Jimmy Kim argues DTC websites are becoming loyalty channels rather than stores, as Amazon captures transactional purchases. He predicts by 2026-2027 they'll function mainly as loyalty hubs. He also spent an hour struggling with generative AI design tools, finding the gap between intent and execution frustrating until hardware changes the interface.
Most people who are looking to make transactional purchases will immediately go to Amazon anyways these days. It's only going to a brand because there's something special, a loyalty piece to it. I do think that, you know, and I said this on another pod a while ago, but my hot take for 2026 into 2027 is websites are becoming more loyalty channels than they are actual consumer shopping channels, right? You know, and I think that's evolving right now. And I think this is where it all changes. And I don't know where it goes either myself, but I do agree with you, 10 years plus before we even get near this, mostly because I think that, you know, there's a lot of hype and not a lot of things that are happening positively. Like, I do think like, and I'm sure you did, I fought ChatGPT this morning for like maybe an hour trying to work on an image. In fact, I got so mad at it, I canceled it because I was like, you know what, this thing's no good anymore. I'm going to gem it back to Gemini, right? So Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT, I use them all and they all have different perks and benefits, but Chat pissed me off. And to your point, I could have literally loaded Canva. I was just trying to put 2 dang boxes next to each other for a social media post and it was struggling to do it because it kept adding new elements and changing things and changing colors, it being off position. And I was like, this is crazy. An hour later, right? So I think knowing that we're still that far away, I'm sure we'll get closer. But dude, there's always this intersection between the ability of a human to be able to see, act, converse with the computer that is always going to be a challenge. And I think that's always going to be it until we get to hardware level of things, which is a whole different story in the world.
