The ASOM Pod | EP77: Here’s what we think is happening in 2026 (ecom and business predictions)

We financially model everything. We predict everything and we continue to re-predict everything and we're always so down to the cogs and costs of every little dollar and cents we're spending. We ensure that we're maximizing margins so we can reinvest it all into growth. Personalization explodes and that could be at the shopping level which is where you're no longer going down a funnel. You're more going down a personalized experience based around your actions and reactions. I think these are things that are going to happen this year. The prediction that I think there's going to be correction because there's going to be more privacy and regulation coming and we're going to shift to more synthetic data. We're going to use human behavior analysis to predict what most humans would do in a specific situation. So we're going to see a lot of owned D2C retail stores open up in 2026. 2026 more D2C only brands currently. When I mean D2C I mean e-commerce. I mean Amazon I mean Walmart Target.com I mean their own website. More D2C brands will open up their own retail stores in 2026 than ever before in the history of e-commerce. You know what? Which what do you mean? We're only doing one. Are we doing the prediction one? Yeah we're doing the prediction one today. Oh just a one. Okay. Timingwise this is the best pod we can do right now with our time so. And when it's going to be released too. Yeah. Cool. Let's do it. Do you know I shaved before I started this? Yeah. I mean you can tell clean shaving I am. You look great. Yeah. I really did shave. I had this little patch of hair right here. You can stand it. He was. Typically Asian males can only grow like mustache a little bit of the under the bottom lip. That's pretty much it. I wonder why. I've never seen an Asian male with a full beard have you? Yeah I have. And those kung fu movies. It could be fake. No no no. None of that is fake. It's 100% real. Are you bullshitting? All right. With that let's go ahead and thank you guys. Ready? Let's do it. All right in three two one. Welcome to the awesome pod where we talk a lot. Ecom is the path that we walk a lot. From four point of view is when we're talking shop. Amia from the agency and Jimmy from SAZ. John has an Android for giving the past because he's an operator building brands like a carpenter and that's Ryan. He is the marketer. Like I said this the awesome product. Where we talk a lot. What is up everyone? Welcome back to the awesome pod a show by perspective from the eyes of an agency. Sast operator marketer focused on the D to C e-commerce and retail space. All right boys today we are going to do a prediction. Potion. Fortunately our boy John is out sick I think we just got the covid or what? Yeah I think John John got a John got attacked. What do you got it? Wasn't he out somewhere like Vegas or something like last week or something? I don't know but the picture he sent me was like he was dead so. All right P. All right P. We hope that it recovers before I don't know the weekend or something I guess maybe. Anyways well we're gonna do this thing with or without and we decided that we're gonna move forward and march forward and someone sick can't make it we can't make it it is part of life so all right I wanted to bring back last year's thing and before I do that I should probably make a little introduction so otherwise besides John we've got a Marigrassnid she's the Prince of Bosnia the mirror Chicago the mayor of motivation king of Russia whatever I think we want to call him going too far. Too far and I know we've got Brian McDonald funny student on LinkedIn we're here and my name is Jimmy Kim and today our pod is going to be hot takes and predictions. Now we did this one last year and we did this for episode 28 we'll link that in the show notes below. It's called hot takes and predictions for e-commerce 2025 so I wanted to start off with two things let's let's do a what happened and where we write or we wrong so I'm gonna read off our predictions from last year and we're gonna jump into predictions for next year and since John is in here today maybe we'll let him do a prediction in the future but for now we'll start there so let's get going from the back end of here last year let's start with you Brian you had four or five predictions last year so let's go through them and let's talk about it and if we agree that they either came in reality or you just missed the so all right first one I think is good it's TikTok creators are going to jack their rates up because brands are panicking I don't know the answer do you so I know that the TikTok platform fees went up I do know that in terms of the creators we don't do enough or anything with with TikTok this would have been a question for John to to respond to but I do know just from purchasing on the platform that the deals have definitely increased and there's a lot of brands now on TikTok that are selling either damaged product or product that didn't necessarily make the fit for retailer D to see which I think is a very smart play there was a brand that a candy brand and their product came out too sticky and they sold it as like extra sticky on TikTok shop for like 80% off what they just use it as a flush sales channel to get rid of the table recoup some cash but in return a lot of the deals that I've been seeing have been higher this year so are the creators charging more don't know the answer that will have to wait on John but I do know just by being a consumer on the platform that the deals definitely are getting bigger interesting I would just say did the deals are getting bigger or the products are getting cheaper what do you think it is it's it it also could be a thing to Jimmy where maybe they you know to combat the to combat the costs of what people dealt with with tariffs and with you know just the economy in general this year maybe they just use it as a way in which that hey listen we we just want to sell and and get rid of either product that we had bad deals on or not great margins on and we were just trying to flush channels so it could be a way in which to either get rid of like dead skews that they're pushing or slow moving skews that they had to increase their deals on in order to move it but that's my guess so you know one thing that I notice Brian like one of the things that I've noticed about TikTok which is really weird and I've done this with probably two or three of brands that I've purchased from oftentimes when I see an ad for a brand on TikTok I'm always like cool like the D to CME is like I've never heard of this brand let me go check them out I'll go to their website I'll go look and then I'll even look on Amazon but you know a lot of times a deal is better on TikTok than it is on Amazon or the direct to consumer website which I think is a big mistake in my humble opinion but that's how that is so what happens is I will go and look on their website and I'll look at it there and be like okay and then look at on Amazon and usually I'll be driven back to TikTok to make the purchase because the deal is just better and it's not because of like the subsidy like coupons that they give you I'm talking about they're giving me just a better price like where is this there's this thing I take from my gut like this for a biome stuff I love this stuff I've been on it forever it's for my digested system and so I discovered it on TikTok and they sell the bottles for like I don't know 45 40 45 dollars and it goes for about a month right it's about a month supply on Amazon they sell it for 50 bucks right and on their website they sell for like 55 plus you have to pay for shipping and so it's like wait a minute why wouldn't I go to TikTok and pay 45 but as a brand but you think like you price it the lowest in the channel where I think TikTok takes a margin from you at the on top of that I don't know what it is like 20 30% I'm assuming like Amazon like they're taking a margin right and they're paying the affiliate at that point yeah I don't understand it's interesting I think it's also like a there must be a strategy here that I'm missing that's all to our kickbacks that TikToks might be doing with the back end maybe maybe TikTok contributing to a discount or something because I can't I can't figure it out they do TikTok will do will run their own deals too but it also could be a thing where it's like hey we want to sort of make it an ear as a spilloff or we just want to purchase we don't we know that that TikTok has now become full funnel in terms of like discovery through purchase and we don't want to lose any conversion on someone finding us on TikTok and then you know oh let me check them out on D to C now their kid draw Sharpie on the wall and they don't purchase the product right that's almost like making making the daily resistible where they have to discover they have to investigate