Mejuri

🙅🏽♀️ say no to trendslop 💁🏽♀️ say yes to trend strategy A few months ago, I came across this HBR article about strategy "trendslop." And today, Zoe Scaman shared an essay that further explores why defaulting to AI for strategic advice typically backfires: "We have built the most powerful consensus engine in human history. And we’re calling it our edge." Zoe is far from anti-AI. As a proponent of the technology, she's highlighting how most organizations are using these tools lazily, and why this is detrimental to their brand differentiation. Because AI doesn't inherently know anything about your brand's soul. It's built to optimize for the average. And that's a losing business strategy in the longterm. It's a similar story when it comes to trends. If you ask AI to tell you about the "top beauty trends for 2027," you will get the same response as your competitor. Perhaps you can try a few more specific prompts. Is the response really helpful? My philosophy is that trends are useless without strategy. There are plenty of incredible ways AI can augment trend research, tracking, and sizing. But none of that is very helpful to your business without trend strategy. Strategic frameworks cut through the noise to track real cultural trajectories, draw cross-category connections, identify emerging signals, and unlock compelling insights. And strategic interpretation of trends through a brand-specific lens can help detect white-space opportunities, map category evolution, inform product pipelines, inspire creative concepts, and guide marketing to cultivate cultural resonance. Read HBR's piece: https://lnkd.in/gBm7MS_z Read Zoe's piece: https://lnkd.in/gWZggDgW Read about Trend Strategy: https://lnkd.in/ejtwtSVB Read my AI-informed Q1 Macrotrend Update: https://lnkd.in/gyhzDvgZ

One of the reasons I joined Rootly was a bet that the AI inflection point was coming. I'd tried Cursor early, took a week of vacation to build with a friend, and even though we didn't ship anything, it shifted how I thought about the future of engineering. When I talked to JJ Tang and Dan Sadler , they had the same read. By December it was obvious we were right. What I didn't expect was what would break once we were. We went fully agent-based. Every engineer built their own workflow with some running five+ agents in parallel. The output was real. So was the fragmentation. Convention drift that used to take months was happening in weeks. The fix wasn't centralizing on one agent or one workflow. It was standardizing one level up, the substrate the agents ground in. Shared standards in a format agents can read. A plugin that gives every engineer the same skills on install. A PR pipeline that encodes good behavior instead of hoping someone reads a doc. The part I still haven't solved is maintenance. Building is cheaper than ever. Keeping it alive is the same hard problem it's always been. Read the full story here: https://lnkd.in/ewheWAh9

Thank You RETHINK Retail team and @Marie Chevrier Schwartz for the conversation about stores — it was a genuinely fun conversation to be part of. We got into something I think about a lot: most retailers measure stores by what happens inside four walls. And that's not wrong — but it's incomplete. The moment a store opens, things start happening outside of it too. Search picks up. Digital traffic shifts. Conversion improves in ways that don't always show up in a store P&L. A few things to think about: -Stores can act as demand engines — a physical presence often lifts digital performance across an entire market, not just foot traffic. -Attribution models sometimes create the wrong incentives — when teams are protecting "their" numbers, it's easy to miss what's actually driving growth together. -The store might be one of retail's most important acquisition and fulfillment assets — marketing, fulfillment, customers, revenue generation and brand experience, all in one place. None of this means the four-wall P&L is broken. It means it may be telling only part of the story. Listen or watch the full conversation here → https://lnkd.in/gYUPSxAK And if this resonates — or if you see it differently — I'd love to hear how you're thinking about Retail Strategy and the economics in the comments. #RetailStrategy #Omnichannel #RetailLeadership #RethinkRetail #storeeconomics #customerexperience #ChRetailGroup https://lnkd.in/gYUPSxAK

During the 2022–23 cost of living crisis, CHANEL raised its bag prices by over 60% ❗ Most people called it tone-deaf but they were wrong! Here is the economics behind why luxury brands raise prices during recessions and why it almost always works: Luxury does not operate on the same demand curve as normal goods. When the price of a CHANEL bag goes up, demand does not fall. In many cases, it increases (Yes, you read that right). Economists call these Veblen goods: products whose desirability is partly a function of their price. The moment they become accessible, they stop being aspirational. When CHANEL raised prices during a period of mass financial anxiety, it was sending a precise signal to its core customer: this is still not for everyone. In fact, it is now for fewer people than before. For high-net-worth customers who define their consumption by its exclusivity, that signal was not a deterrent. It was a reinforcement of value. There is also a second mechanism at play. Luxury brands are acutely aware that a Chanel customer is not comparing a bag to groceries. They are comparing it to other investments like property, art and watches. And so, when Chanel increases prices year on year, the bag becomes an appreciating asset. Customers are not spending. They are allocating. BUT none of this means every brand can do this. It requires decades of brand equity, a controlled distribution strategy, and the discipline to never discount. And, Chanel has all three ✨ The brands that tried to copy this without the foundation, raising prices without the heritage to justify it; exposed themselves immediately. Because price is only as powerful as the belief system behind it! The luxury paradox is not that rich people are irrational. It is that they are rational by a completely different set of rules. Does this strategy have a ceiling or is the luxury demand curve permanently immune to economic reality? 📩 #luxurybranding #Chanel #LuxuryAssets #Recession #luxurymarketing