Black Friday is Every Day

[00:00:05] Phillip: Oh, I guess I should have some way of opening up the show.

[00:01:42] Brian: Oh, we just jump in now. That's what we do.

[00:01:44] Alicia: I like that. "Oh."

[00:01:48] Phillip: {laughter} Oh.

[00:01:49] Brian: What?

[00:01:50] Phillip: Have you ever seen those 1980s, like, fantasy genre films where it always begins with a guy reading a storybook? And he's got a pipe and he's like in his like little armchair and then he looks up in the camera and he's like, "Oh."

[00:02:06] Brian: I remember that.

[00:02:08] Alicia: "Oh. You're here."

[00:02:09] Phillip: "Oh, you're here. Gonna tell little story about Shoptalk Fall. About elemental alchemy."

[00:02:18] Brian: Elemental alchemy. {laughter}

[00:02:20] Phillip: Alicia Esposito, welcome back to the show.

[00:02:23] Alicia: Hi. Thanks for having me.

[00:02:24] Phillip: Yeah. This is a bit of a recap of Shoptalk Fall, but also I want a bit of a check-in because you have been here on the team now for about six months now. Is that right?

[00:02:36] Alicia: Yeah. Alright. Time flies when you're having fun.

[00:02:39] Phillip: Are you having fun?

[00:02:40] Alicia: I am. I mean inside Future Commerce. Everything else... I don't know. We gotta talk about that. That's a different conversation.

[00:02:49] Phillip: Yeah. I'd love to hear more about it.

[00:02:51] Brian: She's having fun on the inside, Phillip. {laughter}

[00:02:53] Phillip: {laughter} It's not showing on the outside yet. Yeah. I wanna get a little check-in from you on some of the things you've been working on here and because I think we had a brief intro when you first joined. So now you're back and you've done a few series in the last couple months. So I just want to get a quick check-in. So we'll get to that. But before we do, we're gonna be in New York for a workshop coming up called Archetypes and Aperitifs with our friends at MM LaFleur. Alicia, you'll be there.

[00:03:28] Alicia: Yes. I will be. I'll be running the workshop, which is super exciting. We're gonna be talking about archetypes.

[00:03:33] Phillip: And give us a little bit more. Who's it for? What are you doing?

[00:03:38] Alicia: Yeah, absolutely. So we have a few key partners that will be there, the Maze Group, and we'll be getting some support from Shopify, which is super exciting.

[00:03:47] Phillip: Yay.

[00:03:48] Alicia: And Endear, which folks who have been following our Step by Step series, we just did a season with them all about the new in-store experience, omnichannel service, and how brands are really connecting those dots. So they'll be there with us. And Archetypes is really the core of it all because we're hearing, and we heard it at Shoptalk Fall, that it does require a deeper level of customer understanding in order to really market effectively, provide the best level of service. So we're gonna be doing some exercises with our attendees. We're looking for women in retail, marketing, operations, strategy to join us and really explore their brand archetypes, but also their customer archetypes and how we can best shape our plans for Q4, even 2026. So it's going to be fun. It's going be a combination of networking, a little bit of shopping with our friends at MM LaFleur, which is super fun. We're not just gonna be looking at slides here. We're gonna be doing some work, which will be fun.

[00:04:57] Phillip: And women in retail, women in retail. So Brian and I are not gonna be there. We won't be there. But please come out. We would love to have more folks come to more of these workshop type events. We want to put on more of them. And come out show your support. And more info on the website futurecommerce.com/events, and register, and we'd love to see you out there. We also have a lot of things coming up in the next few weeks. If you are in the New York area or the Tri State area, and you're a member of Future Commerce Plus, Future Commerce is sponsoring a music festival called Steinyfest. Our friend and one of the co founders of Somethingdigital, one of the premier agencies in the ecommerce space, who had a phenomenal exit in 2020, he founded this music festival and it is in its fifth year, I believe. And we are co-sponsoring that, and if you are a member of Future Commerce Plus you get in for free with your membership. So go to futurecommerce.com/plus, and we will have some information in the Plus portal on how you can get that or shoot us membership email at [email protected] or check your inbox because we do have some information in there by now. We would love to see you at Steinyfest, and that's October 4.

[00:06:21] Brian: Headlined by Theo Katzman, the lead singer from Vulfpeck.

[00:06:25] Phillip: Yes. Vulfpeck. Yeah.

[00:06:26] Brian: Super cool.

[00:06:27] Phillip: The lineup is ridiculous.

[00:06:29] Brian: It is.

[00:06:29] Phillip: And it's in Mamaroneck, and it just grows every year.

[00:06:32] Brian: If you came to our blues event at Shoptalk Fall...

[00:06:36] Alicia: So good.

[00:06:37] Brian: You know we love good music. That band we had was unbelievable. Oh my gosh.

[00:06:44] Phillip: Michael Damani, right?

[00:06:46] Brian: Yep.

[00:06:47] Phillip: Gonna be rad. Can't wait to curate more of this type of thing. And then we'll be in town. We're staying over for advertising week. So if you're around for advertising week, we will be walking around and learning what that's all about. That's my first time there. But I think Alicia, you're pretty well versed in the advertising week of it all.

