![\"Retail](\"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/RETAIL-ONLINE-TRAINING-728-X-90.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
[00:00:00] Phillip:<\/strong> Hello, and welcome to Future Commerce, the podcast at the intersection of culture and commerce. I’m Phillip.<\/p>\n [00:00:04] Brian:<\/strong> I’m Brian.<\/p>\n [00:00:05] Phillip:<\/strong> And, Brian, this is like our first time we’ve had you and me back in the seat in a little while. We’ve been… yeah, all over the place. Look well rested.<\/p>\n [00:00:14] Brian:<\/strong> Good. I love looking well rested. I might be going to bed late. I might be getting up early, but I’m looking well rested because I’m sleeping on Boll & Branch sheets, which were sent to me by Boll & Branch and are delightfully comfortable. Unbelievable. And I’m not just saying that. It is actually the truth. This is the episode where we talk to Boll & Branch. Welcome chief commercial officer Katia Unlu to the show.<\/p>\n [00:00:42] Katia:<\/strong> Hi, guys. So nice to… so nice to see you, Brian. So nice to see you, Phillip. I’m excited to be here and to chat all things comfort with you guys.<\/p>\n [00:00:53] Phillip:<\/strong> We’re gonna cover a lot today. We’re gonna get into, you know, you’re in the process of opening five stores this summer. Retail experience is a good deal of what we’re covering recently on the show. Also want to talk about the balance that you’re striking between AI implementation, you know, reducing friction, keeping the human touch. But, you know, as we get into that, I’d really like to just talk a little bit about, like, what your role is and, you know, who you are and what you’re doing at Boll & Branch.<\/p>\n [00:01:22] Katia:<\/strong> Absolutely. For those that don’t know, although I want every single person to sleep on Boll & Branch sheets – we’re getting there. Every bed in America. We will have almost 19 stores by the end of this year, which has been such a journey. And I’ve actually been a part of this journey for half of its life, which has been just so rewarding for me personally and amazing. When I first started with the brand, we were primarily 99% ecom, and we have now expanded into all of these different channels. We’re in Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom across the country, and it’s just been so many exciting milestones. We’re in categories… we’re launching travel and sleepwear and dabbling into furniture, and it’s just been such an amazing journey to see now the company come to life in all of these places. So it’s been incredible. My role has also expanded, honestly, as the business needed it and as the business needs change. So first, it was really focused on performance and analytics and DTC. And as we’ve grown all of these channels, we added retail and wholesale to the equation. And that’s how my role has evolved, and it’s been amazing.<\/p>\n [00:02:38] Phillip:<\/strong> There’s the eras of retail. You covered it, sort of, the beginning of the DTC era. Right? And I know that you… Boll & Branch has done such a tremendous job in thought leadership and helping others in the industry understand how you’ve gained the success that you’ve had. But it’s not just DTC. Right? You’ve mentioned how now Boll & Branch is expanded beyond channels into other areas of influence. And now we’re looking at all of the other retail investments. There’s planning… Macy’s.com. There’s subscriptions, subscription boxes like Birchbox, luxury…<\/p>\n [00:03:20] Katia:<\/strong> That was my prior background.<\/p>\n [00:03:20] Phillip:<\/strong> I know. I’d love to hear a little bit more about that. I think that tells the arc also of the consumer evolution. Right? There’s a lot of evolution in how consumers are changing and all of the new modes in which they’re purchasing and how they come to understand a brand and the relationship to a brand and how they may have an expectation of that relationship with the brand by which they discover the brand through the channel… which they have the relationship. What does that arc tell you about commerce and the consumer needs and priorities that are evolving?<\/p>\n [00:03:54] Katia:<\/strong> One of the reasons I actually came to Boll & Branch, the, like, fundamentals for me, especially coming from a place where Birchbox was… And I think we can all… we all kind of know the archetype. A lot of founders who came out of HBS in 2008. It was, like, a very special class of HBS. Started a lot of amazing brands out of it. Rent the Runway, Birchbox, Warby, and they were great brands. They focused on one very singular product, and they were very focused on marketing. And I think the fundamental miss in a lot of this, like, crop of businesses that happened was that none of them thought about the customer and creating an experience for the customer that they’re going after. So all of a sudden, you know, when the VC money stopped coming…<\/p>\n [00:04:53] Katia:<\/strong> They were left with rising CACs over time as Meta and Google and all these platforms became really competitive. And they were left with a product that was kind of okay with absolutely no path to repeat purchases, never expanded beyond the hero product, and