Feudal, Revisited
Feudal, Revisited
Last month, in this space, we suggested that we’re entering a period of what might be considered Feudal Commerce:
This is, admittedly a way-out-there analogy, but it is, perhaps, a framework through which commerce might currently be explained: feudal society had rungs in which interdependencies existed, whereby peasants were protected by knights (in exchange for work) and knights were provided land by nobles (in exchange for allegiance). Without each other, no one prospered in the same way.
And herein may lie this framework’s value: It may feel like the walls are closing in on brands, but that’s not exactly accurate; they’re being built around them.
If you thought Apple’s ATT move was bad, then wait until all the walls are built. Amazon, Meta, Google, Apple… they’re all building kingdoms. No one, yet, has built an empire.
Apple, this week, announced that iOS17 will remove tracking parameters from links in private browsing sessions. From the sounds of it, stuff like customer IDs from Klaviyo email clicks will apply.
So, the walls got a bit higher this week—even if they only apply to private browsing sessions. And that says nothing of the fact that Apple teased what it might hope is the future of computers with its Vision Pro. The future is being telegraphed.
What, then, to make of Shopify and last week’s Shop Day event? Does Shopify—like everyone else—try to build an empire? To date, its growth has been heavily dependent on the other players coexisting. As we watch that come to a halt, what does that mean for Shopify and the brands it supports?
Shopify, it seems, believes in part that it will need to push more traffic to the Shop app to aid discovery and create demand for its merchants as walls get built. But that likely means building walls of its own.