Coaching Opportunity

If you're looking for marketing/analytics guidance, I have an opening in my calendar.

Clients who hire me for coaching opportunities ask me to analyze their customer transactions, then participate in weekly video conferences. The topics vary by client, frequently including the following issues:

• Marketing Investment and Subsequent Growth / Profitability.
• Marketing Channel Strengths.
• Future Customer Value by Marketing Channel and Merchandise Category.
• Email Marketing Targeting Tactics.
• Merchandise Productivity / Effectiveness.
• New / Existing Merchandise Evolution and Off-Price Effectiveness.
• Fusion of Targeting and Merchandise.
• Staff Mentoring.

If this is something of interest to you beginning in January, let me know (kevinh@minethatdata.com) - I can structure something that meets your specific needs.

The Missing Ecommerce Middle Class, Part 2

This is how the composition of a business changed over eight years. Across the top we have purchase frequency, the rows represent recency.

The 0-12 month file is smaller (numbers represent change vs. eight years ago), but the 0-12 month file with one (1) historical purchase is larger.

The 13-24 month file grew a tiny amount, mostly from 1x buyers who lapsed (did not become 2x buyers after purchasing for the first time).

The 25-36 month file grew, mostly from 1x buyers lapsing for 2+ years plus 2x and 3x-5x buyers not repurchasing thereby lapsing.

Notice how middle-class buyers shrunk, but in this case loyal buyers (6x+) shrunk even more. This happens when the middle class shrinks, resulting in fewer customers migrating from the middle class to loyal status.

You've heard me repeatedly ask you to work hard to convert first-time buyers to a second purchase (quickly). This is why. Our businesses are shifting, away from loyal buyers (in spite of every possible loyalty confection known to mankind applied to best customers over the past decade). Our businesses are shifting to prospects who have a need at a point in time ... we meet that need, then the customer moves on. Quick ... you recently purchased athletic wear on Amazon, what was the name of the brand you bought, and why didn't you go directly to that brand to buy from them?

I wouldn't have shared this finding with you (twice) this week unless it is something I repeatedly run across, something that I repeatedly observe causing harm. Do not wait until the customer is lost (beyond 13-15 months of recency) to do something, ok? 

A Dumb Mistake

Back in the day, I performed some "fancy math", demonstrating that poor business performance was correlated with the S&P 500. I was so happy!

I shared the results of my brilliant work with my boss ... who was not happy!

• "I'm not paying you to correlate bad business with an economic downturn, I'm paying you to fix bad business performance."

That's a fair statement.

We need to fix things.

"Ecommerce in a box" ... the Shopify / GA4 / ESP / Search / Social / Marketplaces environment gives the illusion of not having to fix things. A co-worker in 1992 once said "Read a step, do a step, get a banana". He was referring to what would become "Ecommerce in a box". We execute, we get a paycheck.

I once had a communication with a professional who noticed that there weren't enough new items ... he said "what do I do?" When I responded "you either figure out how to introduce more new items and/or you learn how to feature the new items you have so that customers buy them at higher rates" the person just went silent.

Here's the thing ... within the "Ecommerce in a box" environment, business can be fixed. Your email service provider would love to implemented targeted streams to customers pre-disposed to buy new merchandise from specific categories. Your search agency would love to implement ideas they've seen work with your competitors, they want to help you. 

So don't make the dumb mistake I made ... don't quantify the problem ... solve the problem!

The Ecommerce Middle Class

Not "middle class" in terms of income. "Middle Class" in terms of value to a client of mine.

If we go back twenty years, your customer file was comprised of a lot of "middle class" customers. These were customers who generally purchased two times. This was a good thing for ecommerce brands, because these customers had a fighting chance of becoming loyal.

Whether it is Amazon taking all the middle class customers away or the Shopify empire encouraging purchases from a million smaller brands, the middle class has generally disappeared in ecommerce.

