The Legend of the Corpse Reviver & Can Legacy Commerce Platforms Be Revived Through Composability?
Issue №17 - It’s nearly Halloween & Day-of-the-Dead, a good time to enter the crypt & explore Corpse Reviver cocktails. Speaking of corpses, can legacy platforms be revived through composability?
In today’s issue we look at a bunch of revivers that became corpses, and the one that still flourishes today, the Corpse Reviver №2. Trust me, our updated spec is a knockout - if you love the Last Word, this updated reviver may become a new favorite of yours. As we sip away, we also look at the question of whether the legacy commerce platforms can revive their offerings by going composable. And what does composability even mean? Is it just lipstick on a set of empty reviver (cocktail) coupes or can they find their way through to relevance?
Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy it! Cheers!
Cocktail: The legend of the Corpse Reviver, and why is there a №2, a №3, a №4, and a…
The Corpse Reviver was a nineteenth-century American cocktail that was essentially unknown in America. In fact, it was not really a specific cocktail at all - but a moniker that many bartenders in the U.K. working in “American-style” bars would apply to a wide range of cocktails in the mid-to-late 1800’s. Each of these cocktails was meant to revive, typically for a patron with a nasty hangover from the previous night's reverie. Each bartender would thus have their own ‘reviver’ and the many-sorted, documented recipes we have today reflect that.
Bring out your dead, we have a reviver for each of them
The use of the words "corpse reviver" to describe a mixed drink first appears in literature in early issue of the weekly British satire magazine Punch in December, 1861 in an article titled “A Smash for a Sensationist”. A later, very different recipe appeared in the U.K.’s Gentleman's Table Guide in 1871, which called for equal parts brandy and maraschino liqueur, with two dashes of Boker's bitters - a cocktail bitter known for its unique herbal, citrusy notes with a hint of spice that was closely associated with the Manhattan cocktail before Angostura came to rule the world of bitters.
In 1937’s Cafe Royal Cocktail Book, by W.J. Tarling, listed four different reviver cocktails. These included a corpse reviver that called for a glass filled with brandy, orange juice, lemon juice, and topped off with champagne. That same book also held recipes for a ‘new corpse reviver’, a ‘stomach reviver’, and ‘Godfrey's corpse reviver’ (Editors note: at the time of writing, it remains unclear if Godfrey was the corpse or the creator of the cocktail). The index of the book even indicated that the book did not have enough space for still two other reviver cocktails, including one called a ‘Corpse Reviver Liqueur’.
Even the jaunty one who likes pousse-cafés
Revivers got out a little out there as bartenders pushed the limits and took some creative license. As evidence I present the Corpse Reviver from 1903’s The Steward's Handbook And Guide to Party Catering. This corpse must have been having a laugh as the customer was served a pousse-café - a fancy, layered (or "stacked") drink that uses the various densities of the various spirits and liqueurs for dramatic effect. (Ya, think of all the layered delights and such fine pousse-cafés as the B-52, the Slippery Nipple, or the Tequila Sunrise.) You expect that sugar-rush of technicolor bullshit to revive me? To each his own… reviver.
That said, in my research for this article I did uncover the hilarious - and maybe not half-bad sounding - Corpse Reviver №Blue. I may have to give this one a try before I head out to the disco, and burn the place down with my dance moves. The Corpse Reviver №Blue calls for blue curaçao in place of the dry curaçao to give this reviver the Blue Man Group treatment. (Note: Blue joke removed. Still laughing.)
OK, OK, but I desperately need the best reviver
The version that first gained widespread fame was a cocktail that was served in London’s Piccadilly in the late 1850’s. That drink - now known as the Corpse Reviver №1 - was two parts cognac, one part Calvados or apple brandy, and one part Italian vermouth. In the seminal Savoy Cocktail book, bartender Harry Craddock's notes says it is, "To be taken before eleven in the morning, or whenever steam or energy is needed".
But it is the next entry in that book that won the day in the end, the Corpse Reviver №2. This is the reviver that has stood the test of time and spawned a whole genre of cocktails. This is more than warranted as it best fits the modern palette and is delicious - bright, tart, refreshing, nuanced and balanced - and, I should add - clearly the most reviving.
But we are not the only ones who like (or liked) it better. Apparently Craddock had noted that the №2 was the most commonly drunk of the corpse revivers at the Savoy - that just did not happen to make it in the book. His editors must have cut it, because the wanted to include Craddock’s public service announcement - and stab at humor - in the notes under the cocktail instead: “Four of these taken in swift succession will unrevive the corpse again.”
