The Great Consumption Crisis

[00:00:01] Phillip: Brian, where are you at?

[00:01:27] Brian: Chicago.

[00:01:29] Phillip: Chicago. What are you... You're, like, wearing old man headphones? These are Hi Fi headphones? What is...?

[00:01:36] Brian: Look at this.

[00:01:38] Phillip: What is this? These are cool.

[00:01:40] Brian: Look inside these.

[00:01:40] Phillip: They are cool. Are the ones that you got that, like, map your brain?

[00:01:44] Brian: Yeah. I haven't actually tried mapping my brain yet, but they're supposed to scan my brain...

[00:01:49] Phillip: These are the Worldcoin headphones. These are like the mark of the beast headphones.

[00:01:53] Brian: Yep. Yep.

[00:01:53] Phillip: They're 23andMe headphones.

[00:01:54] Brian: They're sending back data about my brain. {laughter}

[00:02:00] Phillip: Hold on. We're seeing a picture of Brian's brain scan. Oh, it came back empty.

[00:02:05] Brian: Oh, you do not want a picture of my brain scan. I'm sorry. It's not... There's something... There's other things going on in there than a typical brain.

[00:02:15] Phillip: That's very true.

[00:02:18] Brian: It might be an actual picture of something in there.

[00:02:21] Phillip: That's true. It's literally just, it's like Brian's bedroom wall. You know, most teenage bedroom walls were like, I don't know, pin ups or something. It's like Marshall McLuhan Hall of Fame. It's like Dostoevsky, Marshall McLuhan, Norbert Wiener. It's a very strange...

[00:02:41] Brian: When I was a a kid, I was really into outdoor stuff, history and frontiers stuff and that kind of a thing.

[00:02:56] Phillip: Davy Crockett.

[00:02:58] Brian: Yeah. Totally.

[00:02:59] Phillip: Like, muskets.

[00:03:01] Brian: Yep. Muskets, the Revolutionary War, US history. I was in. I was all in on all of that.

[00:03:08] Phillip: That's great.

[00:03:09] Brian: And birds. I like birds and plants.

[00:03:13] Phillip: I have no idea how we're gonna get out of this. Well, this week...

[00:03:16] Brian: Hey. What's up, Alicia?

[00:03:19] Phillip: We'll get there. We'll get there. This week, we have a lot on the show. We're going to cover a whole lot. Obviously, we have our weekly Heroes and Villains, and we're gonna get into some Coachella coverage. We're gonna do our weekly tariff watch. Brian, you're in Chicago. We're gonna cover B2B online. We're gonna talk about the new slate truck because I think that is the fulfillment of a lot of things we've been predicting for years here. But before we get there, we have a brand new member to the team {applause} and someone who's been a collaborator for many years. Welcome Alicia Esposito to Future Commerce.

[00:03:56] Alicia: Yes. Hello, hello. I'm so glad I got to join the day we got into the lore of Brian's childhood.

[00:04:03] Brian: Oh, there's so much more there. There's so much more.

[00:04:05] Alicia: I definitely envision a little Brian with a little coonskin cap just wandering on the side of the road.

[00:04:10] Phillip: Do you know the David Crockett theme song, Brian?

[00:04:12] Brian: Yeah. Yeah. Of course.

[00:04:15] Phillip: Can you give us a little bar of it?

[00:04:17] Brian: Oh, it's well, no I've lost my voice because I've been talking so much. Yeah. B2B people are crazy. Yeah.

[00:04:27] Phillip: B2Boring. Ammiright?

[00:04:29] Alicia: Doesn't have to be B2Boring.

[00:04:31] Brian: Opposite. It's the opposite. I'll tell you, they are booze to booze is what they are.

[00:04:38] Phillip: You had an opening session, I think. You spoke.

[00:04:41] Brian: Yes. Yes. I had, like, the first panel of today, and it was good. It was a giant panel. Six people.

[00:04:51] Phillip: Six people. Holy.

[00:04:53] Brian: Six people.

[00:04:54] Phillip: For the uninitiated, it's an annual show in Chicago, B2B Online, and it's put on by our friends at Worldwide Business Research WBR. Right?

[00:05:02] Brian: Yes. Correct.

[00:05:04] Phillip: You opened with an opening panel.

[00:05:07] Brian: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We dove into the fact that 71% of B2B purchasers are millennials or Gen Z now, which is a pretty big shift from the last five, if you think about five years ago even, it wasn't even close to that as far as I remember, at least the impression that I had. And so there's a lot of change happening in B2B right now. The whole digital transformation thing is coming to B2B. It came for B2C, and we didn't say anything. And now it's here for B2B. {laughter}

[00:05:46] Phillip: I got the joke. I got the joke. Yes. Alicia, is your bag. You spent many years covering the trade.

[00:05:53] Brian: Yeah.

[00:05:54] Phillip: Just give us a little bit about you. And you're like a seasoned podcaster. You had a podcast that I listened to for many, many years. Give us a little bit of the CV and your coverage. You've covered that show, I think, in the past maybe.

[00:06:07] Alicia: Yeah. And I've covered B2B ecom in general, and we noticed very similar trend lines that Brian mentioned. So for background, before joining Future Commerce, I was with Retail Touchpoints for about thirteen years. So I grew up in trade media essentially. And what's been really interesting is seeing that shift from B2B being very quote/unquote old school, very manual processes, especially around invoicing, accounts payable, even sales processes. It's like you pick up the phone and you have the conversation and then you write down your notes and only you have your notes, to a very, very fluid experience on the back end. And it's largely mirrored by the front end experience that buyers now expect. So even if you're not Gen Z or millennial, you have these great user experiences when you use Netflix, when you use Uber or Lyft, if that's your bag. I personally am a Lyft person. But you have all of these great front end journeys and you say, "Well, why can't I go to a website for this product I need to buy or this service I need to buy and just be able to get all the information I need in that moment? Why do I have to book a demo or book a conversation for me to get what I need to determine whether I want to have that conversation?" So although millennials and Gen Z are really driving that shift, I think across the board, people are having these more fluid experiences with technology at the center and it's just starting to slowly trickle into B2B and we're starting to see some really, really rich and dare I say even engaging experiences for B2B products now.

[00:07:57] Phillip: Dare you. We've covered consumer, you know, quite a bit. We touch on B2B. We cover consumer quite a bit at Future Commerce and you've actually been covering for the last few weeks Coachella and I think through a couple of different lenses and some of your background, I think was in music industry, Alicia. Give us a little bit about that Coachella coverage too here. But I think that as we are shifting, we're broadening our coverage here at Future Commerce this year. And so a little bit as we're broadening into B2B, as we're talking more about consumer, we're talking, I think entertainment and culture. So yeah, we're getting a little bit of each of these here today. Tell us a little bit about what you've been covering here at FC the last couple weeks.