Twenty years ago, a first-time buyer had a 35% +/- chance of purchasing again in the next year. This accelerated the rate of customers moving to a second purchase, where the customer had a 45% chance of placing a third order. There were many 2x/3x buyers as a consequence, customers in the middle of the customer value bell curve.

When first-time buyers have a <= 25% chance of buying again in the next year, the middle class gets hollowed out. Not nearly enough customers develop to 2x/3x status, which means eventually not enough customers become loyal.

You've heard me talk frequently about "Welcome Programs". These are separate email marketing streams that target customers who just purchased for the first time. The goal of the programs are simple:

• If the customer needs to return something, make it easy for the customer to return something - and then find something else for the customer to purchase.
• Teach the customer about who you are. Get the customer hooked up with Instagram or any of the social media platforms. 
• Based on the merchandise purchased in order #1, cross-shop the customer into the next most likely category that the customer wants to purchase from.
• If you have a loyalty program, get the customer enrolled in the program. 
• Rapidly convert the customer to a second order - get this customer into your "middle class".

How many businesses do an excellent job at quickly converting a first-time buyer to a second order?

• Very few.

I'm convinced few are good at this because few possess the creativity to be good at this. It's one thing to create a beautiful image that you put up on Instagram. It's quite another thing to put together a dozen different triggered email programs based on "what" a customer purchased in a first order. It's not easy for a campaign-centric creative professional to adapt to the reality presented to us in late 2026.

New Customers: Does Quality Matter?

Maybe your data looks like this:

• All Other New Customers:  $20.00 profit in the next year.
• Google Shopping New Customer:  $12 profit in the next year.
• Paid Social (Facebook):  $10 profit in the next year.

When you email me your questions, you'll ask if you should avoid the Google Shopping / Paid Social new customer?

What you should avoid is wasting a lot of money marketing to those new customers. If you can earn a profit acquiring those customers, market to them in the "welcome window" ... the first 90 days after acquiring the customer, then be gentile with your marketing dollars. Don't waste them chasing a customer that is not interested.

I know, this is the point where you suggest it isn't worth acquiring a customer that doesn't want to have a relationship with you. Almost no customers want to have a relationship with any of us. The customer has a need at a point in time. The customer wants that need met.

The quality of a new customer matters in relation to how you manage the downstream relationship. If you can earn $25 profit acquiring the customer and then earn another $10 in the future (whereas a different new customer pays you back $25 / $20), just back off your downstream marketing efforts to that customer.

The average ecommerce brand doesn't have this problem, FYI ... they don't have outbound marketing programs that cost $15/year. This is a decidedly old-school problem.

Old School Geography

I think this goes back to 1991 or 1992. I was asked to explain what was happening to swimwear sales at Lands' End. I mapped sales by state by month.

• In January/February, sales boomed in the Midwest and Northeast.
• In March, sales thrived in the Southeast United States.
• In April, the eastern seaboard performed well.
• By May/June, sales moved back to the Midwest and Northeast.

In other words, sales followed the weather. Vacationers bought merch in the heart of winter. From there, the weather improved most in the south, then southeast, then eastern seaboard, then in the midwest/northeast.

The relationship was consistent. In fact, when I left for Eddie Bauer, the relationship at Eddie Bauer was nearly the same.

But when swimwear business was not great, it was largely a weather issue.

Back in 2005-2006 when we killed off the catalog business model at Nordstrom, it was my job to field angry calls from customers. For about four months, angry 45-75 year old women in Minot and Rapid City and Cheyenne and Bozeman let me hear their frustrations with no longer receiving a catalog. I recall telling my boss where these customers lived and she said "those aren't our core retail customers". The stirrup pants customer in Billings was not the core retail customer at The Galleria outside of Dallas. In fact, when we coded zip codes, those who bought from the catalog skewed disproportionately rural. One of my more successful consulting projects was from 2008 ... "Zip Code Forensics", where I created an algorithm to code zip codes, then showed how certain zip codes aligned with catalog marketing. That project lingered for eight years until ecommerce fully consumed the catalog business model.

