10 Things I Hate About You: A love letter to ecomm and retail.

This is an open letter to ecomm and retail. We’ve been in a relationship now for what seems like forever, but I remember when things were different. You used to be fun, interesting and even sometimes cool. You and me broke new ground, travelled the world and had some laughs whilst we did it. We met great friends together, lifelong friends and we have had some near death experiences too. I remember the days carrying my laptop and second phone around in pubs. Getting a text from pingdom, to let me know you needed R and R. It never phased me, it was our “thing”. Lately though, we are dragging each other down. Things are not the same. The sparkle has gone from you eye. You do not seem as keen to let new people in and you are getting quite controlling. Some of these new social media influences have complicated our buss. When it was just us, google and some email, all that kept us up at night was SEO. I am still not sure of your relationship, sure its’c complicated, but….

I want you to know I love you. Despite yourself. I want a relationship spanning more decades, creating more laugh lines than wrinkles, but we need to talk. This letter is for feedback purposes only and I consulted with some of your friends too, they agree with some of this. But you have made life hard for the both of us. I don’t think things can go back to how they were but if we are to survive we need to evolve. I hope you enjoy my letter and take it for what it’s worth but before I go any further, here are 10 things I hate about you.?

1. Coach Tony D’Amato was right - It is half time in this business. We need a big Second Half or else.

Gone are the heady days of triple digit growth. We are back to fighting for marginal gains, little wins. Coach D’Amato gave us a great speech (it is now used to death) but Its worth noting the state of retail and commerce right now. There are many headwinds:?

I look around, I see these young faces and I think, I mean, I've made every wrong choice a middle-aged man can make. I, uh, I've pissed away all my money, believe it or not.

But, you only learn that when you start losin' stuff. You find out life's this game of inches, so is football. Because in either game - life or football - the margin for error is so small.

Black Friday in a nutshell - e claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when add up all those inches, that's gonna make the fucking difference between winning and losing!

Where are our teams? Ecommerce is FULL of good people, great teammates.?

You've got to look at the guy next to you, look into his eyes. Now I think ya going to see a guy who will go that inch with you. Your gonna see a guy who will sacrifice himself for this team, because he knows when it comes down to it your gonna do the same for him. That's a team, gentlemen, and either, we heal, now, as a team, or we will die as individuals. That's football guys, that's all it is. Now, what are you gonna do?

Why is it like this??

Supply chain and margin claiming make it such that the model itself must now be looked at. In a world where economies are fractured and getting more so, we need to accept, this is our game too, and it needs to change, or face dying slowly.?

2. John King’s Magic Election Wall told us a Tale of Two Cities (multiple times but I have to stick with the pun)

Lots of cities actually. I don’t want to be one of those people who states “Here’s 3 things the election taught us about leadership” - but… Stick with me. The nuance that exists in a colored state on that map was fascinating to listen to. Even with all those election dollars there was a lot of work to be done. So when we think about our jobs when it comes to marketing it demonstrated with incredible effect the magnitude of the problem we have when it comes to marketing - it is insanely TOUGH. It is micro focused, despite our ability to reach people - it is a game of small, marginal gains. Large budgets does not guarantee results, it gives you access. Access then needs to understand some fundamental truths right now: for the most part, people do not care about your paraben free hair restoration gel (hard to get a good one). They care about what it takes from their pocket. What do they have to forego to get this. Some simple old economics:?

1. How much do I have to spend
2. How far can i stretch it
3. What do I not get if I make this purchase
4. Can I bothered anyway

The Magic Wall and all its variants were powered by enormous budgets, not quite Temu big, but big and they still cannot guarantee results.?But the art or marketing is about minutiae and specifics. It is an up at dawn, pride swallowing siege.

3. DTC was built on a second draft of the script for Brewsters Millions (what a movie).

DTC bashing is not my thing and it’s frankly, a little dated but there is a lesson in there. Take my next sentence, it is, in fact, from Brewsters Millions but it could easily be from a founder story on LinkedIn - 7 things I learned from my failures from talking with my investors, by Ryan Breslow. Come tomorrow, you are dead broke. It's all over. You don't even have a job playing baseball anymore. And what do you do? You throw a party with last thirty-eight thousand! Monty, Listen to me. I pissed off so much money, I figured, what difference does $38,000 make?

DTC thought about things in reverse dog year terms. Take a year, divide it by 7 and voila. The road to exit became the road to Damascus for money, maybe for some even Mecca. It was actually a road well trodden by many before, those with more patience.?

DTC was redicated on building to exit. PE money is circling again, not more of the same please people.

4. Buzz, your girlfriend, Woof. This is how I think about what Shopify has done to technology pricing.?

When I think about the challenge teams had up to about 2014 even. Tech architecture was very hard, so was development and implementation. Black Friday was planned in February so banners could be made and discounts set. This time 10 years ago, devs were fit to kill marketing teams and equally sitting, sweating, waiting for something to fall over and take the inevitable blame. The hardest part was always trying to quantify the problem into lost sales, as though the marketing was so slick as to guarantee them and then place the blame.?

Fast forward 10 years. There will be a celebrity sitting somewhere in North America now deciding or not if they want to get into men's underwear (pun, again, intended) and will call an agent and say, let’s endorse this, let’s make it happen - 4 days later, it most likely will, could. Shopify you rascals with your cheap tech, that is easy use, hard to break - you have a lot to answer for.?

