Get your Monday started: The Struggle Bus pulls into Breckenridge with Harvey Bierman on board. This episode hit different. Harvey has been everywhere, merchandiser back in the day, Demandware OG, CDO at Christy Sports, CEO of Red Van straddling Salesforce + Shopify and now, a pause in the mountains. But his take on where commerce is headed? 🔥🔥🔥as Hendrik Laubscher would say.
We went back to 2010 when SaaS still felt like a gamble, when Demandware was stitching together Burton, Columbia, Deckers/UGG and Crocs from college towns with a Main Street turned pedestrian (for US readers: yes, that was radical then). Harvey’s point: culture + curiosity built those brands, not capital alone.
Fast-forward to now: Shopify has turned commerce into a true utility. Flip the switch, the lights come on, integrations mostly “just work.” That’s brilliant for merchants but a slow-motion earthquake for agencies.
Total Cost of Ownership? Harvey calls it a zero-sum game and a distraction. The platforms aren’t lowering your costs, they’re squeezing ISVs and especially agencies. Projects are smaller, margins tighter, talent pools oversupplied.
Innovation, the invisible cost, is what’s getting cut.
His warning to agencies: if you’re still living off keyword campaigns, integration management or spec docs, AI and platform simplification will eat your lunch. The survivors will move upstream into strategy, revenue generation, next-level UX, interactive and video commerce, giving brands fractional access to innovation they can’t build alone.
And to brands: the barrier to entry has never been lower, but that makes the industry more fragile. Everyone can launch a DTC overnight, outsource everything, white-label anything, dream of an exit. But shallow brands without roots or values don’t last. The Timberlands of the world were cobblers first; today’s “brands” are marketers with a supplier. Harvey is disillusioned with that, and frankly, so am I.
We even got into agentic commerce. Harvey’s take: it’s a blank until smart, curious operators do something useful with it.
Harvey’s career song right now? Tune in.
🎧 Listen in if you’re an agency leader, a platform exec, or a brand owner wondering how to navigate the next wave. It’s raw, it’s real, and it’s the kind of conversation our industry needs before we sleepwalk into fragility.
Listen here
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