Future Commerce

The funnel’s compressing, content volume is exploding, and everything is quickly descending into AI slop. But the Miami heat and chilled coconut water hit just right, so everything is juuuust fine.

We’re unpacking our hot takes fresh out of POSSIBLE, Hyve’s sprawling beachside conference at the Fontainebleau and Eden Roc resorts. Between Walmart's "Who Knew" thesis, EMARKETER's no-safe-channels reset, and Phillip's case for what it would take for POSSIBLE to rival Cannes, the team weighs what makes a conference culturally relevant and what's still missing from most experiences.

What happens when a cultural figure with 20 years in the limelight decides to become a brand operator? Adam Domian, SVP & Head of Commerce and Audience at 11:11 Media, joins Phillip and Brian to break it down. From Walmart shelves to TikTok lives, Adam shares how Paris Hilton's portfolio balances licensing cash flow with equity-driven brands like Parive, and why "founder energy" is becoming a moat in an AI-saturated marketplace, especially with someone “sliving” such a dynamic and coveted life.

People will let AI be their therapist but not their partner, their assistant but not their manager. Gillian Katz of Hannah Grey VC joins Phillip and Brian to unpack the firm's newest Cultural Vibrations journal and the qualitative study behind it: a read on how people are actually negotiating AI's role in their lives, domain by domain, role by role; from anthropology to sommelier frameworks to Goodhart's Law.

"There will be a lot fewer people employed doing existing work in not just insurance, but in all business." Phillip reports from the press pool at Semafor World Economy 2026, where 500 CEOs, a quarter of the US Senate, and 20 G20 finance ministers spent two days in Washington DC sketching out the next decade. Inside: why the AI race is really the electricity race (and why we may have already lost it to China), the $10 trillion and 250 gigawatts Meta says AGI will cost, Senator Mark Kelly on the new commercial space economy, Levi's 50% DTC milestone, Ralph Lauren's experience-economy flex, and why Balzac saw the "exterminator economy" coming 200 years ago. Plus: white smoke from Apple Park.

Furniture.com is a new kind of furniture marketplace: a single platform aggregating more than 3 million SKUs from 80+ retail partners, using standardized data and AI-powered personalization to replace the 15-hour odyssey most shoppers endure. VP of Brand & Creative Olivia Hnatyshin joins Phillip and Brian to unpack how the team is rebuilding the third-most expensive purchase of a person's life – one where hunter green and forest green finally mean the same thing.

Evelyn Mora, founder and CEO of VLGE, joins Phillip and Brian to challenge how we think about AI training data, brand identity, and the coming era of individual-first commerce. We move from the mechanics of world modeling to the cultural philosophy of what it means for brands to let go, adapt, and become an ingredient rather than the star of the show.

Andrew Youderian joins Phillip and Brian to break down the 2026 eCom Trends Report: a decade in the making, 300 brands surveyed, and a lot of conventional wisdom overturned. The data reveals a diverging landscape where gross margins are climbing but net margins are shrinking, Amazon's dominance is quietly unwinding, and AI's productivity promise hasn't quite arrived – yet.

How does a 76-year-old legacy retailer reinvent itself as a tech-powered ecosystem? Lisa Horton, Chief Communications & Creative Officer at David’s Bridal, dishes on the company’s grand modernization and how they’ve expanded to accommodate the next generation’s Gen-Z-sized aspirations.

Recorded live on the Shoptalk Spring show floor, Phillip and Alicia sit down with Leah Logan, VP of Retail Media Transformation for Inmar Intelligence, and Andrew Lipsman, Founder & Chief Analyst at Media, Ads + Commerce, fresh off a spirited on-stage debate about agentic commerce. We debunk AI Traffic Apocalypse predictions and make the case for creators as a critical yet overlooked retail media channel.

Recorded live at Shoptalk, Phillip and Brian sit down with Heather Rivera, Chief Business Officer at Wing (an Alphabet company), to talk about how Wing has crafted our five-minute delivery future. Spoiler: the novelty of drones wearing off might be the best thing that ever happened to the industry.