"Secondhand is the New New" (w/ Ryan MacInnis)

"Secondhand Commerce" is changing the way that we purchase luxury goods - from watches and handbags to sneakers - secondary markets are finding life after the initial purchase. Plus: Macy's acquires Story in a move to bring experiential retail to the big department store. Special thanks to Ryan MacInnis of Voysis for joining us on this episode of Future Commerce!

Apologies for the audio quality in this episode as we encountered a technical issue. Should be fixed going forward! Thanks for listening!

Main Takeaways:

The advent of Voice, AR, and VR is allowing smaller retailers to compete with Amazon and Walmart.

Phillip is a hype-beast-in-training.

Second-hand and limited-edition may be calls-to-action for consumers.

Is Amazon at war with everyone?

Mobile-based-commerce may soon overtake desktop.

Ryan (or Brian) And The Rise of Voice in Commerce:

Ryan McIness of Voysis is standing in for Brian, and he seems pretty excited about it.

Ryan gives some insight into Voysis: "Voysis is a B2B solution that mimics the Alexa experience".

"If you have a brand and you want to voice-enable your mobile app, then you come to us, and we make sure its based off your data and your product catalog, the intelligence smart stuff that's related to your brand."

Apparently, everyone's going to Vegas to talk about commerce.

Voysis puts out an infographic that basically breaks the internet: The shock value may have made this go viral, in it Voysis claims that by 2020 75% of all households will have a voice-enabled device.

Phillip points out that a lot of people are really starting to see voice as part of their brands.

Also: "It makes you question how your brand voice translates to other mediums and how a brand goes beyond written word or logo."

Ryan says that the advent of Voice, as well as AR and VR, has allowed brands to actually compete with Amazon and Walmart.

But Amazon does have Alexa.

Old is The New Brand-New: Second-Hand Commerce Edition:

So consumers seem to be trying something new... ahem old by buying second-hand luxury items in a secondary market.

In fact: there's a resale report by ThreadUp that points to the fact that one in three women shopped second-hand last year.

Simon Birkhead writing in Daily Insights over at Gartner L2 talks about how second-hand purchases are becoming trendy, and resale sites like Poshmark, TheRealReal, and Depop are seeing a significant uptick in traffic.

Phillip asks sneakerhead Ryan if he has ever bought second-hand sneakers?

Ryan and Phillip discuss how Phillip is a hypebeast-in-training, and how he fell into the sneaker community by accident.

Spoiler alert: It involves orange sneakers, limited edition LeBron 15's and Casey Niestat.

The second-hand market does seem to defy all digital commerce logic

Phillip wonders if a big box retailer could get ahold of this and make a move, would it be on a retail roadmap?

Limited Edition Items Bring All The Consumers to The Yard:

Phillip has finally figured out segues.

Another Future Commerce alumni Richard Kestenbaum has written an article for Forbes on Macy's acquiring Story.

Why is Story so cool? Because in keeping with their name, every six-eight weeks the store completely changes, and new items all keeping with a chosen theme (chosen by founder Rachel Shechtman) are curated and sold for a limited time.

This kind of commerce is interesting because it creates a feeling of possible FOMO, and doesn't allow consumers to sit too long on purchasing situations.

Phillip points out that brands with evergreen products can use limited-edition items to take more risks and be more daring.

Voice can be a big part of this and allows brands to ahem... find their voice.

Ryan makes the point that limited-edition experiential retail may help bring customers in the door, and then allow brands to be innovative to keep them.

Is Walmart Trying to Challenge Amazon in India?

Walmart and Amazon may be going head to head in India.

So Walmart has acquired 77% of e-commerce brand Flipkart

Flipkart currently number one in India for e-commerce, can anyone guess who is number two?

In fact, Flipkart was started by two former Amazon employees.

Phillip says that this points to a long-term strategy by Walmart, and actually changes the way he thinks about Walmarts place in commerce.

Ryan says that this brings to mind Uber going into China and then selling its stake to its competitor (Grab), will Amazon buy Flipkart to step up its game?

One of the most innovative parts of Walmarts strategy is how they are trying to personalize recommendations, this might actually give them an edge over Amazon.

Amazon Sends Out a Siren's Call to Paypal Users:

Amazon may be trying to start its own war, with Paypal,

How is Amazon trying to compete? By hyper incentivizing Amazon Pay.

Amazon announces they will help negotiate lower fees, and help merchants with discounts if they adopt Amazon Pay.

This announcement caused Square and Paypal stock to short-circuit.

Why does everything always come back to Amazon?

Phillip points out that Brian wouldn't be able to discuss this since he works for Amazon.

Can The Rise of Mobile-Based-Commerce Change Everything?

Adobe says that we may soon be at the point where mobile-based-commerce overtakes desktop-commerce.

Also: Retailers are saying that 70% of their traffic is coming from mobile.

Ryan says that this shouldn't really surprise anyone.

Macy's came out and said that mobile is becoming a much bigger part of their brand, and their new mobile app is integrated with their retail stores .

Now, people never have to interact with another person, when in-store, or online, which sounds like a great idea?

Phillip points out that not all conversion is direct-to-purchase.

"Companies like Instagram enabling in-app purchasing is the path and the shortest path to purchase."

What brands must realize that there really is no one strategy and that some consumers want in-store, and some like to shop online, and experiential retail really is everything.

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