[00:08:44] Alicia: Yeah, absolutely. And I will say, I personally am just like very invested in music fest culture. Like you mentioned briefly, I minored in music management. So I had two paths. I either wanted to be a journalist writing for Spin Magazine, which kind of dazed me a little bit, or I wanted to work for a record label doing PR, artist relations, things of that nature. So I interned for the Bamboozle Fest, which is like New Jersey's version of Warped Tour, RIP. So I grew up going to these shows. I grew up going to the danky venues that hold 50 people maximum. Seeing bands like Paramore and, like, I'm the tenth person in the room and that's all there is. So there's an emotional investment in this topic because you see that passion and you see that community connection firsthand. And the world of retail, we're hearing so much about community driven commerce and the rising popularity of fests like Coachella. Brands want to be a part of that. You know, it just it's you go where the people are, you go where your potential customer base is or your target market is. Right? And then that's just kind of the way of business.

[00:10:07] Phillip: Mhmm.

[00:10:07] Alicia: It's interesting to see how brands do show up. There is that creative aspect and, you know, how they design activations and spaces to really be engaging and relevant in context of the festival experience. Now, myself personally, I'm used to hot asphalt water bottles and just people just trying to survive. So, like, the Coachella vibe is completely new to me. So that was really interesting to really see, like, people pull out the stops. Like, there is a lot of money, a lot of budget that goes into creating these activations and these adjacent events. So I wanted to explore that. Like what tactics are really coming to the forefront, what collaborations are seen and covered as most effective through the retail lens. But what was even more interesting to me was seeing data that indicated the average spend to go to Coachella is about 2 to $3,000. That's for like general admission. That's no add ons. That's no like VIP stuff. That's the baseline cost for participation for a consumer. So that kinda raised, you know, my ear a little bit like, "Huh, how is that even possible?"

[00:11:29] Phillip: And this was the thing. Sorry to interrupt. This made the rounds, I think, the week before the weekend kickoff of Coachella a couple weeks ago is that there was a story about the Coachella multi pay scheme.

[00:11:45] Alicia: Correct. Yeah.

[00:11:46] Phillip: So Coachella had its own of like payment plan. And a lot of people were saying greater than 50%. I think it was like 60...

[00:11:55] Alicia: Sixty.

[00:11:56] Phillip: Sixty percent of people that were attending Coachella had bought into that payment plan. So I think that that was part of the thing. Was like, "Oh, that seems..." A lot of people are talking about recession indicators right now, and i think have been talking about that for a long time, but when you layer that in with how many brands also participate, that seems like a really interesting story to how many people are sort of aiming at a certain type of consumer and how they activate and how they show up there. Anyway, sorry, Carry on.

[00:12:26] Alicia: Yeah. No. I think you nailed it perfectly. Right? It's like when the cost of participation is already so high, and then you are going to this festival expecting a really, you know, life changing experience. You're gathering with your friends, your fellow music lovers. You wanna see that artist that you love so much. Although, I will say a growing number of people are going to these festivals for literally the vibes. It's not to see the artist. They will go for the all encompassing experience, and that includes the brands and retailers that show up there. That includes the activations, that includes the overpriced food and cocktails. They will go to be at Coachella versus "I'm going to go to Coachella because this artist I really love is playing."

[00:13:21] Brian: Yup.

[00:13:21] Alicia: And I think that's the really important cultural shift that's happening. And it's almost a chicken or egg thing. It's like well, did the brands drive this or the retail industry drive this because they're investing so heavily in these activations and that's becoming the carrot, so to speak, to get people there? Or is it that consumers actually legitimately want more from these experiences and not to just stand there and watch a music set? So it was a really interesting exercise to really dig in the psychology of it all and what do people really want and expect from these experiences, especially because travel, concerts, festivals like Coachella, they're becoming the premier or priority purchases versus standard discretionary purchases. So that's like there are a few different dynamics at play.

[00:14:13] Phillip: You kinda put that up against the other cultural affairs where you're starting to see the cost of participation rise too. So there's two separate pieces on Future Commerce Insiders that you published in the last couple weeks. The first was Insiders 190, which I believe is City of Coachella Population and Debt, I believe was the first one.

[00:14:40] Alicia: Mmhmm. Yup.

[00:14:40] Phillip: And so it really talks about all of these premium experiences, one of which I think even has some of these talks about posting pictures of menus at things like F1 and...

[00:14:59] Alicia: Oh, the menus are wild.

[00:15:00] Phillip: They're wild, right? And how even, you know, some brands that don't even participate at some of these, I don't know, and this goes back a long way, like Woodstock '99 having, I don't know, $12 water bottles. But AI now allows brands that don't participate in these festivals to get in on sort of the memeification of it, like Breeze, for instance, added their can to the F1 race last year for like a million dollars to their menu. And so the sort of like cultural participation, even if you're not part of Coachella, is brands are also trying to be part of the discourse even if they're not activating there. But, you know, caviar tots are just part of the standard fare now and spending $40.50 dollars on nachos seems to be like, this is just what we do now.

[00:15:59] Alicia: Right.

[00:15:59] Phillip: This is how you experience something like this.

[00:16:03] Brian: This seems like only an experience that the top 10% of people can afford.

[00:16:07] Alicia: Exactly.

[00:16:09] Phillip: If you spread that payment out over, you know, 20 or 30 payments, Brian, you could afford that along with your student debt...

[00:16:26] Brian: {laughter} No. I've heard that that people are giving up on college. They're just going to Coachella instead.

[00:16:33] Phillip: Maybe this is the new...

[00:16:34] Brian: New college.

[00:16:35] Phillip: Yeah. This is your new college debt.

[00:16:38] Brian: Coachella debt.

[00:16:40] Alicia: This is the new learning experience.

[00:16:41] Phillip: This one, you can actually declare bankruptcy on, though.

[00:16:45] Brian: That's actually healthier.

[00:16:49] Phillip: Yeah. Anything else about this particular, you know, angle of the piece that you feel like was particularly enlightening? Because I think you had another piece as well, I think, on the fashion brands activations.