then… and basically, that’s when the music stopped. Like, some have made it out of this carnage and have, like, rightsized and figured out that path, but that was the plague of a lot of these companies. So where this gets into, like, Boll & Branch… I had all of that knowledge and background. And when I was looking for a new role, I was like, I’m going to go to a place that has always been, first order, profitable. Fundamentals are intact. A place that actually knows… here’s, like, amazing products that we’re making for people. Prior… I can’t take any credit for what Scott and Missy, the founders of Boll & Branch,<\/p>\n [00:05:53] Phillip:<\/strong> Started. They…<\/p>\n [00:05:55] Katia:<\/strong> They, from day one, first order profitable. From day one, they did things differently. The sheets that Brian has had the pleasure of sleeping on took years of careful crafting. They didn’t just go out and buy a sheet from a manufacturer and just, like, try to sell it online to people. Missy spent, like, blood, sweat, and tears toiling in… creating a weave until it was perfect, and then went to a factory in India and asked them to make that weave. The four hours a day I spent in product meetings, that is still how we run the company. And then thinking about how are we gonna bring that product to life is, like, an afterthought. It’s not the leading thought of how we come up with the product. We make a really great product, and then we figure out how we’re gonna get it into people’s hands. And I think that is, like, the fundamental miss of the, like, DTC era. And I think the other piece too, right, that you hit upon is DTC took over, and everybody thought that, like, oh, I’ll just buy things online and, like, nothing else needs to happen. People thought customer experience and customer service… I mean, it’s this outsourced function that lives in other countries that people don’t even think or worry about. What about the experience? And that is, like, such a symptom of this DTC era because that’s not how retailers thought. There’s plenty of retailers that have high touch services that have clienteling. They have all of this infrastructure built in, and it’s almost like in the DTC rise, boom, people, like, forgot that that’s an important piece of the experience.<\/p>\n [00:07:41] Brian:<\/strong> I think this is so huge. And I’ve heard the saying, and I actually fully believe this: what you win them with is what you win them to. And I think that that sort of speaks to the quality – like, product quality is, like, number one. If you don’t have a quality product, you can’t do anything. Like, eventually, word-of-mouth is gonna get around. And positive word-of-mouth is the most effective way to make sales. Right? It’s gonna… it’s a recommendation from a trusted friend or an advisor or an expert, whatever it is. And that’s, like, the surest way to get someone to buy your product: an outside third party voice bringing something to somebody else and sharing.<\/p>\n [00:08:22] Katia:<\/strong> 100%. Especially in our category. Right? Like, we see that really ring true. Like, we are not beauty. We’re not fashion. The word-of-mouth is, like, the most important thing that happens in our category. There’s still a cross generational, like, learning that happens. A mom’s still shopping at Bloomingdale’s for her sheets, and she will tell her daughter who is registering at Zola, hey, this is amazing. Like, you should put Boll & Branch sheets on your registry. Like, that is still very much how people discover.<\/p>\n [00:09:00] Phillip:<\/strong> Wow.<\/p>\n [00:09:01] Brian:<\/strong> Yeah. The inverse of that is also true, though, I think. If someone says, oh, don’t get that, that’s actually, like, close to a knockoff or whatever… and they’re not gonna buy your product.<\/p>\n [00:09:11] Phillip:<\/strong> Oh, yeah. That carries a tremendous… it probably carries a lot more weight too. Right? You’d probably have to hear more positive reinforcement than you have to hear one negative reinforcement. That’s been studied quite a bit. Right?<\/p>\n [00:09:23] Brian:<\/strong> Yeah. Totally. And I think so. One of the things that, as you’re talking, I just… like, I think Phillip actually inadvertently said it best. Boll & Branch is sort of the Taylor Swift of…<\/p>\n [00:09:37] Phillip:<\/strong> When did I say that?<\/p>\n [00:09:38] Brian:<\/strong> The sheets broke. You said the word “eras,” and I think that… what…<\/p>\n [00:09:42] Katia:<\/strong> I love it. I totally didn’t catch that. That’s so good.<\/p>\n [00:09:46] Brian:<\/strong> What Boll & Branch has been able to do is enter the market in an era that was so direct to consumer. It was just like, okay, this is how you sell now. This is how we’re gonna build audiences and build markets and so on. And what you’ve done, though, is you’ve been able to say, hold up, there are things from the past… like Americana in Taylor Swift’s case…<\/p>\n [00:10:10] Phillip:<\/strong> Wow. Or pop…<\/p>\n [00:10:12] Brian:<\/strong> Or whatever it is. Right. I’m just gonna research… pull back on and say, we…<\/p>\n [00:10:17] Phillip:<\/strong> [inaudible]. I don’t know where this is coming from. This is wild.