And yes, someone on Google's product committee must be a Star Wars fan, because every year they gift us names that sound straight out of the Mos Eisley cantina.

But beyond the funny name, here's what really matters: we finally have a tool that can revolutionize how we work with images in ecommerce.

The Same Old Problem

Think about your product catalog. That endless Excel sheet with SKUs. The hours and hours of photo shoots. The budget that vanishes into making your products look good online.

Or worse: think about when your marketing team asks for "more variety" for social media campaigns and all you have are those three product shots on white background that your supplier sent two years ago.

Sounds familiar, right?

This is where Nano Banana enters the scene like the hero we didn't know we needed.

Three Reasons Why This Changes Everything

▶︎ First: it's ridiculously easy to use. Forget complex prompts or learning technical jargon. You talk to it like you'd talk to your trusted designer. "Hey, put this product in a Christmas setting" or "change this shirt to navy blue." That's it. The model understands context, intent, and executes. Like having a senior designer working 24/7, but without the complaints when you ask for changes at 11 PM.

▶︎ Second: the consistency is insane. And this isn't a small thing. You can upload a photo of your star product and ask for twenty different variations. In all of them, your product will remain exactly the same. Same design, same details, same quality. Only what you ask to change will change. For anyone who's tried to maintain visual consistency in their catalog, this is like finding the Holy Grail.

▶︎ Third: the level of control is out of this world. Want to change the camera angle? Done. Adjust the lighting to look like natural light? No problem. Change the product color without doing a new photo shoot? Piece of cake. It's like having a virtual photo studio where you're the creative director and Banana is your entire production team.

What Blew My Mind the Most

After several days playing with this (and trust me, I've lost count of the hours), what really left me speechless is the iteration capability:

Before, each generated image was an independent process. You started from scratch every time and prayed something decent would come out. Now you can take an image and work it like digital Play-Doh. "Make it brighter." "Now put it in a forest." "Great, now make it rain." And Banana keeps everything perfectly consistent.

This used to be possible only if you had budget to train your own models or if you mastered technical configurations that would make a NASA engineer cry. Now, any ecommerce manager can do it from their browser while having their morning coffee.

Your New Creative Arsenal (Courtesy of Jedi Master Banana)

Image combination that looks like black magic. Upload several photos and tell it how you want them merged. The current record is combining thirteen different images into one perfect composition. Check out this example that broke Twitter:

Instant professional cleanup. Got amateur product photos taken with your phone? Upload them and ask it to convert them into professional catalog photos. Perfect white background, frontal angle, studio lighting. Like hiring a professional photographer, but free and in seconds.

Unlimited catalog expansion. If you sell fashion, this will change your life. One photo shoot, infinite possibilities. Change the model, change the scenery, make the model smile, sit them down, stand them up, take them to Paris, New York, Tatooine if you want. All without lifting a finger or spending an extra dollar on production.

Let Me Show You with a Real Example

Alright, less talk and more action. I grabbed a DTC brand (Minimalism Brand) to show you the power of the dark side... I mean, of Nano Banana.

I start with this catalog photo. The product is fine, but the model looks like he just got his credit card statement. I know there are fashion codes about whether models should smile or not, but come on, a little joy wouldn't hurt.

So I ask Banana to cheer him up a bit. And while we're at it, give him some sun because he's paler than a Twilight vampire.

Next step: I need a photo with more life, more action. I take him to London on one of those three sunny days they get per year (with AI, everything is possible, even sun in London).

The result is spectacular. The product looks a thousand times better, more aspirational, more sellable:

Now I go for another product. This time I want a model with more character, George Clooney type but silver fox edition. Since I haven't asked anyone's permission, I ask Banana to create a fictional model, elegant, mature, with that touch of sophistication the brand is looking for.

I put him in the Minimalism shirt and start playing with backgrounds. The original doesn't convince me at all. After a couple of iterations, I get something much cleaner and more professional. And mind you, I did this in two minutes while waiting for my coffee to heat up:

The Future is… Banana

With this quick example, I want you to see the brutal potential this has for ecommerce.

Are there limitations? Of course. If you play around for a while, you'll find them. But at the pace this is going, with the money they're pouring in and the development speed, those limitations will disappear faster than the Jedi in Order 66.

Don't just stand there watching. This isn't a passing fad. It's the future of visual content in ecommerce, and it's already here.

Resources to Start Right Now:

• Start to play with Nano Banana

• Google's official post (for those who like documentation):

• Tips and tricks to get the most out of it

▶︎ If you don't have access to Gemini: Try Nano Banana on LMArena, where you can also compare models against each other: https://lmarena.ai/?mode=direct (Use "direct" mode instead of "battle" and activate "image" mode in the prompt box)

Look, I've been in ecommerce long enough to recognize when something is truly game-changing versus just hype. Nano Banana is the real deal. It solves the visual content problem we've all been struggling with for years: limited photos, endless needs, tight budgets.

Start experimenting with it today—even 30 minutes of playing around will show you possibilities you hadn't imagined.

And if you found this useful, forward it to your team. They'll thank you when they're creating campaigns in minutes instead of weeks.

Best regards,
Pablo Renaud

December 2008. My ecommerce metrics:

• Revenue: Down 73% YoY

• Inventory turnover: 47 days → 186 days

• Cash flow: Negative for 4 straight months

• Bank balance: $312

I was 6 days away from shutting down.

The "foolproof" ecommerce formula of 2007—cheap Facebook ads + basic SEO + email blasts—had stopped working overnight. While other founders were pivoting, I was paralyzed.

That painful Friday call from my supplier ("Pay by Monday or we cut you off") was my wake-up call.

The Comeback (With Data)

Fast forward to 2025. Same founder, different playbook:

• Revenue: 8-figure annual run rate across 5 brands

• Channels: Marketplaces (65%), DTC (35%); International (50%+)

• Operations: Fully automated 3PL handling 500+ orders/day

• ROAS: Consistent 4.2x across all paid channels

What changed? Everything.

The 3 Systems That Saved My Business

1. The Anti-Fragile Model

Instead of one store, I run several. When Amazon changes their algorithm (again), my online stores compensate. When local sales dip, rest of Europe picks up the slack.

Result: No single point of failure can kill the business.

2. The 80/20 Automation Stack

• Inventory management: Automated (saves 15 hours/week)

• Customer service: 70% AI-handled, really (maintaining 4.8★ rating)

• Pricing optimization: Dynamic algorithms (increased margins by 18%)

• Order fulfillment: 3PL partnership (reduced overhead by 60%)

Result: I work 25 hours/week, not 70+.

3. The "Boring" Profit Focus

Forget vanity metrics. I track:

• Contribution margin per SKU

• Customer acquisition payback period

• Inventory velocity by channel

• True unit economics (including returns)

Result: Profitable every single month since 2022.

Why I'm Sharing This

Every week, I see founders making my 2008 mistakes:

• Over-relying on one channel

• Ignoring unit economics

• Scaling sales without systems

• Fighting today's war with yesterday's tactics

That's why I created the EcommLetter.

What You Get (No BS)

On each edition, I send one actionable insight from running real ecommerce businesses:

✓ Actual numbers: Like how we increased AOV by 34% (and the hidden cost)
✓ Failed experiments: The $20K ads in a marketplace that returned $3K in sales
✓ Tool stack: Exactly what we use
✓ Market intel: What's working NOW, not in Paleolithic ecommerce

No theory. No courses to sell.

Just battle-tested tactics from someone who's been in the trenches since 2003.

Two Types of Ecommerce Founders

Type A: Uses proven systems. Scales intelligently. Sleeps at night.

Type B: Wings it. Burns cash. Burns out.

The difference? Access to real-world intelligence from someone who's already paid the tuition.

Join 6,000+ Ecommerce Operators

Get the email that's helped readers generate an extra $47M in combined revenue (based on our 2024 reader survey).

Get Free Access →

Subscribe now

Zero spam. Unsubscribe anytime.

P.S. Still skeptical? Your competition is probably already subscribed. Just saying.

Pablo Renaud
Founder, EcommLetter
$50M+ in career ecommerce revenue
Shipped from Madrid to 27 countries

▶︎ Meet COMET, Perplexity’s freshly launched agentic browser you can grab right here (no waitlist, finally): https://www.perplexity.ai/comet

Wait—what on earth is an “agentic browser”?

Think of it as the next evolution of search.

Instead of handing you a pile of links, an agentic browser stitches together multiple queries, hops across sites, applies a bit of reasoning, and delivers an actual result—report, spreadsheet, summary, you name it. In short, it behaves less like Google and more like a junior analyst who skipped the coffee break.

• Automation on the fly – Outline a task (“Compare shipping rates across five UPS competitors and draft a cost-savings report”), hit Run, and watch the tab frenzy happen in the background.

• Context that sticks – Because the agent keeps the thread of your conversation, you refine instead of restart.

• No-code superpowers – All of the above, zero lines of Python required. Works like magic, in natural language.

What about ChatGPT?

COMET is the latest kid on the block, but you can pull a similar stunt inside ChatGPT by flipping on agent mode if you’d rather stay in familiar territory.

Picture this: your screen erupts into a rapid-fire ballet of tabs—each one springing open, logging in, skirting cookie banners, and swatting pop-ups like a seasoned bouncer. Links get clicked, forms autofill themselves, captchas melt away, and data flows neatly into a doc you didn’t lift a finger to create.

If the agent hits a roadblock—a paywall, a 404, a stubborn modal—it pivots, retries, or grabs the info from a workaround source, all before you’ve even taken a second sip of iced coffee.

The whole thing feels less like browsing and more like watching a self-driving browser hustle on your behalf with uncanny precision and zero need for supervision.

Why ecommerce folks should care—yesterday

1. Competitive intel on autopilot

   Set a recurring scrape of rival pricing, promos, or new SKUs, then have the agent kick you a neat summary every Monday. For free.

2. Product-page glow-ups

   Feed it raw specs plus customer reviews, and let the browser compile a ready-to-publish description before your latte cools.

3. Review mining without the carpal tunnel

   “Show me the top five complaints about our best-seller over the last year, grouped by theme.” Boom—more actionable than a generic sentiment score.

4. Data fetch & stitch

   Need revenue, ad spend, and conversion data in one sheet? Frame the question once; the agent will pull, clean, and merge the numbers like a pro.

5. Fire-drill triage

   When that unexpected promo goes live, an agentic browser can check landing pages, coupon codes, and inventory levels simultaneously—faster than a slack ping chain.

The takeaway

These tools are still newborns, which is the perfect time to kick the tires: low stakes, high learning curve, huge upside.

Spin up COMET (or ChatGPT’s agent mode) this week, throw it one mind-numbing task you’re sick of, and see how far the automation rabbit hole goes. Once September hits, you might find your to-do list suspiciously light—and your deck chair still calling.

Oh, and one more thing

And here’s the kicker: chances are your next online “customer” will be one of these agentic browsers working on behalf of a real shopper—scraping specs, comparing prices, auto-filling carts, and sealing the deal in milliseconds.

Get under the hood now, see how they traverse your pages, and fix the friction points before the bots beat the humans to checkout.

“In platform wars, you want to be as close to the user as possible—otherwise, someone else will get between you.”

Google got that. And they played it perfectly.