[00:17:03] Alicia: No. I think it's that cost for participation. And it makes me wonder because there are so many festivals now. Every niche seems to have their own dedicated stand up fest on a global scale. It makes me wonder how that competitive landscape is really going to shake out, not just from the consumer standpoint. Where are they gonna bring their attention? Because you can't afford to do it all, and you probably can't even afford to do three over the course of a year. So where is that wallet share going to go long term? But also how is it gonna shake out for brands too? Because you cannot afford to be present at all of these spaces. And arguably that cost for participation is probably going to get higher too because let's be real, when the size and the quality of your audience goes up, you can charge more for potential sponsors. So I feel like there are trends to watch in several levels. But the big, I guess, existential question is, at what point will the cost of participation outweigh the value of participation to the point where it's like, well, what am I even doing this for? I don't think it'll be a short term thing, but it's something to watch.

[00:18:23] Brian: This is the state of the music industry.

[00:18:28] Alicia: Which is why I'm in trade publishing. {laughter}

[00:18:34] Brian: Man.

[00:18:34] Phillip: Some people would say that that's endangered too. So but we're gonna cover our eyes on our way through it. Brian, one of the interesting parts of this breakdown on sort of the Coachella Buzz brand... So this was the the second piece, Alicia, that you wrote.

[00:19:58] Brian: It was an excellent piece.

[00:19:59] Phillip: Right.

[00:20:00] Alicia: Thank you.

[00:20:01] Phillip: Is Coachella Buzz Brand Supply Chain Friend or Foe? This is sort of like a tariff based angle in the light of tariffs, in the light of how supply chains will be impacted by tariffs, Coachella and it might be one of the later, maybe one of the last big marketing, splashy marketing angles and investments that they may be able to spend some money on.

[00:20:30] Brian: Maybe. Maybe.

[00:20:32] Phillip: Maybe. Who knows? Maybe. Nobody knows. They could change their mind next week.

[00:20:34] Brian: I think based on the article... This is the thing that kind of blew my mind. There were actually so many brands in there that had already started to make moves to mitigate. And to me, maybe it's a little bit of a pause, but those brands are gonna be back at Coachella next year because their supply chains are gonna be changed, moved, like, adjusted, or maybe they already were. That's the thing, that was my big takeaway. I was like, brands move fast, or they were already protected in many cases. Not all of them, obviously.

[00:21:07] Phillip: Well, I think the big question here is how big is the halo effect and how much can they really expect that the halo effect of an activation like this leads to more marketing investment of this sort in subsequent years. I think the other, you know, if you anecdotally, there was some discourse this past week on X around operations. Operations and finance are usually the bigger risk points for brands becoming endangered. So revenue impacts, margin impacts on a brand. But usually marketing is what gets hollowed out first when you have challenges.

[00:21:58] Alicia: Especially tied to events.

[00:21:59] Phillip: Yeah. So marketing gets the blame. Marketing gets hollowed out. But operations and finance are the ones who, especially in a supply chain situation, especially in light of tariffs, especially when you have to reshore a lot of your supply chain, that is a risk part of the business. We're in a situation where right now, you're also gonna shut down your demand. You're gonna shut down your marketing funnel. There's brands right now that are challenged with something like this. Anyway, I'm having a totally different conversation while also trying to say what in this article, Alicia, was an interesting angle on the tariff conversation in light of Coachella?

[00:22:45] Alicia: Yeah. I think in addition to the big brands, the ones that had a very significant presence at Coachella that are really trying to capitalize on that halo effect. Obviously, they have a risk at play here because they're saying, "Oh, we're pumping up all of this demand, all of this excitement, not just at the show itself, but through social media. And are we able to fulfill and meet all of that demand?" There's also a question of all of those smaller brands that are maybe not doing the big activations or the celebrity meetups at a lounge, for instance. They're not even putting their logos on signage, but they're part of this festival culture. They are well known, loved, and these consumers are loyal to them. But they're not as, I guess, buzzy on social media. So they have this level of risk too because even though they have a really strong and loyal audience, their operations are very much tethered to countries like China, which the China of it all. We can't understate how significant the financial impacts are not just for the business, but for the consumer if they want to manage all of those costs. So that was the big question for me because these are smaller brands. Their average order values are on the smaller side versus say a Revolve. Like the price points are very different. So I wanted to really explore like what are the big festival brands that maybe don't have a presence but are very well known and what are the implications of their supply chains and how materials are created and shipped, where are they shipping from. So it was a bit of a connecting all of the points with the red thread. But it was interesting because these are businesses that are gonna be impacted long term. And I'm curious to see what approach they're going to take, where that impact's gonna be felt, and to like what level, like how much is gonna be put on the business versus the consumer, and how are they going to communicate that? Because we have seen and we have covered very different approaches to how brands are tackling this tariff conversation. Are they really being transparent? Are they using it as a marketing ploy? Is it a little bit of both? So that was an interesting lever to explore. Although it's not fully established, whether those brands were making sale decisions, price changes specifically to move inventory out before tariffs became a significant issue.

[00:25:36] Phillip: The DIFF eyewear one that was referenced in this piece was was probably the clearest example of egregious marketing.

[00:25:50] Alicia: There's a lot of them too.

[00:25:52] Phillip: There are a lot, but we'll give them some love, if you will, in this. "Official tariff alert, not approved by finance." Also, I love the name check. "Click fast before Brett from finance sees this."

[00:26:07] Alicia: It's always Brett.

[00:26:08] Phillip: Screw you, Brett. Buy two, get three free is now a thing. How do you do buy two, get get three free? That's wild.

[00:26:17] Brian: You want five pairs of glasses?

[00:26:19] Phillip: I don't know. To be honest with you, five pairs, I could go through five pairs of glasses.

[00:26:24] Brian: No. Here's the problem. If I had five pairs of glasses, I would go through five pairs of glasses.

[00:26:28] Phillip: It's Parkinson's law for eyeglasses. It's the if you have five pairs of glasses, you will lose five pair.

[00:26:37] Brian: Exactly.

[00:26:38] Phillip: You'll consume exactly as many glasses as you have.

[00:26:41] Brian: I will lose them all but one pair, and they'll be the ones that I don't really like very much.

[00:26:45] Phillip: It's wild to me. Well, this has been great coverage and I really love seeing us ramp up, you know, sort of more of the cultural event coverage, especially as brands relate to it.

[00:26:56] Brian: The other takeaway I had from this is that I feel like the thing that I feel like Trump was, one of the things that Trump did with tariffs was try to pick his winners. And it feels like it's working. I'm not saying tariffs are working, but the thing that I think, one of the things he wanted to do was say, "I have picked the countries. I'm in charge of which countries win." And it definitely feels like that's what's happening.

[00:27:32] Phillip: I believe that's... In some places, I think they call that an oligarchy. But whatever.

[00:27:41] Brian: But the thing that I'm trying to say is the countries that decided...

[00:27:48] Phillip: I don't have a dictionary.

[00:27:49] Brian: {laughter} Yeah.

