What retail CEOs don't know
Merchants have played a role in societies since ancient times, and in so many ways, acted as de facto ambassadors across continents and cultures. The ‘merchant class’ represented the one of the earliest versions of the middle class; people with little or no inherited wealth who managed to cultivate status through their adventurous personas, access ... See more
Amanda Greeley • Retail Romanticism Revivalism
Hype became a dirty word, and longevity increasingly feels like a myth.
Virality got conflated with relevance, while relevance comes with the curse of becoming imminently passé. Whist new gen brands like Corteiz are propped up by persistent presence, institutions such as Apple resist exploring their own hype, choosing omnipresence instead.
This beg
My overarching thesis is that we are at the early stages of a multi-decade super-cycle of retail empowerment driven by the fact that “consumption, culture and community” are now tradeable assets. Consumption is no longer ephemeral, but persistent. No longer private, but communal. No longer limitless, but scarce. Consumption is, for the first time, ... See more
Richard Kim • Thoughts at the Intersection of Web3 and Creative Culture
When we look back over the past 100 years, traditional commerce (and the culture it indirectly endorsed) was primarily curated by a single person’s point-of-view. Even when commerce moved online, to places like Amazon or Farfetch, retailers still controlled the types of things consumers purchased. Online commerce didn’t innovate a new shopping expe... See more
Gaby Goldberg • Curators All the Way Down
For a long time, retail survived on taste and real estate — curation and distribution. The internet made it possible for regional clothing stores like Need Supply to sell to a global audience and build larger businesses. But then it also made it easier for consumers to find everything, anywhere — at the lowest price — challenging any sense of loyal... See more