Back in 2008, alongside dominating online search and ads, they quietly launched two free products that would become practically invisible infrastructure: Chrome and Android.

With those moves, they locked down the user interface. They parked themselves right between you and the web—leaving no room for other platforms to sneak in.

▶︎ So when I read this headline yesterday, alarm bells went off:

OpenAI is reportedly working on its own browser to compete with Chrome. (source)

This isn’t just another product release.

This could actually work. This time, someone could go head-to-head with Google.

Why now?

Because the moment is right. The shift is real. And it’s being powered by something we’re just beginning to understand:

Agentic AI.

Agentic AI is artificial intelligence that can act independently toward a goal.

No step-by-step prompts. No hand-holding. It just… figures it out.

It can research. Write emails. Automate workflows. Book things. All without you micromanaging every click.

Think: less “tool” and more “self-starting assistant.”

And here’s the twist: it’s going to live in your browser.

And not just there—but let’s focus on browsers for a second, because this matters more than it seems.

Let’s talk browsers.

Quick gut check:

• How many hours a day do you spend working in browser tabs?

• And how many of those tabs live inside Google Chrome?

For me? All of them.

Your browser is your workspace.

And chances are, that browser is Chrome.

Taking Chrome down is no small feat. Google has had a 15-year head start, 3 billion users, and owns roughly 68% of the market.

But if anything could rattle that empire, it’s a browser that rethinks everything around a seamless integration with agentic AI.

Not AI slapped on top.

We’re talking a total reset of how the browser works.

Let’s get into it.

What could an agentic browser actually do?

Picture a browser built from the ground up with AI like ChatGPT baked in. One that:

• Finds and filters content for you, skipping the junk, the ads, the chaos.

• Manages multiple tabs and tasks simultaneously, like a behind-the-scenes assistant squad.

• Knows you—your preferences, payment methods, calendar. Not in a creepy way. In a “don’t ask me that again, you already know” way.

• Just works, out of the box. No endless settings, no tech savviness required. Clean onboarding → mass adoption.

Your browser will know you.

It’ll remember your addresses, your shirt size, your wife’s birthday, your go-to airlines, your usual lunch order—and it’ll act on all that without being told twice.

Let me be blunt:

▶︎ This new kind of browser will…

• Write your emails

• Buy your stuff

• Book your travel, dinners, haircuts

• Run your calendar

• Fill in your CRM and expense reports

• Draft your LinkedIn posts

• Maybe even swipe right on your behalf

Now that’s a revolution.

And just like platforms will battle for this new interface, digital pros who move early will earn an edge others can’t easily catch up to.

Wanna be one of them? Here’s your homework.

What should you do now?

Personally, I’m not watching this from the sidelines. I’m in.

My focus? Agentic AI applied to eCommerce—from both sides:

• How sellers will use it to sell faster, better, and with less stress.

• How buyers will completely change how they shop.

This is not going to be a small shift.

And yes, those who prepare now will be very hard to beat later.

Here are four places to start exploring the world of agentic browsers—and what they mean for the future of online commerce:

1 // Try COMET, Perplexity’s new browser

There’s a waitlist—unless you’re on their highest-tier plan—but it’s worth jumping in. Join here

2 // Explore MANUS , a general-purpose AI agent

Think less “ask for stuff” and more “delegate outcomes.” It’s action-oriented and shows its steps along the way. Start here

3 // Upgrade to ChatGPT Plus, if you haven’t

When OpenAI launches its browser, early adopters will benefit. Pricing here

4 // Feeling dystopian? Watch Opera Neon’s concept videos

Yes, Opera still exists—and they’re swinging big with weird ideas. Watch here

You’ve got some exploring to do.

And if you want to swap notes, I’m all ears. Ping me in the chat.

In The EcommLetter, we’re going deep on everything that intersects
AI + eCommerce.

And this? This is going to be huge.

Catch you soon,

Pablo Renaud

From the outside, the place looked like a dusty antique shop. Narrow. Quiet. The kind of spot where you’d expect to find a vintage Tiffany lamp, not a rare bottle of Ribera del Duero with a wild backstory.

We walked in purely out of curiosity. What happened next felt like stepping into a movie.

Right after we crossed the door, the owner —a gray-bearded man with a documentary narrator’s voice and a warm smile— asked what we were looking for. He noticed we’d drifted toward the good stuff: the wine section.

“We’re looking for a nice bottle to gift… or maybe keep. Not sure yet.”
He smiled. “That can be fixed. Come upstairs.”

We followed him up to a floor that turned out to be… his wine temple.

Hard to describe it properly. It was chaos and harmony at once. There was art and there was structure. Inventory, yes — but also the warmth of a lived-in space full of memories. Low shelves like an old deli, handwritten labels, soulful objects.

But most of all: stories everywhere.

And you know me — I’m a sucker for stories. I was like a kid in Disney World.

He said, “You can’t just stand here doing nothing. Let me pour you a glass.”

We tasted a few wines, each one with a surprising tale behind it. He shared anecdotes from every vineyard he works with — all handpicked with obsessive care. Brought out a couple of snacks. Amazing.

Next thing we knew, over an hour had flown by. We learned, laughed, toasted, soaked in the whole vibe.

And yes: we left with way too many bottles. We wanted to recreate that magic at home. To surprise friends with this hidden gem and the stories that came with it.

And as we walked out I thought: this man doesn’t sell wine.
He sells experiences. And he does it masterfully.
No email flows. No CRM. No Shopify.

And that made me stop and think…

What DTC Brands Can Learn From a Guy in a Wine Shop?

Look, ecommerce has its strengths. But let’s be real — too many online stores feel like they were built by teams who’ve forgotten what selling to humans looks like.

So today, I’m breaking down 4 things this secret wine shop does better than most ecommerce brands — and how you can steal those moves for your DTC.

1. Design the customer journey with intention — not like a warehouse layout.

This wine shop didn’t have 500 bottles scattered around like a never-ending scroll of products.

There was a central table with “just arrived,” a shelf with “house favorites,” and a corner for “hidden gems” (my personal weakness). Every section told a story. Every spot was a moment designed for the visitor — curated by the owner.

Online, most stores throw everything on a grid: categories, filters, price sliders. Boom. It’s cold and overwhelming.

But your customer doesn’t always know what they want. Sometimes they just need you to put the “special stuff” right in front of them.

Like Typology in skincare: instead of throwing you into a product jungle, they ask three simple questions and recommend your ideal products.

Pro tip: Create landing pages based on moods, moments, or needs. Group products that belong together. Ask your user what they’re looking for — then show them just that.

Build story-driven paths, not product mazes.

2. Tell stories. Don’t just list features.

A tech sheet about a wine bottle wouldn’t have sold us anything.

But hearing about a small family winery in Galicia surviving a brutal frost thanks to pure grit, how they use chestnut barrels instead of oak, or why a particular wine is named after a grandmother who taught the winemaker how to cook… that got us hooked (that floored me!).

That turned a bottle into a story you want to share over dinner with friends.

And on your site? How many product pages sound like “100% cotton, regular fit, white tee”?

Thanks for nothing, Wikipedia.

Look at Allbirds: they don’t just sell shoes — they sell sustainability, recycled materials, feel-good manufacturing. Warm images. Real copy. Emotional hooks.

By the time you get to the product, you already want it.

Pro tip: Rewrite your product pages like you’re explaining them to a friend. Share the “why,” not just the “what.” Add photos, quotes, micro-stories.

Make your products desirable. Not just scannable.

3. Show up for customers when it matters most.

When we were torn between two bottles, the owner didn’t vanish. He sat down with us:

“If it’s for a formal dinner, I’d go with this one. But if there’s strong cheese involved… this other one’s magic.”

No pressure. Just advice. You felt guided. You felt seen.

In ecommerce, this moment is usually MIA. Users browse a sterile catalog, get overwhelmed, and bounce. You expect the “Add to Cart” button and free shipping to do all the heavy lifting. No wonder abandonment rates are sky-high.

But brands like Asphalte (French menswear) or Kitchenaid know better. They offer comparisons. Highlight real reviews. Share how-to videos. Have actual humans in chat (that don’t jump-scare you on entry).

Pro tip: Identify your drop-off points. Then add value there. A sharp comparison. A genuine review. A helpful answer to a common doubt. Helping ≠ interrupting. It’s just being there when it counts.

4. Wake up the senses — even through a screen.

That wine shop smelled like flowers and old wood. You could hear soft jazz playing. The floor creaked — in a cozy way. The whole place whispered, “you’re somewhere special.”

Now ask yourself: Does your ecommerce site say anything without words?

It’s not easy. But it’s doable.

Look at what Onoma does with skincare photos — pure emotion, pure sensation.

Pro tip: Check your photos. If they scream “stock image,” you’ve got work to do. Add textures, sounds, short videos.

Describe how it feels, not just how it looks. Show customers actually using your stuff on social. Bring life to the screen.

TL;DR — Takeaways

Selling online doesn’t mean forgetting how to sell. It means translating what’s always worked… into digital.

Behind every cart is a person. Not a KPI.

We live in a world of AI, automations, smart prompts, instant personalization. And yeah, I’m all for it.

But that’s exactly why the human touch is more valuable than ever.

Warmth. Intention. Real conversation — online.

So next time you review your ecommerce experience, ask yourself:

Would the wine guy near Santiago Bernabéu do it this way?

If not… maybe it’s time to open a bottle, grab a blank page, and rethink a few things.

▶︎ Oh — and if you ever find yourself in Madrid, and you’re into stories and customer magic, go visit the secret wine shop.

Every word of this story? 100% true.

The infamous “2008 crash” had torn through my ecommerce business. Just months before, I was still calling it—half-jokingly—my “digital empire”.

Now? It looked more like a half-sunk ship.

There I was, doing inventory like a man possessed, barcode scanner in hand, hoping some spreadsheet miracle would save me. Spoiler: it didn’t.

By that time I was founder, tech support, warehouse guy, programmer, customer service rep… and, honestly, I could’ve used a therapist—but I couldn’t afford one. Everything depended on me. There was no one else to blame in that sinking ship.

The ecommerce playbook at the time—cheap ads, SEO, mass email marketing—had worked. Until the economy punched it in the face.

First the clicks dropped. Then the sales.

I was unable to react. I didn’t know what to do.

By the end of the year, my bank account was empty.

And then the call came:

“We need payment by Friday, or we’re cutting supply.”

I hung up the phone. Looked around at the stock towers I couldn’t sell. The silence was deafening. The ground felt like quicksand under my feet.

Cardboard boxes don’t make good dinner. But my daughter still had to eat.

In just a few weeks, I’d gone from signing invoices with a grin… to counting coins to keep the lights on. I slept with my phone under the pillow—not out of addiction, but because the next alert could be the final nail in the coffin of my sinking empire.

What did I learn from all of that?

A lot. Let me tell you.

⏩ Fast forward to summer 2025. Present day.

I wake up without panic. My online sales dashboard greets me with five digits and a wink. Most sales channels are green. A couple are orange, but nothing serious. We’re cruising steady.

I’ve been selling online for over 20 years now.

And I learned how to grow smarter during the DTC ecommerce boom that followed.

Today, everything important in my ecommerce business is systemized:

• A 3PL team packs smiles into every order—usually before I finish my first coffee. They’re awesome.