[00:27:55] Phillip: Hold on. Let me look that up.

[00:27:59] Brian: Producer Sarah.

[00:28:01] Alicia: Producer Sarah dictionary check.

[00:28:03] Phillip: Producer Sarah, quickly. We can quickly change gears. What's really interesting is watching small business DTC Twitter writing their letters saying, and this is where we can superimpose the old keyboard cat. And it's like, "Dear President Trump, I fully support making America great again. However, your current policy is going to decimate my business. I have exactly thirty days before your policies will completely destroy me. I hope you will take this into consideration. Your loyal follower." {laughter}

[00:28:55] Brian: Well, I mean, and to that point, actually, was it Dave Stickland said, like "We'll know by June 1. Shelves are gonna be empty at Christmas. Santa's getting stalled at the border."

[00:29:11] Phillip: Santa's having a border check. ICE is gonna arrest Santa. ICE is deporting Santa, everybody.

[00:29:21] Brian: "Why are you coming into this country?"

[00:29:25] Phillip: "Why are you here?"

[00:29:26] Brian:

"Well, I'm here to give people goods." "Have you declared those goods?" {laughter}

[00:29:33] Phillip: Yeah. There's 134% tariffs on goods from the North Pole. That's what we have. That's what's happening.

[00:29:42] Brian: Man, if it worked the way that everyone told their kids what work, but Jeff Bezos worked with Santa. Remember those years when there was all that whole thing going around? "Oh, yeah. Santa works with Jeff Bezos. That's why you have so many Amazon boxes." If that was the case, then the North Pole is in trouble.

[00:30:06] Phillip: June first. So this is an interesting conversation. A lot of Black Friday and holiday creep do depend on supply chain management orders being placed right about now.

[00:32:13] Alicia: Yep.

[00:32:13] Phillip: So we're creeping into May. May is when demand planning is starting to happen for Black Friday. Goods often, especially electronic goods, are being produced for Black Friday specifically because of the margin advantage around them. Think about televisions. You know? Remember all the deals like the doorbusters? Those were things that were specifically engineered for Black Friday deals. They're made just to be sold during Black Friday/Cyber Monday. Toys in particular, this was the X post by a friend of the show, Dave Stickland. Those orders, purchase orders, those things go in by June 1st. Economic uncertainty, tariffs in particular, all of those things may lead to lower amounts of demand planning, under purchasing, which means and this is the economic forecast that he's sort of making is there is likely to be empty shelves at Christmas. There's likely to be if you thought Tickle Me Elmo was in high demand, just wait. There's likely to be lower amounts of inventory for things that you will want. It's probably one of the reasons why we saw historic profits for Apple in this last quarter because people are pre purchasing iPhones. People are making large unplanned pre purchases of large electronics goods right now. It is also contributing to, I think, people looking at large luxury purchases right now. Things that are happening at this exact moment, I am unfortunately, my algorithm, because I'm gonna blame you, Brian.

[00:34:03] Brian: It's all watches.

[00:34:05] Phillip: You and I were talking about watches at one point, and now my YouTube is just flooded with watches. It's like watch talk.

[00:34:12] Brian: It's your fault, actually.

[00:34:14] Phillip: It's not my fault. I looked at a watch for you one time, and now all I have is watch on my YouTube.

[00:34:18] Brian: You looked at watches for me multiple times, actually.

[00:34:21] Phillip: I looked at a watch for a talk, actually, when I was working on the the Seiko thing for this upcoming talk I have for VISIONS. And now all I have, it's like, you poison your algorithm with one search and it's over. You know what I mean?

[00:34:38] Brian: Clicked on a watch one time.

[00:34:39] Phillip: You click on a watch one time, and that's all. Next thing you know, it's like ASMR watch repair on my YouTube 100% of the time.

[00:34:48] Alicia: You're in a rabbit hole.

[00:34:48] Brian: I 100% put a bid in for a watch.

[00:34:51] Phillip: You put a bid in on a watch.

[00:34:52] Brian: While we were sitting here.

[00:34:54] Phillip: This is the problem. Thank you, Brian, for being 100% committed to the podcast.

[00:34:58] Brian: Oh, that was for the bit. Don't worry.

[00:35:00] Phillip: But this is the thing that's happening is in every corner of my algorithm, you know, everybody is concerned about tariffs, and they're all using tariffs to justify consumption. So let me, I'm gonna ask you both.

[00:35:17] Alicia: Oh, boy.

[00:35:19] Phillip: I'm gonna ask you both. Have you ever heard of gas? The acronym GAS.

[00:35:24] Brian: I've heard of GAS in the context of Rabah Rahil saying "gas." "That's so gas."

[00:35:33] Phillip: Oh, that's no. That's not that. Alicia, do you know what GAS is? GAS?

[00:35:39] Alicia: No. I don't.

[00:35:40] Phillip: No.

[00:35:42] Alicia: Was trying to think of something.

[00:35:43] Phillip: Brian?

[00:35:44] Brian: I mean, there's again, gas means a lot of things, sir.

[00:35:51] Phillip: Okay. Musicians use this term GAS, and they say they have GAS. And what what it means is it's like an understood thing. GAS is gear acquisition syndrome. It is like a... It is a known acronym for people who over consume. You constantly are buying things, or you constantly sell things you have so that you can buy more things. It's a contagious disease because you get around other people who constantly buy things, and you find yourself also constantly buying things.

[00:36:23] Brian: Enthusiast economy.

[00:36:24] Phillip: YouTube makes this a hundred times worse. It just constantly makes you wanna buy things. And there is a fear mongering happening around the tariff talk right now that's also ratcheting up this prepurchasing that people on the synthesizer side of things, people on luxury guitars and talking about precious woods. They're like, "Oh, woods are gonna cause... We import wood from overseas, and that's gonna make guitars go up in price." People are talking about components for synthesizers. That's gonna make that go up in price. Luxury goods on, you know, Japanese and Swiss watches. That's gonna make that go up in price. Everything's gonna get more expensive, so you might as well buy it now. And I can't help but wonder if we're all just always all the time trying to justify having the thing we want and having it right now.

[00:37:19] Alicia: Oh, absolutely. Without question.

[00:37:23] Phillip: Right. But doesn't that...

[00:37:26] Brian: To that end, actually, here's what I think is gonna happen coming into holiday, actually. There are going to be certain goods and services that are... Sorry, services. There are going to be certain products that are manufactured for a lower cost because they happened, they got lucky, somebody got lucky, and had all their manufacturing in a place that wasn't affected by tariffs. And those items are going to be high margin items compared to everything else that's available out there. And so, the fact that YouTube is so influential and there's so much fear and there's so much whatever right now is the easiest and best time to influence people to buy a certain type of product. And so do you remember when there was excess hibiscus flavor?

