The Ostrich Report Live

Welcome to another Ostrich Report Live as Hendrik looks out the window into the wondrous Cape Town sunshine. Uh, Hendrik, how's it going?

Vinny, it's been a very cold and miserable week. Um, thank God no storms, but it's, it's clearly the winter year down south, which means we are getting closer to rugby season. Um, for watching the Springboks, yes please. Um, but yes, lots going on in our sector, um, and I had such great fun last week, we decided to do this again.

Yeah, we should probably should have told people about it, but look, we got the post-record as well. That had hundreds of views last week. I didn't tell you this, but we had like 300-400 people watch our little ramble last week. There you go, surprise, surprise.

Uh, yes, awesome. Um, At the end of the day, we just— we are trying to help people and have—

ah, look, come on, we're, we're suiting ourselves here. Come on, let's not lie about it. Tell me, are you a Knicks fan? I get the impression you are not a Knicks fan. No, no, didn't figure. Did you at least watch the game, Game 4?

I've watched, uh, highlights of all 4 games. Um, yes, Madison Square Garden looks amazing. I, I don't have the money to go actually watch the games. The tickets are basically investments, that's how expensive they are. But, uh, good on New York for finally actually being relevant in the playoffs. Um, and yes, I don't support the Knicks.

So the economics of it are kind of crazy, as you touch on. There was a guy posting on LinkedIn, I think at the beginning of the week, he said he went to Game 2, bought a ticket for $4,000, and a ticket for Game 4, sold 2 of them for $13,000 each. In his post, he also said There are 400,000 millionaires in the New York greater area, or greater New York area, and 1,700 billionaires in the area. So courtside seats, courtside service, it don't matter a shit what people pay, they just still pay anything. So jump into our first big story. What we're trying to do here is talk about big topics happening on the week, unpacking them a little bit, and then trying to get through as many of them as we can in the time allowed. Until Frida, Hendrik's dog, barks in the background. Hendrik, did you hear the big story coming out of eBay this week?

Oh no, I have not. So just tell me, please. So kindly—

it wasn't— there was none. That's the story. Let's move on. Uh, first story this week. I have been planning that there hasn't been a story out of there in such a long time. Uh, maybe it's on auction, I don't know. Ending Sunday, ending Sunday, as I always do. First one, there was a distribution masterclass this week. On Monday, it was reported by numerous outlets that Google and Apple were getting back into bed together, with Apple allowing Gemini, the Gemini model, the LLM, to run its Siri program. Look, both of them have really struggled in commerce in general, but they're so fixed into the plumbing of everything that we do this could be the most significant shift or permanent shift in terms of the move towards a more agentic world. Thoughts, Hendrik?

So, um, I humbly suggest that I think we should just admit that agentic is the word of 2026. I think what's really interesting for me about the Worldwide Developers Conference that Apple always holds is that there was no mention No mention, zero, nada, nothing about the fact that Siri AI is being run by Google. Um, I think Mark Gurman from Bloomberg said that, um, it's going to be about a billion dollars a year for them to, to license, uh, Gemini. I, I must be honest when I say Apple is the one company that I'm increasingly not worried about because they have so much capital. Um, I, I think it's great for Gemini to get access to a data set that will be very interesting in the sense that it can access photos, uh, email, all kinds of stuff on device. I think the question that we need to talk about actually is what pressure does this put on the new Apple CEO that's coming in September about the future, because you have to design software, hardware for this now. This, this is no longer just a nice to have. So as an Apple user, I'll be honest, I do use their products. They make really good stuff. They— Siri for me is one of the first things that I switch off. I— this— nothing, nothing. I just— for me, it's borderline useless. So I use Claude a lot. I use Gemini a little bit, but not so much. So it's interesting. It'll be interesting to see how Google is and Apple manage this and market this.