  No more warehouse headaches. I’ve turned fixed costs into variable ones. I can scale fast when needed. I enjoy Prime Days and Black Fridays. And when sales dip? I adjust without stress.

• Customer service? Handled. Magic happens behind the scenes. AI, humans, clear processes—everything just works. I used to get involved in every support ticket. I always wanted to be right. Now I let the pros take care of the customer.

• Automations watch prices, stock, and returns like bloodhounds. And the human team makes the smart calls. No more “are we making money or not?” No more surprise sales drops. No more sleepless nights wondering if this whole thing is even working.

• Multiple revenue streams. Independent channels. If one takes a hit, the others keep us afloat. No drama. You can’t rely on just Amazon. Or just your own store. Or your Instagram audience (because, let’s be honest, it’s not really yours).

  You have to diversify. Balance things out. Build a global business that turns a real profit at the end of the month.

These are just four things I had to learn the hard way.

Now I solve them with ease—because of the experience.

But there’s always more.

Selling online profitably means constantly rethinking everything.

This isn’t a fairytale. Selling online is hard.

Algorithms change. Competitors race to the bottom. Consumers pull back. Logistics still plays practical jokes on us. And don’t even get me started on European regulations—just one hurdle after another.

It’s a minefield.

But with systems, solid tech, and a great team, you can build something profitable. Really profitable.

From an ecommerce shipwreck in 2008…
To, years later, a solid boat cruising at 35 knots, handling the waves like a champ.

And still—I never let my guard down.

Because every now and then, the boat shakes.

There’s noise. There are bumps.

And that noise?

It reminds me exactly why I keep doing this—why I keep writing and sharing what matters for selling online:

So that maybe, just maybe, someone out there—excited about their online business—won’t live through the same 2008 nightmare I did.

Because they made the right decisions in time.

And out of those scars, EcommLetter was born.

These days, what drives me is helping you build your own ecommerce success story.

I mean that from the heart.

I don’t want you to go through what I went through.

I want to help you see how to sell more, sell better—and live a better life while doing it.

EcommLetter is my loudspeaker.

In every edition, I open the box of memories—failures and wins alike:

• That strategy that nearly doubled AOV… but killed our margins.

• The mistake that cost a friend an entire Black Friday.

• The tool that saved a clearance campaign—and kept saving others after.

• The shiny new channel tactic I came up with… that turned out to be a dumpster fire.

All real stories. Full of mud, data, and that special “only-someone-who’s-been-burned” kind of truth.

Stories meant to help you avoid the same mistakes I made.

You’ve got two possible paths ahead:

If you’re selling online, your future is going to look like one of two viral videos:

🎬 The making of a profitable, resilient business—without soul-crushing effort.

No more warehouse all-nighters. No more silence when the sales dashboard stays flat.

Just steady growth with “Eye of the Tiger” playing in the background 🥊🥊🥊

Or…

🎞️ A chaotic reel of sleepless nights, dark circles under your eyes, dusty inventory, and Instagram ads that burn cash and bring zero sales.

That’s the one I want to save you from—because I’ve lived it.

▶︎ Here’s something important:

The outcome won’t be decided by how hard you hustle.

Believe me, in 2008 I gave it everything I had—and still shipwrecked.

It’s not about effort.

The difference between those two paths?
One smart move. One good tool. One timely warning that helped you pivot fast.

That’s exactly what you’ll get when you join EcommLetter:

• Real-world strategies to sell more—and sell smarter. Not outdated theories from the golden age of dropshipping.

• Tips, ideas, battle-tested tricks.

• Shared privately, behind the scenes of the newsletter. Stuff you won’t see from the outside— but I can’t wait to show you.

• A community of ecommerce nerds like you and me. People who’ll answer your questions before ChatGPT leads you down the path of mediocrity.

My goal?

That you hear “Eye of the Tiger” playing in the background…

and you win like Rocky Balboa. 🥊🥊🥊

Sound good?

Drop your email here and join EcommLetter—it’s free:

Every edition delivers an ecommerce lesson that cost me time (and money) — so it won’t cost you.

Let’s make sure your business doesn’t become someone else’s cautionary tale.

Yours truly,
Pablo Renaud

And yes, this applies to growing ecommerce brands too.

Let me explain. But first… let’s talk Ironman.

Ironman is the ultimate triathlon: 2.4 miles of swimming, 112 miles of biking, and a full marathon (26.2 miles) to top it off. You’ve got 17 hours to complete this madness. No breaks. No pity. Just steady pulse, cold head… and a stomach that doesn’t betray you.

Ibiza, 1999

Sunrise at Figueretas Beach. The Mediterranean is dead calm, a perfect mirror. The announcer calls the start of the Ironman Ibiza. Among the sea of wetsuits stands Jesús Sánchez, 26, nervous, excited, and probably questioning his life choices.

The swim and bike go like a dream. But at mile 17 of the marathon, everything falls apart: cramps, nausea, a gut-wrenching pain that bends Jesús in half.

The crowd cheers. Jesús doubles over. An ambulance rolls in.

DNF—Did Not Finish.

Three letters that haunt him for months.

Blood tests, training logs, over 30 nutrition products tested… and the conclusion is brutal: he wasn’t undertrained, just under control.

One wrong variable — fast sugars, gluten, high osmolarity — turns your gut into a ticking bomb.

In 2007, Jesús heads to his basement with an industrial blender, a stack of scientific papers, and the energy of a mad scientist. He experiments, fails, adjusts. Sticky notes cover the walls with sodium, potassium, and osmolarity targets. After a hundred botched attempts, one formula finally works. His gut signs off.

Enter 226ERS

That anonymous white powder was the seed of 226ERS: clean ingredients, zero gluten, controlled sugar, low osmolarity. The old strategy of “run and pray” becomes: measure, adjust, repeat.

The results come fast. In 2011, Jesús crosses the Kona finish line — the Mecca of long-distance triathlon — for the first time. And two more times after that.

Then in 2012, he’s crowned European Long Distance Champion in Roth.

Validation in hand, 226ERS moves from basement to fulfillment center, then to global logistics, and now to a thriving DTC site shipping 80+ SKUs to 40 countries.

The brand grows at double digits, embraces subscriptions, adds channels, and turns its digestive obsession into an unfair market advantage.

Moral of the story? Talent gets you to the start line. Obsessive control gets you to the finish.

And the rest? History.

▶︎ 226ERS was born to fuel athletes taking on 226 km of hell… and became the go-to brand for champions.

So what does any of this have to do with your ecommerce?

Swap “Ironman” for “fast-scaling ecommerce” and the pattern is obvious:

The initial boost gets you ahead. But only control over every moving part keeps you alive when things speed up — and they will.

Survival Kit for Ecommerce in Growth Mode

Here’s the bottom line: growth without control is a slow-motion trainwreck.

These five levers will keep your business from imploding when sales surge.

1/ Revenue on Cruise Control

Subscriptions are the cruise control of modern ecommerce: orders repeat on their own. Customers get refills right on time, your cash flow smooths out, and you stop throwing Hail Mary discounts just to hit your monthly numbers.

▶︎ Build your subscription engine. Make the offer a no-brainer. Then spend your energy on growth, not on fires.

2/ Forecast-First Inventory

Predicting demand isn’t magic anymore. Hook up some AI models to your ERP, and you’ll know before stockouts or dead stock bite you. Smart alerts = smart purchase orders.

▶︎ Result? On-time delivery, fewer headaches, zero post-sale panic. But only if you get serious about it now.

3/ AI-Backed Support (That Actually Works)

Imagine if 70% of support tickets never reached a human. With a real-time knowledge base and a well-trained AI agent, your team focuses on upsell-worthy conversations, not lost packages.

Customers feel fast and accurate service. You feel lower costs and fatter carts.

▶︎ I’ve had this running for a while. Total game-changer.

4/ KPI Clarity Over Dashboard Chaos

Overloaded dashboards kill decision-making. Pick 3 metrics that move real dollars — LTV/CAC, repeat rate, acquisition cost — and set up Slack alerts when they go off track.

▶︎ You want traffic lights, not spreadsheets: green = go, red = fix it.

5/ Tech That Snaps Together Like LEGO

New tool? New feature? It shouldn’t feel like open-heart surgery. A modular, API-driven stack lets you plug in new tools like LEGO bricks — without breaking what’s working.

▶︎ I could write a book about this. I’ve been going full LEGO-mode for two years.

Your turn

Now tell me: what topic do you want me to go deep on next editions of the EcommLetter?

But, is this going to happen to me too?

If you’re growing in revenue and complexity, the fires will come. Ask the burned-out founder next door.

Every dollar saved in ops is a dollar freed for growth.

That spike in orders will hit on a Friday night. Or when your star employee is sipping sangria.

And worst of all: your customer will remember the bad experience longer than your best flash sale. Always.

Which means one thing: plan your growth. Or pay the price later.

Think about it:

Will you survive the next sales sprint?

Or will you collapse like Jesús in Ibiza ’99?

I’ve seen this for 25 years in ecommerce:

Put growth control systems in place today — or pay interest tomorrow. That’s it. That’s the tweet.

▶︎ Got questions about this? Drop them in the comments or message me directly.

Chances are, I’ve been where you’re headed.

Talk soon — assuming you don’t dehydrate first.

Stay cool out there,
Pablo Renaud

For years, they made us believe consumers are rational. That what matters is price, specs, technical details.

Yeah… no.

Emotion is what sticks.
It’s what moves us to act.

What makes us remember—and buy.

The great creators—of ads, of stories, of products—they know this.
They don’t sell things. They sell emotions wrapped in things.

And in ecommerce, even without someone staring you in the eyes, emotion still works.

Actually, it has to work. Because emotion is the anchor that turns curiosity into desire… and desire into sales.

Let me tell you something that happened to me.

Well, more like something that hit me so hard, I still feel it:

The Story of Rick Shearman

One of my guilty Sunday pleasures is watching emotional YouTube videos. The kind that mess with your insides.

One day, I stumbled on a video based on a true story.

And trust me, if you watch it, you’ll get chills too.

Here’s how it goes:

Rick Shearman, a 49-year-old Aussie, was enjoying a sunny morning at Byron Bay beach. Nothing unusual. He’s a seasoned surfer, super comfortable in the water.

But that day, something went wrong.

He got caught in the impact zone. Waves crashing, one after another. He tried to stay afloat, follow protocol, ride the current until he could swim parallel to the shore.

But the ocean had other plans.

Cramps started.

Exhaustion.

The distance.

Half a mile offshore. Alone. No land in sight.

And then he remembered he was wearing his Apple Watch Ultra.

In the middle of the waves and wind, he managed to trigger the emergency feature.

For an hour, he stayed connected with rescue services, holding the watch to his ear, fighting not to swallow water.

And finally, a helicopter spotted him.

Pulled him out.

Alive. Safe. Because of the tech on his wrist.

“If I hadn’t been able to call from the watch, I’d still be floating somewhere in international waters,” Rick said.

I watched that video. Felt a lump in my throat.

And I thought, “I’m buying that Apple Watch right now.”

Spoiler: I already had it on my wrist. Bought it the day it came out. Because I do dangerous stuff, too. Often.

