As 2009 comes to a close, I want to take a second to recognize the amazing team that is revolutionizing retail as we know it. We have a great staff at 18 W. 18th, amazing people that overwhelm me with the commitment and passion with which they come to “work” everyday…
But today, the team I’m referring to is the 120 total Shopkeepers that have come together over the last 6 months.
As individuals, they are dynamic. Great storytellers that have built large audience and influence around their passion, expertise and personal brands. They are famed authors, respected experts, and influential personalities across the web, tv and radio.
As a community, they are inspiring. Vibrant and collaborative, working together, sharing ideas, and promoting one another. They learn from each other, build off of each other and grow together. I’ve worked with many distributed communities, but none as special as this.
As individuals, they are entrepreneurs. Sharing the world’s best products, those that help shape their knowledge and experiences, with an audience that knows and trusts them.
As a community, they are visionaries. A living, breathing force that is re-inventing shopping forever.
With the new year will come more personalities, more audiences. The Shopkeeper community is growing daily. And what they do together in 2010 will thrill the world’s consumers.
I want to welcome our 69th and 70th Live Shopkeepers today: Jillian, Amanda and Kristina from 100 Layer Cake & Lisa Keegan from Kidding About.
100 Layer Cake is a creative collaboration between friends and fellow designers Jillian, Amanda and Kristina.
3 Friends, 2 weddings and years of experience, 100 Layer Cake is the go-to wedding site. They can help you craft the perfect day, layer by layer. Check out their unique Zinc Tags that you can write on with chalk.
Amanda Keegan from Kidding About is a professional artist who every week discovers new ways to get kids involved with creative thinking and crafting. Her private artwork takes inspiration from pop artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, which she combines with her experience as a mother to get kids involved in fun and easy activities.
It has been a remarkable first 6 months in the life of OpenSky. Here’s are a few of my highlights:
Meeting with Dave Epstein at the Amtrak Station @ Route 128 outside of Boston. We didn’t have a website, a platform, an e-commerce solution, a tech team, or any vendors, but we met a great guy (Dave) who wanted to imagine a new way of building commerce with us. He said he needed OpenSky and wanted to work with us to develop the community. Big thank you to Alex for introducing us to Dave.
The conference call in June with all of our Summer 2009 interns dialing-in and listening as we went over the original OpenSky ppt. The questions asked were outstanding and I still think that group helped us create OpenSky more than anything.
Our first NYC Shopkeeper meetup and seeing Kenny, Shannon & Alison, Marta and Michael Ruhlman brainstorming about ways to make shopping human. We ate the worst meal ever, but no one seemed to care.
Our first product: The day Dave sold 10 Bee Houses in 24 hours and I think I may have cried at my desk. When my bee house was delivered to our office, I ran around with it over my head, like it was the Stanley Cup. We now use it to recognize amazing contributions by people on our team. It’s sitting on Adam Saks’ desk for the monster vendor outreach effort he’s done in the last 30 days.
The posts that Shopkeepers did to introduce their enthusiasm for partnering with OpenSky. Like this one from Ruhlman:
The meeting I had with Dr. Ruth (yes, the real Dr. Ruth) when she said she wanted to be a Shopkeeper. She’s so smart, so funny and incredibly real.
The day Matt Meeker, co-founder of MeetUp, came in to meet with me about a job he was considering at another company and I didn’t let him leave our office. Today he’s running OpenSky UX with his partner Chris Keane and they have a 2010 roadmap that is brilliant.
Agnieszka Gasparska and the brilliant Kiss Me I’m Polish design sessions in her store front on the lower east side.
Adam’s Holiday 2009 promotion, orchestrated brilliantly across 50 Shopkeepers, dozens of verticals and thousands of consumers.