The Corpse Reviver №2 is also simple and fast to make. Craddock’s original version called for equal parts gin, fresh lemon juice, orange liqueur, Kina Lillet, and a dash of absinthe. It follows the now standard "sour template" of cocktails, meaning it utilizes a base spirit in combination with a balance of sweet and sour elements, in the form of liqueur and citrus. The fortified, aromatized wine functions the same way vermouth does in countless other cocktails, helping to bind together and smooth out the ingredients while adding depth of flavor.
What the Kina? You changed the recipe? May the House of Lillet tremble at the Ghost of Kina.
Craddock’s recipe called for Kina Lillet, which is no longer made. Well, it is more complicated than that - it is sorta being made today, and sorta not - but has lost its place for many in the esteemed Corpse Reviver №2.
Kina Lillet was a French fortified, aromatized wine - like vermouth. In the early 1970s, Maison Lillet - the family makers of Kina Lillet - removed "Kina" from the brand name, deciding to call it simply Lillet. There was a good reason for that, as "Kina" had become a generic term used by many aperitifs to emphasize their quinine content - so why not just simplify. A brand change for a beloved product such as this is totally fine in my book, as is changing it yet again later on to Lillet Blanc after Maison Lillet decided to add the punchy, fruity, and wholly unnecessary Lillet Rouge.
But the crimes go beyond that. In 1986 Maison Lillet decided to take the quinine out of the Kina Lillet. The resulting product was softer, with a sweeter profile and different enough from the original that it is safe to say we lost Kina Lillet. (Hey, Lillet - pay attention. This is a softball for you here, revive this sucker!)
As a result, many who care about the Corpse Reviver №2 will argue that Cocchi Americano is actually closer in flavor profile to the Kina Lillet than the Lillet Blanc is today - and prefer it. Comparing the two, the ‘Cocchi’ adds a touch more herbaceousness and bitter-balance to help properly stimulate the corpse. But, after conferencing with esteemed Cocktails & Commerce co-CMO (Chief Mixology Officer) Mr. Bill Friend, we decided to test with Tempus Fugit’s Kina L'Aero D'Or instead.
Using Kina L'Aero D'Or is an advanced maneuver, as it is harder to find - but it is a stroke of genius in this cocktail. It adds an elegant next-level of herbaceous bitterness over the Cocchi, and most certainly over the Lillet. The impact of this ‘kina’ is no accident. Tempus Fugit very intentionally created their kina to fill the void left by Lillet, modeling it after the golden age of French “kinas” - with wormwood and cinchona that is absent from Lillet, and uses more than the Cocchi for that matter. Tempus Fugit has built a great business reviving liqueurs and spirits long lost, and I commend them yet again for it.
I agree it makes a better reviver. Let’s mix one!
Cheers!
Article Resources & Notes:
I would like to call out the great resources used in the research for this article:
The Oxford Companion to Spirits & Cocktails, Oxford University Press, 2022
Wikipedia - "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." — Jimmy Wales, founder.
Note: As I mentioned, this ‘kina’ can be a little hard to find. Trust that you are still going to make a great reviver with the much more widely available Cocchi Americano.
Corpse Reviver №2 Cocktail spec, serves one:
¾ oz (~20 ml) - London dry gin (see note)
¾ oz (~20 ml) - Tempus Fugit Kina L'Aero D'Or (Substitute: Cocchi Americano)
¾ oz (~20 ml) - Triple sec or curaçao (Cointreau recommended, see note)
¾ oz (~20 ml) - lemon juice, freshly squeezed
Rinse - Absinthe (see note)
Garnish (optional) - Lemon twist (see note)
The process:
Rinse (or spray, see note) the inside of a chilled coupe or cocktail glass with absinthe, discard the excess and set the glass aside. Add all ingredients into a cocktail shaker, then add ice and shake until very well-chilled. Strain into the prepared glass. Add the optional garnish.
Notes:
Gin: A good, down-the-middle London Dry Gin is what you are looking for. Beefeater will do the trick, as will Plymouth or Tanquerey. I like The Botanist Islay Dry Gin for this for its silky texture and well-balanced juniper. Just don’t go too herbaceous and “new gin” here and you will be fine.
