Marketplaces

They're as old as the Bible.

This book (click here) is a classic from the dot.com era. The authors explain how industries evolve and change. Think about catalog marketing, once dominated by the likes of Sears and JCP and Montgomery Wards among others. Everything consolidated to a handful of gatekeepers. Then "specialty catalogers" ... the Lands' End and LL Beans of the world, they took away market share. There were thousands of small (and some large) catalog brands. Eventually the large catalog brands expanded into retail/malls (i.e. marketplaces).

Then ecommerce came along. Thousands or tens of thousands of small companies erupted, taking market share from catalogers. Catalog brands folded. Ecommerce ultimately rolled-up into large marketplaces (Amazon ... Shopify ... Etsy etc).

What do we think happens when we transition from ecommerce to something that is AI-inspired? Do you honestly think that Amazon will be the big winner? Or do you think that something comes up, something we didn't expect, and that "something" does "something new" better than incumbents? 

It's likely to be the latter.

This is more about what happens to "brands". They grow, they thrive, they struggle, they die. It's unavoidable.

Your "boutique brand", however, can adhere to a different set of rules. That little Italian restaurant on the corner has been around for three decades. They've survived all changes. How did they do that? Why do you keep going there?

Yes, there are going to be grifters that sink the economy as they try to force their version of AI upon us. We've seen an endless supply of grifters in the last quarter century ... the Enrons, the Mortgage Backed Security purveyors, and in the past decade politicians. It's going to be an awful experience in ecommerce to wade through the grifters. But we'll do it. Everybody always does it.

Your "boutique brand" doesn't have to adhere to the migration from the marketplaces that dominate the 2020s to the marketplaces that will be created for the 2030s. Plan accordingly, and have a vision for what is best for your customers.