But yeah, it's, it's, you know, let's, let's look beyond our own industry here because we talked a little bit, or at least I woke up this morning on our Slack group and there was talk of the fact that consumer AI is not fully pulled through yet. We're trying to shoehorn AI in, and probably because we work in this industry. But when you think about the utility areas that your phone gets into, let's have a think about that. You can pay for utility bills, you can do your banking, you can use it to unlock your door, you can see who's doing security, like check in on your Ring. You can do all these different things that the phone already supports. It goes way beyond consumer spending. It is this utility now that's in your pocket. This might be the move that allows the two of them to start thinking about, as you said, a more hardware-led future, a step closer towards what Minority Report showed us the world could be like. I wrote this week again about Kevin Kelly, my go-to in all of this, who predicted that this was the year that Google would start making more money from its AI product, not its search product. He wrote that in 2016, by the way. 2016. That same man was the guy who put together the possible technology, um, the possible technology, uh, capabilities for the entire Minority Report movie. He wrote them in 1998, 1999. Movie came out in 2001. So this is a guy who knows his onions, and he's kind of set out this broad framework for it that we still have another 40 or 50 years before the adoption curve is, is really kind of saturated. The one thing he didn't contend with, and we've seen it this week, was something like the launch of Fable 5. You have the pressure coming from Google and Apple now doing this great deal, Fable 5 comes out, Sam Altman jumps up and down and says, I'm not happy, I'm just going to give everyone whatever price I want just so I can keep distribution high. It's lowest common denominator stuff. We have this emergence of almost like a two-tier economy when it comes to what we perceive consumer AI to be even. So this whole area is ripe for redefinition and rediscussion. And as we think about it, while all this is happening, the plumbing of e-com is really where all the change is happening and where the handshakes are happening. My whole contention out of it this week was that attribution as a place to waste time and energy is no longer pertinent. Like, who needs attribution when your MCP servers are passing through an objective, completing the objective, and there's no URL to track, right? So who cares at that point what attribution is? It begs a question, does modern commerce look more like you need to be fully distributed everywhere all the time, or is it that we're going to be curated and you will be dynamically appearing where you need to be at any moment in time? And I have a follow-on question to this. It's a doozy, so stay with me. So there's 20 people listening. Hello to the 20 people, by the way.

Yes. So let's, let's just call this what this is. We have two companies, Anthropic and OpenAI, going public. I doubt that we will see large revenue numbers from a consumer side from both of them. I think their dependence on B2B is, is quite large. Um, to answer your question about, you know, the future of this, I think what I consistently see, and I don't see this changing, I see brands that have a majority of their business on marketplaces which drive anything from 40 to 50% of total revenue generated, dependence on the category. So I don't see that changing anytime soon because, Vinny, I hate to break it to you, an AI is not going to deliver my package from a, from a warehouse. We're not there yet. Humanoids and robots, we're getting there, but we're not there. So, so that, so, so there's that. Secondly, the marketer will tell you that you need to be everywhere. That's one strategy that I disagree with. I think you need to be very tactical about where you are based on the intent that your consumers show.

So let me stop you there because let's debate this for a while because the intent signals are now going to be buried inside the LLMs, right? And they're going to be buried inside— even take them out of the equation right now. Like Google will tell us we can set daily budgets, we can set, you know, full maybe total budget spend, and they'll do everything else because they're hiding all the other signals from us. So there's a black box that's already there. We really don't get much insight into— unless you're at a really high end or a really high spending customer on these platforms, you don't know those signals. So the only thing you can do is try and understand where your customer is. Your customer is now more fickle than ever and is being pushed into areas or being pulled in by influencers or by their friends who says, "Go check out this site." So I'd argue that, yeah, it's great to think about curated inventory for a channel, but really, is it not more that you've got to be present when someone needs you? And you don't know where that is or when that is because the very premise of PMax is if that next sale is coming from Kazakhstan, we're going to present that ad to that person because they have shown us intent. How do you on the brand side contend with that?

So, Brian, yeah, so yes, uh, thank you for the mic drop and the sound as well. Um, so I think this is where the challenge is at the moment. I think the brands that I see winning at the moment have invested significantly in getting— making sure that they, they have significant amounts of their data and, uh, inside these LLMs, which is foundable. Um, I think secondly, you have— we're not there for cross-border where you can ship anything everywhere. We're just not there. I, I just, I disagree with you on the fact that yes, they are going to be data sources that you cannot, you know, understand where your traffic is coming from. But I think The brands that I currently work with, a lot of them have tools that they use that they essentially use to understand where intent is coming from. I'm not going to mention names because I'll get very much a slap on the wrist, but, but this exists. You'd be surprised about how many platforms at the moment can tell you that where your, your traffic is coming from. I'm not talking about final click attribution. Please don't. Please don't.

