Category Archives: Trends

Shopping for clothes

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I dont fancy shopping for clothes. (Yes women, some men have that). You have to go in and out of stores. That always seems to be too hot and with too much airconditioning. Always dress and undress to try all different kinds of cloths. Always having trouble with the right seizes. While we are all so different in posture and seizes we are divided in four ‘silos’ (S, M, L, XL). Which also often are different per brand.

In this world that is getting more and more personalized I don’t get what clothing companies do. Or don’t do. There should be a market between the tailor and the online clothing shop for personalized items. What I don’t get is why my body isn’t measured, it must be possible to do that automatically via pictures or a video. Or do it yourself. (or ar least that can’t be the barrier).

All clothing companies could do the work of a real tailor with all the technology we have in our possessions. We can make a 3d printed shoe Why can’t we order online all the cloths from H&M, Zara in our perfect size. That will exactly match our bodies. We (the customers) are still being put in four large containers of sizes (S, M, L, XL) while we all have different bodies and seizes.

I get that it is a miracle by itself that we can buy clothes for something like 20 euro. It is a real efficient value chain. But who is the first to make a difference? And besides being first, it is probably lowering the returns for online shopping dramatically too because no more wondering which size to choose.

Win-Win-Win situation. I don’t have to go to local stores for clothes. Lower return from online shopping. Better fitting clothes.

Who can tell me why it isn’t already in place?

The reputation economy is the foundation of the sharing economy

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A good reputation takes long to build up. And it can be erased in a few moments, a few decisions and you can be all the way to the bottom (or even below)

Your history forms you. And internet remembers your history. Everything. No escape. There is a lot of commotion about one fundamental part of the sharing economy. You cannot decide what you give away of your privacy. It is all or nothing. Your behaviour is recorded online: all collected and used in the reputation economy.

On the bright side. We can now build up a network, a reputation that will solve a lot of trouble for the internet that is too big to be a real community. A movement that will make the middle man disappear. Who used to be necessary to make a deal. A community should not be too large. (different topic; will blog about it another time).

We believe in others online. We trust complete strangers online because they have already experienced the product/ shops/ items/ service before (if they don’t get paid to do it).  It is a way to persuade you to buy stuff when you cannot check it in a different way.

We can give reviews to everything. We did so for restaurants. For books. For apps. And now even for persons. I got a review when I enjoyed an airBnB spot. I gave a review to the driver from Uber. All personal reviews. Public feedback. All part of a bigger sum that gives a ‘metric’ of how good you are.

A reputation economy is needed for all of us to make a sharing economy happen. We exchange our lifes and privacy for cheaper alternatives (and will let the middle man vanish). Be aware.

Digital money

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I didn’t use any cash during my Iceland trip. That is really really convenient during your travels. At the same time I really didn’t know how much I was spending. This is ofcourse always the luxery when being abroad in a country with a different currency. But now it is even more untouchable. No cash at hand, a foreing currency, an exchange ratio not totally clear. Only pay by plastic. Ingredients for trouble. A little shock for me when the credit card was charged. Not that bad. But more than I expected.

Can the future generations make a difference between 1 euro and 10 euro if all they know is this number on their mobile screen? That number which corresponds to their current savings (or better; loans). It doesn’t give any emotional reaction to spending, like it does with spending actual cash money. No attachment to the hard work that went into it, to buy the stuff.

Research (by Prelec and Simester) has shown that spending with your credit card doesn’t give the same emotional reaction as with cash. And people are even willing to offer higher prices due to the fact that the don’t feel the pain of spending. That’s why credit card company are so big. And a lot of people come into troubles.

But I guess we have a huge problem if this virtual number is all we ever are going see. How should coming generations coop with this? No emotions attached. We as humans are simple not able to give any emotion to a digital number.

That is a problem!

South Park episode And it’s gone! from floui on Vimeo.

Intention economy

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We leave all kind of different trails online of our live. What websites we visit. Which Facebook pages we like. Clicks on emails we get. That is a online trail we are making without noticing.
Sometimes we have such a passion for things we like. We want to express it. We want to share it with the world. We make a trail on purpore. That is exactly what Amazon is after. For them that is really interesting information.

So they bought both GoodReads and Shelfari. Book / library apps where you can show your current list of books you have read. But not only that. also can also add your wishlist of ‘want to read’.

Offtopic: I had a discussion about the best online tool to show off your offline library in a digital world. I once made the mistake of taking the wrong tool. Both owned by amazon but I had to switch from Shelfari to GoodReads app. Better alignment with the Amazon database and a greater community. Although the desktop version is not a beautiful as the Shelfari website.

Amazon did buy these tools. And it got a reason to do so. This TechCrunch article of the takeover of GoodRead sums it al up

The company also shared an interesting stat, which might have sealed the deal for Amazon:
In the last 90 days, Goodreads members have added more than four books per second to the “want to read” shelves on Goodreads.
With over 16 million users? You do the math.

It is so much more easy to convince your customers what to buy if they already indicated what they want. Surprised that Bol.com and Amazon both have a wish list for you?

Which other signals are there to pick up on? So obvious as sharing our next books to read? Some other items i can think about;

  • Which countries to travel?
  • Which movies to watch?

But probably a lot more.

Sometimes marketing and sales is really easy. Just ask the consumer what he/she wants to have. These are just obvious hits for these kind of companies to chase you on.
(And this kind of data is really valuable: could be a separate business model for startups)