Commerce Outsights
May 20, 2024
How credit card rewards work, why genAI is falling short of its promises, and the future of storefront personalization.
Hello, and welcome to Commerce Outsights—Nebulab’s email roundup of the best reads, listens, and tools from the world of retail, e-commerce, and DTC.
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
Anatomy of a credit card rewards program (16 mins). For someone who’s never stopped to consider the economics and business dynamics of credit card rewards programs (which, I suspect, is most people), this is a fascinating read. In retail, it’s especially relevant given the recent surge of co-branded credit cards, popularized by the likes of Tandym.
🎧 Conjectures and Commerce (52 mins). Fermàt is betting that the future of commerce is fully personalized storefronts. I have a slightly different view (okay, a very different view), but can certainly appreciate when someone veers off the beaten track to chase the next big thing. Whatever you think, this is an interview that’ll be worth your time.
Goings-on
🔒 Is Generative AI the New Fashion-Tech Bubble? (8 mins). Talk to anyone who’s tried to apply generative AI to e-commerce, and most people will tell you that there’s a disconnect between what the vendors promise and what they currently deliver. That said, that’s the story of all new tech: we just need more time to distinguish the practical use cases from the fluff.
Ulta has been quietly testing a gamified loyalty program called GlamXplorer (3 mins). I had a chance to chat with the Hang team a few weeks ago when we were exploring their solution for a couple of clients. I was impressed not just by the product but also by their take on what's broken with traditional loyalty programs. I’m not sure a gamified approach to loyalty will work for every segment, but it’s definitely interesting.
TikTok Sues US Government to Block Divest-or-Ban Law (3 mins). Pretty much what it says on the tin: TikTok is suing the US government over a law that would force ByteDance to sell the business or face a nationwide ban. While I’m not sure how I feel about the legislation, I also wouldn’t bet that the free-speech narrative TikTok has adopted will be received well by the public.
Tool of the week
We don’t accept sponsorships for this newsletter. All product recommendations come from our consulting team.
GoodDay. Have you ever heard of an e-commerce operator that’s happy with their ERP? Me neither, and it’s bothered me for a very long time. The implementation is expensive, the functionality is overly generic, and the UX sucks. GoodDay promises to be “the ERP for modern brands”—built straight into your Shopify admin. We haven’t taken it for a spin yet, but they’re on our radar, and we think they should be on yours.
You might have missed...
💀 A few weeks ago, I managed to get some Liquid Death shipped to Italy. I took the chance to write about why I love the brand.
🇬🇧 We will be at Pulse eCommerce Summit in London next week! If you’re going to be in the area, let me know—I’m always up for a chat!
🧴 The custom bundle builder from D.S. & DURGA is a beautiful little thing, so I recorded a quick screencast of it. Check it out!
💻 Framework, a long-standing Nebulab client, just raised an $8M round to expand their mission of fixing consumer electronics.
📹 YouTube is going all-in on its commerce offering, and they released a slew of improvements and a whole new Affiliate Hub.
👨💻 Nicolò has published a blog post about building custom integrations and business logic for high-volume Shopify stores.
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.
That’s it for today!
If you’ve come across any interesting articles, podcasts, or tools we should check out, you can email us at [email protected].
See you in two weeks! 👋