping, and how ShopShops is creating the space for the next generation of content creators and influencers.
ShopShops and Consumer Behavior
“I believe the future of shopping is definitely live and video.” - Liyia Wu
Liyia states that they call themselves “Retail First” or “Retailtaimerce”, which is retail, entertainment, and commerce all in one as a platform that serves three sides of the market.
ShopShops tries to mimic the offline shopping experience for the online world: the sense of discovery via the physical spaces and environments.
Because of video calls, conferences, and the rise of live streaming and video forms on TikTok and Instagram, Liyia sees a user change behavior that’s acknowledging what video can offer.
Instead of a one-to-one experience, live streaming becomes one-to-hundreds. During livestream shopping or livestream entertainment, consumers start seeing relatedness to the person presenting and to other consumers in live chat features.
ShopShops’s influencers come from backgrounds of stylists, fashion designers, makeup artists themselves: “They very much have their own way to express their opinion about beauty.” - Liyia Wu
Just as Instagram and TikTok brought consumers in for entertainment purposes, ShopShops wants to focus on shopping - bringing consumers in to be entertained and learn something through that.
Entering the U.S. Market and Monetization
ShopShops is starting their expansion into the Western market by focusing on the vendor/seller side, having them start English versions of their live streams themselves in-store.
By the end of the year, ShopShops wants to open up the platform to more individual sellers who are willing to be hosts and curate their own content for the platform.
Currently, ShopShops charges a platform fixed fee based on seller’s transactions and in connecting hosts with retailers, they collect affiliate fees.
ShopShops currently curates which retailers and brands are platformed. Because of cross-border limitations in shipping and fulfillment, there’s a higher level of curation in the Chinese market. However, for their expansion into the U.S. market, ShopShops is open minded.
ShopShops shares insight, industry insights, cross-border insights, and analyzed data with their creators. This helps them identify and retain their customers.
On ShopShops’s female-focused audience: “I think women and men shop differently. Women shop for entertainment. Men shop for a purpose…” - Liyia Wu
ShopShops sees millennials as their primary focus in moving Westward - because of their mobile savviness, their quick adoption for what’s new, and their spending power.
Links
Find ShopShops on the Apple Store and if you’re interested in being a curator and content creator, find ShopShops Host.
Visit ShopShops’s website.
Check out Liyia Wu on the Modern Retail Podcast: ShopShops founder Liyia Wu on making digital QVC for China’s livestreaming generation
If you have any comments or questions about this episode, you can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels. We love hearing from our listeners!

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48 min
January 15, 2021Net Neutrality and the Deplatforming of Trump (feat. Danny Sepulveda - SVP Policy, MediaMath)
The Internet & Net Neutrality
Danny works for the CEO of MediaMath on internal and external policy, as well as projects related to data partnerships and issues around privacy and competition.
After leaving the Obama administration, Danny started at MediaMath answering the question of what is wrong with advertising.
“There are significantly more actors than in that supply chain than I was aware of beforehand.” - Danny Sepulveda on transparency, misinformation, and disinformation in advertising.
Danny says that when it comes to Shopify and other brand’s recent decisions on censorship: “It’s a policy thing and it’s a private thing.”
“We need to have a much larger and more inclusive conversation about what we want the future of the Internet to look like, who we want to make value and judgement decisions for the Internet, and whether or not it’s fulfilling its original promise.” - Danny Sepulveda
“When we talk about network neutrality, it is a concept which has historically been rooted on the idea of gatekeeper access to a commons, to the platform of the Internet.” - Danny Sepulveda
Danny explains that the Biden campaign committed to a restoration of Title 2 authority over Internet service providers, which would restore Title 2 provisions that provide net neutrality at the Internet service provider level - and Danny believes that a Democratic FCC will revisit this.
Danny on why Democrats support network neutrality: “It was to ensure that large entities could not snuff out small entities or that big voices could not silence small voices.”
Antitrust, Communication Tools, & the Near-Future
There have been many lawsuits of antitrust towards Facebook and Google.
“I think ensuring that you have competitive markets through antitrust law is necessary but insufficient to ensure that people and societies feel safe with the media ecosystem that we’re living in and dependent upon.” - Danny Sepulveda
Danny says that there are scenarios that aren’t questions of competition, but questions of culture and society that require tools outside of antitrust to solve. Danny states that privacy and content moderation falls into those categories.
“I would argue that almost all forms of media and communications start out as a tool.” - Danny Sepulveda on media companies being used for collective thought and communication.
“These media and communications and these companies, like every private activity that has come before them, will have to be subject to communal oversight and communal regulation or acceptable in order to gain acceptance… We’re scared because we don’t really have any faith in the idea that a large corporation is going to act in the public interest.” - Danny Sepulveda
Danny personally knows some of the individuals that the Biden administration is bringing into the picture for net neutrality: “They’re the most talented, most capable, most honorable people I’ve ever worked with in my life. I’m very hopeful for the next four years.”
“We are at a very interesting point in the development of the relationship between marketers and media and what kind of media is financed and how and subject to what rules and where it will provide the greatest ROI. Those are huge developments that are being driven.” - Danny Sepulveda
Links
Check out Danny Sepulveda’s other appearances on Future Commerce:
Episode #106: Are We Being Fairly Compensated For Our Data?
Episode #63: Deep Fakes
Episode #55: Don’t Underestimate What Can Happen in Just 1 Year
Episode #54: Microsoft Paint, but for Augmented Reality
Episode #49: Public Policy and Net Neutrality
Check out MediaMath, where Danny regularly writes blogs.
If you have any comments or questions about this episode, you can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels. We love hearing from our listeners!