Triple sec or curaçao: In this drink, the orange liqueur can be a solid triple sec or curaçao. Technically, there is no strict boundary between triple sec or curaçao anyhow, though curaçaos can have additional herbs and spices added - making them softer and rounder - while triple sec is purely orange flavored. Many will use the excellent Cointreau in a Corpse Reviver №2, as I do, but equally good is Pierre Ferrand Dry Curaçao - which in my view is excellent quality for the money and something I reach for all the time.
Rinse: Instead of a rinse, using a little atomizer bottle of absinthe and giving a quick spray (or two or three or four) is also a nice trick - and adds a bit of jauntiness to the process. (See what I did there? I used “jaunty” twice in one newsletter. It’s the little things.)
Garnish: Craddock’s Corpse Reviver №2 had no garnish but often this drink will be garnished and I prefer a lemon twist with a Corpse Reviver №2. If you use the lemon twist, apply with a jaunty wipe down the stem of your coupe and around the rim before placing three times. (“Jaunty” three times! For the win!) [Yes, some will use a cocktail cherry. I hate those, so I am going to tell you that you will jeopardize all the reviving properties of the reviver by adding the too-sweet, blah of a cocktail cherry.]
Join Cocktails & Commerce: Mix & Learn - Composable Commerce & Cocktails, with Magento!
Thank you to ITG for hosting Bill Friend and I on November 2 as we mix Negronis and Boulevardiers, educate on mixology, and talk about how Magento clients can extend the life of their Magento investments. We will of course be leveraging much of the perspective we share below, but will focus primarily on Adobe and Magento.
It is going to be a blast. Register here, and do it quickly!
Note: If you are commerce technology or services business interested in working with Cocktails & Commerce for virtual or in-person events, contact us here.
Analysis: Can the legacy commerce platforms revive themselves through composability?
Over the last twelve to eighteen months nearly every legacy commerce platform has announced “composability” initiatives or product releases. A year-ago August, Salesforce “unveiled” its ‘Composable Storefront’. This past January, Adobe Commerce announced “extensibility capabilities” to support clients’ composable commerce ambitions. Last March, SAP Commerce “pre-announced” its composable offering. Even HCL got into the game this past July.
Are these savvy, important moves by these industry giants, or simply composting - preparing the scraps from a great meal to be returned to the earth? (OK, that is maybe a bad joke, but I couldn't help it.)
Let’s first define what makes these platforms ‘legacy’, and what they have in common.
All of these platforms have some key characteristics in common. Some are material, and some less so, but all conspire to make the term ‘legacy’ stick:
Each of these platforms have large install bases. Salesforce Commerce reportedly has over a thousand customers on its B2C platform, and somewhere like half that on its separate B2B platform. SAP has roughly a thousand for their commerce offering as well, though certainly some of that is shelf-ware sold through SAP enterprise bundled deals that never went live. Adobe Commerce, aka Magento Enterprise, has somewhere in that neighborhood too. HCL is harder to gauge or even determine what a customer is anymore, but it is fair to say the number would be over five hundred customers as well. Large install bases creates gravity, turning the focus of product organizations toward existing customers - keeping them happy by chasing what are often small features and enhancements - with the goal of retaining those customers and making their platforms more efficient and cloud-friendly.
All of these were acquired and folded into larger suites and offerings. Already we have early career people working in this industry who don’t know that SAP Commerce was once hybris; or that Salesforce Commerce was once Demandware and Cloud Craze (sorry, but still the worst brand name in commerce, ever); or that Adobe Commerce was Magento; or that HCL Commerce is the artist formerly known as IBM Websphere Commerce. HCL is of course a special case, as they are essentially a services firm supporting clients on the old IBM product, but all the others - SAP, Salesforce, and Adobe - acquired these businesses and platforms and folded them into larger offerings. For the most part, that means selling into the wider install bases each of those enterprise “suite” players had built and acquired over time. Dissecting and analyzing the relative success, failure, and lessons learned of each of these moves is best left to a future article, but suffice to say that in each case it dramatically changed the focus to selling these solutions into the acquirers install bases - taking the focus off new business and innovation. Integration to the suites and broader value proposition became the most critical set of priorities - both for the products and the business.