I'll hang up if you start talking about final click attribution.

The point is, is attribution as a sector has been totally upended again. But I think to your point, I think brands need to understand now more than ever the importance of influencers. I've seen the very large platforms, um, as we spoke off air about Pinterest allowing Amazon creators to link the stores to them this week. I think influencers and earned media, earned media, let me just say that again, and media becomes really important now because the earned traffic will basically be used by all these search engines. Um, to just, just on that, like traffic mix with there's two aspects here.

There's intent, which is the tools that you're talking about that you've got to go and pay for. It's still a really difficult signal to figure out. But on the traffic side, I'm delighted you brought it up. Not because— not just because the World Cup is in South America, but the pay-per-view model is something that we need more people in North America.

North America.

We don't want Central America. Central America. North America.

But North America.

The teams that are North America. Let's keep it. Let's keep the country. So, but The idea that pay-so modeling for traffic acquisition and demand generation needs to be more talked about, I think, is really interesting. So we've got paid, earned, social, and owned media channels. A lot of people think, and if you look at the SaaS world, they're really zeroing in on owned channels right now, but they're no good if you've got nobody looking at them or you haven't got a way of bringing traffic in around it. So I think what they've got to get better at is the earned and the social on top of—

are we going back to you and your little situation about, you know, the echo chambers inside SaaS businesses? That's what I'm hearing from you.

It feels like it, but it was hard to tell because most of them were on yachts in the Barcelona harbor this weekend. Really hard to tell over all the caviar and oysters and champagne. I'm not jealous, I'm not jealous, I swear. Um, but, but to go back to that point, it It becomes really interesting because we've now got to figure out how to deliver demand generation in so many different ways. And that feels like a brand new challenge in so many respects because we've been so overly reliant on one or two channels where the advertising world has taken us and where attribution has told us we need to be. But it's the effectiveness of those influencers I think becomes really important. And then you mentioned during that discussion that Pinterest have launched the idea that you can now link to your Amazon storefront. Creators can connect their Amazon storefront to their Pinterest account once and then their affiliate link updates once they have an eligible product tag and so on. That's kind of an interesting evolution and in a category where potentially you think Amazon can win, right? The creators on Pinterest are not fashion influencers on Instagram. You know, these are people, real products, niche products.

So, so the biggest story here is actually that I think there's this misunderstanding that, uh, Pinterest is a— as a public company, has made large amounts of revenue. Uh, newsflash, it's not. Um, they make a ton of capital quarterly from Amazon sending them traffic because you can now use, uh, the demand side platform to actually have ads on Pinterest. So I'm not surprised in this at all. The one thing that I continuously come back to is, and this is something that I've been following for almost 18 months, is that Amazon is kind of consistently looking for, uh, demographics and groups of people that not necessarily could be shopping on them, but Everybody's driving traffic to Amazon to, to lead to a conversion. Um, this is where I think the conversation is going. I'm also seeing as a go-to-market strategy more startups, especially AI guys, using podcasts as a way to get into people's ears and decision makers. Obviously, this is nothing new, but I think Vinny, in simple terms, your media mix now becomes more important than what it was because you can create everything. You know, I saw Mark Lord, it's the state this week, that you could use Wonder AI and, you know, create a restaurant group inside minutes, and then it can be produced at scale by his restaurant group. Great, that, that sounds like a business. Wanting to go to an IPO. But my, but my thing is, is that anybody only makes money in this world when a transaction happens somewhere. A, a mutual friend of ours, Rick Watson, had, um, the, uh, essentially head of agent e-commerce this week, um, from Stripe on his podcast. And it was really interesting to listen to this guy Danny Smith talk about where we are at. Um, they, they're obviously coming from the payment standpoint. I just think that we— everybody just needs to take a very deep breath because as, as much as I said that Agentic should be the word of 2026, from a commerce standpoint, this is going to take a while. And for me, the biggest signal of this is Shopify essentially buying back stock and not investing in AI. That, that for me, that is, that is a really interesting point that I have not seen being discussed. But my point is this: what does it signal to you?