[00:07:09] Alicia: Yeah. And it's a doozy of an event. Everyone from Netflix to TikTok to Canva, it's really a who's who in creative marketing and advertising. And it's not just like the same old boring booths and demos. They do some really fun activations. So last year, Netflix did essentially like a record shop, and they had curated shoppable spaces that represented all their IP, like all of their top shows. So anyone who goes, it's a great, fun experience from an experiential standpoint, but the content is top tier too. They always have the celeb moments, which, you know, we all love. But yeah, I always have fun. And I'm excited for you guys to experience it too.

[00:07:58] Phillip: That's super cool. I'm excited for my first time. I can't wait. I got a hotel room at this neat little spot right across the street. Don't want to miss a moment of it.

[00:08:10] Alicia: Oh, wow.

[00:08:10] Phillip: Yeah, so I'm pumped. All right, let's dive in. Before we get into the Shoptalk Fall of it all, I want to point to a few pieces, Alicia, that you've been working on recently over on futurecommerce.com. You've been publishing some phenomenal work over there.

[00:08:33] Brian: Mmhmm.

[00:08:34] Alicia: Thanks.

[00:08:34] Phillip: In particular, we're in the middle of Black Friday content, I think since Labor Day going forward that's all anybody's really about. You have a few pieces that I think people should be taking a look at. In particular, this last piece that you published back, I think it was last week on Insiders called How Your Phone Murdered Black Friday. I really enjoyed your data driven approach here, I think, some PwC data and some Deloitte sort of looking toward the future of what holiday might look like this year. Give us a little bit of a rundown on the past, present and future of Black Friday and what this piece was all about.

[00:09:22] Alicia: Yeah. So I've been covering the holiday season for, oh my gosh, thirteen years at this point.

[00:09:30] Phillip: Don't date yourself.

[00:09:31] Alicia: But I do because I think it's really important to look at how severe this evolution has been. I started to note a really seismic shift in how people talked about holiday, participated in holiday shopping, their holiday shopping expectations when we saw this term really come to the forefront called Couch Commerce. Now, Bloomberg, I believe, was the one that really did a deep dive in 2013/2014 around how it has officially arrived and smartphones have overtaken the desk top as a browsing vehicle as far as online share of time, share of wallet. So I really wanted to compare that tipping point to what I believe is a really critical tipping point right now, which is when the digital influence is becoming so significant that it is dictating how often we shop. And I think the ever present and our ongoing dependence on our smartphones and our dependence on social content influencers, on our AI companions, whatever your platform or app of choice is, that is what is fueling that ongoing shopping nature. And honestly, I think it really contributes to the fact that this season, which was once so set and confined to a certain number of weeks starting on Black Friday, it's pushed further and further back. And there is data to support that behavioral shift. So the piece, the goal was to really explore those nuances and how it will ultimately impact the way brands show up.

[00:11:22] Phillip: I think it's also a bit of a historicity of the origin of the term Black Friday. And I just think it's an important piece for us to, you know, capture this moment of how we got here and where it's going. Really important. I'm going to link it up here in the show notes, and we'll also include it here on our YouTube version. Also, Brian, I want you to weigh in. You pinned what I think you would characterize as one of the more important pieces as a turning point in Future Commerce. It's like a bit of a lament as to the change of tenor around how Thanksgiving or post Thanksgiving experience is now that deals start to roll out around the Thanksgiving dinner table. You published this piece a number of years ago, sort of lamenting this. Did this piece that we just published bring up any of those old feelings and maybe give us some context around that?

[00:12:24] Brian: Yeah. No question. What we don't realize that we're moving into is a period that shopping is no longer fun. Shopping is no longer an event. Shopping is no longer something you do as a family. Shopping is something you do alone, fully contained with passive attention on other things. Couch Commerce is a great way to put it. I think that Isolated Commerce is probably another way to put it. Sales are no longer a communal event. Sales are an isolating event. And so, yeah, I think what's really interesting about this environment is that sales don't have the same purpose that they did before. It used to be to get people to come into the store so that they would buy more stuff. But now I think that people are out and when they drop a sale and they see a good deal, they're gonna buy it to your point, Phillip, and to the point of the article. People are understanding that there's no reason to wait around if there's a good deal on something. And so Black Friday is eventually gonna lose most of its meaning other than some random time that people drop some decent sales. We're into Christmas in July, Christmas year round, basically. There was a site called DealNews where it said "Black Friday is every day." I think that was the tagline, something to that effect. And that was actually way more foretelling than maybe they intended for it to be. Now the Internet is just a passive way to keep track of when something hits a certain price point. And that's why things like Honey and some of the other passive shopping tools got purchased by PayPal. It's a lot more like B2B. I really think that every person, every household's becoming a business, and that's actually the end impact of having sales no longer be something to get people into a store. They're just a pricelist. We're talking about pricelists now. That's what online shopping is.

[00:14:48] Phillip: You're just managing the PnL of your home.

[00:14:50] Alicia: I mean, that hits for me personally because I know growing up, I loved going to the mall on Black Friday. That was a family moment. And now that I'm running my own household, it looks a bit more like, "I'm gonna download this budgeting template, and I'm gonna build the list and then I'm going to use all of these tools in order to best plan and optimize my entire journey." It really is becoming more operational versus joyful. And I wonder, and I think this ties to the Shoptalk Fall of it all, if we're all secretly looking for a bit more joy, but we don't know how to get to that point because we've almost reconfigured ourselves into operating in this more efficient and business like way, even for things we should be loving and enjoying and participating in as a community, like holiday shopping. We're looking for retailers to provide it.

[00:15:55] Phillip: Can I throw something out there? Probably not too far from where you are is the American Dream Mall.