[00:38:23] Phillip: Yes. Yeah. This was a whole...

[00:38:25] Brian: What did the world do? The big hibiscus said... But it's not Big Hibiscus.

[00:38:32] Alicia: {laughter} Big Hibiscus.

[00:38:35] Brian: The CPG brand said, "We have all of this extra hibiscus flavor. We need to turn this into something."

[00:38:42] Phillip: Yeah.

[00:38:42] Brian: And they found a way to stoke and create desire.

[00:38:47] Phillip: Yeah. And some people were like, "I'm an influencer and I made the world believe that." And then, no, actually, it's big hibiscus all along.

[00:38:54] Brian: It was big hibiscus all along. And I actually believe that's what's about to happen with whatever gets produced in the countries that were less or not affected by tariffs... So get ready for whatever it is. It's gonna be something different, but you're all gonna want it. Everyone's gonna want it.

[00:39:13] Phillip: Alicia, question. Do you buy aftermarket or, you know, used things as opposed to new things ever?

[00:39:22] Alicia: Yes. Yeah. I was going to say that's part of the conversation now is, like, what does this mean for, like, resale? And it's been building for a while. But I wouldn't be surprised if we see even more activity because to your point, I think people look for reasons or ways to validate their buying behaviors, especially if it's luxury goods or fashion items, something that is a bit more discretionary.

[00:39:51] Phillip: Yeah.

[00:39:52] Alicia: And they can say, "Well, I cleaned out my closet, so I got rid of all these things. I need to get something else to replace those." And typically, and I know this from personal experience, those items tend to be priced significantly higher than what they sell, what they give you for those old items that you ship to them. So it's just usually how it plays out coincidentally.

[00:40:18] Phillip: And the aftermarket tends to respond to, it moves sympathetically to the actual originating market, to the cost of the firsthand... I have this weird brain fog lately, you guys. I don't know what it is. But when the authentic good itself direct from the manufacturer is raising in price, like we saw with the constrained availability and supply of automobiles because we couldn't get chips from China during the pandemic. What happened to used cars? Used car prices rose in response.

[00:41:04] Alicia: Way up.

[00:41:05] Phillip: I know because I sold my used car for a pretty penny during the pandemic, and I rode my bike for twenty months instead. And so I feel like there's an opportunity coming too for, I don't know, there's probably... We have a lot of supply of a lot of things in this world that are probably sitting by idly to become available on a secondary market too, I have to believe. There has to be. Fear not, people who want luxury watches and synthesizers. I'm sure there's plenty to go around is the thing I'm trying to say.

[00:41:47] Brian: I think you're right about that. The watch that I just bid on momentarily or just like a second ago, I should say.

[00:41:55] Alicia: In real time.

[00:41:56] Brian: In real time. That watch was brand new on eBay. Plenty of those. Plenty of brand new watches on eBay.

[00:42:06] Alicia: Oh. Yeah. Even if you go to a site like The RealReal, there's five versions of the same handbag.

[00:42:13] Brian: Right.

[00:42:14] Alicia: Sure the wear and tear may be a little different, but not much.

[00:42:17] Brian: Not much.

[00:42:18] Phillip: Yeah. And by the way, I'm proud of you, Brian. You're buying something for yourself. That's great. Good for you.

[00:42:24] Brian: Well, I mean, you don't know how aggressively I bid on it, so you don't know if I'm actually buying it.

[00:42:29] Phillip: That's true. That's true. Let's take a look at... Here's a pun. Let's take a left turn.

[00:42:37] Brian: Left turn.

[00:42:38] Phillip: And you know what doesn't exist a lot is a well priced new car, a low priced new car. And this actually really warms my heart. There's a $20,000 truck coming to The United States.

[00:42:54] Alicia: I read about this.

[00:42:55] Brian: Yeah.

[00:42:56] Phillip: Slate, a brand new automobile manufacturer in The United States, just announced out of nowhere, a brand new electric truck with hardware knobs and switches, y'all. An electric truck, doesn't have a ton of range, 150 mile range on the lowest base model, but manufactured here in The United States, Twenty thousand dollars after rebates and for its basest of base models. And it's about the size of a small, or the old pickup Ford Ranger. And it's about, it's very affordably priced, I think. And you can reserve one right now for $50. Lot of conspiracies floating around. It's named Slate, which is an anagram for Tesla. It's also backed by Jeff Bezos.

[00:44:00] Brian: Slate or short for super late. {laughter} I'm telling it now, actually. It's gonna take a minute for these things to get delivered. Maybe longer than expected.

[00:44:12] Phillip: They're calling it the 2027 model year, which means it could deliver next year. It could deliver in 2027. You're right. It may not ever deliver at all. Highly customizable. Website experience is amazing. But $50 gets you on the reservation list right now. I've seen people configure theirs with custom paint. You can do a ton of customizations, wheels, interior upgrades. You can add a fastback to it, do a little bit of a customization to it to, like, add a little bit of an SUV flare to it. So you can do a lot to it. You can get that thing up to almost 60,000 in upgrades. Many of the upgrades I've heard labeled as DIY. I don't know what DIY means. I don't know if that means you're installing those parts or not. That doesn't track for me.

[00:45:05] Brian: You know how IKEA sends you with, like, the little wrenches?

[00:45:09] Phillip: That sounds so awesome to me.

[00:45:10] Brian: No. They're gonna send you with a little drill.

[00:45:13] Phillip: An Allen key. You got a little Allen key.

[00:45:15] Brian: No. They're gonna give you, like, a little drill. It's gonna be like a...

[00:45:18] Phillip: I would love that. That sounds fantastic. That can't be safe.

[00:45:22] Brian: Allen keyed car. Put it together.

[00:45:26] Phillip: Another conspiracy theory is Slate is also an anagram for steel. Maybe this thing never ships. Who knows?

[00:45:36] Brian: That's why I said super late. Yeah.

[00:45:39] Phillip: I've been hurt before by a Kickstarter or two in my life, so I don't know. But this thing looks really rad. The production... Well, the preview, production preview that was at the influencer event where a bunch of people, like a bunch of YouTuber types were that were invited to the sort of launch event, then it looked pretty rad, looked really great. And a lot of people pent up demand.

[00:46:09] Alicia: Yup.