educate and then purchase it's probably that name sounds probably the only full funnel purchase consumer platform in terms of discovery through end of purchase yeah I mean I think there's nothing more stronger in this marker right now than TikTok maybe what not at this point but there's a very different little customer there too TikTok just scrolling in bed and they hit you with an advertisement versus like what not you have to intentionally go join a stream about a product right so like there's a difference in the intent there anyways I think we went far left on this thing so sorry but I will I will mark that one as a maybe because we're not sure what would happen what was what was my other prediction for this year okay so another prediction for you you and a mayor had contradicting answers one said that one person said the W15% decline year over year in subscriptions for 2024 to 2025 versus one said that the subscription and membership will win and increase and go up this year yeah so I'm assuming I was the I was the gloomer there and I said they would decrease what's the answer I'm pretty confident we're on the decrease I think you know what I don't want to say it out loud but I think a mayor was wrong once again I think the conversation that we had from what I remember is you were saying per brand is going to decrease as an industry I was arguing was going to increase. And I think it keeps going up, but I don't know. Did just the descriptions go down to sure? Brian? No, they went up in here. Actually, actually per chat GPT and I told them to go research it for 2024 to 25. They're saying that revenue is up, but activists, subscribers are down. Yes. And that was, and that was the conversation when Paul Chambers and Sub Summit released a report. And that's why this is why what drives Brian up a wall when people talk GMV and revenue on TikTok shop or Amazon or whatever is you have your, I would call it top five players, right? We're talking about Amazon Prime. We're talking about Netflix. We're talking about Hulu. We're talking about slaying YouTube TV, right? You're top five to seven, you know, big membership or subscription driven platforms that all have either gone up by 30 to 60% in the past year and a half. Well, of course, the category is going to look like it's going up. But in return, right, 99% of the people that play in the subscription and membership space aren't Netflix or Amazon Prime. So they could be struggling, but the category itself, if you look at like revenue is increasing because of those of those businesses. So yeah, so there's an average drop about 10%. But there is increase in your to your right 73% of businesses increased their prices just in 2024 alone. And another, you know, 45 did in 2025 or so, so far it looks like. So interesting. That's a good one. All right, here's another prediction, another three, four-way prediction around SaaS and it was about consolidations, companies folding. I guess everybody kind of agreed with all of these that everybody said that this would happen. So I mean, I guess yeah, the answer is we did see a lot of things change this year. I mean, we saw people like Yacht Pose, a perfect example of someone, Brian, as the recipient of a lot of great free things that he would get some shoes, you got some luggage, you might have gotten some free food at one point or something. He never switched and he never did anything, but he'll rock his stuff proudly because it's nice, they're nice brand stuff. But that's probably the biggest example of it. But we've, I guess we've seen more consolidation this year. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, I guess. Like I don't think I think last year to this year we thought there'd be more movement across it. And I don't know, you think this a merit, but like I don't think there's been a ton of movement. There's been some acquisitions, small ones, which are, you know, acquisitions are very hidden under the cloth of like what it really means, right? Like it just because you got acquired, doesn't mean it's positive or negative, but I would say that some of that happened. What do you guys think? It wasn't as much as I thought it was going to be. I thought it was going to be much, much worse, but there has been a lot of more, indeed, shop, ecosystem aggregation with smaller apps and things like that, which I think was kind of expected. But if I was to evaluate my sentiment towards this compared to last year, I was wrong on it. Yeah, I think so too. I don't think it'd happen as much as we thought. I think people survived and looked dude, you know, this man startups, especially do those survive and survive. They're like, you know, the SaaS model is designed to be like a parachute balloon. So like, you can always cut deep enough to survive and operate and revive, come back out of it. And we've seen that. We'll see that I think this year as we continue on and company is changing. All right. So that one I like that one, we come back to that prediction. The only big one that went down was Builder AI. That was kind of the big thing. Yeah, but that was a scam. That wasn't the same thing. I feel like when there's one thing when someone's trying to run a legit of a business and they fail, there's another one when you just outright lying, right? Not proven by court. So I'm not to judge jury here, but that's allegedly, allegedly. There was a lot of fraud apparently that occurred with that thing and a lot of fake investor updates. It was basically like, very on. Now one now one quick thing to add for SaaS, which I'm seeing, which I actually love because I've talked about this a lot before is a lot of SaaS companies, at least ones that I've looked into this past, I would say like two quarters, along with current ones that we run are creating more like price competitive starter packages were before and Sasha either had custom packages or you had like a starter beginner package. And then it was like contact us and book a demo to whatever. There's more tiers now. And there's more ease of onboarding, I would say today in SaaS, where you can download and pick a package that fits as best as you can to try to save as much money as you can. And then obviously there's the custom aspects of it, but I would say that was a big change. I saw this year in SaaS and regards to pricing structure and packaging. Yeah, I think that's probably the pressure from AI happening right there. Just applications are going to be easier to build and they know the competitions there. I mean, let's look at the reviews landscape. For example, in e-commerce space, we've got, you know, at the top end, we've got the bizarre voice to yak pose, the most expensive enterprise grade. And I don't understand what makes an enterprise grade at this point. And then you've got the judge visa all with the bottom at $15 and you've got all these little brands in between all of them. And the reality is, bro, like they all display reviews. You can all search the downloadable thing like what more do you do with your reviews? Like what magical things. Yes, there's syndication and some of the fancy stuff that you can do. I get that right. There's like licensing that occurs, which allows people to do that. But like, outside of syndication, I don't see where the value in it and reviews is. But yet, how do you charge essentially for the same thing? $15 a month versus what I've heard people pay three, four, $5,000 a month for review engine. Yeah, you're spot on. I mean, Ameri, you work with companies that have to work with bizarre voice, right? Like bizarre voice happen for the, and that's what their edges. They have a agreement and lock with like Walmart.com where they can display reviews on their site. And so I get their edge, right? They have a moat. Their moat is a the undefensible contract. Whatever that contract is, it's gold. And they should make sure that that contract never unexpires because they control the market right now, which is unfair. But it's also important, right? But dude, most of these guys don't have any kind of special mode. That's kind of where I don't understand, you know? I mean, the beginning when people, when they reviews application, start to evolve, there was a separation. And what I mean is like step one, everyone just collect review, approve, disapprove, move forward. And then you had like email automations in there, you had, you know, not your language like AI voices, but all of these gimmicks at any application, because, you know, spin up pretty cheaply. The other thing that really helps that again, the entire ecosystem is caught up on is like in the beginning was integrations. Who did you integrate in the ecosystem with? Those are all like separation that made like certain applications stand out. And you're like, okay, I'm going to make my clavi integration easier with Yachtflow because they have an automated integration. But like, now if you have an app and you don't have the core ecosystem integrations, nobody's going to use you anyway. So that's kind of like what everyone's offering today is just a standard. Tired of staring at blank pages, Ami sent AI doesn't hit you with writer's block. Their new AI writes your emails, personalizes content, and builds customer segments instantly. Just whisper who it's for and AI figures out the rest. Join 125,000 users already winning with OmniSense email, SMS and push notifications. Back by 24/7 amazing support, visit OmniSense.com today. Yes. And realistically outside of your like, oracles and net sweets of the world, which obviously as tech advances, I would say the next like three to five years net sweet will still dominate because it's just such a tough space. And it's such a space where every business is unique in there and what they need from the capability side of it, right? Even us like 70 80% of it is in the box, but then like our team has to build out, you know, different ship for it. But outside of that, for the most part, everyone's like the things that used to separate people during COVID, now are what makes you like everyone else. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's just gotten easier. And I think that's a tribute to AI, which we'll talk about in a little bit here. So the next prediction was meta. Meta will stay king. Basically, that's the long TLDR from last year. You guys coupled two people, you and John said it was meta still king this year. I think it was still continued to dominate. And I think it's interesting because the more I think about why meta is king and why a lot of brands run on it and different things, not only Asian buying demographics, it's the intelligence of the platform. And even though we hear every year that Facebook is dying or Instagram is dying or any of this, it's to undeniable. Like the people who spend money are really still on those platforms today. Yeah. So that is not nothing that was wrong about that. That's undisputable when you come down into it. All right. So let's keep going here. Let's look at another one. We've got social commerce being a competitor to China, China, social commerce, Shopify. I think this one was thrown on a curve all this year because of the thing called tariffs this year, huh? Basically, the prediction was that China would be hyper competitive. This was like, when we did this last year, Tima was on the rise. Remember, yeah, Brian was doing shopping sprees for $20 and spins for $300 and buying $350 for $10. And so, yeah, the crazy [bleep] remember you were wearing watches that were falling apart. Well, your prediction was that China would take over and destroy Shopify, but turns out, the tariffs have stopped that. So, I think you're wrong. That's all. Oh, man, that was-- Those were the days. Those were the days. Yeah. Post-requited days. All right. John had a prediction around a continued run-up of cryptocurrencies and we'll see another push for companies trying to convince brands and SaaS companies to accept more coins. I don't think-- No, I don't-- I'm at least on bad timing. Yeah, yeah. It's not a good timing right now. We've been on a pretty bad significant crash going on right now. All right. Here's another one. Live shopping will have its first year of genuine success in the e-commerce industry. John has had great success with live shopping, but has the industry-- would you guys classify the industry in general saying that? I would. I mean, Gary talks about it every day, right? Yeah. One thing that I noticed in eBay, they started to promote on listings if the seller goes live or not. So that tells you they're pushing it, they're believing in it, they're seeing results. I've tuned into a couple of eBay ones. We're talking about tens of thousands of people log in. Yeah. It shows. It is ridiculous. I've been on eBay ones too, Amir. I think it's-- I think it's-- I think it's had a great year. I think it's had a great deal with obviously it being hyped up on social right and everyone like, yeah, I'm going to give it a try. Like, John, two years ago, would never have tried social shopping and the more it got put in its face and the more that-- you know, he-- and I think now two brands have to figure out new-- they have to unlock new areas of revenue and channels that are outside of your traditional like Amazon, Walmart, D to C, and retail where it's like, hey, what else do I have like more control over? What else am I not looking at? Even if it adds another 5 to 10%, that could make you negative 5 EBITDA to plus 2 EBITDA, right? Just by having a year like John on a new social shopping channel. So I think as times get harder for direct consumer brands or e-commerce brands in general, where it's never been harder, I don't think to run a D to C brand. When you unlock things like social shopping, it, like I said, it could make you, you know, go from go from red to black. Okay. Fair enough. All right. Moving to the next one, I'm lumping a couple of them together, but they're interesting. They're both very interesting. So value based shopping will be bigger than ever versus discount value shopping, I guess. Like people are going to be leaning on value board discount in the second part of that prediction that I'll blend another prediction in with and was that consumer spending will loosen up during the second year of the second half of the year. So I would say that both of those are not true. I think that value is important, but price is becoming more sensitive due to the increase of cost that is occurring. What used to be premium is now your regular basically. Those things have gotten more expensive. And so I would say that and I don't think consumer spending is up. I mean, second half right now, we are in a negative downward consumer confidence trend right now, ultimately. But we are at one, I forgot, I think it's like 40 or 50 years, the lowest consumer sentiment. Yeah, consumer sentiment of finances and stuff. It's tough right now. There's no doubt. I mean, we're in a really interesting place. I don't think it's, I don't think it's the bubble of, you know, I know this is the controversial thing, but like AI bubble and all that stuff happening. I don't think that's going to be it, but like definitely consumer confidence is definitely a change. I've told Japanese gente thing that's happening. So based on this pod comes out, that could change a lot of things that are happy right now in real time. So I'm not sure what will happen, but that leads me to the last prediction. The last one here off from John is, it's not the last one, but this is one of the last ones is game over for a lot of brands, expecting a lot of companies to fold in 2025. Have you guys felt like a lot of companies have folded in 2025? No, I don't think so. I mean, maybe ones that we've never seen or heard of, but in terms of like sizeable ones that people know of. A lot of them are hurting. Now could we say that they've, you know, had a bad fiscal or will they have a bad fiscal or calendar 25 financially? Maybe. And to be fair to John, it could have been like, it depends where this year ends for, I think, for some brands, even to some that I talk to, I think could be like a make a lot of challenges with tears with everything else going on with consumer sentiment being down. Brands took a lot of curveballs. Yeah. But you know, founders are like roaches like we just survived. Like you just find ways to duck under that rock and figure your way out. So I'm not surprised that we didn't see people and especially to all idea, like here's the thing. There's a lot. I would agree with John that there's a lot of brands that are not doing very well. They're failing. They're unsuccessful, but they're not going to give up as founders. This is the difference. They're going to stay scrappy. Stay lean, go down as small as they can and just survive like good cockroaches. And that's what makes a great founder. Anyway, he's like, you're going to have issues. You're going to have challenges. If everything was only on the up and up all your life, you wouldn't be starting an e-commerce brand because you'd be smart for anything else. So I would, yeah, I would take it as, as like a positive even even even, you know, with consumer sentiment being down and even if some brands are struggling, I think it's probably the first time, at least, you know, since I've been an e-commerce called since 2018 that like people have been forced to, I think, years past founders have been either like marketers or sales guys or fundraisers or whatever. I think it's forced people to become operators. And I think not a lot of founders before this year were had to be, you know, pushed into a corner to be like, hey, now you have to actually operate the business. Instead of just like creating and selling product or marketing the product. So I think it's actually done. I think it's done really, I think it's done what I have nothing bad to say about it because