Automation is a choice.
It hits the poor hardest, removes romance, and is largely negative for society. Yet, it's pursued with fervour: huh? ALSO FEAT: Starbucks! Selfridges! WWF! B Corps! Instacart! Unified Goods!
“The planet has gone past the point of no return, and though many people don’t want to hear it, our customers and kids do.” - Anne Pitcher, Selfridges outgoing boss.
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SCOOP THE BEANS, MY FRIENDS.
The moral of the story: automation has a cost that needs to be deeply considered.
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AUTOMATION NATION
MIT study finds that the ‘drive for efficiency’ = income inequality*
*I dunno about you but I feel like we need less of this?
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‘HARD AGREE’.
“Business is often guilty of limiting its thinking by squeezing big ideas into neat little boxes. For example, through the old business mindset, something as vast and unknowable and exciting as the Internet becomes ‘e-commerce’. Connection, interaction, learning, touching, feeling and art becomes ‘experience’. Preserving life on this planet and creating a green revolution? We call that ‘sustainability’. Retail is essentially a human pursuit, but we have a very inhumane way of talking about it – we even call the varied and wonderful people that we engage with every day ‘consumers’.”
from the much-shared (and rightly so) Selfridges future report.
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WASHPO: “AMAZON IS A TACKY STRIP MALL”
The lack of control we have over what we see online vs the choices we get to make IRL?
“Amazon might feel unbeatable for service, fast shipping and easy returns. But as a place to find products, it’s becoming a tacky strip mall filled with neon signs pointing you in all the wrong directions.”
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STAY YOUNG: THINK BEFORE YOU BUY
Handy report from Vice on the buying habits of yoof.
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THE ‘RESPONSIBLE CONSUMER’' SECTION
WWF footprint app - I thought this was really well done. Interesting to look at ‘previous you’ or ‘pre-pandemic you’… or imagine that you’re an Instagram travel influencer and racking up carbon for likes.
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⚠️ Minor self-indulgence alert ⚠️ : once upon a time, when I was young and the internet was not all pervasive and electro-indie music was deemed ‘cool’, I worked** at The Sunday Times Style magazine. The editor at the time was Tiffanie Darke. She’s on Substack now and writing some good stuff, esp around responsible consumption in fashion.
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Bale Tales
Thought this was vv good for student work.
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B Corp Criticism
Interesting. Who monitors the monitors? Is ‘B Corp’ just a branding triumph? Environmental auditing is going to be the wild west, isn’t it?
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‘Nature appointed to the board’
Faith in Nature doing as the name would lead you to believe. Into this idea - worth reading / understanding more deeply. Click away, pals!
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I like Arena, and this is a nice channel about handmade fashion.
(Thanks, Tom!)
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IN PRAISE OF PEOPLE SHARING GOOD STUFF
“Hey, Adam! Where do you keep up to date with new stuff?”
Well, dear reader, I sometimes look at the v handy D&P ‘Briefing’.
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INSTACART AND ‘THE FUTURE OF GROCERY’*
I actually quite like the look of this…
https://www.instacart.com/company/updates/introducing-connected-stores-making-shopping-seamless/
*You can choose the future you want, but tech and its investors may push you to their own preferred conclusion, so take care out there.
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SHOPKEEPER OF THE MONTHS
Congrats to James of Unified Goods on this auspicious award that I have just created. I like what you do.
“We’re both historically and romantically attached to physical retail spaces, they were a key part in building the social fabric that we call society today, so I don’t think we can just ‘shed’ it, for me it’s still the ultimate way to experience product and I’m personally twice as likely to buy something in person. A store is a sensory experience—the handle of a physical product, the people, the scent of new packaging, the conversation, the interaction. The internet still has a lot of work to do.” - well said.
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CUSTOMER SEGMENTATION IS DYING.
‘Whereas businesses in the past grouped consumers into segments, retailers in the future will be able to target each individual and tailor products and services to that individual’s needs.’
from a BCG FORECOURT FUTURE REPORT - had to read this for a project. Forgive me, father.
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LSD: LISTEN, SEE, DO™️
🦻 Verbatim Books Store Playlist (+ 24 hours of good stuff here). I don’t know anything about Verbatim Bookstore. It could be entirely fictional, which would be kinda cool / ‘meta’ in the old sense. I guess it’s this place though. Looks cute.
👀 Cultural Observations: skinfade and North Face. Only seen this one, gonna watch more. This lad’s got talent.
📖 I urge you to read The Years by Annie Ernaux. There’s some perfect passages on the boom in consumer culture post war and the shift towards mall ‘leisure’ in the 80s/90s.
“The increasingly rapid arrival of new things drove the past away. People did not question their usefulness, they just wanted to possess them and suffered when they didn’t earn enough to buy them outright.” - Annie Ernaux in The Years
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POINT OF SALE LAST MINUTE LINKS
M&S had a good Xmas and seems to be heading in the right direction…
Amusing and spot on eulogy for Fenwick on Bond St. Soon to close.
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FIVE TYPES OF CONSUMER THAT YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND!
The little live graph in this is quite ‘fun’ to play with.
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THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME, PLEASE COME AGAIN.
**Indulgent memory lane moment: 2005-7: interned, mostly unpaid. Did get some £s for a thing I wrote though, so won’t be pursuing a lawsuit just yet - fear not, Rupert.
I also: fetched coffees from the weird Starbucks in the basement of the old office in Pennington St; ‘did research’ (plus ça change), claimed my travel allowance from the funny finance place… in cash!; marvelled at the snack trolley that came round, stocked with loads of chocolate bars; was mildly in awe of the dandy mens’ fashion editor; abused my position by calling in all manner of stuff to ‘review’ (sorry to indie record labels of the era, and thank you); was a bit sickened at the sheer amount of STUFF the beauty desk got sent; laughed at the massive painting of RM in the News Int foyer each day; felt intimidated by the interns on ‘more journalistic’ sections; and was touched by how nice the folks who worked there were (Fleur, Gemma, Grae, Talib, Sharon: big up, should you ever read this).
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THIS ISSUE’S EXCELLENT PHOTO OF BEACHGOERS IN FELIXSTOWE WITH SHIPPING CONTAINERS LOOMING IS BY SOMEONE NAMED QUINTIN LAKE.