[00:16:03] Alicia: Oh, I know. {laughter}

[00:16:04] Phillip: Yeah. Have have you been to the American Dream Mall?

[00:16:07] Alicia: Oh, yes. Yes we have been.

[00:16:11] Phillip: Recently, within the last, you know, month or two, Salish Matter, who is a YouTuber, or a family YouTuber, part of a YouTube family, she released a skincare product called Sincerely Yours. The drop of that product was a an event that I think eclipses any Black Friday you have ever seen at a mall. 80,000 people turned out for this event. Creators are basically the new Black Friday. And when you look at how the creator economy drives people to an event based, time bound, marketing, content creation event, that is something that can't really be replicated. And it happens on such a short timescale, the way that they organize, the way that people turn out for it, and the way that it boosts the economic impact of the stores in which these folks are turning out for has a meaningful impact. And those become so memorable that people talk about them for years. We still talk about the lines at the Mr. Beast Burger shop at the American Dream now, and it's been four and a half, five years since then. So these are the new Black Friday rushes. It's still here. It's just it's distributed differently, and it happens in different points in time. They're not monocultural moments anymore. I believe they're just broken up and they're more distributed into these new subcultural pockets.

[00:17:55] Brian: Yeah. I totally agree with that. It's the full monoculture moment where everyone's out and about and you can feel sort of the energy from the whole of America coming around one day is gone. It is single little pocket moments that provide these. And you could argue that that, in some ways, that's maybe more communal. At least it's more tribal. But I agree that getting people out and about and around something has more to do with fandom parasocial relationship being tangentially related to people as a result of being fans of something and having some activity happen that's local or that you even go out to go to that is an important moment. I think that there used to be something, you know, that kinda fell in that category. It was called Christmas. {laughter} Christmas has been split up into a whole bunch of little moments in different fandoms, and people will fly out to go to those events.

[00:19:13] Phillip: Yeah. We treat ourselves now. Right?

[00:19:17] Brian: It might not just be local people. It is literally people flying in to go to that event.

[00:19:22] Phillip: I've come full circle. A lot of respect for the creators who are able to, you know, build these followings, sustain the level of media creation that they do, build products, and then turn people out for these sorts of launches. It is not easy. So do I believe that there's some element of brain rot and maybe like the crumbling of society around it? Maybe. But I do think that there's something to be said around the ability to operate something at that scale. And I think that that is admirable on such a level to the fact that I had never even heard of this person until this launch happened. To have that sort of following in a way that many people have never even heard of her or her father And this YouTube channel, I'm in my own filter bubble of my own algorithm where people are dominant in my life, where I think they're the biggest thing ever. And we all have some level of that experience now. That is a monocultural experience now where we all believe that someone is the biggest thing ever. And they're really not. They are just big to us. Now, she is obviously, you know, she looms large in a tween space as an influencer and deserves a lot of success there. But what I will say, just to kind of put a big bow on it is for every Salish Matter, there's hundreds of other creators behind her who are doing something very similar and driving meaningful amounts of commerce off their sort of cultural importance. And that is just a new model that I think is really upending what we think of as a traditional like retail operating model. And I think supporting that intersection now where we have those launches at Sephora or where those are coming together is how we're going to realize this new economy and this new change in this economy. I think we called it the creator economy before, but I really just think it's the new evolution of a retail economy where that level of influence is being brought to bear in the way that people want to have that parasocial relationship with the products that they have encountered made by people that they like as opposed to the functionality by a global brand that markets a product effectively.

[00:22:58] Brian: Well, it also used to be that there were things that were new and interesting to buy that created their own sort of fandom and need. It feels like we've kind of come to the end of product, if you will, as the item itself that we would go after. Think about this. When we were kids, we got so excited about TVs. People were crazy about TVs.

[00:23:29] Phillip: Like Black Friday offering or?

[00:23:30] Brian: No. Just in general.

[00:23:31] Phillip: Just in general.

[00:23:31] Brian: In general, the advancement of the TV screen was a really big deal.

[00:23:39] Phillip: As an innovation product.

[00:23:41] Brian: As an innovation product. There was new formats that kept getting released that were exciting. Now there's no interest at all. I mean, like, you can get an 83 inch, high def TV for $500 now. That's almost not an exaggeration.

[00:23:57] Phillip: Yeah. That's because it's an advertising surface, but, yeah, that's... {laughter}

[00:24:00] Brian: Well...

[00:24:02] Phillip: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:24:03] Brian: No. It's like the format's dead, and there were a whole bunch of things that had format innovation. It seems like we've kind of peaked. We've peaked on a lot of the end of the format for a lot of these products. Who's excited about the new iPhone? Not really anybody.

[00:24:22] Phillip: I don't know. I see a lot of people excited, Brian.

[00:24:24] Brian: Yeah. They're no. It's because you're so online. Really. I don't think most of the mass population's that excited about the new iPhone. It's actually just the same form factor. It's not like it used to be when a new phone got released, when we went from a flip phone to a Surface, it was a big... When we went from a brick to a flip phone, like, these were major. The closest thing we have to that is the Fold that was released. And guess what?

[00:25:01] Phillip: Yeah. That's Seems DOA.

[00:25:03] Brian: People were only sort of, yeah, sort of excited. It was kind of mediocre. So my point is there was a certain level of things that were being innovated, like technology, items, gadgets, things that we needed in our household. Now it's like, I don't care about what the newest microwave can do for me. I don't care about what the newest TV can do for me. I don't care about what the newest phone can do for me. Actually, product innovation just feels pretty flat.