And because, even though I try to be rational when I buy, I also get swept up in emotion when something connects to what really matters.

What about you?

How to add emotion to your content

What does this have to do with you and your brand?

Everything.

If you want to sell (and keep people coming back), you need to trigger emotion.

And no, I don’t mean slapping epic music on your videos. I mean creating content that connects with what actually matters to your audience.

Here are 5 practical ideas—and real examples—to inspire you:

1. Start by feeling it yourself

You can’t move anyone emotionally if you’re in robot mode.

Before you write, record, or create… ask yourself what emotion you want to spark. If you don’t feel it, don’t publish it.

Example:

Simon Sinek isn’t powerful because his ideas are revolutionary. It’s because he believes them. His “Start With Why” talk (12M+ views) hits home because it clearly matters to him. And that comes through.

Are you writing a boring landing page—or are you sharing something that actually matters to you?

2. Tell real stories

Stories connect more deeply than any technical feature ever will.

They lower our defenses. That’s where magic happens.

Example:

Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign didn’t sell soap. It told a story: of real women, with real bodies, learning to see themselves as beautiful.

It was an emotional punch that doubled sales and redefined the brand.

Got a real story to tell? A customer experience? Something that happened to you that connects to your product?

▶︎ Check out Dove’s latest video on beauty and generative AI. Powerful stuff.

3. Don’t sell products—sell what they do for people

People don’t want a camera. They want to capture moments.

They don’t want a blender. They want unforgettable breakfasts.

They don’t want a COSORI air fryer. They want their family eating healthy with zero effort.

Example:

GoPro doesn’t sell cameras. It sells adrenaline, freedom, and wild memories.

Every user video is a celebration of what life looks like when you’ve got a GoPro on.

So… what does your product do for people?

How does it improve, simplify, or move them?

4. Pick one emotion—own it

Does your brand inspire trust? Adventure? Pride? Gratitude?

Don’t try to trigger every emotion. Pick one. Build from there.

Example:

Volvo has spent decades building on a single emotion: safety.

Every ad, every crash test, every feature points there.

That’s why they’re believable. That’s why it works. They’re not trying to be sexy or fast. Just safe. And that resonates.

What about you? If your brand were an emotion, what would it be?

And now… does your content really convey that?

5. Use visuals, sounds, and words that spark something

Emotion comes from stimuli: images, sounds, words.

The right word beats ten adjectives.

The right visual beats a full feature list.

Example:

Nike doesn’t talk about soles. It talks about Just Do It.

And it backs that up with images that make you want to jump off your couch.

Honestly, I could post Nike videos all day. They’re masters of emotional storytelling.

Final advice: Sell with emotion—if you can

You watched the Rick Shearman rescue video, right?

Of course you did.

Now you know what a well-told story can do: tension, emotion, and a memorable ending.

Apple didn’t sell you a watch.
They sold you the chance to stay alive.
The feeling that if everything goes to hell, you’ll still have one more shot.

Rick Shearman is alive.
Not because of luck.

But because someone decided product design should prioritize people’s lives.
Because someone thought about feelings before profits.

You can do the same with your brand.
Not just sell more.
Move more.

Every building inevitably reminds me of the iconic film The Dark Knight.

Every corner makes you think the Batmobile will show up at any moment, speeding around chased by the police. Every alley gives you chills, especially if it’s nighttime, cold, and you’ve just stepped out of the theater.

The thing is, it was a trip where we couldn’t stop saying out loud, “These Americans are incredible,” “They’ve thought of everything,” “They’re the gods of marketing.”

That was the daily reflection: Americans have perfected the art of selling; they’ve taken marketing messages to excellence. Everywhere. In everything.

Just when we thought they couldn’t take more of our money, there they went again 😅. But in a good way. Everything there was better, shinier, more tempting, more convenient, more “necessary.” It made us want to spend lots of $$$.

Also, everything was a spectacle. Because spectacle sells.

Especially the NFL. That’s on another level. Watching an American football game live was such an amazing experience. Checked that off the list 😉

Their devotion to holidays, like Thanksgiving, also feels straight out of a movie. The entire country transforms, and the best marketing takes the stage, all to make the average American spend more than $500 on that night alone, between food, drinks, and decorations.

That is, unless the “average American” makes the wild decision to walk into an Apple Store and request a demo of the Apple Vision. That’s the ultimate expression of aspirational marketing. And in that case... the spending skyrockets 🤣

And the day after Thanksgiving... Black Friday. Time to keep spending, big time. We’re already very familiar with that since we’ve imported it into our market with full intensity 😆

In short, it was a trip full of learning (as always). I’ll be sharing anecdotes and reflections applied to e-commerce soon.

Now, on to the contents of today’s edition

Improve for your marketing

For next year’s Black Friday, or your next promotional campaign for your online store, I recommend being more ambitious with your content, messaging, and production quality and quantity. Think bigger.

We’re in the age of AI, and we need to find real, everyday use cases where this magic technology helps us stay competitive.

▶︎ A few days ago, I came across a guide from Practical Ecommerce where Ann Smarty shared a series of tips (and prompts) for using ChatGPT to improve content for e-commerce.

I’ve selected some of those tips that I found relevant and added my personal touch and experience.

Here they are ⤵️

How to use ChatGPT to create better content

Generate content ideas with a goal.

Add the phrase “Generate content ideas for...” to a ChatGPT prompt. Then, specify your need.

For example: Generate content ideas for... boosting social media actions.

Other examples: Capturing the attention of bloggers and journalists. Increasing organic traffic. Attracting buyers at the top of the sales funnel. Engaging site visitors. Re-engaging inactive customers. Educating customers. Differentiating a product from competitors’ versions.

Real example of a prompt: “We are building a national network of doctors to offer personalized healthcare services. Generate content ideas to attract doctors who might join our network. Highlight the benefits of joining a network versus independent practice.”

Exclude specific keywords.

I get good results when I force ChatGPT to exclude my target organic search keyword. The responses attract consumers who might not be aware of my client’s product and are searching for something else.

For example, if a client offered peer-to-peer loans, I’d use a request for content ideas for people looking for loans but not necessarily “peer-to-peer” ones, like: “Propose content ideas to attract consumers looking to borrow money. Exclude the phrase ‘peer-to-peer loans,’ as many potential customers aren’t familiar with this concept.”

Request a specific format for the output.

Include the desired format in your request, such as: List, FAQs, Comprehensive Guide, Step-by-Step Article, Interview, Q&A, etc.

You can also ask ChatGPT for format ideas. Here’s an example: “For my online store marketing (which sells this type of product), I write articles, post interviews, and create videos. What other content formats should I consider?”

Generate creative ideas.

ChatGPT follows instructions. It will provide unconventional ideas if you ask it to. Try adding these instructions to your prompt: “Avoid generic ideas,” “think creatively,” “focus on our specific benefits and avoid mentioning others.”

You can also ask it to analyze a text and suggest more novel content ideas. Here’s an example prompt: “Suggest new content ideas based on this text [TEXT].” If you paste your own text, request complementary ideas.

Generate ideas to improve your content.

Ask questions, reflect on the answers, and generate follow-up queries. For instance, if I have an online store selling pet supplies, I could ask ChatGPT for linkable content ideas to improve SEO. Here’s an initial request: “I have an online store that sells pet supplies. Generate a list of digital assets I could create to attract backlinks.”

Adjust your requests, such as: “Think of unique ideas that no one has implemented.” “Focus on a specific audience for link acquisition, like journalists, bloggers, or forum users.” “Generate ideas for a single type of asset, such as eBooks, infographics, or whitepapers.”

Find bloggers, podcasters, and media for visibility.

Start with a broad request: “I’m the owner of an e-commerce store that sells pet supplies. Make me a list of bloggers and podcasters who interview merchants like me.”

Follow up with other requests, such as: “Where else can I appear online? List all opportunities, not just bloggers or podcasters.”

Generate a contact email to reach out to these people. During the idea generation process, ask ChatGPT to create a relevant outreach email. After listing potential bloggers, ChatGPT could compose a pitch email starting with this request: “Write an email I can use to contact these bloggers.”

Remember to refine the results: “This email isn’t convincing. Try to make it better.” “Use a more casual tone.” “Propose a shorter, more original subject line.” “Make it shorter.”

Write customer service emails for your e-commerce.

ChatGPT can easily write emails and templates for your messages. Start with a generic request, such as: “You are an online store that sells car parts. Create an email template thanking your customers for their purchases. Address it to potential buyers.”

Keep refining as needed: “Change the tone to be more casual or friendly.” “Add a call to action for ‘Subscribe to our newsletter’ that blends with the content.”

Reconnect with inactive customers.

There’s no perfect way to convince lost customers to buy again. But ChatGPT can generate email ideas to re-engage inactive customers.

Here’s an example request: “You’re an e-commerce store that sells car parts. Generate ideas to re-engage customers who haven’t purchased in six months. For each idea, write an email and a social media post.”

Improve review management.

Respond to positive reviews. Saying “thank you” repeatedly on Google Local or Yelp with the same message can come across as insincere. Try this request: “Generate 20 messages to thank customers for positive reviews on Google, Yelp, and Facebook. Make them short but varied.”

Respond to negative reviews. Replies to negative reviews can risk upsetting customers further. ChatGPT can generate empathetic words and thoughts: “Generate 15 phrases to show empathy to customers who had a negative experience with our business.”

You could also ask ChatGPT to critique a response: “This is my response to a customer’s negative comment [TEXT]. Critique my response and suggest improvements.”

There’s more, but I think it’s good to start testing these and see if they improve your production capacity, variety, quality... and results 😊

Are you going to try these prompts? Are you already doing something similar?

Let me know!

1. Go out hunting.

2. Tell stories about going out hunting.

They probably went out to hunt for two days and rested five long days, telling stories about it—unlike us, who now work five days a week and rest only two, completely reversing their way of life 🤣

By repeating this plan for thousands of years, these hunters laid the foundations of our current narratives. Marching into danger, venturing into the unknown, overcoming obstacles, risking their lives, and ultimately catching their prey—these brave souls shaped what we now know as the "Hero's Journey."

This framework still appears in most of the stories we see today. It's a bold oversimplification of a much more complex thing, but stick with me for a second, and you'll see where I'm going with this.

If you've never heard of the "Hero's Journey" before, it's a concept coined by the writer Joseph Campbell in the last century. It's a narrative structure that fits stories across times and cultures.

Think Homer's Odyssey, The Hobbit, Star Wars, and even Pixar movies. It's there in basically every adventure or action story you've been told over the past few decades. The different stages explain the circular journey of a protagonist who embarks on a life-changing adventure, faces challenges, and returns home transformed.

ℹ️ If you want to dive deeper into the Hero’s Journey: Wikipedia's take on it

▶️ If you're a Star Wars fan, here's an excellent explanation of Luke Skywalker's journey and the whole myth of Star Wars:

The Heroes of Today

Today, we don't have warrior-hunters in our tribes. Getting food isn't exactly heroic, unless you count facing the grocery bill with calmness and not fleeing in panic at the crazy price tag. Life is a bit easier now, let's be real.