Andy’s questions. Jolyn’s faith in teams and work ethic. Greg and Josh’s brilliant Shopkeeper talent scouting program and Barry’s relentless pursuit of fulfillment efficiency. Andy’s questions about his questions. Everyone doing fulfillment ops when our sales grew 10x in 24 hours. Brett moving from GSI Commerce into our office and sleeping under his desk 4 days a week. Bulat, Matt and Steve becoming the world’s experts in Magento.
Our bi-weekly Shopkeeper Town Hall conference calls. Especially the Open-mike call. Brilliant Shopkeeper questions, tremendous collaboration, common goals.
The Extranet. Shopkeeper Gateway. Live!
Welcome Wednesday & Live Friday.
A trip I had to LA, listening to big shot talent agents pitch me that only their talent should be allowed to leverage their twitter followers with OpenSky commerce.
Alan and I driving to work together every morning.
Mike’s distributed buyer network being born. Bringing more opportunity to more people.
Moving into 18west18th Street and raising a bottle of champagne together to toast our future.
The day we said it out loud: We will make relationship commerce available to everyone on the planet.
Ever since we moved from our quaint office to the lap of luxury on 18W 18th Street, my breakfast sandwich has just not been the same. At our old spot Suzie’s, as soon as I walked in, my friend behind the counter would crack some eggs, throw some bacon on the grill and put the perfect amount of hot sauce on the roll. He knew the food I liked better than my own mother, who still cooks Meatloaf after 23 years of knowing I hate Meatloaf. Now, at our new breakfast spot, which very well could be using the same ingredients as Suzies, the food doesn’t taste right. Purchasing a good from someone who doesn’t know you or care if you had a good experience is definitely not the same as buying from a trusted individual who wants you to come back and see him again.
Retail vacancy rates are the highest in twenty years. Almost 10% of all space in the United States is empty and climbing.
Weak and over-leveraged retailers have closed in breath-taking numbers. Gone are dozens of national chains and hundreds of local shops. From small towns in the Midwest to the urban centers of every city, shuttered stores scar the landscape.
I didn’t want to search for the number of retail jobs lost in the US, but it’s tremendous. There is nothing more heart-breaking than the people who can’t find a job, who are struggling to meet their obligations, who’ve lost their sense of hope.
We’re keenly aware of this at OpenSky. And out of the scorched earth of global recession, we’re creating a new retail paradigm to change how the world shops. The new paradigm starts with us re-thinking retail from the ground up: no inventory, merchandising done by people who have relationships with consumers, marketing based upon relationships (not ad buys) and customer service that is an interaction not a reaction.
Our community is already hundreds deep: knowledgeable people becoming Shopkeepers, Cool-hunters scouting the best manufacturers, vendors drop-shipping spectacular goods. A new community is being organized. A community of people taking the future into their own hands, working together to help themselves and their neighbors. We believe there is no other way to create the future than to first imagine it and build it one person at a time.
We don’t like the old rules. We see things differently. Conformists will be skeptical, say that we cannot invent a better way. They will be the champions of the status quo and when the time inevitably comes, we will welcome them with open arms.
- john caplan
The retail status quo is coming to an end. Monolithic stores with no soul. Ivory tower merchants with zero interaction with consumers. Every store carrying the same item. And worst of all, relating to us as if we’re all identical.
But we’re all different. From punk rockers to new moms, we each crave different things. We need an experience that inspires us for our individuality. That embraces our passion.
The time has come for an experience that is as much about interactions as it is about transactions.
2010 is going to be the beginning of something different. Here’s to our future, to breaking the old rules, to creating a new day in commerce.
Flat out, today my family discovered the coolest place in Brooklyn.
Okay, okay – technically, my wife discovered it first, but I was second through the door. Anyway, it’s called Buzz-O-Rama 500 and it’s a public slot car track. For those of you who can’t remember anything before Atari 2600, slot cars are miniature automobiles about seven inches long that race along an electric-slotted track.
Evidently the fad was incredibly popular in the 60s (before my time) and back in the day there were 47 slot car businesses in Brooklyn alone. Now, there’s just one – Buzz-A-Rama – run by a guy named Buzz. Walking through the doors was like taking a trip back in time.