[00:46:09] Phillip: Lot of people were ready to pop down money, sight unseen, same day. Seems like a lot of folks are ready for something like this. And this goes right along with something that we've been talking about for years on Future Commerce, Brian, is an antidote to the digital economy is a time where, you know, every single thing inside of a car nowadays, if you look at the most recent, like, BMW X3 revision, it's like one massive screen all the way across the dash, all the way from the instrument panel all the way to the passenger. It's a screen all the way across. And the instrument panel is screen. Nothing about it is analog whatsoever. This is the exact opposite. It has crank windows. It has like, milled analog switches that go "kachunk." And I think this is the pendulum swing back to people, there's a a whole group of people that will buy this that never grew up with a crank window or a hardware switch in their car ever. And I think that this kind of the right thing at the right time for people who are desperately, you know, wanting to experience some form of ownership that doesn't require an ongoing digital subscription, doesn't require some sort of ongoing form of digital immersion or screenification of things. And this goes back to some of our prior predictions of analog resurgence. Thoughts?

[00:47:57] Alicia: I think that's a really interesting point because I read something recently about Gen Z consumers and how a lot of them are shifting towards analog. It was a nice continuation, I think, of our past coverage. And they interviewed these consumers individually saying like, "Well, why? Why are you buying a flip phone?" And it was like, "Well, you know, I've never known something like this would exist. I've never seen it like out in the wild." One of them said, "It's a form of rebellion for me," which I thought was really interesting. I was like, "Huh." I never thought about it that way. And I think there is a desire for some people to be so untethered from the constant connectivity and data sharing of it all. So I think it's right in line with where a lot of younger consumers are trending towards. They're opting out of opting in in a lot of ways. So it'll be interesting to see whether they can fulfill the demand and what demos really gravitate towards it.

[00:49:08] Phillip: There's that. Brian too, I mean, we have this piece that just went up on Future Commerce Insiders too about sort of the vinylification of commerce. It's like people want analog. We're seeing that in media. I had a movie. This just happened to me. I had a movie that I purchased on Movies Anywhere, not too long ago. And we went to go find it the other night, and it was gone. And it said, "This title is no longer available because Viacom has decided that they no longer stream it anymore." And I'm like, "I bought that with my own money," and it's gone. But I thought I bought that. I didn't get my money back. And this is why having the physical piece of media is so important is that you unless the Viacom tribulation force comes in my house, they can't take that away from me. But yeah. Brian, what's your thoughts on the hardware vehicle? You know?

[00:50:14] Brian: Yeah. Long have I desired to see a cheap truck released in The US, and I've always thought it would kill. But I have always thought it would kill. And in fact, I talked about how it was just on After Dark or whatever, how I even wanted to fly down to Mexico to drive one of the Toyota trucks that was customizable over the border and pay the fee. This has been on my mind. And Jesse Tyler's, who's long helped with creative at Future Commerce, he bought his little truck as well. I think Future Commerce is in on little trucks. This has been a long running thing. I also was a little bit taken aback, and this was deemphasized in the marketing of this truck that it was electric. So it is an electric vehicle, but everything else is not electric, if you will, which I think, at first I was a little bit annoyed by because I've always been like, "Why can't we just get a really basic gas vehicle that anyone can fix and the mechanics love and it's easy to get into and it just works and like it's the car that enthusiasts just adore and people customize and it's cheap and it's the mode of transportation and hauling things for a whole subset of US consumers?" That's been my vision and hope and dream for American transportation. I should say, my near term vision. I have a long term vision. And I do think that this truck, at first, I was a little bit annoyed that it was electric. But actually, on further reflection, I think it's a bridge from my prior vision for what American transportation could look like to my future vision of what American transportation can look like. And so because I think electric cars really are the future. I think that electricity, it's something that we can have in a cleaner way and it'll be more available in the future. And in fact, we have a lot of electricity in The US. There's just really bad infrastructure for transporting electricity in The US. And so the answer, I think, is that there's going to need to be more electric infrastructure investments by the government and that will lead us to using electricity for all transportation at some point. I really believe that will take place because I believe that what cars look like right now will drastically change in the future. And we talked about this a little bit with Dirt Media, Daisy and Frances. So I love this as a next step towards that future.

[00:53:27] Phillip: Well to be fair, what we talked about with with Dirt Media was, if I recall, was you said cars would be inflatable, and she said that she wanted to drive around busy town in an apple like she was a little worm. That's what I recall.

[00:53:43] Brian: It's very close to what happened. Actually, Daisy and Francis both have said, "Why do Waymo's have to look the way that they do?" And I think that's what spurred the conversation. But if anyone really wants to know my deeper thoughts on this, go subscribe to Future Commerce Plus because in one of our After Dark episodes, I get deep into how the future of transportation is actually inflatable. So there you go.

[00:54:12] Phillip: Gonna have to find that and link it up somewhere. That's a thing that I think we're gonna... That's a deep link. Alright. Last thought on this is, Simone Oltolina did a piece on Leftfield UX, which I think we've already mentioned here twice. So there's a couple deep thoughts on this that we published on Future Commerce Insiders this week. And it sort of fuses a bunch of these ideas. I'm pulling it up as we speak. But the big idea concept here is that discovery is something that we have not prioritized in the ecommerce field and industry. And Simone is sort of, I'm sorry, Oltolina. I mispronounced it. And Simone's sort of positing in this piece that there is a mode of discovery and encouraging getting lost or encouraging wandering online that is something ecommerce has not prioritized. Ecommerce has prioritized frictionless, quick, fast discovery search, find, kill, convert quick, get through the funnel. And what this piece has really done also is highlight that there's many modes for shopping. We've prioritized one mode above all. Another thing is this idea of Leftfield UX, and so what Simone has done is really related a couple different analog discovery modes, one of which is how vinyl shops and record shops have crates that you dig through, and they don't help you other than give you broad categories. They show you here's, like, rock or here's grunge or here is jazz, and they might have, if you're really lucky, a little way finding. There might be alphabet, little alphabet placard. There might be a couple major bands, a couple placards in there, but they want you to flip through every single record. And if you are into vinyl, it is your joy to dig through every crate. It is part of the joy is spending time. And so it is meant to dig. And so what Simone actually puts in into this piece, I think, is really, really brilliant is this idea that there is a new type of UX that prioritizes less preoccupation with efficiency and more around discovery. And Simone calls it Leftfield UX. It's a great piece. I also think that it also talks a little bit about this idea of, like, tactile switches and kind of lends itself to this idea of hardware-ish component-ish... Makes me feel like there's a new wave of design that makes it feel like we're onto something that feels very much like a return to analog, maybe a little more skeuomorphism. Makes me feel like that piece I wrote last year around a reverse skeuomorphism where we're bringing skeuomorphism back to digital design. And, you know, maybe that's what Slate is all about is that we're digital detoxing. We're bringing back these old design paradigms both into the digital world and maybe back into the analog world too. So that's that. That's kind of the end of the docket today, and we're gonna get into Heroes and Villains. But before we do, I wanna remind you all that we have our VISIONS Summit coming up in New York City, and it's coming to the MoMA. And I can't wait to have you all there. It's June 10, and we're gonna be there with about 200 of our closest friends. When we get to New York City, we're gonna have a half day of intense thought and creativity, and we're gonna ask you who holds the vision in your organization. And we're gonna challenge you. Are you a builder of worlds in that organization? It's gonna be an amazing time, and I can't wait to see you there. We have our full lineup posted right now with just a couple more speakers coming this week. We're announcing them by the time that you you see this, there's a couple surprises there for you. Go right now to futurecommerce.com/visions and see who's speaking. One of my favorite musicians and world builders Andrew Huang. He is our major keynote. Can't wait for you to see him and so many more futurecommerce.com/visions, June 10th, and there's just a few more tickets left. Our early bird is just a couple days away from ending. If you're watching this on the Friday, when this drops on the YouTube, there's like twenty four hours left. That's it. And then the price goes up to $399. So like you've got just twenty four hours to save just a few more bucks. Go right now. Futurecommerce.com/visions. June 10th, we'll see you at the MoMA, and it's gonna be an amazing time for our fourth year of VISIONS, at the historic Museum of Modern Art, VISIONS and we'll see you there. FutureCommerce.com/visions. Alright. Heroes and Villains. Brian, who's your Hero of the Week?