Nowadays, many of the heroes, stories, and role models that used to shape our culture have been replaced by consumer brands. These brands aren't just selling products; they're telling stories that aim to connect with us on an emotional level. Marketing departments are the new modern-day storytellers, crafting narratives that inspire us, make us feel part of something bigger, and elevate our everyday experiences by aligning with the values we hold dear. It's not just about the product; it's about the lifestyle, the identity, and the journey that they sell to us.

I've been diving into the world of storytelling lately (which could be translated as an engaging narrative of events with a final message that offers a takeaway). I've started to notice the stories that brands tell us, and it's fascinating stuff. There are plenty of lessons we can learn.

I look at ads from Nike, Apple, RedBull, or CocaCola, and I get what they're doing with their marketing—the spectacular ads and campaigns. I see the Hero's Journey and other narrative structures all the time.

• For instance, Apple's legendary '1984' commercial positioned the brand as a revolutionary force against conformity, redefining what it meant to be innovative.

• RedBull's 'Stratos Jump' campaign literally took storytelling to new heights, capturing the imagination of millions by pushing the limits of human potential.

• CocaCola's 'Share a Coke' campaign made their product personal, encouraging people to connect with each other by sharing a bottle with a friend's name on it. These are perfect examples of how brands tell stories that resonate deeply with us.

And I understand these stories that brands tell us that, at first glance, may have nothing to do with their product. For instance check this crazy ad:

Storytelling in digital brands

In our ecommerce universe, there are many brands that have understood the power of storytelling to communicate, convert, and stand out.

And to connect with us—that's the main purpose of stories.

• I often talk about Gymshark, a brand that started in Ben Francis's basement—a hero with humble beginnings on a mission to bring together (connect) the entire community of fitness enthusiasts. It's been wildly successful.

• Or Liquid Death, taking on a crusade against the giants of the industry, trying to banish plastic from water packaging and make drinking this precious liquid as cool as sipping a sugary drink or beer. It's about connecting with people who care about the planet.

There are many more examples in the EcommLetter archive. For instance, brands like Allbirds have excelled at storytelling by focusing on sustainability and comfort, connecting with consumers who care deeply about the environment and ethical fashion.

Or take Warby Parker, which has crafted a story about accessible and affordable eyewear, making their mission about giving people the ability to see the world clearly—literally and metaphorically.

Any of these ring a bell?

Modern storytelling archetypes

The folks over at Future Commerce, who publish fantastic content on ecommerce, digital brands, and the future of digital commerce, are doing something really interesting: they've brought these ideas about the Hero's Journey and story archetypes into the world of modern commerce. They're exploring iconic online brands and the stories they tell.

They've extracted 12 archetypes of DTC brands and are developing them on a gorgeous, impactful website.

Plus, they promise that if you take a simple 5-minute quiz, you'll find out which archetype you belong to (they align pretty closely with Jung's archetypes, which is pretty fascinating). You'll understand why you love the brands you love and why you can't stand the ones you don't.

I don't know if you'll be able to resist taking the quiz. It's free, and they send you the results by email. I couldn't resist 😉

▶️ Take the quiz, it's 5 minutes. Which personality archetype represents you? Which brands embrace that archetype?

Takeaways

Storytelling is more than just a marketing buzzword—it's the thread that connects brands to their audiences on a deeper level.

By telling authentic, relatable, and inspiring stories, companies can transform from mere product providers into symbols of values, aspirations, and identity.

Whether it's about pushing boundaries like RedBull, challenging norms like Apple, or fostering community like Gymshark, the power of storytelling in marketing is undeniable. Brands that master this craft don't just sell; they inspire, connect, and create lasting memories.

So, next time you see a great ad, look for the story—and think about why it resonates with you.

Engineers reassured politicians and military leaders by saying that steam engines were becoming more efficient, which implied less coal consumption.

However, economist William Jevons countered this idea. He argued that as steam engines became more efficient and cheaper to operate, they would be used more, leading to higher overall coal consumption. This economic principle, known as "Jevons Paradox", has withstood the test of time since then.

Example:

Consider how manual tasks in the 1830s, like hand-copying books, evolved into using typewriters that doubled production speed and allowed for multiple copies with minimal effort. Similarly, the introduction of early adding machines meant that accountants could work faster and with greater accuracy.

These innovations didn't reduce the workforce but instead increased demand for more workers. And multiplied production.

More in these ideas here, in an excellent article by Benedict Evans

Enter Artificial Intelligence

Now, let's discuss the current game-changer: Artificial Intelligence. It promises to skyrocket efficiency without reducing workload.

Jevons would be thrilled to see how AI is about to transform marketplace selling by leveling the playing field between new and experienced sellers, as well as domestic and international players.

Decades ago, starting a brand was a privilege exclusive to big consumer brands. Amazon blew that wide open, inviting everyone into the game. The barriers have fallen so much that today, you can start a retail brand from your living room using dropshipping, often with minimal initial investment.

However, the ease of entry doesn't guarantee success. The landscape is more competitive than ever. Traditionally, in physical retail, the main skill was selecting brands that consumers would buy. Today, thanks to data and tools like Helium 10 or Jungle Scout, guessing is out of the equation. Sellers can accurately meet market demand, and the competition is fierce.

AI is the next evolution in online sales.

AI will choose which products to create or source, manage inventory levels, create appealing product content, optimize ads and pricing, and resolve channel-related issues. Sellers will operate with tenfold efficiency, and while some of these tools are already out there, more are coming, promising seamless integration.

Imagine the competitive market where AI obliterates informational gaps. Both new and experienced sellers could operate with equal proficiency, making geographical boundaries irrelevant.

Artificial Intelligence will handle most tasks, from creating listings to managing inventory, both a seller in China and one in the U.S. could create flawless English listings through AI assistance.

The world of retail has shifted from a handful of brands dominating the supermarket aisles to millions of sellers operating on marketplaces today.

AI will accelerate this process, turning every seller into a marketplace expert, fueling the growth of even more sellers.

Today, whether sellers use Seller Central, Excel spreadsheets, third-party software, or specialized agencies, AI might not radically change this overnight.

Sellers relying solely on Excel spreadsheets may find themselves outmatched by those leveraging AI.

How do you feel about this vision of online sales?

For me, it inspires both concern and excitement.

One thing is clear: it calls for preparation, adaptation, and boldness.

— Pablo Renaud

My other contents (in Spanish)

• EcommCanvas: the strategy you need to compete online
  Discover the methodology that’s changing the game for competitive ecommerce businesses, and see how you can get ahead.

• Explore the original EcommLetter
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  Por Pablo Renaud

I look up. In the distance, I see the fifth tallest building in the world. It’s stunning. It’s massive. It really seems to “scratch the sky.”

For several years now, the top 10 tallest skyscrapers in the world have been dominated by Asia. The West is gradually falling behind.

What surprises me the most about Shenzhen is the rest of the buildings around me; they're all skyscrapers. Yesterday, as I was crossing the bridges from Hong Kong and looking into Shenzhen, I tried to count them. I gave up when I saw there were hundreds. And there were hundreds more under construction. The Shenzhen skyline stretched across the entire horizon:

I refocus on my surroundings. A titanium-colored Tesla Model S, with tinted windows, stops in the middle of the street. The driver gets out without bothering to park and enters a coffee shop, leaving the car in the street as if abandoned. The driver emerges from the coffee shop ten seconds later with his latte and a satisfied look on his face. He gets back into the Tesla and continues on his way. It feels like he does this every day.

It’s the fastest "pit stop" (for coffee) I’ve ever seen.

The place he entered is called Luckin Coffee, and it looks like a coffee chain.

It is a coffee chain that has opened 10,000 stores in 240 Chinese cities in just five years. By comparison, Starbucks has taken 50 years to open 35,000 locations. Despite some financial scandals, they serve coffee to over 500 million Chinese customers. That’s a lot of coffee and a lot of people.

Naturally, I had to check it out. I wanted my latte in less than ten seconds too.

I was dying to see what brings 500 million Chinese into a Luckin Coffee every day. Surely, there’s something to learn and share with my readers.

😱 First cultural shock: There are no signs of any kind inside. No screens, no prices, no product listings. It doesn’t even look like a shop. I wasn’t expecting to understand how “latte” is written in Mandarin, but I felt completely out of place in this coffee shop.

😱 Second cultural shock: There are no overly friendly staff members to help me with my order. No one pays attention to me; no one tries to sell me an extra shot or a freshly defrosted pastry. What I see are several "baristas" continuously making coffee like worker ants. They don’t look up; they don’t smile. They just make coffee and place it on a long table, perfectly organized in columns, with a ticket underneath.

Customers come into the store, locate their order number on the table, grab their coffee, and leave without paying, greeting, or looking up either.

All of this is possible because the transaction has already taken place within the WeChat universe.

Our Tesla driver placed his order a few minutes prior, paid for it on WeChat, and now picks it up with maximum efficiency. He doesn’t waste a second waiting in line. And that’s how 500 million Chinese get their Luckin Coffee.

😱 Third cultural shock: This is the only way to get your drink at Luckin Coffee. You can’t place an order in the store; you can’t pay with credit cards or cash; there’s no one to help you choose a drink. You have to use WeChat:

Is this the future of coffee shops?

That morning, I didn’t get my coffee as I pondered whether this was the future we wanted.

▶︎ Maximum time optimization. Maximum profit. Minimum humanity.

Fun fact: Starbucks is investing a huge amount of money to reduce customer wait times in their shops. Clearly, it’s a factor limiting their growth and profitability.

Technology is a tool. We can use it for good or for evil. The incentives we place around technology will shape how we use it. If big corporations see a path to growth or profit by encouraging users to use their phones (or in-store screens) for placing orders, making payments, and reducing wait times and labor costs, this is what we’ll see everywhere. I think it's inevitable.

The question then is:

Do we strive to humanize our relationship with customers?

Or do we offer them maximum convenience?

What do we really want when we go for our morning coffee at 9:44 AM on a Wednesday?

I’m very interested in your opinion.

P.S.: That night, while enjoying a hot pot at one of the most famous restaurants in Shenzhen with friends, it was clear that the Chinese still socialize just like we do. It was a festival of food, noise, people, and a great atmosphere. No one reached for their phones. Not even WeChat. There was no intention to optimize anything; everything was perfect as it was.

P.S.2: The next day, walking through the bustling streets of Hong Kong, I realized something: most of the coffee I buy at Starbucks these days is to-go. I drink it while walking, chatting, and looking around. We use that “coffee moment” to move around instead of sitting down.

Maybe what they’re doing at Luckin Coffee with their “10-second lattes” isn’t that bad after all.

What about your online store?

Is it about the experience, or convenience?

At the end of the 19th century, a significant event took place in India that will lead us to the idea I want you to think about today:

At that time, India had been under British control for almost a century. A hundred years of strict management by the colonizers who, however, never quite understood the peculiarities of the local culture and its people.

A problem arose that threatened the British plans of extracting resources and riches from the colony: the number of poisonous cobra snakes was increasing due to favorable environmental conditions. Cobras were everywhere and they bit the workers who were harvesting natural resources.

So, the local British authorities created an incentive: they would pay a monetary reward to anyone who brought in a dead cobra.

Given the number of Indians living in poverty, volunteers wouldn't be scarce. This legion of mercenary hunters would solve the cobra problem within weeks. All in exchange for a portion of the money they were already extracting from these lands in the form of valuable resources. Give me a dead cobra, take some coins.