<\/p>\n [00:10:21] Brian:<\/strong> Yeah. I’m not even a Taylor Swift fan, which… I just admire him.<\/p>\n [00:10:25] Phillip:<\/strong> I… Methinks thou doth protest too…<\/p>\n [00:10:27] Brian:<\/strong> Well, maybe. Yeah. A couple of her songs are pretty good.<\/p>\n [00:10:32] Phillip:<\/strong> Go on.<\/p>\n [00:10:34] Katia:<\/strong> That there… that’s the real truth. He actually is a Taylor Swift fan.<\/p>\n [00:10:38] Phillip:<\/strong> Yeah. I was gonna say he’s a closet Taylor Swift fan. Go on. Totally. Yeah. That’s the… give us the “All Too Well” ten-minute version of Boll & Branch. Wanna hear… what…<\/p>\n [00:10:45] Brian:<\/strong> I mean, the reality is…<\/p>\n [00:10:50] Phillip:<\/strong> This is all getting struck. I just know it. Like, this is coming back. This whole thing is gonna be…<\/p>\n [00:10:54] Brian:<\/strong> I just… I came out as a Taylor Swift fan. Right? Right. I’m not… I’m not a Taylor Swift fan. The thing is, we’re reaching back, we’re kidding on things that are tried and true methods of connecting with customers. Once you have a good product, you need to be in the places where people are, and they need to experience – especially something like sheets – touching, feeling, smelling, having things in the context they’ll actually be in. And I know that you’ve introduced a program where you actually come into someone’s home and actually into a very intimate space, their bedroom, and help them style and get a feel for what they could experience with Boll & Branch products. Yeah. And I think that that’s just… it harkens back to a different era and maybe even surpasses it. There’s not many consumer products available at a broad level that would offer up a service like this. And to come out of the era that you did into… and then introduce something that engages more than just, well, asynchronous purchasing patterns is, like, I think, a really big step for any brand that came out of that era to continue to succeed. They will have to follow this path.<\/p>\n [00:12:18] Katia:<\/strong> Totally. Scott and Missy, it wasn’t even in their purview. Like, oh, hey, you should take a bunch of VC money, and, like, that’s how you should grow and, like, spend a bunch of money on Meta. When I came into the brand in 2019, a lot of our advertising was done on audio, as an example. Like, traditional, like, radio advertising. And it was… they just, like, weren’t even in that world that, like, in my prior careers I was in. The customer service number, for a very long time and still to this day, rings Scott’s cell phone. Right? Like, that’s how they just always behave. They never got, like… the company just never got distracted by all the ups and downs. And same with COVID. I think a lot of brands, especially in home, had an excellent COVID. Right? And then not so excellent afterwards. Right? Because people were in their homes and… sure, everyone was Zooming from their bedrooms. Right? And we just have continued to just execute our plan, stay on track, have the fundamentals, always obsessing about product, always obsessing about the customer experience. That’s just, like, always been true. So we just haven’t had all of the ups and downs over the last even seven years that everyone’s been on because we’ve just… that’s just always been ingrained in the company.<\/p>\n [00:13:46] Phillip:<\/strong> There’s interesting behavior, and it’s something I’ll muse on. And then I guess I could sort of redirect it back to how your programs and, you know, sending stylists into customers’ homes… I really wanna hear more about that. But I look at my own purchasing behavior in this category, and I look at how… maybe there’s… it’s unlike… this behavior is unlike other categories where there’s a bit of an irrational… I don’t wanna say an irrational behavior. I could buy a single set of sheets and wash them and put them on my bed, but that’s not how I behave. I find something I like, and I buy three or four of them. I keep them stocked. I’ll put one in the wash and I put another one on. Like, there is a methodology or a behavior – a behavioral pattern – that is unlike other product categories that I think is an interesting behavior. And I also… it tends to skew a lot more towards taste and fashion and trend. And I have things from, you know, from ten years ago that I don’t use as much as I’m using right now that I… but I don’t think of it in that way. Right? So I tend to be influenced a lot by what I see others buying, maybe ad creative. And I’m curious what a program, you know, around something like… I think you have this, a stylist program. I’m curious what others are using and looking for, for recommendations that might help them to enable more of this, you know, curation and purchasing behavior patterns… might be able to do that helps them.