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45 min
January 08, 2021"Your Tool, Your Sword, Your Treasure": Corporate Leadership in the post-Trump era
Today, Brian and Phillip talk about the extension of 2020 into 2021, corporate leadership, and personal data.
Corporate Leadership, Shopify, and Your Personal Data
Anything related to Donald Trump is effectively not what Shopify wants to promote. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat have all suspended Donald Trump’s account across their services. This brings to question businesses and their corporate leadership stepping forward.
Elon Musk has surpassed Jeff Bezos as the world’s richest man. Musk found ways of implementing what the future could be—compared to Bezos, who just found the most efficient way to do things.
eCommerce, being all around us, is in a unique position. Comparing it to the time when viruses weren’t on Macs because they were less popular than PCs, Shopify has seen an amount of stores as fraudulent/risky. Just as Macs were on the rise and were ripe for fraud, so is the world of e-Commerce.
In 2020, you’re responsible for managing your own data—with whom and what your data is used for.
Many retailers are becoming advertisers in and of themselves using this data—like Amazon, who brought in more ad revenue in 2020 through its own ad network than Twitter has brought in revenue in its entire existence.
Stealth Luxury
“Every brand is either a marketplace today or will have to adapt to become one.” - Phillip Jackson
As marketplaces (or curators), brands all interweave and interact with other brands and their stories.
Bottega Veneta deleted all of its social accounts—a deliberate move to build their brand identity of luxury. In a noise-filled world, silent spaces (like flying first class) can feel more luxurious.
From the GQ article on Bottega Veneta: “[The move] is the ultimate act of stealth luxury. It will now be a brand that travels strictly by word of mouth.”
Tied into this, Parade Underwear has taken a new spin on influencer marketing, in delivering free underwear to Instagram users with fewer than a thousand followers in exchange for posting.
There’s a separation in the market for luxuries vs price-centered items. Amazon and other marketplaces are saturated with knockoff brands so Brian predicts that the brands that are going to see the most success in the 2020s are brands that are marketed for broad markets and brands that are extreme luxury. The middle ground of “premium mediocre” brands is thinning.
Links
Check out our sponsors for today’s episode. Vertex is tax solution for businesses of all sizes, and MarketerHire, a platform for hiring teams of expert marketers for you.
The New York Post: One in five Shopify stores reportedly pose a risk to shoppers
Future Commerce Insiders #066: Your 2020 Body is a Dataland
GQ: Why Did Bottega Veneta Delete Its Social Media Accounts?
If you have any comments or questions about this episode, you can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels. We love hearing from our listeners!

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52 min
January 01, 2021"2-Day is Too Slow": How Darkstore's FastAF is Delivering on the New Customer Expectation, feat. Lee Hnetika, Founder and CEO
Lee Hnetinka, Founder and CEO of FastAF joins the podcast to talk about how FastAF is not only revolutionizing delivery but also offering its members a thoughtful, curated selection of products as a fresh take on the DTC marketplace.
FastAF Now & 2021 Scaling
FastAF is a two-hour delivery app to get premium essentials delivered, working with the likes of Aesop, Bala Bangles, and Vybes. FastAF is currently available in Los Angeles and New York.
Currently, FastAF has micro-fulfilment centers to deliver their inventory from. In 2021, they’re planning on expanding cities and expanding geo-coverage within their existing cities.
Lee launched Darkstore because of the lack of marketplaces for classic premium brands. There are marketplaces for groceries and basics, but not for premium products that customers have high affinities for.
“These platforms were built for two-day delivery, not two-hour delivery.” - Lee Hnetinka on Shopify partnerships.
“Two day is, not to be cliche, too old. It is not what is the norm today. Consumers have higher expectations of two hour or faster with food, with movies, with renting a home, getting a car at the tap of a button.” - Lee Hnetinka
On marketplaces and DTC brands moving to Amazon: “That’s where we came in and said the brands of tomorrow are not going to sell on Amazon. They don’t want to because of competitive reasons. They don’t want to because they [wouldn’t] have a customer relationship with the customer… [We saw] that it was not in line with the values of today’s customer and today’s brands. So that’s where FastAF came in.” - Lee Hnetinka
Curation, Marketplaces, & Efficiency
Happy Valley Tool is a tool built to pull Google Maps data and Uber drive data to pull gradients over maps so they know street-level statistics of where to build their next Darkstore.
Consumers don’t really know what they want until they’re provided with it: “We needed to show to both brands and consumers what [two hour delivery] looks like in order to have them become believers.” - Lee Hnetinka
Lee doesn’t see FastAF as a competitor of Amazon. “You can’t replicate the Amazon experience without billions of products. So we have to forge our own path.” - Phillip Jackson
Because of its careful curation, FastAF is leading to consumers finding new brands, thus becoming a discovery platform.
On launching FastAF virtually with social help through influencer marketing: “[If asked a few years ago], could you launch a city entirely virtual? I would tell you no, but I would tell you we did… it’s been the right decision.” - Lee Hnetinka
After consumers are exposed to more efficient deliveries and services, reverting back to inefficient ways is unseeable.
Links
Find the FastAF app!
Check out Future Commerce Insiders #036: Freaky Friday

