The End of Opening Ceremony Marks the End of Shopping As We Know It

Stare long enough, and you begin to see the whole: an economy where culture is made in service of brands . To be even more literal: cultural production has become a service industry for the supply chain.

Rather than being a retail’s side gig, modern merch has become its main act. Merch has always been a high-margin moneymaker, so a subtle but all-encompassing transformation of retail’s operating principle into merch makes economic sense. Through the process of transubstantiation from a youth culture artifact to a killer business model merch has bee

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