Like, let's open that up for people who maybe are not as familiar with this kind of signaling.

So let's put this in simple terms. If you buy back stock or you repurchase stock You are trying to tell the market that you're a mature business that basically can generate free cash flow that you can go give back to shareholders. But isn't it ironic that this company that is currently, I think, doesn't really know who the core customer is? Is it developers? Is it the entrepreneur? You know, let's arm the rebels, or is it enterprise? I don't know. But my point is, is that you do a stock buyback so that you can essentially mitigate the dilution of, uh, stock-based compensation. But if you look at Google, Google went to the market, raised $80 billion so that they can invest in data centers. Amazon is investing significantly in data centers. I just think that this is a signal that if you don't own data centers, or as I call it, the Holy Trinity, essentially data centers, the compute, and the chips, you're essentially standing and building a business on somebody else's platform. And we all know that doesn't end well.

It doesn't. And the signals are interesting. Just on the data centers piece, the Irish government listened to a new policy framework that was put forward about 10 days ago. Paolo Macchiarini actually shared it with me, and it was on a lot of podcasts on that day in Ireland. It was actually this day last week. And what they're saying to the data center owners is that they're going to have to bring their own energy because so much has been taken from the national grid. I know it's a policy been adopted by other countries, but it's interesting. It's also the signal that, like we've said, this is not something that's going away. It's here. It's going to be here for the next 200, 300 years until a volcano erupts and we all die. But that's a whole other podcast. I want to try and keep moving us along because we want to try and keep this snappy and stuff. But you talk about getting your channel mix right and maybe looking at where demand generation comes from. JoiiBoy, the JD kind of march into Europe continues this week. And now JoiiBoy is live in UK, Germany, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and it's got a plus subscription per month at €3.99. They've also got this double 11, Pledge. Have you seen this? Order by 11 AM, delivered by 11 PM. This is the first real flattening of Europe that we have seen with a universal delivery promise from a central hub with— let's not, let's not forget this— a physical presence right across the continent. Is this the start of a viable competitor to Amazon right across this territory, or Is it an improvement of what Amazon have been kind of delivering in Europe for 15 years?

So, okay, so let's not bury the lead here. The lead is that this week in the UK, um, Joybuy said that they have opened their marketplace to third-party sellers. So that's significant because they only have currently 100,000 SKUs on on the business that's available to the consumers, which we all know is never going to be enough. But I think this is the way in which Temu and everybody else has essentially started, is that you start via the cross-border model, i.e., you ship goods from China into a market, and then to appease local regulation, you say, um, we will, we will work with local businesses, um, and we will help them generate sales. I think the— I think the JD play is these two things at play here. One, uh, I think they are trying to replicate the business in China in Europe, i.e., having a trusted marketplace with sellers that are being verified to ensure that they sell proper goods. Um, so think— but so— but also, secondly, and I think this is the bigger point to the story, is I think They are trying to create themselves a hedge for when the German government comes down and say that they can't buy Sesame because of, uh, uh, whatever political angle they want to use. Um, I think the big— for me, the bigger challenge remains, and, and I think this is a challenge that all of these businesses have, is that you are still a Chinese platform. Chinese Chinese platforms have a specific narrative around them, um, which I think is sad because I think people have this perception that they only sell garbage products and it's full of fakes and everything. That's not the case. This is all marketplaces. But I think, I think JD is trying to push Amazon and essentially create a model where you can buy anything from them and get it delivered to you, you know, by 11:00. Um, we've seen this work in other markets. Uh, so in terms of where this happens and where this goes, I think, uh, Coupang in South Korea have shown that if you can do order— can you— if you can offer next-day shipping or shipping before 11:00, people will buy because they, they understand that that's convenient. I will tell you that I'm a Prime member now here down south. Prime was, was open last week.

How much is your Prime membership?

359 Rand, or in, in your terms, 50 euros? No, dude, what are we talking?

I'm sorry, 20 to 1? That's about—

that's, that's— it's, it's 30.

It's not even It's not even 40 quid. It's, it's—

yes, it's, it's not even $4 a month. It's not even— it's, it's not even €20 for the year. It's, it's, it's, it's the cheapest of all the Prime products. But what happens here, it's, it's the, it's the consistency of you order something and it'll be available to you the next day. It works brilliantly. The point is, uh, Vinny, is that as a brand This provides you with opportunities to test on another marketplace. So please go and use Joybuy if you can.