A while back a CEO talked about the core customer being "native" to New England. I didn't think that was possible until I analyzed where his customers lived ... sure enough, they were skewed to zip codes starting with a 0 or 1.

There are things to be learned by analyzing business performance by geography.

Gap Year

There's an election tomorrow. Take advantage of your right to vote.

In sports, it is common for coaches to be fired. The LinkedIn crowd might appreciate that "accountability" comes for the coaches being fired.

Of course, if you were the coach, you know full-well how difficult your job was. It is highly unlikely that you didn't try your best ... you likely gave everything you had to be successful. It just didn't work out. Happens in ecommerce all the time, likely has happened to you at some point in your career.

When a head coach is fired, it is common for the coach to take a "gap year" ... a year off. The coach doesn't rush into a bad job (which likely harms the coach long-term), the coach studies how everybody else does their jobs. The coach looks for innovation, for blind spots in how s/he performs compared to others.

A year later, the coach reappears, wanting a new head coaching job or potentially taking a step back to become an offensive or defensive coordinator.

I was never smart enough to take a gap year. I moved on from Lands' End to Eddie Bauer in the course of a weekend. I moved from Eddie Bauer to Avenue A in the course of a weekend. I took one (1) week off moving from Avenue A to Nordstrom. I took a weekend off moving from Nordstrom to my consulting life. All of it was stupid. I should have studied how to be better as a professional, how to be better as a leader, how to be better as a co-worker, how to better help my new company be successful.

If (and only if) you can possibly afford to financially take "some" time off, do so when you are forced to change your path or you voluntarily change your path. Learn from somebody else. Shadow an acquaintance for a few weeks. Learn how other people with comparable skills approach your job.

If you're in this situation, contact me (kevinh@minethatdata.com). I'll share how I view things, you can take my advice and throw it away or you can apply it to your work - that's what you get to do if you take a gap-week, gap-month, or gap-year.

Share of AOV

Every business possesses a unique relationship between first-time buyer AOV and future value. The relationship dictates exactly how the brand must approach marketing for first-time buyers.

An example:  "Brand A" has an AOV of $70 and in the first five years after a first purchase the customer spends $230. You wouldn't be surprised if this company offers free shipping, executes television / radio / billboards, hires expensive influencers, seemingly wastes money. This business "can" waste money because the customer pays the brand back over time. In fact, it is almost good that the brand wastes money, because the long-term payback of finding new customers is so worth is that the math all works out.

Another example:  "Brand B" has an AOV of $70 and in the first five years after a first purchase the customer spends $22. This company has no choice but to be exceptionally disciplined in their marketing approach. No waste. None. They can only afford tactics that are guaranteed to work and deliver profit during the acquisition transaction. Their "Share of AOV" is poor ... just 31%.

There are times when you read stuff from the LinkedIn experts, telling "brands" what they "must do" to be successful. Well, "Share of AOV" dictates what a "brand" must do ... if the company wants to be profitable.

There is a reason we always end up with department stores, or Walmart, or Target, or Amazon, or Marketplaces. The extended merchandise assortment (which comes at a cost, by the way, but frequently at a cost that is lower than wasteful marketing spend) drives "Share of AOV" much higher, allowing the company to generate a ton of downstream profit.

There is reason most newer enterprises hit a ceiling. Their merchandise assortment is too narrow, meaning "Share of AOV" is too low and eventually the brand reaches all of the prospects it can possibly reach.

Smart marketers optimize the relationship between acquisition AOV and downstream Share of AOV. From there, smart marketers do everything they can to increase merchandise productivity (i.e. personalizing the assortment to customers), increasing profitability, thereby increasing how much can be spent to acquire a customer.

The Milwaukee Brewers

I grew up in Wisconsin, so naturally I approached the peak of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs on Wednesday night when the Milwaukee Brewers won their first World Series in the 57 year history of the team in Milwaukee.