<\/p>\n [00:15:38] Katia:<\/strong> Yeah. Absolutely. And, you know, that is the, like, replenishment angle is definitely one angle. I think sheets is such an unconsidered purchase because there’s no market leader in this category. Right? Most people just go to Target or go to Amazon Basics or go to IKEA, and that’s where they get their sheets because…<\/p>\n [00:15:58] Brian:<\/strong> It’s just…<\/p>\n [00:15:58] Katia:<\/strong> Like, I was… Costco. Totally. Because there’s no brand leader in this category. And that’s, like, the exciting part of, like, the opportunity that is still out there for us and others to take, where there’s just not a market leader because there’s no brand… like, honestly, besides Boll & Branch, there’s no brand that thinks about building a brand and having really quality products that will stand up to time out there. So, you know, just to touch on the… we call it the room service program, but it really goes to the fundamentals of how and why we’ve opened stores. We open stores for a very different reason than most, I think, DTC brands have. You know, you saw this behavior coming out of COVID, all these DTC brands. They were like, we’re gonna open up a bunch of stores, and that’s what’s gonna save us. And then, basically, you saw them all closing these stores a year later because it didn’t work. Fundamentally, most brands think that stores are, like, some sort of a brand awareness channel for them. They think, I’m gonna plop a store in the middle of Soho in New York City, and the people, they’ll just come. That’s how they will discover us. It’s a billboard for us. Fundamentally, that is not how we think about opening stores. Sure, over time, for sure, it’s gonna help drive up awareness in that market for us. Absolutely. Fundamentally, we open stores in places where our customers are because we want to build an even better relationship with them over time. And having a person in their community, in their market, that understands that in Bethesda, the… this is the local, like, charity that you have to be a part of, and, like, this is the community, and this is, like, the fun stuff that happens around it.<\/p>\n [00:17:52] Katia:<\/strong> Having a person like that in that market is, like, everything for us because all of a sudden, there’s a face to a name. You can talk to somebody. You can call them. You can tell them about… my daughter’s graduating. It’s such… this is such a milestone in my life. I have no idea what it’s gonna be like when she leaves my house. She’s been in my house for eighteen years, and it is such a journey that they’re on. And we’re a part of that journey with them. We’re like, don’t worry. One thing you can check off your list is dorm bedding. We will help you set it up for her. We will do everything. If you want us to come to college, if you want us to ship it to you, we will do whatever. We do that all the time. You move to a new house. We’re like, hey, if you’re interested… and not all people are, right? As you guys said, it is a very intimate setting. It’s a very intimate… I personally don’t want someone in my house to be looking at all the crap that’s on my nightstand. I mean, it’s a mess. Like, I don’t need them seeing that stuff, but there are a lot of people that do.<\/p>\n [00:18:58] Katia:<\/strong> They’re like, I don’t know how to… you buy sheets. I don’t know how to put them on the bed. I don’t know how to style them. The other thing too, Phillip, that you… right? Like, part of it is the replenishment piece, but what we see, right, is people, they’re like, wow, the sheets are amazing. I’ve washed them a hundred times, and they look better than when they did when I took them out of the package. And then all of a sudden, they want everything on their bed and their bathroom to be Boll & Branch. They’re like, how about my pillows? How about my duvet insert? Like, I want to upgrade everything in my life to be Boll & Branch, and that is what we see. And some people are like, fine, oh, I’ll just throw it on, whatever. But some people really want our help and support, and we do that absolutely all day long. We’re like, you’re moving to a new house, we can take care of that for you. You already have enough on your plate. First thing you can have… you’ll probably be sleeping on a mattress because RH or Crate and Barrel or Pottery Barn forgot, you know… the bed’s delayed. So we will help you set it up, like, whatever you need for you. And we do that all the time. And we bring croissants. We bring flowers.<\/p>\n [00:20:05] Phillip:<\/strong> Woah.<\/p>\n [00:20:05] Katia:<\/strong> But that’s the… like, the fundamental pieces: we’re there for our customers. We open stores where our customers already are so we can get to know them better. I think that a lot of our decision making around what programs we have in stores, what type of people we hire in stores, how we lead, what marketing activations we do in these stores, all falls out of that. That’s, like, the fundamental principle.<\/p>\n [00:20:31] Brian:<\/strong> So essential. I think one of the things that you’re kind of hitting on… it’s sort of swirling around… is people might buy something they enjoy, but they will actually defend what they love. And I think this is where, like, having people that you can develop affection for and connection to in markets where you have strength is such an incredible play, because you’re actually not just trying to sell, you’re trying to cultivate that sort of affection for and real connection to life. We talked about important moments in people’s lives, like their child graduating, leaving their home and going to college. Like, that’s an essential piece of someone’s life, and I’m coming up on that relatively soon. So it’s very…<\/p>\n [00:21:23] Katia:<\/strong> We can help.