In 2016 I wrote ‘The Death of Retail Is The Birth of Retail‘.

The post was inspired by some very smart investors and entrepreneurs. The links in the post are worth re-reading.

The stock picks I made in the post have not done too badly (Square, Bitcoin, Shopify and Paypal).

The ‘death of retail‘ seems to be accelerating in 2019 (see Abercrombie just today), but so too does the ‘birth of retail‘.

This birth of retail continues as Digitally Native Vertical Brands (DNVB’s) launch and leverage their attacks with software and services like Instagram, Facebook, Paypal, Square, Stripe, Shopify, Bitcoin, Zendesk, Salesforce etc…

Amazon is the planet that lurks in the path of every DNVB. One can only imagine the software that Amazon has built to arm themselves in their global domination run.

Despite planet Amazon, successful DNVB’s will start growing and accelerating horizontally. The ‘pop up store‘ is now a table stakes strategy for DNVB’s as they grow and move into the physical world. The DNVB’s will continue to leverage software to navigate this complex growth and omnichannel world.

Companies like Kustomer and Narvar (both in Social Leverage portfolio) continue arm the DNVB’s of the world with world class software necessary to compete in an Amazon world.

Exciting times in e-commerce.

PS- Congrats to Kustomer on their latest $40 million raise to help accelerate their growth in the omnichannel customer support space. Kustomer’s founder and CEO Brad Birnbaum shared his vision in an interview this morning. Not too bad for a company founded in 2016.