I think it's really transformed, especially the younger entrepreneurs that launched when money was free during COVID that didn't really have to face this. Now they're facing it and it's going to make, it's going to make them better, better operators and founders ultimately. To add to that too, I mean, I don't much, probably obviously share branded. You guys went to a packer, you guys don't do that anymore and used to be very much against. I was just seeing that like me talking to a lot of operators, a lot of founders that they're looking like, hey, how can I buy a machine that can replace 200,000 dollars worth of salaries as an example, shifting that how can I go to a 3PL? How can I do that? So I think everyone is focusing, which I think is the right activity on the things we have introduced and that ever talk about. The small points that are hidden into PNLs that everyone looked over because it was all about going back to meta, how is meta performing, rises there, we're killing it. Not that everything went down, I think we're kind of looking under the couch cushion per say to see where there's a dollar to say. Well, and it's not just that. Let's be honest, the rise of people talking about financial literacy this year, right? We've seen our body tailor holiday do this plenty of times, but like it used to be the only one, two Jimmy. Yeah, now there's a bunch of people starting to talk about it. It's this CFO and that CFO and this person who does this and like, look, business is business. What I am finding more and more of these days is like, there are businesses being stood up agencies that are basically fractional CFOs for e-commerce that are successfully growing and scaling and helping people to understand data and engineering. I think I told you guys this before when I, you know, way back what three, four, three, four years ago when I first true classics was on the explosion, I remember sitting with Ben standing next to Ben one day and I said, Ben, what's your secret, dude? Like what's the secret to true classics like Blooming Success? He goes data, PNL's finance and he's like, this is Ben, right? Ben, this is where Ben comes from and he was basically like, we financially model everything and we predict everything and we continue to re-predict everything and we're always so down to the cogs and cost of every little dollar and cents we're spending. We ensure that we're maximizing margins so we can reinvest it all into growth and you know, they grew what to 300 million before they took a dollar in and then they recently took money in from private equity but like, they took a significant amount of dollars in revenue scaling using math. So I think that definitely came into place. All right, I got a handful more and then we'll jump to the new 2026 predictions. Okay, crater led software and crater led brands will be on the rise this year. That was one of the predictions. You guys agree? I mean, some YouTubers I follow and especially in the two way space definitely came out with stuff but I wouldn't say it was like a plethora but I definitely saw some new ones. But on the software side, yeah, I would say on the software side we saw explosion of founder led brands this year. People trying to figure out distribution and using their status, I think that that's definitely a louder area. So maybe on the software side we saw that. All right, prediction number two here, another one. I'm pretty proud of this one because I called this one but Google search ads are going to be less relevant relevant. in 2025. And I think that that's true. We've solved AI attack and the changes that are recurring right now in the market. So I would say Google search is starting to be coming. Was that? It's minimal. It's only like 0.25% of the search market. What's that? AI. For direct searches for products, right? Is that what you're saying? For service to their products. I'm interesting. So you're saying it's still minimal. It's still very minimal. I think so I think this is what's still happening. I think Google and the coin is a word a long time ago. They're still dominating what's called micro moments. When somebody needs a solution right away, you go to Google, it solves it for you. Amazon has taken that a little bit with the product, and that a little bit a lot with the product. And I think with AI, the habit is still, let me get to the point until I switch to owning that micro moment. I don't think it's still there. I think a lot of people have conversations, but I don't think they're applying like technical graphs are like I'm actually doing a lot more product discovery using Chattier PT or complexity. So this is this is this is very interesting. So Google searches are up. However, it's the first time in over a decade that Google's engine market share is below 90%. They typically trend between 92 and 94%. This year, they're below 90%. However, their search volume has increased from 25 to 24. So that just means there's just more search going on. And that what that tells me is there's more avenues of search and all new advancements with whether it's AI or whether it's Amazon getting better or Walmart or whoever getting better. People are asking more questions. People are investigating more than they did before. And I see that too with even like my mother, I bring my mother and wife up because I think it's like a pretty good indicator on like the economy with women. They're whether it's Alexa this year or Chattier PT this year or now on Amazon, they finally figured out you can just type in like girls birthday toys age five. And like they think it's the coolest thing ever, right? So I think the awareness and search has evolved. But now there's more avenues in search. So even though Google's increased, now they have just 89.7% of market share on search in comparison to their average of 92 to 93% over the past decade. So that's pretty cool. Okay. That's an interesting step there too. I mean, I think it's all interesting, mostly because like, you know, if you think about all the the split of what e-commerce means and like how people are going to search, I mean, Amazon dominates, right? I think Amazon's 38% of the market of e-commerce. And if you look put all the Shopify stores together, they're only make up for like 6% of the entire e-commerce GMV of the world basically, right? Like it's very small sliver. And so I think that people like Amazon or like Walmart, I think Walmart's about 7, 8% to the market, you take people like that and they're going to innovate on how to make consumers spend more money and so forth this year. So yeah. All right. Let me see any more here we've got. So we had AI agents will change team structures. That was some kind of that was the only AI prediction that we put out last year, by the way. Isn't that crazy? A year ago? One year ago, guys, all this and the only prediction is AI agents will change team structures. It's the only prediction about AI we made last year. And it was 100% accurate. It was 100% accurate. Yes. Yes. Yes. It's still wild to me that that was the only thing that we predicted this last year. Yeah. And that's true. That's true. So the crazy to say was in this infancy. Yeah. It was a year ago was in his infancy, right? And look how far it's come. Yeah. So I would say we got about 50% of them right overall looking at it. Yeah. We were pretty solid. Yeah. We're pretty solid. There was some weird off ones. I would say that looking at these a mayor probably ran, it pains me and Brian to tell you this, but you were probably the most right this year, because you were the most broad and generic. You didn't take any risky ones. God was off the wall. God was like brands will die and this and that. And you know, like so there you know, but to be fair, that was a little bit of a sentiment because people were not, you know, I share some of the sentiment we're drawn to. Yeah. Oh, it does a TikTok. Oh, here's what I missed from you, Mayor. TikTok would be acquired by a US company in 2025. It did happen. Or it's happening, I suppose. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's right. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Not bad. Yeah. You're most right. I think overall looks like. Yeah. The free. The premier. Let's move on. All right. We'll move on. Yeah. That's enough. Yeah. You must, you must be bleeding edge. I mean, bleeding. Which one did you hear? All right. Seeding edge. Seeding edge. All right, guys. Let's talk 2026 and unfortunately, John won't be here to put his hot takes in, but maybe we'll ask him in a future pot if we have time in one of these. But all right. We'll go around the room and start. Let's start with each one because I looked at a mayor's and it's all like cap case and crazy looking. So I'm going to let a mayor start. I don't know what the hell you're talking about. These words are too big for me. So what's your first prediction? Okay. So mine, I'm going to talk about it from an agency service standpoint because you have a similar prediction that you will set. So I'm not going to get into it a consumer one. But my big prediction is that there's going to be or has to be a shift in user experience and the way we approach conversion rate optimization and funnel marketing because that fund is not going to be splitting to two different tracks. One is a human track that exists today. The other one is the agent track that is going to be dominated by of course AI shoppers. And I think we're going to have to figure out where do we go in order to really achieve the best conversions with I did actually a little bit of reading on this couple of weeks ago and Google was reporting even that conversions are higher when an agent is leading them. So I think if we start to see those patterns happen and AI becomes smarter and evolves more, are we going to start to marketers? AI is more than we do to humans, which is going to be something interesting. The other component is AI currently, which is really scary just how we finish this with one year being in of this like explosion. We're still or it is still consuming human data and behavior. It is still learning us. This is very early. So I think the more we input, I think the better the output of AI is going to be and not going into the rabbit hole of quantum computing. But when that ties in with AI properly, it's going to be a whole new world. I mean, I think my entire prediction of next year, I mean, the one that's kind of mirroring this, but they all kind of fall together when I think about my predictions and your answer to this short line is we've all heard about what personalization is. I think this year, personalization explodes and I could be at the shopping level, which is where you're no longer going down a funnel. Data privacy. Even when I think about data privacy, which is one of my things this year, I think this is the year we shift the data privacy aspect. And I think what I mean by this, we've been so closed off about let's protect our privacy and data. What I think we're going to start seeing this year is people going, you know what? Giving the right privacy and data to the right people where I want a better experience is going to help me have a better experience, a more personalized human authentic experience. So therefore, I'm going to allow more of it. I don't think it's going to still be a consent list. It's going to still come with consent. But what we're learning with people is like, I've heard this from people like if they don't accept the cookies or accept these things, then the experience isn't good. It doesn't save my preferences. It doesn't do this for me. It doesn't do that for me. I think as long as you have an application that wants that, I think people are going to be more willing to give it to you than ever this year. I think companies, so industries typically lead innovation with anything and then human adoption comes. So I've been looking at Atlas. I've been looking at a comment, browsers from OpenAI and ProPlexury. So I look at a comment as an example and this is kind of actually super crazy to me and I will never use comment. So comment considers anything that you put into it as content. And comment also in their privacy has any content that is put into and output it into comment. It's their property and can be used in any way they choose to do so. Who's going to be comfortable with that? I'm not. Yeah. I mean, dude, there's a lot of things that are consenting. You know, when you buy a car or like you sign a mortgage or do a lot of things, you sign away so much data. So much so much. And you don't have to. But like, then if you don't, then you got to fill all these forms and it's just easier to give them the data. Like let them know that you bought a house. Let them know that you did this. You know what I mean? Like, this is the challenge that we come into. But want to be different between signing off on things and signing up for things. And I even like when I sign up, I think a lot of people do it. I'll do like a mere plus Comcast at whatever.com. So I know who I gave it to and how there's been spread. But both I'm a politics and campaign with politics, one of the worst offenders of this, and they create these regulations. My thing, though, is we have an intimate relationship with this device. We have things on there that are photos, they're by family, that are medical records, that are things that we search for, look for, like whether somebody is pregnant or not, and maybe somebody is considering taking their life. I mean, there's a lot of crazy stuff in there, and that people share with their device, and at what point, 'cause AI's different than the way we'd be sharing data. - Yeah, but I'm there. - You have me moving your phone, Amir? - I'm sorry. - You have nudes in your phone? - I have what, Amir? - Nudes, news? - Nudes. - Or nudes. - I do not have nudes. - I do have nudes. - Listen, Amir, you're a self-important peanut, bro. Like, no one cares about your data, no one cares about my data. We're not that important, like, just let them have it. - No, no. Make a better experience for me. - We're not. Here's my point. I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about large corporations. - Yeah. - So, what are they gonna advertise better to me now? Like, I like that. - No, no, no, no, no. It's not that I'm saying the adoption, for example, if you use AI, and AI is going to evolve, and I'm just using this extreme example, in a workplace that connects it to their Wi-Fi, as an example. And let's say that you're using AI on your phone, but it's your work phone, or you're using AI on your personal phone with work files. That becomes an issue for some companies. I'm saying, I'm actually in the other spectrum of you. I think that companies, corporations, are going to embrace AI, but protect their data even more. I think there's gonna be probably on-prem or self-hosted AI coming our way, that people are gonna adapt to. But I also think regulators, if regulators and Congress that knows nothing about Facebook and how it works, majority of them, how the heck do you think they're going to be able to assess and regulate AI when you explain to them what AI is capable of? They're gonna freak out. - So, what's the prediction? - The prediction, I think there's going to be a correction because there's going to be more privacy and regulation coming, and we're going to shift to more synthetic data where we're gonna use human behavior analysis to predict what most humans would do in a specific situation. - I don't know what the doctor said, do you? - I mean, yeah, we'll go with it. - I mean, that's not my prediction, so American predict whatever it wants. Good for you, Amir. - Brian, tell us the prediction you got for next year. Give me a hot one. - So, I'm gonna give, this is Brian, Brian just gives a wild prediction, I don't give a general prediction. - Yeah, give us predictions like 20 sporting bets. - 2026, more D to C only brands currently. When I mean D to C, I mean e-commerce. I mean, Amazon, I mean, WalmartTarget.com, I mean, their own website, more D to C brands will open up their own retail stores in 2026 than ever before in the history of e-commerce. And I like following, there's two very smart people who never post on X and LinkedIn. Occasionally, they'll drop nuggets, but I'd seen a ton of their interviews, two folks over at Bombas, the SOC company. And they just announced that they will be opening up their own Bombas retail stores across their three heavy geographic D to C customer locations in the United States. So, they haven't released exactly one in where, but it's gonna be happening in 2026. And then it got me thinking that as it gets harder and harder to run a business, people are cutting, people are trying to open up as much margin as they can. Obviously, the easiest way to get in the retail, right, is to go through your cascows and your, you know, Walmart's and Whole Foods or whatever the case may be. However, on the inverse side of that is a lot of folks have been working so hard over the past 10 to 15 years, growing their own brand. And they grew it so big that they have such a loyal following. And the best way in their mind to open up margin and to acquire other assets outside of it is buying because deals right now on commercial real estate properties are incredible, even though the interest rates aren't great. So, the inverse side of residential right now is on the business and commercial side. As you can find some really good locations in Strip malls, that a lot of people are taking advantage of. So, I see this as like a double down an asset, especially as rates drop a little bit and the market figures with way out, but price wise to get into your own retail store is gonna be a thing that I don't think people thought about before. It was an easy lever of saying, hey, Costco, take 30% 40% of my margin, go sell it, you