Can I hazard a— I'll jump in because I think there's another tactical but strategic piece happening here. What they're also trying to do in launching it this week and getting out in front of it is getting in front of the €3 additional tariff that's coming on parcels in the certain values across Europe. And as our own version of de minimis kind of kicks in, we're seeing someone taking a strategic march to say, we are now going to give you an improved service. So for your €3, come with us because we're going to give you a better service. So your extra €3 per item, I might add, that's not just per order. So it's a line item level. It could be, if you're like you ordering 10 bags of socks, 3 pairs of underwear, 3 black t-shirts and a comb, that's an extra €12 going on to your order or half the price of your annual— half the price of your annual Prime fee, Hendrik. Um, it's £18.50 is roughly what you're paying for Prime. I pay £110 sterling. Mine started at €79. Um, and I don't know if I've got price sensitivity to it, and I don't even use it as much for parcels anymore. I use it because I like music, podcasts, and TV streaming. So there you go, the value of Prime is interesting. But I wonder where JD will go with the the physical retail side of it, because that to me is where I think they can really win in Europe to convert customers from Amazon over to them. To your point about the move or the influx of Chinese business models into Europe, I think we will see that soften over time. I think people will realize this is actually about a better business model for how we want to do business. Let's not forget, retailers operate in single-digit margins. We talk about how hard retail is. Yes, because retail by its nature is, is next to impossible to make money in. Like, it's an incredibly difficult industry because of how it's built. If there's a better way to deliver it, we should be embracing it and trying to figure it out. And if you've ever been to, um, the manufacturing facilities in China, you know, I take car parts as an example. You've got the OE, the original equipment manufacturer line on the left-hand side producing the part with a badge that says Range Rover or Land Rover or BMW. If you want to sponsor us, guys, you can. But then on the other side, on the right-hand conveyor belt, you have the non-branded version of that product that costs 75% less than the branded version. So there's no detriment, there's no degradation of quality is kind of what I'm getting to say to people who are buying. You've got to do your own research anyway. Look for the safety standards, look for the ISO marks, look for the symbols that mean that they've complied to everything that they have been asked to. So then after that, you make your own choices. But I think the model is shifting. And if I'm a brand or a retailer looking into 2027, again, I'm looking at the footprint I can gain by having cross-border trade as part of my overall business solution. So I'm really, really interested in there. What we're not seeing, and what I'll be watching over the next few months, is who are the brands who start differentiating their product by region again? I think they're the ones that will start emerging as winners. Get rid of homogeneity, right? This idea that we get the same thing everywhere, same price. Everything is a race to the bottom then. I'd be interested to see, do you get a different version of what I get? Have we started thinking about product differentiation? I remember, I'll shut up now in a sec, but there was this old visa system in Ireland where you could go, and you still have it today actually, but you can go to the States and do a gap year between university and your summer holidays and go work in the US. My brother did it in '93, '94. It was really exciting when he came home because he was bringing me home trainers that we could never get in Europe, that never surface here, that never appear. So you knew when you were getting a, like, a, you know, a present from your big brother, which is always good fun anyway, but you knew you were getting something that no one else would ever have, and you'd, like, be the coolest kid on the block, even though I wasn't. Like, I was ugly duckling personified, I can tell you that much. So a new pair of trainers to me was, like, a real bonus when it comes to these kind of things. The other kind of topics emerging, you've talked a little bit about agentic and what it all means for commerce in general. Is it changing the technology landscape much, Hendrik? We've seen some consolidation, we've seen it in the ads world, Adyen are kind of consolidating, they've made an acquisition this week, but how differently are technology vendors now thinking about themselves and the way that they get to market? Um, and I mean that from a product roadmapping perspective.

Well, I think the most— the one that I'm noticing more is, is that I think SaaS businesses are under great pressure now because, you know, now you actually have to listen to your consumer and actually understand what they want. You can no longer just roll out features because what I'm seeing and hearing is that people are in most cases ending SaaS subscriptions.

Anyone help Hendrik with this? Email in what you think he should say. You're worse than the President of the United States of America. You can't say something so bad.