This place redefined old school.
MUST WATCH: Buzz-O-Rama 500 Video featuring Buzz, himself.
The way it works is you pick one of the 8-laned studio apartment-sized race tracks and then Buzz’s wife issues you a car. In addition to the car, you get a remote control that you plug into the race track with three alligator clips (told you it was old school). You rent the cars for 15-minute intervals and then Buzz turns on the juice.
When Odin (my three-year-old) realized that he could actually accelerate his car by squeezing the remote’s trigger, he discovered heaven. Seconds later, when his car tumbled off the track on the first hairpin turn, he discovered hell. Or, more accurately, I discovered it.
“Daddy! Daddy! My cah’s bwo-ken!”
I quickly raced around the perimeter, righted his car and the three others that had wiped out after they smashed into Odin’s, and then he was off again.
One lap later, Odin wiped out again. And flipped out again. I righted his car again. And off he went again.
One lap later, Odin wiped out again. And… well, you get the picture.
(Note to self: don’t put the three-year-old on the inside track, as the turns are the sharpest and “Slow down!” is a command that I know he comprehends, though I can’t say I’ve ever seen him do it.)
Once I convinced Odin to switch from the white car to the green car in the middle of the track (no easy task, I assure you, as once Odin ceases on a color he doesn’t let go without a fight), things went much smoother. He was able to floor it almost the whole time without wiping out, and I was able to relax.
From l to r: Phin, Jonah (Phin's bff), me, Odin, Sophie (Jonah's precocious older sis)
As I took in the surroundings, I was struck with how unapologetically authentic the place was. The walls were lined with monstrous video game consuls like Galaga and Space Invaders, all of which were broken, missing track balls and joy sticks, as well as power. Surrounding each of the five different race tracks was a hodge-podge of unmatched chairs. And then there was, of course, the live electricity pulsing through the stripped alligator clips (no child-proofing in the 60s, no child-proofing in Buzz-A-Rama).
It couldn’t have been less cookie cutter. In fact, I think if a Starbucks manager ever set foot in the place, his head would immediately explode.
Anyway, though I feared my kids would quickly lose interest, before I knew it we had been there for three hours, racing around and around and around. Though we were slot car novices, everyone else in the place was a hardcore aficionado. They came with small wooden boxes, carrying cases that opened up to reveal oil, modeling paint, spare parts and a treasure trove of slot cars. It’s like when you go to a pool hall and a guy takes out his own cue – you know he’s good.
All the “pros” as we called them were incredibly nice, happy to show my grabby sons their beautiful cars. Each was perfectly detailed and zipped by my kids’ slow, rented cars like they were standing still. The pros told stories about how to build them as well as about races, both past and future (one 60-year-old woman was training for a big race in January).
The great thing about the whole place was that everyone in the shop was there because they loved it. They hadn’t been lured by some television ad or banner campaign. They weren’t trying to be cool or just happened to be passing by. They were there to race and have fun. Period.
By the time we left, my wife was already talking about returning the next day and all the people she wanted to tell about this amazing place.
Buzz and his wife share their joy for this almost-forgotten passtime daily with each new visitor. It’s their warm, hands-on approach that literally helps keep slot car racing alive, because there’s no substitute for genuinely sharing something you love.
This is where Buzz-O-Rama and OpenSky are on the same track.
Just a quick thought for the holidays: it really struck me last night that the real magic that’s coming together at The OpenSky Project has everything to do with the exceptional staff that we’ve put together. Without exception, this is the smartest, most creative, and most mutually supportive group of people I’ve ever worked with. And they’ve got a boundless appetite for hard work.
This is our “secret sauce!” Looking forward to more challenges in 2010!