know, but then you get to that scale and we look at costs, like, and we're at a almost pride, a very small scale. Well, you're not only giving Costco, like for an example, when we see dude wipes, Shawna dude wipes post, we sold $30 million at Costco. Cool, they took 40% of that, right, 30%. Now you have to pay people a team to run your Costco channel. Now you have to give a dividend or a cut to the buyer, whoever that got you in a Costco. Now you have to pay for the merchandising inside Costco. Costco's not paying the time for that. So the more and more you compile onto this and squeeze the businesses are like, dude, we're not making much at all. Well, you've already grown such an established brand like Bombas, for example, right, we're talking about tens of millions of customers. Hey, we already have the people, we'll open up a store or wherever we want, we'll own the real estate, so now we're acquiring assets. And now we only need a few employees in the store and we're gonna sell our product at 100% margin. So we're gonna see a lot of own, D to C retail stores open up in 2026. - Okay. I mean, I think it's a strong point. I do think it's interesting to see, I mean, we had our friend Curtis on this pod and we talked about with Portland, with Portland, the goods in their stores they've opened and other people opening stores. I think it's interesting, man, like I do understand a point of going into retail, but at the same time, I feel like you add a lot of complexity into your business once you add retail into it, right? Like if you don't have retail, 'cause I've had both sides, right? I went from retail to online, right? And we went from retail to online to fully online and we never, we closed down our retail store front because the retail side was extremely hard. You add this weird complexity of things and people never think about. We're not talking about product or staging or buildings. We're talking about employees and retail employees. And I mean, I mean, this is the nicest way, but retail employees that a D to C brand is hiring is probably not gonna be at the top to your quality. You're not attracting A plus great talent. You're attracting young talent that could be hit or miss. Not saying they are great, but when one doesn't call out, one gets sick, one had does this, one does something stupid and like a fenced customer or does something like crazy with inventory and steals it. Like these are all examples of things that I dealt with what I was in retail. It's extremely hard and I'm not sure if the dollars are worth the output because let's just say, let's just say Brian, I've got an amazing retail store, right? I don't care how good your retail store is. Let's just see make a million dollars in that store. What are you really netting? 100, 200,000 maybe max, right? What if I would have spent that same $1 into my online presence or my online side? Could I have outpoured more EBITO? Could I have outpoured more doubt? And short answer is yes, I think, in my humble opinion. - Yeah, I think as Azure like customer opposition costs gets higher, all these other channels are taking more money. - Yeah, but retail in front end human person traffic it seems to be the worst kind of cat bed. Like I had a hundred people walk by my store and two people came in and one person bought. Like is that really good? I think though, when you hit a certain layer like economics of e-commerce, I think sometimes people look at the data or give in to how you opened up Brian and they say can we grow the channel anymore? How much more can we truly go? - Bombas did what? 500 million last year? Something like that? It's crazy. - Crazy for socks. - Yeah, for socks, for undergarments, good for them. And then maybe looked at the traditional retail like the Costco models, whatever, they looked at all of these different distribution channels that they have. And it's like, okay, how do we hit that billion dollar mark? It is to Curtis's point, it is not what we did for the last 10 years. We gotta try something extreme. And they can open 50 stores up and each store has that net in quote of a million dollars. - What's pretty cool too is our director of retail sales, Rob, him and his wife had a store in Brooklyn for like 20 years. And they used to have like three or four employees working there for typical 10 hour retail shift. And now they have one with the Shopify scanners. So they have four scanners in the store with one employee, people go around, scan their products, wipe their card, someone verifies at the counter. So they cut down from four to one. So you're seeing cut in retail now with advancements in technology. And now you also have assets, right? So we've been a part of a couple calls recently, just like Adams, like you know, creating this like advisory board or whatever. And a lot of companies now investing, especially in CPG or like, what are your assets? So if I were to go to true classics, and say, hey, what are your true assets, the T-shirts? - I had no idea what their building's situation is like. - Yeah, like do you lease, do you own? So now, as we evolve, what? - I think part of that investment, by the way that they took, and recently, was to actually open their own manufacturer. - So they might be opening their own asset. Yeah, they might be building their own assets. - Right, so you're seeing, and that's gonna be my next prediction. So I'll just roll that into my next prediction, and then we move on to Jimi Ramirez. But I think more people are gonna own their own manufacturing, because it creates a value asset before either acquisition or investment, or an exit, where people come to us where they're like, hey, here are the numbers you have to hit, here's what you could be worth, because we go to someone that's like a D to C brand, that could be five times our size, and they have a co-packer. They don't own any of their real estate, they don't own any part of their process, besides the actual brand and their email list, essentially, right, their subscriber list. Those assets are actually becoming less and less worth in value. So the last call we had, he was like, hey, listen, your subscriber list and your email list, used to be worth 800 times more, or 800% more during COVID than it is today, 'cause if I were to acquire that business, I don't own anything, right? And we went through this whole thing, I filled you guys in on, I can't name the company, but they don't own anything. Well, what is almost pride on? Well, we own $4 million of land in real estate, we own $3 million of machinery, we own our own production space, we own our own retail store, automatically we're worth more than, we have more assets in Farmerstock, for example, they don't co-pack, they don't ship, whatever. Now, that side of it is now becoming sexier for investors, because now they know, worst case scenario, they're investing in an assetable business that didn't exist during COVID, they just invested in hyper growth on the paid ad side of it. So, the retail side of it, like our retail store downstairs, the most profitable part outside of the turkeys, is less than a million in total sales, but we'll profit call it like 2.2230 take home. Just by having one employee there, we're only open 20 something hours a week now, and it's 350 square feet, little small store. But that whole prediction in terms of people now owning their own manufacturing, is during control of the process, it opens up your margin. If we had a co-packer pack for us, we would lose 15% minimum right off the top. And now we only manufacturing started a business. So, that's my phase two is CPG companies. We'll start to move and invest more into their own manufacturing, and say what you want about the politics side of it right now, but there is a lot of opportunity, and a subsequent amount of states in the Midwest and down south, to build warehouses and manufacturing facilities that are available via Grant State and Federal, where you can get some really cool stuff built today. It's just a matter of going through that process that a lot of people were scared of before, because they didn't have to face it before. So, 2018 through 2022, it's like, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. I don't care if Tony and China makes it. I don't care if we're shipping out boxes in Tallahassee, who cares? I'm gonna hire a $250,000 CMO. I'm gonna hire a $400,000 CFO. We're just gonna grow and sell, sell, sell. Well, now it's like, dude, we gotta make money, we have to own something. 