[00:25:34] Phillip: In the last ten years alone, think of how many subscription products you've added to your roster of a monthly spend and how much of those are entertainment products that are innovation.

[00:27:38] Brian: And cutting them. So there you go.

[00:27:39] Phillip: Well, maybe. I mean, that's because you I are founders now. But I think there's a number of things that you made...

[00:27:46] Brian: I unbundled cable.

[00:27:48] Phillip: Many people have made room in their lives for additional spend for things that they deem to be worth it. The next wave of that could be how many AI agents you're willing to spend money on personally.

[00:28:03] Brian: I mean, maybe that's true, but I think I was actually supporting your point, Phillip. Your point was that it's people, it's culture, it's things, it's the aesthetic around, it's the personality around, it's not the thing itself.

[00:28:16] Phillip: I see.

[00:28:16] Brian: The thing itself is only made valuable by the people that are behind it or the aesthetic that's behind it. The thing that gets us excited is not the product itself or innovation. It is actually the person or personality, parasocial relationship, or community involvement factor or whatever it is. It's not the product itself.

[00:28:40] Phillip: That well, yeah. Because in this case, it's skincare. I couldn't tell you what the skincare does. I couldn't tell you what's new or interesting about it because nobody's really talked about that. It's just the fact that, you know, it's this particular creator who is behind it, and that's why we should care about it. I think that in that way, we're... If there's one of these creators that can turn out 80,000 people to a mall, I wonder how many... And we're seeing more of this every day. You see, you know, Alex Hormozi, who many people had never heard of does a world record launching book. There's many pockets of these swathes of influence that live in people's algorithms that are escaping containment. We're all realizing the amount of cultural importance they have in certain areas, and they're trying to become more important to the culture at large. And I think that is probably an interesting bridge to a larger discussion around Shoptalk because I think that's where everybody at Shoptalk is trying to figure out how you do that at a scale. Right?

[00:29:46] Alicia: Mhmm. Yeah. Absolutely. And it's funny. I went in with an assumption that all of the sessions would ladder back to tariffs and just general economic volatility, the uncertainty both at an industry level, but also at a household level. But the sessions that I sat in at least, it was less of a conversation point, and it was more so the elements that the brand on stage indicated that they could control. And that was how the brand showed up through a cultural lens. Now, I will say there were sessions outside of the ones I sat in that did speak to tariffs. And as executives from Wayfair, from REI, they all spoke about how they are working with their supplier partners, sharing data and just making sure that they have the insight that they need to operate as effectively as possible. And that is fine. I didn't get like a lot of meat from like the recaps that I saw, so I can't fully judge. I will say too that I did sit in David's bridal session, the CEO Kelly Cook, who we know and love, she was on the show in the past. She was actually one of the few that were able to dig into specific projects and initiatives that the business has done in order to help their partners mitigate the impact of tariff costs. So they own, and I didn't know this, so they are able to own the entire supply chain. So she said from sketch to the moment a bride is standing on the platform in a store and trying on the dress, they own that entire process.

[00:31:38] Brian: Mmm.

[00:31:39] Phillip: Wow.

[00:31:39] Alicia: They have 36 design and production centers all over the world, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, The Philippines, Delhi, other countries. And when tariffs first burst onto the scene, when those conversations started, David's Bridal started David's for Business. And they were able to help partners, help these companies that said, "Well, most of my production is in China. What are we going to do when these tariffs hit?" And now they're producing for multiple clients through this initiative, which I found to be fascinating. So they're not selling these products. It's not like a B2B2C scenario. They're just helping them produce the products and then do so at a low cost, and then these partners can sell them. So they're able to turn their supply chain systems and processes that they already had in place into like a whole new revenue stream for the business, which I found to be fascinating. And again, I would love for anyone listening to share anything that they saw that got to this level of depth and detail. But otherwise, everything that I read from a tariff perspective is just understanding when to purchase inventory to get ahead of tariffs and the challenges that leads to when you're considering demand going into the holiday season, all of the timing aspects and planning aspects that I think have already been discussed. But yeah, culture seemed to be it, from a conversation standpoint... Marketing, digital, merchandising, even all kind of had their own distinct perspectives of how culture impacts not just their job at a functional level, but how they're collaborating with their teams. And that's how AI comes into the conversation, which I found helpful. The use cases and applications around AI also felt a bit more tangible this year, which I thought was beneficial.

[00:33:44] Phillip: I have to... I don't want to claim any credit, but I'm going to. {laughter} I really believe that this conversation at Future Commerce and our influence is having an impact in this industry because I believe that we are shaping a conversation and people are realizing that this is the conversation that is an important one to be having. I know that in times of uncertainty, when you feel like there's not much to control, it's probably a less tangible, more esoteric and easier conversation to have about ways that you can have a cultural impact or ways that you can sort of zoom out from the tactical conversations, especially in ones where you, especially if you're a publicly traded company and you're probably not, you're probably bound by communications and PR and what you can and can't say. But these are not things I was hearing five and seven years ago in this industry. This was not happening.

[00:34:54] Brian: Nope.

[00:34:54] Alicia: I agree. It was "create a seamless experience across all channels."

[00:34:57] Phillip: Exactly.

[00:34:57] Alicia: And all it's like, "Okay, well, how do you do that?"