But things did not go as expected.

The Indians wanted this incentive more than anything, so they thought of the best way to obtain it: secretly breeding more cobras.

They set up clandestine snake breeding farms, where they had them accessible, controlled, and kept together. Smart people 😉

When the British discovered what was happening, they reacted impulsively: they immediately removed the reward for dead cobras. They eliminated the incentive.

The snake breeders released all the cobras because they no longer needed them. And the free-roaming cobra population multiplied by ten. The British now had a problem ten times worse. All because of the incentives created.

We jump in time and space to present-day United States, where FedEx, the largest express delivery company in the world, operates. The frenetic pace of business requires FedEx's hundreds of cargo planes to meet in the middle of the night at a large central airport in the country (their Memphis, Tennessee hub) to exchange their hundreds of thousands of packages, each moving towards its final destination that night.

Time and coordination are of vital importance, as all planes must take off back to their points of origin as swiftly as possible, or the promise of "overnight" delivery will not be fulfilled. And the key process of unloading planes is still quite manual 😱

FedEx's night shift workers have to make all this magic happen every night, without delays, without failures. And many nights, they fail.

The company's management has tried everything to solve this problem: motivation, punishment, layoffs, changes in middle management, even paying more per hour worked (a poorly thought-out incentive)... but nothing ensures the job gets done without delays and failures.

What about incentives?

Finally, someone designs an appropriate incentive: workers would no longer be paid by the hour. Instead, they would be paid per shift worked (the equivalent of 8 hours of salary). If they finished the job earlier, they could go home, earning their entire shift's pay.

Boom! Magic. Suddenly, efficiency skyrockets. No one stops to rest or grab coffee. No one gets distracted talking. Everyone focuses on finishing the job as soon as possible to get home to a warm bed.

Problem solved "overnight." With the right incentive 😉

Let's take this idea to online business

In all online businesses, incentives exist. We typically use them to get more customers to buy from us.

Here are three good examples of the power of incentives:

1/ I'm sure you've used the incentive of "free shipping on purchases over X euros." It's not an incentive to make customers buy, but to make them buy more. When used well, it will help increase our customers' average ticket. To get them to buy one more product or accessory; always spending more than they initially intended to buy (the “average ticket”).

2/ An incentive designed to get customers to buy is the terrible "20% discount only for new customers." We aim to encourage new customers to make that first purchase (giving up much of our margin). And we greatly upset existing customers who have already rewarded us with their loyalty. This incentive fills our database with duplicate accounts because the customer is smart and knows how to appear as a new customer. And it erodes the margin on all orders. Bad business.

3/ The "free returns" incentive aims to get hesitant customers to buy. But what it achieves is that everyone - hesitant or not - buys more products than they need, on different colors and models, planning to return what they ultimately don't want. A disaster for the income statement of your ecommerce. And bad for the planet.

I've dramatized everything a bit; there are other uses and nuances in these three practices, making them a good incentive; sometimes. But you see how easy is to define the wrong incentive.

What other incentives can you think of in the different areas of an ecommerce? Not only for customers; there are also internal ones, as in all companies. And toward external collaborators or suppliers.

Are they all well-defined? Do they incentivize the right things?

I simply hope, with these examples, to make you think about the incentives you create. Because:

Your turn:

Speaking of incentives, I've just launched a referral program for this newsletter.

If you recommend me to your contacts using your personalized link, you can earn these rewards

Have a look 😉

P.S. If you want to see more examples of poorly designed incentives, in a very short and easy-to-consume format, you’ll like this thread.

Back then, I was selling Spanish gourmet products: good wine, great Jamón—you know the deal. I was operating under my own brand and exclusively online. You could say I was one of the pioneers of the DNVB phenomenon here in Spain.

But let me tell you how this story ended before you start congratulating me 😆.

Selling these gourmet products online in Spain 15 years ago was complicated. There were many reasons for this, but mainly because customers could easily find these products on every corner (long live Spain and its products! 🐷🍷).

I had read that "there are more millionaires in China than Spaniards in Spain". These millionaires had a high purchasing power and a desire to enjoy great products from a well-known brand: "Marca España". They were eager to savor good ham and drink fine wine.

It seemed like a "blue ocean." If I could strike a few deals in China to ship and sell my goods there, the rest seemed much easier than fighting in the crowded red ocean of the Spanish market, which was still reeling from the 2008 crisis—remember that?

So, I caught a flight to Shanghai and started having meetings. Everything was going smoothly; there was very little resistance to my ideas, and the Chinese entrepreneurs I met were eager to collaborate. Well, aside from the language barriers, of course.

It was already the fifth day of meetings when I saw a familiar face. Not because I knew him from before, but because my contact was Russian, which felt like being halfway between Spain and China. He spoke excellent English, and we understood each other perfectly from the start. Albert (a strange name for a Russian guy) was "one of my kind." He was Western, laughed at my jokes, ate pizza, and loved Madrid and its nightlife. We had great chemistry.

I explained my plan and progress to Albert, and for the first time, he gave me a puzzled look. After a few seconds of thinking, he wanted to accompany me to the next meetings with potential Chinese partners I had lined up for that day. I was delighted to have him with me, even though he barely spoke during those meetings and just observed the Asians.

Late at night, after numerous meetings with the Chinese, we went for a drink at a bar with a view of Pudong (the views were stunning, I promise):

Albert then told me something that stuck with me (still does to this day):

In China, doing business with Western professionals is complicated because a "serious" business conversation has multiple layers of communication. There's one thing that is said, and another that you have to interpret.

To "save face" (a very important concept there), a Chinese person won't tell you something negative or derogatory "to your face." They won’t outright say NO, especially not in front of others. They will hide it in a perfectly polite sentence for you to interpret the underlying message.

I could give you more details about this idea surrounding Mianzi, which is much more complex, but what you need to know from my story is that ALL the Chinese people I met were telling me—without saying it directly to save my "face"—that my product was bad, my brand was ridiculous, and that I shouldn't even think of selling in China under those conditions. That I should go back to my country and leave them alone.

Where I saw successful meetings and business potential, they were telling me, in their way, that there was no business to be done.

Albert had no problem telling me directly and saving me from what could have been a massive business failure. I’m grateful to him to this day.

You learn a lot from traveling, right? 😱

Lesson Learned: Going after "blue oceans" was something very difficult, risky, and costly 14 years ago. Especially if you venture into the unknown with insufficient resources and knowledge.

Men wanted for hazardous journey

Every time I remember this story, I inevitably think of another difficult, risky, and costly expedition. A real one: The mythical expedition of Ernest Shackleton to traverse Antarctica and the South Pole, where men were sought for a dangerous journey, with:

• low pay,

• much cold,

• constant danger,

• long months of total darkness,

• and doubtful return.

That’s right: honor and recognition in case of success.

It's a beautiful story and all true, except for maybe that newspaper ad, which is thought to have never existed. What we do know is that more than 5,000 volunteers applied to accompany Shackleton to traverse Antarctica on foot.

How does it look today?

Today, everything is much easier, whether it’s going on vacation to Antarctica or opening sales in China or other distant countries.

In both cases, the important thing is to do it with the right information and contacts to help you overcome the geographical and cultural distance.

In fact, over the past few years, I’ve resumed business with Chinese professionals (trained in Western business schools), and I see that these social norms have softened a bit. Now, they do tell me the bad things to my face.

Of course, you have to go to dinner with them and lower their cultural defenses 😉

What awaits you if you decide to sell in a distant country?

A dangerous journey: dangerous for your company’s finances, because you will have to invest previous profits in an expedition without guaranteed success.

Low salary: the beginnings will surely be at a loss. You’ll have to sell at a loss while trying to gauge the market potential, the fit of your product, and the keys to reaching new consumers successfully.

Long months of darkness: yes, success will take time to appear on the horizon. Arm yourself with patience and don’t expect to succeed on the first try.

Constant danger: you’ll have to stay very alert to avoid cultural mistakes (like the one I made) and not anger the business partners you work with.

Doubtful return: consider it this way, it’s NOT certain that the mission will succeed. Don’t embark on this adventure as the only solution to a bad situation in your local market; you need to be strong before going into the unknown.

Honor and recognition in case of success: no doubt, we will all admire you if you succeed in conquering a distant market.

And the profits can be spectacular 😉

The question we all need to ask ourselves is: What are we doing today to integrate these new tools and opportunities? If we don't take the initiative, a competitor will. And when we decide to react, it might already be too late.

Racing at Ludicrous Speed

Ten years ago, ecommerce was still a complex affair. The main goal was to “get it right” before your competition did:

• Technology had to be tamed to work the way we needed it to.

• Operations were grueling, and constant vigilance was required to avoid mistakes.

• Traffic acquisition strategies were known and predictable, with few competitors.

• You could plan actions 2-3 years ahead with some confidence, aiming to eventually “get it right.”

Now, we're in an age of dizzying speed, rapid changes, and uncertainty.

Ecommerce brands need to adapt at maximum speed to the constant changes in the market. Marketing strategies shift from one quarter to the next, and if you fall behind, your traffic acquisition costs can skyrocket.

You need to constantly think about new channels, markets, products, messages, and offers.

The new goal is to fail quickly until you find what works. Exploit that advantage while it lasts and then experiment again to find the next lever.

All at ludicrous speed.

To travel at "ludicrous speed," we need:

• A company culture that rewards trying new things, learning from failures, and stepping out of the comfort zone.

• Technology that supports this rapid pace of change, both in terms of capabilities and associated costs.

• A group of agencies and external collaborators who are comfortable in this environment and can bring proactivity, expert advice, and capabilities that we do not have in-house.

In this past edition, we focused on the technology aspect, highlighting the common symptoms of “vintage ecommerce”:

Today we showcase a user experience example.

An example to illustrate

Imagine you're in the furniture business. You sell chairs and tables online, like this website:

It's a beautifully designed site, but more importantly, it’s centered on helping the visitor find what they’re looking for.

As shown in the screenshot, there's an interesting component on the left that seems to remind me of the products I viewed on my last visit. Just like Amazon does, except here it works without requiring any registration.

The most interesting part comes when I search for a specific product:

Instantly, a component appears that invites me to refine my search based on visual similarity among all the chairs in their catalog:

I can focus on a specific element in the product photo, and it will find similar products. Or, I can upload a photo from my computer to process and search for visual similarities.

This is much more powerful than text search or navigating through categories set by the online store. Wouldn't you agree? Try it; you'll understand better. This experience is based on integrating external technology, Salesfire.

If you investigate further, you'll find many simple implementations of visual search to test the effect in your online store. Our friends at Doofinder explain how visual search works.

Takeaways

What's interesting about this case is that the Eclipse Furniture team has an ecommerce technology, in this case, a BigCommerce B2B online store, allowing them to easily integrate tools that enhance their customers' shopping experience.

Today, they've decided to explore the possibilities of visual search. Tomorrow, they might integrate chatGPT, with the voice of Scarlett Johansson, as a furniture expert sales assistant, always available for you.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

We're advancing through the ecommerce space at ludicrous speed. We must be prepared to integrate these falling technologies into our digital channels over the coming months and years, as we're submerged in a tsunami of innovation.

Either we do it, or our competitor will.