In the 1970s my Grandpa would fire up the AM radio, pour himself a Kingsbury beer in a 7oz glass, and keep score of Brewers games in his scorebook while listening to Bob Uecker and Merle Harmon. Yes, there's a retail connection there ... Merle Harmon went on to open 140 sports merchandise stores called "Merle Harmon's Fan Fair". Your local mall likely possessed one of these stores.

Anyway, that's where the passion started. I recall going to a Brewers game in 1976. Bottom of the 9th, trailing, and Henry Aaron was called in to pinch hit. The crowd of maybe 10,000 fans watching a God-awful Brewers team rose to their feet. Aaron hit a fly ball. I instantly screamed out, believing we were about to see a Henry Aaron home run! The ball was caught 100 feet short of the wall, in mid-center field. Game over.

The 1982 team had a 7th inning lead in Game 7 of the World Series and could not pull it off. The State of Wisconsin remembered that team, seemingly forever, through decades of losing.

The Rickie Weeks / Prince Fielder / Ryan Braun / Corey Hart / Jonathan Lucroy teams started to win a bit.

In the past decade, the team starting winning regularly, but developed a nasty habit of horrifying playoff catastrophes. They lost to the Dodgers in 2018 in Game 7 of the NLCS at home. They lost to the Nationals in 2019 (they'd win the title). They lost to the Dodgers in 2020 (they'd win the title). They lost to the Braves in 2021 (they won the title). They lost to the Diamondbacks in 2023 (they won the pennant). They lost to the Mets in horrifying fashion on a 9th inning home run in 2024. They were swept by the Dodgers in the NLCS in 2025.

On Wednesday night, that changed.

The team played as a team, with everybody believing in each other.

Ecommerce isn't terribly different from sports. You work on a team in all likelihood. Some teams are dysfunctional. Some teams have amazing chemistry. Some teams are highly talented. High performers and low performers. Glaring mistakes and amazing creation. Every once-in-awhile your company does something incredible or your team does something incredible. We probably don't talk about this enough, but there are special times at work. You'll remember those times for a long time. You'll remember the people, you'll remember how the people made you feel.

If you find yourself working on a talented and high-performing ecommerce team, enjoy it. It doesn't happen very often.

Quiz Week: Question #4

Yesterday we observed a business where Management decided to discount heavily in an effort to overcome lousy comp segment results. When I'm asked to evaluate businesses for Private Equity, this is a common finding. There are all sorts of tricks Management attempts when trying to make a business appear healthy.

Today, we'll look at annual comp segment results for the past four years. Tell me what is wrong with this business.

Comp Segment Performance:  Existing Items

• 2026 = -11%.
• 2025 = -2%.
• 2024 = +8%.
• 2023 = +12%.

Comp Segment Performance:  New Items

• 2026 = +3%.
• 2025 = -20%.
• 2024 = -24%.
• 2023 = -10%.

Quiz Week: Question #3

Yesterday's business suffered from low merchandise productivity. Customers liked the merchandise less than the year prior. The marketing department continued to spend money finding new/reactivated buyers in an effort to keep the business steady. It's really important for marketing to do what can be done when customers simply don't like the merchandise being offered.

Ok, today we're going to look at two different dimensions within comp segment performance. Can you tell me how Management decided to respond to what was happening within this business?

Comp Segment:  Items Selling At/Above Their Historical Average Price Point.

• Sep:  -27%.
• Aug:  -24%.
• Jul:    -22%.
• Jun:   -12%..
• May:  -17%.
• Apr:   -13%.

Comp Segment:  Items Selling Below Their Historical Average Price Point.

• Sep:  +33%.
• Aug:  +29%.
• Jul:    +25%.
• Jun:   -10%.
• May:  -11%.
• Apr:   -10%.

