Future Commerce
Millennials Think They Invented Everything
Episode Summary
Despite what millennials may believe, the retail services and models far predate the app economy. From food delivery and meal kits, to flash sales, most modern digital experiences have vestiges from a simpler time. PLUS: Breakdown of the Paula’s Choice acquisition by Unilever. Listen now!
Episode Notes
The Internet is a Literal Web
- Congratulations to friend of the show, Ian Leslie, and to Industry West for ranking on 2PM’s DNVB list and for Adobe Experience Maker Awards. Phillip and Brian talk about the Adobe Experience Maker Awards, the rankings, and ask the question of how some brands are ranked so highly.
- Millennials didn’t invent meal prep delivery. Schwann foods, and catalog delivery — even the milkman — are all examples of modern reimagining of pre-existing retail models.
- In eCom news, Shopify continues to eat the world, bringing in another investment of Stripe, and launching payments buttons across Google Shopping and Facebook — without the need to be operating a Shopify store.
- The BNPL ecosystem has stratified into much clearer offerings, as Phillip lays out the roadmap for Afterpay, Affirm, and Klarna.
- “The world is reopening… New York City no longer has any covid restrictions. San Francisco opened up officially yesterday; the biggest cities are coming out of covid and physical retail is back. I feel like Afterpay is the big winner here in the latter half of the year, if I had to bet the way that people would be using this like everyone, every channel has to deal with the fact that physical retail is coming back.” - Phillip
- “The internet is held together by spider webs.” - Brian
- Most people’s first ecommerce purchase was probably a digital property.
- Paula’s Choice is the original direct to consumer brand, and predates what we know as the modern web. Launched in 1995 it was one of the first beauty brands online, and predated Google by 3 years.
- The first-ever secure online purchase was a copy of “Ten Summoner’s Tales”, a solo album by Sting.
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