I'm glad that I could make your day, Vinny. It's just— Thanks, Hendrik.

Thanks.

If you can subscribe to something that is actually valuable, you will continue, will continue to do it. I see the point of the point that I was going to get to is, is that go-to-market for software businesses now is totally different than what it was. Cold outreach no longer works because people now have a bazillion agents answering email. Um, versus actually seeing inboxes. I'm seeing, um, people using AI as a way to, you know, gain their first customers, which for me is interesting. But the point is, is that where does this lead? I, I think this leads to— I don't know if I'm maybe getting this wrong, but I think the The amount of software that companies buy and lease and pay for, I think, are gonna— it's gonna get less. And I think we are gonna see more investment into, you know, buying and building things that you actually use daily versus, you know, something that you use once a month for end-of-month finances or whatever. I believe certain sectors are kind of safe. I think financial software is not going to go away, but I think other situations such as media creation, advertising creation, all of those businesses are under pressure because, um, you can have Claude do it to you in, in a much cheaper way, um, than what you can currently pay for it. Um, but I also think that, you know, from an agentic standpoint, you know, let's just all be honest here and say that it's— we're at the early stages of this. You know, everybody trumps all the traffic numbers and everything, but at a low base, everything looks like it's significantly growing because it's small numbers.

Can I throw a comment at you? See, you think I was on a webinar yesterday and in the build up to it we had some manufacturers on, we had some of the team from Commerce PayPal. We've had this really interesting space. I wrote a white paper late last year on the state of B2B transformation in the UK from a digital perspective. 800 senior leaders surveyed by YouGov, really respected UK research platform. And one of the interesting things that I'm observing, Hendrik, is that the B2B companies who are adopting transformation and getting into early-stage agentic could teach the B2C world a lot more about how to run agentic commerce in their business. And I say this because they are fundamentally and culturally aligned to the commercial economics first, and they think in complete terms about supply chain. And I think once that side of it is taken care of, there's this natural curiosity to say, where's my next sale coming from? Do I have all my eggs in one basket? And I love this idea as well, that the really sharper minds in there are saying, we want to use our Agentic toolkit to investigate how many of our customers deliver more than 4% of our revenue, because that poses a risk to us in the long term. And then to help us figure out, how do we find and distribute to more people like that? It's a really simple use case, but it's a really good way to break down data and to understand it, to get it into a phase that you can do something with it. And I think on the consumer side, we've loads and loads to learn because we're not as commercially adept. I say that as a real broad brush, broad stroke approach, but you think about it, we talk about traffic acquisition, channel acquisition. We don't necessarily talk about the commercials of things first. We talk about the commercials as an aftermath to the things we've done from a marketing perspective, where in B2B it's, let's solve the commercials first, see can we get to the outcome, and then the marketing happens. And it's this real reverse psychology phase. So I don't know if you've seen any of that, a bit of a ramble, not sure there's even a question in there or a statement, but it's one of the observations I've taken away from working on that project for nearly 6 months. And I think Like I said, there's something to be learned in there as well. Not really weekly news topic, but I was on talking about it yesterday.

So, um, I've seen exactly the same. Um, I, I understand what you described, and I think this is where— I think it's just because we're in a different stage for B2B commerce. Um, it was mooted as the great opportunity 2 years ago by everybody under the sun, but I'm beginning to see businesses of all sizes, you know, whether you're a sub-$20 million a year to sub-$500 million a year business, essentially use Agentic as a way to double down on where to actually invest and grow their business. Um, and I think the understanding of commercials is, is, is once you sit in these conversations and you actually hear the discussion internally that these companies have, it's almost like a light goes off and then you realize that we've kind of let the CFO run our e-commerce business without actually knowing it and saying it out loud.

So just like, I'm conscious of time, we'll get close to the end of this soon, and I've got a little game for you before we, we end up here as well, but One of the big stories, Mike Ashley came to fame when he bought Debenhams years and years ago. He was famously involved in Newcastle United, has done a lot of things wrong, but with his son-in-law, Mike Murray, they've done a lot of things right in the UK, building Fraser's Group into one of the most formidable and impressive groups out there, I dare say. What do you think of their outlandish bid to buy Hugo Boss? Have you read much about this? Have you been paying much attention? 1.7 billion 1.7— 1.37 billion, I think, is what they've offered to pay, or 1.7 billion, um, so in a brand that they already own 26% of.