With the holidays just around the corner, I’ve been thinking a lot about my family and friends back home. I’m spending the holidays with my girlfriend and her family this year, so I won’t be able to make it back to my hometown. It can be hard living across the country from where you grew up, especially when you grew up in a small town as I did.
But as I sit here thinking about “home,” I can’t help but realize how much of an impact my roots have on my excitement toward OpenSky.
I’m from California, but not likely the California you know. San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Napa Valley get all of the glory, but if you’re willing to take a drive up north, well north of the beaten path, you’ll find a town where the old way of life has not been compromised. 300 miles up the highway from San Francisco, nestled in a small valley between two redwood forests, is my hometown.
Ferndale, California, or the “Victorian Village,” as it is known, is a thriving dairy community with a population of just 1,350. True to its namesake, Ferndale has old-fashioned mercantiles with Victorian architecture, a local market, a leather shop, and even a real-life blacksmith. There are no traffic lights, chain restaurants, or big-box retailers. I grew up on “Ambrosini Lane” and the name of the main street in town is actually “Main Street.”
As described in a brochure, “Ferndale is a working, all-American town which takes pride in its beautiful community and cultural heritage. In the late 1800s Ferndale was an agricultural and transportation center, a melting pot for Scandinavian, Portuguese and Swiss-Italian [that’s me!] immigrants.”
For those who visit, it’s an untouched remnant of a way of life that used to be; Main Street stuck in time. But my nostalgic thoughts of Ferndale aren’t about local brick-and-mortar shops or picturesque snapshots of yesteryear. Sitting here 3,000 miles away, my memories of Ferndale are about community: about someone taking the time to smile and offer a kind greeting; about meaningful and trusted relationships, old-fashioned service and friendly faces; about passionate shopkeepers who care about the people they serve.
And that is why I’m so excited about OpenSky. It is everything I love about Ferndale, but without the geographic limitations. Relationships today are not restricted to the area in which you live, and that may be the single most powerful impact the Internet has had on the world.
For years, we were excited that the Internet gave us instant access to infinite information. It was new. But the novelty wore off. It was information overload; just noise with no personal connection to you. And now we’ve come full circle. People value relationships again. Relationships drive human interaction online, just as they do offline. They are the key to both social communities (think Facebook) and commerce communities (OpenSky).
Ferndale represents relationship commerce, something that went missing as the world moved online. OpenSky is bringing relationship commerce back… online. For me, it’s home away from home.
It’s a little ironic that I love marketing, that I’m working for an online startup, but I’m generally skeptical of new forms of technology. I probably shouldn’t be admitting this, but it was bound to come out soon enough. I’m often a late adopter, a laggard even, on the adoption curve. I don’t even have Internet access on my phone (this must change shortly). I thought about why this is – why the resistance – and I realized it’s because I so resent when people use technology in ways that hinder or replace, rather than color and enhance, interpersonal interactions. That chick who rests her Blackberry in lieu of a roll on her bread plate and spends the entire night looking deep into its eyes while you try to have a conversation with her; that guy whose cube is so close to yours that you can hear his phone conversations and gum chewing, but he communicates with you exclusively via email…and sometimes Facebook. These are cases of technology misuse, technology abuse.
And this is why it makes perfect sense that the somewhat tech-unsavvy me would be working at OpenSky. OpenSky is technology bringing people from all over the world together, facilitating real relationships and fulfilling human interactions. And on top of this, it’s empowering the ambitious and creative, but slightly intimidated by technology – a group that I can relate to – to get in the game and embrace technology. OpenSky is technology elevated to something greater than a clever timesaving tool; it is technology done right.
Ferndale, California, or the “Victorian Village,” as it is known, is a thriving dairy community with a population of just 1,350. True to its namesake, Ferndale has old-fashioned mercantiles with Victorian architecture, a local market, a leather shop, and even a real-life blacksmith. There are no traffic lights, chain restaurants, or big-box retailers. I grew up on “Ambrosini Lane” and the name of the main street in town is actually “Main Street.”