<\/p>\n [00:21:23] Brian:<\/strong> Top of mind right now. So, yes. Yeah. You can help me with that. I think these are the kinds of moments where if you don’t have someone that you trust, you don’t have product that you can trust. I think the word here is trust. Trust is fundamental. Like, these are the things that make the difference. And it’s funny, we’ve talked a lot about, you know, how you started 99% ecom, you’re now moving towards sort of the future of the brand, which is putting stores in places where you have strength with customers. What kinds of data are you gathering from those in-person experiences to go back to the digital experience? And how does that improve the overall feeling of the brand?<\/p>\n [00:22:12] Katia:<\/strong> Yeah, great question. And I think that there’s… of course, we do a lot of things that, like, I would call, like, fundamental table stakes. We have a post purchase survey, right, that once you’ve placed an order, for example, online, that it pops up – or you had an interaction in store, it sends you an email. You know, tell us, like, why did you make this purchase? Like, what inspired you to make it? How did you hear about us? All of those things. I learn the most from the one hour store manager call that I have on a weekly basis than I do from any of those, like, type of things. The anecdotes that you get from that can inspire so much. So I’ll give you an example. We’ve been talking about our room service program and how, you know, again, like, not everybody wants us in their homes. Some people are super private, and they don’t want that. And, you know, store manager… they were like, so what I’ve been doing is I’ve been asking people to take a picture of your bedroom and, like, email it to me, and then I can help put together, like, a little lookbook for you of, like, what are the colors that could go with your bed frame, etcetera, with your nightstands. And I was listening to this, and I was like, man, there’s gotta be something, especially in the age of AI, that can help us, like, put the actual pieces on the bed for this customer virtually.<\/p>\n [00:23:41] Katia:<\/strong> So we launched, and we’ve been testing now since, like, end of April, this virtual bed designer. So it’s a tool that anybody can use. It’s on our website where any customer can just go take a picture, upload a picture of their bedroom, and select pieces on it, and we’ll help guide you too. But it has been a game changer, I think, in stores, because now all of a sudden, all of those, like, emails back and forth and the awkward, like, lookbooks that they were creating is completely seamless. Here’s your bed. Here’s our product on your bed. And, again, from, like, what actually ends up happening, people buy everything. Of course. They’re like, of course, this is what I wanted it to look like. Please, please send me everything. Right? So there’s, like, real revenue implications that have now come out of this, but it started with literally a conversation that we were having with the store manager on this call. And I find the most valuable insights from that around how customers think. Like, you’re not… my other, like, I would say, like, favorite… we have a channel called Fairing, which is… comes out of our post purchase survey. But we have a free form as part of it.<\/p>\n [00:25:05] Katia:<\/strong> And it’s like, one of the questions is like, what was frustrating about your experience? What did you not get? So my doomscroll at night and early in the morning is that Slack channel, because we’re getting live feedback from people. And we learn so much. Like, as an example, bed skirts, not a huge market for them. Who has bed skirts these days? Like, it’s not… but some of our customers do. So out of that, they were like, man, I really wish you had a bed skirt. We’re gonna make a bed skirt because the people want a bed skirt. So we find so much inspiration. And, again, of course, like, ways to improve the website experience, but even product, even everything. And we get so much also praise for our customer experience team through those channels as well. Right? Caitlin, she was amazing. She was incredible. She went out of my… out of her way. She sent my daughter a book because she’s going to a big girl bed. I mean, it’s just, like, so much valuable insights comes from that. And, of course, we use AI to aggregate information and create themes and do all that stuff. But there’s no shortcut for what, like, real life consumer insights can give you when you just go and talk to people in stores.