If you have any comments or questions about this episode, you can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels. We love hearing from our listeners!

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43 min
December 25, 2020Divergence: 2020 in Retrospect, feat. Sucharita Kodali, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester
2017 to 2020, Sucharita the Soothsayer
In 2017, on FC Ep 2432041, Sucharita said “In the future, brands should be thinking about how they can become marketplaces,” which has come to be true in eCommerce today.
In 2020, Sucharita says that divergence is the broad theme of the year: divergence in political thought, essential businesses vs. nonessential businesses, employed vs unemployed, etc.
There will be recovery for businesses affected by this divergence, but it might be a longer recovery than what’s ideal.
Retail in 2021: Efficiency vs. Tradition
Retail was hit the hardest in 2020. Merchants had to pivot their businesses drastically in order to keep up because of the pandemic: curbside pickup, inventory visibility across channels, etc.
“[This] showed the possibility of how fast things can move when [businesses] set their mind to it and everyone’s aligned.” - Sucharita Kodali
Sucharita worries that retail businesses will see this from a different perspective. Instead of seeing the opportunity of quickly changing direction and focus, they’ll see 2020 as a dodged bullet and go back to business as usual (slow decision making, hesitance in change and exploring possibilities) in 2021.
CIO and CDO positions in organizations were prioritized this year because that’s where innovation was required. Sucharita hopes this change will stick, allowing businesses to move fast and do things differently.
Working from home was tied in with these changes—Sucharita suspects that 20% of businesses will stick with this change and 80% will revert to pre-pandemic ways. Sucharita says this 20/80 rule will probably be true with consumer behaviour affected by the pandemic, as well.
Sucharita says that DIY home improvement retailers, mass merchants, and grocery stores did exceptionally well during the pandemic.
Restaurants, department stores, and apparel stores have had a decrease in demand during the pandemic. Though they might have a pent-up demand waiting for them once the pandemic ends, Sucharita doesn’t think that pent-up demand will make up for all that was lost.
Shifting Our Public Spaces
Malls were considered public places, though they were commercial spaces, for the better part of three decades. Because of the pandemic, the commons has moved online and businesses are being affected by their ESG values - environmental, social, governmental.
For example, Starbucks implemented social distancing before any state or federal government had any action forcing them to do so.
“Corporations can be ambassadors and capital markets will fund them if they’re doing the right thing that resonates with what the general populace believes is ‘good for society’,” - Phillip Jackson
Retail Roadmap for 2021
“I can imagine that over time, [we will] start to see more creativity… whether it’s leveraging business development partnerships or thinking more creatively about how they fulfill things, now is the time that these companies have the opportunity to experiment and there is an appetite to try new and different things.” - Sucharita Kodali
Retailers in the past year have started to invest in advertising and media networks: “They are monetizing their eyeballs, their foot traffic, and they’re looking at themselves as media properties.” - Sucharita Kodali
Sucharita predicts that we will see a lot of creativity in the physical spaces that were previously occupied by retail.
Phillip and Brian suspect that outdoor spaces will see creative redirections as well, or we’ll all be wearing personal yurts.
Links
Find Sucharita Kodali on Twitter or LinkedIn.
Check out Sucharita’s other appearances on Future Commerce:
Episode #132: “Tracksmith: Unapologetically Premium”
Episode #77: “Zucchini in a Cucumber Pile”
Episode #41: “Technology, for Technology’s Sake”
Forrester: Ted Schadler’s “The Pandemic Recession Demands a Digital Response”
Slate: The Post Pandemic Style

If you have any comments or questions about this episode, you can reach out to us at [email protected] or any of our social channels. We love hearing from our listeners!

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43 min

About Future Commerce

From the publisher's feed

Future Commerce is the culture magazine for Commerce. Hosts Phillip Jackson and Brian Lange help brand and digital marketing leaders see around the next corner by exploring the intersection of Culture and Commerce.