[00:35:00] Brian: Unify challenge.

[00:35:01] Alicia: Culture is kind of the lynchpin. I think people are realizing cultural point of view and participation are the keys to getting to that point. The Chief Merchant of Shopbop actually provided a really great perspective of how they do that. Like, there's a timeliness aspect. Like she talked about how, like, after Taylor Swift got engaged, it was that moment of, "Oh, well, we carry the dress that she was wearing, but also all of these other dresses. So how do we capitalize on that and turn that into a creative moment and a marketing moment?" Great. But she also talked about like the major tentpole moments that influence fashion culture and street culture. And how do they listen, analyze the trends, and turn that into a meaningful point of view from a curation standpoint? And I'm glad that they went that next level because I've been in marketing for a long time. I've always heard like, "Oh, you got to capitalize on what's in the news cycle and embrace the pop culture moment and turn it into a campaign." But in my opinion at least, that only gets you so far when you're trying to really reaffirm your relevance.

[00:36:22] Phillip: Yeah. That can easily devolve into a tactical trend chasing conversation and less of the more abstract relevance conversation and how we align the vision of the organization to the needs of the people that we serve. And I think that just kind of always comes back down to why some brands fall very quickly in fashion and out of fashion or why some brands sustain longer than others is that some brands understand how to speak in cultural languages and understand where culture is heading. And they can forecast it and they can shape it, right? There's these like stages and level of participation. And then there's others who are who accidentally catch lightning in a bottle for a moment, and then they just they don't know how to harness it. So I love that we're having more of these public conversations about it. What are some of the other sessions you sat in? I know that you wrote a bit about this, like Jonathan Adler spoke a bit about this in his main stage session. What are some of the standouts that you experienced at Shoptalk Fall?

[00:37:53] Alicia: Yeah. So Jonathan Adler's session really spoke to the joy and whimsy of retail that I was referring to earlier, which is a really nice departure, least for me, because operational efficiency, tech, that's all well and good. That's what makes the machine run, right? And that's the foundation. But we're talking about how do we show up in the world. And creative world building, that's really the cherry on top. And I can't think of any brand or retail entity that does it better than Jonathan Adler. Personally, I'm biased. I'm a fan, a consumer of his. But I loved that he really got into the reality of his sector. He was like, "Nobody needs the stuff that I'm selling. It's how do we use creative to storytell? How do we turn our stores into a moment where people come in and they say, "Yes, I need that ceramic mushroom?'" Like, again, nobody needs it. But like when you're there and you're talking to an associate who loves the brand as much as you do, and you're in this beautiful, glamorous space, and there's gold and chrome and sparkles, and everyone's so welcoming and nice, it becomes a moment where like that need is like turned up to 11, right? So I'm glad he was a keynote because I think it really balanced some of the other sessions. It really showed that creative component to the conversation, which is, I think, really important right now. And there were other sessions too around physical space design that kind of complemented his. There was one session around new format testing and how are brands like Rivian, the car manufacturer showing up in different spaces. So their VP of Marketing and Brand Experience spoke. And the session was interesting. They did these five to seven minute TED Talks, and then they did a panel. But I really enjoyed hearing her perspective because it's not often we get an auto brand on stage at a show like this, right? And I liked hearing how they have core spaces where it's their dealerships. But then they have these moments where they pop up at, like, South by Southwest. They did all of these outposts and activations tied around the event. And I think that's something we're starting to see really accelerate. We've covered Coachella. We have started to cover sports moments more and like how brands are showing up there. So it was interesting to see and hear how the brand is doing that. Because at Future Commerce, we're covering more of that because we're realizing the culture doesn't stop online. It's showing up in physical spaces. And, you know, we're hearing more and more that Gen Z and even Gen Alpha do want to go to shopping malls. They do want to go to physical spaces. It's just all about how you orchestrate the service and the activations, the interactive components to really make it something special and worthwhile.

[00:41:09] Phillip: I like the idea that we're focusing on, especially at Shoptalk, we're bringing in these other types of sort of outside the traditional realm of retail for learning.

[00:41:26] Alicia: Agreed.

[00:41:27] Phillip: And especially in automotive, it's more experiential, and it's a much more considered purchase. So there's something to be said about learning from folks in other disciplines and other industries. I hope we hear more from that. I know that we sort of in the HIVE ecosystem, they've sort of relegated grocery to its own show. But I do think that there is something to be said about the cross pollination of ideas across these industries and disciplines where we can learn from each other. So it's really interesting to hear how Rivian especially is doing that.

[00:42:04] Brian: Yeah. I think it's easy. Jonathan Adler made such a good point. You can get everything you need as a person in Walmart and Costco. Base level stuff is taken care of. Everything beyond that is brand. Everything beyond that is a nice to have, not a need to have. And so even at Costco, a lot of this stuff is nice to have, not need to have. It's stuff that sets you apart. You've got a pick between the Kirkland brand and the brand that they've brought in to sort of represent what they consider the best of. I digress. My point is most of purchasing in this country has to do with brand. And so then it just becomes a matter of, "Well, why would anyone buy up? Why would anyone buy up? Why would anyone buy something that's beyond what they need?" And that's a real, that is the real question for all of retail. All of this other stuff actually just serves that purpose. All of these other, how do I get this the thing to the where to the when, like, that's just making it more efficient to get to this end state of why would anyone ever buy up.