Quiz Week: Question #2

Yesterday we explored a business where the marketing department elected to cut back on customer acquisition. We can easily detect this issue by looking at comp segment results (which were consistently positive). When comp segment results are positive and new/reactivated comps have a shift in performance at a specific point of time, we look to the marketing team ... because their change in marketing investment caused the business challenge observed.

Here is today's quiz question: What is wrong with this business?

Comp New/Reactivated Buyer Counts:

• Sep:  -3%.
• Aug:  -5%.
• Jul:   +2%.
• Jun:  - 1%.
• May: +3%.
• Apr:  +4%.

Comp Segment (Those With Exactly Two Purchases In The Past Year) Results.

• Sep:  -8%.
• Aug:  -7%.
• Jul:    -9%.
• Jun:   -6%.
• May:  -9%.
• Apr:   -8%.

Quiz Week: Question #1

This week we're going to cover comp segment results that frequently arise in my work. Your job is to diagnose the reason why the business is succeeding or failing.

Question #1:  Here are comp new/reactivated comps, and comp segment results ... for the past six months. What is the likely cause of this business not meeting expectations.

Comp New/Reactivated Buyer Counts:

• Sep:  -22%.
• Aug:  -18%.
• Jul:    -30%.
• Jun:  +13%.
• May: +11%.
• Apr:    +8%.

Comp Segment (Those With Exactly Two Purchases In The Past Year) Results.

• Sep:  +6%.
• Aug:  +8%.
• Jul:    +5%.
• Jun:   +7%.
• May:  +3%.
• Apr:   +9%.

Based on what you see here, what is the reason this business did not meet expectations in recent months? What would cause a business to exhibit the comp new/reactivated buyer and comp segment results you see here? What would you do to fix the problem?

8%

Here's a gem.

I've been working in corporate America for more than thirty-eight years. The number of blank stares I've received when suggesting an A/B test when the person on the other side of the conversation is a ROAS believer ... well, it's a staggering number of blank stares!

A/B tests are humbling. They force you to address your personal marketing belief system. It's been my experience that not many professionals want to address their personal marketing belief system.

60%

In sports, the trend is moving toward building small stadiums. Colorado State comes to mind a few years ago. Northwestern this year, building a 35,000 seat stadium. Instead of probably not selling an inexpensive seat four thousand feet above the field, premium seats with premium experiences are sold at premium prices. Five thousand highly enthusiastic and/or wealthy individuals pay a ton more, the remaining 30,000 pay more.

Similar things are happening in ecommerce. The "middle" of the customer file is simply disappearing, being replaced by either one-time buyers that the brand needs to generate a handsome profit on the acquisition transaction ... or ... loyal buyers are subsidizing the core business.

I've told you this many times ... I define a loyal buyer as somebody who has a 60% or greater chance of buying again in the next year. As we continue to lose all of the "middle" customers to Amazon, the loyal buyer audience becomes increasingly important, because without them there is no profit.

In sports, this audience gets premium experiences, given what they're paying.

In ecommerce?

If I had to make a prediction for the future, I'd predict that "somebody smart" will figure out how to give premium experiences to loyal buyers. Not points. Not discounts. Not BOGOs. Not free shipping. No. Somebody smart is going to figure out what the premium experiences are that are unique to your best customers. Amazon figured it out - you pre-spend just south of $200 a year and somebody delivers the solar yard lights you purchased at 8:58pm tonight by 7:00am the next morning. Oh, the premium experience also includes NFL football games and NBA basketball games and NASCAR and first-run television series and Pickleball TV.

That's what we are competing against.

Have your analytically minded guru score your customer file ... have her tell you how many customers you have that have a 60% or better chance of buying again next year ... have her do this quarterly for the past three years. Have her show you what is happening to your loyal customer base. Is it growing? Is it shrinking? Is it contracting faster than the rest of your twelve-month buyer file?

If your analyst won't perform the work, contact me (kevinh@minethatdata.com) and I'll do it for you. Figure out how many premium customers you have, figure out what you can do for them.