So Mike Ashley, I think, is an interesting case for people to understand in the sense that he built his fortune initially in retail and then essentially used that fortune to essentially create one of the most interesting holding companies in the apparel sector that is outside of the United States. I'm not surprised that they made this offer to Hugo Boss. I was actually waiting for it. I, I think the one thing that, that, uh, the Frasers Group do better than anybody else is understand what brands have potential to come out better on the other side if we help them execute and, you know, getting to the right stores online, you know, partner with the right people, blah blah blah blah. So I'm not surprised. I think Hugo Boss is in a position where I'm— I'd be surprised if the board just, just say no off the bat. I think this is going to be a situation where they're going to most probably take some time to consider the offer. Um, and, and I think we will continue seeing this because, Vinny, one of the things that I just wanted to say out loud this week because I didn't say it yet last week, but I wish we could have a sector section every week that just basically highlights how hard e-commerce is. Selling apparel online, folks, or selling anything online is very hard. Apparel is even harder because you have different variations, you have different sizes, you have many things that can basically kill your business. We will— I believe we will see— I equate Fraser's Group to another holding company in the United States called Authentic Brands. APG. Yeah, yeah. I believe this is the model they are following. And I don't see them changing anytime soon. And I think they are going to lap up investor money because they are building a suite of brands that people want to buy, my friend.

Well said, Hendrik. I agree with you wholeheartedly on e-com being hard, and I think we do demonstrate every week. Look how old I look week by week by week. But before we go today, I'm going to get you on to play a little game. So you weren't ready for this. We weren't ready for any of this. We're just going to make it up as we go along. Who would have thought? Who would have thunk it? Hendrik, what we're going to do, I'm going to read out a headline and you're going to have to tell me, was it written by a journalist or was it AI written? We are calling this section AI or Journo. AI or Journo. Are you ready for this? Are you up for it?

Why not? I think I'm going to get a lot wrong here.

Frida might need to go for a walk after this. Okay, so headline A, you've got to tell me, is this a journo or AI written? Don't spend too much time on it, go with your gut. Amazon starts selling its AI shopping technology to other retailers. AI or journo?

Journo.

Correct. Apple outsources Siri's brain to Google and $1 billion a year Gemini pact.

Journal.

Aha, there you go. Um, this is my news editor in the background here, by the way, Mike Claude. Uh, next one up, tell me, is this AI or journal? Pinterest bets on creators with Amazon Storefront integration.

That's a journal.

Correct, 2 for 3, Hendrik, you're flying it. Next up, EU parcel fee leaves Temu and Shein counting the cost of cheap. Oh, this is a tough one.

I'm gonna say this is a journal because I know the parcel fee exists, but I think you— I think the Sheen and Timo angle basically makes this an AI. So I'm going to say this is an AI one.

Oh, look at this, you are kicking ass right at the gate. That is 3 for 4, 2 to go, and then we will let you get off. So Next one: retailers could lose more than 40,000 stores in the next 5 years. Sad story.

I hope this was AI.

It's not. It's from Retail Dive, written this week. And I was speaking to some of their journalists recently, um, and they are borderline thousand 40,000 stores in the next 5 years. Yeah, 39,000 of them are Dunkin' Donuts. It's okay. Um, final question, and this—

GLP-1 has struck again.

Yeah, you can eat all you want now in Greggs in the UK. Um, we, we might just end on that story before we go. Um, final, final one here. JD.com's Joyboy lands in Europe with same-day swagger and a $3.99 prime problem, AI or Jono?

That's Jono.

You are, you are, drum roll, incorrect. That was AI. That was AI, Hendrik. You, you did well. You got 3, 3 out of 6. Yeah, 3 out of 6.

This was hard.