His home market was fully saturated, with no room for further growth. In neighboring countries, it was even worse due to the presence of well-established local shoemakers, familiar with the market.

While searching for avenues to expand his shoe sales, he received reports about some distant Pacific islands, inhabited by an isolated population untouched by capitalism.

He sent a young salesperson from his commercial team there. The journey was going to be long and tedious, but the young man eagerly accepted the assignment, seeking an opportunity to grow within the company.

Weeks passed, and finally, the young salesman sent a message:

“Sorry for the delay, boss. It took me a long time to get here and explore the islands. And I have bad news: people here don’t wear shoes; there’s no market; it’s a waste of time. I’m coming back.”

The businessman pondered the message for a moment. Then, he called his most veteran sales representative. He explained the situation and asked him to go there and verify the young man’s work. The veteran salesman set off for the islands the next morning.

Within a few days, he sent an urgent message to the boss:

“People here don’t wear shoes. There’s a huge market for us. I’ve already made the first deals with the tribes. We’re going to make a fortune.”

If you embark on an unknown path with the experience you already have and reach the end of that path with the right attitude, you can find great opportunities.

Just like the veteran shoe salesman did.

Real world example

This week, I read a story that relates to this: It’s about Thomas Straker, a young English chef whose life changed radically when, during the pandemic, he started creating videos about homemade butter recipes: The young chef became a social media celebrity in the UK. Today, millions of followers keep up with him on Instagram and TikTok, and he’s known as the “butter king.”

But what exactly has Thomas innovated on?

Has he discovered a new secret butter recipe? NO. Not at all. It’s believed that butter started being used at the dawn of livestock farming, 10,000 years ago. In fact, its “recipe” has been found written on Sumerian tablets from 2500 B.C. And it's the same butter recipe we use today.

What Thomas has done is share his passion for butter and create some spectacular videos. Your mouth will water when you see them. In a super-saturated and declining sales market, he found the opportunity. He brought the passion for butter to new generations, through TikTok and Instagram.

And later he partnered with Toby Hopkinson, on the business side, to create this marvelous online store:

They have secured over half a million pounds in funding and are building a very trendy brand for the new generations in England. The first hundred thousand blocks of butter sold out in a couple of months, and now they are completely “sold out” to generate even more FOMO.

Remember the shoemaker story?

🧐 Boss, here in the UK, nobody from Gen Z eats butter. There’s no market. It’s a waste of time.

😱 Boss, here in the UK, nobody from Gen Z eats butter. There’s a huge opportunity!

Takeaways

It’s a creator economy case that I loved.

First, because it shows that by creating good content, you can get the necessary attention to successfully launch a new brand into the market. It doesn’t matter if the market is saturated.

And second, because I love butter, and my mouth is watering as I write this and review Thomas’s videos. I’m off for a snack… 😆

Sure, your online store works and orders come in, but it's slow to load, inflexible, cumbersome, and doesn’t let you offer all the advantages that the new-generation, dynamic ecommerce platforms can. Your old on-premise solution has long stopped evolving and is just being patched up (like an Hell’s Angel’s jacket).

When you have limited resources to do your job, the hardest part is knowing how to prioritize your efforts; figuring out where to spend a dollar to improve things so that, over time, that dollar turns into three.

In the current battle for ecommerce, we tend to focus more on audiences, cost-per-click, acquisition efforts, or an untimely change in a social network algorithm that brings fewer buyers to our online store. We try to optimize our efforts on the “shopfront” activities of the store. This isn't bad; it should be the focus of our attention as ecommerce managers, concentrating 80% of our efforts.

As long as the “back office” of our online store is in order and everything works impeccably. The reality is generally not that. If we take a peek into the “back office” of a typical online store’s ecommerce, we see holes everywhere. Like an old biker jacket, full of patches and repairs.

Traffic escapes us from all angles because things don’t work well, and we have:

• High loading times,

• Usability issues,

• Poorly adjusted searches,

• Awkward mobile menus,

• Insufficient payment options,

• Checkouts that don’t convince visitors.

All this is terrible for the most important metric we face right now in ecommerce: the conversion rate.

In the past, when traffic was cheap to get, efficiency didn’t matter as much; effectiveness was sought: give me a lot of traffic from social networks, and I will hit sales targets, even if it’s by brute force, pushing people down the sales funnel.

But in current ecommerce, the famous growth equation:

where traffic used to be king, is being restructured to give more weight to optimization factors: improving conversion, increasing the average ticket, and boosting purchase frequency.

And how are we supposed to optimize all that if our online store suffers from “Vintage Ecommerce Syndrome”? Well, the first step is recognizing that we have a significant issue to resolve.

Biker jackets are very cool, very vintage, but our ecommerce competitors are wearing Formula 1 suits and have jet engines.

The second step is understanding that, although our sales equation works right now, we are at the mercy of the cost and quality of the traffic we buy.

We are at the mercy of major audience platforms. If a butterfly flaps its wings there, it could turn into a hurricane for our online business.

We need to start optimizing conversion and other efficiency metrics. But this time, for real. With impact. And that might mean considering difficult ideas: maybe it’s time to hang up the biker jacket and evolve.

Maybe it’s time to say goodbye to your vintage ecommerce platform…

Panic Over Changing Platforms

Yes, it’s one of those topics that keep you up at night. It’s normal to have “respect” for the idea of re-platforming. In all businesses, investment decisions need careful consideration: when to renew machines, expand factories, offices, or fleets. When to modernize facilities and processes. It’s tough to get it right.

But don’t worry, for the vintage ecommerce syndrome we’re considering today, there’s a three-step methodology to know when, how, and why to embrace a platform change.

Tune in next week to learn: When, How, and Why changing your platform.

Besides those mentioned in the previous post, these others are very common in online stores suffering the syndrome:

• The current store technology limits business needs.

• New tools or functionalities cannot be easily integrated.

• Frictions in the purchase process erode the conversion rate.

• Maintenance costs are unpredictable, high (or both).

• The platform doesn’t meet necessary security standards.

• The platform is not user-friendly for managers or customers.

STEP 1: Economic impact study

First, we study the real operating costs of the current platform, with attention to:

1. License, infrastructure, hosting, and related service costs.

2. Costs of catalog management, promotions, and merchandising.

3. Online store operation costs.

4. Corrective and evolutionary maintenance costs.

5. Integration costs for new services and functionalities.

In many of these cases, the simplest thing to measure is the time tasks take. But time always equals cost and can be translated into a table in $. An annual cost can be calculated for each of these five categories.

It’s also important to reflect unforeseen costs historically suffered, to get an average annual cost of these events (emergency actions, unexpected server costs, security issue solutions, etc.).

Let’s not forget the costs associated with potential risks incurred by maintaining current technology: security, unavailability, fraud, reputational risks, to name a few. These can all represent a significant cost and should be included in the calculation, with a weight for their risk of occurrence.

Finally, opportunity costs are estimated: all the good things that cease to happen in our ecommerce due to the decision to maintain the current platform and technology. This is very challenging to estimate but crucial for the analysis. It can be estimated as follows:

• Estimation of the benefit that would result from better technical performance and availability. We look at what we’ve lost in sales due to technical issues, outages, and problems; and also estimate what we’d be missing out on due to poor technical performance (which directly impacts abandonment rates).

• Estimation of the benefit from a better user experience. This is hard to estimate alone, but we have aggregated data from national ecommerce as a reference. Global performance and sales data provided by technology manufacturers or well-known sector reports can be used. It may seem complicated, but there are refined models for making these calculations based on data shared by thousands of online stores operating in our technology, region, and sector.

It’s enough to get this far in the cost study, although it’s true we could analyze the problems caused by the current ecommerce platform in greater depth. Every problem can be traced to a cost or lost sale (revenue lost, profit lost).

Advanced methods exist for investigating and quantifying these problems, such as the SPIN method, but for solid conclusions, external help is almost certainly needed. Ask me if you’re interested.

Armed with this information, we’d have Step 1 complete: a picture of the total costs of our ecommerce platform and what we’re missing out on by using it. Only then does it make sense to move on to Step 2.

STEP 2: Analysis of Platform Change Costs

A platform change will generate two significant cost milestones:

1. A one-time project cost for re-platforming.

2. A new operational cost model for the new ecommerce platform.

It’s time to start looking at technological alternatives in the market: we’ll need to know the costs of these two aspects of the platform change. And we’ll likely need assistance from an ecommerce agency to handle the technology analysis and subsequent re-platforming project.

We need to meticulously and diligently analyze this step 2 to compare it later with the internal data obtained in step 1.

Re-platforming project cost

To obtain the re-platforming project cost we can request quotes from several development agencies experienced in platform changes. By detailing our functional needs and everything developed on the current platform, we should receive sufficiently precise and detailed proposals from these agencies. They will outline the time and cost required for the platform change project. We’ll incorporate this data into our study.

Total operating cost of the new ecommerce platform

To estimate the total operating cost of the new ecommerce platform, we need to consider many aspects:

The first and most obvious are license costs and sales-related commissions of the new platform, especially if we’re moving towards SaaS ecommerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, Shopware, Vtex, Wix (to name a few).

In this section, numbers need to be handled carefully because some costs of these solutions may not be immediately obvious. The cost factor will be crucial in selecting the SaaS technology we’ll use; some utilize percentage costs tied to sales, which can make the bill skyrocket, even becoming unaffordable. Let’s handle this part with great diligence.

Then we move on to operational costs. The shift to a SaaS philosophy simplifies many of these maintenance costs (hosting, security, updates, connectivity, etc.), but there are others we need to adapt.

From my experience, what’s hardest to see is the lower cost associated with operating the new platform. If the ecommerce platform technology for the new online store is well-chosen, especially if talking about new-generation platforms, many efforts should reduce: maintenance, updating, securing, managing, expanding, enriching, analyzing, and improving should be simpler tasks. And therefore cheaper. It’s crucial to add this to the new platform’s operational cost calculation.

What else can we look at to do this job? The Gartner consultancy has designed its own TCO (total cost of ownership) calculation methodology to serve as a checklist to overlook no cost consideration. And browsing TCO literature gives clues to many hidden costs that you might not be considering.

My advice here is to contact professionals to help with this calculation process. There’s no point in deceiving ourselves and seeking the cheapest cost right now without considering any of the mentioned points. Or being too optimistic (or pessimistic) in the analysis. Or overlooking any costs, especially those that grow with sales.

It’s vital to do this platform change cost analysis well if we want conclusions that are:

• Valid (accurate and not misleading),

• Valuable (teaching us something useful for decision making),

• Versatile (that help us in justifying the change in front of others).

Armed with the “3 Vs” from the previous step, let’s work on step three of this methodology, which is the final one 😉

STEP 3: Feasibility Analysis

What we’ll do in this Step 3 is combine our previous analyses to see if the ecommerce platform change is viable — now.

We start from the defined business objectives. It’s crucial to know what we need to achieve with our ecommerce channel when we should achieve it, and what happens if we don’t. The urgency for results or strategic inclination to risk we’ve set will significantly alter our reading of the following calculations.

These are the key calculations:

Current situation: Current platform operating costs + Current opportunity cost (for continuing with the current platform)

New situation: Re-platforming cost + New operating cost + New opportunity cost (enabled by the platform change)

Illustrative example:

From Step 1 calculations, you see keeping your current online store operational costs 100 (any economic units). This could be an annual figure, for example. The analysis can be done for other periods too.