Triggers / Targeting / Personalization

On my last trip to Europe, a vendor was telling a conference attendee how he had a client that was dynamically merchandising a catalog. The client had creative for several hundred products, the client sent the vendor customer purchase transactions, and the vendor assembled a personalized catalog for every customer based on prior purchase transactions. The conference attendee looked at the vendor, and said (I'm paraphrasing here):

• "That takes all the fun out of creating a catalog."

The conference attendee walked away. The vendor sales person look at me and said"

• "I don't understand why almost no catalog professionals realize that we're trying to help them. This happens to us all the time."

Professionals understand that the vendor was trying to help ... and would likely generate more profit.

Maybe you feel this way about your job. Have you ever had a new management team take over your department? A new Vice President? And she doesn't like how you are doing things, so she starts telling you that the way you're doing your job is "wrong" and she prescribes a new way to do things? You feel angry. You believe that she "doesn't get it!" You dig your heels in. You go through the five stages of grief. If you've ever been in this situation, you are reflecting the "that takes all the fun out of creating a catalog" statement above. You are that person!

I've been there.

There are three things that are incongruent with campaign-centric styles of marketing.

• Trigger-based marketing.
• Customer targeting.
• Personalization.

It's one of the reasons some old-school marketers slide into email campaign execution seamlessly. It's a campaign. Everybody gets the same thing. Creation is fun!

It's one of the reasons some old-school marketers slide into social media. It's a campaign. All 199,000 followers get one message, with the added benefit that 25 of the recipients provide feedback. It feels good! Each message is a carefully created campaign.

Meanwhile, AI will usher in an era of machine-oriented triggers / targeting / personalization that will be outside of anybody's control. For many, that's going to take all the fun out of creating. For other professionals, it will be their turn to help run a business.

PostPilot

I don't talk about vendors a whole lot, for good reason. Early in my consulting work I'd be asked to partner with various vendors, the vendors would let my clients down, my clients would stop working with me for recommending a vendor ... you get the picture.

So, I don't have a relationship with anybody at PostPilot (click here). I haven't been asked to say anything about PostPilot.

I will say that a portion of their services are calibrated to helping the catalog brands that still remain.

Print-based marketing is in trouble, and has been for twenty years. Why should you spend $1 sending paper to a customer just because the customer hasn't purchased in 30 months and "might" be a reactivation candidate? Well, the reason you are doing that is because people at your company LOVE creating catalogs. They LOVE the process. They LOVE creatively enticing a customer via a spread. They LOVE the process, regardless of profit.

Profit.

Until the generation of catalog buyers (I'm not talking about the retailers that mail catalogs as branding pieces and don't care about profitability) is no longer employed, the profitability of mailing efforts will continue to erode. This will force those who adore print into a corner (it has been doing this for twenty years).

• To maintain the craft, the catalog-centric professional must focus only on the most productive customers ... the most loyal customers ... or the most recently active customers. These will be the only two viable audiences going forward.

Which brings me back to PostPilot. Now, I get it, you want to merchandise 64 pages, you don't want trigger-based marketing via post cards, that's not what you love doing. The "market" doesn't care what you love doing. The "market" is giving you a small window of opportunity to do something via print.

• Customers who have done "something recently" ... clicked through an email campaign, visited your website, signed up for credit, purchased, interacted with your social media presence ... these customers are profitable via print for a very small period of time. Why wouldn't you capitalize on this small period of time? With print? With the craft you love?

Again, I don't have a relationship with anybody at PostPilot, I haven't been asked to say anything, I just see a small window in the customer relationship process where you could "do something with print" and it "could/should be profitable". I mean, I'd rather leverage email marketing for everything given it costs essentially nothing and a postcard is going to cost at least $0.60, but a portion of my audience loves print, so have at it.

Infrequent Buyers

In about three weeks, a large fraction of your inactive customer file will awaken, briefly. For about 6-7 weeks thereafter, customers who purchase gifts ... customers who like winter-centric merchandise ... they'll awaken after a pummeling of email campaigns over the prior 44 weeks when the gift/winter-centric customer could have cared less.