<\/p>\n [00:26:31] Phillip:<\/strong> Fairing, a longtime partner of Future Commerce, empowered our Word-of-Mouth Index at Future Commerce Plus. So, a built in selfish plug: futurecommerce.com\/plus. If you’re a paying member, you know about the power of the Word-of-Mouth Index. And for many years, what we tracked on the Word-of-Mouth Index is that consistently, especially in the home category, word-of-mouth is the number one indicator and predictor for people to get that second purchase or convert to subscription, or their propensity to keep the product and not convert, like, a return. So word-of-mouth happens to be always the highest factor for quality and for satisfaction among a customer above any other channel for “how did you hear about us” – which, Fairing is the post purchase survey company, and a good friend of ours, Matt, who started it there. So, just a little plug there. We like them. So, one interesting thing… you noted AI and how AI has really, you know, delivered a lot of benefit. I think also the same AI that helps a consumer to visualize what can be done for them and how it might work for them within the confines of their home… also, there are tools now that might be weaponized against you in the CX channel and as the brand. Something that caught our eye a few months ago on LinkedIn: Scott Tannen, founder and CEO of Boll & Branch, had this post with a couple of pictures that I think were submitted through your CX channel. And I think the post started with, “AI tried to steal from us today. Not theoretically, but today.” But this generative AI picture was used to sort of counterfeit this idea of a damaged, you know, sheet or bedding. And we’ve seen this. We’ve reported on this now for a few months. We had this large write up about how this is a pervasive problem with CX teams. I’m interested in and curious how, outside of this one incident, you know, your team is catching these things – obviously, you’re transparent in writing it up and calling it out. This went viral. How is it impacting team training and awareness, and what are you doing about it?<\/p>\n [00:29:10] Katia:<\/strong> I’ll give you another example too of something that recently… I was literally listening to a call last week with my CX team. It was a full on AI agent that called us asking for a refund. It was… but it was, like, so blatant because…<\/p>\n [00:29:28] Phillip:<\/strong> No.<\/p>\n [00:29:28] Katia:<\/strong> Yes. Yes. It was… it was epic. It was so epic. It was like, “I am… hello, I am Nate. I am Brian’s assistant. Brian is going to be traveling outside the country.” Like, it was so blatantly obvious. At one point, our team member, Rachel, she asked… she was like, “Are you AI?” And then there was, like, a five minute extensive long pause. And the AI goes, “No, I am Nate, Brian’s assistant.” It was so… it was so epic. But it does. It happens. But the reason why we caught that incident and this one to begin with is because we have real human people that are… right, right… looking at this, that know the brand in two seconds. They looked at the photo, and they were like, that’s not how that waffle blanket tears. Like, that’s not real. That’s not… it would never happen. Like, even if you cut… they have seen everything. I’m not gonna go into all the stories of all the weird gross stuff that they’ve seen from customer photos too. Like, they’ve seen it all. In two seconds, they were like, this is absolutely not real. Right? And that’s gonna happen.<\/p>\n [00:30:47] Katia:<\/strong> Right? But the benefit that we have is that we have a real team of people that sit in our Summit office, that are here, that see this stuff all day and every day. And, of course, again, they use AI tools on the back end to help them. But, like, it’s because they’re there and they spotted it, and we have no plans to change that. So, of course, right, like, we’re gonna be adding in some… you know, we bring on, for example, additional help during holiday because that’s, like, peak time for us for sales, etcetera. Right? People are thinking about gifting, especially, you know, around Thanksgiving and the holidays and stuff like that. So we bring on temp help. And for sure, that’s gonna be in our training and onboarding with them: things to watch out for. But at the end of the day, it’s, like, it’s because it’s humans that understand and know our brand and know how the product is gonna tear, or, like, know how people ask for a refund if they actually want a refund because they are gonna keep purchasing with the brand, or if this is an actual just fraud case.<\/p>\n [00:31:57] Phillip:<\/strong> Yeah. Matt Prince, who’s the CEO of Cloudflare, mentioned last year at Cannes Lions… he said, we’ve reached the tipping point. More traffic on the Internet is agentic than not. And that was 2025. We are at the post human future of the internet, right? So most of the traffic that’s on the internet right now is agentic. Means that more of our attention is going to agents than before. And I wonder… this is me wondering aloud, I’m not asking you to weigh in on it, Katia, but my concern is that I wonder at what point in the future will we have to contend with more of the agentic, you know, support calls, because that is a human that has kicked that off on the other side of it. Like, at some point, we are catering to agents through AEO efforts and we want to be discoverable to agents. At least some brands are seeing the opportunity there. And I think some people have even said that, you know, maybe at some point it was arbitrage. Now it’s commonplace. Like, we need to be discoverable through ChatGPT or Claude.<\/p>\n [00:33:08] Brian:<\/strong> Right? So what you’re saying, Phillip, is maybe the call that Katia just described earlier was actually legitimate. Like, someone…<\/p>\n [00:33:17] Phillip:<\/strong> Well, someone kicked it off. Right?