You have given us all something pretty damn special, at a price that is competitive a 5 person meeting in Starbucks. A business in a box for sweet FA. And there’s nothing other tech could do about it. In the mid 2000’s we negotiated on 12 month - 2 year deals. Now, this monthly way of living has us thinking of the world differently. We also think any old mug can do it. Well you can, for the most part - thank you Youtube.

5. There's a time for daring and there's a time for caution, and a wise man understands which is called for.

Still Shopifys fault here. Right now, at a level much higher, decisions are not being made. We need to move our business forward, powered by Technology, but we cannot. We are hampered by indecision - this all seems to easy for a business as complex as our. Only last week ASOS stated after reporting their ￡379M loss, that they were about to hire 100 developers. To solve X problems - hard to fathom. Amazon has largely held the same UX position since 1997, horrible to look at, cluttered and largely shit. But I know where everything is - much like a $300 shopify template. The good enough is best for most for now. Caution needs to be tempered with the cost of indecision.?

They say fortune favors the brave, but we are fighting for small gains, not fortunes. The time to hesitate is through.?

For the first time in my whole life, I know what I wanna do! And for the first time, I'm gonna do it! Whether my father wants me to or not! Carpe diem!

6. Blessed are the cheesemakers.?

Marketing is hard, Part Deux. We are mid Fight Club. We have emerging generations who do not think the same, about products, or work or any of the things that we do.Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.

Warning: If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Don't you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can't think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all that claim it? Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think every thing you're supposed to think? Buy what you're told to want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping.

Marketing is hard, maybe unless you are a creator, right??

You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.

You met me at a very strange time in my life.?

Now, onto sunnier things.?

7. Everything, everywhere all at once.?

There is nothing we cannot get, anywhere, anytime. What once made retail interesting was the opposite of the McDonald's approach to product availability. Now with a simple search and swipe, we can access anything. It is not the access is the problem, there is nothing new. Price elasticity is gone. We are looking to pay the lowest we can, because it is available everywhere. This has domino like effects.?

• Made it possible for Temu, Shein and others to make things cheaper.?
• Goods do not have to exist to be listed. I can pay less and build momentum to get the old production line fired up and in use. This change puts an entire industry at risk. Mid market retail.?
• Small brands simply cannot compete with these technologies or economics. Because it is cheaper, we will wait. These wait times, too, are coming down, what then.?
• Governments will intervene. They will have to - why? Retail accounts for over 6% and 4.3% respectively of GDP in the US and UK respectively - they are hard numbers to replace when they are gone. Recent suggested changes to things like De Minimis are small.?

But how will they intervene this is the challenge? Curation, newness and scarcity. This is where globalization can be won. Don’t follow trends, create them.?

“Since it is the last scarcity, wherever attention flows, money will follow.”

― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

8. We lived on farms, then we lived in cities, and now we're going to live on the internet.

Social media has made us passive in our own search for products. Discovery is born in a very different way to how it used to occur. I blame social media - it has come between retail and commerce for the worse.?

“In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” Simon’s insight is often reduced to “In a world of abundance, the only scarcity is human attention.”?

― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

Needs trump wants right now. Needs occupy front of mid and wants somewhere in the forgotten middle.?

“today, our social media experiences are designed in a way that favors broadcasting over engagements, posts over discussions, shallow comments over deep conversations.”

― Thomas L. Friedman, Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations

9. Let's get some other people on this. Some Ivy Leaguers.

Sustainability. In a word. But the wrong word. We have toyed with the concept now for a decade. Recent consumption patterns and numbers tell you how committed to it we really are. We are on moving away from the combustion engine because the costs of set up for EVs is too high or some other Joe Rogan show comment. Fact is, we are not really that influenced about it.?

We expend energy on it, thinking about it in the wrong terms. We are almost back where we started on this. Companies are even giving up on greenwashing. Want to argue about it? Check Temus numbers, or Amazons. Or check your Black Friday list.?

We do not take it seriously.?

Kate Dibiasky: You guys, the truth is way more depressing. They are not even smart enough to be as evil as you're giving them credit for.

We will be regulated and legislated on by our governments on our behalf, because we cannot take these steps. We will grumble and grouse but this is how it will be. Increased tariffs and buyers fees. Not because, as we might think, politicians love taxing us (they do) but because businesses cannot take many more burdens, nor should they.?

“God always forgives. Man often forgives. Nature never forgives. —”

― Thomas L. Friedman, Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations

10. Where are you goin'? Where are you goin'? OK, OK, come on back. Come on back. Things aren't as bad as they seem. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to dump on you. I'll figure something out, OK?

We have been here before. Things are cyclical. Aren’t they. This time I am not so sure. eComm and retail are not just changing, but in need of change. We need to figure out new ways to not do the same old thing. The failed rule of 3% I call it.?

“Because of technology everything we make is always in the process of becoming. Every kind of thing is becoming something else, while it churns from “might” to “is.” All is flux. Nothing is finished. Nothing is done. This never-ending change is the pivotal axis of the modern world.”

― Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

Dear eComm, I still love you. But you need to change. I, am here, to help. To prove it, here is a song.

Cheer up, Brian. You know what they say: some things in life are bad. They can really make you mad. Other things just make you swear and curse. When you're chewing on life's gristle, don't grumble; give a whistle, and this'll help things turn out for the best. And...