The Outsights: November 21, 2023
Building purpose driven-brands, Meta and Amazon are ganging up on TikTok, and a platform that that turns consumers into curators.
Hello, and welcome to The Outsights—Nebulab’s bi-weekly collection of the best reads, listens, and products from the world of retail, eCommerce, and DTC.
Apologies for the late send: this issue was supposed to go out yesterday, but I was recovering from a pretty bad flu that had me re-evaluating all the life decisions I've made in the past ten years. On the upside, I've had plenty of time to catch up on all the latest eCom drama.
But before we take a look, a quick word from our consulting team…
We’re offering free DTC strategy sessions!
Every quarter, we give five select brands a free, 1-hour consultation with our strategy team. These are the same folks who have worked on the shopping experiences of Cometeer, Framework, and Huckberry.
If you’ve been thinking about tweaking your DTC strategy or store design, this is the perfect opportunity: you’ll get the chance to chat with us about all things retail, eCommerce, and DTC, and you'll receive an executive summary that you can use to prioritize your efforts going into 2024!
Thought provokers
The power of generosity in eCommerce. Brian at Future Commerce sits down with Simple Modern CEO Mike Beckham to talk about building a purpose-centric, strategy-driven brand in the age of tactics and EBITDA. If you’re an eCommerce leader, this will be a breath of fresh air—or a jolt of jealousy.
Under review. If you’ve ever bought something after reading a 10-page Wirecutter breakdown, you’ll enjoy this insider perspective on what it’s like to run such an operation. It’s a life of infinite Excel spreadsheets, long work hours, and creative washing machine tests.
Goings-on
Meta and Amazon team up on new in-app shopping feature on Facebook & Instagram. Facebook and Instagram users can now use their Amazon accounts to purchase products without leaving their social media feed. This deal looks very much like Amazon’s and Meta’s attempt at pushing back against TikTok and, to a lesser degree, Shopify.
Klarna brings its Creator Shops platform to the US. In a not-too-dissimilar move, Klarna keeps moving further up the shopping funnel by allowing influencers to set up an online storefront that sells curated products from Klarna merchants. This is an interesting move, but Klarna will have a hard time competing with much more established players in the e-com platform space.
US eCommerce to exceed $1.1 trillion in 2023. The tl;dr is that 2023 was most likely the worst year for eCommerce growth. The absolute number of dollars flowing through eCommerce keeps increasing, but eCommerce as a percentage of total retail has flatlined recently. However, eCommerce penetration is expected to start accelerating again in 2024 and beyond.
Tool of the week
Sourcerie. For the everyman, Sourcerie is a consumer-powered brand and product discovery platform. For brands, it’s an invaluable source of consumer insights. We’ve never seen a product blend the lines between consumption, curation, and market intelligence quite so elegantly—quite impressive, and we wish Sourcerie and its team the greatest success!
As a side note, we learned about Sourcerie through Tim Richardson, who recently interviewed Sourcerie’s co-founders on his podcast, Your Basket Is Empty (bonus link for y’all!). Check it out!
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! 👋
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