Each of these platforms were built in a different era, with older paradigms. Hybris was founded in 1997, with development pivoting and evolving through the 2000’s. Demandware was founded in 2004, using a creative licensing arrangement with German legacy-platform player Intershop to accelerate its (at the time) novel SaaS offering. Magento started development in early 2007, originally developed by Culver City services firm Varien, it developed and grew quickly with an open-source model. In each case these platforms - single tenant and had to solve for challenges of hosting, scaling, and supporting this software in a pre-cloud, pre-API world. When these platforms were developed, the deployment paradigm was slapping them on a server somewhere, configuring them, and integrating them. Many of the early platforms required capabilities to function that today are handled by cloud software infrastructure and a host of web-dev and application tools that were not available then - but the buyers of these platforms actually favored the fact that these platforms at the time had all-in capability, as long as it was adequate. And while Demandware was a SaaS product, it was essentially then - and arguably still is - a hybrid solution. And now, each of these platforms is chipping away at tech-debt, the plumbing that needs updating, and struggling to keep the wide range of capabilities that may have only needed to be adequate before up to the standards today’s customers expect.
And as business slowed, focus was on existing customers to make the numbers. I’ve written about the lengthening replacement cycles for commerce platforms before, so will not retread all that here, but net-net we are clearly in a phase of the market will little net-new or replatforming happening in the enterprise market (For more on the lenghtening replacement cycles, see C&C Issue №12). In the previous growth cycle for this market - arguably 2005-2015 - each of these players saw remarkable growth in a highly competitive market. But that has changed, and each has not only been refocused on the parent companies install-bases (for reasons I explored above), it has also been where the money was. Each of these products made their numbers by upselling and cross-selling to existing customers - capacity, features, cloud-services, upgrades, and support. That can help make the numbers work in a corporate environment, but it also can take your eye off the innovation ball and leads to tighter and tighter development budgets and internal business-cases that do not support the investment needed to keep these products at the forefront - let alone to build for what customers need five-years from now.
I thought this article was about composability, what is that really?
Sometimes analogies are useful. Think of the e-commerce site as a house, and the e-commerce platform as the foundation, framing, and systems like electrical and plumbing. To get the house you want, you can do a lot with interior decorating - a fresh coat of paint here, some wallpaper there, some new bathroom fixtures - but sometimes that does not go far enough. Sometimes you need to move some walls around to make room for your partner’s new found passion for artisanal home glass-casting (it’s cool, believe me), or maybe the old tube-and-knob electrical can’t keep up with your smart-home ambitions (still not cool enough, if you ask me), or maybe the kitchen is too small, or maybe you need to add a bar (now we are talking!).
Modern construction, plumbing, and electrical has evolved such that there are standardized sizes, regulations, and specs which can come together more efficiently when remodeling - or of course when building something new. And just like adding a new bathroom or an extra room, composability theoretically allows you to update and expand your existing setup while working with more standardized components and standards – yet tailored to your business needs and in order to deliver the customer experience you need to succeed.
In the commerce platform and ecosystem context composability is a component-based solution design approach that makes the remodeling easier - such as the addition, integration, and running of third-party solutions together with the core platform. Think search, personalization, PIM, OMS, payments, and so on.
A less kind, and certainly more violent, analogy is often referred to in information technology circles as a ‘strangulation strategy’ that ‘chokes off’ legacy IT applications by replacing pieces of large systems over time. While the analogy is perhaps grotesquely violent, it is apt, and something we will get into further below.
MACH or Not?
In this market, lots of people want to debate the differences between MACH and composability. It is in some ways a silly, yet entertaining argument that can run in circles - but it is still important to call out. (Personally, I like to picture an episode of Firing Line, with Emily Pfieffer as William F. Buckley and Kelly Goetch as Madalyn Murray O'Hair - could be fun right?)
Composability can be thought of as a set of big lego kits that have been glued together, but which can still be stuck to other large lego-based models or have other legos stuck to them. MACH is the box of legos - from which a nearly infinite set of combinations can emerge, but which can also add complexity when you just want the Death Star combined with the set of Friends.
In my opinion, Composability is a continuation and improvement upon the previous generation of commerce platform and technology stacks, with the goal of making use of various parts of those large applications easier to segregate - and use or not use - while combining with other applications and services through easier integration and orchestration tools to combine them. MACH represents another level of product-specific - or single capability - APIs that are combined to complete ‘the stack’ and in a sense wholly replace both legacy apps and these composable capabilities increasingly within them.