<\/p>\n [00:33:18] Brian:<\/strong> Not as, like…<\/p>\n [00:33:20] Katia:<\/strong> Somebody said. Yeah.<\/p>\n [00:33:21] Brian:<\/strong> But as, like, an opportunity for them to actually return their sheets that they wanted to return, and it actually was legitimate.<\/p>\n [00:33:28] Phillip:<\/strong> Well, I’m not saying it’s not legitimate or it is legitimate. I’m saying that at some point in the future, we will likely reach some sort of tipping point where many of the calls, if not most of the calls, are agents. And I have to wonder if we… you know, we have to have some protocol to have to deal with them. I’m curious if… like, what if there is an internal, you know, playbook to have to deal with these now? They seem to be not commonplace, but, you know, you’re going to have to learn to deal with the agent led… agentic… call in the same way that you would probably deal with it differently if it was agentic traffic that was coming into the website, right? We’re probably a little more accepting of agentic traffic on the website than we are agentic calls into the CX team. And that’s more me musing than anything else. I think that as the Internet becomes more agentic, I wonder how much of real life is being brokered by agentic traffic as well. Right?<\/p>\n [00:34:24] Katia:<\/strong> Totally. Totally. Yeah. 100% true. I mean, it’s gonna keep evolving. And some of them, to your point, right, are gonna be an actual… there are plenty of people that have AI assistants. Like, that’s real. I think it’s gonna be about trying to, again… when you, if you have an internal CX team, right, that knows the brand and knows what are the types of things typically that people actually return because of, right, versus, like… there’s such clear triggers for people that we know when it’s fraud.<\/p>\n [00:34:59] Brian:<\/strong> For sure.<\/p>\n [00:35:00] Katia:<\/strong> Well, I think, you know, for us, it’s like training anybody that we bring on board around, like, what those, like, trigger words are that we know. But, yeah, of course, there’s gonna be a point where someone is gonna have an AI assistant call us to actually legitimately return something.<\/p>\n [00:35:20] Brian:<\/strong> Right. In which case, like, how do you handle that? And, Phillip, this is actually where I think we start to get into something you have talked about and written about before: the idea of, like, agentic ghettos, you called them, which is, like, paths for AI to actually take that are not paths that we would send humans down…<\/p>\n [00:35:40] Phillip:<\/strong> Yeah. Just wanna make sure I define that. The write up was in January 2025, and it was when the original Universal Commerce Protocol was announced with, you know, this consortium of folks in the commerce industry. And the goal there was for me to basically say… I think if we’re gonna create agents that are going around buying stuff in the world on the Internet, we should probably… if they’re going to be functional substitutes for human desire and human activity, then they should be using interfaces that humans use as well. We shouldn’t be creating another Internet just for agents. Right? To me, that’s… it’s creating something that humans don’t interact with. It’s a… we’re creating a fast lane just for agents, or we’re creating a…<\/p>\n [00:36:36] Brian:<\/strong> Slow lane for humans?<\/p>\n [00:36:38] Phillip:<\/strong> Or slow lanes for humans. Right? To me, it’s like… we’re recreating the old… all the lessons that we learned from the past of, like, the mobile Internet that we then backtracked on, and we then created the responsive web. Like, we’ve learned these lessons before, and we don’t need another five year, you know, hard lesson to learn again. That’s what I said around that.<\/p>\n [00:37:05] Brian:<\/strong> So my point in bringing this up, though, is this. When we talk about analog engagement – like, engagement with actual people rather than technology that’s sitting on the other side. So agentic ghettos, as you put them… like, when it comes to these asynchronous digital experiences that we’re creating and ways of sort of fielding interest in those things, traffic, right? And ways of funneling that traffic, it may be relatively simple to build experiences that an agent can just follow because we’re talking about something that’s built, a system that’s built. But when we talk about engaging with actual people, this is where things start to get really tricky, because now we’re talking about a computer, an AI, the machine world trying to come engage with the human world. And engage well… the problem with that is it’s infinitely scalable. Right? And so I think that there’s gonna need to start to be some standards around this. And something that I think would be really interesting – and I wanna bring this back around to the AI, you know, experience that you built, Katia – there’s an article that Ryan Kempel over at the Lyceum recently wrote called “What Must Remain, or Standards for AI Evaluation.”