mornin' merry makers 🤠🎶🛍️🎤🎬
sxsw starts later this week!
which means my backyard (downtown austin) is about to be completely transformed.
austin is a car city every other week of the year. wide streets, parking garages, people prioritizing ac, lots of traffic. sxsw turns it into something closer to new york with busy sidewalks, lines spilling into the street, someone you've been meaning to email for six months appearing around a corner.
so much kismet happens here.
the festival started in 1987 as a scrappy music industry gathering. a way to put austin on the map (it worked). then it added film. that worked too. then tech showed up in the early 2000s and seems to get the most press and brand spend. i first “attended” in 2009 & can’t say i fully understood what it was.
but the energy was electric & i hope it always stays that way.
this year & for many more, the convention center is not the hub as its been fully demolished. which means everything that used to happen inside is bleeding further into the streets, into lobbies, into the places i walk every day.
i’m accepting that my block will feel like a convention floor.
so this year i decided to do some sniffing in advance to see how retail is showing up.
it's not a track. it doesn't get a keynote. ecommerce gets sessions. social media gets loads panels. ai gets whole houses. but physical retail hides in the subtext. in the talks about consumer psychology, cultural identity, music, wellness, and transformation. in the brand activations planted inside storefronts just off congress avenue.
i did the hunting & i’m sharing what caught my eye. 👇
quick shoutout to this month’s merry partner
✨ marqvision ✨
did you know 78% of brands lose 5%+ revenue to counterfeits?!?!
with ai, fakes are appearing faster than ever. which means your fans unknowingly buy knockoffs, get disappointed, and blame you.
true for digital & physical stores.
marqvision created an enlightening report explaining this costly ai tax & sharing exactly how you can fight back to reclaim your revenue.
store sessions
the panel that’s most directly tied to store is called mall rats reborn: how hot topic is using entertainment to revitalise retail. hot topic shot two social-first sitcoms entirely inside malls, casting creators from the emo, gamer, and cosplay communities that built major buzz for the brand.
i love to see more stores becoming set.
when the content is the store, and the store is the content. love this topic is getting dedicated attention. plus i love seeing a trend i predicted seeing more of getting a panel!
another very festival appropriate panel with music twist is retail as a stage: merch, culture & artist identity. focused on how artists are using retail as cultural infrastructure, not just a revenue line. merch drops, in-store activations, exclusive collaborations that deepen fandom.
different context than the first, but same underlying thesis.
the physical space is where culture gets made tangible.
consumer psych sessions
three sessions stick out to me on how they’re talking about shopping:
culture meets commerce: building the next $1B brand features emma grede, who built good american and helped scale skims. she knows better than almost anyone how cultural relevance becomes commercial scale. the retail angle is implicit but it's absolutely there.
welcome to the transformation economy is based on a new book by b. joseph pine II. this is the guy that coined the term "the experience economy” & wrote a book on it back in 1999. his argument now is that we've moved past experiences into something transformation. people don't just want to feel something. they want to become something.
unreasonable by nature: the psychology of consumer choice gets into the mechanics of how we actually make decisions. academics from top business schools make the case that emotional and identity-driven appeals outperform rational marketing every time. always useful framing for anyone designing a store environment or a sales floor.
retail related
three more that are somewhat adjacent to stores:
composing for wellness: music as a cognitive utility looks nerdy but fabulous. all about how neuroscience-backed music designed to drive behavioral outcomes in classrooms, clinics, and retail environments. the sonic layer of the store experience is getting much deserved attention.
when ai shops for you is one i'm skeptical of but watching carefully. the pitch is that ai agents will discover, recommend, and purchase on our behalf. maybe they will. but so much of what makes physical retail irreplaceable is the human friction. think understanding this will help better position brick & mortar.
the future of fashion: the next fashion stack is a full day of fashion, tech, and community conversations at hotel van zandt, closing with a runway show. event is put on by refind (a membership platform for fashion founders to scale) & pickle (a peer-to-peer fashion rental platform). tagline is “where innovation, data, and community converge”
stores activating
a few in store activations worth noting:
rivian x alltrails is hosting a wellness walk out of the rivian space that is one of the rare stores with direct access to the ladybird trail on town lake.
yeti's flagship always hosts a live music showcase which is on brand and perfect for their south congress location. conveniently next to rivian too.
birkenstock is rumored to be doing free branding at their music lane store, a fun texas twist for their clogs.
even a few films!
sxsw always has films loosely orbiting retail & consumer culture. this year is no exception with the two most notable being:
the opening night film is i love boosters, a social satire directed by boots riley about a crew of professional shoplifters called the velvet gang, targeting a cutthroat fashion mogul. so curious where all they filmed
cookie queens is a documentary about the girl scout cookie business which is near to my heart as it was my first “sales” job. apparently this has grown into an $800m empire that’s driven by young sellers where, as the description puts it, "innocence and ambition collide." i hope it doesn’t take my delight out of carmel delites fka samoas.
if you're going to be in austin next week, please reach out!
i haven't locked in which events i'm actually attending as i don’t have a badge & prefer to wing it. my favorite sxsw days have little plans, but that’s also because i’ve never invested in a badge so i’m at the mercy of the lines.
plus i love to leave space for serendipity & merrymaking.
p.s. don’t skip on reading this.