[00:43:27] Alicia: Jonathan Adler did mention how important operations is, which was a nice little, like, hat tip. He was like, "Listen. If your logistics are, like, garbage, it's not gonna work. So we needed to figure all of that out in order to bring the brand promise to where it needed to be." Because they're selling furniture. They're selling, like, ceramics. You can't mess with the logistics piece because that kind of brings the product moment to where it needs to be if you're ordering online.

[00:43:56] Brian: Yeah. I'm gonna read a quote by Kurt Vonnegut because I think this is really good.

[00:44:02] Alicia: {laughter} Yes. Because when I hear logistics, I always think Kurt Vonnegut.

[00:44:06] Phillip: Is this from Animal Farm?

[00:44:10] Brian: No. That's not Kurt Vonnegut.

[00:44:12] Phillip: Is it?

[00:44:13] Brian: No. That's Orwell.

[00:44:16] Phillip: Oh, I'm sorry. That's what am I thinking of?

[00:44:18] Brian: Slaughterhouse.

[00:44:19] Phillip: Yeah. Slaughterhouse-Five. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

[00:44:21] Brian: You're good. So he was talking to about when he tells his wife he's going out to buy an envelope, and he says...

[00:44:26] Phillip: Oh, yes.

[00:44:28] Brian: She says, "Well, you're not a poor man. Why don't you go online and buy a 100 envelopes and put them in the closet?" And so I pretend not to hear her and go out to get an envelope because I'm gonna have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people and see some great looking babies and a fire engine goes by, and I give them a thumbs up and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And I don't know. The moral of the story is we're here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And what the computer people don't realize or don't care is we're dancing animals." And I think that what the computer people need to remember at these shows is that they're empowering dancing animals. The point of all of this isn't to get to the most efficient state. It's to empower people to be able to go out and have these experiences where they're dancing around and skating around and enjoying life a little bit. And the problem is what we've done is we've inverted it, And we think that efficiency is the end game. And I think that's what when, Phillip, when we switched to "commerce is culture" from "moving faster than the speed of tech..."

[00:45:55] Phillip: Yeah.

[00:45:56] Brian: Is that we realized that all of that was sort of a fool's errand because that's not what people are. And when we invert that, and I think the industry has done that over and over, and a lot of shows have done that over and over. And I love to see Shoptalk step back and have someone like Jonathan Adler come on and say, "This is about joy. This is about whimsy. This is about more than just being an efficient machine." Being an efficient machine is essential to have those moments.

[00:46:29] Alicia: He even said, "My job, my goal is to be intentionally unstrategic."

[00:46:38] Brian: I love this guy.

[00:46:40] Phillip: I was gonna say that's that's a Brian phrase if I've ever heard one.

[00:46:45] Brian: No. That's not true. I love strategy.

[00:46:49] Alicia: I do too.

[00:46:50] Phillip: I gotta say something about farting around.

[00:46:54] Alicia: {laughter} I was gonna say...

[00:46:55] Phillip: I just repinned a tweet of mine from 2024.

[00:47:04] Brian: This is a good tweet. This is a good solid tweet.

[00:47:08] Phillip: I think it sort of just encapsulates the way that I feel about where we are. It feels like it's sort of my, I don't know, my mantra right now in the way that we design experiences of any kind. But I said it this way, "We took all the friction away. And we wonder why we can't feel anymore."

[00:47:30] Alicia: Yeah, that's a good one.

[00:47:31] Phillip: I think that we are maybe coming back to the place of reintroducing, you know, the right types of friction and understanding that there are ways for us to make us want to stop and pause and make us want to have more consideration, make us want to be more engaged. And those are as relevant and important to the experience of participating in commerce as the purchase is. It's not about shortening the path to purchase and getting people to fly through checkout as fast as possible. That was the old way of doing things. The new way of doing things is hopefully not just keeping people glued to the hell box, although that seems to be what most metrics are aiming towards. But, you know, we're not just cluing in on those like dopamine receptors. I would hope that we're trying to create more of the longer lasting relationship, healthy relationships with the way that we engage in the emotional centers. And so maybe that's like, I don't know, is that's serotonin over dopamine. But anyway, kind of getting back on track. I know you have a lot more to say. Give me a few more top lines. What are other notable moments from Shoptalk Fall?

[00:49:12] Alicia: What I did find interesting, I didn't hear a lot of mention about associate empowerment this time around.

[00:49:20] Brian: Big mistake. {laughter}

[00:49:21] Alicia: I'm curious why. But it did come up in the session with Anne Marie Campbell of The Home Depot. So she's the Senior Executive Vice President. And get this, she's been with the company for forty years.

[00:49:35] Phillip: Wow.

[00:49:36] Alicia: Four zero.

[00:49:37] Brian: That might be older than me.

[00:49:41] Alicia: So she started at the associate level. Now she's overseeing the vision and strategy from the executive side. And what I really liked is that she called out the misdirection, I would say, if I do say boldly, that The Home Depot and arguably a lot of other retailers have done and gone through, and that's over indexing their people in the store to fulfill digital orders. Now, they brought up how in the most recent quarter, digital sales grew 12% and digital is about half of their overall sales, which is, she even admitted she was like, "It's kind of surprising because we were always a people centric cash in hand business. You go to the store, you get what you need to come back." That's a shift. But she said when they initially saw this uptick and this opportunity through digital, sales associates were pulling those orders for online customers. BOPUS, we all know this. And what we recognized, it was deteriorating the overall customer service experience. So we decided to set a separate team to make sure that they pull orders efficiently and effectively while protecting the people who have the knowledge and the expertise and the opportunity and approach of engaging with the customers in the store to best address home improvement needs. They measure success a different way than these people. Their job is to ask questions, serve the customers, provide curation opportunities, help them get what they need for a specific project, right? Like the level of skill and thought that goes into like these two very distinct experiences are very different. And I really appreciated that she kind of called that out and showed how they were able to get things back on track. Because honestly, I'm seeing it in my stores. I don't know if you guys are, that there are some retailers that have gone so hard on in store pickup that I can't find anybody.