And then? They'll go quiet again.

In 1999 at Eddie Bauer, our Home customers went dormant as a matter of practice. They bought bedding or pillows or whatever, then their needs were met. We'd waste a fortune mailing catalogs to an audience that was largely dormant. My team got tired of being blamed for low response ... "DON'T YOU KNOW HOW TO TARGET CUSTOMERS??" ... well, yeah, we knew how to target customers, it's just that the customers the company wanted us to target were dormant. So we rented the living daylights out of the Williams Sonoma and Pottery Barn file, and those names worked! Those customers had not just purchased our merchandise.

Obviously it's a different world in 2026. Regardless, you have your product listing ads ready for the dormant customers who are ready to bite. You have a fundamentally different email marketing cadence for the portion of your email subscriber file that is dormant for ten+ months then highly active for 6-7 weeks. Your website recognizes the formerly dormant customer and treats that customer differently.

Take advantage of the tools at your disposal for managing infrequent buyers. This is your time to shine ... it's not a Black Friday / Cyber Monday 60% off opportunity, it's an opportunity to enhance the customer relationship with infrequent customers.

The Long and Winding Road

Your business performance is undoubtedly due to decisions you recently made.

It's also the outcome of decisions made 1-3 years ago.

I worked with a company that threw away winning merchandise ... they just killed a bunch of items, replacing them with stuff that didn't work. Customers acquired 3-5 years ago were loyal to a style of merchandise that they were acquired from. It took this company about thirty months to rebuild the merchandise assortment and ultimately identify new winning items that were aligned with the winning items from 3-5 years ago.

Do you want to know one of the huge benefits of having a 15% or 20% annual rebuy rate? Rebuilding your business is not a long and winding road! You can reinvent your customer base annually! The low-retention businesses I've been aligned with constantly reinvent themselves, they aren't beholden to the past. It's a feature of this business model.

If you are Macy's and you have a customer base with a 60% annual rebuy rate? You can't reinvent anything!! You are truly on a long and winding road, you're not driving the car and your customers own the keys to your car. Any change you make is met with criticism from your long-time loyal customer base. Pundits mock companies like Macy's for not being willing to change or evolve with the times. Pundits are wrong ... companies like Macy's cannot change or evolve with the times or their existing customer base will reject them. They're stuck. It's a huge disadvantage for having a loyal customer base. You're quite honestly better off creating new brands than trying to reinvent the existing brand, your loyal customers won't let you reinvent the existing brand.

Both the low-rebuy ecommerce brand and the loyalty-centric retail brand need to develop new items that become winning items. This part of business is universal, and it's a lot of fun for the marketer/analyst who decides to help grow the business via great items.

Newness

I watched some of the US-Spain Women's Soccer match Tuesday night.

So many players I didn't recognize. The ones I recognized largely won the Olympics a few years ago. The great class from 2015-2019, the players who struggled in the 2023 World Cup, they're gone. Times change, and if future players aren't identified and developed, future performance suffers.

Have you watched the Kansas City Chiefs play football this year? Patrick Mahomes is running the show, but look at his supporting cast ... it's a new generation of players, isn't it?

You know all about this dynamic, don't you?

If you don't find new customers, future performance suffers.

If you don't develop new items into winning items, future performance suffers.

In many ways, if you don't explore new marketing channels, future performance suffers. It's one of the blind spots of modern ecommerce professionals ... pursuit of marketplaces resulted in dead ends and missed opportunities elsewhere. Yes, some of you with commodity products are actually better-served selling on Amazon than on your own platform. Those of you who spent the past twenty years building viable "brands" have better opportunities to pursue.

Ecommerce is an endless exploration of "newness". If you are an analytically-focused professional, there's an entire career that can be built from the blueprint of newness + winners (winning items, winning customers).