What: A social media and marketing observer shares his thoughts on how retail can be done differently thanks to the rise of the social economy.

Why it is important: Department stores are not going to die, but they should be aware of the new ways of doing business, in order to either promote the individual talents and sell their products in their premises, or harness the trends themselves by creating their own exchange platforms.

Tech and communication columnist Rex Woodbury reviews in his newsletter a new app, Flagship. The column is not so much important for the app itself as for the economic approach it proposes for the next generation of retail.

For him, malls and department stores embody retail in the 20th century, while e-commerce took the lead in the early 21st century. However, e-commerce is all about utility and does not compete with the level of experience and expertise that Nordstrom or Macy’s are actually able to create. This is why his thesis is that their 21st-century equivalent is people, i.e. a retail culture of individuals acting as content creators and retail operators at the same time, or what he calls the Creator Commerce.

Relying on such individuals allow to aggregate brands, facilitate discovery and provide trust, through social platforms (this is where the Flagship app comes in the game as it is a true platform designed specifically for this activity). According to Woodbury, this is a great way for brands to reduce customer acquisition costs, for creators to maximize their influence, and get rid of the large operators taking more than a fair share of the revenue generated by their third parties.

This is actually a perfect example of the “unbundling” process explained and described by Benedict Evans or Christopher Knee in past articles.

are you ready for creator commerce?