[01:00:06] Brian: Slate for sure. Hero truck. I'm very excited about it. I almost considered paying $50 to get on the list. I am very, very bullish on these types of products. So I was actually in my truck just this past week wishing that I had an analog window roller because my right window electricity has been a little bit spotty lately. It scares me. I'm like, go back up. Wait. Don't go down. I was like, if this is only a manual thing, then I would never have to think about it. I like things that are durable, that I don't have to deal with, that I can just rely on, and I can use without worry. Those are my kinds of experiences. I like to beat things up and use them forever.

[01:01:01] Phillip: Ain't that the truth? Alright. Alicia, are you prepared with the Hero of the Week?

[01:01:08] Alicia: I think so. So my Hero of the Week is Walmart, and I'll explain why.

[01:01:15] Phillip: Oh.

[01:01:16] Alicia: So Walmart won a couple of Webbies recently for Walmart Realm. And I know this is something that we've been covering quite a bit on Future Commerce. I've really dug into this world of spatial commerce, the metaverse, whatever you wanna call it, gaming. I just think it's such a fascinating space, and there's so much potential. And it's rare to find established brands and retailers that have such infrastructure and have such a legacy that are investing in these areas intentionally and that effectively reflects the creative passion that the users of these platforms actually have. So as someone who not just covers the space, like I see my son interacting with it, Granted, he hasn't participated in Walmart's experiences just yet. I may have to have him do that as a live test run. But it's really interesting to see how they have been able to invest and test all of these different modes, so to speak, all of these different worlds, and really embrace the best of them and continue to bring their storytelling to the next level. And we actually have an executive from Walmart speaking at VISIONS in New York City this June, as well as someone from Spatial. They partnered on arguably Walmart's most creatively aggressive and out there concept yet Walmart Unlimited, which is true game oriented storytelling. So again, as a big old nerd that covers this space, I just love to see the work that they continue to do.

[01:03:04] Phillip: Oh, wow. That's great. Can't wait. That's gonna be a great session at VISIONS, and great tie in. Alright. Well, you gave me license. I'm gonna go a little far afield from things too. I'll drop a a link for the producer. Alright. My Hero of the Week. There is a link. It's a article I read in POLITICO of a study, and the title of the article is "How Gen Z Became the Most Gullible Generation," which is probably the most clickbait headline I've ever read in my whole life. However, the actual study from Stanford is about how TikTok has created such disinformation warfare and how the age of the algorithm has shaped an entire generation to not only distrust their government, but believe almost anything that happens on the platform. And I think that that is something that we all should be taking stock of right now. I think that POLITICO is in this one particular instance, this maybe just confirms my priors on things that I believe to be true, so I just take it as truth. But in this one particular instance, this is the kind of thing that we need to be talking a lot more about is the dangers of the algorithm, the types of media that we consume, and the fact that there is still journalism that's really important to be done in this era in a time where I think a lot of people are afraid to speak out. As a total aside, I don't know if you guys caught the end of 60 Minutes this week that kinda went viral.

[01:04:56] Brian: Not a Boomer. {laughter}

[01:05:01] Phillip: {laughter} It went viral. It's not just me.

[01:05:03] Brian: Oh, okay.

[01:05:06] Phillip: There was a... So I don't know if you saw this. Paramount is in the middle of a merger at the moment and needs the Trump administration to sign off on it. And one, basically, Bill Owens, who is the executive producer of 60 Minutes, quit after thirty seven years at CBS News because they no longer created an environment for him to be able to report objectively on the news because they needed him to tamp down his ability to report so that they could get the merger cleared by the Trump administration. I think that journalism is my Hero of the Week. I think that these kinds of things are necessary and important in the era that we live in, and I think will become increasingly rare going forward.

[01:05:58] Alicia: I love that. Snaps. Says the journalism major.

[01:06:03] Phillip: I digress. Sorry. Villain of the Week, Brian Lange.

[01:06:09] Brian: Villain of the Week is Coachella. I mean...

[01:06:12] Alicia: Ah. You stole mine.

[01:06:16] Brian: {laughter} They've killed music. It's over. Music is dead, man. I know John Mayer said there's only music now, but he was wrong. It's dead too. It's all dead. All of arts and culture is dead, and Coachella killed it. The commercialization and the blandification, the gentrification of music festivals is the end of exciting new sounds and things. So, I mean, I guess this is what happens. It's like B2B software, it starts out scrappy and cool and people are building community around it and it's like helpful and like it's making a difference in the world. And then it grows and grows and they just have to raise their prices and they have to acquire new companies that people know about, and then eventually, they just become this behemoth that's built for rich other companies. And that is what has happened to Coachella. It went through the B2B software cycle...

[01:07:25] Phillip: What is happening?

[01:07:28] Brian: And now everyone is gonna hate it in the end. That's what's gonna happen.

[01:07:32] Phillip: I love that. It's like, that's phenomenal. Okay.

[01:07:39] Alicia: That was the time I didn't know I needed. So here we are.

[01:07:42] Phillip: And by the way, for whatever it's worth, maybe this is our After Dark this week. I watched School of Rock with my kids. Very similar rant from Jack Black about how MTV ruined rock and roll. So there's that. Alicia, Villain of the Week.

