Commerce Outsights
July 29, 2024
Transparency is the new luxury, Digital Product Passports are coming for you, and why not every brand is Liquid Death.
Hello, and welcome to Commerce Outsights—Nebulab’s bi-weekly roundup of the best reads, listens, and tools from the world of retail, e-commerce, and DTC.
Today’s issue is about the slowdown in luxury spending, the state of Digital Product Passport regulation in the EU, and why not all brands are Liquid Death. We also have a roundup of the juiciest news from the past couple of weeks, including Google’s 180 on their plan to kill third-party cookies, a new search engine by OpenAI, and Klaviyo’s latest AI features.
Happy reading!
Does your brand need help with strategy, design or development?
For over a decade, we’ve been shaping, launching, and scaling shopping experiences for category disruptors such as Cometeer, Framework, and Huckberry. No matter where you’re going, we can help you get there.
Thought provokers
Why consumers are questioning luxury’s markups (6 mins). Luxury fashion, a segment infamously immune to economic turmoils, is finally feeling the squeeze of a slowdown in consumer spending slowdown. At the same time, consumers and regulators are demanding more visibilityto in supply chains and worker conditions. Will the trend last long enough to ignite real change?
Should I care about Digital Product Passports? (8 mins). The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) entered into force on July 18, mandating that products made or imported into the EU come equipped with a Digital Product Passport (DPP). In his latest piece (which we referenced in our own article about DPPs), Luke Hodgson separates fact from speculation, helping brands navigate the ESPR and its implications.
Liquid Death’s fame shows how badly marketers neglect product (5 mins). If there’s one thing I love, it’s a well-argued contrarian take. I’ve had the chance to write about Liquid Death a few times before and love the work they’re doing—it’s brave, original, and refreshing. But one should resist the temptation to generalize: LD competes in a highly commoditized category, where brand is everything. For everyone else, the Maslow hierarchy still stands.
Goings on
A new path for Privacy Sandbox on the web (2 mins). After running into technology and regulatory challenges with Privacy Sandbox, Google has decided not to deprecate third-party cookies for the time being; instead, they will offer users the ability to opt into/out of cookies on an individual basis. Maybe the real Privacy Sandbox was the friends we made along the way.
Dream big with new Klaviyo AI features (3 mins). Klaviyo released a bunch of new AI-powered features: it is now possible to create flows through an AI prompt, run personalized A/B tests for your campaigns at scale, and analyze customer review sentiment. What I like about these is that AI is being integrated in a thoughtful way into existing user flows, rather than just slapping a chatbot on top of an entire platform.
OpenAI announces SearchGPT, its AI-powered search engine (3 mins). Also, OpenAI is launching its search engine, powered by GPT-4. We don’t know much about it yet, and monetization is the elephant in the room, but this is an interesting space to watch for brands: after TikTok, AI-driven search might be the new channel to figure out.
Tools to watch
We don’t accept sponsorships for this newsletter. All product recommendations come from our consulting team.
Decile. If you’re looking to enhance your understanding of your customers’ demographics and purchase behavior, Decile might be what you need. We’ve had the chance to take it for a spin a few months ago and were impressed by its user-friendly UI and the sheer amount of datapoints it offers.
Does your brand need help with strategy, design or development?
For over a decade, we’ve been shaping, launching, and scaling shopping experiences for category disruptors such as Cometeer, Framework, and Huckberry. No matter where you’re going, we can help you get there.
In other news...
🛂 Our latest blog post talks about Digital Product Passports, and how brands can use them as a growth opportunity. Check it out!
🖥️ This might be weird to hear coming from us, but no, Customer Experience is not everything. You should be careful not to overinvest.
🛒 As Shopify moves upmarket, larger merchants are deciding to put a hard limit on how many and which apps they install. What does the future hold?
🪑 The perfect product configurator doesn't exist. Or does it?
That’s it for today!
If you’ve come across any interesting articles, podcasts, or products we should check out, you can email us at [email protected].
See you in two weeks! 👋