Where things get a bit confusing is that many of the MACH-like solutions (not necessarily in the MACH Alliance) are candidates to be incorporated into ‘composed environments’ and thus combined with composable commerce platforms and solutions. (Still with me? Good, moving on…)
If that does not sound so new to you, you are right.
Composability may be a newish term, but it is not new. From the earliest days of digital commerce tech, businesses were buying ‘best-of-breed’ solutions and integrating them to their commerce stack to get what they needed. Arguably when people use the term ‘composable’ they are implying that this is getting easier. Garnter’s term ‘packaged business capabilities’ is of course also related.
The goal of these composable initiatives by the legacy-platform players is to make it easier for customers to live with these platforms longer - use what you need from them, and get the rest from others, preferably - in their mind - from their marketplace of ISV partners they get a twenty-percent cut from. They promise ease of integration and the ‘plug-n-play’ swapping out of core capabilities they have long offered for the so-called “best-of-breed” point-solutions their customers want to work with. It also implies the ability to orchestrate across these various solutions - for the front-end experience and the back-end processes. That’s a great promise to make, but a hard one to keep.
The reality today - across essentially all these platforms - is that composability is a promise yet to be paid off. Integration with apps is still painful, requiring development work to manage data-models and data-flows, and is often supported with batch processes (yes, I am looking at you CSV). SAP, Salesforce, Adobe, and even HCL have all invested in their integration tools and API-interfaces. Teh ‘best-of-breed’ ISV’s who want to be a part of these ecosystems still have to labor to write and test integrations. They have all announced a host of composable product features and spoken at length about their visions, placating their customers perhaps. But here is the thing, no one is really using them. Maybe that will change, but probably not quickly.
The argument for how composability will benefit these platforms and their customers.
The plausible argument for how composability will benefit these platforms and their customers… let me think… hmmm… give me a minute. Maybe the real answer is, what else are they going to do?
I jest, but if I were running product strategy at one of these platforms I would be doing the same exact thing. Faced with a host of up-and-coming MACH and other start-up platforms that are built using modern API-first architectures and tech stacks, that are natively multi-tenant SaaS and efficient as hell, I would be doing the same thing. Make it composable! (Note: I am avoiding the term ‘microservices’ as I think that can be a smokescreen and does anyone buying these solutions really care what’s behind the API? Certainly not short-term.)
Each of these platform businesses realize the commerce tech world is fast moving toward API-first, ‘best-of-breed’ products and their customers increasingly need or crave both increased agility and wide-range of feature enhancements across many capability areas that these platforms will simply not be able to keep up with.
If your goal is to retain customers - which is true for all these platforms - then these moves make a lot of sense and are logical. It is, however, simply not enough long term. In my view these moves will not turn the tide and lead to significant new business for these solutions outside of bundling these products into larger enterprise “BOMs” - deals with many, many products from these large suite players. In many cases, these products are already being essentially given away, and the business model simply shifts to utilization of cloud-hosting and managed-services.
The reason why this will ultimately fail… but maybe not for a while.
These investments in composability make sense, and will help lengthen the runway for these products with existing customers. But there are a couple of key reasons why I believe in the long run this will not ultimately succeed:
The ‘strangulation strategy’ eventually kills the host. Point-solutions across a wide range of the broader commerce technology ecosystem have matured a lot over recent years - all of them delivered as scalable, API-based solutions. CMS, Search, Personalization, Cart, OMS, CDP, Customer Service, PIM, and on down the line. In many cases, when a range of them have been implemented, the value resides there and thus the underlying commerce platform will indeed become increasingly commoditized - and easier to replace. This is even a ‘sales play’ for many in the point-solution ecosystem as they have worked to get in-front of larger commerce replatforming initiatives, though as we have said - those are becoming few and far between.
In a highly composable environment, what is the value of the commerce platform exactly? As all these point-solutions become more and more prevalent inside composable environments, the cost of these various services will rapidly exceed the cost of the underlying commerce platform. And while the legacy commerce platform “suite-players” may be fine with discounting and bundling the commerce platform with other products, there is an underlying problem - a product that is driving little real revenue will receive commensurate investment, in other words, little to none. It is slow spiral down as these players invest a minimum amount in their roadmaps, focus on existing customers, escalations, and invest what they have in a small set of critical security and efficiency measures (to, yes, reduce the cost of running them.)