[00:52:00] Phillip: Yup.

[00:52:00] Alicia: And I'm even going through the store and I can't find what I'm looking for because there are the big carts for online orders, in the way, and I'm just trying to get what I need and go. So I thought that was a very interesting call out.

[00:52:14] Phillip: No, I hear you. It can be... It degrades the in-store experience to a point that you almost, you feel like you're sort of subtly being bullied into like, "Why do I even come in the store?"

[00:52:30] Alicia: Yeah. "Do you want me here? Should I go? Should I go? Are you okay?"

[00:52:34] Phillip: {laughter} In the same way, not not to go on a rant... In the same way as like, you walk into a Starbucks and you're the only schmuck who's going up to the register. Everybody else ordered on mobile. There's just such a shift. And that's, yeah, it's something to be said about that. We have this update that we published over on futurecommerce.com. Is there anything else to sort of leave us with of the like overall takeaway and any last things that sort of exemplify the tone and tenor of Shoptalk Fall and maybe the future of that show?

[00:53:16] Alicia: Yeah. I mean, from a tone standpoint, I really hope we all continue to embrace the creative side of retail. I mean, there were some exciting notes around AI, the agentic side. We're going be doing some content around that, some member briefs that are a bit more deep dive and actionable. So be on the lookout for that. But I did breathe a sigh of relief that I was like, "Oh, people are talking about creative and people are talking about how different teams can ideate together and bring new ideas to market." It was not so much about the optimization of it all, especially from a marketing and advertising perspective. So I hope that continues. I really do. I think the theme, they always do a great job with their theming and the experience. I think McCormick Place is a cavern of a venue and it is very difficult to like turn into a nice, you know, homey experience for lack of a better term. But I think they did a nice job of turning it into something.

[00:54:19] Brian: Agree. Walked in the show floor, it was like walking through kind of a mystic garden. It was like very...

[00:54:27] Alicia: Smoke and everything. Yeah.

[00:54:29] Brian: It was like supposed to be kind of mist misty. And the theme was the earth, wind, fire, water and had all the different astrological signs.

[00:54:43] Phillip: Alchemy.

[00:54:43] Alicia: Yeah, retail alchemy.

[00:54:45] Brian: Yeah, retail alchemy, sort of like a gilded alchemy, if you will. And it was quite the, they did a very good job taking McCormick and doing something with it. That said, I think maybe they're kinda done with it because they're moving to Nashville.

[00:55:01] Alicia: They are. Yeah. It's going to Nashville.

[00:55:03] Brian: Yeah.

[00:55:03] Alicia: And we actually had a great side conversation with folks from the event, and it seems like they really want to keep the access side of the show and the intimacy of it and really double down on that side a little bit. Brian, I don't know if you got that vibe, but it seems like they to go to these cultural centers. Obviously, Chicago is amazing. Retail, of course, but the food scene is incredible. The music scene. Nashville is known, you know, through its own cultural correlations and spaces. So I'm curious to see what they do with it, honestly.

[00:55:42] Brian: Totally. I think that's dead on it. Nashville's, you know, been on its way up for a while. It has deep roots in being kind of a cultural center. So Shoptalk has always been kind of focused on that angle of building a really cool experience. And so when it entered the scene now almost almost ten years ago.

[00:56:07] Phillip: Ten years ago, yeah.

[00:56:08] Brian: It was unlike anything else out there, and they were focused on sort of the experience. And I think that that's always been kind of the emphasis. And I think this particular, this particular Shoptalk was such a stamp in time for them sort of saying, "Hey. Really, culture, experience, things that people enjoy actually matter. Build them."

[00:56:37] Phillip: One thought I have is that Chicago is actually a retail center. There's a lot of organizations and businesses and historically important retail CPG businesses that are based in Chicago in that metro area. And Nashville... I don't know that I would consider Nashville to be like that metro area to be as populous and dominant in that way. And so there must be some data that supports that there's a plurality of people that travel in for that show that must be willing to travel.

[00:57:18] Brian: Yeah.

[00:57:19] Alicia: Mmhmm.

[00:57:19] Phillip: And in that way, maybe they can get more folks from surrounding areas that would travel to a show that otherwise wouldn't. I also think it hints to me, Brian. Alicia, I'd love you to weigh in, too, because you did your time in the events business. I think we are seeing a bit of a pendulum swing away from large annual fixture events that stay in the same city to more regionally centered events. And there's dozens of them. I could name a dozen regional or traveling events now or event series that are small. And I think when you're looking at now times, I'd love you to weigh in as we kind of close-up here. When you're looking at the times that we're in now where a lot of these big enterprises, especially the ones that you're trying to court for a larger show, they have smaller budgets, they're more constrained. A lot of them are on travel holds and travel freezes. You want them to participate. Maybe you have to go to them because getting them to come to you is gonna be harder.