'Cause a lot of people on e-com and D2C, when you go on X and LinkedIn, they don't really own anything. Like if you were like, hey, what's your business worth? If you were to die today, and I were to buy your business, what am I gonna buy your tumblers, your t-shirts? You don't own anything. So, there's gonna be a shift in that regard. I know those long, but-- - Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so the rise of brand assets and different things behind that. I get that. I love board with it. - I agree. That's a good one. Don't discount brand value. Brand cares what. - Yeah, I think for some, Amir, I don't think for 98. I think for like 95% it doesn't. I think for five percent it does. - Yeah, well, I don't know. - We can talk about that for real quick. I think that's an interesting topic. Because-- - You're good. - That's a good topic, Amir. - You guys know about Radio Shack, what are what, Pier One, a couple of these other brands that were owned. You know there was this company, a group that owned it, right? This guy from Tai Lopez, you guys met, heard him here. Here, my garage, you know what I'm talking about? - Yes, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, he got recently caught up in SEC and I don't know all the details, what allegedly happened, all that stuff. But he bought all these brands when they wanted to stress right before COVID and he bought them and reopened them with generic product generic brands just to sell and put things into the product. I'm not sure that those brands even know we grew up with him. Radio Shack is a perfect example. Why did you go to Radio Shack to find precise gains? I need a little clip for this thing. They had that there, right? It was kind of like Fry, same thing, right? And Fry's is gone too. And so, I don't know if Brand carries the weight, the same way in that I would say that it carried for our generation, like the older generation to the younger generation. Brand seems to be less important. I still consider saying this. Like I think person out in creators or whoever the founder face, like the brand is different than it used to be where brand used to be symbolized to a store, a brick and mortar, a product, it's more now going down to like the humanized level. I don't know if that makes sense. To the degree, I would ask you question, what shirt are you wearing? Who am I wearing? True classics. True classic. Yeah. Same shirt. Under our baby. Under our. So here's my question here. I think with the radio shacks, with the peer ones, with the Marshall fields in Chicago, those are the Boomer brands. So those are also not brands. They were retail brands. They were, yeah, they were the Boomer. They were multi-place stores, right? But you talk to a Boomer, they're going to be like, "Ah, radio shack, let me tell you a story." But if true classic or bombers, for example, were available for pennies on the dollar, and we are degeneration, they're growing up with them, you should be stupid enough to buy it. Yeah. I mean, I'm not saying it's right or wrong. I'm just saying that doesn't always quantify the dollar with company. Yeah, yeah. Like I do think real physical tangible items, like Brian is talking about is more going to make sense. I also think it's like, I think a mirror, you're right. I think it's now that I think about it, though. It's slowly become the even older generation. When we first bought our home, RIP, grandfather passed away. Old. When I bought a Sony Bravia TV, if you guys know the line of Sony Bravia TVs, bought a 75 inch, it was like the biggest purchase I made in the home, I was all excited. I put it out 2018, right? In the wall, I go, this is beautiful. My grandfather walks in and goes, "Why aren't you going to Toshiba?" I'm like, you don't even, do they even still make TVs during the past? Yeah, maybe 45 years ago, when like the first TV was invented, right? Then what happened is Amazon now has trained the boomer market that used to be big brand. And now my dad's like, so phone charger on Amazon. (beep) Buy. He doesn't care if it's an Apple. That's what I'm saying, Archer. He doesn't care what brand. So now, now the brain equity that used to be the boomer generation, because my dad used to be this way growing up. He only used to buy Toyota's, right? Only used to buy Toyota's. That was it. Now he's like, "Dude, I don't, whatever's got the best deal, the best, whoever can give me the best, you know, whatever." That's cyclical. That's generational. But that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. But now that's even, it's even carried down further in generation, like my wife, when she, birthday parties, needs home decor stuff, needs clothing. She'll go on sheen to get kids clothes. She'll go on Amazon and get party stuff. She's like, she doesn't care what brand it is. Now it's all, we're so set on price and convenience that like the brand side of it, even true classics. True classics got big because they were the first in the space, right? They were the first one to get into. And then Bill came a little bit after. And now there's like a bunch of them, right? They were the first ones to get down. Obviously, I think they might have been the last one into the place. Then they get in 2017? Yeah, I think Cots maybe 2015, Bill was like 2015 or 2014. So actually they were last to come in. So now, so now, the true classics thing, right? I have a bunch of their shirts, but it was an interesting conversation. We're sitting here with Ruin, a bunch of people from in our meetings the other day. I'm like, "Dude, is that a true classic shirt?" You guys do, I don't know. It's one of those brands. And I looked at it and it was that BYU, it's BYULT. That is the Bill. Yeah, he goes Bill. Yeah, it's like, I just rotate between all of them and whoever's got the deal going on. That's his thing. He goes, "They're all the same." I mean, I'll be open about it. Ryan gives me a lot of gift cards. And so I just spend them, to be honest. And the thing is, too, they're like, they were saving us just to have them with food of the loom. It was the same situation back in the day. There was like three, four of them. Food of the loom ended up winning the battle. And they're kind of the only big, big, you know, undergone my brand left. But my thing is, it's like wherever we are in the phase of life, and I think every smart marketer knows us. From 25 to 35 right now, the way marriages and kids, that's what we spend our money. When the kids start to come, we start to rethink. They always look, okay, what do we buy for the kids? And what do we say? When we hit our 50s and 60s, like how much can I save so that I can live when I'm 70? That's why your dad has to ask the work, he doesn't care about it, he just needs to talk. Same thing with my dad. You know what I care about? I have one pair of I, a (beep) Apple pods, a second pair, 'cause they don't last enough. And I didn't buy the courted ones. I have an Apple computer, Apple laptop on. When I'm 50 or when my first kid comes, I'd be like, I am not giving Apple another dime. It's good to happen. Hey, Amar, did you, The Fruit of the Loom logo have a cornucopia or not? Oh, you're gonna kill me now. That that's one of those. It does not. Is that only 'cause you thought about it, but do you still remember it with a cornucopia? Yeah, I have, I remember with a cornucopia, but it does not have a cornucopia. Yeah, it's a Mandela thing. Brand of thought. All right, all right, let's keep going. Okay, so with all this knowledge that you guys kind of shared and we'll wrap up with the last two here in a second, but with all this knowledge you did, let's think about the future and let's think about what, you know, where this go future of websites and different things. And this is where I started like researching the e-commerce market, $4.8 trillion. And then I started chopping it up and it really came down to Amazon's like 38%, Walmart's like eight, nine percent and Shopify's like 65%. And I was like, if Shopify is 65% or 6% roughly of all e-commerce GMB right now, it's proving out just like everything else that e-commerce or website, yes, it can be a good to direct a consumer type of environment, but it's probably not the best place to be running and operating or business. And secondly, I see where this continues to become more of a loyalty channel. Websites are becoming a loyalty channel. It's kind of like, it's kind of like, okay, you said a perfect rhyme. If I'm shopping for my kids' birthday party, I'm not shopping for one brand and going, I need the forks and then going to another brand and going, I need to spoon and then I go to Amazon type and kids five year old party and it fucking spits out a ton of different things at order. And so the marketplace effect, we grew up with this, you guys all on this, especially me being that I'm the oldest in this room. I am on the cusp of a Gen X or any millennial, right? I'm like the oldest, like I'm a weird hybrid because I have old tendencies and new tendencies, which is why my friends are half challenged in many ways technological because they, it was a couple of more older than me because I always hung out with older kids. When I was younger, they have turned out to be like tech dummies compared to me because they grew up in that next generation, right? And so as I look into it, one of my predictions that next year is we're going