<\/p>\n [00:38:23] Brian:<\/strong> And he had this idea about stimulation versus substitution. And I think this is really essential right now. And I think this idea of, like, substituting for humans and using AI as substitutes for humans – substituting tasks or processes that we’ve done – versus things that cause us to want to engage more and learn more. So we’re not just turning off our brains and putting things in the hands of the AI, we’re actually using the AI to enhance or push us further towards something and actually want to master and make it our own in the process. And so I think as brands start to think about this, I think that when you substitute… if you’re gonna substitute for something, make sure it’s something that you don’t wanna take away from a human. And we talk about this all the time: frictionless versus friction. Where is the good friction in the process of AI? And I think that’s the question right now. And it sounds like the experience you’ve created, in my mind, is an opportunity to enhance and get people to engage, in a way they feel comfortable with.<\/p>\n [00:39:34] Katia:<\/strong> I’m gonna use that framing with my team when I walk out of this. It’s such a good one. It is. Like, that is very much… we very much don’t wanna substitute. We don’t have an AI bot on our website that you can even ask questions to. Like, we don’t. We believe in having an interaction. We don’t wanna substitute that. But we enhance, right, on the backside.<\/p>\n [00:39:58] Katia:<\/strong> And we stimulate. Right? Like, I think the virtual bed designer is a perfect example of that. We… if we use it as an interactive tool to interact with customers. Right? Like, let’s add this. Let’s remove this. Like, this now looks better. I really like that framing.<\/p>\n [00:40:15] Phillip:<\/strong> As always, I mean, a stimulating conversation. I’m curious… when we ask all of our guests, you know, what does the future hold? If you had to look into the crystal ball… Boll & Branch of the future, you’re opening new stores all the time. You’ve got three that we just talked about in the preshow that are opening imminently. What’s the playbook of 2026, H2 2027? What do you got coming up?<\/p>\n [00:40:39] Katia:<\/strong> Yeah. I think it sounds really boring, and I say this all the time, but it’s a lot of what we’re doing now. And nobody… I feel like people don’t like to hear that, but that has been, you know… I…<\/p>\n [00:40:51] Brian:<\/strong> I love that.<\/p>\n [00:40:52] Katia:<\/strong> People wanna hear, like, a really shiny thing that we’re doing, but we’re continuing to execute our plan. Like, this is our plan, and we’re gonna open… we already have signed four more stores for next year. We are continuing to elevate our experience in Nordstrom locations and Bloomingdale’s locations to make sure that it looks really brand right and that those teams there are also educated on our brand. So, like, it’s really a lot of those types of things, and it’s not… we’re coming out with some sexy new cool thing. That’s… I’ll say one piece that we are, like, I think… that remains, like, a big opportunity for us is, we do have an interior designer program. We do have, like, a small, like, hospitality program, but that space, as you can imagine, is very relevant for us. So I think that there’s a lot of opportunity and, like, headroom to grow in that side for us. So I’m very excited about that.<\/p>\n [00:41:52] Brian:<\/strong> I love that. Blocking and tackling – that’s how you build a brand. Good product, good people, develop affection. I mean, what can get better than that in this day and age?<\/p>\n [00:42:01] Katia:<\/strong> Thanks, Brian. Thank you both.<\/p>\n [00:42:03] Phillip:<\/strong> What an incredible… thank you for your…<\/p>\n [00:42:04] Brian:<\/strong> [inaudible].<\/p>\n [00:42:05] Phillip:<\/strong> …brand. What an incredible set of accomplishments and to have done it over such a long period of time. Incredible. Katia Unlu is the chief commercial officer at Boll & Branch, and congrats on all the success and wish you continued success in the future.<\/p>\n [00:42:19] Katia:<\/strong> Thank you so much. This was so fun, you guys.<\/p>\n [00:42:21] Phillip:<\/strong> Thanks for watching this episode of Future Commerce. If it sparked something for you… and if you like, you should subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. It helps more people join the conversation. If you want to bring more Future Commerce into your world, we have a print shop. Go to futurecommerce.com, our brand new website where we’ve just revised everything. We’ve got a bunch of topical stuff for you to go check out and our beautiful print books. You can put this probably on your nightstand next to your beautiful Boll & Branch books. If you don’t have this, Katia, we gotta get this to you.<\/p>\n [00:42:47] Katia:<\/strong> Yeah, I need it for my shelf over here.<\/p>\n [00:42:49] Phillip:<\/strong> Yeah, we have a whole library of these now. This is our fifth book, and we’ve got some new stuff coming. So, commerce and culture together in beautifully crafted books, zines, and things for your coffee table, your bookshelf. And, anyway, remember that commerce shapes the future because commerce is culture. We’ll see you next time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n