[00:58:32] Brian: Maybe. Yeah. We'll see. I think one thing that's really interesting about a show you travel in for is that you know that the people are coming are gonna be engaged.

[00:58:40] Phillip: No distraction. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:58:41] Brian: Because if you're in their city, then they might just not show up.

[00:58:47] Alicia: Yeah. They'll come in for one or two sessions that they wanna see and then they'll leave.

[00:58:51] Brian: Yeah. That's right. And so one of the things that I think has made Shoptalk traditionally really successful is that they paid for retailers and brands to travel in. And they also said if you don't show up to x number of meetings, then you have to pay us back. And so I think that that's probably going to be true for Nashville, I would imagine. Whereas in Chicago, I bet you a good chunk of the audience was just from the local environment. And so it just wasn't as much of a incentive, like, oh, I don't need hotels. I don't need flights. I don't care. I don't need to go to your meetings because there was no cost for me to be here.

[00:59:37] Alicia: No stake in the game.

[00:59:39] Brian: Yeah. And so I think the skin in the game thing is is we'll see how it pans out. It might be a, maybe it will be a little small, a slightly smaller show, Phillip, to your point because of the freezes. But if they're getting travel expenses covered, then probably not.

[00:59:57] Phillip: I would like to opine, and this is in no way... Listen, this is not a Shoptalk thing by any means. And I don't know that this is an ecommerce industry thing by any means. And we are valued partners of Shoptalk. We love our partnership with them. But I do think that there is an escalating and maybe unsustainable relationship that we have in this industry with merchants and their relationship with these shows where there's a level of expectation for them to be covered in travel and travel benefits and level of expectation for experience and stuff. That's kind of becoming almost untenable. I don't know how you even produce a show with rising expectations in the next few years without some sort of meaningful compromise at some point where people decide that they... There's a level of entitlement, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. I'm not trying to level any criticism towards the merchants or towards any showrunners. But I think that is a trend line that to me seems that if every show is offering this, at some point, it becomes a little bit egregious, I think. And that's just if you made it to hour two in this show, I guess, congrats. But I would like to point that out that this is not a Shoptalk thing. It's not an NRF thing. It's not an etail thing. It's not even an ecommerce thing. I see it everywhere. Because that's I guess capitalism, baby. But I don't know where we go from there.

[01:01:52] Brian: I do. Here's where we go from there.

[01:01:55] Phillip: Where do you go?

[01:01:55] Brian: Decision makers are eventually gonna want gates. The freemium model invites everyone. And so people will aspire to get to that. And if they get in, they're really excited. And growth is always the goal, so you're eventually going to expand out to different types of roles and people. Decision makers don't want to be in the same room. They'll pay for a gate.

[01:02:34] Phillip: Bring back the gatekeepers. That's what you're saying.

[01:02:36] Brian: Bring back the gatekeepers and oftentimes dollar... It's either dollars or deep curation, one of the two that will protect something. So I think the future of these shows is gonna have to be getting really serious about... It's not about numbers, actually. It's really not about numbers.

[01:02:56] Phillip: No. Yeah.

[01:02:57] Brian: It's about who you have in the room. And that requires massive...

[01:03:01] Phillip: So it's differentiation. Maybe that's where Shoptalk Luxe comes in.

[01:03:05] Brian: I think so.

[01:03:05] Phillip: Where you start to have these differentiated levels and echelons. Right?

[01:03:13] Brian: Totally.

[01:03:14] Phillip: Okay.

[01:03:15] Brian: Nice. Well, I'm looking forward to Shoptalk Luxe.

[01:03:17] Phillip: I am too.

[01:03:18] Alicia: Yeah. That's gonna be fun.

[01:03:21] Phillip: Alicia, thank you for coming on. Six months in.

[01:03:24] Alicia: Yay. We did it.

[01:03:27] Phillip: Been really loving the work that you've been putting in. Thank you for all the brilliant work that you've been doing.

[01:03:35] Alicia: Oh, thank you.

[01:03:35] Phillip: Looking forward to the next few weeks, and we'll see you hopefully out at Archetypes and Aperitifs. Go to futurecommercecomm/events and go check that out. And we will see you. Again, futurecommerce.com/plus. If you want to join us at SteinyFest, we'd love to have you there. If you're a member of Future Commerce Plus, come on out. That ticket is included with your membership.

[01:03:59] Brian: Sign up. Sign up for Future Commerce Plus just to get to SteinyFest. It's worth it.

[01:04:03] Phillip: Come hang with us. It's an all day affair and come spend a day. We've got VIP passes and they've got your name on it. Thanks for watching. If this conversation sparked something for you, subscribe and follow wherever your podcasts, and it does, it helps more people join this conversation. So make sure that you leave a comment or star rating. And if you want more Future Commerce in your world, go to our shop, we have this amazing series of books. I'm going to pull a couple up right here and show them off to you. If you're looking on the YouTube, we have our print editions, including Lore. It's our newest book, it's over my shoulder, we'll put it up on the screen as well. Lore is our newest print edition. Two eighty pages of beautiful hardcover print bound, critique essays, and thoughtful criticism of what's happening in commerce. Asks you the question, is the story of your brand already written? Or do you write it? And we want you to engage with that. Go get it over at futurecommerce.com. Or click on the shop icon. You can get it where commerce meets culture and beautifully crafted print. Remember, commerce shapes the future because commerce is culture. We'll see you next time.

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