to start to see the decrease of Shopify or website direct, not Shopify actually, I take this back, website conversions occurring and we're going to see a continued increase in marketplace is continued increase in social commerce. All this thing, Shopify is done a great job positioning and solves as a main hub where they can do retail, they can do social commerce, they can do website commerce, they can do it, they'll eventually figure out some more self-adamination, I'm sure. So in my opinion, I think websites continue to gear towards that loyalty aspect next year. - You know, I agree and it's something similar to what Brian said and I'm going to kind of like transition if it's okay to back you to my prediction. It's like twofold. One is actually think we're going to see a start of the demise of e-commerce. - Yeah. - I think e-commerce is going to fall apart and this is what I'm thinking. We're not no longer going to be hiring digital strategies or specialists, we're going to shift to analog strategy. - And this is a lot of-- - An analog, like, gorilla strategy, like what are you today here? - So analog, what I mean by that, I will use Aura, as an example, I have on my ring. Products that have a media attachment to it. That could be a nap, that could be courses, that could be experiences. I think brands going through the loyalty piece, I think that loyalty thing that you're talking about is going to accelerate the brands are going to preserve the most customers. And I think what a lot of brands are going to have to think about is, okay, somebody purchases something on whatever channel. How do I keep their attention? Is it like Peloton and Aura Ring or the Ring camera, where you have a subscription attached to your product? Is it maybe something like a subscription box that we, like Crunch Labs, or UnderShift2, that we work with that teaches your kids traditional formats on how to build certain things. But I think there's going to be the websites that are going to agree with you, Jim, going to become town squares for people to connect or apps. So community is ultimately what you're saying. Yeah, which also drives loyalty. Yeah, I mean, yeah. But it's going to be, I think, more directed. It's like, how do we attach a service to a product? The other component, I think, was going to accelerate that. I think we've seen with iOS 14, and it's going to accelerate now. There was like a great data reckoning that we had, that everybody parented, or I think it's going to get worse. And I think what people are going to shift to is like, kind of like what I've said, like media publishing, self publishing, I think e-commerce companies are going to start to think like media companies. I'll use Battlebox, a great example. Actually, you guys do a great thing too, but I'll much cry. You use media to entertain your customers on TikTok and Instagram. We have Brandon, who does a phenomenal job with Battlebox, Engage, or-- I think people who don't do this moving forward, like, discollection of whatever it is. Wow, am I that exhausting? It's that better exhausting of this thing, Jim. It just popped up and said, better exhausted. Jim is probably tired. Yeah, yeah. But-- Yeah, I don't know what's going on here. I think my battery gave up. I'm going to switch cameras here to something else. I'll send you a link to what you need to buy for that. But I think we're going to need for brands to switch to this model sooner than later, and I think it's going to start next year. Yeah, I like that. I like that a lot. I mean, even look at the-- on the app side of it, in terms of loyalty and creating that sort of experience within the product, look at John and Duolingo. Like creating some sort of-- the product is obviously the app and paying for it to learn Spanish. But then on the-- that also comes along with the challenges and the gains and the community and the streaks. And all of that, because ultimately, that's how you keep people coming back on a daily basis. And I think that's it. I would agree. It's almost like if we did a-- where if you sent it for a subscription, it's like, when do you feed? Let's say you were twice a day feeder. Oh, I feed that 9am-- or between 8 and 9, and then I feed my dogs between 8 and 9am and 4 and 5pm. And it's almost like you track-- you see how consistent you can be if you fed your dogs in the window for like, I fed my dogs at this exact time for six weeks in a row, five months in a row, and I got 20% off my next order stuff like that. Well, nothing of that. You actually taught a bug that's and you're looking into it. It's a whole data play that you're trying to do with the food. Well, the data play is going to be huge. That's going to be a lot of fun. It's the exact same thing. And I think a lot of more companies, I hate to touch your horn, but they need to think like you. It's like, OK, I know this is my hero product, but what comes with it? And if we spoke in the phone earlier, and maybe we can talk about this on the pod, it's a similar way, not media, but a crox. It makes $250 million on those little pins. It's 10% of the revenue. $250 million on pins. I hate those things. What on your shoes? I hate those things. But yeah, you're spot on. So we'll see. I think these are some good predictions, boys. Anymore, Brian, I've got retail assets. What's your last prediction? Give me one more before we fire this thing out. So this one's going to be pet specific. And I'm going to-- and this is another wild take. But we're either going to see-- I don't know if the actual transaction will go through, but we're going to at least at minimum hear rumors of a transaction going through. Where Amazon or Target will buy Chui. So Chui now is-- OK, so you're saying Chui will get acquired. They're public now, aren't they? Chui? I thought Chui is a public company. I think it's official too. Let me see. Yeah, they are. Yeah, Chui is a public company. I mean-- So here's the thing with Chui. So Chui launched. They were just dry food. They just did kibble in treats. And they did that for the longest time. And they said, hey, they actually-- they actually saw the category growth in frozen fresh, gently cooked raw, freeze dried a lot sooner than most folks, where they doubled down in that growth a couple years ago. They've only been hosting and selling frozen and refrigerated pet food for not even 18 months. So they just got their logistics sorted out. They now acquired and purchased warehouses all across the country. And I think that was-- that's the-- and they're huge warehouses, by the way. That was the point where I'm like, OK, this is sort of Amazon's playbook where, hey, here's a potential $30, $40 billion channel. Just Chui, I believe, in the next five years. They've already figured out the logistics out of it. They already have distribution set up. And freezer and refrigerated, which Amazon right now doesn't touch because of the complexity of it, right? You can't ship FBA if you sell frozen order refrigerated because Amazon doesn't allow. They only allow FBA for dry. So we're at least going to hear rumors of it if the transaction doesn't go through. But one of those two folks will gobble Chui up. Yeah, I mean, they have a $14.3 billion market cap. So I mean, it would have to be a target or a Amazon that would have to buy them just purely because of how expensive that thing is. Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah, and it's going to be a continuous-- at least 10 or 20% year over year growth market, at least the way that fresh and frozen raw is going. So it's Amazon's playbook. Let's let someone figure out, build it out. they'll just buy them as much as I have grown, they have stalled in the last couple of years. Yeah, their stock is not, I mean, they were peak stock 2021, like everyone else and then they fell down. Yeah, but I would say if you look at who they were, a mayor in 2020, and now they're pretty much black. Oh, yeah, I mean, it's incredible what they've done. I'm not taking away anything from them, but yeah, yeah, it's kind of wild. They're bigger than all of independent pet retail, which is 7500 stores. Yeah, that's interesting. Well, we'll see what happens if they do get a choir ring come back to this pod and we can talk about it. Alright boys, well, I had to switch cameras. My camera went out. I think I need a battery thing, but we'll talk about that. I'm here. So I'll send you a link, you know, send me a link of whatever the heck I need now, but I feel like I've been pouring money on this stupid camera and I can just use this beautiful Mac camera. Anyways, with that guys for mayor, Brian, my name is Jimmy Kim. Thank you guys for tuning the awesome pod like subscribe follow comment yadi yadi, this awesome pod.com will see you on the next pod. See you later. Adios. Tata. I mean, guys. Welcome to the awesome pie where we talk a lot. It's the path that we walk a lot from four point of views. When we're talking shop, I'm