[01:08:00] Alicia: Just to tack on to Brian's. I'm not gonna go down the B2B path, but I will say the premiumization of these experiences, I think, has gone a bit too far. And I'm left wondering, like, to what end? How far could we possibly go? Caviar tots, omakase in the desert. How much further are we as consumers going to allow the benchmark to go until we're like, "Wait, no, this isn't what we signed up for. This isn't what we want or expect from an experience like this." And it's a vicious cycle, right? It's a case of if you build it, they will come. And these brands just keep building and tacking onto these activations. They're doing full blown festivals within festivals now. So I personally am just waiting for the ecosystem to just continue to build upon itself internally until it explodes. But that's my Villain of the Week. I just think it's gone too far. We don't need all of this stuff. It's taking away from not just the integrity of the festival experience, but I think the joy and the purpose of what it all stands for to begin with. Get off my lawn.

[01:09:26] Brian: In this movie, Jack Black is running around sprinkling magic mushrooms in the truffle risotto. And he's like, "This is about the experience, man." There's gotta be a fight the man story involved in Coachella, and there's no fight the man left.

[01:09:47] Phillip: My Villain of the Week. I mean, I there's so many to choose from. Where could I even begin?

[01:10:00] Brian: So many villains.

[01:10:02] Phillip: There's too many villains.

[01:10:04] Phillip: I was gonna choose the Aritzia boyfriend couch. Then I was gonna choose Aritzia altogether. No.

[01:10:12] Brian: No. Don't pick on Aritzia.

[01:10:13] Phillip: I know. I know. We need them at a dinner at some point. Right, Brian? No. True.

[01:10:19] Brian: Hey, Aritzia. I'm going to Everest tonight if you're interested.

[01:10:26] Phillip: Jeez. You know what? Here it is. Unbridled consumption. Am I becoming anti capitalist? What's happening?

[01:10:38] Brian: This is a real fight the man episode here.

[01:10:40] Phillip: This is weird for me because I love buying stuff. I mean, just look at me just in general. Just take all of me in. I love buying stuff. I think that the discourse from brands in general in this moment, if your business isn't mortally endangered, especially the small businesses, if your business is not mortally endangered by tariffs, and I think many businesses are, so don't get me wrong. But if you're using the tariff discourse specifically as a dark pattern to encourage more consumption right now, you're probably the Villain of the Week. I don't wanna like, not to single anyone out. But I think that just generally the overconsumption that we have is something that we all need to reckon with at some point. And this is the challenge right now is I think everybody knows it. We all know it. And the reckoning has been coming for a long time. We're gonna have to deal with this one way or another. Right? We're gonna have to deal with overconsumption at some point, and it's either our problem or our kid's problem or a grandkid's problem. Something at some point has to stop it. And I don't know that anyone is gonna be able to make a conscious decision to do it. I don't know whose job it is to do it. Shouldn't it be the government's job to, like, do something? I just don't know that we like the tactics. No. I'm serious. Like, if it wasn't the climate crisis that was gonna make the decision to do it. I don't know. So I have this really strange... I have a really...

[01:12:24] Brian: I mean, this is an After Dark.

[01:12:25] Phillip: Let me have a crisis for a moment. But the overconsumption issue is an issue. And so I have a conflict. I have a bit of a moral conflict. It's like anything that can stop overconsumption is probably not on its face outright villainous. It's probably generally, probably directionally good. We need to stop overconsumption, probably. But I think if you are using that as a means to overconsume and you're using that as a fear tactic to cause people to buy more now, that's probably bad on its face. So that is my Villain of the Week. It's very cerebral. Go with it. Go with it. Help me go with it this week.

[01:13:13] Brian: I'm running with it. I'm going with it.

[01:13:14] Phillip: You're vibing me? You're vibing with me?

[01:13:16] Brian: I think you gotta keep working through it. There's more to work through there, and I wanna see what the outcome is.

[01:13:27] Phillip: Yeah. I understand. But if you made it to minute sixty eight of the podcast, I think you're okay with it. I feel like you would be okay with it.

[01:13:33] Brian: Absolutely. I mean...

[01:13:38] Phillip: We're allowed we're allowed to be a little conflicted in our feelings at this point in our journey.

[01:13:45] Alicia: Well, I think the problem is even if we have that reckoning personally and within ourselves, it seems like there's always something new that comes into the market to reactivate our desire to consume. Right?

[01:14:02] Phillip: That's so true.

[01:14:02] Alicia: At the same time that we were talking about how Gen Z is the most mindful and environmentally aware audience and they wanna shop with their purpose in mind, like, Shein and Temu rose in the ranks. And also at the same time, the rise of, you know, organization influencers where like their entire livelihood depends on like taking things out of packages and putting them in tinier, prettier packages, which is a whole other field of consumption. There are all of these little subcultures of the Internet that literally live and breathe through consuming goods. So it's like one thing benefits and then three other things emerge to kind of take away from that reckoning that we all try to have or or tend to have, I think, at one point or another. I mean, I think that's the human condition in some way.

[01:15:00] Phillip: Yeah. It is. And Brian, I think you wrote a a very thoughtful piece for Muses about our nature being to consume and that's, I think it's who we are.

[01:15:13] Brian: Overconsumption is bad and underconsumption is bad. We have to consume to live. There's no way around.

[01:15:19] Phillip: Goldilocks consumption. That's what we're looking for.

[01:15:22] Brian: Goldilocks consumption. Exactly.

[01:15:23] Phillip: Great.

[01:15:24] Brian: And I love the twist of fate. I got the watch.

[01:15:28] Phillip: {laughter} Oh, it is. There we are. And all was right with the world. Well, thank you for watching Future Commerce. Wow. This really... We really went there on this episode. If this conversation's sparked something for you, like, subscribe, follow, and so you can consume more of this wherever you do podcasts and right here on YouTube. And it helps others find this conversation and join in on the conversation. If you wanna bring more Future Commerce into your world like this, the Lore journal, I should have mentioned this at the top. Lore, this is our new 280 page journal, and we have four other pieces of print just like you can see it here on YouTube on the shelf behind me. We've got a lot of print at our print shop at shop.futurecommerce.com. You could check it out. Where commerce meets culture and beautifully crafted journals, prints, zines, and other collectibles. We got a lot there for you. We want you to check it out. You can bring this into your world. We do like analog, switches and buttons, but also books. Put this on your coffee table on your bookshelf. This is gonna last a lot longer than that email that we're gonna send in your inbox. And dare I say this is more beautiful and durable as well. So we'd love for you to go get that shop.futurecommerce.com. And remember, commerce shapes the future because commerce is culture. We will see you next time.