bring back old school ecomm, shout out the clippers, dumb phones, lifestyle branding n more
live & direct from paris
Hi friends! I’m sending this from Paris, where I’m continuing a lil Retail research / exploration trip. I saw some amazing stores + fits in London. I head to Amsterdam on Sunday where I’m looking forward to checking out the Library for something different (thanks Ivan!). Fun fact, my first ever job was in a Library and i sincerely hope it will be my last job ever too, when i’m in my retirement era. Anyway onto the good stuff-
a theory: 2003-2012 ecomm was GOATed and we should revert entirely back to those aesthetics and UX
I think on my last newsletter i was praising the simplicity of the brandy melville site, but then i saw someone else talking about how good the montbell site is and i’m in absolute agreement. this is all that is needed. if you are in the middle of an ecomm project for a lifestyle / apparel brand please reply and talk to me about whats going on in the space (and why i might be wrong about this, i love dissent lol). I just think sites have become so overengineered and laborious - please take me back to this era.
RIP the OG amazon site:
sick move from the clips: The Wall
The Clippers have carved out a section on “the enemy side” of intuit dome exclusively for their most hardcore fans. Season passes run at $1399 to access all 41 games, first come first served. I love this idea SO MUCH as a Knicks fan local to nyc who has been completely priced out of attending any games (thanks tourists!). Even last year it became almost impossible to get reasonably priced Liberty tickets which really sucked as a real-deal WNBA supporter in the city (happy for them that the $$$ is flowing in, though). I think this is vital for the league tbh- rewarding local base/day 1 fans.
Think this idea could and should be applied to so many sports, especially in big-ticket cities flooded with tourism.
a lil late but still interesting; booze brands x streetwear
This Heineken ‘kale phone’ (or as they called it, ‘Boring Phone’) orchestrated by boston-born Bodega and revealed at Milan Design week, is yet another branded foray into offering the youth a more analog option so they can get off tiktok/snap/IG when they’re having nights out (presumably drinking Heineken). I do think this campaign owes some flowers to Mekanism’s dumb phone campaign for Jose Cuervo, which came out about a year ago:
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1286d628-78ed-4e38-ac80-2d1e3c1def63_1102x1010.png)
[ Related/Unrelated: a study on the impact on kids mental health through removing smartphones in schools, via Norway determined that “banning smartphones significantly decreases the health care take-up for psychological symptoms and diseases among girls. Post-ban bullying among both genders decreases. Additionally, girls’ GPA improves, and their likelihood of attending an academic high school track increases. These effects are larger for girls from low socio-economic backgrounds.”]
In other booze x streetwear collab news, Seoul-based thisisneverthat partnered up with Budweiser for a capsule collection available globally.
Presumably, all this activity and energy around things relevant to gen z is because booze consumption is on a steep decline amongst the youth - particularly north american, coastal-city dwelling kids, who lead cultural trends- and they are scrambling to re-engage a disinterested cohort. This feels like an opportune moment for the bigger alcohol brands to consider N/A product innovation, or even service/space-based offerings instead of being dependent on moving bottles to make money.
Prediction: tennis is finally ready for its golf moment
Tennis started picking up for younger people during the pandemic due to its covid-friendly, outdoors nature, but i think it’s going to soon have the bigger zeitgeist bump that golf has similarly had. How cute is this:
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc79d5c0e-6a5c-4475-97ba-9aa2e8a9d9bf_1184x982.png)
lil branding food-for-thought ramble- Life After Lifestyle / revisiting a 2022 banger
This piece from
, “Life after lifestyle” is from 2022 (so consider that when parsing through the optimistic references to the metaverse/crypto) but came up in the feed recently (via Romain Coste) as part of the “Running is the new ______” dialog. Incidentally, running can just be running, and evolving into a new era, we don’t need to fuse it with anything else. Anyway, I digress. For anyone who works in Branding, specifically cultural/lifestyle products and efforts like footwear, apparel etc, the points made feel more salient and worth revisiting than ever.“The Lifestyle era was not about creating culture; it was about attaching brands onto existing cultural contexts. It was not about shaping people; it was about sorting consumer demographics into niche categories. The new order we are entering into reverses this. For some organizations, culture has become the product itself, and products have become secondary, auxiliary, to the production of culture.”
This is the era that sees brands offer a diversified portfolio of products with the connective tissue only being the identity of the person who uses said products; it lends itself incredibly well to creator-ran and founded brands that offer built-in permission to play in many different categories and verticals, as long as each different offering feels true to the origins and character of the creator.
Juicy link round-up
Audiences are spending more time watching Youtube on their television than Netflix. I think younger viewers in particular are cutting back on subscriptions, and also inherently have a preference for ‘realer’ feeling content from creators- at least for ambient viewing (netflix’s specialty).
Great little assessment on
of the current mainstream energy around womens sports, spotlighting the innovation in particular that womens leagues are modelling.Michelin, who you may know for their restaurant ratings, have awarded some hotels with Keys in the USA (similar meaning attached as michelin Stars). Of note, to me, was the addition of the refurbished Hotel Chelsea. keen on doing a lil staycation there asap.
- of wrote a wonderfully endearing tribute to a Harlem retail staple.
“How To Truly Get To Know Great Cities”- maybe its the confirmation bias talking because this is EXACTLY how i like to travel when given the option, but i loved this piece on how to do your trips to your favorite towns. “Really knowing a city means doing things you would do on an average day if you lived there.”
Graydon Carter is opening an Air Mail store in the west village. Feels 2010-ish.
The Footwear/feets zone!
There’s been a lot of conjecture among sneakerheads around bringing Mark Parker back to Nike, as the current CEO is widely believed to be blowing it spectactularly. A worthy read from local paper The Oregonian re-examines the culture of Nike during his tenure with a sobering lens.
Bobby hundreds has a hypothesis for softening ‘lifestyle’ sneaker / high-heat product sales:
reader, i think he’s onto something!
Dave is New Balances’ latest ambassador
we are entering a glory age of mule/tabi/moc or mary-jane-like sneakers for the girls (n guys)
Jim Greco has teased his highly skateable hammers loafers
Ok, thats it yall, substack told me i typed too much already. As always, if you enjoy these please forward them on to your friends, co-workers, or whoever you think might like it. Have a fab weekend!
GG x
The maryjane sneaker revival is real and I am personally here for it. I wonder if diesel or Lacoste is going to take advantage of the chokehold they had on these models back in the noughties. (Also great email as always!) x
There was a great tweet about websites getting more boring in reference to Clif Bar:
https://x.com/sdw/status/1640021222015598592?lang=en
Hopefully elements of the old web come back. A lot of what gets passed off as clean design is really just pretty boring.