The weight of the tech debt is hard to overcome. Technology continues to move forward with an unforgiving disdain for what came before. This favors the newer products and solutions built upon modern cloud infrastructure, development tools, and architectures (microservices shout out!). This typically has relatively little bearing on what many clients experience or need, until it does. I believe we are a short distance (it is all relative, think Astronomy) from major changes in how digital commerce and marketing are experienced by consumers and executed by those selling and marketing to them. Conversational experiences and the use of Generative AI is poised to change this market tremendously. AR and VR (meh-taverse shout out!) will also interweave with that transformation - leading to a proliferation of experiences and even more ‘heads’ in a ‘headless’ commerce experiences context. It will be harder and more costly for customers on legacy platforms and tech stacks to quickly, iterate, test, learn, and adapt. Perhaps that is the inflection point so many competing in the commerce market with more contemporary ‘headless’ and MACH-like solutions are looking for - leading to a new wave of platform investment in the market. (For more on the impact of Generative AI on commerce experience, see C&C Issue №6)
On the top end, build is now once again a viable option - together with point-solutions. With the democratization and standardization of modern application development on top of public cloud infrastructure continues, more and more large IT shops inside large organizations are seeking to build versus buy. These are savvy, proud organizations with resources and the burning desire to differentiate. They see Amazon and Walmart and Shien and Temu as their competitors - and they all build. While this trend today applies to very few outside the niche, high-end market, it can’t be ignored as a trend that will continue to head down-market as well - especially for digitally native brands building a connected-commerce value proposition - such as embedding commerce into their products and customer experiences, both physical and digital. Many of these players will mix in the point-solutions we have talked about throughout this article - where there is a base-level of capability needed to complement what they build, and in areas they don’t see value in differentiating. This will nibble away at the most valuable customers of these platforms and further erode their businesses and thus what they invest.
What this means for the market
We are in a cycle where there is little re-platforming activity, and all the momentum is in the point-solutions and ‘best-of-breed’ providers. Legacy commerce platforms are delivering huge value still today, and I do not expect this to change overnight. Investments by these platforms in composability are relevant, and good to see. But in the long-run, these platforms will fade, and likely fall victim to the corporate calculus of the large ‘suite-players’ who own and control these platforms - just as what befell all the solutions that ended up at Oracle. (Sigh.)
Let’s drink to all of them, and the contributions all who founded, worked on, and got behind these solutions - making a huge impact on the commerce market.
Let’s have another Corpse Reviver!
Recent Podcasts, and my last as host of Commerce Experience:
Well, it was a helluva run - 72 episodes! - but after leaving Bloomreach and supporting them for sometime after, my time with Bloomreach’s Commerce Experience Podcast has come to an end. The podcast was an early pandemic project of mine, and something I had been thinking about for sometime. But I really did not have the time or the work-rhythm to do it early on in my tenure at Bloomreach as I focused on getting the marketing and GTM organizations humming, meeting customers and partners in person, and constantly traveling in the process. Enter the pandemic.
Suddenly I was not traveling and had more time, working from the comfort and security of my backyard office. We found a small agency in London to help us navigate the podcasting process and got going. Having conversations with so many old industry friends - and making new ones - was a tremendous pleasure. Thanks to Scott Pace for jumping in and lending his early help to get it off the ground, and of course, thanks to everyone who came on the show as a guest, or who played a role in it over the last number of years, including Megan Sklar, Benji Block, and the good people at Sweetfish.
If you were a regular or casual listener, thank you. It was so great to hear from so many of you who got value from it. Best of luck to Elena Kacan as she takes it forward and makes it her own.
I do not plan to stop podcasting, and hope to bring you news of a fresh initiative soon. Meanwhile, please check out my final episode (which I did not quite know at the time of recording), it is a great conversation with a good industry friend - the retail podcast-and-barbecue master himself - Michael LeBlanc.
Commerce Experience Podcast - Episode 72: Shifting Trends in Retail And A Look at Canadian Retail, with Michael LeBlanc. A great conversation with the insightful and entertaining Micheal LeBlanc. We talked about the overall retail climate, what’s on the minds of retail leaders in these turbulent times, what makes Canada so hard to get right for American retailers (Canada, it’s almost like a different country!), and the outlook heading into Holiday 2023.
If you are looking for Brian online, you can find him here, here, and here. Bill does not want to be bothered ;)
Be well, be safe, and here is to good business! Cheers! - Brian
Cocktails & Commerce™ is a wholly owned subsidiary of StrategyēM, LLC.