It was hard, but look, you're a good sport for playing along. And look, final story I want to talk about is one that we, we should continue to watch because it's making economic headwinds and tailwinds at the same time. This week, it was reported in multiple sources again that the GLP-1 jab has taken £780 million out of the UK economy, dropping the average basket since February by €418. The conversion there to pounds, I haven't got in front of me, but it's a fairly significant number. The categories that are hitting the most are crisps and chocolate. Interesting to know that they were such a big part of the economy. Sorry, Gary Lineker, your Netflix documentary is timely to buffer your pockets because your Walkers crisps won't be selling as much anymore. But Boots have launched a walk-in jab service. Superdrug now are preparing for the oral medication drop as well. This is a sign of the times. This is only going to get more prevalent. And it's an interesting parallel to consider. From, let's say, an agentic perspective, as one area of industry suffers and probably won't recover for a period, other areas emerge. The piece that I was reading said that the two net outcomes of it are bad breath and unclean teeth. Oral care is taking a bump this week. Put all your money into toothpaste. Happy days, Colgate. What do you think of this story? Is it— here to stay, or is it going to be one of those remember GLP-1 stories?

I think it's here to stay. Um, I will add that in the United States, um, apparel retailers are saying that they are being inundated with returns because of GLP-1 customers basically just changing body types very quickly and, and basically, um, either buying clothes or returning clothes because it no longer fits. Um, I think this is a challenge that we will see globally, especially in the Western world. I also think that we could see the creation of GLP-1-specific food items. I genuinely believe that. I think we're going to see partnerships between drug makers and food manufacturers to ensure that people eat rightly. Because if you don't eat correctly, Vinny O Brien, you regain the weight that you have supposedly lost magically. So I don't see it's a fad, um, I, I see it as a massive reality check. It's not like the retailing, um, especially the convenient and grocery store sector, needed any more headwinds. But I think the impact that this will have on apparel is not good. The, the impact that this will have on our sector is going to not be great. So news flash, not good overall. Um, uh, but what can I say? Um, I'll end off by saying that we had a massive story here down south in South Africa about, um, police finding a, a storeroom full of GLP-1 drugs that are— that were being sold on the black market in South Africa, which Wow. Uh, it just tells you how big of a deal this is. Um, and unfortunately, um, or fortunately, we— South Africa is one of the tightest regulated medical sectors in the world, so nothing is sold here until it's certified and tested and whatever else. So the fact that this was sold on the black market and you could see legitimate products in warehouses just tells you how big of a deal this is. I always say Show me what's on the black market and I'll tell you what flavor of the month— but yet again, the impact that this will have on CPG should not be forgotten or understated.

I have so many jokes that I'd love to play off about digital currency here today!

No no we need to go time please.

Okay, so for anyone who has watched and we got up to 25 listeners at one point so um Obviously there's some sort of click farm going on over in the Philippines. So thanks, guys.

I actually thought it was an island.

No, no, it's Friday and it's sunny, so we tend not to work on days like that. So just bear that in mind, some hours. What I would love to do, thank everyone for coming along. Thank you for taking the time out. Anyone who has any feedback, let us know. We really don't care one way or the other, but that's just us. I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. We love the feedback. But what we're going to bring back is the Ecom Happy Hour. This is where Hendrik and I get together on a Friday evening. We're going to do it for middle of summer going into the winter, where we get together once a month, have a beer, have a chat, and we do it so that we can all let our hair down figuratively and metaphorically for us to get to know each other a little bit better and talk about the topics you can't talk about in the virtual world. But thanks for coming along, Hendrik. Thanks for your time. A quick call, who's going to win the World Cup? 38 days to go.

I've got Spain or France winning it.

Look at you, always going with the favorites. You're such a predictable person, Hendrik. I love it. Me, I'm going to say, um, I see a place in time where this is going to be won by My son loves Canada, so I'm going to say Canada.

Huh? No, I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

It's going to be one of the favorites. Uh, I think England will go out in the quarterfinals. Um, I think that it's France's— France's to lose. They look really, really strong. Okay. Brazil would be my outside money. I think they, um, they have an incredibly hard-working squad. They've learned loads in the Premiership over the last few years. So yeah, uh, And I'm interviewing Paulo Mukadji on Monday for The Struggle Bus, so I have to be pro-Brazil for another few days. And for Carlos and Gustavo and all our other Brazilian friends, happy Friday. Get out in front of it. Enjoy your weekend. Thanks for joining me, Hendrik.

Cheerio, dude. Speak to you soon.