You also estimate an opportunity cost due to lost sales, for example, quantifying the gross margin lost due to this at 90 units per year. This figure can remain in the first table or be transferred to the second column as a negative value for clarity.

In the second column, following the described Step 2, you obtain the re-platforming project cost (100 units) and also estimate the new operating platform costs, which drop by 35% to 65 units per year.

Moreover, you conclude there will be no lost opportunity cost with the new platform because everything will work as it should, being on par with the market. No potential sales will be missed. So, you leave the negative opportunity cost of the current platform in this side of the table (-90 units) and add nothing new.

Comparing these example totals (100 vs. 75), you see that turning the project takes compensates soon, due to reduced annual operating costs and additional sales thanks to platform improvements. Even in the first year, the change could compensate. Each day of delay means losing money (and competitiveness).

You’ve read a highly simplified exercise of this re-platforming analysis methodology. Just stick with the concept. There are many things to consider and calculate correctly before reaching these figures.

There are very different scenarios you can reach; even some where re-platforming isn’t beneficial yet. This methodology is so interesting for genuinely answering the question of whether we need to change our “vintage” ecommerce platform.

In most scenarios, you’ll see that tackling re-platforming sooner is beneficial. These calculations provide arguments for advocating the change. Each year lacking a proper online store generates potential debt to your brand… which your competitors have left behind.

Just hit reply to this email and tell me your case or questions.
Or write me here. I'll give you advice 💪

But first, let me start by talking about the tool that has most changed my way of working in recent years: Notion. It’s my "knowledge operating system":

• If a piece of information passes me by and is relevant, it goes into Notion and stays stored there for future use.

• The internal search is fantastic. Many times I turn to my Notion repository first instead of Google. I only search through my validated content.

• Creating new content is a delight. Without leaving the tool, I can search, connect, enrich, and transform all that captured information to my liking.

• And now, with the huge layer of AI it has, I can ask it questions about my content, ask it to write things for me, improve texts, provide ideas,etc.

The EcommLetters come out of Notion, the stories I tell you come out of Notion, the tools I create come out of Notion. Even my novels come out of Notion.

It’s a fantastic example of what I want to illustrate next.

Operating Systems for Ecommerce

Along the lines of this “knowledge operating system” concept, a reflection arises, thinking about ecommerce:

How could we benefit from a higher level of abstraction that would make us more efficient and productive? Where could we apply this "operating system" idea to simplify management and online sales processes?

If we think about the tech area, we see a clear advance in that direction with ecommerce SaaS platforms like Shopify or BigCommerce. One of the main advantages they offer is the ease of interconnection, through modules or apps, of all the tech components needed for an ecommerce site to function. By visiting the official marketplace of each platform, we can install any program we need to equip our ecommerce "operating system" with new functions.

This isn’t something new; all ecommerce platforms now have these ecosystems of extensions, created by third parties, that facilitate the “extension” of functionalities. You’re all familiar with apps, modules, extensions or templates.

What’s interesting about SaaS solutions is that they are like a “cloud operating system”: we install extensions with one click and don’t have to worry about anything else; the software integrates automatically, our store acquires these new features, and everything works for us without worries, without seeing the code, without having to care for anything breaking.

It resembles what we all do daily with our phones and app stores, which revolutionized software access.

What other areas of ecommerce could follow this path?

Thanks to this democratization of ecommerce technology, in recent years, countless digital brands have sprung up to sell online and conquer markets worldwide. It’s the wave of DTC (direct to consumer), which established brands also join to avoid full dependency on retail. They want to know their customer better. Everyone wants to sell directly to the customer, at least part of their revenue.

And then comes the chaos of ecommerce operations, where we have to:

• Ship orders, one by one, to all the markets we operate in.

• Handle taxes, customs, fees, and other bureaucratic matters.

• Track those shipments, for us and the recipients.

• Endure the hell of returns, one of the most significant headaches.

If you sell online in a cross-border mode, you know what I’m talking about. A nightmare.

Perhaps you haven’t seen it yet, but that additional level of abstraction we saw in web technology might be coming to ecommerce operations, through companies like SWAP.

What is SWAP?

Founded in 2022 in the US, SWAP brings a fresh vision on how to help online stores sell in other international markets.

SWAP's ecommerce operating system manages all operations for DTC brands, including shipping, tracking, parcel protection, returns, and cross-border commerce. They’ve recently raised $9 million to enhance their service: the new SWAP Global will allow the company to help DTC brands unlock new markets with duties-paid shipping, automated tax remittance, and express customs clearance. Sounds wonderful.

If we focus only on global product returns, we see that in 2022, consumers returned products worth more than two hundred billion euros, representing just over 16.5% of total ecommerce retail sales.

For every billion in sales, the average retailer incurs $165 million in returns. And growing.

Another fact: for every 100 euros in accepted returned merchandise, sellers lose about 10 euros due to return fraud.

This is rarely discussed. SWAP is tackling this problem by offering consumers a platform that facilitates returns, product exchanges, or receiving store credit. The benefit for the online store is that SWAP’s team handles all direct relationships with carriers, insurers, and recycling companies, managing everything under a single platform for the brand. Additionally, SWAP handles all global tax declarations and duty refunds through localized tax and VAT submissions by country for all international shipments.

Customers will save a lot of money (and headaches) by accessing and using SWAP's tax IDs for global auto-filing of duty refunds on returns. SWAP already works with hundreds of DTC brands in the US, such as PANGAIA, Retrofete, Hill House Home, Drake’s, Percival, and Nadine Merabi. This sounds quite promising.

What other initiatives do you know of in this field of easing ecommerce operations?

Perhaps you know the folks at Reveni, good friends, who improve the returns and exchange experience in ecommerce.

Or the people at Returngo, who add the sustainable touch to the ecommerce equation. Anything sustainable interests me.

Or maybe you know Loop, which focuses on reducing the number of returns and, above all, maintaining the online store's revenue.

I see a promising line of work here. If digital brand ecommerce wants to continue competing against global marketplaces, this could be the path: offering both sellers and buyers a set of solutions that make life easier and solve one of the significant problems of online sales: selling far and making returns easy.

Here’s how it works:

1️⃣ It involves writing on a piece of paper the professional activities we enjoy doing, activities that energize us rather than drain us. Tasks that we are naturally good at and are recognized by others. Sometimes, it might even feel like it’s not work at all. We’ll box all these words within a big box.

2️⃣ Next, outside the box, we jot down other tasks we frequently do during our day that we don’t necessarily enjoy. Whether it’s out of obligation, necessity, or because there’s potential benefit in doing them. Or maybe because others in our field are doing them, and we think we should too.

3️⃣ Then we consider if there is anything we aren’t doing often but would love to incorporate into our daily professional routine. We must be reasonably sure about how fulfilling it would be to do these things regularly (and if we’d actually enjoy them). And you know where we write this? INSIDE the box as well.

▶️ Our focus should be on growing the activities inside the box, those we enjoy, that energize us and we excel at, until they become the source of our income, our professional specialization, and our growth.

Outside the box, you'll find very appealing things like the latest market trends or the recommendations from all those media-successful figures we follow (those who, having achieved so much success, now spend their days recording videos and posting on social media, which is a quite demanding task).

How to keep focus

🛡️ We need to develop a certain immunity to those messages that entice us to "step out of our box" and chase the latest shiny object. In this case, we genuinely want to stay inside the box and execute like pros.

What will happen if we do this? If we put our energy into performing the activities within the box, maintain an improvement mindset, and are persistent, two very curious things will happen over time:

1. By focusing on just a few things, we will become very good at them, increasing our market value. We'll achieve more success through compound interest, rather than wasting our efforts on a new specialization each time.

2. We'll have a wonderful "unfair advantage" in these activities because we'll enjoy doing them. We won’t tire out, we won’t give up, and others will feel like we do it effortlessly.

I loved a quote from Dwayne Johnson (The Rock), which goes something like this:

I wake up every day at four in the morning and start training. I give it my all, every day. Because I want to. NO ONE is going to out-train me. No one will endure that kind of pain. It is impossible to beat me.

Another example: Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympic athlete of all time, must have thought something similar when he decided to train even on Sundays, every Sunday of the year.

Counting the hours of extra training leading into each Olympic Games, with the 200 Sundays Phelps trained over his rivals, it’s "normal" he later dominated and took home all the medals.

We don’t have to be as extreme as The Rock or The Baltimore Bullet to succeed; we just need to be inspired by these examples and apply them to our reality.

Focus and advantage are concepts we can apply in many areas. To keep the focus 😉 on today's edition, let me share my view of these ideas applied to online business ⤵️

Applying the Box Theory to ecommerce

When engaging in the battle to grow an online business, everything is urgent, everything is important, everything is demanding. We compete with the entire world. It’s rarely easy to pause and draw boxes and think of superhumans who wake up at 4 am to lift heavy things. But that’s precisely where the error lies: doing everything, quickly, poorly, and with suffering, will not get us far.

Let me share the three steps I visualize to put the Box Theory (the name is awful, sorry) into practice for your online business:

1️⃣ The first thing you need to think about is how to shed the tasks you don’t want to do, to make room for the ones you do want to do, are good at, and will make a difference in the business (the ones inside the box). This has been invented for as long as commerce has existed; it’s called outsourcing, or delegating, or automating with the help of IA (that last one is more recent 🤖😉). You need to tackle this as soon as possible, or you will never be competitive in the online business space.

2️⃣ Next, with the space created by what you’ve delegated, think about how to execute tasks from inside your box in a way that is significant for the business; in a way that “moves the needle considerably” (an American term I love). It’s not about doing everything you like and is inside the box but selecting those tasks from that list which are most important for your business, role, job position, or project at this moment. If you need help finding this fit, do not hesitate to seek it; it will be the best money and time invested. Besides rowing hard, it is VITAL to row in the right direction.

3️⃣ Finally, like everything important in life, you’ll have to be a good “operator” and operate like a champ in your business. Again and again, you will put some of your box skills into play, and you will do it with pleasure. And you will do it with purpose. And you will do it with results. You will be leveraging your unfair advantage, and this will show in your business.

Seek you inspiration

There are countless examples of entrepreneurs leading online businesses who knew how to draw their box and execute what was inside. Let me show you one.

Ben Francis, young founder and “soul” of Gymshark, drew his box and had a clear idea of where he added the most value, to the extent that he handed over the leadership of his company to a professional business manager, who was a successful CEO for eight years. This way, Ben could focus on the vision of what he wanted to achieve with Gymshark and the Community needed for it. Read the story.

Takeaway thoughts

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationship between effort and result, sacrifice and success, luck and preparation.

I’m beginning to see patterns I didn’t see before, and I would love to go back in time with what I know now. But since that’s not possible, my idea is to learn from these patterns as soon as possible and apply them to my life, just as I am doing with the Box Theory.

If you want to do it too, here’s an interesting starting point: this video by Mark Manson stirred up many ideas I took for granted and has made me create new patterns related to effort and result, sacrifice and success, luck and preparation.

I recommend you look for your patterns and change your way of thinking.

Especially if you want different results, you know 😉