The collapse of commerce
I am sending this to you on the fifth day of a hayfever case that’s not serious enough to keep me in bed, and yet serious enough to annoy me beyond measure. In any case, it did put me in a very reflective mood. So much so, in fact, that the thought I want to dissect today is more of a meta-analysis than a thing in and of itself.
From where I’m standing, it seems like a handful of isolated trends are all slowly but inevitably leading our industry to the same conclusion, which is a collapse of the commerce experience as we know it today. It will not happen for everyone, and it will not happen for everyone at the same time, but I still believe it will become a reality for most brands.
In particular, I think there are three major trends driving this transition.
The first trend is the evolution of the consumer’s role, which I covered not too long ago in this very newsletter (see thought no. 23, The curation opportunity). Rather than passively experiencing a brand, the modern consumer is constantly remixing and imprinting themselves onto the brands they love. This can happen organically on TikTok (or not-so-organically on TikTok Shop), via a dedicated platform such as Sourcerie, or through a brand-provided channel such as KIKI’s co-creation campaigns.
Our friends at Future Commerce have been talking about the Multiplayer Brand for a while now (if you don’t have the zine, buy the zine), and that’s exactly what this is: brands are turning into artifacts of our collective sensitivity, which also means that they are much more pervasive in our lives than they used to be—something that can only accelerate.
Speaking of pervasiveness, the second trend is the convergence of media and commerce. Again, this is nothing new: 2PM has theorized Linear Commerce back in 2019. I have also written about it in thought no. 15, Media x commerce, where I used Liquid Death as an example of a brand that’s really blurred the lines: is it a CPG brand leaning into media for brand marketing, or is it a media company that monetizes its content by selling things?
Of course, Liquid Death is just one case, but in the last three months alone we’ve seen abundant proof that consumer brands are more interested than ever in media—and the other way around:
- Walmart produced a shoppable romcom just in time for the holidays. Pinterest has done the same, launching Deliciously Entertaining.
- Walmart (again) acquired TV manufacturer VIZIO, which will likely become a part of Walmart’s growing retail media network business.
- Complex was bought by NTWRK, which then folded into Complex. The company will produce content, commerce, and experiences.
- LVMH launched 22 Montaigne Entertainment, which will help the media industry produce content about LVMH’s maisons.
Finally, the third trend is the emergence of spatial computing. At $3,499, the Apple Vision Pro is, unfortunately, well above my threshold for discretionary purchases, which means I haven’t had a chance to try it yet. That said, I do think commerce operators who scoff at the idea of consumers shopping through a Vision-Pro-powered Safari tab are missing the point.
The eventual beauty of spatial computing does not lie in giving consumers a new way to interact with your existing channels; it lies in creating a completely new channel altogether.
Imagine a future where you’re walking down the street with your Vision Pro (which will hopefully not look as ridiculous anymore), you see a pair of shoes that you like in a shop window (or on someone’s feet!), and you purchase them right there, right then—no browsers, no apps, no store associates. If this is a crazy proposition now, I have a feeling it will become a much closer reality over the next five years, especially as Apple continues to invest in its AI capabilities.
So where does this leave us? On the surface, brands are just leveraging new technologies and experimenting with new marketing channels, as they’ve always done—and I’d say that’s an absolutely valid interpretation. But when you look more closely, and if you’re willing to suspend disbelief for a second, there’s an argument that these trends will bring about two fairly seismic shifts.
First of all, I expect commerce to turn from something a brand is to something a brand does. Rather than building its identity and organizational structure around selling things, the brand of the future will be at the center of a much richer and more sophisticated universe—one where the physical product is just one of many touchpoints, and might not necessarily be the best way to monetize the brand’s IP.
At the same time, I expect commerce to be everywhere. We are already seeing brands that are born and scaled on TikTok. In the future, many more transactions to be completed at the point of customer acquisition, whether that’s social media, a shoppable TV show, or a physical shop window augmented by AR. For someone like me, who believes that commerce is a form of art, this is the ultimate fourth wall break.
These shifts, in turn, will have consequences both on technology vendors and service providers: for the former, the prominence of digital commerce might finally give birth to a unified commerce protocol (something I discussed in thought no. 24, Apology of the regulator); for the latter, a more nimble, more responsive structure will be needed that can adapt to the different places, times, and structures of the new commerce opportunity (thought no. 25, Agency, deconstruct thyself).
And yet, as excited as I am to see this unfold, I can’t help but think we’re losing something in this transition. Labels are how we make sense of the world. Are we embellished or impoverished in a world where consumers are curators, media is commerce, and physical is digital?
If you don’t have an answer yet, I wouldn’t worry too much—give or take, I’d say you still have a decade to figure it out